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September 30th, 2016

It’s Not The House Is Made Of Glass, It’s That It’s Your House

Random Facebook associations…

Two different friends posted Mennonite and Gay related news stories that showed up in my feed next to each other. No comment other than the serendipity of it, and perhaps a nod back to that saying from back in the day, that We Are Everywhere and to strike at your gay neighbor is also to strike at someone in your own house as well. That first stone you cast might end up hitting your own child.

Original posters blacked out for their privacy…not that I think any of them would mind…but well…

 

mennonite_gay_news

Link to first article, Here.   Link to second article, Here.

 

we-are-everywhere

by Bruce | Link | React!

September 4th, 2008

Why We Fight…(continued)

The Sidney Morning Herald prints what NBC didn’t want you to know…

Out-and-out champion celebrates

HE KISSED him briefly in the stands and gave him his Olympic bouquet. Later, outside the glowing blue Water Cube, Matthew Mitcham and his partner, Lachlan Fletcher, firmly embraced, both shedding tears. Next it was his mother Vivien’s turn to hold her golden boy, and more tears fell.

Carefully nursing Mitcham’s Olympic bouquet, Fletcher spoke of the incredible journey that the diver had taken to the top. Fletcher has been the one constant over the past two years.

He was his rock when Mitcham retired in his late teenage years suffering anxiety and depression. He watched him become a stunt diver at the Sydney Royal Easter show, supported his fight back into the sport and now to win Olympic gold.

"It’s been so up and down," Fletcher said. "When I first met him, he was pretty unhappy, he wasn’t liking the diving in Brisbane at all, he didn’t want to do it, wasn’t happy being there.

"It took a lot for him to retire and stop doing it because it had been his life for so long. He wanted to try and be happy again. He took time to do normal things that people do.

"Then after five or six months he started to really miss it again and he had the opportunity to dive with Chava [Sobrino, his coach]. He started that and loved it ever since, every second of it, which is great to see him happy all the time."

What NBC didn’t want you to know:  Not that Matthew Mitcham is gay, but that he loves, and is loved, and that relationship nurtured and sustained him when he was beaten and down, and brought him back, all they way to the gold.  Love does that.  What NBC didn’t want you to know wasn’t that Mitcham is gay, but that love does that for gay people too.  To know that, is to see republican gay bashing for what it is.  Not a principled moral stand, but a crime against humanity.

What you have to understand about the entire gay rights struggle is that this is what was taken away from us for so very, very long, and what the haters are Still trying bitterly to take away from us.  Not sex, but love.  Vital, nurturing, sustaining, intimate human love.  The love that makes us whole, that completes us, that empowers us to reach beyond ourselves to the best within us. That is what was taken from us for so many human generations.  That is what we of the post-stonewall generations have been fighting to take back.  Our human status. 

When the U.S. Supreme Court nullified the sodomy laws the screaming from the hate pews afterward wasn’t about gay couples having sex, but fear the courts would now let them get married.  It was the first thing they started yapping about.  When bigots like Orson Scott Card say that a homosexual’s highest allegiance is to the society that gives them access to sex, he’s not describing what we are but what he sees us as being.  Not human.  Humans love, not-humans only have sex.  And you can rip the heart out of not-humans, because they don’t feel any pain.

by Bruce | Link | React!

July 22nd, 2008

Paul Cameron’s Real Gift To The Anti-Gay Industrial Complex

Every time someone mindlessly parrots the notion that gay people have shorter lifespans then heterosexuals, the religious right gives a nod of thanks to Paul Cameron.  Ever since the Reagan years, Cameron has been chugging out a torrent of bogus research aimed at demonizing gay people in the public mind.  Where Falwell, Dobson and Robertson waved the bible at gay people, and social conservatives waved family values, Cameron became a fountainhead, a one-stop shopping center for anti-gay junk science.  From his often used claim that gay people have shorter lifespans, to his claim that lesbians are more likely to be involved in car accidents, Cameron gave their cheapshit hatreds a gloss of dispassionate science. 

