We Didn’t Say “Heterosexual Couples Only” Because That Would Be Obvious
Via Good As You… It’s not that Hollywood can’t come up with any new ideas, it’s that it would rather not pay for the creative talent to come up with them. Thus, the "reality" shows. But on MTV’s pioneering Real World the point really was to have a dispassionate camera eye view on how people interact with each other. Most "reality" made since Real World are really just another kind of game show. And in fact, Real World has itself added some game show elements in recent years.
But with TV audiences getting bored with all the "reality" out there, the Networks are trying to revive some actual game shows. From Good As You I read that they’re now making The Newlywed Game once more. Can you spot the "Heterosexuals Only" sign buried in the game show eligibility rules…?
Eligibility Requirements
The following are the eligibility requirements for contestants ("Contestants") on the television show currently entitled "The Newlywed Game" (the "Program"), which is being produced by Manhouse Productions, Inc. (“Producer”). In order to be selected as a Contestant on the Program, and to be eligible for any prize ("Prize"), you must meet the following eligibility requirements:
A. Employees, officers, directors and agents of Manhouse Productions, Inc., Diplomatic, Embassy Row LLC, Sony Pictures Television Inc., Game Show Network, LLC (“GSN”), Liberty Media Corp. and/or of any of their respective licensees, assigns, parents, affiliated and subsidiary companies and the immediate family (spouse, mother, father, sister, brother, daughter or son, regardless of where they live) or members of the same households (whether related or not) of such employees, officers, directors and agents are not eligible to be Contestants on the Program. In addition, any person closely acquainted with any person connected with the production or administration of the Program is not eligible, if in the Producer’s sole discretion, the person’s participation could create the appearance of impropriety.
B. Contestants must be at least 18 years of age at the time of application.
C. Contestants must be legal residents of the fifty (50) United States or the District of Columbia.
D. Each newlywed team of Contestants must be legally married to each other (legal marriage defined as one that is legally valid in all 50 states of the United States) and, upon Producer’s request, must be able to provide proof of marriage (i.e. a marriage certificate) that shows that Contestants are legally married to each other. As of the tape date of the Program, Contestants must still be newlyweds (which is defined as the period of two (2) years after the date of Contestants’ original marriage to each other).
E. Contestants may not be candidates for public office and may not become candidates before the broadcast of their appearance on the Program, or until one year from the date of their taping of the Program.
F. Producer reserves the right to change any of the eligibility requirements at any time and is the sole judge of the eligibility criteria.
Here…let me help you with it: "…legal marriage defined as one that is legally valid in all 50 states of the United States…"
It’s a safe bet that clause wasn’t in the old rules. You see…same sex couples can legally marry in Massachusetts and California, and even if California’s same sex couples are divorced-by-referendum come November, there will still be at least one state in the Union where same sex couples can legally marry. So in order to keep the homos off the set you can’t just say the contestants have to be legally married anymore.
The last game show I ever really enjoyed was the old Concentration. Way back when I was a kid I’d watch that thing raptly whenever I was home that it was on (it was a daytime show). It was a memory game…you had to build a mental image of where all the little prize pairs were inside a grid and at the same time figure out a rebus as it was slowly being revealed. I think part of the appeal to my budding young geek self was also trying to figure out how the mechanical game board worked. That thing just fascinated me. It was the only game show I ever really paid attention to…although these days I’ll watch Jeopardy whenever I happen across it. I glanced at a few episodes of The Newlywed Game in the 1970s and every time I did I quickly became uncomfortable with it.
Something about the idea of watching young couples in love being made to embarrass each other on TV where the entire nation could watch just didn’t appeal to me. And for each couple that won, three others lost. Part of the intended fun for the audience was to watch the loosing couples have fights during the show. It was horrible. Even the Roman Circuses weren’t that gratuitously cruel. I’ve often wondered how many divorces resulted from that show.
So, in a sense, I’m not altogether unhappy that same sex couples are banned from this atrocity. A couple’s love should be nurtured, not humiliated for laughs and ratings. And same sex couples have it hard enough in this country. But on the other hand, here’s how prejudice will keep its claws in our lives to the absolute very end. Year upon year, decade upon decade, inch by inch by painful bitter inch, we have worked to get it’s taint out of our lives. And for every inch it looses, hate adopts, adapts and improves, and keeps working with what it has to work with. Okay…so now you can be legally married….Ha!…but Not In All Fifty States…! Got you There didn’t we!
