When I finished my remarks, it was question time, and the first question was: “But you’re not gay!?” I must radiate a kind of straight guy dumpiness that no self-respecting gay man would be caught dead displaying in public.
Anyway, I took it to mean, “So why do you care about this?” and gave an answer I’ve always been proud of.
“I see it through a Jewish perspective,” I said. “I see you guys as another loathed minority trying to get through the day.”
Which they are. Readers complain to me that homosexuality isn’t a God-given condition, but a sinful choice, and I always respond, “It is? A choice? Really? I couldn’t choose it. Could you?” They never have a good answer to that.
The look-how-far-we’ve-come aspect of Obama’s triumph was mitigated by citizens in California, Florida and Arizona voting to bar gay marriage. An awful intrusion of government into the private sphere, one we would never tolerate if it didn’t touch upon the American obsession with sex. I mean, we’d never ban gays from holding fishing licenses, arguing that they somehow spoil the fishing experience for the rest of us.
But religious conservatives have cooked up this palpable lie about gays and marriage, based on nothing at all, and the public has accepted it because it tickles the unexamined biases they already have.
Just like civil rights, this is a generational war that will be won, I have absolutely no doubt, in the fullness of time. But not yet.
Emphasis mine. And actually…time was a homosexual might not be allowed even a fishing license. Time was you could be denied all kinds of professional licenses if you were known to be homosexual. You could have your plumber’s license taken away. Your license to practice medicine. You could be fired, evicted, rounded up by the cops in your local bar, or just walking down the street in some places, and tossed into jail.
The marriage barrier is a bitter, lingering part of all that. It isn’t marriage they want to protect. It’s the right to persecute homosexuals. They can’t just round us up and toss us in jail anymore. But they can still torment loving couples…still remind us that a whole human life is not ours to have…still drive the knife into our hearts every now and then, so they can feel good about themselves.
Bitterness generated by the bruising battle between Betsy Markey and Marilyn Musgrave apparently lingers days after voters decided the winner of the 4th Congressional District.
Incumbent Republican Musgrave, who lost to Democrat Markey by a 56 to 44 percent margin Tuesday, has yet to call and congratulate Markey on her win.
Musgrave also hasn’t conceded the race, said Markey spokesman Ben Marter. "She has yet to admit defeat," he said. "It’s a little bizarre."
Calls to Musgrave’s campaign and congressional office went unanswered Friday.
Some Stuff To Add To My Reading List While I’m At It…
Per the previous post…
Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection (Hardcover)
by John T. Cacioppo (Author), William Patrick (Author)
From Publishers Weekly
Eleanor Rigby might have been in worse shape than the Beatles imagined: not only lonely but angry, depressed and in ill health. University of Chicago research psychologist Cacioppo shows in studies that loneliness can be harmful to our overall well-being. Loneliness, he says, impairs the ability to feel trust and affection, and people who lack emotional intimacy are less able to exercise good judgment in socially ambiguous situations; this makes them more vulnerable to bullying as children and exploitation by unscrupulous salespeople in old age. But Cacioppo and Patrick (editor of the Journal of Life Sciences) want primarily to apply evolutionary psychology to explain how our brains have become hard-wired to have regular contact with others to aid survival. So intense is the need to connect, say the authors, that isolated individuals sometimes form parasocial relations with pets or TV characters. The authors’ advice for dealing with loneliness—psychotherapy, positive thinking, random acts of kindness—are overly general, but this isn’t a self-help book. It does present a solid scientific look at the physical and emotional impact of loneliness.
