Every time the homophobes put one of those all embracing anti-same sex marriage amendments forward, the ones that ban Any legal recognition whatsoever of same sex couples, they take pains to reassure the public that their amendment isn’t intended to strip everything away from same sex couples. Oh no…they say…it’s only about keeping marriage between a man and a woman. The gays will still have rights too, they claim. Just not the right to marry.
Public universities and governments can’t provide health insurance to the partners of gay employees without violating the state constitution, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled Friday.
A three-judge panel said a 2004 voter-approved ban on gay marriage also applies to same-sex domestic partner benefits.
"The marriage amendment’s plain language prohibits public employers from recognizing same-sex unions for any purpose," the court said.
The decision reverses a 2005 ruling from an Ingham County judge who said universities and governments could provide the benefits.
A constitutional amendment passed by Michigan voters in November 2004 made the union between a man and a woman the only agreement recognized as a marriage "or similar union for any purpose." Those six words led to a fight over benefits for gay couples.
Gay couples and others had argued the public intended to ban gay marriage but not block benefits for domestic partners.
But the court said: "It is a cornerstone of a democratic form of government to assume that a free people act rationally in the exercise of power, are presumed to know what they want, and to have understood the proposition submitted to them in all of its implications, and by their approval vote to have determined that the proposal is for the public good and expresses the free opinion of a sovereign people."
In Michigan, Citizens for Protection of Marriage repeatedly stated in its literature and in press interviews that a ban on same–sexmarriage would not affect domestic partnership benefits.
“This has nothing to do with taking benefits away,” Marlene Elwell, campaign director, told USA Today on October 15, 2004. “This is about marriage between a man and a woman.”
The campaign’s communications director was equally adamant. The proposal would have no effect on gay couples, Kristina Hemphill told the Holland Sentinel. “This amendment has nothing to do with benefits,” she said.
To secure and preserve the benefits of marriage for our society and for future generations of children, the union of one man and one woman in marriage shall be the only agreement recognized as a marriage or similar union for any purpose."
And that’s standard operating procedure for the religious right: lie through your teeth…Jesus won’t mind if you’re doing it for him.
But look at what the judges decided. Even though the rhetoric coming out of the mouths of the amendment supporters was telling the voters one thing, the voters are assumed to have meant to vote for what they were repeatedly told they weren’t voting for anyway.
And, in a sense, you can’t blame the judges here, because it’s right fucking there in the text of the amendment: "…the union of one man and one woman in marriage shall be the only agreement recognized as a marriage or similar union for any purpose." What part of "For Any Purpose" didn’t you understand when you voted?
And you have to figure that a lot of voters Did intend this result, even as they were nodding their heads and saying to themselves yes, yes, yes…this isn’t taking anything at all away from the homos… Hypocrisy is how you save face, when you’re busy putting a knife in your neighbor’s back. But given the results in Arizona, I expect that just enough people were fooled by the rhetoric, that the amendment might have failed if they saw clearly what it was they were voting for. Maybe.
And of course, that’s exactly why the religious right lies.
I remember vividly the day I realized for the first time that I was in love. A more magical, wonderful moment there has never been. I’d gone through most of my adolescence thinking love and sex were boring, stupid, icky things only jocks and dweebs cared about. And then in an instant the world, and my life, became more richer and fuller then anything I could have ever imagined before. When he smiled, I smiled. When he looked at me a certain way, my heart would skip a beat. Life was more wonderful, more beautiful, then I’d ever thought it could be. Everything my eyes beheld seemed to radiate the joy I felt inside of me. The future beckoned, bright with promise. So long as we could be together I thought, everything was possible. I was 17. He was 17. I would live my entire life over again, and every bully’s fist, every curse, every attack on my person, every assault on my intimate spirituality by piss ignorant bible thumpers, every job I’d ever been fired from for being gay, every opportunity denied, every tear I’ve ever shed in loneliness…I’d live it all over again, so long as I could live that moment over again too.
Now I’m 53, and desperately lonely. But I know better then to blame my sexual orientation for that. Rather, I never fully appreciate how much harder a gay person has to work at finding their other half, even in the best of tolerant cultures, let alone ours. We are few, and when you realize how hard it is for heterosexuals to find the love of their lives, you wonder how gay people can even hope to stand a chance at it. But many of us do…I’ve seen it with my own eyes, and it is beautiful. Some people are just naturally good at the dating and mating game. But most of us aren’t, and especially the deathly shy and clumsy ones like me. But were I heterosexual, I’d have had the unquestioned support of the culture around me in guidance and nurturing and encouragement. Instead I had to endure not merely indifference, but outright hostility toward my efforts at finding love. I can’t help thinking now, how much different my life might have been had I lived in a culture where same sex lovers were given the same respect, the same chance to succeed, that heterosexuals take for granted. I’d have known earlier on that boys could fall in love with other boys. Perhaps I’d have been more ready when my first love came into my life. Things may have turned out differently. But I didn’t grow up in that culture. I grew up in one where the lives of gay people are the monopoly money with which so many heterosexuals buy their righteousness.