Cameron was eventually thrown out of the American Psychological Association for distorting the work of other legitimate researchers.  But to the anti-gay right, which builds museums to creationism and attacks the teaching of science in schools, real science was always the enemy.  Cameron is gold coin to them.  But in recent years, as more and more of mainstream America learns what a charlatan Cameron is, they’ve had to take more care not to put Cameron’s name in their pamphlets.  Some years ago, William Mr. Book Of Virtues Bennett got caught parroting Cameron’s lifespan claim he had to backtrack.  First he claimed someone else had said it too, but when it turned out that person had cited Cameron too, Bennett mumbled something about not trusting that figure anymore and went back to his favorite casino.  I’ve heard though, that lately Mr. Book Of Virtues has been citing it again.

But in the end, Cameron’s biggest contribution to the Kultur Krieg may well be not his bogus statistics, but his method.  Jim Burroway over at Box Turtle Bulletin, has uncovered a new scam by the Family Research Council in their fight to repeal California’s same sex marriage law, that has the trademark Cameron technique but apparently was entirely a homegrown effort.

They cite the "Dutch Study" Stanley Kurtz bastardized some years ago for their claim that gay relationships don’t last very long and are never monogamous.  Burroway did a wonderful job some time back of debunking this, and all I’ll say about that now is that when you look at the data from a study that excludes monogamous couples, don’t be surprised when you don’t see any monogamy in the data.

But it’s the follow-up claim that’s interesting here.  FRC is claiming that same sex couples are inherently more violent, more prone to domestic abuse…

The third point the brochure is built on is this:

Intimate partner violence: homosexual and lesbian couples experience by far the highest levels of intimate partner violence compared with married couples as well as cohabiting heterosexual couples. Lesbians, for example, suffer a much higher level of violence than do married women

They base this claim on the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Violence Against Women Survey (PDF: 62 pages/1,475 KB) If you want to see how they construct this particular distortion, I encourage you to download the report yourself and we’ll go through it step by step. Believe me, it’s worth it because this is a classic example.

It is.  You should go read Jim’s entire debunking of it to get the whole stinking rotten smell of it.  But I’ll give you the executive summary here.  Basically, they took the data for individual victims of domestic violence who were in, or had ever been in, same sex relationships and compared that to the data for victims in opposite sex relationships. But much of the violence against people who were in same sex relationships was committed by an opposite sex partner.  In the case of the men who were or had been in a same sex relationship, almost half of the incidents were attacks on them by wives, former wives or girlfriends.  In the case of the women who had been or were in same sex relationships, as I read the figures, about three out of four incidents were attacks on them by husbands or boyfriends.

Dig it.  The FRC took incidents of straight on gay violence, and included them in its total figure for gay domestic violence.  In point of fact, if you look at the data for Couples, as opposed to individuals, what you find is that a gay man is statistically safer living with a male partner, then a heterosexual woman is living with a male partner. 

This is what passes for traditional values over at the Family Research Council.  If there is a devil in Hell below, then he is smiling proudly at the runt at FRC who came up with that one.  And Paul Cameron is probably smiling proudly too.  He taught them how.

by Bruce | Link | React!

January 22nd, 2008

What They’ve Always Tried To Keep Us From Knowing…

…not heterosexuals, mostly…but us.  This is what they never wanted us to know…

Same-sex pairs ‘equally committed’

Same-sex couples are just as committed in their romantic relationships as heterosexual couples, according to a report.

The finding disputes the stereotype that couples in same-sex relationships are not as committed as their heterosexual counterparts and therefore not as psychologically healthy.

The study examined whether committed same-sex couples differed from engaged and married opposite-sex couples in how well they interacted and how satisfied they were with their partners.

Researchers from the University of Illinois compared 30 committed gay male and 30 committed lesbian couples with 50 engaged heterosexual couples and 40 older married heterosexual couples, as well as with dating heterosexual couples.

Results of a questionnaire and a laboratory task showed that same-sex relationships were similar to those of opposite-sex couples in many ways.

