Michael Moore, a former resident of Martinsville, VA said he was forced to resign from the Virginia Museum of Natural History because he is gay. The state has no anti-discrimination law, just Governor Tim Kaine’s (who is also the DNC chair) 2006 executive order. The courts have ruled that without legislation on the books, Moore has no recourse there.
Well of course the Governor’s executive order wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on. It dared to suggest that gay people are something other then human garbage. You can bet your ass that if Kaine had ordered an anti-gay witch hunt the Virigina courts would have backed him a thousand percent, legislation or not. People think Texas is the most anti-gay state in the union, but it just gets noticed more when it does dumbshit things like raid a gay bar and crack some gay heads on the anniversary of Stonewall.
Tell me please, what this man did to deserve loosing his job. Oh…right…he was gay and it was Virginia. By all appearances it was an act of pure anti-gay animus on the part of the executive director of the museum, Tim Gette, who probably thinks Moore should be grateful he didn’t call the police and have him arrested for being a sodomite. Moore had been given an employee evaluation at the time of his getting the boot, that had entitled him to a pay raise. And then Tim was told the horrible news by someone. Hey Tim…you have a gay guy working for you. Imagine that…a gay guy working in a museum…
According to Moore, during his evaluation in October 2006, the museum’s executive director, Tim Gette said, “Michael, there are board members that are aware you are gay, and I do not appreciate you hiding that from me.”
I can’t imagine why he’d have wanted to hide that fact from you Tim, considering you gave him the boot the moment you found out. Homophobe much? You find yourself wondering if the board members who didn’t alert Tim to the presence of a homosexual on the staff are going to get the axe next. I do not appreciate your failure to inform me there was a homosexual on our staff… Hey Tim…are you sure you’re the executive director and not an exhibit somewhere over in the Neanderthal section?
Meanwhile, the Roanoke Times is wagging its finger at a statehouse that wishes its sodomy law was still enforceable…
The decision by the Martinsville court should be a convincing sign to the General Assembly that protection against such discrimination must be written into Virginia’s code. Only a law will offer genuine confidence to Virginia’s gay employees that they won’t face irrational threats to their employment based on their sexual orientation.
It would be better if such protection were guaranteed to all workers in Virginia, not just state employees, but a law making it official state policy not to discriminate against public employees because of their sexual orientation would at least be a start.
Editorial – The Roanoke Times, July 7, 2009.
I’d like to know what planet the editorial board of the Roanoke Times is living on. An anti-discrimination law? They expect the Virginia statehouse, which passed an anti same-sex marriage amendment so draconian, so breathtaking in its sweep that some legal experts say it could even be used to break a same-sex couple’s joint checking account…they expect That legislature to pass an anti-discrimination law? Earlier this year the statehouse gutted an anti-bullying bill of its LGBT protections practically the instant that bill hit the floor. You expect a state that thinks there is nothing wrong with beating up gay kids to pass an anti-discrimination law? There something funny in the tobacco down there lately?
…or photograph. To repeat from the previous post…here’s the deal:
Donate Here to the fight against Proposition 8…the California referendum that would take away the right of same sex couples to marry. You must be a U.S. citizen to contribute. If you donate between now and election day to No On 8 online (for any amount), send me your confirmation email, and I will draw an editorial cartoon on the topic of your choice. Or…alternately…a Mark and Josh cartoon on the topic of your choice.
Or…if my cartoons don’t do it for you…I’ll gladly mail you a signed 11 by 19 print of the image of your choice out of any of my photo galleries.
In a world that can’t seem to hate enough, please do what you can to help same sex couples keep their marriages secure. This poor angry world needs a lot more of this…
Therefore, the ruling to impose homosexual "marriages" upon California was tyrannical, unconstitutional, and immoral. Like many state legislatures that refused to accept the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision saying slaves were property not persons, Californians must not accept the California Supreme Court’s edict that marriage is no longer only for a man and a woman.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen the right invoke Dred Scott. They’ve done it routinely over abortion too. They’re calling for massive resistance to the courts and claiming as moral justification the ruling upholding the legality of slavery.
Ever see them invoke Plessy v. Ferguson? No? Me either.