My fury at the way same sex marriage is under attack is in large measure a reaction to my own loneliness I’m sure. I don’t think even my close friends know how utterly solitary my life is these days. Fighting off the loneliness is a constant battle and it leaves me emotionally drained. And then I hear some self righteous jackass step up to the pulpit to denounce same sex lovers as unfit to enter into the Sanctity Of Marriage and I think of how much that unmitigated contempt for the hearts of gay people has taken away from my own life and I just want to shove their faces into a burning wall. It’s that kind of anger that worries my friends, and I’ve had more then a few recently tell me that I’m getting too angry. But as long as I still believe finding my other half is possible to me, I’m unlikely to act it out. When I meet him, I want to be worthy. But I won’t deny that it is a struggle to keep anger, from becoming hate.
Sanctity. I’ve loved and lost several more times since I was 17, but even so my dating history is a pitifully short one. I’m just too damn shy. Most of the heterosexuals I knew in school had been on several times as many dates as I’ve ever had by the time they were out of college. You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find prince charming, as they say. And it’s true. But when it did happen to me, it was so wonderful, so awesome, so profoundly life affirming that to this day I just can’t grasp what kind of bottomless pit must exist in someone’s heart to make them want to spit on the affections of two people in love. But every time they say they’re fighting to protect the sanctity of marriage, that’s exactly what they’re doing. And I am convinced now, that a lot of them do it knowing full well how deeply it cuts into the hearts of gay people. But if we don’t bleed, they’re not righteous. So we have to bleed.
By Jessie Torrisi
Columbia News Service
December 31, 2005
On the face of it, Sam Beaumont, 61, with his cowboy hat, deep-throated chuckle and Northwestern drawl, is not so different from the ranch hands in Ang Lee’s Critically acclaimed film "Brokeback Mountain," which opened in Indianapolis on Wednesday.
"Listen," the character Twist says to del Mar as part of a dream that goes unrealized. "I m thinking, tell you what, if you and me had a little ranch together –little cow and calf operation, your horses – it’d be some sweet life."
That pretty much describes the life Beaumont had. He settled down with Earl Meadows and tended 50 head of cattle for a quarter-century on an Oklahoma ranch. "I was raised to be independent. I didn’t really care what other people thought," Beaumont said. In 1977, Beaumont was divorced and raising three sons after a dozen years in the Air Force when Meadows walked up to him near the Arkansas River.
"It was a pretty day — January 15th, 65 degrees," Beaumont said. "He came up, we got to talkin’ till 2 in the morning. I don’t even remember what we said." But "I knew it was something special."
Beaumont moved to be with Meadows in his partner’s hometown of Bristow,Okla., a place of 4,300 people. Together, they bought a ranch and raised Beaumonts three sons. The mortgage and most of the couple’s possessions were put in Meadows’ name.
"People treated them fine," said Eunice Lawson, who runs a grocery store in Bristow. But in 1999, Meadows had a stroke and Beaumont took care of him for a year until he died at age 56.
That’s where the fantasy of a life together on the range collides with reality. After a quarter-century on the ranch he shared with his partner, Beaumont lost it all on a legal technicality in a state that doesn’t recognize domestic partnerships.
Meadows will, which left everything to Beaumont, was fought in court by a cousin of the deceased and was declared invalid by the Oklahoma Court of Appeals in 2003 because it was short one witness signature.
A judge ruled the rancher had to put the property, which was appraised at $100,000, on the market. The animals were sold. Beaumont had to move.
"They took the estate away from me," said Beaumont, who said he put about $200,000 of his own money into the ranch. "Everything that had Earl’s name on it, they took. They took it all and didn’t bat an eye.
Every state has common-law marriage rules that protect heterosexual couples. If someone dies without a will, or with a faulty one, his or her live-in partner is treated as the rightful inheritor.
But only seven states currently give gay couples protections — such as inheritance rights and health benefits — through marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships. What’s more, Oklahoma last year amended its state constitution to ensure that neither marriage nor any similar arrangement is extended to same-sex couples.
Last year, Beaumont moved to nearby Wewoka, Okla., to a one-bedroom place with 350 acres for his horses, white Pyrenees and Great Dane to roam.
Sanctity. I got your Sanctity right here…
He said he was continuing to fight the cousins, who are suing for back rent for the years he lived on the ranch.
Sanctity. They took the ranch Earl left to his beloved Sam away. But you need to understand that it wasn’t so much about taking the ranch away from Sam, as taking Earl away from him, and everything inside of Sam, that remembers Earl in peace and contentment and joy. That’s why they’re suing for back rent. So that Sam won’t be able to remember any of the years they had together without feeling pain, so any place inside of Sam where there was once love, must be emptied. They want what was rightfully theirs, back. Not merely the ranch, but the love Sam felt for Earl.
When they speak to you about the Sanctity of Marriage, this is what they mean. Our hearts must be empty. Our lives must be empty. If they’re not, if we’ve somehow managed despite their best efforts to find our other half, then we’ve stolen what rightfully belongs to them…Sanctity…And they want it back. If they have to cut our hearts open to get it.
Sanctity.
