From Our Department Of Credit Where Credit Is Due…
The Log Cabin Republicans have launched a website highlighting prominent republicans who are against California’s Proposition 8 (the ballot initiative that will amend the California constitution to ban same-sex marriage)…
A new Log Cabin Republicans website aims to highlight Republicans who are against Proposition 8 – California’s constitutional amendment which would once again ban gay marriage in the State.
The recently launced website features quotes, bios and interviews of prominent Republicans who oppose Proposition 8 including: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mary Cheney, San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, Redondo Beach Mayor Mike Gin, comedian Dennis Miller and Desperate Housewives Producer Marc Cherry. Councilpeople from various cities are also included.
It’s Not The Hill That You Need To Worry About Dying On…
It must be an election year…the Log Cabin Republicans are cheerfully telling everyone they can what a bunch of happy quislings they are. An AP news story on the upcoming republican party platform (which I’m not going to link to), says the platform will contain the usual call for a constitutional ban on same sex marriage. Log Cabin spokesdroid Scott Tucker says he’s fine with that…
"This isn’t a hill we’re going to die on," said Scott Tucker, a spokesman for the gay rights group Log Cabin Republicans.
Log Cabin is a gay rights group like a white sheet flapping in the wind is an American flag. But let it be said they’re working on building common ground between gay and straight within the republican party…
"Unlike previous years," said Gary Bauer, a social-conservative veteran of platform struggles, "I just don’t see deep divisions within the party."
See how easy it is for people of differing views on gay rights to get along in the republican party? Really…all it takes is a little abject submission.
I realize that you can’t pigeon hole gay people on the issues. Gay folk range the entire political spectrum from left to right. I grok this. But if a conservative gay group will not take a simple basic principled stand for marriage then what the fuck good is it? Oh yes…I hear them yap, yap, yapping all the time that their sexuality isn’t all there is to their lives and they have other issues too. Fine. Marriage, as it happens, is about more then sexuality too.
I don’t ever want to see these pathetic quislings tut, tutting the sexual excesses of "gay culture" again, if they’re not willing to raise so much as a squeak in protest over a plank that calls for a constitutional ban on same sex marriage. Better to die on the hill, then in the gutter.
Police say for the past three years, the wife and children of Raymond Daniel Thurmond lived in fear and squalor; held captive in a singlewide trailer where they were literally not allowed to see the light of day.
According to the news article, nobody in the neighborhood even knew there was a family in that trailer. Trailers in that park sit within feet of one another…
Only one of the children, who are ages 14, 13, 12, and 9, had been to school.
“The 14-year old had been allowed to go school until second grade,” Chief Carlisle said.
…
The only food found in the house was rotted, leftover fast food, said Roger Dutton, who has been responsible for cleaning out the structure, and investigators said all four children were undernourished and underweight. “Their weight is not consistent with their height and age. They were deprived of food and had also gone without medical attention for a long period of time. In fact, one of the children has a serious medical condition that has gone untreated,” Carlisle said.
Photos taken at the scene by investigators and shown to this reporter revealed the family was living in unimaginable filth.
The photos showed thousands of roaches and roach dirt covered every part of every room. They crawled in and out of drawers, cupboards, and furniture.
Old pizza boxes were stacked in one corner of the living room with dozens of empty plastic soda bottles strewn about on the floor.
In the kitchen, counters were covered in stacks of dirty dishes and old empty cans of food. Bags of garbage were strewn about the house, mixed in with dirty clothes and other trash.
Workers have hauled away two Dumpsters full of trash so far, and the work still is not done, Dutton said.
The prisoners family were discovered when Thurmond decided to take himself a mistress on the side and his wife bolted…
All are now in protective custody at an undisclosed location. The children are being evaluated and their medical needs treated.
Thurmond was arrested when he showed up at the Fieldale chicken processing plant where he worked.
But at least those kids weren’t growing up in a same sex household, so they still had a good roll model of what family life is supposed to be like.
The Times editorial board formulates its positions on ballot measures not only by research, but by inviting representatives of both sides to (separate) meetings with the board. It’s a good forum for probing an issue, and the results sometimes are surprising.
Here is where we win. When the only people who were engaging the gay haters directly were us, they were able to hide the depth of their hate from the rest of straight America. They could claim they were only motivated by a desire to protect children. They could claim that they were only out to protect the institute of marriage in a time of every increasing divorce rates. They could claim they were only motivated by their sincerely held religious beliefs, and not merely animus. That love the sinner hate the sin was always just a thin coat of paint over God Hates Fags was something the rest of America never really got much of a chance to see, as long as most heterosexuals kept their distance from the fight. Now, as more sons and daughters, more friends and co-workers come out to them, they are taking a closer look…
So it went with the supporters of Proposition 8, which would amend the state constitution so that gay and lesbian couples no longer could marry. The board already has published its stand on the measure, but the editorial left out some interesting turns in the conversation.
The measure’s supporters are generally careful to avoid appearing anti-gay, probably because they realize that, for all the voter split on same-sex marriage, Californians generally support gay rights. They professed in our meeting to have no ill will toward gay people…until the talk went deeper.
And I expect it didn’t have to go very much deeper…
At one point, the conversation turned to the "activist judges" whose May ruling opened the door to same-sex marriage, and how similar this case was to the 1948 case that declared bans on interracial marriage unconstitutional. According to one of the Prop. 8 reps, that 1948 ruling was OK because people are born to their race and thus are in need of constitutional protection, while gays and lesbians choose their homosexuality. So much for the expert opinions of the American Psychological Assn. and the American Academy of Pediatrics that people cannot choose their sexuality. Oh, those activist doctor types.
In any case, one Prop. 8 supporter said, gay rights are not as important as children’s rights, and it’s obvious that same-sex couples who married would "recruit" their children toward homosexuality because otherwise, unable to procreate themselves, they would have no way to replenish their numbers. Even editorial writers can be left momentarily speechless, and this was one of those moments.
Emphasis mine. As Molly Ivins would have called it, a "whoa moment". It isn’t so much the myth that children can catch homosexuality like a goddamned cold. It’s the image of gay people as almost a separate parasitic species that shocks the conscience. But for these people, it’s just common knowledge. Homosexuals aren’t human.
Aside from this notion of a homosexual recruitment plot — making it understandable where the word "homophobia" came from — this made no logical sense at all. Same-sex couples. whether married or not, already have children. Marriage wouldn’t change a thing about this picture except, perhaps, to model for children that parents tend to be married.
Exactly. But it’s not about insuring that children have stable family lives. It’s not about imparting the virtues of marriage to them. It’s about cutting gay people out of the human family tree. That’s it. There is nothing more noble about their cause then that. If you don’t believe that, spend some time talking to them. Enough time for them to get all their spiels about loving the sinner out of the way, so they can get down to brass tacks.
We Didn’t Say “Heterosexual Couples Only” Because That Would Be Obvious
Via Good As You… It’s not that Hollywood can’t come up with any new ideas, it’s that it would rather not pay for the creative talent to come up with them. Thus, the "reality" shows. But on MTV’s pioneering Real World the point really was to have a dispassionate camera eye view on how people interact with each other. Most "reality" made since Real World are really just another kind of game show. And in fact, Real World has itself added some game show elements in recent years.
But with TV audiences getting bored with all the "reality" out there, the Networks are trying to revive some actual game shows. From Good As You I read that they’re now making The Newlywed Game once more. Can you spot the "Heterosexuals Only" sign buried in the game show eligibility rules…?