If same sex marriage was legal all across the Union they’d find some other way to cull out the homos. Perhaps recasting the show as a contest between genders…er…Birth Genders…who incidentally and merely to heighten the excitement of the game play, have to be newly married also. As I said, I’m not all that unhappy that same sex couples are being kept off this atrocity of a game show. But I emphatically object to the name. It is not The Newlywed Game. There are gay newlyweds, and have been even before same sex marriage was legal. Same sex couples have been getting married for ages, whether or not their government or their communities recognized them. Our relationships exist. Our households exist. Our unions exist. We exist. It is not The Newlywed Game if only heterosexual couples are allowed to be contestants. It is The Heterosexual Newlywed Game.
At the same time I’m reading this…I also came across this little news item from The Netherlands, which has had same sex marriage now for years…
The Dutch civil service has developed a new name for "maiden name" so married gay men won’t feel awkward.
"Geboortenaam" translates to "birth name". It will replace maiden name on official forms, radio Netherlands reported on Wednesday.
The Dutch Language Union hopes it will save married gay men from any embarrassment when taking their spouses surname.
Despite its liberal reputation, Amsterdam and the rest of the Netherlands have been facing a rise in homophobic attacks over the last few years.
The government has committed to millions of Euros to fighting homophobia in the country.
A recent European poll found the Dutch to be the strongest supporters of same-sex marriage in the EU, with 82% in favour
I’m a tad surprised they didn’t already have a term for "birth name" in Dutch. But never mind. Over there they are trying, really trying, to be inclusive of same sex couples. And this was such an easy one. Just say "birth name" on the form instead of "maiden name". That works too, and doesn’t deny anyone, gay or straight, the dignity of taking their spouse’s name if that’s what they want. Meanwhile, over here in the land of the free and the home of the brave it’s "…legal marriage defined as one that is legally valid in all 50 states of the United States…"
Well Lookie Here…A Visit From Jackson Memorial Hospital…
First…a little GLBT history…
A gay man dies alone in an unfamiliar hospital while his longtime partner tries fruitlessly to get permission to be by his side. It’s a too-common scenario that documents such as living wills, powers of attorney, and domestic-partnership registration are supposed to prevent. But in the death of Robert Lee "Bobby" Daniel, 34, at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in October 2000, none of that mattered, according to a lawsuit filed by Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund on February 27. San Franciscan Bill Robert Flanigan Jr., 34, had power of attorney for Daniel, his registered domestic partner, but was barred from his room and from consulting with physicians because Flanigan was not considered "family" by the hospital, charges the suit, which seeks unspecified damages.
The couple had been driving to meet family in northern Virginia when Daniel became ill. He died without being able to say goodbye to his partner. "I have a huge hole in my heart, and my soul, because I wasn’t allowed to be with Bobby when he needed me most," Flanigan said in a statement.
Hospital officials denied any wrongdoing. "We deliver compassionate care to every patient, with sensitivity to the wishes of our patients and their loved ones," spokesperson Ellen Beth Levitt, told The Baltimore Sun.
Flanigan and Daniel, both residents of San Francisco, signed a legal document giving Flanigan the power to make medical decisions for Daniel in expectation that doctors might not recognize Flanigan. Daniel confided to Flanigan that he did not want to go on life support at the end of his life.
Daniel was transferred to the Shock Trauma Center from the Harford Hospital in Havre de Grace, Md. That night, Flanigan sat in the waiting room for four hours while they worked on Daniel but was never consulted about medical decisions, according to the claim. When Daniel’s sister and mother arrived at the hospital, Flanigan was allowed to see Daniel for the first time.
When Flanigan and the family saw Daniel, he was unconscious with his eyes taped shut, and a breathing tube had been inserted, contrary to Flanigan’s requests, according to the claim.
I did this cartoon about the tragedy back in 2002…
I’d only just started adding the political cartoons to my web site back then, and my drawing skills were stunted from years of neglect, but unlike a lot of the other cartoons I did at that time, this one still holds up I think. Reading the story of Flanigan and Daniel had made me livid, and probably that anger lifted my limited drawing skills up a notch or two. I also blogged about it over and over. Flanigan later found the cartoon while searching the web and I’m happy to say sent me a very heartfelt email thanking me for it.