A Cry Unheard: New Insights into the Medical Consequences of Loneliness (Hardcover)
by James Lynch (Author)
"Thirty years ago, anyone blaming loneliness for physical illness would have been laughed at," the editors of Newsweek observed in a March 1998 cover story…" (more)
Amazon.com Review
We’re a lonely society. Twenty-five percent of American households consist of one person living alone; 50 percent of American marriages end in divorce (affecting more than a million children); 30 percent of American births in 1991 were to unmarried women. These factors are linked to an increased risk of premature death, according to loneliness specialist James J. Lynch, Ph.D., who has spent almost four decades clarifying how loneliness contributes to a marked increased risk of developing premature coronary heart disease. "Mortality rates in the United States for all causes of death, and not just for heart disease, are consistently higher for divorced, single, and widowed individuals of both sexes and all races," writes Lynch in A Cry Unheard: New Insights into the Medical Consequences of Loneliness. An important point in this book is that loneliness in childhood has "a significant impact on the incidence of serious disease and premature death decades later in adulthood." School failure is a major contributor to this problem. Children who fail in school are socially isolated and deficient in the language and communications skills that could help them overcome their isolation. Lynch also explores the links between loneliness and premature death, and describes the biological power of human dialogue–which, he says, is more intimate than sexual intercourse, because dialogue involves the heart, not just the body. This is not a fluffy, feel-good book. There are no quick tips, no instant relief from loneliness, no "do now" lists of activities. This book is for readers willing to delve into the subject of loneliness and health risk. Lynch wants you to understand the magnitude of the problem, which he presents in a style that is both academic (with plenty of statistics and graphs) and accessible. He also wants you to understand the complex solution: contact, companionship, and communication. –Joan Price
From Library Journal
Psychologist Lynch’s The Broken Heart: The Medical Consequences of Loneliness (1977) was the pioneering work that linked mental and emotional states to physical well-being. In A Cry Unheard, he expands on the connection between the stress of loneliness and the state of one’s health. Drawing from his own and others’ research, Lynch contends that loneliness has become a silent epidemic, leading to depression and early death. He points out that parents’ use of language and school failure can result in alienation and antisocial behavior, which sow the seeds of loneliness. And while we may seem more "connected" through technology, Lynch warns that technology-induced loneliness is likely to increase and result in even more medical problems. Loneliness, writes Lynch, is a lethal but avoidable poison. While not a "how-to" book, this is worthy of inclusion in larger consumer health collections. -Valeria Long, Van Andel Research Inst., Grand Rapids, MI
A lethal but avoidable poison… I’ve tried for decades to avoid it and all it got me were friends who think I never tried hard enough. This is why I don’t think I’m going to make it out of my fifties alive.
In Loneliness, the psychologist John T Cacioppo and the science writer William Patrick report on the situation in the United States: Between 1985 and 2004, the number of Americans who said they had no close confidants tripled. Single-parent households are on the rise, and the US Census estimates that 30 percent more Americans will live alone in 2010 than did so in 1980. As the American way of life spreads around the world, no doubt loneliness is being exported with it.
People do like to be alone sometimes. But no one likes to feel lonely – to feel that they are alone against their will, or that the social contacts they do have are without deeper meaning. According to Cacioppo and Patrick the feeling of loneliness is the least of it. They present scientific evidence suggesting that loneliness seriously burdens human health. By middle age, the lonely are less likely to exercise and more likely to eat a high-fat diet, and they report experiencing a greater number of stressful events. Loneliness correlates with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s. During a four-year study, lonely senior citizens were more likely to end up in nursing homes; during a nine-year study, people with fewer social ties were two to three times more likely to die.
To explain why loneliness hurts so bad, Cacioppo and Patrick turn to evolutionary psychology…
(Emphasis mine…) A chance comes along for you to do something good, maybe something wonderful for a friend. Perhaps nothing will come of it. The odds are poor at best. But it’s a chance. It has dropped in your lap. You need only lift your little finger to give this chance to your friend.
But perhaps lifting your little finger is too much trouble. If instead, you allow this chance to float away on the wind, like a dead autumn leaf, don’t tell yourself afterward that it wasn’t really of much importance. Don’t just shrug and think that, after all, probably nothing would have come of it. That isn’t the point. …scientific evidence suggesting that loneliness seriously burdens human health. By middle age, the lonely are less likely to exercise and more likely to eat a high-fat diet, and they report experiencing a greater number of stressful events. Loneliness correlates with an increased risk of Alzheimer’s. During a four-year study, lonely senior citizens were more likely to end up in nursing homes; during a nine-year study, people with fewer social ties were two to three times more likely to die…. Is this what decent people allow to happen to the ones they care about? Of course not.
So don’t tell yourself that it was nothing. Don’t reassure yourself that the odds were poor anyway. Stop making excuses. Look yourself in the mirror, and fess up to the fact that if you care so little about this person, that you’d allow even a billion to one chance they’d find happiness to fly off into the night without so much as a shrug, they were never really someone you cared all that much about to begin with.
