Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committe held the first-ever hearing on the Uniting American Families Act, which would equalize the status of foreign-born same-sex partners of American citizens. Heterosexual Americans can earn citizenship for their foreign partners by marrying them. Gays, obviously, cannot do that, effectively making a gay American and his or her foreign spouse legal strangers.
Testifying was Shirley Tan, a Fillipino woman who has been with her American partner for 23 years. Together, they are raising twelve-year-old twin boys…
…one of Tan’s children started crying within seconds of the start of her testimony. At the sight of this, Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy stopped the hearing and asked Tan if her son might want to sit in another room, where presumably a Senate staffer would console him for the duration of what was clearly an emotionally fraught experience. For most people, the sight of a 12-year-old boy in tears at the prospect of his mother being deported halfway around the world would invoke some sympathy. Unmoved, however, was Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions, ranking minority member of the Committee and the only Republican to bother to attend the hearing. At the sight of the weeping boy, according to a Senate staffer who was at the hearing, Sessions leaned towards one of his aides and sighed, "Enough with the histrionics."
Take Note:
Sessions opposes the bill, stating that it would amount to a federal recognition of same-sex marriage.
I keep drumming on this but it’s a simple fact: Everything we have ever asked for in this fight, from hospital visitation to the repeal of the sodomy laws amounts to recognition of same-sex marriage if you listen to our enemies. This has always been their trump card in Every Fucking battle over any and everything: turn it into a fight over same sex marriage.
So it makes no sense to say that we are wasting energy fighting over same-sex marriage when we could be putting our resources into fighting for anti-discrimination and hate crime laws. Everything is a fight over same-sex marriage. Which is to say, everything is a fight over the legitimacy of our emotional lives. The pieces make up a whole at the center of which is a simple question: do gay people experience life the same way heterosexuals do, or do we, as Orson Scott Card would say, merely play house in hollow mimicry of genuine emotions that heterosexuals feel?
Look at Sessions’ gut level knee jerk response to that kid’s tears again. Histronics. He doesn’t believe they are real. They can’t possibly be. Because that family is only playing house. It isn’t a real family. They don’t have real feelings. It’s just an act they have convinced themselves of. Even the kids. This is the enemy your gay and lesbian neighbors have been facing for decades now.
At a hearing earlier this year on one of the stalled bills to allow same-sex marriage, Mark S. Goldberg told a Senate committee about his months-long battle last fall to persuade state authorities to release to him the body of his partner of 17 years, Ron Hanby, so he could grant Hanby’s wish for cremation — only to have that request rejected too because “we were not legally married or blood relatives.”
After struggling for years with depression, he said, Hanby took his own life.
Try to picture Goldberg’s state of mind right then. The death of the one you love is hard enough, but this was a suicide. He must have been absolutely devastated. But then, homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. So now is just the right time to twist the knife in his heart…to make sure he knows how much he is hated.
Goldberg said he tried to show the police and the state medical examiner’s office “our wills, living wills, power of attorney and marriage certificate” from Connecticut, but “no one was willing to see these documents.”
He said he was told the medical examiner’s office was required to conduct a two-week search for next of kin, but the medical examiner’s office waited a full week before placing the required ad in a newspaper. And then when no one responded, he said, they “waited another week” to notify another state agency of an unclaimed body.
After four weeks, he said, a Department of Human Services employee “took pity on me and my plight … reviewed our documentation and was able to get all parties concerned to release Ron’s body to me,” but then the cremation society refused to cremate Ron’s body.
“On the same day, I contacted the Massachusetts Cremation Society and they were more than willing to work with me and cremate Ron’s body,” and so, “on November 6, 2008, I was able to finally pick up Ron’s remains and put this tragedy to rest.”
They treated this man, this grieving lover, like so much human garbage. And without a doubt they all did it, every single mother fucking one of them in this chain of events, with a sense of moral righteousness.
The right to bury the one you loved, and shared a life together with, is just one out of the great plenty of rights heterosexual couples take for granted every single day. It is a safe bet, none safer, that a lot of folks in Rhode Island think extending even that one to gay people is far too much. Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex…
Lying on his cot in the Longworth House Office Building in the small of the night, Jason Chaffetz had a scary dream: The conservative Republican from Utah had beaten the odds, defeated an incumbent and made it to Washington, only to end up by some bizarre twist of events arm-in-arm with Marion Barry, the crack-smoking laughingstock former mayor of the District of Columbia.
"Oh man, if I had run a campaign saying I’d be working closely with Marion Barry, I don’t know that I would have been elected," Chaffetz says
Mirror, mirror on the wall… Sure you’d have been elected Jason. Your voters are cut from the same cloth you are…the same bolt of cloth Washington’s former Mayor For Life was cut from. Barry wasn’t our ally, we were his tools…his useful stepping stones to political power. Just like we are to you. And to your voters, we’re convenient scapegoats for every cheapshit failure of personal character. We give them someone to blame for how lousy their lives are, how dead and rotten their conscience is, so they don’t have to blame themselves. Useful tools Jason…that’s what gay people are. To Barry. To you. To your constituents. Tools. Nothing more. Look in Barry’s empty smiling eyes Jason, and see yourself.
So go ahead and smoke yourself some crack Jason. It won’t matter. Smoke it right in church if you like. As long as you’re willing to put a knife in the hearts of loving, devoted same sex couples you’ll still be a Mormon in good standing. Because nothing matters more then the war against The Homosexual, not even the resurrection. You could spit in Christ’s face on Judgment Day and as long as you’ve left a trail of destruction in the lives of gay and lesbian people you’ll make it to heaven on a red carpet. Oh wait…Mormons think they get to be gods in the afterlife don’t they…?
First… Robin Wilson, professor of law at Washington and Lee University School of Law, writing in the Los Angles Times…
So what should states do to respond to [these] clashes between same-sex relationships and religious liberty?
What they should not do is what New Hampshire’s Senate did last week: pay lip-service to religious freedom while enacting meaningless protections. New Hampshire’s bill provides that "members of the clergy … shall not be obligated … to officiate at any particular civil marriage or religious rite of marriage in violation of their right to free exercise of religion." But this is a hollow guarantee: The 1st Amendment already provides such protection.
Okay. Got that? All those religious freedom clauses being written into same-sex marriage statutes are hollow, since the 1st Amendment already establishes religious freedom in the first place. Well…duh. But that’s not the point.
