Dan Savage got a chance to give Washington state supreme court Justice Gerry Alexander a little grief over his role in that court’s grotesque decision against the rights of same sex couples. The occasion was a previously scheduled interview with reporters from The Stranger for the upcoming election (supreme court judges in Washington state have to answer to the voters). The Stranger website has audio excerpts of the confrontation. There is a moment in these recordings that has to rank among the most telling of the gay civil rights struggle, and it isn’t even anything anyone actually says. It is a sound.
Posted by Unpaid Intern at 02:59 PM
Weeks ago, we—meaning I—scheduled interviews with the state’s Supreme Court candidates in preparation for our annual endorsement issue. Then, one day before the interview, the justices announced they were upholding the gay marriage ban. Coincidence? Entirely. Fortuitous? Very.
Imagine a justice who voted to uphold DOMA trapped in a room with Dan Savage (wielding a framed picture of his son, DJ) and the rest of the Stranger Election Control Board, for an entire hour Well, you don’t have to just imagine the showdown! Here is Justice Gerry Alexander starring in “An Inquisition”:
It’s nine minutes long, so here are some highlights: use of the phrase “child-rearing” (0:34), the sound of Dan placing a picture of his son on the table (0:50), discussion of “suspect class” (5:19), eight-second pause as Alexander ponders response to “Is homosexuality an immutable characteristic?”(5:55-6:03)
…the sound of Dan placing a picture of his son on the table… This would be in front of a justice who signed on to a decision writing same sex couples into second class citizenship because they cannot make babies when they fuck. By that logic every heterosexual couple who use contraception, or whose children were adopted, or who have no children of their own, or cannot have children of their own, shouldn’t be legally married either. But of course, we make exceptions for our fellow heterosexuals…
This has been a month in which the courts have simply walked away from their responsibility to uphold justice and protect the rights of minorities. One court after another has just thrown up its hands and announced that the basic civil rights of homosexual Americans exist only at the pleasure of the heterosexual majority. Justice is a concept that only applies to heterosexuals. What homosexuals get is forbearance.
But we are human beings too. We fall in love. We take our mates. We make our households, grow families, build lives together. Just like real people. And the silence of the courts to the injustices inflicted upon us, upon our homes, is shattered by the sound of a picture frame being placed on a table, before a man whose job it was to protect that family too.
Just over three years after the U.S. Invasion of Iraq, and the middle east is a horrific mess. Say…weren’t the Iraqis supposed to welcome us with roses? Wasn’t democracy supposed to spread like wildfire across the middle east? We’ll be cleaning up after president codpiece’s excellent adventure for generations. But that’s not to say all the news from the middle east is grim. Sometimes it’s funny-grim.
Take the case of Danish imam Ahmed Akkari, of Lebanese birth, who single-handedly instigated months of raging anger in the Muslim world over twelve cartoons of the prophet Mohamed published in a Danish newspaper. The twelve cartoons not being offensive enough, the good imam traveled throughout the Muslim world showing people pictures of things he claimed were images of the prophet produced by the Danes, that actually weren’t. There was a picture of a man wearing a pig mask, that Akkari claimed was a Danish man mocking Mohamed. It turned out to have been a newspaper photo taken at a pig calling contest. Akkari claimed another photo showing a cartoon of Mohamed as a pedophile was also printed in Jyllands-Posten. It wasn’t. Lying through your teeth to incite mob violence is standard operating procedure for all religious zealots, regardless of the specifics of the faith. For his trouble, Akkari got the Danish embassy in Lebanon burned down.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Denmark and Sweden were front-runners in the race to rescue foreigners fleeing the violence in Lebanon, nearly completing the evacuations of more than 10,000 citizens Friday while many other countries struggled to get their nationals out.
The Scandinavians credited new crisis response plans streamlined after bitter lessons learned during the tsunami disaster in 2004.
"It would be fair to say that what we’re able to do now is something we learned from the tsunami," said Lars Thuesen, coordinator of the Lebanon evacuations for the Danish Foreign Ministry.
By Friday morning, Sweden had already evacuated 6,400 citizens while Denmark had shipped out 5,000 nationals from Lebanon — more than any other countries. Both governments said only a few hundred of their citizens remained.