The Side Of The Comic Book Rack I Always Stayed Away From…
…had a lot of these in it…
When I was a kid, I just couldn’t imagine how even girls liked these. Although I never actually saw any browsing that side of the comic book racks anyway. Maybe they were too embarrassed to be seen looking at these. Or maybe they just waited for the boys to leave first, before approaching them. I can imagine the snickers coming from the boys side of the rack were a girl to wander over and pick one up…
But there must have been a market for these, because the comic book publishers kept grinding them out. Some of the most famous names in comic book…er…excuse me…Graphic Novel history did these. Here’s one by Jack Kirby…
At the age I was buying a lot of comics, I could barely stand to look at these. They just completely creeped me out. That whole icky love stuff just totally mystified me. Who cares? I used to fidget in my seat at the movies whenever the love interest parts of the story were going on. I’d be sitting there thinking to myself, Ah Jeeze…come on, come on, let’s get on with it…
Had I bothered to sneak a look inside one of these, I might have found something like this inside…
…which would have just confirmed my suspicions for me. All that love stuff was for the birds. Who cares? Leave me out…please.
I just couldn’t fathom it. As I said…those things really creeped me out. Why would anyone…even a girl…bother with crap like that. Especially when you could buy a really neat comic like…oh…this one…
Or…this one…
Man…I couldn’t get enough of that when I was a kid. For some strange reason. Even though the stories were usually pretty lousy.
They say girls mature a tad sooner then boys in the romance department, and maybe that’s true to a degree. Also, I was a bit of a late bloomer. But there was a section missing from the comic book racks back then too, and had it been there, maybe I could have grown up understanding all that gooey, icky love stuff a little bit better. Maybe by the time my hormones really started to percolate, I wouldn’t have been so fumbly, clumsy and deathly shy.
I grew up in a world where homosexuals were twisted monsters who lurked behind schools waiting to pounce on kids my age. The messages we all got back then to beware of strange men fell on the ears of gay kids too…and looking back on it, I can clearly recall flinching away whenever my thoughts began to stray toward how…attractive…some of the characters in my comic books were. I didn’t want to be a monster. I didn’t want to be sick. So I just kind-of let my eyes wander over whatever it was something deep down inside of me had jerked them towards…
…and then wander away again without thinking about it too closely.
What I really needed in my young teenage life was something that spoke to me. Well…what I really needed was to grow up in a time when adults were willing to talk to teenagers honestly and rationally about sex and sexuality. The girls weren’t getting any of that either back then really.
Even so…as horrible as it was back then, to even contemplate being homosexual, had I seen something like this on the comic book racks, I would have snatched one up instantly…
I don’t know if I could have worked up the courage to actually take it to the cashier or not…but I’d have gotten it out of the store one way or the other…
Well…of course there would have been no “explicit content” allowed. But just the idea that boys could fall in love with other boys, and that it was okay, and that you weren’t a monster if you felt sexually attracted to one, would have made so much of a difference in my life later on… So very, very much of a difference…
Romance. Maybe it wasn’t so icky after all…
…maybe I could find one of my own someday…
Every time I buy one of these now…and I have several bookshelves full of them…I have to laugh at how contemptuous I felt toward those girl’s romance comics way back when. Yes…they were horribly sexist. But at least love always won in the end in those things. It was something you could hope for, for yourself too. Here’s a portion of the back cover of Constellations In My Palm…
What would you do if you lost the best thing that happened to you because of your own pride and selfishness? What would you do if you lost the best thing that happened to you because you were taught to be afraid of it? What would you do if you lost the best thing that happened to you because you were never taught how to reach for it like the other kids were? What would you do if you had another chance and lost it again? And again? And again? What would you do if you spent your whole life trying to get beyond that fear and confusion they put into you when you were a kid, and you couldn’t?
My generation, and the one just before us, the pre Stonewall generation, began this movement to break down those barriers of self loathing, fear and confusion, and reclaim our human right to love and be loved. And this is our great victory: that gay teens no longer have to live in a world where all they ever hear about themselves is that they are sick, broken, twisted, monsters. They can grow up now, believing that they are fully human too. They can grow up now, believing in the promise of love too.
It was, and still regretfully is, a hard and bitter fight. But every day now, more and more of us are finding our way to the promise land. Even, thankfully, some of us older gay folk too. Some of us will only stand on the hillside just beyond, never to find our way in after all, stricken by how much more beautiful it really was, how much more beautiful then we could have ever imagined, back when we first started fighting to win it back. But we can take heart in this, and carry on: so no kid will ever have to grow up in a world that tells them they will never find love, never be loved, because they are gay.