All had positive views of their relationships but those in the more committed relationships (gay and straight) resolved conflict better than the heterosexual dating couples.

The notion that committed same-sex relationships are "atypical, psychologically immature, or malevolent contexts of development was not supported by our findings," said lead author Glenn I. Roisman.

"Compared with married individuals, committed gay males and lesbians were not less satisfied with their relationships."

And he added: "Gay males and lesbians in this study were generally not different from their committed heterosexual counterparts on how well they interacted with one another, although some evidence emerged the lesbian couples were especially effective at resolving conflict."

Yeah…male ego…  But still.  It’s possible.  It can happen.  To us too.  That’s what they never wanted us to know…

The study features in the January issue of Developmental Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association.

by Bruce | Link | React!

September 20th, 2007

Some Better News On The Equality Front

After the grotesque decision by the Maryland Appeals Court to sustain the Heterosexual Prerogative, on the basis that even though some opposite sex couples absolutely cannot procreate, there remains some mystical possibility that they might anyway, and individuals cannot be discriminated against on the basis of sex, but only entire genders, and besides we’re normal and you’re not and there are more of us then there are of you, and minority rights are really only a gratuity bestowed by the majority so you need to just keep begging for them and if you beg nicely enough, well who knows you might actually get a few crumbs from the table not that you deserve any, or as another famous and still very well respected in many quarters Maryland judge might have put it, a homosexual has no rights a heterosexual is bound to respect…I really needed to see some evidence of actual goodness in this world.  Thankfully, there was some…

First…if you’ve been following GLBT news lately, then you know that the City of San Diego recently voted to endorse a court challenge to the state of California’s current ban on same sex marriage.  This came after a previous vote rejecting endorsement of the court challenge that surprised and angered a good many people who expected some long time gay rights advocates to…well…you know…do the right thing.  But on the second go-around the endorsement was passed, at which point the mayor of San Diego, republican Jerry Sanders,  announced he would veto it.  But there were enough votes to overturn the veto, assuming nobody on the council switched again.

Then…someone had a change of heart… 

San Diego Mayor Backs Same-Sex Marriage

The mayor of the nation’s eighth-largest city abruptly reversed his public opposition to same-sex marriage Wednesday after revealing that his adult daughter is a lesbian.

Mayor Jerry Sanders signed a City Council resolution supporting a legal fight to overturn California’s prohibition on same-sex marriage. He had previously said he would veto the resolution.

Sanders, a former police chief and a Republican, told reporters that he could no longer support the position he took during his mayoral campaign two years ago, when he said he favored civil unions but not full marriage rights for same-sex couples.

"Two years ago, I believed that civil unions were a fair alternative," he said at a news conference. "Those beliefs, in my case, have since changed. The concept of a ‘separate but equal’ institution is not something that I can support."

He fought back tears as he said that he wanted his adult daughter, Lisa, and other gay people he knows to have their relationships protected equally under state laws. His daughter was not at the news conference.

"In the end, I could not look any of them in the face and tell them that their relationships — their very lives — were any less meaningful than the marriage that I share with my wife, Rana," Sanders said.

The mayor, who is up for re-election next year, acknowledged that many voters who supported his earlier stance may disagree, but he said he had to do what he believed was right.

Now look at this…a republican with a gay child, who not only isn’t going on a jihad against the gay community because of it, they’re standing up for their rights as citizens too.  Wow.  And you thought republicans like that didn’t exist.  Well…I did anyway.  Hey Alan Keyes… Phyllis Schlafly… all the rest of you louts who can’t love your gay kids… Take A Look.  Rex Wockner has the complete statement, and some photos…

And…speaking of loving your gay kids

Dear Abby: My husband and I raised our two sons and two daughters. One son and both daughters married well. Our other son, "Neil," is gay. He and his partner, "Ron," have been together for 15 years, but Neil’s father and I never wanted to know Ron because we disapproved of their lifestyle.

