I see Faux News is reporting this morning that the total raised for the fight over Proposition 8 in California is something like 74 million dollars. Let me repeat that: 74 Million Dollars.
There’s your fall of western civilization right there. Not same sex marriage, but that it’s a knife fight, just to let loving, devoted couples tie the knot.
Who still believes in this day and age that gay people are twisted sub-human monsters? I don’t think half the people voting today to cut the ring fingers off their gay and lesbian neighbors think that. I doubt a tenth of them think that. But they are all of them, all of them, taking right now, right this moment, some kind of visceral self righteous pleasure in sucking the hopes and dreams from our lives.
I’ve only ever lived with one romantic partner in my life, but I’ve been married twice. Once in a big, celebratory ceremony on the beach in 1998, in front of almost a hundred friends and relations, in a ceremony that the Renaissance Woman and I wrote ourselves; and the second time, five years later to the day, on a different beach, in front of exactly eight guests (not counting the picnickers and rollerbladers all around us), with brief boilerplate state-issued vows, in front of a Marriage Commissioner we’d never met before.
The first ceremony, in legal terms, meant nothing. The second also meant nothing legally as soon as we got home to Seattle, but made us next of kin according to all authorities just a couple of hours’ drive to the North.
We used to joke about it, or sort of joke, whenever we drove up to Vancouver to visit friends. "We’re married now!" We’d cry, after crossing through Customs and handing over all our papers and the Mermaid Girl’s birth certificate with both our names on it. And then, on the way home, as we passed the Peace Arch: "Not married any more! Hey, girlfriend!"
It wasn’t that funny, though, to tell the truth.
One of RW’s relatives, older than us, an established doctor with a great house in the San Francisco Bay area, flew to Niagra Falls with her partner, a lawyer, to get married at around the same time we did. They were so inspired by the ceremony that they up and moved to Canada a few months later. They live in the Okanagan now, in a house surrounded by vineyards.
Four years after our Vancouver wedding, we also moved to Canada. Now we’re married all the time.
The prospect of legal marriage wasn’t the only reason or even the main reason that we emigrated, but we’ve both been surprised at the depth of the difference we feel. It’s a difference that makes it possible for me to shrug off the opinions of sweet old ladies on the street and even, to some extent, the prejudices of my child’s teacher, because– and here’s the part I didn’t think about much– here, we are not different. We’re not special, we’re not the subject of battles over court decisions and legislative changes. We don’t have to go to lawyers to make special arrangements and get special papers written up. We don’t have to qualify anything when insurance companies and mortgage brokers and doctors ask for our marital status. We’re married, period. The law is on our side.
Let me repeat that: the law is on our side.
This is a new concept for me, and not one I’d given much consideration before our move. After all, in Seattle we lived in a liberal bubble of tolerance and acceptance, taking for granted that under almost all circumstances– except legal ones– we’d be treated the same as our straight friends and neighbors. And just about always, we were.
But a bubble is just what it was. Underneath it all, recognition of our relationship was based on nothing but the good graces of our friends and relations. And while those good graces were pleasant and much appreciated, they still left us hugely vulnerable in the face of all the vicissitudes and disasters that could happen to any family. We were lucky that none of those happened to us. And we took for granted that dependence on luck and good grace, and the slight anxiety it brought with it.
Now, we don’t have that any more. It’s not just that we consider ourselves married, and our families consider us married, and our friends and neighbors and bosses and dentists consider us married: now, the Province of British Columbia and the Nation of Canada consider us married, too. And that has made all the difference.
Let me tell you about something that happened a couple of days before our wedding:
In Canada, you don’t go to City Hall to register for a marriage license, you go to a big drugstore and wait in line with the people who are getting their auto insurance renewed, all the while shopper push past you in their search for Q-tips and deodorant and hairbrushes.
And so, a few days before our legal marriage ceremony on the beach in Vancouver, the Renaissance Woman and I found ourselves at a booth in London Drugs, with our passports in hand. The clerk who processed our paperwork was a bored-looking middle-aged guy whose first language wasn’t English (not unusual in a city of immigrants). We filled our the required papers and passed them back to him, along with the payment, and he took them with barely a glance at us.
This was back in 2o03, and same-sex marriage hadn’t been legal for very long in British Columbia, and we were anxious and wanted to make sure the papers were done right, so they wouldn’t be invalidated in some unforseen way. So we pressed the point.