Before there was an Internet, there were computer BBSs. It was on a gay BBS, the Gay and Lesbian Information Bureau (GLIB), that I finally found my little subset of the gay community, and began settling in. It was during one of our GLIB happy hour gatherings that I had my eyes opened about transgendered folk. This was sometime in the late 1980s as I recall. A group of us were sitting at the bar and this really cute guy, not a GLIB member but a friend of one, joined us. He seemed almost a stereotypical D.C. K Street type. He had on his Power Office Worker suit and tie, and his expensive walking sneakers because it was rush hour and you leave your good shoes at the office and put on your Nikes for walking to your Metro stop. And he had his Franklin-Covey Day Planner with him, and as he chatted with his friends there, I kid you not, he would glance in his appointment pages to see where his free time was.
At the time I was working as a contract software developer, and as this was a time before PDAs were mated to cell phones, I also had a paper day planner, mostly so I could keep track of my billable hours. Mine was the Daytimer product, largely because it had twenty-four hour day pages, and my workdays were anything but nine to five. And being a techno-geek, and more interested in the technology of managing time then actually managing my own, I asked this guy what he liked about the Franklin-Covey product. After a while he and I were enjoying a nice chat. I about the technology of time management, and he about how busy his life was.
Eventually he went off to make a phone call. As I sat at the bar a GLIB member who knew him came over to me and asked me what I thought of him. He’s real cute, I said. But a bit too much K street for me. Does he have any friends, I asked jokingly, or are they all business contacts? The GLIB member asked if I knew ‘he’ was really ‘she’.
I was stunned. I hadn’t a clue. Not clue one. He was, I was told, female, but living as a guy because that’s what he felt he was. He’d had no surgery, not even merely cosmetic, and apparently had no interest in it. He was just living as a man, because that’s what he felt he was really, regardless of the physical sex he was born as. And when he came back and sat down next to me, and we resumed our conversation, even knowing that he was physically female, I could not help but believe, somewhere deep in my gut, that I was talking to another guy and it wasn’t an act. He just gave off guy vibes.
That was, I think, when I saw for myself that there really could be a difference between the sex of your body, and the sex of your mind, and that it was something distinct from one’s sexual orientation. But that’s not to say that the struggle of transgendered folk is separate from our own.
Homosexual. Bisexual. Transgendered. What do these people have in common? One thing: we don’t fit the gender stereotypes of the majority, and that has had profoundly negative consequences for our lives. This is why we need EDNA, and why it’s at root, our struggle for equality. All of us. Not some of us. Our life struggles are different in the particulars, the obstacles we face are not always the same ones, but the hate has, I am convinced, a common root. People who hate gays and who would deny us jobs, housing, a decent life, the freedom to be, hate transgendered folk just as much, just as deeply, just as passionately, and really don’t see a distinction between us. We’re all sexual deviants, and they wish us all gone from this world.
As a point of clarity for the community: The recent version is not simply the old version with the transgender protections stripped out — but rather has modified the old version in several additional and troubling ways.
In addition to the missing vital protections for transgender people on the job, this new bill also leaves out a key element to protect any employee, including lesbians and gay men who may not conform to their employer’s idea of how a man or woman should look and act. This is a huge loophole through which employers sued for sexual orientation discrimination can claim that their conduct was actually based on gender expression, a type of discrimination that the new bill does not prohibit.
Do you see the problem with leaving out protections for transgendered folk now? If your employer can fire you for not acting like a normal All-American heterosexual, as opposed to simply for being gay, or bi, then the bill does exactly nothing.
Let me reiterate…the problem isn’t that we’re homosexual, the problem is that we don’t conform to the gender norms of the majority. You can’t craft a law that protects homosexuals, and not the transgendered, and end up with a law that actually protects homosexuals. It has to outlaw discrimination based on gender expression, real or perceived, or it won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on.
I have to say I’ve lost a lot of respect for Barney Frank in this. His reputation is as a shrewd politician, and in fact he tried to justify doing this to ENDA on the grounds that it made better political sense. It was something he averred, that he could get more agreement on…maybe enough republican agreement that Bush would either sign it, or his veto could be overridden. Damn Barney… God Damn… Haven’t you fucking learned yet, that when you shake hands with these people, you need to count your fingers afterward…?
This version of ENDA states without qualification that refusal by employers to extend health insurance benefits to the domestic partners of their employees that are provided only to married couples cannot be considered sexual orientation discrimination. The old version at least provided that states and local governments could require that employees be provided domestic partner health insurance when such benefits are provided to spouses.
In the previous version of ENDA the religious exemptions had some limitations. The new version has a blanket exemption under which, for example, hospitals or universities run by faith-based groups can fire or refuse to hire people they think might be gay or lesbian.