Here’s the point…
In her May 3 Times Op-Ed article, "The flip-side of same-sex marriage," Robin Wilson urges state legislators across the country to undertake "the careful crafting of robust religious protections" when they draft laws to recognize same-sex marriages. Her goal in recommending such religious accommodations is to "allow Americans with radically different views on moral questions to live in peace and equality in the same society."
I share Wilson’s goals. States that recognize same-sex marriages should protect the autonomy rights of religious individuals and institutions at the same time that they protect the autonomy rights of gay and lesbian individuals and couples. But Wilson’s column does little to promote the careful crafting of accommodations to achieve the equality she seeks.
Wilson starts off on the wrong foot. She characterizes clauses such as the one in the New Hampshire same-sex marriage bill that reiterates the protection of clergy from being required to officiate at same-sex marriage ceremonies as "meaningless protections" and a "hollow guarantee" since the 1st Amendment already provides such protection.
Where was Wilson six months ago when we had an election in which the opponents of same-sex marriage insisted that the defeat of Proposition 8 would result in churches being forced to conduct marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples?
-Letter to the Editor, Alan Brownstein, May 11, 2009
[Emphasis mine] See…here’s the problem: No Alan…you don’t share Wilson’s goals. Wilson’s goals are that his gay and lesbian neighbors remain second class citizens, Regardless Of What The Law Says. This claptrap about churches being forced to marry same-sex couples, and all the other crap, is what we in the IT profession call FUD… Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. Wilson is a goddamned professor of law…he’ knows goddamned well that the first Amendment prevents states from doing to churches, precisely what the Proposition 8 hatemongers said they would. And no…you didn’t see him taking them to task for it in the pages of the L.A. Times, did you? There’s a reason for that. It isn’t the religious freedom clause in New Hampshire that’s hollow. As far as Wilson is concerned it’s the First Amendment that’s hollow.
So now what’s happening is that states and some gay rights activists are starting to call the religious rights bluff on this and expressly including religious freedom protections in their same-sex marriage and civil unions statutes. And naturally, now we find out the truth…that the first amendment protections aren’t enough. What they want is a religious exemption from the equal opportunity laws that everyone else must abide by. A Specific Exemption in fact, just to accommodate their specific hatred of a specific class of people…gay people. They want to be able to deny gay people health care and medicine, housing, jobs, services…in short, they want to be free to keep on persecuting gay people and same-sex couples regardless of their status in the eyes of the law.
What you have to understand about the religious right is they’ve elevated persecuting gay people to a religious piety greater then that of belief in the resurrection. You aren’t saved by the blood of Jesus Christ…you are saved by your hatred of homosexual people. That is what religion is in the kook pews. If a nurse can’t eject a gay person’s spouse from their hospital room, they have no freedom of religion. Because it isn’t Jesus who saves. Salvation depends on how much you hate your gay neighbor. If we don’t bleed, they aren’t being righteous enough.
The domestic partner of a man who appeared to be near death was reportedly ordered to leave the room when it was time to make some major decisions about the patient.
This all started with a hospital visit. The patient, who only wanted to go by his first name of Christopher, was having trouble breathing. So his partner, Patrick took him to OHSU.
As Christopher was laying close to death, Patrick was told he had to leave the room and couldn’t believe what the nurse was telling him.
"The nurse said, ‘Christopher is very ill. There are some life and death decisions that have to be made and now is not the time for friends to be in the room.’ I’m like, ‘we don’t have any friends in the room,’" recalled Patrick.
Under Oregon law, Patrick had the right to stay in the room because the pair had been legal domestic partners for nine months. Patrick found a lawyer who made a call to the hospital and after two and a half hours, he was allowed back inside.
This commenter on Derbyshire’s post sums it up pretty well…
This is from a week ago. A woman in Florida, carrying documents, was kept out of the room while her partner of 18 years died. While their children stood by, no less. Why do people continually bury their heads in the sands about these things? “Oh, I can’t believe that people are so cruel!” It happens. We know it happens. We have documentation that it does. You know what stops it? The universally-understood bond of marriage.
The other major flaw with your argument is you never explain why extending marriage rights to gay couples will “mess” (with), “redefine” “overturn” or “overhaul” marriage. You simply assume your argument throughout.
When marriage changed from a property arrangement between a father a prospective husband, when women were changed from essentially chattel to equal partners, when marriage was changed from multiple wives to one – all of these did far more to change marriage then changing the gender of the two people involved in today’s civil marriage laws.
Last – "people who want to marry their ponies, their sisters, or their soccer team?" I thought equating homosexuality with bestiality and incest was limited to the religiously motivated. Disgusting. As for polygamy – marriage used to be that way in many cultures. Perhaps you had better ask historians why we changed away from it rather than ask the gays why they should have to preemptively defend against something for which they’re not asking.
Emphasis mine. A case against same-sex marriage is not made by making a case against something else. That said, you have to believe as Orson Scott Card does, that the bond between a same-sex couple simply does not exist…or that ripping it asunder is no crime against their humanity.
Why do people continually bury their heads in the sand? They’re not. Not at this stage of it. The one’s doing that now aren’t burying their heads in the sand, they’re looking the other way.
"Last June, a "500-year flood" ushered millions of gallons of water through eastern Iowa. In Cedar Rapids alone, more than 25,000 individuals were displaced in one day. Hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage was done. The Flood of 2008 is arguably the most destructive disaster that the state of Iowa has seen — at least, that is, until last Friday… Flood waters erode the soil. "Gay marriage" erodes the soul. A flood impacts for a decade. "Same-sex marriage" destroys generations. A flood draws a community together. "Homosexual marriage" tears the family apart. Communities recover from floods. The promotion of un-natural unions has an eternal consequence," – pastor Eric Schumacker, Baptist Press.
I’m 55, and single, and it’s looking now as though that is how my life will always be. And I blame hatemongers like Schumacker for that. The ones for whom hating gay people just isn’t enough. The ones whose cheap bar stool hatreds have to be shared by everyone for them to feel good about themselves. The ones who teach gay kid like the one I was once upon a time to hate themselves, just as much as their haters do, driving their knives deep into hearts only just learning what it is to feel desire, and glimpse a world of romance, trust, and tender joyful companionship. The ones that drive a knife deep into a kid’s capacity to love themselves, let alone anyone else, and who do it, with a smile in the name of God, and once again in the name of Jesus, and then one more time in name of love. I might have found a love of my own by now, were it not for gutter crawling human hating maggots like pastor Schumacker, who had to make me, and other human beings like me who mate to our own sex instead of the opposite, into their scapegoats for all the cheap failures of character within themselves. We had to be monsters, so he could be righteous…and monsters aren’t allowed to love.