By contrast, the U.S. evacuation efforts were just entering high gear Friday…
…
The Danes got a test run in crisis management earlier this year when newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad triggered violent protests against Danish embassies in Muslim countries.
One of the Danish Muslims who spearheaded the rallies against the prophet drawings, Lebanese-born Ahmad Akkari, was among those evacuated from Beirut on Thursday.
"My impression is that the transportation has been safe and that no one has been suffering," Akkari told Denmark’s TV2 channel as he boarded a Greek ferry chartered by Denmark.
How nice that no one is suffering Akkari. No thanks to you and your kind. And while you’re riding your boat to safety, say thank you to the nice Danes, who despite your inciting mob violence all over the world and getting their embassy burned to the ground, were willing to give a gutter crawling murderous lout like you a ride out of harm’s way.
Say hello to the cartoonists whose lives you put in jeopardy when you get back to the safety of Denmark fella.
As it was last year, there are far, far too many cute longhaired computer geeks here for my own good. And as it was last year, the foreign guys are just a tad sexier. I think that’s because they just feel more comfortable inside their own bodies. One of those little ways that American sex-negative religiosity shows though, is in the way American guys dress below the waist.
Portland’s having a bit of a heat wave, and some of the guys here are in shorts or cutoffs, and you can reliably tell who are the American guys and who are the foreigners, by the length of their shorts. The American guys (generally) won’t wear shorts that are cut well above the knee. Can’t be showing a little thigh or people might think you’re gay.
I was watching some guys swimming in the hotel pool late yesterday, and swear their swim trunks reached down past their knees, halfway to their ankles. Except for one cute blond who was wearing a speedo style trunk. I ran into him at the hotel restaurant and he turned out to be from Spain. It’s like American guys are wearing below the waist burkas these days.
This is how you get to Catalina. They have regular jet-catamaran boats to and from the island, and they are comfortable and fast. Even on a fairly rough sea you don’t feel much. But the sea was very calm on the trip out and back.
At the entrance to Avalon harbor. At the very top of the hill is, I’m told, the Wrigley Mansion. That’s Wrigley as in the chewing gum. The family owns most of the island I’m told.
One of the streets of Avalon looking west. Most of the island is a wilderness preserve. Avalon is the largest town on the island and it ain’t big. Everything the people who live on the island need has to be trucked in by boat. But there is a nice tourest zone right at the beach with good food, a few clubs, shopping, and stuff to do. I’m told there is surfing on the western side of the island. Avalon is on the eastern side, and doesn’t get much wave action at all. The main activites around Avalon seem to be boating, fishing and scuba diving. My brother and my nephew did the scuba park by the casino while I was wandering around taking pictures.
Looking from the end of the Avalon Pier, back to Avalon, as the sun sets.
Boats docked in Avalon harbor. Some of those moorings, I’m told, sell for over a million dollars. Yes…that’s a million bucks just to park your boat..
Avalon harbor from the Casino. It’s not a gambling casino, it’s an old, grand movie theater.
This is the way most folks get around on the island. They don’t like having cars over there, although you’ll see some. Mostly people use these golf carts and small lawnmower engine powered light trucks (and I mean light). Instead of car garages, most houses that have them, have golf cart garages or parking spots.
Many of the nice houses here are built on quite steep hillsides.
Finally…the catamaran trip over and back takes you past the Queen Mary, which is now doing duty as a beautiful art deco hotel. If you like anything art deco, you Have to go see the Queen Mary sometime, it is just amazingly beautiful inside (and out…it’s a lovely ship from the days of the grand trans-Atlantic ocean liners). On the trip back one of those new cruse line ship things was parked nearby, so I snapped this shot of the two of them together. A contrast in Ocean going eras.
More postcards later. I’m on my way now to Portland Oregon for a software developer’s conference. I’ll post more photos of my trip when I get settled in up there.
Our friend Eric Rofes died two weeks ago, and his memorial was held here in San Francisco on Saturday. He died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 52, completely unexpectedly. He was a leading gay activist and scholar and his memorial was shattering- terribly, terribly sad, with a palpable sense of bereavement felt not only by his friends, but by an entire community. It was most heartbreaking to see and hear the agonized grief and bravery of his partner of 16 years, Crispin Hollins.