Later, when an all heterosexual jury excused Maryland Shock Trauma for what they did to Flanigan, I did a follow-up cartoon that was pretty lame and I’ve since removed it from the cartoon site. I guess by that time my anger had turned into a weary contempt. Maryland Shock Trauma had finally found a way to give straight juries an excuse to let hospitals stick a knife in the hearts of same sex couples without having to acknowledge their own bigotries. Oh…we were just too busy to let the Not Family Person into the room with that other homosexual…
All of this is to say that if you google the case of Flanigan and Daniel you will likely run across one or more of the pages here on my web site, either in the cartoon pages or the blog pages. Hold that thought for a moment. Because the case of Flanigan and Daniel is not, alas, unique. It’s still happening to same sex couples, who thought, like Flanigan and Daniel did, that their power of attorney documents might actually mean something to gay hating hospital staff…
The family vacation cruise that Janice Langbehn, her partner Lisa Marie Pond and three of their four children set out to take in February 2007 was designed to be a celebration of the lesbian couple’s 18 years together.
But when Pond suffered a massive stroke onboard before the ship left port and was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital, administrators refused to let Langbehn into the Pond’s hospital room. A social worker told them they were in an "anti-gay city and state."
Langbehn filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday charging the Miami hospital with negligence and "anti-gay animus" in refusing to recognize her and the children as Pond’s family, even after a power of attorney was faxed to the hospital within an hour of their arrival.
…
Pond, 39, was pronounced dead of a brain aneurysm about 18 hours after being admitted to Jackson’s Ryder Trauma Center. Langbehn said she was allowed in to see her partner only for about five minutes, as a priest gave Pond the last rites.
"I never thought almost 20 years of love and family could be disregarded in an instant," said Langbehn, a social worker who lives with her children in Lacey, Wash.
…
Jackson officials declined to comment, except to say that the hospital follows state and federal laws on patient privacy that can forbid releasing health information to those outside the patient’s immediate family.
The hospital also may limit visitors if a patient is being treated for a trauma, emergency or serious infection, said Valda Clark Christian, an assistant county attorney representing Jackson.
That last statement there from the ironically named Valda Clark Christian is Jackson Memorial Hospital picking up the knife that Maryland Shock Trauma gave it, and anti-gay hospital staff everywhere. Oh…we were just too busy to let that Not Family Person into the room with that other homosexual… Power of Attorney? You homosexuals have no power here…this is an anti-gay city and state…
What Jackson Memorial Hospital is going to do now is play the Maryland Shock Trauma trump card. In the case of Flanigan and Daniel, first they said Flanigan wasn’t family. Then they told him that the power of attorney document had been misplaced. Somehow none of that mattered when Daniel’s Legitimate Family arrived at the hospital because they were let right in and that was when Flanigan was, purely as a matter of coincidence surely, also allowed to see his beloved. When Flanigan sued the hospital finally came up with the excuse that they were just too busy to let Flanigan in. Never mind that they could have still respected his medical directives anyway. They didn’t have to let him into the room to do that. Daniel had a fear of dying with tubes stuck down his throat and that was precisely what the hospital staff did to him. When Flanigan and Daniel’s family were finally allowed to see him, not only were there tubes shoved down his throat, the hospital staff had put Daniel into restraints when he tried to take them out.
That was how Daniel spent his last moments on earth, in the tender care of Maryland Shock Trauma. Because they didn’t give a good goddamn about the faggot in the waiting room and his so-called power of attorney. First they openly told Flanigan that he wasn’t being allowed in because he was "not family". Then they said the power of attorney documents had been misplaced. Then when Flanigan sued they told the jury they were too busy taking care of Daniel to deal with Flanigan too. Probably they were too busy putting the tubes down Daniel’s throat. In any case, the "too busy" excuse allowed the all heterosexual jury to acquit the hospital of any wrong doing. If gay ain’t shit you must acquit…
Jackson’s lawyers surely have their own resources to look up how the case of Flanigan and Daniel went down. But the hospital is covering all its bases apparently. Someone there is doing a little research on the web regarding that case, probably to get a sense of just how the Maryland Shock Trauma excuse card is played. According to my site meter logs, someone at Jackson paid me a little visit the other day…
Nice. Note the search string: "lambda legal flanigan daniels court findings ruling judgement" Too bad you can’t search for your missing sense of human decency on Google. What the Maryland Shock Trauma excuse does is give hospitals the absolute right to disregard anything anyone tells them about patients in their care, whether they’re the "legal" family of the patient or not, whether they are legally married or not, have a power of attorney or a medical directive document. The Maryland Shock Trauma excuse gives hospitals free reign to do to your loved ones as they damn well please, so long as they die of it quickly enough that they can claim they were performing emergency procedures. Nobody’s family rights have to be respected now in any way. But of course everyone understands that it’s only the homosexuals who have no rights a heterosexual is bound to respect.