The problem with negotiating in good faith with people who have no conscience, should be obvious. Even to people on Capital Hill. Or so you’d think anyway.
Legalizing gay marriage would "only strengthen New York’s families," according to Governor Spitzer, who laid forth his most detailed argument in favor of recognizing same-sex relationships in a legislative memo.
Mr. Spitzer, who late last month became the nation’s first governor to propose legislation legalizing gay marriage, articulated a legal and moral argument in defense of the bill in a two-page "statement in support" that is being distributed to lawmakers.
The governor’s forceful language adds even more contrast between his position and that of the major Democratic candidates for president, including Senator Clinton, all of whom oppose gay marriage but favor civil unions.
Supporters of the bill said they were heartened and surprised by the governor’s appeal and said they viewed it as another sign that gay marriage could become a more mainstream Democratic position. While Mr. Spitzer’s stance is not shared by his party’s top-tier White House hopefuls, it could become a more widely accepted position within the party by 2012, when Mr. Spitzer, a nationally known political figure, may be a candidate for president.
The memo, which was prepared by the governor’s counsel, directly confronts one of the main arguments made by opponents of gay marriage, who have warned that allowing same-sex couples to marry would erode the institution of marriage.
"Same-sex couples who wish to marry are not simply looking to obtain additional rights, they are seeking out substantial responsibilities as well: to undertake significant and binding obligations to one another, and to lives of ‘shared intimacy and mutual financial and emotional support,’" the memo states.
"Granting legal recognition to these relationships can only strengthen New York’s families, by extending the ability to participate in this crucial social institution to all New Yorkers."
Opponents of gay marriage said the governor was trying to co-opt their argument.
"He’s couching it in this family values language, which is insulting. He’s trying to turn our argument on its head," a spokesman for the New York State Catholic Conference, Dennis Poust, said. The conference is the public policy arm of the bishops of New York.
Actually Dennis, the insult was you and all your pals in the American political gutter turning the words "Family" and "Values" into code for prejudice and hate. On its head, did you say? I’m laughing in your face bigot. Your kind has turned two precious human institutions, Family and Marriage on Their heads; from things that nurture and sustain us, into instruments of your cheapshit culture war. May. You. Be. Damned.
The bill memo also suggests that civil unions, adopted by a number of states to confer many of the legal rights enjoyed by married couples, offer insufficient protection.
"Civil marriage is the means by which the state defines a couple’s place in society. Those who are excluded from its rubric are told by the institutions of the State, in essence, that their solemn commitment to one another has no legal weight," the memo says.
Mr. Spitzer also tries to place the legislation in a historical context by arguing that the "history of this country" has been a story of excluded groups achieving access to equal rights. New York has long been a main character in that story, the memo says.
There’s a lot of verbiage out there already on the New Jersey Supreme Court ruling on same sex marriage, but candidate for congress Angie Paccione, during an exchange with homophobe and co-author of the Federal Marriage Amendment Marilyn Musgrave (via Pam’s House Blend), said it all, perfectly…
"I think that’s the ideal environment for children to be raised," Musgrave said, of opposite-sex marriage.
The remark got a smattering of applause but Paccione’s response was quick earning her wide clapping and several cheers.
"You want to protect marriage, you know what’s a threat to marriage? Divorce is a threat to marriage," she told the crowd of about 1,000
"You know what else is a threat to marriage? Infidelity is a threat to marriage. Domestic violence is a threat to marriage. Losing your job is a threat to marriage. Marriage is not a threat to marriage. I support equality."
Just so. But taking the bigots at their word that they’re about defending marriage is for rubes. They don’t give a shit about marriage. What they care about is keeping their right to persecute gay people, simply for existing. What they care about is defending the lie that homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. What they care about is maintaining the cultural perception of homosexuals as something other then human, something grotesque and ugly and no more deserving of human regard then scarecrows or punching bags. We can’t be the scapegoats for every cheap sin they couldn’t keep themselves from committing, if we can have lives of our own. The only threats to their marriages are themselves. That’s why they need someone else to take the blame. If gay people can enter into marriage, if same sex couples can walk proudly together through life, in trust, in honor, in mutual love and affection, then what does that leave them, except responsibility for their own lives? What do you do when all the scapegoats are finally gone, and there is no one else to blame, but the face in the mirror?