And Now…A Word From Some Useless Fucks Who Need To Just Go Away Now…
This came in the mail just a little while ago. And here I thought I wouldn’t be hearing any more from these folks…
Dear Bruce,
This has been an incredibly difficult week for Californians who are disappointed in the passage of Proposition 8, which takes away the right to marry for same-sex couples in our state. We feel a profound sense of disappointment in this defeat, but know that in order to move forward we must continue to stand together as one community in order to secure full equality in California.
In working to defeat Prop 8, a profound coalition banded together to fight for equality. Faith leaders, labor, teachers, civil rights leaders and communities of color, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, public officials, local school boards and city councils, parents, corporate law firms and bar associations, businesses, and people from all walks of life joined together to stand up against discrimination. We must build on this coalition in order to achieve equal rights for all Californians.
We achieve nothing if we isolate the people who did not stand with us in this fight. We only further divide our state if we attempt to blame people of faith, African American voters, rural communities and others for this loss. We know people of all faiths, races and backgrounds stand with us in our fight to end discrimination, and will continue to do so. Now more than ever it is critical that we work together and respect our differences that make us a diverse and unique society. Only with that understanding will we achieve justice and equality for all.
Dr. Delores A. Jacobs
CEO
Center Advocacy Project
Lorri L. Jean
CEO
L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center
Kate Kendell
Executive Director
National Center for Lesbian Rights
Geoff Kors
Executive Director
Equality California
This is all well and good…especially the part about not putting all this on African-Americans. Yes, they voted heavily for it, but they didn’t put four out of very five dollars into the kitty for Proposition 8 either. They didn’t get it on the ballot. They didn’t donate vast amounts of logistical support for it.
But…leaving all that aside… You know…you folks lost the fight...
I worked for both the No on 8 campaign and the Obama campaign this year and cannot tell you how far apart those two were in style and substance. One was top down, the other bottom up. Ironically, it was the presidential campaign that was the grassroots model, not the state-level proposition campaign. As soon as I started working for the No on 8 campaign I was amazed at the level of scripting: "don’t say ‘civil rights,’ don’t say ‘constitution,’ don’t say ‘gay.’" I couldn’t believe it.
One of the most brilliant things about the Obama campaign was that they didn’t expect callers and canvassers to be policy wonks. They just said "tell your story, let people know why you’re voting for him. Connect with people." I can’t help but feel at this point that if the gloves were taken off we could’ve helped people get a grip on the real issues at stake here, which I happen to think is a matter of soiling the state constitution.
What was even more confounding was the No on 8 campaign’s decision to stay away form polling places at churches and schools. First of all, most polling places are at churches and schools, and second, that mentality buys right into the Yes on 8 brainwashing campaign that same sex marriage is going to corrupt our morals and our children. This idiocy was obvious to everyone that I worked with on the campaign. What was going on with the leadership upstairs?!!!
I don’t think I’m the only one who gave you a lot of money I couldn’t really afford who is wondering now why you let a substantial lead over the yes vote when this campaign started just…evaporate. So why don’t all of you to just shut your traps now and stay out of this. I’d rather watch ten hours of James Dobson gloating then one second of you pathetic milksops lecturing us about respecting the people who just cut off our ring fingers. You don’t bring a handshake to a knife fight.
SAN FRANCISCO — The California Attorney General, Equality California, and the nation’s leading LGBT legal groups agree that the marriages of the estimated 18,000 same-sex couples who married between June 16, 2008 and the possible passage of Proposition 8 are still valid in the state of California and must continue to be honored by the state.
As Attorney General Jerry Brown has stated in previous court papers and as he reaffirmed to the San Francisco Chronicle, those marriages should remain valid notwithstanding Proposition 8’s possible passage. On August 5, 2008, Brown told the Chronicle, "I believe that marriages that have been entered into subsequent to the May 15 Supreme Court opinion will be recognized by the California Supreme Court,’ He noted that Proposition is silent about retroactivity, and said, ‘I would think the court, in looking at the underlying equities, would most probably conclude that upholding the marriages performed in that interval before the election would be a just result.’"