When I was 74, my husband died, leaving me in ill health and nearly penniless. No longer able to live alone, I asked my married son and two daughters if I could "visit" each of them for four months a year. (I didn’t want to burden any one family, and thought living out of a suitcase would be best for everyone.) All three turned me down. Feeling unwanted, I wanted to die.

When Neil and Ron heard what had happened, they invited me to move across country and live with them. They welcomed me into their home, and even removed a wall between two rooms so I’d have a bedroom with a private bath and sitting room — although we spend most of our time together.

They also include me in many of their plans. Since I moved in with them, I have traveled more than I have my whole life and seen places I only read about in books. They never mention the fact that they are supporting me, or that I ignored them in the past.

When old friends ask how it feels living with my gay son, I tell them I hope they’re lucky enough to have one who will take them in one day. Please continue urging your readers to accept their children as they are. My only regret is that I wasted 15 years.

— Grateful Mom

Dear Grateful Mom: You are indeed fortunate to have such a loving, generous and forgiving son. Sexual orientation is not a measure of anyone’s humanity or worth. Thank you for pointing out how important it is that people respect each other for who they are, not for what we would like them to be.

You could have learned that lesson long ago, had you and your husband contacted Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) when you first learned that Neil was gay. Among other things, the organization offers support groups and education for parents who need to learn more about gender issues. (The address is 1726 M St. N.W., Suite 400, Washington, D.C. 20036.)

That was from a Dear Abby column back in July.  This week, Abby posted what came in the mail

Dear Abby: I am writing to respond to "Grateful Mom," the widow who, in her time of need, was invited by her son Neil and his partner to live with them despite having rejected Neil in the past because he is gay. I have a gay son, too, and I would not trade him for anyone. He is the most loving and caring son any parent could ever have. I consider myself very lucky.

When it was time for me to relocate, it was his partner who first approached me about moving across the state to be near them. My son helped me find a cute little house to buy. My two dogs and I are very happy.

I will not have grandchildren, but I do have grand-dogs and another wonderful son. I am blessed.

— Another Grateful Mom in Florida

Dear Abby: "Grateful" said her two daughters and one of her sons "married well." Sounds to me as if Neil is the one who married well. If only the world could be half as tolerant as Neil and his partner, Ron. Because of their good hearts and generous spirits, even that intolerant mother was able to change!

— Berkeley, Calif., Reader

That’s just a sample of the outpouring.  Not bad, eh?  There’s hope for this poor world…

by Bruce | Link | React!

July 9th, 2007

They’re Not Listening James…

So the San Diego Padres, in a gesture of good will to the gay community, hosted a pride night at yesterday’s game.  Given that many gay couples go to the games are families with kids, the Padres cheerfully offered to give their kids 14 and younger free Padres floppy hats.  Of course you just know this made the kook pews go nuclear

What began as a few angry parents in San Diego, has now turned into a major blunder on the part of the political powerbrokers within the Padres administrative offices. However, the Padres are not backing down. They are choosing the side of homosexuality over the protection of kids, as well as the rights of parents to choose when they teach their kids about sexuality. Parents at the July 8th game will be forced to explain homosexuality, lesbianism and transsexuality to their little boys and little girls because of the celebration of gay pride during the Braves-Padres game.

Rally organizer James Hartline hopes that educational flyers being distributed to families coming to the ballpark will discourage parents from bringing their children inside of the stadium where they will be exposed to radical elements of the homosexual movement. Rally sponsor Scott Lively, President of Defend the Family International, hopes that the Christian response to the gay pride celebration at Petco Park will serve as a catalyst for awakening parental responsibility in a very sexualized culture.

…"We will not abandon these kids to the destruction of homosexuality," says Dennis Martinez, a former national skateboard champion. A committed Christian and well-respected minister among America’s troubled youth, Martinez decided that he could not allow his ministry or its employees to compromise their commitment to Christ.

And…fat lot of good it did too…

Boycott of gay pride event at Padres game fizzles

As boycotts go, yesterday’s protest at Petco Park flopped – like the hats.