"We’re both women," we explained carefully, ready for shock or disapproval or at least the need to fill out a whole other set of special forms. "We’re getting married to each other."
"Yeah, yeah, okay," he nodded, filing and stamping and perforating and barely stifling a yawn. "Lots of people doing this. You sign here."
His shrugging matter-of-factness, the face of the machinery of bureaucracy chugging along on our behalf, was as sweet as wedding bells, as satisfying as the New York Times wedding announcement I’d wangled, as celebratory as the flowers MG tossed enthusiastically at the ceremony that weekend. It was the story we ended up telling over and over, in wonderment, after the ceremony. And it was one big reason that we packed up and moved four years later, and that we live here now.
I might live in Canada, but I’m still an American. I want everyone in my home country to have the chance at what I have now: an ordinary, boring, un-notable married life with the person I love. I’m seeing a chance of that, or at least a step towards it, in California. And like so many people, I’m e-mailing and reading and donating and watching and worrying about the prospects of Proposition 8: if it passes, that hope is so much further away.
And if not, if same-sex marriage stays legal in California, it’s at least a bit closer.
We used to joke about it, or sort of joke, whenever we drove up to Vancouver to visit friends. "We’re married now!" It won’t be a joke for me if I ever do manage to find my other half. There will be many states in this country we simply couldn’t pass on through, let alone visit, because the instant we were to cross that border we’d be, in effect, forcibly divorced for the duration, and if something were to happen to one of us…an accident or medical emergency…it could quickly become a nightmare for both of us. Life in some other country could start looking a lot more attractive.
And, as this blogger points out, not only for the legal recognition. I suppose when the stress of always knowing in the back of your mind that you are living on the edge of a precipice goes away, life probably does become a lot sweeter.
This is what writing us out of the state constitutions, if not the federal one, is meant to do. Not protect marriage, but keep us fearful. Life can’t be sweet for us. Maybe they can’t always prevent us from finding love…but they can make fear walk in lock-step with love. The sweetness of life for a bigot, comes only from taking it away from the ones they hate. That is the beginning and the end of what this fight has always been about.
Please Donate to No On 8. And if you live in California, please be sure to vote on Tuesday. Take nothing for granted. As the saying goes, pray as though everything depends on God, but act as though everything depends on you. In an election this close, your vote Will make a difference. So please…vote…so that love can have a chance in this world.
Click on the graphic above to join bloggers all over the world in taking a stand for freedom to marry.
This is not just a fight over same-sex marriage. Same-sex marriage is but a battle ground in a much larger war against basic human freedoms. All over the world the fundamentalist haters of liberty, from al Quada to our own domestic Taliban, rise their fists against us…we who believe in liberty and justice for all. They call us heretics. They call us corrupters. They call us destroyers. We are. For as long as there exists one place on this good earth were people can stand on their own two feet unbeaten and unoppressed, and embrace their dreams unafraid, no tyranny on earth is safe. We are the sons and daughters of the revolution of freedom, and liberty, and justice. For all. Join us.
Donate Here, to No on 8. Any small amount…any at all…can make a difference in the fight for the freedom to love, and honor, and cherish…
Believe in love. Believe in your right to love, and be loved. There is no more noble cause you can fight for, no greater good you can do for this poor angry world, then to take a stand for the freedom to love. Donate now to No on 8. Make a little more room in this world for love to grow, and endure.
If you donate between now and election day online (for any amount), and send me your confirmation email, I will draw, if you wish, an editorial cartoon on the topic of your choice. Or…alternately…a Mark and Josh cartoon on the topic of your choice. Or…if my cartoons don’t do it for you…you can have a signed 11 by 17 print of the image of your choice out of any of my photo galleries.
A reader sent me this overnight and I’m posting it here in full…
Hello Bruce!
I’ve been reading your blogs and your writings on aph for nearly twenty years now. Thought I’d share something I wrote to my neighbors in Lake Manor CA (just to the west of Chatsworth). And I’ve been sharing it, and sharing it, and sharing it…
Feel free to share it as well.
Cheers,
Bill
———–
Neighbor to neighbor on Prop 8
Dear Neighbor,
Bill here, as in Bill and Robert and our three dogs. I normally don’t suggest to my neighbors how they should vote, but this time the stakes are too high. On November 4, the Yes–On–8 campaign wants you to take away a constitutional right. This is unprecedented in California, and it’s wrong. I’m writing to ask, neighbor-to-neighbor, that you vote NO on Proposition 8.