There is absolutely nothing in the language of Proposition 8 to suggest that the initiative would apply to couples who have already legally married. Unless the language of an initiative specifically says that it is to be applied retroactively, California’s courts have been very reluctant to do so, especially when the newly passed measure is in such stark conflict with existing constitutional provisions.
And that stark conflict makes it just possible, barely, that Proposition 8 will be found invalid by the courts. Simply put, it is a revision to the state constitution itself, as opposed to an amendment. The distinction is important because a revision must be, according to the constitution, first approved by the legislature, and then by a super-majority of the voters, not merely a simple majority. But at this point, to strike down the vote, especially after the court already had a chance to rule on this very matter before the vote, will take more nerve then I think this court has now. It takes a special sort of person to stick their necks out for a hated minority they themselves are not one of. And then stick it out some more.
But that’s a post for another day. The interesting thing here is this sudden…enthusiasm…by the Mormon church elders for…healing the rift…
Now that California voters have outlawed same-sex marriage, an LDS Church leader called Wednesday for members to heal rifts caused by the emotional campaign by treating each other with "civility, with respect and with love."
Hahahaha! Civility. Really?
Although it is extremely unlikely that California courts would apply the initiative retroactively, the proponents of Proposition 8 may file a legal challenge trying to invalidate the marriages of those who married before Proposition 8 possibly passed.
May? Yeah. Right. And the sun May rise in the east tomorrow. According to the bigots no heterosexual marriage is secure so long as a single same sex couple remains legally married. They’ll sue all right. The least we can do is wave all their rhetoric about "civility", "respect" and "love" back in their faces.
For the first time since the end of 1994, we can have normal politics and policymaking–can discuss what policies are best for America, and what America should be.
You see, from the end of 1994 to the end of 2000, the Republican congressional majority’s single fixed idea was that nothing should happen that could be portrayed as a success for Bill Clinton. And from the end of 2000 to today, the executive branch was controlled by a gang of malevolent, immoral, and destructive thugs that have disgraced the United States of America.
We can finally have normal politics and policymaking again. That’s not a tremendous accomplishment, is it?
It feels like one…
Yes. Yes it does. Or will…when I can get around to feeling it myself. Having lived under the cloud of republican party radicalism for decades now, it’s going to be hard to come back out of the bomb shelter, so to speak, and look around without feeling nervous.
If you want to know what Barack Obama’s magic was, it was simple. He ran as a democrat. In the New York Times, columnist Roger Cohen writes…
Beyond Iraq, beyond the economy, beyond health care, there was something even more fundamental at stake in this U.S. election won by Barack Obama: the self-respect of the American people.
For almost eight years, Americans have seen words stripped of meaning, lives sacrificed to confront nonexistent Iraqi weapons and other existences ravaged by serial incompetence on an epic scale.
Against all this, Obama made a simple bet and stuck to it. If you trusted in the fundamental decency, civility and good sense of the American people, even at the end of a season of fear and loss, you could forge a new politics and win the day.
Four years ago, at the Democratic convention, in the speech that lifted him from obscurity, Obama said: “For alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga: a belief that we are connected as one people.”
He never wavered from that theme. “In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people,” he declared Tuesday night in his victory speech to a joyous crowd in Chicago.
But this is the democratic party ideal in a nutshell ever since FDR.
It is nothing new. What’s different this time, is that a democrat actually ran on it. Republicans have been trying to utterly destroy FDR’s New Deal ever since he passed away toward the end of the great war he had guided the nation through. But this is still FDR’s America. His vision that we are all one America, whether rich or poor, factory or farm worker or white collar manager, eastern, western and everywhere in between, still resonates with us.
It is the American dream, that diverse people of many faiths, descendants of many nations, can still be a people in spite of their differences, because of a shared vision of liberty and justice for all. The tragedy of my lifetime is that the democratic party came to believe decades of republican propaganda, that America was not one nation after all, but a winner-take-all playing field where only the most ruthless, the most greedy, could win if they carved out of it just the right voter block.
And all it took to crush them, was someone willing to take up the dream again, and remind us what it was once upon a time, to still believe in it…
In that four-year span, Obama never got angry. Without breaking a sweat, he took down two of the most ruthless political machines on the planet: first the Clintons and then the Republican Party.
An idea has power. John McCain had many things in this campaign, but an idea was not one of them. At a time of economic crisis, he could not order his thoughts about it. Hard-hit Ohio drew its decisive conclusions. It was not alone.