It isn’t that I reject the theology, although I do. Somehow, all the little rules and regulations that come along with being a Christian as the kook pews percieve Christianity to be, don’t translate into loving your neighbor. Or rather…love consists of sticking a little dagger with Jesus’ name engraved on it into your neighbor’s heart and praising God. The earth was not created in six days…the rocks in the ground say different, and if God is that which created all that is, all that was, and all that will ever be, then the rock, not the word, is the testament of God, the original manuscript, God’s own handwriting. But even the word means only what the reader says it means, and it seems, especially so when it’s telling you to love your neighbor. Ah yes…love… Feel the love for their gay neighbors in this life here: "Gay marriage" erodes the soul. No. Hate does. And I have fought so very hard to keep it from eroding mine all my life, and especially whenever someone tries to put their Jesus dagger into my heart in the name of love.
We love you…stab stab stab…Can you feel our love? Stab Stab Stab… You may never know how hard that personal inner battle has been for me, or the cost. I get angry. Livid. And I am all alone with it, with no companion of the heart to talk to, no smile to look for whenever I need reminding that life is good, and that the haters, the bigots, the human vampires who suck the love out of everything they look at aren’t important. No hand to put into mine. No companion of the soul to put my arms around for a little while, and feel that life is good and the world makes sense after all. I put my head down on the pillow every night it seems, just a little bit angrier then the night before, just a little bit angrier then I thought it was humanly possible to be angry. And I am all alone with it. Alone with it, and the memories of all the near misses I’ve had in my life, when love seemed like it might just be possible after all, only to have that chance snatched away from me once again, in the name of love.
The promotion of un-natural unions has an eternal consequence… But murdering another person’s ability to love, and accept love from another, apparently does not in his bible. I would give up everything I have to have had the love of my life beside me. I would wash dishes for the rest of my life, dig ditches, clean pigsties, live without anything but the clothes on my back to have had his smile to look at, and his hand to hold every now and then. I would spend forever in Hell, knowing that even an eternity of pain could not touch the love I had shared once. I could survive in Hell forever with that smile to remember, those moments spent in the arms of the one I loved. If you don’t know what I am talking about then you have never loved and I feel sorry for you.
Homosexual marriage" tears the family apart… All the gay children who were thrown out the door like they were so much human garbage. All the gay sons and daughters who will go to their grave remembering the sound of their parent’s voices as they told them to burn in hell. All the grieving parents who will go to their graves remembering how they drove their own children to suicide for the glory of God. All the lonely people, bearing the wounds on their hearts that keep them from reaching out to another in trust, and then in love. I dated one of these once and naively thought that if I loved him wholeheartedly I could heal that wound. But even love can’t heal a wound that someone blames their own existence for.
Un-natural unions… I know what Jesus would want me to do. I have to forgive him. I understand it. I understand the necessity of it. Jesus, whatever you think he was, was absolutely right about this one thing: we must love one another. This poor world tears itself apart a little more every day with hate. He would tell me I have to forgive this man, and all the others like him, who put all those knife marks on my heart. And I can’t. This world is so much poorer, and meaner, and smaller for the likes of him, and all for nothing more then so Schumacker can imagine the monster he sees every morning in the bathroom mirror is some other person, some other convenient scapegoat. So many broken hearts, turned into someone else’s angel wings. So many lost dreams of love and peace and joy, turned into other people’s stepping stones to heaven. They say God never gives us a greater burden then we can bear, and some days I think that what I am being spared is that I will never know how, I will never know why, some folks can walk to heaven on the broken hopes and dreams of their neighbors with little tears of joy in their eyes. It’s not that I reject the theology, it’s that I can’t forgive. I just…can’t. And that is why I am not a Christian.
Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better.
-Edgar Watson Howe
Natale Davis over at All Facts points me to a post over at the Christian Science Monitor "Patchwork Nation" blog about recent events on the same-sex marriage front. Patchwork Nation is an interesting project…
About the Patchwork Nation project
The United States is a vast, diverse place – more than 300 million people spread over 3.5 million square miles. Yet our understanding of its complexities is limited. We think of demographic slices or broad regions, or we fall back on the overused, oversimplified ideas of red and blue America.
Patchwork Nation, funded by the Knight Foundation, a nonprofit philanthropic organization based in Miami, is designed to help us get past those views and understand how different communities and cultures within the US experience different realities – and shape the whole.
So the blog post in question grabs snapshots of opinions from each of their representative communities thusly…
In Los Alamos, N.M., our wealthy and educated “Monied ’Burb,” there doesn’t seem to be much of a gay marriage “issue.”
“Our legislature introduced a bill allowing gay marriage. It died in committee,” says Bill Enloe, chairman and CEO of Los Alamos National Bank, in an e-mail. But he also writes, “The majority of individuals in the state are in favor of allowing gay marriage. It might pass next year.”
Kevin Holsapple, executive director of the Los Alamos Chamber of Commerce, e-mailed that he had “never perceived it to be an issue” in the city.
In Lincoln City, Ore., our small-town “Service Worker Center,” some in the community are focused on the topic, according to Patchwork Nation blogger Kip Ward, who runs a local hotel. However, “For most of us, we have bigger fish to fry,” he says in an e-mail. “We just don’t bother with it one way or the other.”
In Ann Arbor, Mich., our liberal “Campus and Careers” community, one correspondent succinctly e-mailed, “Gay marriage should be a nonissue.”
And in Nixa, Mo., our socially conservative “Evangelical Epicenter,” local retiree Betty Ann Rogers wrote that she hadn’t really heard about the issue or read about it in the newspaper.
…but what gets my attention is a comment left by a reader from Massachusetts:
Here in Massachusetts, so little is different that you’d not know that we were the first state to legalize gay marriage, if you didn’t make an effort to ‘turn the rocks over’ or ‘kick the logs’ a bit. Those gay and lesbian couples who wanted to marry have done so…and settled down into quiet, integrated parts of the communities in which they live. They pay taxes, support churches, do community service work, and just generally help their areas be better places. You’d never know that there had been a ‘country-shaking’, ‘ground-breaking’ event here by the quietness of it all. My marriage fell apart not because some of my gay and lesbian friends married their partners, but because of my own failings (or those of my ex). I think that as things march forward, people will come to see that that their own relationships are not, in any way, controlled or affected by those around them, gay or straight, and that tolerance and quiet, friendly support for happy couples is much, much better for our society overall than is angry divisiveness.