Robert and I have been together for 16 years, and we’ve lived here in Lake Manor since 2005. We’ve grown to love Lake Manor, not just for its beauty, but also for its people. We’ve shared many dinners, holidays and block barbecues together, a few Super Bowl parties, and countless evenings just chatting over a few beers. During the wildfires, our neighborhood pulled together to see that everyone and their pets came to safety. Never have Robert and I been treated as less than other couples. We love our neighborhood and our neighbors. We’ve found our home here, and we are profoundly grateful.
Proposition 8 seeks to legally make us lesser people, and relationships like ours less protected under the law. There are dozens of legal rights – and responsibilities – given to married couples and no-one else. The backers of Prop 8 say they only want to preserve marriage, but marriage is not threatened by gays and lesbians living the same quiet life as any other couple. It’s sad that Yes-On-8 ads have used fear mongering and falsehoods to deny that which everyone else enjoys. I can’t believe what they’re saying, but it’s not hard to see through their campaign:
Claim: Same-sex marriage infringes on religious liberty.
Fact: The California Supreme Court specifically stated that no church, synagogue or other religious institution can be required to perform or recognize a same-sex marriage.
Claim: Children will be forced to learn, over parents’ religious or moral objections, that same-sex marriages are equal to opposite-sex marriages.
Fact: Prop. 8 does nothing about education. California law expressly gives parents the right to review classroom material on health and family issues and remove their child from hearing what is objectionable. That won’t change.
Claim: Domestic partnerships for gays and lesbians are enough, and activist judges shouldn’t make new law.
Fact: I actually read the Court’s decision. The Court recognized this as a ‘Separate but Equal’ argument, and court after court has ruled that separate-but-equal has no place in American law.
You may have genuinely-felt religious objections to same-sex marriage. I respect that. I grew up Lutheran, and if my conservative congregation isn’t exactly gay-friendly, neither is it gay-hostile. They don’t perform same-sex weddings, but they still treat Robert and me like any other couple when we’ve gone on visits to my home town. In fact, people hear about what’s going on in California, and ask us when we’re getting married!!! Why? Because in addition to marriage being a religious rite, marriage is also a civil and legal institution apart from any particular faith. The law doesn’t care who performed your marriage, nor should it. Legally, it makes no difference if you were married by a priest, minister or rabbi, or by a judge. My congregation is happy living in a pluralistic society, because while their faith is strong, they know that everybody should be equal under the law. Everybody.
It’s wrong to make gay couples pay the price for someone else’s misplaced fear. On November 4, it’ll be only you in the voting booth. Nobody will see how you vote – that’s your business. But before you mark your ballot on Prop 8, please take a moment to ask yourself, in all honesty, what does it hurt you if gays and lesbians get married? Will it make you love your spouse any less? Does it make you love your children any less? Would it hurt your family if, after 16 years, Bill and Robert finally get to tie the knot? I think your answer will be no. Your marriage will be no weaker if Prop 8 doesn’t pass. Your family will be no less under the law or under God.
This will be a close vote, so what you decide matters. Vote NO on Prop 8.
Thank you for reading this, and thank you for helping make our life in Lake Manor a happy one.
Your neighbor,
Bill
P.S. Feel free to share this letter if you like. Get the facts at www.NoOnProp8.com and contribute if you can. If you want to talk about this issue, drop by the house or send e-mail.
P.P.S. You may have heard from Yes-On-8 about those school kids who threw rose petals at that gay wedding in San Francisco. What they didn’t tell you is that the idea was from a parent, not the school, and every one of those kids had their parents’ permission to go. Some parents declined, so their kids didn’t go. That’s OK, but the Yes-On-8 campaign seemed to miss those details.
Thanks for sending this. And…wow…I had no idea that some of the folks who read me once upon a time on aph (that’s alt.politics.homosexuality, the Usenet newsgroup I used to post to often, long ago, before I set up my own website), were still reading me. That’s…amazing.
Please, give what you can to the fight against Proposition 8. We have closed the fundraising gap and the vote is close, very close, and that’s only made the other side raise their own stakes more furiously. They want to swamp TVs all over California with anti-gay propaganda in the closing hours of the election. We need to be able to match them ad for ad in the last days before November 4th. Please give. Anything you can spare. So that love can have a chance in this poor angry world.
Donate Here, to No on 8. Any small amount…any at all…can help make a difference in leveling the playing field.