One final note… I don’t expect everyone in my life to agree with every political or moral stand I take. And there was a time when I’d make exceptions for family. But since mom passed away a few years ago my heart has grown that much lonelier, and that much harder, and I am disinclined now to accept excuses, let alone make any for people who have been content to sit back and watch me walk into my fifties utterly alone. I have gone to bed with an aching heart for far, far too long to politely ignore the knife in my back. If you’re about denying gay people, if you’re about denying Me, the means to find our someone to love and to build a life together with them to the best of our ability…And That Damn Well Means Also The Right To Marry Them If They Consent…then you are no friend of mine. I do not know you.
Arline Isaacson of the Massachusetts Gay & Lesbian Political Caucus, said she believes political opponents such as Mineau are acting in good faith. But she said any campaign against gay marriage inevitably draws virulently anti-gay activists from out of state who will say hateful and destructive things. Groups such as Mineau’s have to take responsibility for that, she said.
"It’s naive at best to think it won’t happen," Isaacson said.
Are you nuts? Those people are about as much good faith as a used car dealer selling models pulled from last year’s flood. This guy has it Exactly right:
Tom Lang of Know Thy Neighbor.org, a sponsor of the vigil, said he’s skeptical of calls for civility in the debate because gay marriage opponents aren’t honest about the real reason they oppose gay marriage: "They don’t like gay people."
"The dialogue can’t exist unless they’re honest and they come clean about how they really feel about gay people," he said. "We’d like them to just admit it."
But of course…they won’t.
Mineau said his group isn’t against gay people, but rather for promoting the man-woman model of marriage as the best way for society to raise children.
"That’s what we should all be esteeming for," he said. "We shouldn’t try to deconstruct it."
Well let’s deconstruct you instead asshole. The man-woman model of marriage is the best, because homosexual relationships are inferior to heterosexual ones. We should all be esteeming for it because homosexuality is a choice and a bad one at that since it’s inferior to heterosexuality. And since the man-woman model is the best and a homosexual one inferior, that means that homosexual households damage the children in them. And since homosexuality is a choice that means that gay people are deliberately choosing to do damage to children. That is what you managed to say in just two short sentences. But without actually saying it outright, of course. And you’re not against gay people.
Good faith. Good faith. Any more of this good faith and the churches up there might as well start selling flood cars.
MFI and VoteOnMarriage.org – the ballot question committee seeking to advance the Massachusetts marriage amendment – has endeavored to advance a campaign that refrains from name calling and does not denigrate individuals. However, as many political pundits predict, the same sex marriage debate, much like the abortion debate, will be with us for decades and MFI sees a need and an opportunity to work with leaders on all sides to promote justice in the way we discuss our differences.
"The tone and rhetoric around this public policy issue has escalated to a frenzied level, too often with shouting that does nothing promote understanding. Denouncing individuals as bigots does not bring people with honest differences together. We would like to work with our opponents to raise the quality of the dialogue," said Kris Mineau, president, Massachusetts Family Institute and spokesman, VoteOnMarriage.org
…Even as this initiative beings to take shape, MFI and VoteOnMarriage.org will continue to urge supporters of the marriage amendment to be respectful of human differences and always maintain a dialogue that affirms the dignity of every person.
You know how this works…right? We stop calling them bigots, and they get to keep calling us AIDS spreading child molesting family destroying abominations in the eyes of God.
Honest differences? There is nothing honest about these people. Nothing. And especially nothing honest about their calls for mutual respect and civility. Every time you hear something like this coming out of an anti-gay hate machine, you know they’re talking to the heterosexual majority, not the gay people they’re busy bashing. They didn’t place that press release in the local gay papers. This call for mutual respect wasn’t addressed to the gay people they’re trying to take the right to marry away from. This is window dressing for the big vote in a couple years. They need to convince just enough voters that voting to take away their neighbor’s right to marry doesn’t mean they’re jumping in bed with bigots. That’s what this is about. Nothing else.
Picture a bunch of white racists pleading with black Americans for mutual respect while arguing for segregated schools and neighborhoods. Picture a bunch of antisemites insisting they want a dialog about the Nuremberg laws that affirms the dignity of every person. It’s to laugh.
He may be on the conservative movement’s shit list these days, but Andrew Sullivan is still its useful idiot…
I doubt whether Massachusetts will forgo the honor of being the first state to grant gay couples legal equality with their straight peers. But there’s one way to find out. Let’s debate and campaign. The national gay groups, whose record on marriage has been spotty at best, need to make this the first priority of the national movement. Winning a democratic vote on marriage is a huge opportunity – and well within our grasp. We have the arguments. We have the evidence. Now let’s have the vote.
We have the arguments do we? Well…one argument we won’t have I guess is that no civilized nation puts the human rights of minorities up for popular vote. Can someone tell me when reason ever made a dent in the mindset of bigots? It wasn’t the voters who swept away the segregation laws in America, it was the hated Warren Court.
The Conservative Soul is it? Well of course. Conservatives never were very big on the concept of liberty and justice for all were they…
So they’re going to allow a vote on the anti-gay marriage amendment in Massachusetts. I was worrying about this when I saw all the Boston newspapers start bloviating about how the legislature had a "responsibility" to let the vote happen, after the state supreme court ruled they couldn’t force the vote, and that they had a "duty" and so on.