This is why the fight for same sex marriage is so important. Not that a marriage ring will give bigots any more respect for same sex couples, but that the system will never see our relationships as being equal to those of heterosexuals unless we fight for equality, not some separate but equal civil union status. It’s not about the legal paperwork. Langbehn and Pond had the same legal paperwork that Flanigan and Daniel did, and it conferred nothing. It’s not about the paperwork. It’s about respect. Heterosexuals mate to the opposite sex. Homosexuals mate to their own sex. That’s it. There is nothing more to it then that. If that’s all it takes to make care givers treat loving and devoted couples with less compassion then they’d grant to laboratory rats then the moral problem here isn’t with us. They were a lesbian couple. If the word ‘lesbian’ negates the word ‘couple’ for you then You are the one with the moral problem not Langbehn and Pond. Langbehn, in her struggle to care for her beloved, had more integrity and virtue then any of the runts at Jackson Memorial, who spit on their family while Pond was dying. That’s what this is about. We are not fighting over a word. We are not fighting for a piece of paper. We are fighting for the human status. For the righteousness of love.
A hospital can be a place of hope against all the odds. It can be a place where the human heart takes its ultimate stand against the finality of death. We all die. That we still fight anyway, still love anyway, is either to our glory or just a pathetic conceit. A hospital can be a monument to our capacity to love one another, that even the taint of death cannot take from within us. Or it can be a place of despair, of the end of all things, even love. Yes, sometimes, in the heat of battle, hospital staff have to be left alone to do their jobs. But why even bother, if not for love?
If homosexual marriages or civil unions are the equivalent of traditional marriages, you can’t discriminate. If you do, at the very least you put your government benefits at risk.
This is the same rationale that was used by the Supreme Court in 1983 to uphold stripping Bob Jones University of its tax-exempt status due to its racial policies.
That it was. Gosh it’s so uncanny how racists and homophobes look so much alike isn’t it? You’d almost think they were cut from the same cloth or something…
And in the end, it all comes down to money, not theology. What motivated the Pat Robertsons and Jerry Falwells and James Dobsons of America to pour their poison into American politics for the past several decades wasn’t abortion, and it wasn’t gay rights, and it wasn’t even racism, it was loosing their tax-exemptions.
Moral Judgements Are Easy When God Is Always On Your Side
On Box Turtle Bulletin I had a very brief argument with someone named David who could not believe that a fundamentalist crackpot once told me on Usenet that the Golden Rule gave him the right to harass gay people. David assured me that he had argued with them over on BeliefNet over the course of many years and never once encountered such an argument and asked me to provide him with an example. Which I did after a very quick scan of my Usenet archives.
The fundamentalist’s argument went something like this: "If I was engaging in self destructive behavior I would want someone to rescue me from it, even if I fought it at the time because I would thank them later." David assured me that such a stupid argument was "easily refuted". And yes, it is. But if fundamentalists were willing to listen to reason and logic we wouldn’t still be arguing over evolution in this country, let alone the human status of gay people. That David could find it "easy" to refute a fundamentalist about anything made me wonder how often David every really argued with any.
I was thinking about that reading This Story over at the New York Times about an atheist soldier who is currently suing the department of defense over violations of his religious freedom by officers and other soldiers. This follows years of horror stories of military personnel being subjected to forced proselytizing by evangelicals in the ranks. Not all of the victims, as the Times story notes, are atheists. In fact most of them are other Christians who were deemed to be not Christian enough for their tormentors…
In an e-mail statement, Bill Carr, the Defense Department’s deputy under secretary for military personnel policy, said he “saw near universal compliance with the department’s policy.”
But Mikey Weinstein, a retired Air Force judge advocate general and founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said the official statistics masked the great number of those who do not report violations for fear of retribution. Since the Air Force Academy scandal began in 2004, Mr. Weinstein said, he has been contacted by more than 5,500 service members and, occasionally, military families about incidents of religious discrimination. He said 96 percent of the complainants were Christians, and the majority of those were Protestants.
Emphasis mine. When faith has degenerated into certainty you have lost all your brakes. You have become God’s own right hand and gods don’t feel shame. Or to put it another way…
After his run-in with Major Welborn, Specialist Hall did not file a complaint with the Army’s Equal Opportunity Office because, he said, he was mistrustful of his superior officers. Instead, he told leaders of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, who put him in touch with Mr. Weinstein. In November 2007, Specialist Hall was sent home early from Iraq after being repeatedly threatened by other soldiers. “I caution you that although your ‘legal’ issues are yours and yours alone, I have heard many people disagree with you, and this may be a cause for some of the perceived threats,” wrote Sgt. Maj. Kevin Nolan in Specialist Hall’s counseling for his departure.