COUSHATTA — Nine black children attending Red River Elementary School were directed last week to the back of the school bus by a white driver who designated the front seats for white children.
The situation has outraged relatives of the black children who have filed a complaint with school officials.
Superintendent Kay Easley will meet with the family members in her office this morning.
…
Easley would not comment much on the allegations Wednesday, saying it is a personnel issue. She acknowledged that she has investigated the claim. And she confirmed that the bus driver did not run her route Wednesday, nor would she today.
Asked if the driver would work for the rest of the year, Easley said, "I’m not going to answer the questions. "You’re getting all that you’re going to get from me. I’m sorry."
…
After Richmond and Williams [the parents of the children] filed complaints with the School Board, Transportation Supervisor Jerry Carlisle asked Davis to make seat assignments for her passengers, Sessoms [a relative] said.
"But she still assigned the black children to the back of the bus," she added.
And the nine children had to share only two seats, meaning the older children had to hold the younger ones in their laps.
A new solution reached Monday by School Board officials has a black bus driver driving across town to pick up the nine black children.
Dig it. The new solution was to kick the black kids off the white lady’s bus altogether.
It’s Louisiana and I’m not surprised. I’ve driven from one end of this country to the other and Louisiana has always stood out in my remembrance for the level of openly in-your-face white racism I saw while I was there. It’s a problem everywhere, but in Louisiana it was like stepping into a time warp, not just in terms of how often you saw it, but how they all seemed to accept it as a fact of life. New Orleans was the exception to that. Drive across the causeway into Covington and north and there might as well have never been a civil rights movement. But in New Orleans itself, at least the parts I explored, you didn’t see that. And that’s almost certainly why New Orleans is still a devastated ruin. I’m convinced the rest of Louisiana was glad to see it go.
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.
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.
BLACK JACK, Mo. – The city council has rejected a measure allowing unmarried couples with multiple children to live together, and the mayor said those who fall into that category could soon face eviction.
Olivia Shelltrack and Fondrey Loving were denied an occupancy permit after moving into a home in this St. Louis suburb because they have three children and are not married.
The town’s planning and zoning commission proposed a change in the law, but the measure was rejected Tuesday by the city council in a 5-3 vote.
"I’m just shocked," Shelltrack said. "I really thought this would all be over, and we could go on with our lives."
Olivia Shelltrack finally has her dream home. Her family moved into the five-bedroom, three-bath frame house in Black Jack last month. But now she fears she and her fiance face uprooting their children because of a city ordinance that says her household fails to meet Black Jack’s definition of a family.
Shelltrack and Fondray Loving, her boyfriend of 13 years, were denied an occupancy permit because of an ordinance forbidding three or more individuals from living together if they are not related by "blood, marriage or adoption." The couple have three children, ages 8, 10 and 15, although Loving is not the biological father of the oldest child.
…
The couple appealed the denial of an occupancy permit last week at a hearing before Black Jack’s board of adjustment. Shelltrack said board members asked her and Loving personal questions about their relationship, their children and their previous home in Minneapolis, from where they moved, for nearly an hour. Then the board denied the couple’s appeal. The case now goes before Black Jack’s municipal court.
At the hearing, Shelltrack said, one board of adjustment member, Norma Mitchell, even pointed at her and asked, "I don’t understand why you as a woman didn’t exercise your right to marry that man," before being hushed by another board member.
Mitchell refused to comment. She referred all calls to Black Jack Mayor Norman McCourt, who defended the ordinance.
"This is about the definition of family, not if they’re married or not," he said. "It’s what cities do to maintain the housing and to hold down overcrowding."
"This is about the definition of family, not if they’re married or not…" Gotta love it. From the book of Doubletalk, chapter 4 verse 12: Thou shalt be married, in order to be a family…however whether or not you are married has nothing to do with it… We thought you were speaking in tongues there for a while brother McCourt, but it turns out you were just talking out of both sides of your mouth.
This is what the religious right wants to turn America into…a place where they can dictate not only who is and is not a family, but where we can and cannot live, and what property we can and cannot hold, based on how well our lives conform to their religious dictates. If you think it’s only same sex couples, only same sex households, that are at risk of being literally thrown off their own property for religious crimes in the United States, think again. You’re on their plate too, your children, your home, your life, it all belongs to them as far as they are concerned. And you can bet your ass that there are people in that town who are nodding their heads approvingly right now, right this instant, and thinking that if the fornicators are arrested, the city can give their kids away to a decent, properly married couple…
Shelltrack, 31, could appeal Black Jack’s decision to the St. Louis County Circuit Court, but she said that would involve legal fees that she and Loving can’t afford because of the money they poured into buying their home.