Does anymore seriously believe that our enemies, if the positions had been reversed, wouldn’t have used precisely the same tactics to prevent a vote, if doing it would take away our right to marry? Would they have fucking cared what the newspapers said? We are in a knife fight with these people, and you win a knife fight by fighting to win, not by playing by a set of rules designed specifically to allow the enemy to keep taking swings at you while you just stand there with your hands behind your back. You go into a fight with these people to win by any means necessary, or don’t bother fighting them because they’ll laugh in your face and kick your balls. They’re dancing in Massachusetts now, because they can figure now that in a couple years they’ll be able to cut the ring fingers off the gays in their state. And if you thought the religious right was triumphalist before, just wait until they can crow that they turned back sodomite marriage in Massachusetts.
To the cowards who previously voted to adjourn rather then vote, and then switched sides yesterday, all I have to say to you is I hope your own marriages suffer the same fate as ours. About half of heterosexual marriages fail anyway don’t they? Piss on your hopes, your dreams, and every moment of awestruck joy you ever felt as a couple.
What It Looks Like When Playing To The Moonbats Doesn’t Win You Anything
Canadian Prime Minister Stephan Harper, who campaigned on a promise to hold a free vote on restoring the traditional definition of marriage, read the tea leaves and instead ended up holding a vote on whether or not to hold a vote. You can’t govern from the far right in a country whose political process and news media haven’t been utterly corrupted by right wing billionaires and big business.
Demonizing minorities for the sake of driving the bigot vote to the polls can only get you so far in the civilized world, and Harper apparently wants to keep on being prime minister…
Tory attempt to restore traditional definition fails in House; social conservatives cry foul as Harper declares debate over
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper has declared the contentious issue of same-sex marriage to be permanently closed.
After a Conservative motion calling on the government to restore the traditional definition of marriage was defeated yesterday by a resounding 175 to 123, Mr. Harper said he will not bring the matter back before Parliament.
"I don’t see reopening this question in the future," he told reporters who asked whether same-sex marriage would return to the table if the Conservatives won a majority government.
Nor does he intend to introduce a "defence of religions" act to allow public officials, such as justices of the peace, to refuse to perform same-sex marriages.
"If there ever were a time in the future where fundamental freedoms were threatened, of course the government would respond to protect them," said the Prime Minister, who voted for the motion. "The government has no plans at this time."
The declared end of the same-sex marriage debate brought comfort to those who have been fighting for such unions. But social conservatives who have supported Mr. Harper’s government said they felt betrayed by his decision to quit their fight; some said it will come back to haunt the party in the next election campaign.
"I am afraid that the Conservative Party feels that they can take social conservatives for granted in this country," said Joseph Ben Ami, executive director of the Institute for Canadian Values.
Social Conservatives…? That’s a polite way of saying ‘bigot’ isn’t it? And as I understand recent Canadian political history, calling Harper a Tory is a bit misleading. Harper’s party, the Conservative Party of Canada, was formed from a really odd (to this outsider) merger between the Progressive Conservative Party and the Canadian Alliance, which, particularly in Alberta, couldn’t seem to fag bash enough. The Alliance was Canada’s bigot right, in morals and tone not all that dissimilar from the southern state republicans down here in the U.S,. They can’t be happy with this.
But the rest of the western industrial world isn’t still arguing about evolution. Whatever levers big money has to pull in Canada, it looks like playing the fundamentalists for votes isn’t a winning proposition. So for now anyway, gay people in Canada don’t have to play the roll of the bogeyman herald of the apocalypse who drives the batshit crazies to the polls and keeps the conservatives in power. They can have lives. Real lives.
The "Whites Only" fountain once dispensed the same water as the "Coloreds" one did; but the implications of having to walk the alternate line to obtain the H20 spoke volumes.
Via Blue Jersey, here’s an example of how the consequences of separate but equal play out in the lives of gay people…
Consider Paula Long and Rosalind Heggs of Camden who have been together over 15 years. They were registered as domestic partners and also had a civil union from Vermont. Under New Jersey law, they have hospital visitation rights and the right to make decisions on behalf of each other when the other is sick. That’s what’s on paper, but when Rosalind had a heart attack and needed a blood transfusion, the hospital refused to allow Paula to give consent. Paula even had a highlighted copy of the relevant law with her, but that didn’t matter to the hospital. They demanded to see their marriage certificate. (see video of their story)
This story happens over and over again from one end of this country to the other, in red states and blue alike, and it’s indicative of a mindset. Here’s that mindset in a nutshell:
However emotionally bonded a pair of homosexual lovers may feel themselves to be, what they are doing is not marriage. Nor does society benefit in any way from treating it as if it were.
However emotionally bonded a pair of homosexual lovers may feel themselves to be… Bigots such as Orson Scott Card cannot, will never, acknowledge there is a bond between same sex couples, but only, and grudgingly, that they may feel themselves to have one. Card later wrote another column, in which he reduced the struggle of gay and lesbian Americans for simple justice, to a childish demand for "fairness"…
The single most effective argument being used to gain support for the redefinition of marriage to mean anything, therefore nothing, is this:
"It’s not fair that homosexuals can’t get married just like heterosexuals."