Eligibility Requirements
The following are the eligibility requirements for contestants ("Contestants") on the television show currently entitled "The Newlywed Game" (the "Program"), which is being produced by Manhouse Productions, Inc. (“Producer”). In order to be selected as a Contestant on the Program, and to be eligible for any prize ("Prize"), you must meet the following eligibility requirements:
A. Employees, officers, directors and agents of Manhouse Productions, Inc., Diplomatic, Embassy Row LLC, Sony Pictures Television Inc., Game Show Network, LLC (“GSN”), Liberty Media Corp. and/or of any of their respective licensees, assigns, parents, affiliated and subsidiary companies and the immediate family (spouse, mother, father, sister, brother, daughter or son, regardless of where they live) or members of the same households (whether related or not) of such employees, officers, directors and agents are not eligible to be Contestants on the Program. In addition, any person closely acquainted with any person connected with the production or administration of the Program is not eligible, if in the Producer’s sole discretion, the person’s participation could create the appearance of impropriety.
B. Contestants must be at least 18 years of age at the time of application.
C. Contestants must be legal residents of the fifty (50) United States or the District of Columbia.
D. Each newlywed team of Contestants must be legally married to each other (legal marriage defined as one that is legally valid in all 50 states of the United States) and, upon Producer’s request, must be able to provide proof of marriage (i.e. a marriage certificate) that shows that Contestants are legally married to each other. As of the tape date of the Program, Contestants must still be newlyweds (which is defined as the period of two (2) years after the date of Contestants’ original marriage to each other).
E. Contestants may not be candidates for public office and may not become candidates before the broadcast of their appearance on the Program, or until one year from the date of their taping of the Program.
F. Producer reserves the right to change any of the eligibility requirements at any time and is the sole judge of the eligibility criteria.
Here…let me help you with it: "…legal marriage defined as one that is legally valid in all 50 states of the United States…"
It’s a safe bet that clause wasn’t in the old rules. You see…same sex couples can legally marry in Massachusetts and California, and even if California’s same sex couples are divorced-by-referendum come November, there will still be at least one state in the Union where same sex couples can legally marry. So in order to keep the homos off the set you can’t just say the contestants have to be legally married anymore.
The last game show I ever really enjoyed was the old Concentration. Way back when I was a kid I’d watch that thing raptly whenever I was home that it was on (it was a daytime show). It was a memory game…you had to build a mental image of where all the little prize pairs were inside a grid and at the same time figure out a rebus as it was slowly being revealed. I think part of the appeal to my budding young geek self was also trying to figure out how the mechanical game board worked. That thing just fascinated me. It was the only game show I ever really paid attention to…although these days I’ll watch Jeopardy whenever I happen across it. I glanced at a few episodes of The Newlywed Game in the 1970s and every time I did I quickly became uncomfortable with it.
Something about the idea of watching young couples in love being made to embarrass each other on TV where the entire nation could watch just didn’t appeal to me. And for each couple that won, three others lost. Part of the intended fun for the audience was to watch the loosing couples have fights during the show. It was horrible. Even the Roman Circuses weren’t that gratuitously cruel. I’ve often wondered how many divorces resulted from that show.
So, in a sense, I’m not altogether unhappy that same sex couples are banned from this atrocity. A couple’s love should be nurtured, not humiliated for laughs and ratings. And same sex couples have it hard enough in this country. But on the other hand, here’s how prejudice will keep its claws in our lives to the absolute very end. Year upon year, decade upon decade, inch by inch by painful bitter inch, we have worked to get it’s taint out of our lives. And for every inch it looses, hate adopts, adapts and improves, and keeps working with what it has to work with. Okay…so now you can be legally married….Ha!…but Not In All Fifty States…! Got you There didn’t we!
If same sex marriage was legal all across the Union they’d find some other way to cull out the homos. Perhaps recasting the show as a contest between genders…er…Birth Genders…who incidentally and merely to heighten the excitement of the game play, have to be newly married also. As I said, I’m not all that unhappy that same sex couples are being kept off this atrocity of a game show. But I emphatically object to the name. It is not The Newlywed Game. There are gay newlyweds, and have been even before same sex marriage was legal. Same sex couples have been getting married for ages, whether or not their government or their communities recognized them. Our relationships exist. Our households exist. Our unions exist. We exist. It is not The Newlywed Game if only heterosexual couples are allowed to be contestants. It is The Heterosexual Newlywed Game.
At the same time I’m reading this…I also came across this little news item from The Netherlands, which has had same sex marriage now for years…
The Dutch civil service has developed a new name for "maiden name" so married gay men won’t feel awkward.
"Geboortenaam" translates to "birth name". It will replace maiden name on official forms, radio Netherlands reported on Wednesday.
The Dutch Language Union hopes it will save married gay men from any embarrassment when taking their spouses surname.
Despite its liberal reputation, Amsterdam and the rest of the Netherlands have been facing a rise in homophobic attacks over the last few years.
The government has committed to millions of Euros to fighting homophobia in the country.
A recent European poll found the Dutch to be the strongest supporters of same-sex marriage in the EU, with 82% in favour
I’m a tad surprised they didn’t already have a term for "birth name" in Dutch. But never mind. Over there they are trying, really trying, to be inclusive of same sex couples. And this was such an easy one. Just say "birth name" on the form instead of "maiden name". That works too, and doesn’t deny anyone, gay or straight, the dignity of taking their spouse’s name if that’s what they want. Meanwhile, over here in the land of the free and the home of the brave it’s "…legal marriage defined as one that is legally valid in all 50 states of the United States…"
Your Stereotypes About California Are Probably Wrong
I’m a native Californian, raised alas in Maryland. But I was born there, and half my family tree is there. So I have a somewhat stereoscopic view of my birth state. I see it from both within and without. The land of fruit and nuts, as they like to joke, ironically, out in America’s heartland. Ironic, because if you put the heartland nuts together in the same room with the California nuts the only way you could tell them apart is the California nuts would have a better tan.
One good thing to come from the same sex marriage decision out in California is that the rest of the country can see how batshit crazy the California republicans have become in recent years. And in particular, the rest of the country can see how coastal California is not central California. This, from Box Turtle Bulletin…
We told you in June about the lunatic idea that Randy Thomasson and the Campaign for Children and Families came up with to try and have Kern County Supervisors put an ordinance in place restricting marriage to the opposite sex.
Not surprisingly, the County’s counsel informed them that this was unquestionably unconstitutional. And the County Supervisors decided that inviting lawsuits that they were guaranteed to lose was not a wise decision.
In a WorldNetDaily article before today’s decision, Thomasson had these words to say:
“This will be as inspirational as the Alamo, without the guns, knives, blood or death,” he said.
…because everybody knows hate mongering gay people doesn’t result in their blood or death.
Dig it. The county clerk’s office ended all civil marriages in Bakersfield, after consulting with attorneys from Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice, rather then marry any same sex couples. Then the kook pews there decided it would be really swell if Bakersfield in effect, just declared itself a separate state. It’s not the Alamo they see themselves as, so much as the Confederate States Of America. Probably, much of coastal California would love to see it leave.
There are conservative, mostly rich suburban enclaves in coastal California. But their contempt at having to share paradise with the hired help is nothing compared to the bitter fanaticism of the central agrarian part of the state where the concept of what America ought to look like differs very little from that of your average heartlander. The San Joaquin Valley is more like Kansas then it is the Pacific Coast, and Bakersfield more like Lubbock Texas then San Jose. The America of their dreams is straight, white, protestant, and run by the good old boys. The rest of us exist just to pick their cotton.