Though with a different unit now at Fort Riley, Specialist Hall said the backlash had continued. He has a no-contact order with a sergeant who, without provocation, threatened to “bust him in the mouth.” Another sergeant allegedly told Specialist Hall that as an atheist, he was not entitled to religious freedom because he had no religion.
Emphasis mine. This is the mindset by which the Golden Rule becomes a license to do whatever you damn well please to your neighbor. This is the mindset by which putting a knife into the hopes and dreams of gay people becomes a form of love. There is no reasoning with this. It’s not that God is on their side, it’s that God is the face in the mirror. Good is whatever you decide it is. Evil is other people.
I have a book on my desk waiting for me to read, titled, The Lavender Scare, about the persecution of gay government employees during the height of the cold war. So this story, via Talking Points Memo, caught my attention…
The Department of Justice’s inspector general continues to conduct its wide-ranging investigation of the U.S. attorney firings and the general politicization of the Department under Alberto Gonzales. And as we reported back in August of last year, one area of focus by investigators is allegedly political hiring practices by Monica Goodling. The inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility sent out a questionnaire to anyone who had interviewed for a job at the DoJ during Gonzo’s tenure. One thing investigators wanted to know about was whether the interviewer had asked about the applicant’s sexual orientation.
NPR today provides some more evidence that Goodling and her associates might have decided that being gay was a disqualifier. Leslie Hagen was the liaison between the Justice Department and the U.S. attorneys’ committee on Native American issues until her contract was suddenly discontinued in October of 2006.
And from NPR…
Justice Department e-mails obtained by NPR show that Gonzales’s senior counsel Monica Goodling had a particular interest in Hagen’s duties….
The Justice Department’s inspector general is looking into whether Hagen was dismissed after a rumor reached Goodling that Hagen is lesbian.
As one Republican source put it, "To some people, that’s even worse than being a Democrat."
Several people interviewed by the inspector general’s staff said investigators asked whether people drew a connection between the rumors and Hagen’s dismissal….
Someone who worked in Hagen’s office says that in a 2006 meeting, senior officials were told that Hagen’s contract would not be renewed because someone on the attorney general’s staff had a problem with Hagen. The problem, it was suggested during the conversation, was sexual orientation — or what was rumored to be Hagen’s sexual orientation.
One person at the meeting asked, "Is that really an issue?" But the decision had been made.
"To some people, that’s even worse than being a Democrat." The party of hate. It’s not always about cynical manipulation of people’s fears. A lot of them really do hate us that much.
NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) – Gay men, but not lesbians, face discrimination at work, earning up to 23 percent less than married men in some jobs, according to a new study.
Researchers at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) Whittemore School of Business and Economics spent two years analyzing labor and wage data from 91,000 heterosexual and homosexual couples collected by a 2004 U.S. census.
They found that gay men working in management and blue-collar jobs make less money than straight men due to discrimination by their employers
"It was surprising to see how consistent it was that gay men tended to be more discriminated against in traditionally heterosexual male dominated professions — blue collar, labor, and management too," researcher Bruce Elmslie, professor of economics at UNH, told Reuters.
The study found that gay men who live together earn 23 percent less than married men, and 9 percent less than unmarried heterosexual men who live with a woman.
They looked at the top 10 occupations that gay men and lesbians tend to be in and found this discrimination showed up most clearly in management and blue-collar, male-dominated occupations such as building and grounds cleaning, maintenance, and construction.
The only thing that surprises me about this are the figures for lesbian households, because when I was doing volunteer work for a gay community service group, the lesbian households pretty consistently made less money then anyone else. At the time I always put the higher income levels of gay male couples verses lesbian couples down to the combined income of two males verses two females. Female wage equality back then was worse then it is now, but they’re still not making equal money overall with their male counterparts.
But that gay men are pretty relentlessly discriminated against in the workplace surprises me not one iota. I lived that myself for most of my life, and particularly at the critical time in my life when I was just starting to make my way in the workforce. I was ushered out of job after job when my sexual orientation became known to my managers. Mind you…I was never loud about it. But I also refused to actively closet myself either. I mostly just kept quiet about my love life and just tried to get by. But what you have to realize about that is that heterosexuals, particularly heterosexual males, are always bringing up their love lives at work…whether it’s family matters, this and that about the wife or children, or the weekend they just spent with their girlfriends.