Eric and Crispin were of course at the forefront of the Gay Marriage movement. They had long held Californian domestic partnership, and also married when (briefly) we believed that San Francisco law permitted us to do so. They had made for one another all the necessary legal arrangements: powers of attorney, mutual wills, etc etc. All their bases were covered, so they thought. As soon as he heard the news, Crispin had flown straight out to Provincetown, where Eric died, to make funeral arrangements. A friend who accompanied them said that when Crispin began to detail the requirements for the cremation and commitment at the funeral home in Provincetown, the funeral director drew himself up and demanded to know what the basis of their relationship was. He told Crispin: "I don’t believe you will be making the funeral arrangements". It required the intervention of NGLTF lawyers and lawyer friends on both coasts to convince the funeral home that he was indeed authorized as a legal partner to make the arrangements. Crispin requested an autopsy, which was contested by the Medical Examiner on the same grounds, and the cremation was subsequently questioned as well (they called during the funeral to argue the case with Crispin).
This stands as a lesson to all of us. We are continually told that as Queers, we do not need to be allowed to marry because all legal avenues of partnership are open to us as domestic partners. For Christ sake- this happened in Massachussetts! They had the gall to question a 16 year old relationship, legally bound as far as two gay men can go. At a time when Crispin was utterly bereft and distraught they had the temerity to impugn his and Eric’s relationship, which was as closely legally covered as they could make it. (Eric’s family, by the way, have too much respect for Crispin to intervene- they would not, I think, dream of subverting his moral authority to decide the arrangements).
It makes me so fucking angry. Give us our bloody civil rights! Enough of this fucking heterosexual gobbledygook denying that our relationships are as worthy as a man and a woman’s- we are sick of arguing- just do it: not some paltry second-best, lesser citizen crumb from the hetrosexual table: give us what we deserve- marriage.
Right. Fucking. Now..
The republicans have there way and we won’t have Any legal recourse when people start fucking with us while we’re in grief. Hell…that’s the bet time to put the knife in and twist it and they know it. That’s why they are so vehemently against giving us the right to marry. It isn’t about protecting the sanctity of marriage or any of that crap. It isn’t about how marriage is a god ordained sacrament between and man and a woman. It isn’t about how children are better off being raised by heterosexual parents. It isn’t about any of that. It’s about freedom to twist the knife in the heart of a homosexual, because you just can’t stand homosexuals. It’s about the freedom to twist the knife. Nothing else.
I haven’t fallen off the edge of the earth…just hanging out with my brother in Oceano California and de-stressing. Which is why I’m not posting a whole heck of a lot lately. It’s very easy to forget the world when you’re walking the sands and looking out at the beautiful California coastline around Pismo Beach. And the even more beautiful California surfer boys.
In the meantime I’ve managed to finish the next episode of A Coming Out Story. Yes, I brought my drafting supplies and a scanner along with me.
…in which our hero discovers that libidos aren’t easily dissuaded. Click on the image to go directly to the new episode, or Here, to go to the main page.
This is the kind of thing I was taught about homosexuals nearly all through grade school. They taught me that homosexuals usually kill the people they have sex with. They taught me that homosexuals prey on young boys, but will sometimes lure an unsuspecting heterosexual man into the woods too. They told me that homosexuals almost never have sex with another homosexual because they know how dangerous it is. This was in the 1960s, in the school system of a well do do suburb of Washington D.C.
That film brings back memories all right. That is what I grew up knowing about homosexuals. I suppose a lot of people from my generation were taught those things. I suppose a lot of people from my generation still believe them. The only thing that saved me from a lifetime of fear of my sexual nature and self loathing was that it was so extreme I just knew it was not me, and the conclusion I drew throughout most of my school years, even while I was severely stressing out over a certain male classmate, was that I was not a homosexual. I just couldn’t be. I wasn’t anything like what they were telling me homosexuals were. Therefore I was not a homosexual.