It’s a shock to some folks back here in the east to see that part of California rear its ugly head. But it’s as much a part of the state as the Golden Gate. My home state, Maryland, is fairly democratic and tolerant. During prohibition, we were dubbed the "free state" because we wouldn’t pass a state enforcement law. H.L. Mencken wrote here for the Baltimore Sun. But we also gave the Union Justice Taney and Spiro Agnew. California was the first state to legalize inter-racial marriages and now to legalize same sex marriages. It has in San Francisco one of the most vibrant and politically active gay communities in the world. In Silicon Valley, it holds the creative cutting edge of information technology. There is Hollywood and Disneyland. There is Rockwell International, Lockheed, and Northrop. The human potential never had it better then in California. It is a place of magic. But you need to remember it also gave the Union Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
Well Lookie Here…A Visit From Jackson Memorial Hospital…
First…a little GLBT history…
A gay man dies alone in an unfamiliar hospital while his longtime partner tries fruitlessly to get permission to be by his side. It’s a too-common scenario that documents such as living wills, powers of attorney, and domestic-partnership registration are supposed to prevent. But in the death of Robert Lee "Bobby" Daniel, 34, at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in October 2000, none of that mattered, according to a lawsuit filed by Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund on February 27. San Franciscan Bill Robert Flanigan Jr., 34, had power of attorney for Daniel, his registered domestic partner, but was barred from his room and from consulting with physicians because Flanigan was not considered "family" by the hospital, charges the suit, which seeks unspecified damages.
The couple had been driving to meet family in northern Virginia when Daniel became ill. He died without being able to say goodbye to his partner. "I have a huge hole in my heart, and my soul, because I wasn’t allowed to be with Bobby when he needed me most," Flanigan said in a statement.
Hospital officials denied any wrongdoing. "We deliver compassionate care to every patient, with sensitivity to the wishes of our patients and their loved ones," spokesperson Ellen Beth Levitt, told The Baltimore Sun.
Flanigan and Daniel, both residents of San Francisco, signed a legal document giving Flanigan the power to make medical decisions for Daniel in expectation that doctors might not recognize Flanigan. Daniel confided to Flanigan that he did not want to go on life support at the end of his life.
Daniel was transferred to the Shock Trauma Center from the Harford Hospital in Havre de Grace, Md. That night, Flanigan sat in the waiting room for four hours while they worked on Daniel but was never consulted about medical decisions, according to the claim. When Daniel’s sister and mother arrived at the hospital, Flanigan was allowed to see Daniel for the first time.
When Flanigan and the family saw Daniel, he was unconscious with his eyes taped shut, and a breathing tube had been inserted, contrary to Flanigan’s requests, according to the claim.
I did this cartoon about the tragedy back in 2002…
I’d only just started adding the political cartoons to my web site back then, and my drawing skills were stunted from years of neglect, but unlike a lot of the other cartoons I did at that time, this one still holds up I think. Reading the story of Flanigan and Daniel had made me livid, and probably that anger lifted my limited drawing skills up a notch or two. I also blogged about it over and over. Flanigan later found the cartoon while searching the web and I’m happy to say sent me a very heartfelt email thanking me for it.
Later, when an all heterosexual jury excused Maryland Shock Trauma for what they did to Flanigan, I did a follow-up cartoon that was pretty lame and I’ve since removed it from the cartoon site. I guess by that time my anger had turned into a weary contempt. Maryland Shock Trauma had finally found a way to give straight juries an excuse to let hospitals stick a knife in the hearts of same sex couples without having to acknowledge their own bigotries. Oh…we were just too busy to let the Not Family Person into the room with that other homosexual…
All of this is to say that if you google the case of Flanigan and Daniel you will likely run across one or more of the pages here on my web site, either in the cartoon pages or the blog pages. Hold that thought for a moment. Because the case of Flanigan and Daniel is not, alas, unique. It’s still happening to same sex couples, who thought, like Flanigan and Daniel did, that their power of attorney documents might actually mean something to gay hating hospital staff…
The family vacation cruise that Janice Langbehn, her partner Lisa Marie Pond and three of their four children set out to take in February 2007 was designed to be a celebration of the lesbian couple’s 18 years together.
But when Pond suffered a massive stroke onboard before the ship left port and was rushed to Jackson Memorial Hospital, administrators refused to let Langbehn into the Pond’s hospital room. A social worker told them they were in an "anti-gay city and state."
Langbehn filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday charging the Miami hospital with negligence and "anti-gay animus" in refusing to recognize her and the children as Pond’s family, even after a power of attorney was faxed to the hospital within an hour of their arrival.
…
Pond, 39, was pronounced dead of a brain aneurysm about 18 hours after being admitted to Jackson’s Ryder Trauma Center. Langbehn said she was allowed in to see her partner only for about five minutes, as a priest gave Pond the last rites.
"I never thought almost 20 years of love and family could be disregarded in an instant," said Langbehn, a social worker who lives with her children in Lacey, Wash.
…
Jackson officials declined to comment, except to say that the hospital follows state and federal laws on patient privacy that can forbid releasing health information to those outside the patient’s immediate family.
The hospital also may limit visitors if a patient is being treated for a trauma, emergency or serious infection, said Valda Clark Christian, an assistant county attorney representing Jackson.
That last statement there from the ironically named Valda Clark Christian is Jackson Memorial Hospital picking up the knife that Maryland Shock Trauma gave it, and anti-gay hospital staff everywhere. Oh…we were just too busy to let that Not Family Person into the room with that other homosexual… Power of Attorney? You homosexuals have no power here…this is an anti-gay city and state…
What Jackson Memorial Hospital is going to do now is play the Maryland Shock Trauma trump card. In the case of Flanigan and Daniel, first they said Flanigan wasn’t family. Then they told him that the power of attorney document had been misplaced. Somehow none of that mattered when Daniel’s Legitimate Family arrived at the hospital because they were let right in and that was when Flanigan was, purely as a matter of coincidence surely, also allowed to see his beloved. When Flanigan sued the hospital finally came up with the excuse that they were just too busy to let Flanigan in. Never mind that they could have still respected his medical directives anyway. They didn’t have to let him into the room to do that. Daniel had a fear of dying with tubes stuck down his throat and that was precisely what the hospital staff did to him. When Flanigan and Daniel’s family were finally allowed to see him, not only were there tubes shoved down his throat, the hospital staff had put Daniel into restraints when he tried to take them out.
That was how Daniel spent his last moments on earth, in the tender care of Maryland Shock Trauma. Because they didn’t give a good goddamn about the faggot in the waiting room and his so-called power of attorney. First they openly told Flanigan that he wasn’t being allowed in because he was "not family". Then they said the power of attorney documents had been misplaced. Then when Flanigan sued they told the jury they were too busy taking care of Daniel to deal with Flanigan too. Probably they were too busy putting the tubes down Daniel’s throat. In any case, the "too busy" excuse allowed the all heterosexual jury to acquit the hospital of any wrong doing. If gay ain’t shit you must acquit…
Jackson’s lawyers surely have their own resources to look up how the case of Flanigan and Daniel went down. But the hospital is covering all its bases apparently. Someone there is doing a little research on the web regarding that case, probably to get a sense of just how the Maryland Shock Trauma excuse card is played. According to my site meter logs, someone at Jackson paid me a little visit the other day…
Nice. Note the search string: "lambda legal flanigan daniels court findings ruling judgement" Too bad you can’t search for your missing sense of human decency on Google. What the Maryland Shock Trauma excuse does is give hospitals the absolute right to disregard anything anyone tells them about patients in their care, whether they’re the "legal" family of the patient or not, whether they are legally married or not, have a power of attorney or a medical directive document. The Maryland Shock Trauma excuse gives hospitals free reign to do to your loved ones as they damn well please, so long as they die of it quickly enough that they can claim they were performing emergency procedures. Nobody’s family rights have to be respected now in any way. But of course everyone understands that it’s only the homosexuals who have no rights a heterosexual is bound to respect.