If you donate between now and election day online (for any amount), and send me your confirmation email, I will draw, if you wish, an editorial cartoon on the topic of your choice. Or…alternately…a Mark and Josh cartoon on the topic of your choice. Or…if my cartoons don’t do it for you…you can have a signed 11 by 17 print of the image of your choice out of any of my photo galleries.
Submitted for your idle viewing pleasure… A wee taste of what your gay and lesbian neighbors have to endure every single fucking day. To my heterosexual friends and family, those of you who have married…while planning your happy day, did you remember to take into account that one or more total strangers might decide to crash it, so they could hurl insults at you, your beloved spouse to be, and everyone else in the chapel?
Of course you didn’t…
More on the guy trying to piss on the happy couple’s big day Here…
…when my editors at SN&R decided that someone with journalistic sensibilities and a sense of humor ought to look into these folks—with their extreme approach to protesting; their bold, yellow “Sodomy is Sin” banner; and their retro use of language that even many anti-gay groups have abandoned as insensitive—I volunteered. The timing was right. Real anger had been stirred up between parts of the local gay community and some members of the Slavic evangelical churches, who have protested at gay events for a few years. And since Proposition 8, which aims to end marriage equality, is on the ballot for November, the upcoming months promised plenty of discussion of gay rights as well as ample opportunity to see Luke and company in action.
So through the rest of the spring and summer and on into fall, I followed Luke and his small crew of activists to protest after protest. With my notebook and camera, I trailed after them during the first local same-sex weddings at the Sacramento County clerk/recorder’s office, at the Sacramento Pride Festival and while protesting at an area McDonald’s, which they perceived as gay-friendly. I kept an eye on the activities of Luke and his friends Viktor Choban and Yuriy Popko at American River College, where they’ve stirred up quite a fuss over the past couple of semesters. They’ve managed to aggravate an impressive list of people: the GLBTQ club, Latinos Unidos, campus progressives, Muslim students and the Improv Club.
The most important thing I’ve discovered through all this: Luke and company won’t compromise. They believe they’re on God’s side, and as far as they’re concerned, if you’re arguing with God, you deserve what’s coming to you: death, destruction and eternal torment.
Gutter crawling bigots like these are no more representative of most of America then Ed Gein, but I’ve often wondered why more good people don’t speak out about the torrent of hate coming from them. I suppose there are a lot of reasons for that, but one is almost certainly that they don’t experience this sort of relentless hatred themselves, first hand. They don’t get to see how completely disconnected the haters are from anything remotely resembling reality, and how that unreality they live in gives them a kind of schizophrenic permission to attack anyone and everyone they perceive as an enemy, without any sort of moral or ethical restraint. They embody not just virtue, but God’s own righteousness, and so they are immune from the moral considerations the rest of us must live by.
Gay Americans have been living with this adversary for decades. We’ve watched it grow in reach from the political gutter to the summit of American political power. The only thing that surprises many of us, is how surprised, how shocked, the rest of America is whenever it catches a glimpse of its essential moral degeneracy. How easily…how effortlessly…they will look you in the eye, and lie through their teeth. How they cheat, and even when flagrantly caught doing it, will deny everything. How they ignore every moral law they insist everyone else must live by when it suits them. Because fighting for God’s truth excuses them from having to live it themselves. It’s not absolute power that corrupts, it’s absolute certainty.
We gay folk need to document our experience more, so others can better understand what America faces. These people want to take everyone down into their gutter and they are determined. It isn’t just our freedoms that are at stake here. If you think these people are just a bunch of irritating, but basically weak and harmless wackos, if you don’t think they’re dangerous, you aren’t paying attention. Perhaps that’s something your gay and lesbian neighbors can help you with. Look again. That guy in the video who called us ‘sodomites’…if you don’t obey his rules, then as far as he’s concerned, you’re one too, and you deserve what’s coming to you: death, destruction and eternal torment.
Video Only — A threatening letter has sparked a new controversy here in San Diego surrounding the gay marriage debate. Donors who gave money to the No on Prop 8 campaign say they received blackmail letters demanding money, and the Yes on 8 campaign now says the letters were sent by their employees.
In Nicholas Meyer’s Sherlock Holmes novel, The West End Horror, there’s a scene between Holmes and Oscar Wilde…I’m quoting from memory here…where Wilde tells Holmes that he has a perfect way of dealing with blackmailers when they threaten him with incriminating letters. "I publish them", he says.