They’re not teaching boys to be careful around strangers in that film. They’re teaching them to fear and loath homosexuals. They’re teaching the gay boys to fear and loath themselves. And they are taking from the gay boys, all the awe and wonder and joy of that first high school romance, and for many of us of my generation, the possibility of love altogether. What they took from us is incalculable, and unforgivable.
For the time being, the political cartoons are going on an irregular schedule. I know…I know…as if they haven’t been already. But I’m making it official now, so as to reduce expectations for the time being. I’ll still be producing gay rights themed political cartoons and posting them here…just not on a regular basis for a while, until I can get some more work done on A Coming Out Story…and until I can get some balance back in my perspective. I haven’t had any community newspapers running my cartoons since January, so this decision isn’t affecting anyone’s publication schedule that I know of.
I’m too angry these days for my own good. There was a time when doing the cartoon helped vent a lot of that. Now when I sit down to draw what’s on my mind I just get even more angry and that’s not good personally or artistically. I need to get some balance back in my perspective, perhaps do more artwork about life and love to balance out the artwork about the struggle against hate and prejudice. That’s another good reason to focus more on A Coming Out Story, and also do some work like I was doing back in the 80s, on the topic of first love.
I had been finishing up the political cartoon late Sunday evening, listening to Pat Marino’s Sunset Cruise. Hearing all those heartfelt love song dedications while I was working on these cartoons about our struggle for freedom and justice made me work all the harder at what I was doing, and for a time gave me some necessary perspective on it. As long as there is love in the world, there is hope. But now I just get too angry. I need to go take a long walk in a happier place and get some balance back. It’s no good being angry all the time.
I’m not abandoning the political cartoon. It will just be a catch as catch can kinda thing for a while. I’m going to be working most of the time for the rest of this summer on A Coming Out Story, and some other artwork down in my art room that is about love, not anger. But as I need to vent a little from time to time, I’ll post something in the political cartoon page. When I have something new up there I’ll notify all of you here.
* One mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life. (Michael Sinz)
* Once you get started, you’ll only stop because you’re exhausted.
* It takes another experienced person to really appreciate what you’re doing.
* Conversely, there’s some odd people who pride themselves on their lack of experience.
* You can do it for money or for fun.
* If you spend more time doing it than watching TV, people think you’re some kind of freak.
* It’s not really an appropriate topic for dinner conversation.
* There’s not enough taught about it in public school.
* It doesn’t make any sense at all if you try to explain it in strictly clinical terms.
* Some people are just naturally good.
* But some people will never realize how bad they are, and you’re wasting your time trying to tell them.
* There are a few weirdos with bizarre practices nobody really is comfortable with.
* One little thing going wrong can ruin everything.
* It’s a great way to spend a lunch break.
* Everyone acts like they’re the first person to come up with a new technique.
* Everyone who’s done it pokes fun at those who haven’t.
* Beginners do a lot of clumsy fumbling about.
* You’ll miss it if it’s been a while.
* There’s always someone willing to write about the only right way to do things.
* It doesn’t go so well when you’re drunk, but you’re more likely to do it.
* Sometimes it’s fun to use expensive toys.
* Other people just get in the way.
I’m back on the road again, heading out to California for a visit with my brother, and then up to Portland for the OSCON open source software developer’s conference. I’m in Memphis at the moment, hoping to touch bases with Morgan Jon Fox, who is working on a documentary of the Love In Action protests. Then it’s a straight shot off to California, and soaking up some California mellow while watching the cute surfer guys by the beach. I don’t see myself spending much time in the four corner’s area this trip, although I’ll probably stop at a few of my regular trading posts along the way.
The trip home should be interesting. I’ll be driving mostly across the northern half of the country, which I haven’t seen much of.
I’ll post of photos along the way. Right now I’m just trying to get as far west as I can.
Oh…and cartoons. I’ve brought some drawing boards and supplies with me, and my small Epson scanner, so I can keep working on A Coming Out Story. I have the next episode half penciled. The political cartoons however, are probably going to go on a much more catch-as-catch-can schedule, so I can concentrate on A Coming Out Story. More on that in another post.