Objecting to the confluence of two promotions at last night’s Padres game – “Pride Night,” a group event for local gays and lesbians, and a team giveaway of floppy hats to children 14 and younger – several Christian and conservative groups called for a public protest and boycott of the game.

Roughly 75 protesters showed up outside Petco Park’s front gate dressed in red T-shirts emblazoned with the message “Save Our Kids.” They handed out fliers. A few attempted to talk with Padre fans as they arrived for the 5:05 p.m. game that was nationally televised on ESPN.

“We’re here to inform parents, to warn them about what’s happening inside (the ballpark),” said James Hartline, a self-described Christian activist who directed the protest. “Bringing together homosexuals with baseball and kids is beyond bounds. We’re trying to get people to turn around, not go to the game, and we’re succeeding.”

If so, it wasn’t readily apparent. Official attendance for the game was 41,026, just short of a capacity crowd for the 42,685-seat ballpark.

And…oh look James…it wasn’t just the gay fans who were ignoring you… 

“Values start and are taught in the home. Just because you see a bum on the street doesn’t turn you into a bum,” said Robert Davila of El Cajon before walking through the gates with his wife and two young children.

Not that gay people are bums…but you get the idea.  Gay isn’t something you catch like a cold.  But the subtext here, as always, isn’t that simply seeing gay people would turn the kids gay, but that gay people are predators that children should be taught to be afraid of.  The better to make them fear and loath their gay classmates as they get older.  The better to make them fear and loath themselves if they are gay. That’s what the Save Our Children slogan has always been about, ever since Antia Bryant used it back in 1977.

You can see why the bigots were bursting a vein over this.  If gay and straight can sit down together with their families and enjoy a baseball game together, what next?

by Bruce | Link | React!

July 30th, 2006

Pictures Worth A Thousand Words

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”:

The first half of the interview.

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.

by Bruce | Link | React!

July 19th, 2006

Why It Must Be Marriage

Andrew Sullivan take note…this happened in your beloved Provencetown

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.

by Bruce | Link | React!

July 6th, 2006

Loving The Sinner…(continued)

The usual suspects have filed suit in Michigan , to stop Michigan State University from offering health insurance to the partners of gay people.

LANSING — A conservative group sued Wednesday to stop Michigan State University from offering health insurance to the partners of gay workers and said the school is violating a 2004 amendment to the state constitution.

The American Family Association of Michigan filed the lawsuit in Ingham County Circuit Court and hopes to get a ruling setting a precedent that would block domestic-partner benefits at other state universities.

The purpose of the suit is to ensure that courts rule on the constitutionality of domestic-partner benefits at public universities, said Patrick Gillen, an attorney for the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, which is representing the association.

By providing same-sex benefits, MSU is "recognizing same-sex marriage in substance, if not by label," Gillen said.

Not to mention providing access to health care for a class of people the American Family Association would just as soon see dead.  The bible says their blood will be upon them after all…

by Bruce | Link | React! (2)


E Pluribus Unum…Except For The Gays Of Course…

I’m going on another of my cross-country road trips this weekend, and the news today gives me reason to reflect once more on a simple, devastating fact: I can freely travel all over America, only because I am single.

Had I a spouse, a same-sex spouse because I am a gay man, we would have to take care not to set so much as a toe in states like Virginia, and Nebraska, and any of the other states in the Union (maybe we should start referring to it as a Dis-union now…), that have not only passed constitutional amendments banning same sex marriage, but also any legal recognition whatsoever of any possible legal right a same sex couple may need to have, in order to defend their union. Because if anything should happen to either one of us, it would be a nightmare for the other. A nightmare like this…

When Sharon Kowalski was injured in an automobile accident in November 1983, her partner, Karen Thompson had to fight a nightmarish legal battle with Kowalski’s parents lasting ten years. During that time, Kowalski’s parents placed her in a nursing home where they could insure that Thompson would be kept away. The nursing home was unequipped to give Kowalski the physical therapy she needed, and which might have made a difference in the extent of her recovery had it been given to her early on. When Kowalski was given a typewriter to communicate, she instantly began typing out calls for Karen. The typewriter was taken from her.