I used to smirk whenever some homophobic bigot would go on a rant about teh gays keeping their sex lives out of the workplace because that kind of thing is inappropriate there anyway and if teh gays just kept quiet about all that that they’d get along just fine, because my experience is that usually by the end of the first day at a new job I knew exactly what heterosexuals were married, how many kids they had, and which ones that weren’t married had a girlfriend and which were single and looking, because they just talked about their personal lives as a matter of course. Everyone does. So you notice when somebody isn’t. The single guy who never talks about who he’s dating, sticks out like a sore thumb and it doesn’t take long before the gay rumors about him start flying. Then it’s either you close the closet door on yourself and lie through your teeth about some imaginary girlfriend, or you admit it or just don’t respond to the rumors and either way you’re labellings yourself as gay right there because almost no heterosexual male is going to just let people wonder if he’s gay or not.
So it’s either hide in the closet or let them know one way or another. And then comes the consequences. For me, it was never being able to hold down a job for longer then a year. I eventually gave up trying to find a staff position anywhere, and just began working various jobs on a freelance basis. I struggled for years, just to be able to pay rent on a room in someone else’s house and take the bus to and from work.
Now I’m working for an employer that takes diversity in the work force very, very seriously and I am finally able to live a nice, middle class life. I’m good at what I do. I give 100 percent to The Institute every day I work here. I earn my paycheck. I have a nice little Baltimore rowhouse now. I just bought the car of my dreams. I am not fabulously well off by any means but I’m living comfortably in a nice house, in a nice city neighborhood within walking distance of work. I’m able to help out with things in my community, support other folks who need it now. Life is good. All I ever needed was a chance. But for so long, so very very long, I couldn’t have that chance. Because I am gay. And that’s why we need laws protecting us from discrimination.
They won’t work perfectly of course…bigots will always find a way to weasel around them. But they’ll make a big difference in our lives. And that means prejudice in America wastes a little less of America’s human capital. What you have to understand about bigots is that for all the patriotic posturing they really don’t give a good goddamn about their country. They would rather live in an America that was poorer economically and more vulnerable strategically, then live in an America that was prosperous and secure, if that means they have to get off the backs of the people they hate.
I’m fortunate enough to be working for an employer that takes diversity in the workplace serious. I have never, Never, felt more comfortable as a gay man in the workplace as I have at Space Telescope. The work environment I’ve experienced has been pleasant, professional, and genuinely good-natured. But I have worked in a hostile environment too, so I know how it is. I’ve been told to my face that there was "no place for homosexuals in our company". And I’ve been let go in situations that I was certain were about my sexual orientation and nothing else, even when other excuses were being made. I’ve been harassed, I’ve been threatened. I’ve seen the atmosphere turn on a dime, the instant my sexual orientation became known.
365Gay.Com has a good post up today, about the Gay Glass Ceiling. There’s an interesting little tidbit in it…
In one ingenious study at Rice University, undergraduates were fitted with one of two hats: one of them said “Texan and proud”; the other, “Gay and proud.” The students didn’t know which hat they were wearing, but they were instructed to apply for retail jobs.
The researchers found something interesting: the gay hat-wearing students were just as likely to be hired as the Texan-hat wearing students. There was no hiring discrimination (and in fact, the students were in a municipality that protects against gay employment discrimination). But the interviewers were more hostile toward the gay hat-wearing students and more likely to end the interview early.
Most students were able to tell which hat they were wearing from the treatment they received.
I’ll bet they were. The difference between being gay, and being black or Hispanic, is that you can’t usually tell someone’s gay just by looking at them. Unless something in their job application or resume alerts them to it, a prospective employer isn’t likely to know that the person they’re interviewing for a job is gay. So white gay folks don’t generally experience job discrimination upfront. But unless the gay person is deeply, and I mean Deeply closeted, sooner or later their co-workers figure it out and then things change.
The glass ceiling is what you experience if you’re lucky. Otherwise you are simply ushered out the door. Sometimes they tell you to your face it’s because you’re gay. Sometimes they make some other excuse. When the religious right points to studies that they claim prove that gay people earn far more money then heterosexuals, what they’re really pointing to are studies that prove that rich people aren’t as afraid of being open about their sexual orientation on a job survey form as someone barely making ends meet has to be.
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.
The Pentagon, in a policy obtained by The Advocate, has indicated that lesbian and gay military personnel who are discharged under the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law are qualified to continue to serve the nation. A copy of the Pentagon policy, included in a statement released by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, now states, "These separated members have the opportunity to continue to serve their nation and national security by putting their abilities to use by way of civilian employment with other Federal agencies, the Department of Defense, or in the private sector, such as with a government contractor."