This argument is only effective because nobody is bothering to define "fairness" or to figure out whether the result will be in any way more fair than the hitherto universal definition of marriage.
When our kids were little, we made it a very clear rule in our family that fairness didn’t mean that everybody got exactly what anybody else got.
"Suppose we buy a dress for your sister," I said to my son. "Would you want us to get a dress for you too?"
Never mind for a moment, the brain dead sexism in that example (picture Card telling his daughter, "suppose we buy blue jeans for your brother. Would you want us to get blue jeans for you too?" "Well…yeah dad…why not?" But maybe females aren’t allowed to wear pants in Card’s family…) Just look at it for a moment. Card is saying there, that to ask hospital staff to let you be with your other half as they lay sick, and maybe even dying, is like a child throwing a tantrum because daddy didn’t bring him a present too. Read that entire column, and if you aren’t a bigot like he is, one sickening thing just leaps out at you like a ghoul at a fun house, and laughs in your face: nowhere in that column is there even the slightest hint that Card can see there may be a deep and profound bond of love between a same sex couple. It just doesn’t even cross his mind.
Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. Homosexual sex. Because they’re disfunctional….
But it is grossly unfair to demand, in the name of "fairness," that the normal pattern of marriage and family be deprived of its privileged position in our society, just so a few people can feel better about dysfunctions that even they insist are nobody’s fault.
This is the mindset that same sex couples have to face every time they try to assert their rights as a couple. The hospital staff that kept Paula Long out of the room where her other half was suffering from a heart attack, treated their union like it was some kind of pathetic imitation of their own, because that’s exactly what they thought of it. Equal marriage rights won’t change their minds about that. But what it can do is warn them upfront, that if they let their cheap conceits and bar stool prejudices devastate the lives of innocent people, there will be consequences. Separate but equal on the other hand, merely validates their prejudices and conceits. As long as they believe they can put the knife in our hearts and get away with it, they’ll keep doing it. Because it is unfair to demand that normal families loose their privileged position in our society, just so a few people can feel better about their dysfunctions .
When Bill Flanigan admitted his partner Robert Daniel to the hospital because of AIDS-related complications his loss was tremendous.
Kept from Daniel during his last hours alive, Flanigan was denied the chance to say goodbye to his partner of more than five years. He filed a lawsuit against the University of Maryland Medical System in Baltimore City Circuit Court on February 27.
Not only was Flanigan refused the right to be with Daniel, he was also not permitted to share Daniel’s treatment wishes with his physicians, according to a statement issued by Lambda Legal. All because the staff from the Maryland Medical System Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore said Flanigan was not family.
…
It was only after Daniel’s sister and mother arrived from out of town that the Shock Trauma Center released information on Daniel’s status that had been repeatedly denied to Flanigan, and allowed the entire family — including Flanigan — to see Daniel. But it was too late — Daniel was no longer conscious and his eyes were taped shut, and his wishes not to have life prolonging measures performed had been denied. There were tubes in his throat.
That was particularly hard for Flanigan to take.
At one point Daniel briefly regained consciousness, according to a nurse, and he tried to pull out the breathing tube. In response hospital staff tied down Daniel’s arms.
…and why I’m so thrilled that our gutter crawling bigot of a Governor John Ehrlich got the boot last Tuesday. In May of 2005, Ehrlich vetoed a domestic partnership bill, saying it would "…open the door to undermine the sanctity of traditional marriage." This was, some of us noted, at a time when he was conducting a whisper smear campaign against the family of Baltimore Mayor O’Malley, who everyone figured would be his democratic challenger in the upcoming election. Ehrlich and his henchmen spread lies that O’Mally was having secret extramarital affairs utterly without concern for the effect on O’Malley’s wife and children. So much for the sanctity of marriage.
Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. vetoed a bill yesterday that would have granted rights to gay partners who register with the state, concluding after weeks of intense deliberations that the legislation threatened "the sanctity of traditional marriage."
The emotionally charged bill was among 24 that Ehrlich (R) rejected yesterday afternoon, including legislation to raise the state’s minimum wage by $1, allow early voting in elections and heighten oversight of the state’s troubled juvenile justice system. Another measure sought by gay rights activists that would have extended a property transfer tax exemption to domestic partners was also scuttled.
(Emphasis mine) His staff made a big noise to the news media afterward that he would "probably" sign the bill adding gay people to Maryland’s anti-discrimination laws. But that was another of his little moves to the middle made only when he knew he had no choice. The statehouse would have overridden a veto of that particular bill and he knew it. But it was useful to put the word out there that he’d sign it, because he’d just made a move which shocked, shocked, the chattering class…
Ehrlich’s decision to side, almost without exception, with business interests and social conservatives surprised some analysts, who thought he might try to burnish his credentials as a moderate by allowing some of the session’s more controversial bills to become law.
Most of the legislation vetoed yesterday had been strongly opposed by Republican lawmakers. But Ehrlich’s appeal to swing voters was key to his 2002 election in a state where registered Democrats still hold a nearly 2-to-1 advantage.