This is why the fight for same sex marriage is so important. Not that a marriage ring will give bigots any more respect for same sex couples, but that the system will never see our relationships as being equal to those of heterosexuals unless we fight for equality, not some separate but equal civil union status. It’s not about the legal paperwork. Langbehn and Pond had the same legal paperwork that Flanigan and Daniel did, and it conferred nothing. It’s not about the paperwork. It’s about respect. Heterosexuals mate to the opposite sex. Homosexuals mate to their own sex. That’s it. There is nothing more to it then that. If that’s all it takes to make care givers treat loving and devoted couples with less compassion then they’d grant to laboratory rats then the moral problem here isn’t with us. They were a lesbian couple. If the word ‘lesbian’ negates the word ‘couple’ for you then You are the one with the moral problem not Langbehn and Pond. Langbehn, in her struggle to care for her beloved, had more integrity and virtue then any of the runts at Jackson Memorial, who spit on their family while Pond was dying. That’s what this is about. We are not fighting over a word. We are not fighting for a piece of paper. We are fighting for the human status. For the righteousness of love.
A hospital can be a place of hope against all the odds. It can be a place where the human heart takes its ultimate stand against the finality of death. We all die. That we still fight anyway, still love anyway, is either to our glory or just a pathetic conceit. A hospital can be a monument to our capacity to love one another, that even the taint of death cannot take from within us. Or it can be a place of despair, of the end of all things, even love. Yes, sometimes, in the heat of battle, hospital staff have to be left alone to do their jobs. But why even bother, if not for love?
It’s not “marriage” – some magical status granted by the government – that serves to make people “healthier, happier and wealthier.” It’s the behavior associated with the marital ideal that brings benefits to couples and their children. That behavior doesn’t require official sanction – any more than official sanction guarantees such behavior.
Medved goes on to make the standard anti-gay case that only opposite sex couples have that magic combination of male and female attributes that make a marriage both stable, and beneficial for children. But then he goes on to take that to its logical conclusion…
Consider some of the high profile heterosexual couples who have refused to get married. I don’t endorse the politics of Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon, but given their long-standing and apparently stable commitment, I don’t think their kids have suffered because they never legalized their relationship.
By the same token, I don’t believe that the children of Rosie O’Donnell and her partner will be able to make up for the lack of a father’s love through a change of bureaucratic policy in California or any other state.
Medved’s column is pretty much a simple rehashing of hoary anti-gay and more specifically, anti-male stereotypes. Gay men can’t control their sex drives because they are men. Well…yes…Lesbian couples are more stable because they’re both female, but children need both a mother and a father, so their unions are bad for children too. Never mind that there is not one iota of science behind any of this, let alone tradition. Consider for a moment, how big the straight jacket is that female sexuality is bound inside in male dominated societies. It isn’t male sexuality that’s being kept under a tight lid in a culture where boys can sew their wild oats, but girls are sluts if they do the same. Never mind all that. Just look at where this delivers Medved. He is now arguing, in all seriousness, that it is heterosexuality, not marriage, that provides for both stability and a better environment for children. Heterosexuals are actually so good at it, that marriage is completely unnecessary for them. This is seriously his argument.
We have been told, over and over again, that allowing homosexual couples to marry will make marriage itself worthless. And now along comes Michael Medved to argue that it is in fact heterosexuality, by its very nature, that renders marriage worthless. Sweet. Can we stop blaming gay people for the horrible state of marriage in this country now? Please?
Walking around in the hot sun wearing a suit and tie and carrying around heavy bags of camera equipment will make you aware of how out of shape you are.
On the other hand, if you have the camera bug you don’t notice that, until the day after, when your legs start telling you all about how much work they were doing the day before.
Taking photos of young couples in love is fun, and never fails to warm the heart. After a few hours of seeing so much happiness and joy all around you, you almost forget that they and everyone in the party would all vote to take away your own ability to marry without giving it a second thought.
No trip to visit the Southern Baptist side of your family tree is complete without a lecture on the bible and hellfire.
While driving south of the Potomac, you can add to your Jack Chick collection by checking the top of the toilet paper dispensers in the men’s room stalls everywhere you stop for a bladder break. I found two Chick tracts this trip that I didn’t have.
I am helping out with small tasks before the wedding, and I see arriving family members gathering around my Mercedes. They are peeking though the windows and pointing to this and that around the grill. The headlight washers seem to fascinate them. One person touches the little three pointed star hood ornament lightly. I’d given Traveler a good washing that morning so it would look its best for the wedding. Now I’ve been given signs to plant near the entrance to the parking lots, directing folks to the gazebo where the wedding will take place, and to the reception hall, and as I walk past on my way to the entrance they ask me about the car. Yes, it’s a new model Mercedes. Yes, it drives really nice. Yes, I’m a very happy owner. Yes, I know that kids like to steal the hood ornament. No, I didn’t know they were wearing them as necklaces nowadays. They ask me about the odd little doors just below the headlights. Oh, says I, those are where the headlight washers pop out. I explain that they work only when the headlights are on, and only with the first, and then each tenth squirt of the wiper washer button. One of them jokes that since it’s a German car, they’d thought the little doors might have been for machine guns.
I think it’s a good sign when you see the happy marrieds-to-be being playful with each other during the rehearsal, and the reception and not all dire and serious. They gather together at the wedding cake to do the cake cutting ceremony, and he looks into her eyes and says ‘I just want you to know I love you’ and she gives him a look back and says she loves him too, and they cut the cake together and then just before they each take a bite they both mash cake into each others faces laughing delightedly. And then of course they’re all affectionately wiping each other’s faces off and share another kiss.
Ever since puberty I’ve always felt somewhat detached from all the life I see going on around me, and I know that’s mostly what prejudice and hate have done to me and I hate it. But I also know it’s given my photographic eye its distinctive voice, and honed my skill as a photographer. To get the very best shots you need to concentrate on what you are seeing. You can’t be a part of the moment and do that. You have to step back from it, which is easy if you’ve never really felt like you were part of most things to begin with.
I took just under six-hundred shots on the digital camera, and roughly another sixty with the Hasselblad. After I got back home I imported the digital shots into Aperture and gave them a once-over, feeling a strange kind of perfect joy in being able to capture a few really expressive moments of love and happiness that I’ll probably never experience myself. It’s looking like I’ll be going into that long night never having a wedding of my own. But as I studied my shoot last night it didn’t feel as though I was living it vicariously through someone else’s. In the end everything a photographer does, regardless of who they do it for, is a personal statement, and I really believe in love. I think this is what most of my friends just don’t get. I really believe in it. By all rights I shouldn’t, considering that love doesn’t seem to even know I exist. And yet I do.
So the blissful pleasure I took in doing that wedding shoot was genuine. All the more so as the newlyweds seem to have between them exactly the kind of playful romance I’ve always searched for. It was a pure pleasure to capture some images of it. But also genuine was the grief I drove home with, and which I knew would be waiting for me when I got done importing and examining my shoot last night. This is the other thing my friends just don’t get: how much of my day is spent dealing with grief. Problem is, at age 54, drink and cigars aren’t making me forget it anymore. All that did for me last night was remind me how old I’m getting…how far beyond my ‘use by’ date I am…
Via Box Turtle Bulletin… They guy who cursed that guitar player who was serenading couples waiting to be married in San Francisco, is Kevin Farrer, who fancies himself a street preacher. He was just helpfully spreading the good news to all the poor sinners standing in line…waiting to exchange vows of eternal love…
According to “Storm Bear” at the Bilerico Project, a marriage supporter was playing a guitar when he “suddenly dropped like a tree” of an apparent heart attack or cardiac arrest. Police immediately swooped in and began administering CPR.
And while that was going on, one of the “loving” Christian protesters was chanting, “Satan Got You!” and “What is the Devil whispering in your ear about now?”
I yelled at the guy, “If you are such a Christian, why aren’t you praying for the guy dying on the concrete?” The protester replied, “God killed him for loving fags!!” The cops even stepped in and told the guy to shut his mouth.