…or this…

When Juan Navarrete came home in 1989 and found his partner LeRoy Tranton lying bloody on the concrete driveway to their house, it marked the beginning of a bitter fight with Tranton’s brother who prevented Navarrete from seeing his beloved in the hospital. Despite Tranton’s persistent calling for his lover Juan, he was kept away. When Tranton later died, Navarrete was unable even to visit the grave.

…or this…

In 1993, a Virginia judge ruled that Sharon Bottoms was an unfit mother because she was a lesbian, and awarded custody of her 20-month-old son, to her mother, who had sought custody of the boy when she learned her daughter was a lesbian, and in love with another woman.

…or this…

In 2000, a court in Tacoma Washington ruled that Frank Vasques could be denied his lover of 28 years’ estate because the two where in a homosexual relationship. They had shared a house, business and financial assets for 28 years.

…or this…

After NBC news cameraman Rob Pierce died in a helicopter crash, his family visited his partner Frank Gagliano, in the Miami condominium the two had shared. After mourning together, they told Gagliano he should take a walk on the beach. Then Pierce’s family changed the locks on the condo, and when Gagliano returned, told him he was no longer welcome there. Gagliano had to go to court just to get his belongings.

…or this…

In Massachusetts, after Ken Kirkey’s partner Mark died of cancer, Mark’s family removed his ashes from the home the two shared. Kirkey discovered he had no legal right to Mark’s ashes, though they were among the first to take advantage of Vermont’s new Civil Unions law.

…or this…I

n 2001 Sharon Smith was told she had no legal standing to file a wrongful death suit against Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller, after two of their dogs mauled her partner Diane Whipple to death in the hallway of her apartment.

…or this…

In 2002 Officials at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center barred William Robert Flanigan Jr. from his dying partner’s bedside, saying he was not "family", and that ‘partners’ did not qualify. Though Flanigan had legal power of attorney for his partner, Robert Lee Daniel, officials at the Shock Trauma Center insisted he would not be allowed his partner’s bedside. Only when Daniel’s mother arrived from New Mexico, was Flanigan allowed into Daniel’s room. By that time, Daniel had lost consciousness. He would die two days later. Because Flanigan was not present during Daniel’s final four hours of consciousness, Flanigan was unable to tell Shock Trauma that Daniel did not want breathing tubes or a respirator. When Daniel tried to rip the tubes out of his throat, staff members put his arms in restraints

…or this…

In 1999 Earl Meadows 56, passed away a year after suffering a stroke which left him unable to take care of himself. He was cared for by his lover and partner, Sam Beaumont, 61, on the Oklahoma ranch they had both worked together for a quarter century. Meadows cousins, filed suit and Beaumont lost everything he and Meadows had worked together for, the ranch, the cattle, everything, because even though he had a will, it lacked a second witness signature, and a judge ruled it was invalid, and in a state that has a constitutional amendment banning not only same sex marriage but any legal recognition of same sex couples, as far as the law was concerned, Beaumont and Meadows were legally strangers.

After Meadows’ cousins won his worldly goods in court, they went back to court and sued Beaumont for back rent for every year he lived on the ranch.

This is the future that jackasses like Andrew Sullivan, and the Deep Thinkers at the Independent (sic) Gay Forum, who preach the virtues of "federalism"and letting each state go their own way on same sex marriage, are condemning gay couples to: a patchwork of states they can safely travel in, embedded in a dangerous no-homo-land where the law doesn’t merely fail to acknowledge your rights as a couple, but actively seeks to destroy your union, and throw the two of you into a living nightmare, when given any opportunity whatever to do so. For all the same reasons that a nation half free and half slave would not work, for all the same reasons that a nation where rights are allocated on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion different in every state would not work, a nation where some couples are allowed to live in peace in some states and in a state of fear in others will not work. You cannot build a democracy out of "some animals are more equal then others, depending on their sexual orientation and their physical location at any given moment".