McCain flailed, opting on a whim for a sidekick, Sarah Palin, who personified the very “country-first” intolerance and Bush-like small-mindedness of which many Americans had grown as weary as the world has.
The divisions the republicans have been sowing in the amber waves won’t be soon healed. But now we can begin a start on it. People Are tired of it. Not everyone surely. The christianists. The bigots. The greedy. But they have always been the hangers-on. There is an aching in the land for a way out of the culture wars, and a return to business as usual. That’s where we can make a start. At last. At long last.
Now that California voters have outlawed same-sex marriage, an LDS Church leader called Wednesday for members to heal rifts caused by the emotional campaign by treating each other with "civility, with respect and with love."
"We hope that everyone would treat [each other] that way no matter which side of this issue they were on," said Elder L. Whitney Clayton, of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Presidency of the Seventy.
…
In a statement, the LDS Church said it does not object to domestic partnership or civil union legislation "as long as these do not infringe on the integrity of the traditional family or the constitutional rights of churches."
Which same sex marriage does not. But…you know that…
As for Proposition 8, "we consider this to be a moral issue," Clayton said. "We’re not anti-gay, we’re pro marriage between a man and a woman."
Right. Like you weren’t racist when you were denying black people a seat in your church…just pro white. You don’t have to be racist to be pro-white.
You gutter crawling scum have been lurking in the background of this battle for over a decade now, and all that is over. You fought to make your gay and lesbian neighbors second class citizens in their own country. Own it. Trust me…you will have to. Nobody is forgetting this. You want civility? Get The Fuck Off Our Backs.
“The crowd just moved onto the intersection , blocking traffic at Santa Monica and San Vicente,” reports Slog Tipper Keith.
As long as nobody gets hurt…good.
I would suggest two things. First…document all the support that Proposition 8 got…from its inception to passage. Everyone who gave it money…everyone who gave it time. Individuals and businesses. And put that information online somewhere it can be accessed. Not to harass anyone, but to boycott the companies that helped cut our ring fingers off, and to know who our friends are, and who they are not. Trust me…I’ll be keeping up on who supported Proposition 8 in my own state, although I’m glad to say that nearly all the money coming from Maryland was in opposition.
Second: Never Forget. Never forget our friends. Never forget our enemies. Raving homophobes like Dobson and company will naturally take pains to make sure we never forget how much they hate us. But in the coming weeks and months there will be a ton of poltroons coming forward, like Rod Dreher, whining that they had nothing against us Personally…they just think same-sex marriage is too radical…
Don’t gloat over this. While I would have supported Prop 8 had I been a Californian, because I do not think there exists a right to same-sex marriage and I fear for the religious liberty implications of constitutionalizing same-sex marriage, I recognize that this is a tremendous blow to good men and women who disagree. It seems to me to be unseemly, even cruel, to rub salt in their wounds.
…But by appealing to the courts to impose something as radical as same-sex marriage, something that has never in the history of human society existed, they invited this backlash.
Juan and Leroy lived together in Long Beach for eight years. One day, Juan came home from the grocery store and found Leroy, who had fallen off a ladder, lying on the concrete patio. Leroy was rushed to the hospital where he stayed in a coma for several days. Although Leroy regained consciousness, he remained hospitalized for nine months. Juan visited Leroy once or twice each day, feeding him and encouraging him to recuperate.
Leroy’s estranged brother, who lived in Maine, filed a lawsuit seeking to have himself appointed as Leroy’s conservator.
When Juan accidentally found out, he showed up at court in Long Beach. Although Juan, who was not represented by counsel, stood up and protested, the judge refused to consider Juan’s plea because he was a stranger to Leroy in the eyes of the law.
The brother subsequently had Leroy transferred from the hospital to an undisclosed location. When Juan finally discovered that Leroy was being housed in a nursing home about 50 miles from Long Beach, he attempted to visit Leroy there. The staff stopped Juan in the lobby, advising him that the brother had given them a photo of Juan with strict orders not to allow him to visit Leroy. Unfortunately, no one else ever visited Leroy there.
It took Juan about two weeks to find an attorney who would take the case without charge. The attorney filed a lawsuit seeking visitation rights.
A few hours before the hearing was scheduled to occur, the brother’s attorney called Juan’s attorney, informing him that Leroy had died three days before.
Since the body had already been flown back to Maine where it was cremated, Juan never had an opportunity to pay his last respects.