Emphasis mine. This is why Every Single Battle in this fight has been to the death. Because once people see they’ve been lied to about the Homosexual Menace, the whole house of cards falls apart. It isn’t society sliding into sexual anarchy the homophobes have been afraid of. It’s the see-it-with-your-own-two-eyes realization that bringing same sex couples into the fold actually strengthens communities that they never, at any cost, wanted people to behold.
For generations they have put knives into our hearts so they could feel righteous. For generations they have taken what should be one of this life’s most perfect joys…falling in love, and being loved in return…and turned it into a nightmare for this one small portion of the human family. They did it so they wouldn’t have to look at the barren wasteland they’d made of their own stone cold hearts. They did it so they could have scapegoats for every cheapshit character flaw of their own. They turned their gay neighbors into monsters, so they wouldn’t have to confront the monsters staring back at them in the bathroom mirror. Andrew Sullivan and Damon Linker have been staring in wonder at the depth of the fear in Rod Dreher’s writing on the subject of same-sex marriage. But they have it all wrong. It isn’t change Dreher is afraid of. It isn’t the fear that civilization may slide into sexual anarchy that grips him. It’s being held responsible for all those thousands upon thousands of broken hearts and murdered hopes and dreams. Why did they do it? Why? Why was it necessary to put a knife into the hearts of so many innocent people? Ultimately, we may never know precisely why. Why do people hate? Why does hate have such power over some of us, and not others? Can we ever really answer that question? But you need to understand what Dreher and his kind fear isn’t the Homosexual Menace, or Sexual Anarchy or The Fall Of Western Civilization, but that common, decent people will stop seeing monsters when they look at their gay neighbors, and instead see who the real monsters were in this unmitigated human tragedy.
There’s the fear. There’s the bottomless fear. Right there.
The process of constitutional referendum in Iowa takes more time then in California, apparently. Before an anti same-sex marriage amendment can be sent to the voters, it has to be approved by the legislature in two consecutive sessions. The republicans in Iowa are complaining that democrats are being obstructionist for not taking up the matter Right Now, instead of next year. The Senate majority leader fired back…
One of my daughters was in the workplace one day, and her particular workplace at that moment in time, there were a whole bunch of conservative, older men. And those guys were talking about gay marriage. They were talking about discussions going on across the country. And my daughter Kate, after listening for about 20 minutes, said to them: ‘You guys don’t understand. You’ve already lost. My generation doesn’t care.’ I think I learned something from my daughter that day, when she said that. And I’ve talked with other people about it and that’s what I see, Senator McKinley. I see a bunch of people that merely want to profess their love for each other, and want state law to recognize that. Is that so wrong? I don’t think that’s so wrong. As a matter of fact, last Friday night, I hugged my wife. You know I’ve been married for 37 years. I hugged my wife. I felt like our love was just a little more meaningful last Friday night because thousands of other Iowa citizens could hug each other and have the state recognize their love for each other. No, Senator McKinley, I will not co-sponsor a leadership bill with you.
I don’t think this is simply a matter of people now reading the tea leaves and deciding it’s safe to support gay Americans in their desire to get married, settle down and make lives together. It’s people, slowly, one-by-one, getting sick and tired at long last of all the venom and hate. People are getting tired of the culture war. They just want to live with their neighbors in peace and good will. Newsweek has an article up titled, The End Of Christian America, which argues thusly…
While we remain a nation decisively shaped by religious faith, our politics and our culture are, in the main, less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were even five years ago. I think this is a good thing—good for our political culture, which, as the American Founders saw, is complex and charged enough without attempting to compel or coerce religious belief or observance. It is good for Christianity, too, in that many Christians are rediscovering the virtues of a separation of church and state that protects what Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island as a haven for religious dissenters, called "the garden of the church" from "the wilderness of the world." As crucial as religion has been and is to the life of the nation, America’s unifying force has never been a specific faith, but a commitment to freedom—not least freedom of conscience. At our best, we single religion out for neither particular help nor particular harm; we have historically treated faith-based arguments as one element among many in the republican sphere of debate and decision. The decline and fall of the modern religious right’s notion of a Christian America creates a calmer political environment and, for many believers, may help open the way for a more theologically serious religious life.
Emphasis mine. You could argue that the religious right’s notion of a Christian America is about as authentic as its notion of Christianity. But this is not the twilight of American Christianity. If anything is coming to an end now, and I am not yet convinced it is, it’s the culture war. Maybe. Hopefully. This is not a Christian nation. It is a nation where Christians are free to worship according to their conscience. But that is only because everyone else is too. President Kennedy in 1960, when it was being asked openly whether or not a Catholic could be president of the United States, said "For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew—or a Quaker—or a Unitarian—or a Baptist… Today I may be the victim – but tomorrow it may be you – until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped."
Divide the nation, and we’ll have the bigger half, said Nixon’s aid Pat Buchannan, signaling the start of the culture war that has gone on to this day. So the southern strategy was put into motion, to divide northern from southern democrats and working people from the democratic party. So the Southern Baptist Convention began tearing their more liberal brothers and sisters from the fabric of the faith. So the Episcopalians began to schism, rather then treat their gay neighbors as fellow human beings. So the more liberal and diverse cities and states of the nation were told they weren’t the true America after all. So gay people were made into demons and scapegoats for every social ill that the culture warriors brought down upon themselves. For the glory of God the fabric of America was torn asunder and the glory that was America, its promise to all the peoples of the world of liberty and justice, was condemned as evil. Only the righteous could have rights. Only the elect could be full citizens. The American Dream isn’t yours heathen…
No, Senator McKinley, I will not co-sponsor a leadership bill with you…
What’s happening is that people are sick of it now. We want to be Americans again.