Go read the whole thing. This happened in front of San Francisco’s city hall, I think as same sex couples were lined up for marriage licenses.
Love. People in love doing what people in love have done for millennia in one form or another; swearing to love honor and cherish until death do them part. A guitar player…was he married, or single and just in love with love…serenades the happy couples as they wait. I am desperately single myself, and had I a musical bone in my body, I would have done something like that for the waiting couples. Love has not been kind to me, and yet I am still in love with love. But then the guitar player falls to the ground, and an anti-gay protester with as much Christ in him as Himmler steps forward and shouts at him that the devil has him. Love.
Can we stop now with all that love the sinner hate the sin claptrap? I would like, very much right now, to be there to whisper, not shout, just whisper, something in this guy’s ear at the moment he finds himself on death’s doorstep. Not that the devil has him. Not that the next voice he hears will be the devil whispering in his ear. But softly, that Jesus is there with him now…and that guitar player he once cursed is standing right beside him.
What is truth? Can you spot the real from the nicely packaged fake? Could you walk into a shop in some quaint little village in some far-away land, and know whether the friendly man behind the counter is offering to sell you an authentic Rolex or just trying to pass off a slick looking facsimile that won’t keep time worth a damn to a naive tourist? Just how good a judge are you of Authenticity anyway?
Calling him "just plain wrong," Bishop William Murphy has blasted Gov. David A. Paterson for ordering state agencies to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions.
…
Murphy wrote, "I fail to understand how" a homosexual union "can be called marriage. … No matter how much some may wish to apply the term ‘marriage,’ it does not fit because it fails the test of truth and authenticity."
Authentic:
In response, diocesan spokesman Sean Dolan said Murphy "is not imposing his will. He is exercising his responsibility as the shepherd of this diocese to teach the faith.
"That said," he added, "the message should not be misconstrued as an attack on the human dignity of homosexual people. The church teaches that we must treat homosexuals with dignity and love, as we would all God’s children."
Their love is fake. But ours is real. Easy payments too.
Those were just a few of the terms hurled my way in 2003 when I said that the Supreme Court’s Texas sodomy decision opened the door to the redefinition of marriage.
When I wasn’t ducking the epithets, I was being laughed at, mocked, and given the crazy-uncle-at-the-holidays treatment by the media. Or I was being told I should resign from my leadership post by some Senate colleagues.
Five years later, do I regret sounding the alarm about marriage? No.
I’m just saddened that time has proved right those of us who worried about the future of marriage as the union of husband and wife, deeply rooted not only in our traditions, our faiths, but in the facts of human nature: as Pope Benedict said, "The cradle of life and love," connecting mothers and fathers to their children.
So sad… So sad… So tell us how were you proven right Rick…
The latest distressing news came last week in California. The state Supreme Court there ruled, 4-3, that same-sex couples can marry.
No kidding? Wow…
Look at Norway. It began allowing same-sex marriage in the 1990s. In just the last decade, its heterosexual-marriage rates have nose-dived and its out-of-wedlock birthrate skyrocketed to 80 percent for firstborn children. Too bad for those kids who probably won’t have a dad around, but we can’t let the welfare of children stand in the way of social affirmation, can we?
OSLO, Norway (AP) – Two Norwegian opposition parties on Thursday backed the rights of gay couples to marry in church, adopt and have assisted pregnancies, effectively assuring the passage of a new equality law next month.
The ruling three-party government proposed a law in March giving gay couples equal rights to heterosexuals but disagreements within the coalition cast doubt on whether it would receive enough votes to pass.
But two opposition parties announced Thursday they were backing the proposals, a move welcomed by gay rights groups, which should ensure a parliamentary majority and allow the law to be passed.
Okay…in other words… Norway suffered a staggering rise in out of wedlock births and an equally staggering decline in heterosexual marriages since it began allowing same-sex marriages in the 1990s, and just one week after your column warning us about that Norway’s parliament announces it is ready to give same sex the right to marry. No you drooling sack of Santorum, Norway hasn’t had same-sex marriage since…it was 1993 since you couldn’t be bothered to check the actual date either. It’s had a form of civil unions.
Okay…fine…so it was civil unions that caused the decline in Norway then…right? Erm…no… You’re waving Stanley Kurtz’ claptrap years after it was debunked you moron. Here…let some fellow republicans slap some wake up upside your head…
Some on the far right claim that the experiences with same-sex marriage in the international community prove that same-sex marriage destroys the institution of marriage. This claim, however, is unsupported by the facts. Stanley Kurtz, of the Hoover Institution, insists, in an article for The Weekly Standard, that same-sex marriage has undermined the institution of marriage in Scandinavia. (Scandinavia includes the countries of Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Much debate on this issue also has included the Netherlands.) An examination of the facts severely undermines Kurtz’s assertion. Professor M.V. Lee Badgett from the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently authored a study examining Kurtz’s conclusion. Click here to read the entire study. Among the report’s key findings:
"There is no evidence that giving partnership rights to same-sex couples had any impact on heterosexual marriage in Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands. Marriage rates, divorce rates, and non-marital birth rates have been changing in Scandinavia, Europe and the United States for the past thirty years. But those changes have occurred in all countries, regardless of whether or not they adopted same-sex partnership laws, and these trends were underway well before the passage of laws that gave same-sex couples rights."
"Divorce rates (in Scandinavia) have not risen since the passage of partnership laws and marriage rates have remained stable or actually increased."
"Non-marital birth rates have not risen faster in Scandinavia or the Netherlands since the passage of partnership laws. Although there has been a long-term trend toward the separation of sex, reproduction, and marriage in the industrialized west, this trend is unrelated to the legal recognition of same-sex couples."
"Non-marital birth rates changed just as much in countries without partnership laws as in countries that legally recognize same-sex couples’ partnerships."
"The legal and cultural context in the United States gives many more incentives for heterosexual couples to marry than in Europe and those incentives will still exist even if same-sex couples can marry. Giving same-sex couples marriage or marriage-like rights has not undermined heterosexual marriage in Europe, and it is not likely to do so in the United States."
The main evidence Kurtz points to is the increase in cohabitation rates among unmarried heterosexual couples and the increase in births to unmarried mothers. Roughly half of all children in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are now born to unmarried parents. In Denmark, the number of cohabiting couples with children rose by 25 percent in the 1990s. From these statistics Kurtz concludes that " … married parenthood has become a minority phenomenon," and—surprise—he blames gay marriage.
But Kurtz’s interpretation of the statistics is incorrect. Parenthood within marriage is still the norm—most cohabitating couples marry after they start having children. In Sweden, for instance, 70 percent of cohabiters wed after their first child is born. Indeed, in Scandinavia the majority of families with children are headed by married parents. In Denmark and Norway, roughly four out of five couples with children were married in 2003. In the Netherlands, a bit south of Scandinavia, 90 percent of heterosexual couples with kids are married.
Emphasis mine. And you can be sure Kurtz knew that when he published his dire warnings about the effect of same-sex marriage in Scandinavia. After all…he had to have poured over the data in his search for evidence damning gay people. He’d have looked at the entire marriage rate data, never doubt it, and he had to have seen that part. He withheld it because it effectively took away his ammunition.
But more specifically with respect to civil unions, look at what the data tells us:
Before 1993, the percentage of births outside of marriage grew steadily by an average of about 9% per year.
After civil unions were enacted in 1993, the growth of that birth rate slowed dramatically. The the growth rate fell from 9% per year to an average of less than 1.5% per year between 1993 and 2006.
Which means that if there were a cause and effect between Norway’s birth rate outside of marriage and providing civil unions for same-sex couples, the data suggests that civil unions actually had a dramatic affect in slowing the rate of births outside of marriage.