We can do the work, we just can’t have the dignity and the honor of bearing arms in our nation’s defense. And it’s not because these braying jackasses are uncomfortable working side-by-side with homosexuals. That’s bullshit. It’s because they just can’t bear to see the stigma removed from people they personally loath, yet know godammned well their country needs too.
For sure the Pentagon’s Jack D. Ripper’s are all feeling very evolved now that they’re willing to let us do the work of keeping America secure, so long as we don’t actually get the recognition for it. Some of them might even think they’re doing us a favor, since life as a highly paid DOD contractor is probably a higher calling in George Bush’s America then being in uniform anyway.
Buying a greeting card for someone’s birthday, anniversary or if they’re feeling under the weather is pretty straightforward. But what if they’re undergoing chemotherapy or struggling with depression? "Get Well Soon" probably won’t cut it.
Likewise, most cards lining the store shelves don’t work on occasions as someone leaving an abusive spouse, undergoing drug rehab or declaring their sexual orientation.
Hallmark Cards Inc., which has built its $4.2 billion empire on sentiments for life’s happier times, is releasing a new line of cards that will speak to those and other situations that the company says have either been ignored by greeting card companies or received only a smattering of attention from niche players.
Well I just know I’m going to enjoy reading the "declaring my sexual orientation" card that’s somewhere between the So Sorry You Have Cancer and Congratulations On Your Drug Rehab cards…
No topics were off-limits, said company spokeswoman Rachel Bolton, noting two cards that could be sent to gay people who have disclosed their sexuality. The cards don’t directly refer to homosexuality, only extolling the person to "Be You" or "This is who I am" or featuring a rainbow, a symbol of gay pride.
Bolton said the writing is general enough for other uses, however, with one focus group member saying they would send it to a friend starting a new job.
"Our findings determined that people didn’t want to be labeled or identified,’’ Bolton said. "We want to be inclusive and not exclusive."
Coming from the company that was protecting the sanctity of stuffed bear family life a few years ago (more about that Here), I’m probably expected to regard this as progress of sorts. Except it isn’t. Hallmark isn’t merely trying to grab a piece of the gay dollar here, they’re trying to position themselves as "inclusive and not exclusive". That card isn’t for gay customers. You don’t market a card that’s too scared to utter the word "gay" to gay people who’ve taken that difficult, nerve wracking, terrifying step of coming out to family and friends. Who the hell sends a card that can’t even utter the word "gay" to a gay person, congratulating them on coming out of the closet? Be Who You Are…Just Don’t Say It… That’s crap. The card is PR, nothing more. Here’s what’s going on…
The $7 billion greeting card industry already brims with tiny niche players who make and sell cards dealing with such things as serious illness or thanking caregivers, said Barbara Miller, a spokeswoman for the Washington, D.C.-based Greeting Card Association.
But she said none of them have the ability to reach customers searching for those types of cards across the country.
Oh yes they do, if they want to exploit it. It’s called the Internet lady. It’s been four years since a Hallmark store had security escort a same sex couple out the door for trying to buy a pair of boy bears they’d discovered kissing, even though the magnets weren’t supposed to allow that, and now all of a sudden the company is a tad concerned that all those little niche players are going to run away with a big chunk of their market while they’re busy appealing to the lowest common denominator. Having a Hallmark store in shopping malls from one end of the country to the other won’t keep the piles of cash coming, in an age where people can make or buy their cards online and print them out at home. Yet even in the face of that, Hallmark can’t bring itself to reach out to that potential market, to actually be "inclusive and not exclusive". On the other hand, that’s probably exactly why Hallmark gets it so right with their core market.
This isn’t progress, it’s window dressing. Cheap, insincere sentiment from your one stop shopping center for all-purpose cheap, insincere sentiment. What you send when how you feel about yourself is more important then what the person you’re sending it to is feeling. Why is it not surprising that it’s a Hallmark moment.
On the one hand, we’re fighting for, and winning in some places, the right to marry. On the other, there are still gutter crawling bigots out there who are perfectly willing to argue for their right to discriminate against gay people, right down to the level of basic goods and services…
UK Christians, Muslims and Jews are planning to rally outside Parliament Tuesday against new gay rights laws that they claim will force them to "actively condone and promote" gay sex.
According to BBC News, organizers say the Sexual Orientation Regulations would limit their right to live according to religious beliefs.
…
The legislation would ban discrimination in the provision of goods, facilities and services on the basis of sexuality.
The BBC reports that hotels could be prosecuted for refusing to provide rooms for gay couples and parishes obliged to rent out halls for gay wedding receptions.