In Georgia, where the question was about how many different subjects a constitutional amendment ballot could embrace, the court unanimously decided that the subject in question was not, after all, a combination of same sex marriage plus civil unions, but one simple all embracing expression of animus by the heterosexual majority of Georgia toward same sex couples as a class. On that basis, the heterosexual majority of Georgia could have thrown every knife at gay people they could have gotten their hands on in that ballot question, the right to hold property, the right to vote, the right to walk down any street in Georgia without getting your head bashed in, and the subject of the ballot question would still have been only the hate, not the particulars of how that hate is expressed. On the other hand, let’s face it, that is pretty much a correct view of what the subject of the ballot question was: Resolved – same sex couples have no rights the heterosexual majority is bound to respect…

But for this week’s laughing mockery of justice, the court in New York has to take top honors. This is their rational, I am not kidding, for keeping marriage in New York a heterosexual prerogative:

First, the Legislature could rationally decide that, for the welfare of children, it is more important to promote stability, and to avoid instability, in opposite-sex than in same-sex relationships. Heterosexual intercourse has a natural tendency to lead to the birth of children; homosexual intercourse does not. Despite the advances of science, it remains true that the vast majority of children are born as a result of a sexual relationship between a man and a woman, and the Legislature could find that this will continue to be true. The Legislature could also find that such relationships are all too often casual or – temporary. It could find that an important function of marriage is to create more stability and permanence in the relationships that cause children to be born. It thus could choose to offer an inducement — in the form of marriage and its attendant benefits — to opposite-sex couples who make a solemn, long-term commitment to each other.

The Legislature could find that this rationale for marriage does not apply with comparable force to same-sex couples. These couples can become parents by adoption, or by artificial insemination or other technological marvels, but they do not become parents as a result of accident or impulse. The Legislature could find that unstable relationships between people of the opposite sex present a greater danger that children will be born into or grow up in unstable homes than is the case with same-sex couples, and thus that promoting stability in opposite sex relationships will help children more. This is one reason why the Legislature could rationally offer the benefits of marriage to opposite-sex couples only.

What they’re saying there, is that a "rational" reason for limiting marriage to heterosexuals only, "could be" because heterosexual couples are less likely to provide stable homes for children, because heterosexuals can have children just by randomly fucking around, and probably will, whilst homosexual couples are more likely to provide stable homes for children because they have to work harder to bring children into their homes.

Never mind that this is, once again, arguing that the purpose of marriage is to provide an environment for the raising of children, which is patently is not since having children, or even being physically able to have children, is not a requirement for marriage.  Never mind that.  This argument is pathetic on its face.  I guess you have to have grown up during the Stonewall years to appreciate the irony of it all. Once upon a time it was your gay and lesbian neighbors who were begging for some meager measure of rights, or at least a shred or two of human dignity, on the grounds that it wasn’t our fault that we were mentally unstable, and it would be cruel to punish us for something we cannot help. Today, at least in New York, it is heterosexuals who are saying they need rights because they cannot help being unstable. But if heterosexuals relationships are too unstable to exist without marriage, then heterosexuals are in no position to pass judgment on the fitness of their gay and lesbian neighbors for marriage either.

Except that they are the majority, so they can anyway. That is the rational here, nothing else. We outnumber you, so we can. The rights of heterosexual couples are enshrined in the fabric of our democracy, our constitution. The rights of gay couples exist, or not, a the discretion of heterosexuals. We can beg for rights, but we cannot assert a right of equality because we are manifestly unequal to heterosexuals in the only way that matters in George Bush’s America: we are fewer. What two state supreme courts have said today, is that this means the majority can do whatever it damn well pleases with our households, and any hopes and dreams we might have ever had or ever dared to want for happiness and peace and a life together with the ones we love, simply because they outnumber us. My Country ‘Tis Of Thee…

And here I am, slowly packing my things for another cross country trip, looking at my path through Virginia, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, and so on…and wondering how the hell I could possibly make such a trip if I had a spouse. I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t. It would be too dangerous for both of us. The minute either of us became sick or ill or incapacitated in some way, everything we made of our lives together, and every hope and dream we ever had for the future, could be annihilated by laws designed specifically to be relentlessly hostile toward same sex couples. 