Donate to No On 8, Here. Maybe you’ll get one of these letters too…suitable for framing…or posting online…
Message From Starfleet Captain: The Center Of The Universe Has Been Discovered…And You’re Not It…
You know how it is that some Über heterosexuals just have this…overwhelming need…to project their cheapshit character flaws and emotional infirmities onto gays? Yeah…it’s like that…
William Shatner is aiming his phaser at his former "Star Trek" colleague George Takei, calling him "sick" and "psychotic" in a YouTube rant.
Ticked off that Takei didn’t invite him to his recent California wedding, Shatner trashed the actor who played Mr. Sulu on the 1960s sci-fi series as if he were a villainous Klingon.
"The whole thing makes me feel badly, poor man," Shatner said in the video. "There is such a sickness there. It’s so patently obvious that there is a psychosis there. I don’t know what his original thing about me was."
…
"He has continued to speak badly about me for all these years," Shatner continued. "Obviously, hiding his homosexuality – talk about festering and not living the truth of your life and feeling badly about yourself – and being fearful somebody would find out about this terrible, terrible secret, so he thought."
Geeze Bill…Ego much? I like the response of Takei’s spouse, Brad Altman…
Altman later told the News that the pair "definitely" sent an invitation to Shatner through his manager, Larry Thompson.
"Maybe he thought it was junk mail," Altman said.
KaPow!
And in other news…at least one happy gay man out there managed to land an Altman. Not that I happen to know anyone by that name myself…precisely…
The database of contributors to the campaigns, for and against, California proposition 8 must be lagging a tad behind because my first contribution of $500 still isn’t in there. But just for kicks and grins I took a stroll though the listings of contributors from Maryland, and was gratified at the overwhelming support No On 8 was getting from my neighbors. Out of something like a hundred and thirty names, only about five or six were from folks who gave money to support cutting the ring fingers off same sex couples. None of them were names I recognized.
I dontated another $500 dollars to the No campaign today. That makes my stake in the fight an even thousand now. But everyone who donates money between now and midnight Sunday (tomorrow as I write this) gets their contribution matched…
Dear Bruce,
Thanks to the outpouring of support in response to the $1 million match grant announced on Thursday, we are nearly halfway there.
The Yes campaign is now dragging out the usual Homosexuals Want To Prey On Your Children scare rhetoric…some of which is being targeted at California’s ethnic communities. Box Turtle Bulletin has a post up on a Yes ad aimed at Chinese readers, that directly links same sex marriage and pedophilia. Also incest and polygamy. The hate mongering from the Yes crowd has turned what was a likely victory for same-sex marriage, into a dead heat, largely because the No side is being outspent and out organized…largely with the behind the scenes support of the Mormon church. The Latter Day Saints as they like to call themselves, account for 40 percent of the Yes money bucket.
They’ve been swamping California TV with ads that portray gay people, both directly and indirectly, as child molesters, and claim that same-sex marriage will give homosexuals the legal means to go into schools and conduct recruiting activity even in kindergarten. They’re also claiming that churches will be forced to marry same sex couples under threat of prison if they don’t comply. It’s like Watching Anita Bryant’s campaign all over again. All that’s missing is Jerry Falwell standing up in front of a room full of reporters saying that a homosexual will kill you as soon as look at you.
That’s why the polls have tightened. We could loose marriage in California…possibly for generations, if people don’t step up to the plate and give. Now.
I’m single. It’s looking now as though I’ll always be single. So why should I care. Because I still believe in love. Love hasn’t looked at me twice but I still believe in it. And I can see with my own two eyes all the happy, contented, loving couples out there and they deserve a chance to make a home together, grow old together, have a life together. So I’m in for a thousand. Before its over I’ll probably give more. If we loose California the bitterness will just go on and on and on and maybe I’ll never live to see the end of it. But at least I’ll know I was one of those who did something, took a stand for freedom and justice and love even when it seemed hate would win anyway. What is freedom worth to you? What is equality worth?
What is your safety worth to you? Do you consider yourself a danger to children? The Mormon church says you are. They are telling every one of your neighbors that you want to enter their kid’s schools and teach them to be homosexuals. Probably so you can have sex with them.
Do you want to put the neighborhood pastor in jail? The religious right says you do. They are telling everyone, every single person you will ever walk past on the street after this election is over, that you want to put their pastors in prison if they don’t marry same-sex couples.