You Can’t Punish A Group Because You Don’t Like Them. Unless I Don’t Like Them Either. Then It’s Okay…
Via Box Turtle Bulletin . Congressman Daniel Lungren complains that congress, in its outrage over bonuses paid to the AIG group that wreaked the company, and oh by the way, the entire world economy, is ignoring the constitution…
Here are the facts: in the stimulus package an amendment was adopted that the Majority put in stating that provisions in the TARP and stimulus bills that limited compensation payments would not apply to ‘any bonus payment required to be paid pursuant to a written employment contract executed on or before February 11, 2009.’ It was written specifically to protect the very bonuses that we’re talking about here today. And so now we’re asking how do we undo what we did? And the Majority has brought to us a bill that doesn’t recognize the truth of the Constitution. There is something called a bill of attainder. You can’t punish a group because you don’t like them. You can’t have them treated more onerously than somebody else without a trial.
Now, that’s an unfortunate truth that we have to deal with. How can we deal with it? Yesterday in the Judiciary Committee we had an alternative using bankruptcy principles, but that hasn’t been brought to the floor because it’s arguably constitutional. This is to get headlines to show we are outraged. Let me tell you if we overturn the Constitution to show our outrage, no single American is safe. Because in the future what we will do is say, we have a precedent that when we have an unpopular group, when we have a group that deserves some punishment, we won’t go through the real laws.
Emphasis mine. You can’t punish a group because you don’t like them. If we overturn the Constitution to show our outrage, no single American is safe. Ya think?
In 2004, Michelle, a project manager for a financial services company, and Marc, a draftsman, planned to marry in Philadelphia and get their license in Bucks County – a decision influenced only by the office’s proximity to their home in Hatboro.
They were acting within the law, of course. Couples can buy their marriage licenses in any one of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties and hold their ceremonies in any other.
So how, the Toths now wonder, is their marriage considered legal in Montgomery County, but possibly null and void in Bucks?
The short answer is that the people responsible for issuing marriage licenses – the 67 elected clerks of Orphans Court – are at odds with one another. And the growing ranks of couples using a nontraditional officiant or no officiant at all are getting caught in the conflict.
On one side are clerks, such as those in Bucks and Delaware counties, who want the state marriage-license law tightened. They say the institution of marriage is being sullied, if not undermined, by nontraditional ministers and those who they believe are irreligious, liberal couples seeking to stretch the law.
On the other side are clerks, including those in Philadelphia, Chester, and Montgomery counties, who say the law is clear as long as it is read without bias. Their position has the backing of the American Civil Liberties Union. (This issue does not exist in New Jersey.)
Once, getting the license was not among the wedding minutiae that might drive a sane person to "go bridal." But now the process has become complicated and, some would say, needlessly politicized.
Pennsylvania has two types of marriage license: One that involves some registered official, either a clergyman or a judge. The other is a "self-uniting" license, which is used by couples who wish to take their vows in the presence of witnesses, but without a the clergy or judge. Quakers, being the most frequent self-uniters in the state, this license has come to be known as the "Quaker" license. But note, it isn’t just for Quakers.
The clerks are trying to get rid of the self-uniting license, or severely restrict it to Quakers or other approved religious groups only…they claim to protect the interests of the married couples. They’re telling couples they can’t use the self-uniting license unless they’re Quakers, and warning couples who have already been married using that license to come in with a real minister for a re-marriage.
The ACLU is fighting the clerks over this and so far they’ve won every court case. But the clerks are apparently ignoring the courts and doing what they damn well please.
In an Allegheny County case, a federal judge ruled that self-uniting licenses were not just for Quakers – and that clerks were barred from asking religious questions.
In Philadelphia, Bucks, and Montgomery Counties, judges issued rulings that conflicted with York County’s. Clergy from the Universal Life Church were indeed authorized to solemnize marriages, Bucks County Court Judge C. Theodore Fritsch Jr. ruled in December 2008.
Still, Bucks and Delaware Counties are ignoring the rulings in the ACLU lawsuits.
Reilly says she is protecting engaged couples from future problems. Hugh Donaghue of Delaware County goes a step further. He requires marriage-license applicants to supply Social Security numbers (not required under federal law) because he suspects that some foreign nationals see the marriage license as a valid form of identification.
"Getting a marriage license allows you to establish identification for other purposes and change your status in the country," Donaghue says.
And, speaking of identification, Donaghue’s office requires a photo ID, and he is suspicious when individuals (mostly followers of Islam) don’t have them.
"They say their religious beliefs do not allow them to have their photos taken," Donaghue says.
Like Reilly, Donaghue says his interest is in protecting well-meaning individuals.
Pull the other one. They don’t give a rat’s ass about the welfare of couples in love. They care about this:
They say the institution of marriage is being sullied, if not undermined, by nontraditional ministers and those who they believe are irreligious, liberal couples seeking to stretch the law.
That’s the problem here. That’s the only problem here.
What you need to understand about the fight over same-sex marriage is that it isn’t a fight over same-sex marriage. It’s a fight over the freedom to marry. My freedom and yours. If you have been sitting back watching the religious right take a torch to the marriages of same-sex couples because you didn’t figure it had anything to do with you, I have two words for you: You’re next.
Give gay and straight couples alike the same license — a certificate confirming them as a family, and call it a "civil union" — anything, really, other than "marriage." For those for whom the word marriage is important, the next stop after the courthouse could be the church, where they could bless their union with all the religious ceremony they could want. The Church itself would lose nothing of its role in sanctioning the kinds of unions that it finds in keeping with its tenets. And for non-believers or those for whom the word marriage is less important, the civil union license issued by the state would be all they needed to unlock the benefits reserved in most states, and in federal law, for "married" couples.
This is a wonderful solution to some problem somewhere in a galaxy far, far away perhaps, but not to the problem of same-sex marriage here on Planet Earth. Once more: how many of these state amendments bulldozed through by the religious right also ban civil unions outright? How many of them are written to ban any and all rights and benefits associated with marriage, never mind civil unions? How many times do the bigots have to complain that anything that gives same sex couples any sort of recognition at all is unacceptable before you begin to listen to them? How many of the Common Ground initiative laws proposed in Utah, after the Mormon Church averred that they weren’t really against giving same sex couples Any rights, did the Mormon church actually allow to pass? What…not even hospital visitation?
At long last, do you still not get the depth of the hatred here? The word they’re choking on isn’t ‘marriage’, it’s ‘homosexual’.
Exactly what Lopez said in Matteson’s class is unclear. Lopez turned down an interview request, Matteson did not respond to e-mails, and French said he did not know enough about the speech to detail it.
So we still don’t know what it was he actually said. And that’s the crux of the entire episode. But…dig it. Lopez, the kid who is suing (through the courtesy of the culture warriors at the Alliance Defense Fund), isn’t saying. Now…why would he not want to tell anyone what it was he actually said? Better yet…why would couldn’t the reporters covering this story not be bothered to find out?