The chart Burroway provides shows the rate climbing since the mid-70s, and then suddenly tapering off after civil unions were enacted. Of course, coincidence is not causality, and the plain fact is that civil unions were probably of utterly no consequence in any sense. Since when did heterosexuals decide how to live their intimate lives based on what homosexuals do with theirs? Is this rocket science?
What happened to change how heterosexuals lived their lives in the 1970s wasn’t gay liberation, but women’s. The pill happened. Women became more independent of men. They could have their own lives. Marriage wasn’t a foregone conclusion for them, the home not the only life they were allowed to have anymore. Given all that, of course the patterns of marriage would change. Opposite sex couples still marry…they just go down a different road to it now…both of them, together, as equals.
And make no mistake…that’s what Santorum and his kind want to change. This isn’t about same-sex marriage. It’s about the prerogative of powerful males. It’s about taking us all back to a day when certain males of a certain class had power and status simply by virtue of their being males of a certain class, and the rest of us, women, minorities, laborers, heathens, knew our place and our lives only had context in service to them. It was once their world, and the rest of us just lived in it. That’s why they fight. Because in this world of ever expanding knowledge, freedom and justice, they are the biggest losers. Where status doesn’t count, you actually have to be something, and all they know how to be, is 18th century privileged males.
Actually Rick, the voters of Pennsylvania gave you a wake-up call when they booted your ass out of office last election. And you’re still walking though life half-asleep, half comatose, aren’t you?
DEAR AMY: I am a gay man living in California. My partner and I have raised a family and have been together for 26 years.
The California Supreme Court recently stated it is illegal not to allow gays to marry. We are thrilled.
Now that we are aging Baby Boomers, we need the protection and rights that married couples have. A proposition to change the California constitution to state that marriage "is between only a man and a woman" will appear on the November ballot, and it only needs a simple majority to pass.
The problem is that four of my best friends are women. It is important to me to know that I have their support of gay marriage. If they vote "no," it will be impossible for me to continue these friendships. I need help on how to handle this situation. — California Gay Guy
DEAR CALIFORNIA: Perhaps you should ask people how they intend to vote on the question of gay marriage before you befriend them. It would save you the trouble of having to sever the relationship later.
I understand your need to have people in your corner, but your friends are already in your corner. That’s what makes them your friends. Demanding that your friendship hinges on what people choose to do in the privacy of the voting booth is offensive.
Furthermore, you seem to assume that your women friends might not support gay marriage. Is this because they’re straight or because women are somehow more likely to want to limit the bounds of marriage? This is a sexist assumption.
I’d suggest that you tread very lightly.
Dear Amy…maybe people should be more honest about what they really think before turning us into the ‘some’ in "some of my best friends are…"
That this guy isn’t sure how his friends will vote told you all you needed to know. I’ve no idea why he’s making a point of their gender…it could be he’s as sexist as you think, or it could be that all his male friends are gay like himself, and he simply said "women" when he meant "straight". I’ve met gay guys who have absolutely no straight male friends at all, but pal around constantly with their straight female friends like they’re all sisters. But the point is he’s not sure how they will vote, and that says it all when it comes to their friendship.
This isn’t about how they’ll vote. This is where push comes to shove and what he wants to know is if they’re with him…in other words, are they really his friends. I’d Suggest that it was treading lightly that got him into that situation to start with. I’ve been there myself and I know the feeling. All through the 70s and 80s and 90s I treaded lightly among my straight friends when I should have been fucking loud and proud and on November 2000 it bit me in the ass, and then again on November 2002 and then again on November 2004 by which time I’d finally wised up and dumped the bastards.
Oscar Wilde was right about true friends stabbing you in the front. I have a lot fewer straight friends now then I did before, but I don’t need to ask them how they’d vote on a same-sex marriage amendment. The people in my life who could only go so far as extending me tolerance because they just couldn’t bring themselves to regard a homosexual as their equal are gone and suddenly I don’t have to wonder who has my back in a political knife fight. Offensive? Reducing this to an issue of voting booth privacy is offensive you drooling lifestyle page hack. This isn’t about how people vote. It’s about friendship. When a gay man has to wonder if his friends might vote to cut off his ring finger come November he needs to know he’s been treading too lightly around them for his own good. If they really were his friends, he would already know.
California Gay Guy needs to live a little louder and prouder around his straight friends. Tell them he’s thrilled. Tell them how much it means to him and his partner and his family of 26 years. He needs to let his excitement be loud and proud. He needs to openly and clearly make his fears about the upcoming referendum known. Then he won’t need to ask his friends how they’ll vote. They’ll tell him, by their expressions of joy and happiness for him and his family, and with their absolute solidarity. Or they’ll tell him with their polite silence on the matter.
Treading lightly is exactly what he needs to stop doing. And if you think gay people shouldn’t get pissed off at "friends" who vote away their basic human rights then you need to grow a soul. Friendship is love, not tolerance.
Recently a dear southern friend instructed me passionately in the theory of "equal but separate." "It just happens," he said, "that in my town there are three new Negro schools not equal, but superior to the white schools. Now wouldn’t you think they would be satisfied with that? And in the bus station, the washrooms are exactly the same. What’s your answer to that?"
I said, "Maybe it’s a matter of ignorance. You could solve it and really put them in their places if you switched schools and toilets. The moment they realized your schools weren’t as good as theirs, they would realize their error."
And do you know what he said? He said, "You trouble-making son of a bitch." But he said it smiling.
-John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley (1962)
Shallow understanding from people of good will, is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
I have a proposition along the lines of Steinbeck’s. If heterosexuals think civil unions really are equal to marriage, let them convert their marriages to civil unions. Once we gay folk see how well civil unions work for heterosexual couples after all, it’ll really put us in our place won’t it?
I jest of course. But I want you think about this. If separate but equal really is equal, then why does it have to be separate? The answer is, typically, that same-sex marriage is too controversial to be a realistic goal now. I can appreciate a tactical decision to pursue equality in stages, but only so long as we’re all clear what the ultimate goal is, and why we have to do it that way. But that’s not what I’m hearing in the wake of the California Supreme Court decision on marriage equality. What I’m hearing from various quarters, not all of them heterosexual, is that we blew it in California by going for marriage, when we already had a perfectly acceptable compromise in separate but equal civil unions.
It’s very frustrating to listen to the debate surrounding the California Supreme Court’s marriage decision to devolve into babbling talk radio crap about how foolish it is for gay people to fight this as though it’s all or nothing, and particularly in California where we already had perfectly good separate but equal civil unions. If I hear one more time about how we’re only fighting over a word I am going to fucking explode. Can anybody who says that just stop and think about what they’re saying for a moment?
A word. A word. A motherfucking word. Why does a motherfucking word matter? Say, I have an idea, why not ask the heterosexuals who are fighting bitterly to keep a mere word all to themselves if that’s what they’re fighting for. A word. A word. Ask them if it’s only a word. Go ahead. And when you ask them you need to listen to what they tell you. You need to pay attention. Especially when they explain to you why letting us have That Word devalues it for them.
This is not over a word. It’s not even over marriage as an institution. It’s not about what marriage is to heterosexuals, but about what we are to heterosexuals. When you understand why heterosexuals want to reserve the word ‘marriage’ for themselves, you understand why civil unions will never be equal to marriage.
After the California decision, USA Today posted an editorial that is eminently typical of the response from what King might have called the People Of Good Will. As USA Today likes to posture as a civilized foe of bigotry, you would think they’d have warmly congratulated Californian gays on this milestone, and on their courage and fortitude the for the sake of their love. You would think this…if you weren’t paying attention….
Last week, when California became the second state after Massachusetts to allow gay marriage, same-sex couples celebrated and began planning June weddings. Good for them. But the unfortunate and unnecessary impact of the California Supreme Court ruling might well have been to set back the cause of gay rights more broadly.