Do you want to put your neighbors in jail along with them. The right wingers backing proposition 8 say you do. They are telling your neighbors that you will have them arrested if you aren’t allowed into their kid’s schools to teach them how to have sex with you.
Maybe you don’t care all that much about same sex marriage. But the hate mongering going on to get proposition 8 passed, if allowed to go unchallenged, could get you killed. Or someone you love. Maybe that someone in your arms.
We are not supposed to exist. But we do. We are not supposed to love. But we do. We are not supposed to have a share of the American dream of liberty and justice for all. But it is the human dream, and we are as human as they. We exist. We love. We dream. Now we take our stand, for love, for life, and in the doing so, tell the world that we believe in the righteousness of our love, and our dream of freedom. Because it is righteous. Because our dream does not need us to hate our neighbor to make it real.
Donate Here, to No on 8. If you do it before midnight tomorrow whatever amount you donate will be matched. Any small amount…any at all…can help make a difference in leveling the playing field.
If you donate between now and election day online (for any amount), and send me your confirmation email, I will draw, if you wish, an editorial cartoon on the topic of your choice. Or…alternately…a Mark and Josh cartoon on the topic of your choice. Or…if my cartoons don’t do it for you…you can have a signed 11 by 17 print of the image of your choice out of any of my photo galleries.
Rod Dreher, who thinks that same-sex marriage will destroy not only marriage itself, but civilization, posts today in an article titled, Newsom & Truth About Gay Marriage that…
Chai Feldblum, a Georgetown law professor, lesbian and pro-gay marriage activist, writes in the new book "Same Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts", that there is an irreconcilable conflict between civil marriage rights for gays and religious liberty for traditionalists. "[G]ay rights leaders are trying to deal with the conflict by simply wishing it away. That is neither possible nor intellectually honest."
And what is the nature of this conflict? Well…one commenter on Dreher’s blog sums it up thusly…
We have been over this ground hundreds of times, as Rod has pointed out. Why should the government care if Kate and Angela want to throw a party to celebrate their alternative lifestyle, which has nothing whatsoever to do with marriage?
But forcing my children to witness the lie that the relationship of two lesbians or two gay men (or three or four or twelve people of assorted genders) is *exactly the same* as the relationship of two people of opposite genders who not only can produce their own biological children but are expected to be completely responsible for them for eighteen years or so is an affront to my civil liberties, not just my religious ones.
Heaven forfend that he should be Forced to witness anything that contradicts his religion. I suppose he’s all for outlawing Jewish holidays too. But let it be said…he has given it a lot of thought…
The only way gay marriage and heterosexual marriage can be truly equal is if we require the sterilization of all heterosexual couples before they can marry. Otherwise, we’re creating a fiction that these two totally and radically different types of relationships, one of which has an overwhelming tendency to produce new citizens and the other of which has an overwhelming tendency not to–and *can never* do so in the same way, e.g., where each partner is equally the biological parent of each child–are exactly the same.
And if that’s not enough…
Since "marriage" as a civic concept has already been made completely meaningless by the advent of gay "marriage," and will only become more so as time goes on, I have a modest proposal: abolish it. End it altogether. Make "marriage" as important a secular concept as baptism and confirmation are–that is, not at all.
…
So, legally speaking, we’ll all be glorified cohabitators
Which is where I foolishly decide to jump into the discussion. Here’s my comment, being held for moderation last I looked…
Since "marriage" as a civic concept has already been made completely meaningless by the advent of gay "marriage," and will only become more so as time goes on, I have a modest proposal: abolish it. End it altogether.
That’s probably coming, but it won’t be same-sex marriage that makes it happen. When marriage in the United States becomes the moral equivalent of a whites only or gentiles only country club, heterosexual couples, good decent heterosexual couples, the very sort you really want to keep bought into it, are going to start abandoning it.
Not many certainly…not at first. But it’s already starting to happen. Opposite-sex couples are resorting to other forms of "civil union" or contracts or what-have-you more and more these days. Some think marriage is "old fashioned." Some dispute its relevance to couples in this day and age. Do you really think putting that Heterosexuals Only notice on the marriage license is going to change people’s minds about that? No…I don’t think you do.
How many couples with gay family and neighbors and friends are going to sign that document? Probably many, even so. But fewer and fewer, as people, good people, decent people, at long last get sick to death of watching loving, devoted same sex couples fighting constantly for rights they themselves can take for granted. You may not appreciate how the feeling of being privileged can make some people feel ashamed. Try.