She said, however, the couple has filed a complaint with the U.S. Housing and Urban Department.
That would be the Bush Housing and Urban Department. Try not to laugh too hard. And if that irony wasn’t enough, from the photos I’m seeing of the couple, it appears that Shelltrack is white and her boyfriend, Fondrey Loving, is black. Loving verses Missouri anyone? And you thought times had changed…
Stephen Noon, the gay press secretary to British Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor was apparently fired three years ago. So that makes the story old news…right?
The row is embarrassing for the Archbishop because, although Mr Noon was dismissed in 2003, details have emerged only days after Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor wrote in a letter to The Times: "The Church has consistently spoken out against any discrimination against homosexual persons, and will continue to do so." He was writing to counter suggestions that the deeply held Catholic faith of Ruth Kelly might be at odds with her new role as Equality Minister.
[Emphasis Mine…] Ruth Kelly is the Opus Dei operative Tony Blair has, for some godforsaken reason, decided to install in his cabinet as…get this…Equality Minister. Not bad eh? Sorta like making Al Capone Minister of Banks.
It’s important to remember the distinction here isn’t that she’s a Catholic, but that she’s Opus Dei. There is no way on God’s green earth that a member of Opus Dei is going to work for gay and lesbian equality. The opposition apparently tried to pin her down about the sinfulness of homosexuality last week, but that’s the wrong question to be asking her…
Ruth Kelly, the staunchly Catholic minister for equality, angered gay rights campaigners yesterday when she refused to say whether she regarded homosexuality as sinful.
Miss Kelly, who was given the job of promoting equality and fighting discrimination by Tony Blair in last week’s ministerial reshuffle, ducked the question twice in an interview on the BBC’s Radio Five Live.
Opposition politicians leapt on her evasive answers saying her appointment – she is also a member of the conservative sect Opus Dei which is hostile to homosexuality – raised serious questions about Mr Blair’s commitment to equality.
Asked by presenter Nicky Campbell if she thought homosexuality was a sin Miss Kelly said she was "not going to get into these questions".
When he pushed her a second time she said it was not right for ministers to make "moral judgments".
She insisted she was committed to equality and against discrimination of all kinds but would not be drawn on whether homosexual practices were acceptable.
There are many people of good conscience in this world, who understand that democracies have to treat all their citizens equally, without regard to their religious beliefs, even if what they do, the religions they practice, the lives they live, go against their own personal religious beliefs. Rest assured, none of these folks belong to Opus Dei.
You need to ask someone like Kelly what they think equality and discrimination Mean, as applied to the rights of homosexual people. And you have to be precise, and you have to keep asking that question repeatedly until you get a precise answer back. And it won’t be easy because an Opus Dei member will know by heart all the right weasel words to say and make you think that she means one thing, when in reality she means something completely different. It wasn’t that long ago here in America, that some people believed racial equality meant separate but equal, and being against discrimination meant treating all white people equally, and all black people equally, but not treating black people as the equals of white people.
When Ruth Kelly says she is for equality for homosexuals and against discrimination, without a doubt she does not mean that you treat homosexuals as the equals of heterosexuals, or treat same sex couples as the equal of opposite sex couples. She means, you treat all homosexuals equally…as God intended homosexuals should be treated, and not give preferences toward some homosexuals over other homosexuals. But you don’t treat them as the equals of heterosexuals because they aren’t. So treating them as equals would be silly. As Rick Santorum once said, it would be like treating marriages the same as man on dog relationships. Mercy and justice dictate that you treat all homosexuals equally, but not as the equals of heterosexuals.
It’s what they believe, but don’t expect them to say so until after they’ve gotten power. In the struggle for the moral soul of the human race, honesty is only a conditional virtue.
Do I sound a tad too cynical? Well…I’ve been in this fight since the early 1970s, and I know just how these people think, and how willing they are to look you in the eye and lie through their teeth in service to their gutter crawling prejudices. Case in point, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, who rushed to assure everyone regarding Ruth Kelly’s religious beliefs, that the Catholic church "has consistently spoken out against any discrimination against homosexual persons, and will continue to do so", three years after he’d personally fired a man from his staff simply because that man was a homosexual.