His Alliance Defense Fund mouthpiece (French) says Lopez spoke two verses from the bible that "had nothing to do with homosexuality." But…look at this…he’s not saying what they were. If he knows for a fact that they had nothing to do with homosexuality, then he knows what they were and he can tell the reporters what they were. If he doesn’t know what Lopez actually said then he can’t say that they had nothing to do with homosexuality.
They’re being very evasive here. It’s not hard to figure why.
Gay marriage is banned in France. But about a decade ago, France’s Socialist government created a compromise — a civil solidarity pact, known by its French acronym PACS — as a form of quasi-marriage for homosexual couples.
This is France’s equivalent to the so-called "civil unions" that exist in some U.S. states. And naturally, France’s right wingers denounced it as a cheapening of marriage. But it was a cheapening they’d had a hand in creating, by their dogged resistance to letting same sex couples simply marry. PACS were seen to be a compromise, just as they are here in the United States, between the needs of gay couples and the hatred of homophobes.
Then, as Hinkle puts it, a funny thing happened. Large numbers of straight couples started opting for PACS, too…
MARRIAGE IN France has been on the skids for years. The French marriage rate has fallen more than 30 percent in the past generation. Marriage has been declining in other European countries as well, but in France the slope has been steeper. By 2005, 59 percent of all first-born children in France were born out of wedlock. More and more French couples live in "free unions," or what Americans might think of as nonbinding common-law marriages. They simply shack up, often for life.
Now France’s experience with PACS helps clarify a very muddled point in the debate over gay marriage here in America. Social conservatives commonly argue against gay marriage for a multiplicity of (often dubious) reasons, from the necessity to protect children to the importance of subsidizing procreation. But perhaps the most often cited reason is that gay unions threaten the "institution" of marriage.
How, precisely, they do so is not intuitively clear. No one seriously argues that a marriage between John and Steve somehow undermines the bonds of affection that keep Ted and Amy together. Nor is it clear how encouraging homosexuals, who sometimes are condemned for libertine promiscuity, to enter a contract requiring lifelong fidelity weakens the appeal of lifelong fidelity.
So opponents of gay marriage fall back on the idea that letting gay people marry somehow cheapens the currency — as though a marriage between Ted and Amy weighs less in the cosmic scales because John and Steve have entered into a similar contract. That is akin to the argument that letting gay people open bank accounts weakens the institution of banking.
FRANCE’S EXPERIENCE teaches a different lesson. It is not gay marriage, but the attempt to deny gays the chance to participate in marriage, that has cheapened the currency and further imperiled the institution. By creating a second-class — call it a "subprime" — form of marriage, France gave both gays and straights a watered-down option that let people enjoy all the privileges with none of the obligations…
…and then, he puts his finger on the heart of it:
And that points to the real issue at the heart of the argument about marriage as an institution. To say that letting gay people marry cheapens the currency of marriage holds true only if gay people have less intrinsic worth than straight people — just as the argument against interracial marriage, that it would lead to the "mongrelization of the human race," made sense only to those who saw blacks as less than human.
To let gay people enter into sacred matrimony, then, requires recognizing something sacred within them…
There’s the problem. How do you recognize it when from nearly every pulpit in America gay people are called abominations in the eyes of God? How do you recognize it when in one statehouse after another gay people are called a bigger threat to America then terrorists?
You can’t. You don’t. You are incapable. They are not human beings. They are some strange, alien, dangerous, evil other. There is nothing at all sacred in them. You are not putting a knife in their hearts, because they have no human heart. Only degenerate lust. You are defending the dignity and the honor of your love, against the animal passions of sub-humans that threaten to devour it.
There can be no dialogue as long as we are not human. There just can’t. Only war. We have seen time and time again how we appeal to our common humanity and we get slammed in return with one filthy lie after another, after another after another. We hold out our hand in fellowship and our enemies jump at us like a pack of pit bulls. As long as we are not human, they will continue to put their knifes into our hearts and put their wreaking balls to the lives we try to make for ourselves, and call it self defense. And we, because we are human, will continue to fight back. Because we must. Because the only alternative is to live with the knife and the wreaking ball. And it will never end. Until the day comes that they can finally look at us, and see human beings.
How to make that day come, I honestly don’t know. Large swaths of the U.S. still cannot look at a black man and see a human being either. Or a red one. Or a brown one. Or a yellow one. Too many U.S. males still seem to think that the female half of the human race is sub-human…good only for making babies and cooking dinner. How do you fight that? Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once said that a bigot’s mind is like an eye…the more light you shine on it the tighter it closes. But for the sake of our common future, our survival as a species, those eyes have to open.
I have no idea how to make that happen. But I know this full well: until they do, this fight will never end. It will only grow more bitter, more damaging, more violent. The word people are choking on in the fight isn’t "marriage". It’s "homosexual". And we are not only being preventing from marrying because of it. We are targets…
"A 4-pound stone, one of several door stops hurled at patrons in a bar that includes gay people among its clientele, left one man with 12 staples in the back of his head and two brothers and an acquaintance accused of a hate crime. Marc Bosaw, 57, said Monday he has little recollection of the Sunday night attack, in which police said one suspect held open the door to Robert’s Lafitte bar while two others launched an assault shortly after 8 p.m. Bosaw sat at the corner of the bar at 2501 Ave. Q just a few feet from one of two entryway doors. ‘I thought I had just been slapped, and the second rock hit me here,’ Bosaw said of the mark on his hand. ‘Everything went white in my mind, and I thought that was it. I even said ‘goodbye.’’ The barrage also hit another patron, James Nickelson, 39, who police listed as a Houston resident, but bar patrons said Monday they believed he had recently moved to the island."
Other bar patrons reportedly struggled to keep Bosaw conscious before he was transported to a regional medical center.
The Houston Chronicle reports: "The three men fled, but were apprehended by police about 10 blocks from the bar, Alvarez said. They were then brought back to the bar, where witnessses identified them. One of the men arrested told police they targeted the establishment because it was a gay bar, Alvarez said. All three men were charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon along with hate crime charges. They are being held on a combined bond of $120,000."According to the Galveston News, "Bonds for Lawrence Henry Lewis III, 20, Lawrneil Henry Lewis, 18, and Alejandro Sam Gray, 17, all of Galveston, were set at $120,000 each on two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon with the enhancement of a hate crime, said Lt. D.J. Alvarez, a Galveston police spokesman."