And never mind vacations.  My employer is sending me to the OSCON Open Source conference in Portland Oregon at the end of the month.  Do I tell them I can’t go because Oregon passed a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage and if I get sick or injured out there my spouse could be legally barred from taking any sort of care of me, let alone visiting me in the hospital, or seeing to it that my medical wishes are respected.  Robert Flanigan Jr.  Karen Thompson.  Juan Navarrete. 

And then there is the matter of families being torn apart.   I have family in Virginia, and my mother’s grave, that I could never see again, if I had a spouse.  They say Virginia’s anti same sex laws are so draconian, they may even disallow joint checking accounts between same sex couples.  How the hell do I even go lay flowers on my mother’s grave, when every moment I am in Virginia, I am putting my spouse at risk for a legal nightmare?  It is impossible.  No family of mine has the right to demand I risk flushing our marriage down the toilet, simply to come down for a visit.  If the people busy passing these laws really believe that homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex, then there are a lot of families in those states, in for some bitter awakenings in the years to come.  Of course a lot of these people just discard their gay and lesbian children anyway, like so much human garbage.  But not all of them do.  I guess the message to those families is, if you love your gay children, there’s probably something wrong with you people anyway.

Anyone who thinks this state’s rights approach is fine for solving the issue of same sex marriage in America is smoking crack.  It is a recipe for tearing this nation apart, one family at a time.  And friends from friends.  I used to have straight friends who would have told me today, to count my blessings, and be glad that I am still single. That is why they are now ex-friends.

by Bruce | Link | React!

March 24th, 2006

How The Game Is Played

I have to give Andrew Sullivan credit where it’s due.  He’s caught right wing theocrat Richard John Neuhaus playing the old game.  Says Neuhaus:

The Church says it has ‘rules’ that preclude the gay placements. What has not appeared anywhere is a reasoned case that such placements are bad for the children, and it is the interest of the children that must come first. (For a critical survey of the studies and arguments relative to placing children with homosexual couples, see cosmos-liturgy-sex.) The claim that 50 or 60 percent of children reared by male homosexuals turn out to be homosexual or bisexual doesn’t cut any ice in some quarters. So what’s wrong with being homosexual or bisexual? And, if the incidence of sexual abuse of children in such settings is many times the norm, well, isn’t it time we reconsider the legitimacy of intergenerational love?

Sweet.  The reason Pope Benedict is waging jihad on gay households isn’t because he’s a raving medieval lunatic, but out of alarm and concern for the welfare of children at the hands of predatory homosexuals.  Only…just where is he getting his facts here?  Sullivan does a little digging, and comes up with a familiar name…

So where does Neuhaus get his inflammatory claims? The only link Neuhaus provides is to a far-right Catholic website which in turn relies on a separate review published by Pat Robertson’s "Regent University" of 36 studies of gay parenting. 35 of the 36 "concluded that children from same-sex parents were not adversely affected," which is what the consensus largely is. One study alone provided the statistics Neuhaus relies on. That study is by our old friend, Paul Cameron…

Bingo.  It almost always comes back to Cameron.  But now they’ve nested his lies three layers deep…a right wing Catholic website, to a review by Pat Roberston’s Regent University to Cameron.

Why doesn’t Neuhaus simply say he’s relying on Paul Cameron for his facts about the dangers homosexuals represent to children?  Well…isn’t that obvious?  What’s interesting is that Cameron has become so toxic to the right, that they have to bury his name even deeper now.  When William Bennett was arguing that homosexuals only live an average of 46 years, he only had to bury Cameron’s name one level deep, referring simply to another study that, as it turned out, cited Cameron for the figure.  Now they’re burying his name three levels deep.  They’ll be burying it three hundred layers deep one of these days, and it still won’t occur to them to just fucking stop spreading his lies.

What ninth commandment?  I repeat, what ninth commandment?

by Bruce | Link | React! (3)

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