State Rep. Kevin Calvey praised the Oklahoma State Board of Education today for repealing their sexual orientation policy.
After a request from Calvey, the State Board of Education met today to make a rule change that repeals their current sexual orientation policy by modifying it to be in sync with federal and state law.
"This brings Oklahoma’s educational rules in line with federal and state law and also in line with the values shared by the large majority of Oklahomans," said Calvey, R-Del City.
Currently, federal and state laws require strong anti-discrimination policies in the areas of gender and race but do not address sexual orientation.
Notice the equivocation there. They are not taking protection from discrimination away from gay citizens, they are merely bringing their laws into conformance with federal rules…which only happen to not protect gay people from discrimination. If homosexuality is such a shameful, immoral thing, as these folks so vehemently insist it is, then why do they act like they’re ashamed to admit what they’re doing, when they do it to homosexuals?
But even more then that…notice this:
"The board’s old policy would have opened the door for our schools to become battlegrounds where activists for ‘alternative’ lifestyles would try to undermine the moral teachings of parents," said Calvey. "Now, Oklahomans won’t have to worry about that."
Oklahomans. Oklahomans. None of whom, apparently in that barren wasteland that is the mental landscape of Kevin Calvey, are homosexual, because homosexuals sure as hell have something to worry about now. But no…Oklahomans don’t need to worry about anything that might happen to them. They’re not Oklahomans, they’re not citizens, they might not even be human beings as he understands the term, and they’re certainly not his neighbors.
"I’m a uniter, not a divider". Remember that? Anyone remember that?
On April 11, Kentucky governor Ernie Fletcher removed protections against job discrimination from gay and lesbian state employees. To add insult to injury, he did it on the same day he declared “Diversity Day”.
The most dramatic moment of the day came when the judge’s wife, Martha-Ann Bomgardner, who had been sitting behind him, left the hearing room in tears. She left when Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was apologizing to Alito for his treatment by the opposition. Graham, who was present at a White House preparation session for Alito, mocked Democrats for their relentless questioning about the Princeton group by asking Alito rhetorically if he is "really a closet bigot." After Alito replied that he is "not any kind of a bigot," Graham continued: "Guilt by association is going to drive good men and women away from wanting to sit where you’re sitting…. Judge Alito, I am sorry that you’ve had to go through this. I am sorry that your family has had to sit here and listen to this." After a break, the judge escorted his wife back in. Conservatives seized on the incident to complain about Democratic "bullying," and said they plan to make the incident a cause celebre. "When will the media shame these people for their behavior?" Sean Rushton, executive director of the administration-friendly Committee for Justice, asked in a blast e-mail to journalists. The always-alert Creative Response Concepts, a conservative public relations firm, sent this bulletin: "Former Alito clerk Gary Rubman witnessed Mrs. Alito leaving her husband’s confirmation in tears and is available for interviews, along with other former Alito clerks who know her personally and are very upset about this development." In case that was too much trouble for the journalists, the firm also e-mailed out a statement from the Judicial Confirmation Network calling "for the abuse to stop."
Creative Response Concepts is the right wing media outfit that first began hyping the Swift Boat Veterans. Funny how they had that bulletin about Mrs. Scalito’s tears hitting the fax machines within moments of the event itself. Oh…and they’re available for interviews… Sympathy. You could almost have some for American fascists, when you realize that gestures of sympathy are all they can manage, the real thing being completely incomprehensible to them. When a lawyer for the family of a 10 year old girl who was strip searched without a warrant in a small Pennsylvania coal town in 2003, brought their case before the federal Third Circuit Court, Alito snappishly asked him, "Why do you keep bringing up the fact that this case involves the strip search of a 10-year-old child?" His defenders claim it was about his dedication to applying the law, not sympathy for one small brutalized child. Yes. Just so. The appeal to sympathy pisses them off because it exposes that empty void inside of them, where a human heart would otherwise be. We meet them first in school, then in adult life…the ones that always seem to have a blind spot when it comes to sympathy and compassion. The gentle pull and tug of daily human interaction is a frightening mystery to them. All their lives they take refuge in the structure and form of tradition and religion and law, because without them they’re utterly lost and rudderless in the human community. Over time they may learn how to fake it, but they hate having to do so at a moment’s notice because they have no reflex for it. It’s all an act, and one that as they get older, and achieve some measure of status and power, seems more and more pointless. But it can have it’s uses. Like tears for senators.
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