"I think it’s just breathtaking that he’s casting his lot with the right wing of his party," said Tom Hucker, executive director of Progressive Maryland…"He ran for governor as the moderate, affable son of an automobile dealer who would stick up for working-class families."
No it wasn’t breathtaking. It was eminently predictable. Ehrlich ran as a moderate. But he wasn’t. A simple glance at his political career would have made it obvious to anyone. He’s pure Ellen Sauerbrey Republican, and there are no moderates in the Maryland republican party since the Sauerbrey wing took it over.
A leading Republican lawmaker praised him for making "a principled decision."
"I know the governor wrestled with this decision because he may be sympathetic to some of the intentions," said House Minority Whip Anthony J. O’Donnell (R-Calvert). "But sometimes bad laws are the result of good intentions."
Modeled after laws in California, Hawaii and other states, the legislation would have granted nearly a dozen rights to unmarried partners who register with the state. Among those: the right to be treated as an immediate family member during hospital visits, to make health care decisions for incapacitated partners and to have private visits in nursing homes.
A principled decision. Anyone who knows a same sex couple, knows exactly the threat that constantly hangs over them from their lack of legal recognition…
A woman who could have benefited from the bill, Stacey Kargman-Kaye of Baltimore, said yesterday that she was heartbroken. "I don’t understand how a human being who has a significant other and children could not see the need for this," she said.
Kargman-Kaye, 37, said that after she emerged from heart surgery five years ago, a nurse literally pushed away her longtime partner, who was there to support her, "because we’re not considered a family in the eyes of Maryland."
But republicans just can’t seem to twist the knife in us enough…
A group of conservative activists had launched a petition drive in recent weeks that sought to repeal the bill if it became law. They argued that it was part of a "homosexual agenda" advancing in Annapolis. Maryland allows residents to put legislation passed by the General Assembly to a public vote if enough signatures are gathered.
Del. Donald H. Dwyer Jr. (R-Anne Arundel), a leader of the petition drive, said organizers would soon decide whether to continue, in case lawmakers override Ehrlich’s veto in January. Dwyer said he was "very pleased that the governor has sent a strong message about the morality of the state."
Dwyer had been puking anti-gay venom into the Maryland statehouse for years now, and I am delighted to say he lost in his bid for re-election this year. Good riddence. Perhaps the voters in Anne Arundel Country had just about enough of his brand of morality…
A gay Baltimore man has won a courtroom battle to keep his late partner buried in the Tennessee grave the two men chose.
But the victory is not absolute. Kevin-Douglas Olive said the parents of Russell Groff have indicated they plan to appeal the Nov. 2 ruling that Olive received Thursday.
“This is awesome,” Olive said. “It may not be over if they appeal, but I feel so good.”
Baltimore City Orphans’ Court Judge Karen Friedman ruled against Lowell and Carolyn Groff, who sought to overturn their son’s will and move his body to a family cemetery.
Groff’s parents argued in court Sept. 25 and 26 that their 26-year-old son didn’t know what he was doing when he completed his will and burial instructions shortly before his death on Nov. 23, 2004.
Groff, who was HIV-positive, died from a staph infection that spread throughout his body.
Olive said Groff was estranged from his parents at the time of his death, and completed a will and burial instructions in anticipation of the legal battle.
So he knew what he was doing all right. He knew his own parents would try to take him from the man he loved after death. And they tried. And they might Still succeed. Morality.
Olive, who married Groff according to local Quaker tradition in 2003, said his battle illuminates the need for equal marriage rights for gay couples.
“I won, but I wouldn’t have had to go through this at all if the state had some sort of provision that allowed my partner and I to have legalized our relationship in some sense,” he said. “This is kind of bittersweet because I had to go through a lot of shit to get this.”
A principled decision… That simple Quaker marriage of two young men in love in 2003 did nothing, Nothing to harm the marriage of any heterosexual couple in this state, or anywhere else. It takes nothing away from anyone save for this one thing: the ability to twist the knife in the broken heart of a gay person who has just lost the love of their lives. There is no pain like the loss of a loved one. What kind of person wants to make that bottomless loss even harder for someone to bear? What kind of person sees righteousness in it?
You have to utterly dehumanize the person who suffers. (Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex…) But before you can do that, you have to take your conscience around behind the barn and kill it. And you do that, so you can make other people scapegoats for everything fine and noble and honorable that a human being could be, that you could never live up to. All your cheap failures of character, all your pathetic evasions of reality, all those need a scapegoat. Otherwise, you’ve only yourself to blame. And the best scapegoat of all, the one you can hate the most without reservation, is the one who faced their life squarely, honestly, and honorably, and became everything a human being can, that you could never be. It isn’t the sanctity of marriage but the sanctity of gay bashing that they’re afraid of loosing. Because if we don’t bleed, if we can’t be made to bleed, then they’re not righteous.
So after a generally positive election day, one where I can take some solid comfort in the fact that although seven states voted to strip same sex couples of any and all legal rights one state refused to go along, I find myself sweating blood again over the situation in Massachusetts, the only state in the union so far, to allow same sex couples to actually marry, as opposed to being civil-unioned.