Equally, gay bars would not be able to ban straight couples.
Thomas Cordrey, barrister and public policy analyst with the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship, told the BBC: "The debate in the Lords is a signal to the government of the need to acknowledge these regulations do not currently strike the correct balance between two competing rights. Christians have no desire to discriminate unjustly on the grounds of sexual orientation, but they cannot and must not be forced to actively condone and promote sexual practices which the Bible teaches are wrong."
Note the formulation, discriminate unjustly. Since when did bigots ever regard anything they ever did to the object of their hatred as unjust? Somehow, we always have it coming. And note also, that the complaints aren’t just about the possibility of having to rent out church space to gay people…something I would be against myself (but they don’t have a first amendment over there). They’re bellyaching about having to rent us rooms in hotels, or for that matter sell any goods and services at all to homosexuals.
Who would Jesus refuse to feed? Next time you hear one of these righteous people complaining that homosexuals are so mean and hateful, laugh in their face. If they had their way, we’d be living in cardboard boxes on steam grates, so they could be righteous.
It’s hard to imagine that when Sabrina Farber sent out an e-mail Wednesday she had any idea what kind of firestorm it would set off.
At 9:08 a.m. Farber, who together with her husband, Todd, owns Garden Guy Inc., a landscaping company on Hillcroft, hit "send" on a message that delivered a painful blow with the verbal equivalent of a smiley face.
"Subject: Cancel Appt – Garden Guy
"Dear Mr. Lord,
"I am appreciative of your time on the phone today and glad you contacted us. I need to tell you that we cannot meet with you because we choose not to work for homosexuals.
"Best of luck in finding someone else to fill your landscaping needs.
"All my best,
"Sabrina"
‘Marriage is under attack’
Michael Lord, who is building a house in the Heights with his partner, told me he had found the company through an Internet search. He liked the "before and after" photos on the company Web site.
He said he didn’t notice, at the bottom of one of the pages, under a photo of the Farbers and their four children, this:
"The God-ordained institution of marriage is under attack in courts across the nation, and your help is needed.
"Go to: www.nogaymarriage.com to take action."
Lord said he filled out a form on the Farbers’ Web site and received a return e-mail expressing enthusiasm for the project. He called the company Wednesday morning to set up an appointment.
"Mrs. Farber kept referring to me and my wife," said Lord. "I told her it was actually my partner."
One-word message: WOW
He said she didn’t say anything about that on the phone, but five minutes after they agreed to a Sunday appointment and hung up, he received the e-mail quoted above.
At 9:17 a.m. Lord forwarded the message to his partner, Gary Lackey, with a one-word message: "WOW."
We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone our employer would serve…
(Minneapolis, Minnesota) A bus driver who says homosexuality is against her religion will be allowed to refuse to get behind the wheel of vehicles displaying gay ads.
Minneapolis-St Paul Metro Transit agreed to the demand by driver despite objections from her union according to an internal transit authority memo obtained by the Star Tribune newspaper.
The controversy arose after the authority accepted an ad from local LGBT magazine Lavender. The ad shows a photo of a young man and carries the slogan "Unleash Your Inner Gay."
The ad runs on about 50 city buses.
When the driver objected the companied issued a memo to dispatchers instructing them not to assign the driver, identified only by her employee number, to any of the buses running the ad "under any circumstances" the Star Tribune reports.
"The decision has nothing to do with the content of the advertisement," he said. "It has everything to do with the employee’s religious beliefs," Metro Transit spokesman Bob Gibbons told the paper.
Minneapolis-St Paul Metro Transit says it made a mistake in the way it handled the case of a driver who refused to operate a bus as long as it had an ad for a local gay publication.
Metro Transit says it was trying to do the "right thing" by the diver based on her religious beliefs, but in doing so sent the "wrong message" to the gay community.
…
"We are not persuaded that advertising, per se, infringes on religious practices and would be reluctant to make similar accommodations in the future," Gibbons said in a statement.
"We deeply regret any impressions of intolerance … Metro Transit employs and serves a diverse population, and we do our best to be respectful of all views."
"We deeply regret…" Right. Notice what’s missing? Any hint that the driver in question won’t be allowed to refuse to operate a bus with an ad for a gay publication again in the future. Kinda reminds me of Macy’s pusillanimous "apology" for yanking a Pride Week display from the window of its Boston store during Pride Week there, at the behest of local bigots. Sure enough afterward came the "We deeply regret…"s but nothing changed. Doesn’t look like it has in Minneapolis either. I was a loyal Hecht Company customer until Macy’s bought it out.
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