Fuck you Dreher.
Gregory Anderson and Michael Connolly lived together for nine years. They jointly owned a condominium in New York where the couple lived. Michael was murdered by a stranger when he was visiting Los Angeles. After police investigated the case, a key suspect admitted that he was guilty.
When Gregory heard that the man had been sentenced, he contacted the detective assigned to the case to determine the defendant’s name, the terms of his sentence, or the place of his imprisonment.
The detective refused to disclose this information because Gregory was not a spouse or blood relative of the victim.
Fuck you Dreher.
Terry Taylor worked for the City of Los Angeles and belonged to the Los Angeles City Employees Federal Credit Union. Taylor was living with her fiancé, Roger Naas. Terry wanted to buy a new car but did not make enough money to qualify for credit on her own. She and Roger therefore sought to apply for a joint loan from the credit union.
They were turned down. Not because of bad credit or lack of joint resources. The loan was rejected solely because the credit union would not give joint loans to unmarried couples.
The problem was that credit unions can only issue loans to members. Members can be city employees or their immediate family members.
Terry and Roger discovered that the board of directors of the credit union had voted to define "immediate family" as being limited to spouses or blood relatives of employees.
Although Terry and Roger never got a loan, the problem was later corrected after it was exposed by the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Consumer Task Force on Marital Status Discrimination.
The credit union board finally changed its by-laws to define "family" in a more expansive manner, so that spouses, blood relatives, or other household members such as domestic partners may now join.
Fuck you Dreher.
Ken Phillips and Gail Randall were looking for an apartment to rent in Chico. They found the perfect place, filled out an application, and handed the landlady a deposit. There was one last minute inquiry: "You are married, aren’t you?" When the landlady found out that Ken and Gail were unmarried partners, she flatly refused to rent to them. Never mind the fact that they had lived together for years, had good jobs, and could give wonderful references from prior landlords.
Ken and Gail fought back. They filed a complaint with the state fair housing agency. The tribunal ruled that the landlady had violated a state law against marital status discrimination in housing.
But the landlady appealed and won the first round in court. The Court of Appeal agreed that discrimination against unmarried couples in housing is illegal. But the court sided with the landlady anyway, on the theory that a business owner with religious objections to unmarried cohabitation does not have to obey the state’s civil rights laws.
Dreher would say the lady had a right to her religious objection. And according to him we invited a backlash. And we invited it, simply for not wanting to live anymore, as second class citizens in our own country. Yes Dreher, you gutter crawling bigot…it’s our country too. We live here. And we’re not asking politely anymore, for your kind to get the fuck off our backs.
So same-sex marriage is Radical is it? Sure it is. And here’s why: because homosexuals are perverts. Seriously. Homosexuals are disgusting disease spreading, child molesting, sex addicts who can no more know and understand what normal human relationships are then an ape can do calculus. Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. That’s why same-sex marriage is radical. To call what homosexuals do marriage, defiles the decent loving relationships of every normal heterosexual couple on earth. It spits in their faces. Homosexuals prowl the toilets for sex. They lurk in bushes and behind schools. They drink urine and eat shit. Picture a pair of homosexual sex partners walking down the isle and you have pictured the end of western civilization. You can’t whitewash perversion by calling it something it isn’t. Homosexual relationships are no more marriage, then feces is food. That’s why same-sex marriage is radical, isn’t it Dreher? But you won’t come out and say so, because you want people to think you’re better then this man…
…and you’re not Dreher. You’re actually deeper in the human gutter then he is. Fred’s a bigot like you, but at least he’s an honest one and you can’t even be that. Afraid for religious liberties are you? Bullshit you’re afraid. There’s already a constitutional protection for religious liberty Dreher…it’s called the first amendment you motherfucking bigot. You know it. I know you know it. Everybody knows you know it. You’re not afraid for your religious liberties. You’re afraid of the day that gay people don’t have to wear the shame you feel every time you look in a mirror and glimpse the slippery cheat inside.
You don’t want to live with us as your neighbors? Fine. We’re not your neighbors. We’re the people who get up every day and get to work getting you motherfuckers off our backs, and then go to bed that night vowing to work harder at it the next day. We’re the people who are in your face today, tomorrow, and the day after and the day after that. And it never stops Dreher…It Never Stops…until your kind are off our backs.