The judges ruled 4-3 that gays’ inability to get married amounts to discrimination under California’s constitution, even though the state’s domestic partnership laws give them the benefits and responsibilities of marriage.
In other words, pragmatic political compromise on the intensely controversial issue is not allowed in California. It’s all or nothing, and recent political history leaves little doubt about what will follow.
Never mind for a moment that it’s always easy to be pragmatic about someone else’s lives. Pay attention to this. The instinct in the "mainstream" "moderate" pews the moment, the instant, same-sex couples get a chance to marry isn’t to be happy for them, it isn’t even to raise a red flag of warning, though if you skim that editorial you might think that’s what they’re doing. They’re not. The point of the editorial isn’t to warn of a backlash, it assumes one. The point is to blame the gay community for causing it. We are always to blame for the hate leveled at us. It is always our fault. The distance between bigots who say the "gay lifestyle" is self destructive, and the People Of Good Will who say that we are needlessly provoking our enemies and whatever comes of that is Our Fault, is thinner then the paint on one of Fred Phelp’s God Hates Fags posters. As far as they’re both concerned, we bring it on ourselves.
How? The bigots say we bring it upon ourselves just by being homosexuals. The People Of Good Will say we do it by provoking our enemies. In other words, by defending ourselves from the bigots. The bigots say we are unclean. The People Of Good Will say that we should at least act like we are unclean for the sake of keeping the peace. Besides they say, we already have all the legal protections we need. To ask for more is just selfishly causing trouble. We are always the trouble makers in this story. And this story goes back a long, long way.
Once upon a time, before there was civil unions, let alone same sex marriage anywhere in the United States, the argument was that same-sex couples already had all the legal rights they need, because we could always avail ourselves of things like medical directives and powers of attorney. The case of William Robert Flanigan Jr. and Robert Lee Daniel back in March of 2002 is instructive here. For four hours, officials at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center barred Flanigan from his dying partner’s bedside, saying he was not "family", and that ‘partners’ did not qualify. Though Flanigan had legal power of attorney for his partner, Robert Lee Daniel, officials at the Shock Trauma Center kept him away from his partner’s bedside. Only when Daniel’s mother arrived from New Mexico, was Flanigan allowed into Daniel’s room. By that time, Daniel had lost consciousness. He would die two days later.
Because Flanigan was not present during Daniel’s final four hours of consciousness, Flanigan was unable to tell Shock Trauma that Daniel did not want breathing tubes or a respirator. When Daniel tried to rip the tubes out of his throat, staff members put his arms in restraints.
At first glance all this seems irrelevant to a discussion of civil unions. Because Maryland at that time did not have a medical directives registry, and did not then and does not now recognize civil unions, they didn’t enter at all into the legal considerations of this case. But look at it. In the context of making health care decisions for his beloved, Flanigan’s durable power of attorney gave him, in theory, for all practical purposes exactly the same rights as a spouse. But in practice, in the moment of crisis, that durable power of attorney couldn’t have been more worthless. United in a mere legal arrangement, as opposed to being Married, Daniel and Flanigan simply weren’t regarded as a family. That was the immediate reflex of the hospital staff. Their relationship wasn’t a marriage. It was something else. Something other then marriage. And so Daniel died apart from his lover, with the tubes he was terrified of shoved down his throat, and his arms strapped to the bed. There was no family there to say otherwise, as far as the hospital was concerned. Something other then marriage, is inevitably something less then marriage.
Flanigan later sued the hospital. After trying different excuses, first saying they never got the paperwork on Flanigan;’s power of attorney, Maryland Shock Trauma decided to tell the jury that their emergency room was simply too busy to let him into where Daniel was being treated. That he was allowed in when Daniel’s mother, the legitimate family, arrived, had to have been just sheer coincidence. Ask yourself what jury would buy that if it were a heterosexual couple. Yes…the jury bought it. Maryland Shock Trauma was let off the hook. Flanigan was left only with his memories of not being able to keep his beloved from the thing he feared most in his last hours on earth, and to be there with him. The usual words of condolences, worth their weight in gold, were spoken all around.
Make no mistake, had Flanigan and Daniel been anything other then a gay couple that power of attorney would have allowed the one to make medical decisions for the other. But what the hospital staff saw in that document wasn’t a power of attorney, but two homosexuals asking to be treated as if they were married, and that was an attack on their own marriages. That is where the reflex came from. When the staff told Flanigan he could not be with Daniel or have any say in how he was treated, because he was Not Family, they were not simply enforcing hospital rules, they were defending the sanctity of their own marriages.
Sanctity. You hear the word a lot in this struggle. Of all the careless brain dead claims being made here by People Of Good Will, the claim that gay activists have turned the fight over same-sex marriage into an all or nothing battle is the most nefarious. In state after state, and even in California, the enemies of gay equality have either tried to, or enacted amendments that sweep away both same-sex marriage And civil unions, And anything and everything else that gives same sex couples even the passing rights that married couples enjoy, in the name of preserving the sanctity of marriage. In the vast majority of states, this was long before same-sex marriage could even have been a possibility. How close to same sex marriage was Virginia, when it passed its constitutional amendment barring it, as well as anything even remotely like it? In fact, he entire history of the fight against gay equality has been waged as an all or nothing struggle by our enemies, and was long before the gay community began seeking marriage in earnest.
Our enemies understand the logic of this fight a lot better then some of us seem to. What’s confusing, or more likely what a lot of us are in denial about, is that the fight over same-sex marriage isn’t a fight over same-sex marriage specifically. It’s a furious, bitter, scorched earth battle over the status of gay people. That is the root of it, that is the thing we are all fighting over. Are we your neighbors, or are we an abomination in the eyes of god? Are we as human as anyone else, or are we the victims of a kind of sexual sickness? Is the fact that we mate to our own sex just a simple and unremarkable variation like being left-handed or green-eyed, or is it a damaging distortion of natural sexuality? If it’s the latter, it should be suppressed like any other illness afflicting humankind. The kinder, gentler view is that we are merely some sort of unfortunate sexual cripples. But in the eyes of the homophobes, we are a curse on humanity and you don’t grant rights to a curse on humanity.
They have been waging this war against granting us human status for decades now. It is not about marriage specifically, but marriage is both their trump card and the end of pretense. Like raising the fear of homosexual child molesters, waving same-sex marriage in people’s faces frightens people into thinking gay rights is an attack on their families, on their most intimate sense of self, on that which is sacred to them. If people who engage in unnatural, distorted sexual behavior can have their brokenness treated the same as the wholesome love of two normal heterosexuals, then that reduces the love and devotion of heterosexual couples to the level of pornography. But the other edge to that sword is that letting same sex couples marry acknowledges their shared humanity with the heterosexual majority. Same sex marriage is both the homophobe’s weapon, and their greatest fear, because then the battle is simply over.
I have watched this fight for decades. Not the marriage fight. The gay civil rights fight. And I tell you, Every Step Of The Way, whether it was over the right to hold down a job, to the right to simply have sex with the one you love without being thrown in jail for sodomy, our enemies have turned every single solitary step we have taken, every meager right we have ever fought for, into a fight over same-sex marriage. Oh, we can’t give them hospital visitation rights, it would lead to homosexual marriage!!! Oh we can’t give them protection from discrimination in the workplace, that will lead to homosexual marriage!!! What was the first thing they started screaming about after the U.S. Supreme Court voided the sodomy laws? It wasn’t that the queers would start having sex now. They know we’re having sex. They immediately started babbling about same-sex marriage. They don’t give a rat’s ass about our having sex. Animals have sex too. But only human beings marry.