I have to say that this "news analysis" in the NYT of the court decisions in New York and Georgia is one of the dumbest pieces of journalism I have read in a very long time. "For Gay Rights Movement, A Key Setback"? In some ways, I think the New York Court of Appeals decision will help, rather than hurt, the cause of marriage equality in the long run. Why? Because it will force the issue into legislatures, where it is best tackled, and where we will eventually win, and in one case, California, have already won.
If Sullivan thinks that this country could have overcome race segregation at the polls in the 1950s and 60s, had the Warren court reaffirmed the constitutionality of race segregation instead of striking it down, he’s smoking crack. Some states Still have those laws on the books, and voters have doggedly refused to remove them, even though they are no longer enforceable…
Alabama Vote Opens Old Racial Wounds
School Segregation Remains a State Law as Amendment Is Defeated
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — On that long-ago day of Alabama’s great shame, Gov. George C. Wallace (D) stood in a schoolhouse door and declared that his state’s constitution forbade black students to enroll at the University of Alabama.
He was correct.
If Wallace could be brought back to life today to reprise his 1963 moment of infamy outside Foster Auditorium, he would still be correct. Alabama voters made sure of that Nov. 2, refusing to approve a constitutional amendment to erase segregation-era wording requiring separate schools for "white and colored children" and to eliminate references to the poll taxes once imposed to disenfranchise blacks.
The vote was so close — a margin of 1,850 votes out of 1.38 million — that an automatic recount will take place Monday. But, with few expecting the results to change, the amendment’s saga has dragged Alabama into a confrontation with its segregationist past that illuminates the sometimes uneasy race relations of its present.
The outcome resonates achingly here in this college town, where the silver-haired men and women who close their eyes and lift their arms when the organ wails at Bethel Baptist Church — a short drive from Wallace’s schoolhouse door — don’t have to strain to remember riding buses past the shiny all-white school on their way to the all-black school.
"There are people here who are still fighting the Civil War," said Tommy Woods, 63, a deacon at Bethel and a retired school administrator. "They’re holding on to things that are long since past. It’s almost like a religion."
If the supreme court suddenly reversed itself on race segregation, you would, never doubt it, see some states rushing to put the Whites Only signs back up. Perhaps not a majority of American states would do that. And yes, those that did would suffer economic consequences, as people and corporations began to boycott them. But you have to have seen racism in America, seen how endemic it is, seen how even poor white people will reliably vote against their economic interests to maintain their status over blacks, to appreciate its intractable power. I’ve witnessed it first hand. Without the courts again and again overruling the popular will of the voters, without a doubt we would still have legal race segregation in America today.
The roll of the courts is to protect the rights of the individual against the power of the other branches of government. The other branches of government speak for the people. The courts speak for the constitution. They abdicate that responsibility, and all we are left with is mob rule, and that is what Sullivan is arguing for here. The argument that Sullivan is making can also be made for letting the states decide on sodomy laws, which puts us right back where we were before Lawrence, criminals literally in some states, and second class citizens everywhere else. Sodomy laws were used to justify discrimination against gay Americans in everything from custody battles to employment to equal housing laws. Those laws reached across the borders of their states, and into the lives of gay Americans no matter where we lived. These state laws and amendments banning same sex marriage will do the same. Note how, even though same sex marriage is legal in Massachusetts, out of state gay couples cannot marry there if their home states do not allow it. This is the situation mixed race couples faced, before Loving v. Virginia, another court decision that overruled the clear will of the majority of Americans. The Lovings’ case came to the courts after the couple married where it was legal, and were arrested for doing so when they returned to Virginia. The day is coming, when a same sex couple will find themselves under arrest, for exactly the same crime, and Sullivan is arguing that this is a good thing, and the courts should stay out of it.
Perhaps eventually gay citizens could find themselves one day in an America that was, for them, nearly half free and half not. But we will never be completely free as Americans, until we are as a class equal to our heterosexual neighbors, in every state. That will only happen, when the courts decide to do their fucking jobs, and defend the promise of liberty and justice for all in our constitution, against the tyranny of the mob.
In another post, Sullivan says we just need to "chill". But as William Lloyd Garrison once said, tell a man whose house is on fire, to give a moderate alarm.
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