In states where it only takes a minority of voters to sign enough petitions to put a referendum on the ballot, and only a minority of registered voters actually vote on the measures, anti-gay bigots have been enormously successfully in writing their gay and lesbian neighbors out of their state constitutions. But in most of those states, the state-houses have had little to no backbone in them to resist the hate. The religious right is powerful in the heartland, and in the south in particular, and many politicians in those regions make their careers either catering to it, or kowtowing to it when necessary. Standing for the devil and against the baby Jesus just isn’t a winning proposition.
But more and more in the blue states, the fight against hate is being joined. In California, the statehouse there actually passed a law granting same sex couples the right to marry (which Arnold to the everlasting shame of his name promptly vetoed). And in Massachusetts they’re not taking the venomous hatreds of the anti-gay gutter laying down. And they’re not just fighting on principle either. They’re fighting, finally, just like the enemy does. To win. By any means necessary.
Lawmakers voted to recess the ConCon until 2 p.m. Jan. 2, 2007 by a 109 to 87 vote, which is the last day of the legislative session. Technically, lawmakers could reconvene to take the issue up, but it’s extremely unlikely. Which means that the amendment has died by procedural maneuver.
When I first read the news I was both elated, and still a bit worried. Why not just adjourn altogether? Why leave prejudice and hate that one last chance and keep gay couples in the state, and all over the nation looking to Massachusetts for hope, still holding their breaths? Well…here’s why:
The significance of the recess vote as opposed to an adjournment vote is that Governor Mitt Romney cannot call the legislature back into session.
Tactics. They have a bigot governor who is kissing up to the religious right in hopes of making a run at the presidency. He’s been kicking the homosexual devil for their approval for months now (which he’ll never get because he’s a Mormon, but that’s another story…). But in this state the fighters for liberty and justice for all have taken full measure of the enemy. They understand perfectly well that they’re in a knife fight, and so they brought a knife. That’s how you fight a knife fight: to win. Let the gutter howl that they’re being denied their rights. It was their neighbor’s rights after all, that they were seeking to take away. This fight was never about rights. It was about power. It was about a group of venomous haters trying to reserve democracy, and its promise of liberty and justice for all, to themselves. If that’s what you’re about, then don’t complain when someone else comes along and takes some of that away from you: brother, you asked for it.
"I’m probably 3,000 feet to the right of Attila the Hun. But the gracious people, the socially conscious people, the liberal people, you’re the ones who always want everyone to be heard. What about these 170,000 people?" said Democratic Rep. Marie Parente.
Yes, we’re the ones who are always wanting everyone to be heard. And yes, you’re not. And that’s the whole point here. One-hundred and seventy billion people would still not have the right to take away a single individual’s right to equality under the law, let alone the rights of tens of thousands of their neighbors. They only way you do that, is to assert a right of force, by virtue of the power of your shear numbers. The term for that isn’t democracy, it’s mob rule. And that’s why we have checks and balances in our form of government, to prevent democracy from degenerating first into the rule of mobs, and then into tyranny. We The People includes your gay and lesbian neighbors too you drooling moron. It includes all of us. And yes, we are the ones who believe that. And yes, you’re not.
The people can always vote the politicians who stood by the gay minority out of office. But that takes more work, and it means every voter must weigh one vote taken in the statehouse against many. Maybe a voter does not like the vote their representative made on the same sex marriage amendment, but they generally like their other votes. Do they vote a politician they generally like out of office on that one single issue? Now suddenly, the bigots need the rest of the population to be as passionate about denying gay people equality as they are. And the population at large just isn’t. They might vote against us if it’s presented to them as a single issue. But it is not the single issue of most voters and the bigots know it.
This is how the tables turn on the bigots. For decades now they’ve been fighting against equality for gay people in situations where they’ve been able to win on their sheer passion, against a voting public that is lukewarm at best in support of us, but only lukewarm at worst in their own prejudices. They may find us distasteful, but they’re not going to throw out a politician they generally like because that politician let the homos marry each other. At least not in the blue states. Every time the gay haters have tried to hold a blue state statehouse accountable when it has supported, in some measure, the rights of same sex couples, they have failed. They failed in Vermont. They failed in California. And they failed in Massachusetts. And that is why there were 109 votes to recess yesterday. The voters Have spoken, and what they’ve said is they really don’t care that much about gay rights. And the bigots know it. That’s why the bigots want to fight this in a forum where they know they only need a minority of the registered voters to win, and where they can make the stab against their gay and lesbian neighbors as easy and painless as possible for just enough voters, to rewrite their constitutions. Tactics. They can’t complain now that they were outmaneuvered.
Well…they can…they’re hypocrites too after all. And they can probably still keep winning this way in the red states. Most of them. They lost after all in Arizona, which is more "leave us alone" libertarian then conservative (no daylight savings time for us, thank you…). But they’ve about picked off all the low hanging apples now, and the rest of it is going to be a fight, and no bigot ever wanted a fair fight. A fight where they massively outnumber their victims, sure. Their vision of democracy is more mob rule then anything resembling the vision of the founders. Which is why the founders put in all those checks and balances. A democracy is a government of citizens, of equals, not of mobs.
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?