So in addition to heterosexuals getting drive-in married and drive-in divorced, Plus all the heterosexual couples who just live together because they couldn’t care less about marriage to begin with, now you’ve got committed couples opting out of marriage because they don’t want their union, their mutual love, their devotion to each other and their kids, tainted by prejudice. And so that special place of honor marriage has in society, that I keep hearing folks babbling about in the same breath as "love the sinner…" just sails off, off into the sunset along with things like antisemitic homeowner covenants. Good job folks. Mission Accomplished.
It’s been well said that homosexuals can’t possibly do nearly the damage to the institution of marriage that heterosexuals already have. Orson Scott Card, who thinks homosexuality is a threat to the survival of the human race, said so in a recent column of his. Call it a testament to its power, and its essential truth, that marriage in the U.S. hasn’t been utterly finished off by now. A lot of big guns have been aimed at it over the course of my lifetime alone, and yet it still stands. But the righteous aren’t through with it either.
If the religious right finally convinces the rest of America that they can and will block same-sex couples from achieving marriage equality for generations, if ever, what will almost certainly happen is a faster movement away from marriage and toward other forms of coupling. Co-habitation is already a fact of life for a lot of young opposite-sex couples. Turning marriage into an instrument of discrimination is hardly going to change that. It’s just going to make decent people feel uncomfortable with the whole thing. Call it a win for the sexual radicals, with an assist by the sexual theocrats.
October 11, 2008: The catering is all in line, and the outfits perfectly pressed. The months of planning have trickled down to hours. Andrew and I are holding our Manhattan engagement party, step one in our bicoastal wedding celebration.
October 11, 1995: I watch every word that comes out of my mouth for fear that my less-than-masculine speech patterns will lay bear the truth that is and has always been within my head. It’s unfair to date members of the opposite-sex, both for me and my partners in faux courtship. But what choice do I have? There are no gay people in my high school. Heck, are there gay people in my town? In all of Tennessee? The entire Southeastern region?
October 11, 2008: Andrew, the planner of our duo, has the day mapped out. Shave, manicure, and haircut are all booked into specific slots. I, on the other hand, am taking a fairly laxidasical approach to getting my stuff done. But while our approaches are different, our excitement is the same. We are both excited and shocked that this long overdue journey is finally in motion.
October 11, 1995: I’ll probably marry someday. I don’t feel like I have a choice. You get through school then ya get hitched. And hey, at least when I marry, I will finally prove to everyone that I am straight. I’m sure that in time, I too will believe it. Right?
October 11, 2008: The Connecticut ruling makes three states where we gays can legally marry.
October 11, 1995: It’s not like I can legally marry a dude even if I wanted to.
October 11, 2008: It’s not even noon, and there have already been two phone calls from my mom-in-law-to-be. She just might be the most psyched of all of us! And why shouldn’t she be? Her baby is finally getting married!!
October 11, 1995: Did anyone see me looking at that issue of "Entertainment Weekly"? The one with the cover story on "The Gay 90’s"? And if so, did they suspect anything? ::sigh:: I better go watch the game and talk about "hot" girls.
October 11, 2008: 115 guests will be on hand to send well wishes to the two fiancés. Acceptance or "tolerance" is not even up for debate. We are loved. We are accepted. Non-"controversially."
October 11, 1995: Will I ever feel love? Real love? A genuine, rock you to the core love?
October 11, 2008: Today is National Coming Out Day. And while the booking was purely coincidental, the resonance of the date is not lost on me.
October 11, 1995: I just learned that today is apparently something called "National Coming Out Day." I gotta remember to put my guard up extra high, since people will probably be talking about it. Questions are dangerous. And the "right" answers are hard to find since they really don’t jibe with what I know to be true.
October 11, 2008: I’m happy. Really frickin’ happy. I want to wish a joyous National Coming Out Day to everyone:
October 11, 1995: I’m scared. Really frickin’ scared. Please tell me it gets better than this. Please tell me there is peace to be had. Please tell me I will come out of this darkness.
Some photos Here. I’m so happy for both of them. I wish them all the best. This poor angry world needs so much more of this. So very much more.
If you donate between now and election day online (for any amount), and send me your confirmation email, I will draw, if you wish, an editorial cartoon on the topic of your choice. Or…alternately…a Mark and Josh cartoon on the topic of your choice. Or…if my cartoons don’t do it for you…you can have a signed 11 by 19 print of the image of your choice out of any of my photo galleries.