Welcome to the morning after. I’ll be your server today. My name is Fuck You.
I rarely sketch out my cartoon ideas before I begin work on them. Nearly always, I picture it in my mind. I have a good imagination. Maybe too good. I can disappear into it for hours at a time. My political cartoons begin as imagery that just comes to mind as I read about, or think about current events. Occasionally I’ll grab one as it passes by, and work on it, entirely inside my brain. When I actually start to draw something, I almost always approach the paper seeing what I want to draw clearly and exactly in my mind. This is pretty much how I draw and paint everything, the only difference being when I paint I will do a quick color study first.
As the fight over California Proposition 8 approached voting day, I had two cartoons already done inside my head, one of which I hoped I wouldn’t have to draw. Had the vote gone the other way, I might have just waited until the weekend to do the other, more light-hearted one. It might even have stayed on the drawing board, like so many other half-finished cartoons have this past year. But this pretty much expresses how I feel right now, and I just had to get it out now. I have nearly two months of vacation time stored up at work, and I took the day off (mostly…I still had things I had to do from home) so I could get this out of my system…
It’s horrible to say it…but I have a new-found interest in doing these now. And…more spare time to do them since I’m not visiting people I know down in Washington every Friday-Saturday now. But that’s another spill-my-guts-out story for another time…
I voted here in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighborhood about two hours ago. It took about an hour to get through the line, and while standing there I was chatting with the 75-year-old retired cop in front of me, and the young 30-something gay couple in front of him, who had their two little girls in tow.
Everyone was in good spirits as the conversation moved from the Obama-McCain contest to the farce that is Sarah Palin, and then on to non-political matters, like the road work being done on the next block. The conversation between the cop and the couple started to get animated toward the end of our hour in line as the three men began to discuss the current football season, wagering bets for this weekend’s games and making predictions for the Super Bowl.
And then, as we entered the firehouse that doubled as our polling place, as the couple and their daughters stepped out of line and up to the table to receive their ballots, I observed the cop in front of me. He opened his sample ballot, took out his pen, scribbled out his "yes" vote on Proposition 8, and filled in the ballot line for "no."
I don’t think he knew that I observed him. And since it was such a private moment I held back my tears of joy and my overwhelming desire to pat him on the back and say "thank you, sir." Instead, I left the polling place muttering to myself those two words you have repeated over and over during this election cycle, Andrew:
Four years ago my husband and I adopted a nine-year-old boy. He’d been taken from his biological family when he was three and shuttled through six different foster homes in six years. The three of us have worked very hard to create our family. Our son has added to our lives in ways we could never have imagined. We love him very much.
This year our son, who is now thirteen, came out to us. Our son is gay. We are fine with this.
The amazing thing about our boy is that he goes to school every day and lives his life true to himself. He’s a happy child. He writes poetry. He skips. He’s a track star. He excels at algebra. He loves the Stylistics. He has a blinding smile. Most of the kids at his school love him. But some of the boys call him “faggot.” Yesterday our usually sunny boy, all five-feet-four inches of him, came home staring at the ground, visibly upset. Some of the boys at school were taunting him with cries of Yes on 8, the California proposition aimed at eliminating the right to marry for those who want to marry another of the same gender. The boys were punished by the school, but the damage was done.
Who are these followers of Jesus Christ who would tell my son, taken from his family at three, and homeless until he was nine, that he cannot marry and have a family of his own?
Today my thirteen-year-old son joined me in the voting booth. As I voted for Obama my son put his hand on top of mine. He did the same thing when I voted no on Proposition 8. He was late for school, but I can’t think of a better reason.
It would be so nice to have someone to come home to here at Casa del Garrett on any night, but especially tonight. I might not get myself tied up in knots waiting for the outcome in California. But then…hey…I’ve been single for nearly all my life and I should be expert at handling stress all by myself.
If only.
I don’t expect my friends to go to any great lengths to find me dates. But when something that looks like a good match just drops in their fucking laps and they just let it sail off into the sunset with little more then a shrug of the shoulders it’s hard not to feel betrayed. No…strike that…I’d be in denial not to see that for what it is.
Hopefully there are enough good-hearted people in California that come tomorrow morning their gay and lesbian neighbors won’t have to wonder if their hearts ever really had a home there among them. But if not…whatever doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger…
Not sure if that applies to all the Tequila I’ll be drinking tonight though…
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