By late Sunday night, I was in so much pain I became delirious. Terry took me back to the hospital, where an emergency-room doctor took one look and admitted me. It wasn’t the flu after all—I had bacterial meningitis, a potentially life-threatening infection of the fluid in the spinal cord and the fluid that surrounds the brain. While I was curled up in a ball on the bed, the doctor tried to ask me questions. But I couldn’t answer, or consent to medical treatment; I didn’t know where I was or what was happening. So the doctor turned to Terry—who was standing across the room, DJ at his side—and asked if he could make medical decisions on my behalf.
This is the nightmare scenario for same sex couples. One is left incapacitated in the hospital, while the other is denied even the right to be by their bedside, let alone give direction to the hospital staff. It’s what happened to William Robert Flanigan Jr., and Robert Lee Danial at Maryland Shock Trauma back in March of 2002. Though Flanigan had legal power of attorney for his partner 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. 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. He died two days later.
Things turned out better for Savage and his partner Terry…
Terry quickly okayed a morphine drip (the nicest thing he ever did for me); he okayed a spinal tap (the worst thing he ever did to me); and okayed a course of powerful antibiotics. The doctors and nurses treated Terry like my spouse, like my next of kin—not just allowing him to remain at my bedside, but also empowering him to make crucial medical decisions for me in a crisis.
The next day I was sitting up, still in a great deal of pain, when the doctor came by. He directed his comments and questions to Terry, not to me; Terry was still in charge, still making medical decisions for me. The only thing I was in charge of was the button in my hand that delivered drops of morphine into my veins.
I was sent home three days later with a catheter in my chest, a cooler full of antibiotics, and a warm feeling in my heart. Wasn’t I lucky to have a boyfriend who cared so much for me? And weren’t we lucky to live in a place where our relationship was respected? The medical personnel didn’t have to treat Terry like my spouse, but they did. Our experience at the hospital left me feeling uncharacteristically optimistic.
Then the painkillers wore off.
Right. Go read the whole thing. If anything the experience of having their relationship treated with dignity and respect made the couple even more worried. What if… It could have been a nightmare. It could have literally killed Savage because absent Terry, the doctors would have run aroung trying to contact someone who was "legally family" and the time they lost doing it could have been fatal. It’s one thing to understand this theoretically, and another to actually live it yourself. They were damn lucky, and they both know they were damn lucky.
The gay haters claim all we have to do to prevent the potential heartbreak here is fill out the proper forms. But they want to bring the nightmare and the heartbreak down on us, because they hate us, because if we aren’t in pain, they aren’t righteous. So if they say same sex couples can protect themselves in one round about way or another you know right then and there it isn’t true. In fact, Flanigan and Daniel had filled out the proper forms and the hospital ignored them anyway. Only having the same right to marry as heterosexuals do, will put our relationships on the same playing field as theirs. Only an equal right to marriage will give same sex couples the kind of legitimacy they need in the eyes of others, whose snap decisions can mean life or death.
Dan Savage got a chance to give Washington state supreme court Justice Gerry Alexander a little grief over his role in that court’s grotesque decision against the rights of same sex couples. The occasion was a previously scheduled interview with reporters from The Stranger for the upcoming election (supreme court judges in Washington state have to answer to the voters). The Stranger website has audio excerpts of the confrontation. There is a moment in these recordings that has to rank among the most telling of the gay civil rights struggle, and it isn’t even anything anyone actually says. It is a sound.
Posted by Unpaid Intern at 02:59 PM
Weeks ago, we—meaning I—scheduled interviews with the state’s Supreme Court candidates in preparation for our annual endorsement issue. Then, one day before the interview, the justices announced they were upholding the gay marriage ban. Coincidence? Entirely. Fortuitous? Very.
Imagine a justice who voted to uphold DOMA trapped in a room with Dan Savage (wielding a framed picture of his son, DJ) and the rest of the Stranger Election Control Board, for an entire hour Well, you don’t have to just imagine the showdown! Here is Justice Gerry Alexander starring in “An Inquisition”:
It’s nine minutes long, so here are some highlights: use of the phrase “child-rearing” (0:34), the sound of Dan placing a picture of his son on the table (0:50), discussion of “suspect class” (5:19), eight-second pause as Alexander ponders response to “Is homosexuality an immutable characteristic?”(5:55-6:03)
…the sound of Dan placing a picture of his son on the table… This would be in front of a justice who signed on to a decision writing same sex couples into second class citizenship because they cannot make babies when they fuck. By that logic every heterosexual couple who use contraception, or whose children were adopted, or who have no children of their own, or cannot have children of their own, shouldn’t be legally married either. But of course, we make exceptions for our fellow heterosexuals…
This has been a month in which the courts have simply walked away from their responsibility to uphold justice and protect the rights of minorities. One court after another has just thrown up its hands and announced that the basic civil rights of homosexual Americans exist only at the pleasure of the heterosexual majority. Justice is a concept that only applies to heterosexuals. What homosexuals get is forbearance.
But we are human beings too. We fall in love. We take our mates. We make our households, grow families, build lives together. Just like real people. And the silence of the courts to the injustices inflicted upon us, upon our homes, is shattered by the sound of a picture frame being placed on a table, before a man whose job it was to protect that family too.
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