By All Means, Let Me Know How You Feel. I WANT To Know. Really.
There are many reason why I do not regard myself as a Christian anymore. Probably chief among them is I am no longer convinced that God even exists. But even so, fundamentalism notwithstanding, I think you can still regard yourself as a Christian nonetheless. If you think God worship is all there is to Jesus’ message, then you weren’t listening.
Forgiveness. Here is why I just can’t call myself Christian anymore:
Over at Box Turtle Bulletin, Jim Burroway posts that he received a phone call from a reporter saying that many proposition 102 (the Arizona anti same-sex marriage amendment) yard signs are being damaged.
I got a phone call last night from a reporter from Phoenix’s ABC15, telling me that a spokesperson for the ’Yes” side for Prop 102 says that more than a hundred of their campaign signs were vandalized. Obviously, everyone here at No on Prop 102 condemns such vandalism. While we are happy to engage in a vigorous debate on the issues, vandalism has no place in rational debate.
Oh…good grief. Look…if some people are willing to spread the open sewer that is their conscience out on their lawns for everyone in the world to see, then by all means leave the fucking things alone. Seriously. Leave them alone.
Photograph them. Document it. We are living through a moment in history, however these votes turn out. Document it. Document it. Document it. And later, if the thing passes, should these fine God fearing folks feel the need to pretend that they never supported it (and they will, many of them, never doubt it), remember how you felt seeing those signs waved in your face, remember how it felt to have your ring finger cut off while they praised God, and wave their signs right back in their faces. Yes…yes you did…
If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches,
that is not progress. Even if you pull it all the way out, that is not progress.
Progress is healing the wound… -Malcolm X
It’s good to know the names on that knife in your heart.
Jesus would say that I have to forgive. I can appreciate how anger can turn into hate. I can appreciate how it can corrode your soul, turn it to rust. There is a reason why we have to forgive. Jesus was right. But there are some things I simply cannot forgive. Just…can’t. Ironically my Baptist grandmother was exactly like me in this regard. Neither one of us could let go of a grudge. It’s a dangerous combination I’ve lived with all my life: dad’s loaded gun temper, grandma’s ability to hold onto a grudge forever. If I didn’t have some small smidgen of mom’s endless capacity for love and sympathy I’d be some kind of absolutely legendary asshole. I have grudges from back in elementary school I still take out and polish every now and then.
Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better. -Edgar Watson Howe
Forgiveness. Hopefully after November gay couples in California will still have their ring fingers, and those in Arizona and Florida will still have hope. But if not, don’t ask me to forgive. Ever. I’ll laugh in your face.
Well after all, California isn’t the only state fighting an anti-gay same sex marriage amendment. Florida and Arizona are also fighting. So in the spirit of we’re all in this together, if you donate to the fight in any one of those states too (any amount), and email me the acknowledgment of your contribution (sans any personal info like SSN or credit card numbers…of course) I will honor the offer I made below to No On 8 in California.
…or photograph. To repeat from the previous post…here’s the deal:
Donate Here to the fight against Proposition 8…the California referendum that would take away the right of same sex couples to marry. You must be a U.S. citizen to contribute. If you donate between now and election day to No On 8 online (for any amount), send me your confirmation email, and I will draw an editorial cartoon on the topic of your choice. Or…alternately…a Mark and Josh cartoon on the topic of your choice.
Or…if my cartoons don’t do it for you…I’ll gladly mail you a signed 11 by 19 print of the image of your choice out of any of my photo galleries.
In a world that can’t seem to hate enough, please do what you can to help same sex couples keep their marriages secure. This poor angry world needs a lot more of this…
Here’s a handy database form you can query to see who is donating to the fight over California proposition 8 (for and against). It’s probably incomplete though, as it says it was updated on the 7th and my donation of $500 dollars (to the folks fighting against of course) doesn’t show up…
You can donate Here to the fight against Prop 8. You must be a U.S. citizen to contribute. Between now and election day, anyone who donates to No On 8 online (any amount) and sends me their confirmation email, can commission from me an editorial cartoon on the topic of their choice. Or…alternately…a Mark and Josh cartoon on the topic of your choice.
Or…if my cartoons don’t do it for you…I’ll gladly mail you a signed 11 by 19 print of the image of your choice out of any of my photo galleries.
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