So much, so obvious. What should have been more illuminating then it seems to have been, was how after Lawrence v. Texas the mainstream news media and all the so-called liberal and moderate middle of the spectrum pundits started worrying about the possibility of same-sex marriage too. Mostly to re-assure each other that Justice Kennedy had said their decision shouldn’t wouldn’t lead to that. This was the reaction on the part of the self described sensible middle of the roaders, the People Of Good Will, to the fact that we were no longer presumptive criminals simply by virtue of being homosexual: Gosh…I hope this doesn’t lead to them getting married or anything. But why shouldn’t it? Why shouldn’t people who say they’re against ignorant bigotry towards their gay neighbors, want us to have the same status they do?
Because, they don’t really mean it. For the People Of Good Will, we may not be a curse on all mankind, but we are still sexual cripples at best, if not disgusting perverts at worst. They might agree that civil society should tolerate our existence the sake of the freedoms of all. They may not go on crusades against homosexuality. But you need to not mistake that for enlightenment or even tolerance. It is disgust. They just don’t want to deal with it. They aren’t going on crusades because they find the entire subject distasteful. And that distaste has consequences.
When they say civil unions is a rational compromise between two extremes, look at that, really look at it. It is the middle ground between your being wholly and completely human, and being cursed by God that they are saying is a rational compromise we should gratefully accept if we weren’t so stubborn. In exchange for just shutting up so they don’t have to deal with our existence, we are being offered the compromise status of damaged goods. But you don’t treat damaged goods as though they are anything but damaged.
Here is how USA Today viewed the decision of the California Supreme Court:
…the domestic partnership laws in California are hardly equivalent to the egregious racial discrimination of the Jim Crow era. Far from denying rights, they guarantee gays equal treatment in such important areas as raising children, assigning responsibility for medical choices and settling financial matters.
By pushing the envelope, the California ruling will help those who want to deny gays such rights — blatant discrimination that reaches far beyond understandable differences rooted in the religious meaning of marriage. Even in California, an initiative is already underway to put a same-sex marriage ban into the state constitution. Similar bans are likely to be considered in Arizona and Florida. Failed attempts to amend the U.S. Constitution will revive.
The special status and sanctity of marriage is the ultimate blessing for couples who want to spend their lives together. Eventually, the nation might be ready to extend the institution to same-sex couples. But, as New Jersey’s top judges wrote in a 2006 gay marriage decision, courts "cannot guarantee social acceptance, which must come through the evolving ethos of a maturing society."
It will be regrettable if the impact of the California decision is to slow or reverse that evolution.
Look at that first paragraph I quoted, where they offer the separate but (at least somewhat) equal defense of civil unions. But just how egregeous could Jim Crow have been, if black people merely had to drink out of separate fountains. After all…it was the same water…right…?
There is separate but equal. But if all you see in that photograph is the black guy has equal access to water you are missing the egregious nature of Jim Crow, just as the editors of USA Today are missing the egregious nature of civil unions. In point of fact, all it takes to see nothing wrong with what is happening in that photo, is to not see the humanity of the black man. He has water…what’s the problem?
The special status and sanctity of marriage is the ultimate blessing for couples who want to spend their lives together. Eventually, the nation might be ready to extend the institution to same-sex couples. Here the editors of USA Today admit out of the other side of their mouths, that this special status, that sanctity, that Ultimate Blessing, is precisely what civil unions are meant to exclude us from. It does not, and you have to understand this, signify a legal status, so much as a social understanding. And that social understanding is that our unions, that our love, does not rise to the sacred level of heterosexual love, and does not merit the same special status, the same blessing, that heterosexual love does. This is the premise, spoken and unspoken, behind every appeal to the "special status of marriage". It is not that marriage is so special after all, but that we are not worthy.
This is why giving same-sex couples access to marriage desecrates it. That is why they use the language of desecration when we agitate for the right to marry. By enacting the rites of marriage, we don’t celebrate it, we can only desecrate it. That can only make sense if you regard gay people as incapable of experiencing love and intimacy as profoundly, as urgently, as heterosexuals do. And that only make sense if you see gay people as irredeemably damaged goods. And that is the thinking. Same-sex marriage desecrates the Institution of marriage because homosexual love is only one step removed from pornography, if that. That is why, exactly why, you hear them saying that same-sex marriage means "anything goes." That simply does not follow absent the view that homosexuals don’t really love, they just have sterile, barren, pitiable sexual assignations, and pretend that it’s love.
The People Of Good Will may be disgusted at the thought of gay sex, or they may feel pity for us and think themselves progressive because they would have us be treated with compassion and concern, just as you would treat anyone with a profound handicap. But you don’t hang forgeries in an art museum, you don’t sell water as whiskey, you don’t treat someone who bought a degree over the Internet as though they’d actually been to college, and you don’t treat a same-sex couple as though they are married. To do otherwise is to cheapen marriage into meaninglessness. Same sex couples do not experience intimate romantic love as profoundly as heterosexuals do. That Is the thinking.
And that is why civil unions will never be equal to marriage. The statutes defining them could read absolutely identically, word for word, comma for comma, period for period, and they will not be treated equally to marriages, because the basic premise defining them, the bedrock they rest upon, is that homosexual love is not the real thing, but a cheap, if not ugly mockery of the real thing. No injury, no foul. Civil unions, as a substitute for marriage, are not even a consolation prize. They are a facade of respect, erected upon what heterosexuals consider to be a facade of love.
And that understanding of our love lives, of our humanity, has consequences. Does anyone actually believe that most people voting against both same sex marriage and civil unions really don’t understand they are voting away both? Do you really think that people who believe we desecrate the institution of marriage will respect our unions if they merely go by another name? Wake up please. Ask William Robert Flanigan Jr. how well a substitute for marriage works. Ask the civil union’ed couples in New Jersey and Vermont who found out the difference between a marriage and a civil union that had all the same rights on paper, but not the same regard in the eyes of people who know that a civil union is a civil union precisely because it does not represent a sacred human bond like marriage does, but at best a pale imitation of one. In the courts, in the public square, in the neighborhoods and villages, in the emergency rooms and in the funeral homes, absent the kind of recognition of our humanity that would make civil unions superfluous anyway, every civil union they encounter will be weighed by heterosexual people for what it is, not for what it isn’t, and what it isn’t is a marriage.
This is not a fight over a word. It’s a fight for that acknowledgment of our humanity, and to have our human needs and our human dignity respected. As long as heterosexuals view our relationships as being something fundamentally different from their own, they will treat them as something fundamentally less then their own. And they will, never doubt it, apply the law as though they are something fundamentally less from their own. Something other then marriage, is inevitably something less then marriage. That has in fact, been the documented experience in at least one state, New Jersey. Nothing should have been less surprising. It is simply, it is inevitably, because applying two different labels, one to the union of opposite sex couples, and a different one to the union of same-sex couples, establishes that they are different things, and gives people permission to treat them as different things. And as long as people believe they have that permission in the spirit of the law, they will use it regardless of the letter of the law.
There is no ‘but’ in equal. We know who our friends are. They are the ones who may worry about a backlash, may question tactics and means, but not that the fight is necessary and just. They understand that love is something to be cherished and defended from hate, not compromised in the face of it. They know how important it is to us to defend the honor and the dignity of our love, because they can look at us, and see people not unlike themselves and they would do the same in our shoes. We are not damaged goods. We are friends and neighbors. Fellow citizens of the American Dream. Shallow understanding, is no understanding at all. It is the person that is shallow, not the understanding. All it takes to understand why we fight, is to have ever loved someone.
To the folks who don’t want to fight this as an all or nothing battle: I’m sorry. Nobody should have to grow up and go through life taking one wound to the heart after another. This fight tears people apart. I’ve seen it. I hate it. I don’t blame you for not wanting to deal with it. But you need to understand this: you found yourself in an all or nothing battle with hate, the moment you first realized that you are gay.
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