KOMO news reports: "The latest attack came a week ago near 13th Avenue and Columbia Street, about a block from the Seattle University campus. Forty-one-year-old Jerry Knight was on his way home when two men confronted him. And now he says the horror of that weekend might always haunt him. ‘I remember being hit hard, where I fell and my hands were bruised falling directly on the ground,’ he said Saturday in an interview. He acknowledges it could have been worse.’I am grateful,’ he says. ‘I am grateful I did not wake up in the hospital. I am grateful I am not in a coffin. I know that, and honor that.’ He says he was attacked by two men as he walked home alone in the early morning hours. The assault was first reported online by The Stranger newspaper."
In March 2007, Skipper’s body was found by the side of a rural road in central Florida with more than 20 stab wounds. His car and laptop had been stolen. The car was abandoned and recovered by authorites, who reported that the assailants had attempted to set it on fire but did not succeed. They had also cut out a seat belt because it was so bloody they couldn’t clean it. Bearden, then 21, and William David Brown Jr., then 20, were later arrested and indicted for the killing. A witness brought in by authorities at the time told police that Brown had killed Skipper because he was gay.
Bearden’s co-defendant, William Brown, is to be tried at a later date on charges of first-degree murder and robbery.
Blabbeando: "27 year old Isaac Ali Dani Peréz Triviño was born in Spain. 32 year old Julio Anderson Luciano was born in Brazil. They lived together in the Spanish province of Vigo and were planning to get married. Both were stabbed to death by Jacobo Piñeiro Rial in their apartment in the early morning of January 13th, 2006. The bodies showed a total of 57 stab wounds, according to forensics. After killing them, Piñeiro took a shower and cleaned himself up. He filled a suitcase with some of their belongings to make it look like a robbery and then spilled clothing all over the place. He poured alcohol over everything, including his victims’ bodies, turned on the gas spigot on the stove, and set everything on fire. The local fire department said that little evidence would have survived if it wasn’t for their prompt response to the 5-alarm fire"
The jury bought the killer’s ‘gay panic’ defense…
This fight isn’t about marriage. It was never about marriage. It has always been about our human status. The sacred is within us too. But you have to want to see it. That is the problem. That is the only problem.
Jonathan Rauch, who writes from time to time like he has common sense, joins hands with a bigot to announce they two have found common ground. Wow…common ground…
In politics, as in marriage, moments come along when sensitive compromise can avert a major conflict down the road. The two of us believe that the issue of same-sex marriage has reached such a point now.
It would work like this: Congress would bestow the status of federal civil unions on same-sex marriages and civil unions granted at the state level, thereby conferring upon them most or all of the federal benefits and rights of marriage. But there would be a condition: Washington would recognize only those unions licensed in states with robust religious-conscience exceptions, which provide that religious organizations need not recognize same-sex unions against their will. The federal government would also enact religious-conscience protections of its own. All of these changes would be enacted in the same bill.
I see. Well that sounds like a plan all right. And it would work too…right up to the point that something like this happens…
One moment everything was fine. You were in your stateroom on the cruise ship — it was to be an anniversary cruise — unpacking your things. The kids were in the adjoining stateroom playing with your wife. Suddenly, they banged on the door crying that mom was hurt.
So now you’re in the hospital — Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami — waiting for word, and it’s not coming. They tell you, Joe (we’ll call you Joe) you can’t be with her. You plead with them, to no avail. No, Joe, sorry, Joe, we can’t tell you anything.
One hour turns to two, two to four, four to six. Your wife is dying and no one she loves is there.
Finally, in the eighth hour, you reach her bedside. You are just in time to stand beside the priest as he administers last rites.
Your wife is dead. Her name was Lisa Marie Pond. She was 39.
It happened, Feb. 18-19, 2007, except that Pond’s spouse was not a man named Joe, but a woman named Janice. And there’s one other detail. Janice Langbehn who, as it happens, is an emergency room social worker from Lacey, Wash., says the first hospital employee she spoke with was an emergency room social worker. She thought, given their professional connection, they might speak a common language.
Instead, she says, he told her, "I need you to know you are in an anti-gay city and state and you won’t get to know about Lisa’s condition or see her" — then turned and walked away.
Now consider what the legal status of that couple would be in a hospital run by a "religious organization", as many increasingly are, within the scope of your…compromise. Oh…I know…just tell the ambulance driver not to take your dying spouse to the closest available emergency room if it’s owned by a church.
Right. Something like this happens and that artifice of civility you’re trying to prop up comes crashing right back down in flames again Jonathan. And what we see in the wreckage, once again, sickeningly but clearly…very clearly…is how much your new found friends hate us, how bottomless that hate is. And…oh by the way…they hate you too. You knew that, right?
I have a question Jonathan. Who do you think you are talking to? Someone who can see a human being when they look at homosexuals? Someone who wants the same decency and common civility to flourish in society, and nurture the best within its citizens? Are you smoking crack? Are you drunk? Did banging your head against that impenetrable wall that is Blankenhorn’s cheapshit bar stool prejudices for years make you simple? Read your own goddamned newsprint jackass. The open sewer that is your pal’s conscience is right here, laughing in your face:
Whatever our disagreements on the merits of gay marriage, we agree on two facts. First, most gay and lesbian Americans feel they need and deserve the perquisites and protections that accompany legal marriage. Second, many Americans of faith and many religious organizations have strong objections to same-sex unions. Neither of those realities is likely to change any time soon.
I’m sorry…you’ve been "discussing" this issue with Blankenhorn for…how long now…? And finally…Finally…you get him to agree with you that "gay and lesbian Americans feel they need and deserve the perquisites and protections that accompany legal marriage"…? Well that’s a giant step forward all right. Look at that goddamn it! Just look at it! He isn’t agreeing that we need anything whatsoever, let alone the perquisites and protections of marriage, but only, and grudgingly, that we Feel like we do. I suppose Janice Langbehn was only pretending to be in anguish while her spouse was dying. But then don’t we all. Someday Jonathan, if either you or your husband find yourselves in that same situation, you’ll pretend to feel anguish too. It takes a lot of practice to mimic how attached heterosexuals are to their spouses and their families, doesn’t it Jonathan?
You’d think a civilized, let alone civil society would recognize such a basic human need. Certainly your pal Blankenhorn believes it does. But there’s the rub. Homosexuals aren’t human. They don’t need marriage, they only feel like they do. I guess because we’re jealous of how heterosexuals have real human needs and we don’t, or something. And you think that this is an improvement over whatever it was that he was thinking about gay people before you started having your discussions with him? What could that have possibly been? That we were only making noises about marriage to hear ourselves talk? Either you’ve never really looked down into that Pit that is the human capacity to hate, or you’ve been staring into it for too long. Either way, you just don’t seem to appreciate, or care, how much damage your bigot pal and his fellows in the kook pews have done to American society, let alone to civility.
A compromise…you say? I have a compromise for you. It’s called the constitution of the United States. That first amendment thing? What it doesn’t give your pal is the right to drop his church onto my back, or yours, or anyone else’s. He can build his church. He can worship in it. He can live his life as he sees fit. And all that America ever asked of him in return, is that he give his neighbor the same right. The compromise used to be this: in the public square, we were all equal, if not in the eyes of God, then at least in the eyes of the law.
Your pal and his neighbors in the kook pews absolutely despise that idea. And they have been waging a relentless scortched earth war against that American compromise for generations. How do you agree to compromise for the sake of preserving civil society with people who think being civil to heathens amounts to condoning sin? How do you agree to compromise for the sake of preserving civil society with people who believe that the basic premise of America is itself evil? They don’t call it a nation where Christians have freedom to worship…they call it a Christian nation. What is the compromise between those two things? I’ll tell you what it isn’t: The United States of America. Liberty and justice for all? Yes. So long as "all" means just the folks in the pews of Blankenhorn’s church. Civility doesn’t mean you have to allow your neighbor to sin. Why…that’s just the opposite of civility…
Meanwhile, back in Utah…another doomed search for common ground goes on…
A legislative committee defeated the last in a group of gay-rights bills presented to Utah lawmakers this year. As was the case with the others, committee members said the bill was not necessary and voiced concern about the law opening the door to gay marriage.
The bottom line is most conservative lawmakers just don’t believe any of these bills just address civil rights. Instead, the Common Ground bills were viewed as a "threat" to traditional marriage.
The last Common Ground bill would have affected medical visitation and inheritance. Changing the law could affect people outside the gay community as well. But the focus—and concern—was predominantly centered on gay rights.
They can’t even let same sex couples visit their spouses in the hospital. Civility anyone? Common ground? Here’s your common ground…
Today, the Utah state legislature “dealt a final blow” to the last of five gay rights bills taken up under the Common Ground Initiative, when it defeated a bill that would have granted gay couples rights of inheritance and medical decision-making. Yesterday, the state House rejected bills that would have allowed gay adoption and protected gays from housing and employment discrimination.
Last night, Utah’s local ABC station received leaked portions of an interview with state senator Chris Buttars (R), which will be highlighted in an upcoming documentary on Proposition 8. Buttars is an outspoken opponent of gay rights; in the latest interview, he compares gays to alcoholics and Muslim terrorists, and warns that gay people are “probably the greatest threat to America.” Some excerpts from the interview:
– To me, homosexuality will always be a sexual perversion. And you say that around here now and everybody goes nuts! But I don’t care.
– They say, I’m born that way. There’s some truth to that, in that some people are born with an attraction to alcohol.
– They’re mean! They want to talk about being nice — they’re the meanest buggers I ever seen. It’s just like the Moslems. Moslems are good people and their religion is anti-war. But it’s been taken over by the radical side. And the gays are totally taken over by the radical side.
– I believe that you will destroy the foundation of American society, because I believe the cornerstone of it is a man and a woman, the family. … And I believe that they’re, internally, they’re probably the greatest threat to America going down I know of. Yep, the radical gay movement.
He also said that gay people have no morals…that "It’s the beginning of the end. Oh, it’s worse than that. Sure. Sodom and Gomorrah was localized. This is worldwide." Oh…and bragged that he’d killed every bill in his judiciary committee that so much as smelled of gay rights. When this blew up in the media, the Utah Senate took swift action. They removed Buttars from his chairmanship. Oh…but not because they disagreed with him mind you…
"I want the citizens of Utah to know that the Utah Senate stands behind Senator Buttars’ right to speak, we stand behind him as one of our colleagues and his right to serve this state," [Senate President Michael] Waddoups said. "He is a senator who represents the point of view of many of his constituents and many of ours. We agree with many of the things he said. …We stand four square behind his right [to say what he wants]."
Waddoups refused repeatedly to clarify which of Buttars’ opinions are shared by himself or Senate leaders.
Emphasis mine. And to further clarify…
He said the decision to remove Buttars from the committees was ultimately his own as president, a move he made so the Senate could function smoothly. The judiciary committee, in recent years, has heard most of the bills dealing with gay and lesbian rights, and removing Buttars from his position would remove the "personalities" and focus on the issues, Waddoups said.
This was a PR move. They weren’t disgusted with the man…they just wanted him to stop saying to publically what they all believe. That homosexuals are not human beings. That homosexuals are destroying the world.
Civility. Common Ground. So you got Blankenhorn to agree that homosexuals Feel as though they need the protections of marriage did you Jonathan? Wow. Peace in our time. Do let us know when you’ve got him to the point where he agrees that we Feel a human heart beating in our chests. That would be…awesome.
I sat down when I came home from work today, and started writing a post about Maureen Mullarkey, the pretentious jackass of a painter slash art critic who painted gay pride parades and was discovered to have donated a thousand dollars to help pass Proposition 8. I have it all pretty well written out in my head just now. I actually started writing it a moment ago. And then I just go tired.
I’m sick of this fight. Just sick of it. I never wanted my life to be a war zone. I never wanted to be the scapegoat for every cheap character flaw that heterosexuals are ashamed of. I never wanted my hopes and dreams of love to be other people’s stepping stones to heaven. But this is the world I was born into.
So I’m sitting here listening to Debussy’s Reverie, and the world I thought I was going to grow up in, and the life I thought I was going to have, keeps coming back into view from between the notes, keeps floating out there in the melodies…just out of reach…and I just can’t keep on writing my post. I’m sick of it all. Just sick of it. I think of this monster with a paint brush using our lives to gratify her soulless ego…selling our lives in her art gallery…cutting our ring fingers off without compunction while selling her twisted vision of our lives to the highest bidder…and I just want to walk away from this world. I really do. Except there is nowhere to go.
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