The right of same-sex couples to marry is now hanging by two threads in Massachusetts.

More on the cartoon page… 

Via Digby, who you should read more often…  It seems Stanley Kurtz thinks democratic anger needs some explaining…

I doubt that even Barack Obama can save us from our anger now. That’s because the anger that lately pervades our politics is more than just an after effect of six years of Democratic setbacks (although the strikingly angry Democratic response to their six bad years does call for an explanation).

An explaination…did you say?  Well…how about this one…

You should go read the rest of Digby’s post.  Digby says of the Kurtz review that, "It’s fascinating because it once again illustrates the degree to which conservatives have absolutely no self-awareness", but I don’t think it’s a lack of self awareness so much as a lack of conscience.  When they kick people in the teeth, conservatives don’t see that as anything less then their god given right as superior beings.  The role of all the rest of us lesser beings is to just stand there and passively take it because…well…they have a god given right to dish it out to us and if we object, we’re the ones being mean.  To them.  And of course, if we decide to dish it right back then we are being positively uncivil.

Speaking of which…have you noticed how the word, "civility" has become some kind of watchword recently?  Civility.  Civility.  The news media has suddenly discovered that it is important for us to be civil.  Now that the democrats are back in power.  Goodness knows it wasn’t important when people like the lady in the photo above were in power.    Goodness knows it wasn’t important back when Rush Limbaugh was playing "It’s Raining Men" right after news broke that a New York Times reporter had committed suicide by jumping out an office window.  Goodness knows it wasn’t important when Ann Coulter said the only problem she has with Timothy McVeigh is that he didn’t go to the New York Times building.  Now that democrats are back in power, the news media that treated Limbaugh and Coulter like elder statesmen have suddenly discovered that incivility is a bad thing.  Gosh.

Digby reminds us about the little list of words the father of the new incivility, Newt Gingrich made for republicans to use every time they talked about democrats…

He became famous (with some help from his cohorts) for being a manipulative, vicious asshole and the lesson was well learned. He went on to create a lexicon of derision, used by Republicans everywhere, to describe Democrats and liberals. He called these words "contrast":

Often we search hard for words to define our opponents. Sometimes we are hesitant to use contrast. Remember that creating a difference helps you. These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast. Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party.

* abuse of power
* anti- (issue): flag, family, child, jobs
* betray
* bizarre
* bosses
* bureaucracy
* cheat
* coercion
* "compassion" is not enough
* collapse(ing)
* consequences
* corrupt
* corruption
* criminal rights
* crisis
* cynicism
* decay
* deeper
* destroy
* destructive
* devour
* disgrace
* endanger
* excuses
* failure (fail)
* greed
* hypocrisy
* ideological
* impose
* incompetent
* insecure
* insensitive
* intolerant
* liberal
* lie
* limit(s)
* machine
* mandate(s)
* obsolete
* pathetic
* patronage
* permissive attitude
* pessimistic
* punish (poor …)
* radical
* red tape
* self-serving
* selfish
* sensationalists
* shallow
* shame
* sick
* spend(ing)
* stagnation
* status quo
* steal
* taxes
* they/them
* threaten
* traitors
* unionized
* urgent (cy)
* waste

I realize it is churlish of us liberals to attempt to defend ourselves from this kind of bad faith and even worse for us to lose our Gary Cooper cool. But, you know, when you push people far enough and hard enough they start to fight for their survival. The level of vitriol and hate emanating from the right — and encouraged by Republicans leaders of all stripes — has been overwhelming. These past twelve years alone have been characterized by smears, toxic rhetoric, impeachments, abuse of power, stolen elections, power mad governance, corruption and ineptitude. So yes, we’re angry — but more importantly, we are fearful for our country.

Until Republicans admit what they have wrought and recognize that their trash talking and boot-to-the-throat mode of fetid politics are responsible for our state today, then for the good of the country, I hope the left remains angry and battles them back with everything they’ve got.

This is ugly, I admit. But the country just can’t take another couple of decades of Republican politics and Republican rule. We have to stop it — and it won’t be stopped if Democrats play nice.

No.  It won’t.  I say this over and over again but it’s true: we’re in a knife fight with these people.  You either fight back to win, or you just stand there and let them laugh in your face and kick your balls, because that’s just what they’ll do, and keep doing, even after you’ve curled up in the fetal position.  They don’t care.  They hate you.  They hate you with a passion that your gay and lesbian neighbors have seen first hand for decades now.  Digby’s right.  Until the republicans are held accountable for the past couple decades of vitriol and hate they’ve been spewing into the political well all that this newly discovered concern about the level of incivility amounts to, is just another way of keeping us passive while they get to keep kicking everyone they despise in the face.  It won’t stop until they’re held accountable.

Somebody finally sits up and takes notice!  Wonderful!  Over at Eschaton, echidne says that it is an odd juxtaposition that our new congress may well repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, at the same time Massachusetts takes the right to marry away from its gay and lesbian citizens.  "Equal for war but not for love?" She asks.  Good question.

In fact, it is precisely to prevent people from asking that question, that we are not allowed to serve.  Did you think that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was really about military readiness?  Have some second thoughts please.  It is because the sight of openly gay people fighting for, and dying for their country, would cause people to raise those kinds of questions that the bigots have been fighting so bitterly to prevent us from serving. 

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has nothing to do with national security.  It has nothing to do with close quarters contact on the battlefield and all the other shibboleths the religious right keeps raising.  It has exactly zero to do with troop moral.  It is about preventing gay equality.  It has always been about preventing gay equality.  Nothing else.

Simply put, I can get news and information of concern to the gay community that I could not before.  It isn’t merely that a lot of hate crime news never makes it beyond the local media.  It isn’t merely that the mainstream news media often chooses not to even report hate crimes against us.  It’s that more often then not you catch them actively downplaying it.  In effect, hiding it from view.

For example…

Six Shot At Chicago Gay Party

Chicago police are investigating the shooting of six men at a party in a house on Chicago’s South Side in what may have been a homophobic hate crime.

Police say two masked men burst into an apartment in the house early Sunday morning, spraying semi-automatic gunfire throughout the living room hitting six men. 

Residents in the area say the apartment was rented by two gay men and was the scene of frequent loud parties. One neighbor told the Chicago Sun-Times that the building was known as the "Gay House".

"We always be seeing them, and they always be looking at people," Kevin Carter, 18, told the paper. 

"They give you that gay look, like you’re a female or something. That ain’t cute. People be ready to fight. … I knew something was going to happen to that house."

…

A man who said his brother lives in the apartment told the paper that his brother had complained for several months about being harassed by people in the neighborhood for being gay.

That’s from the story at 365Gay.Com.  The gunmen didn’t use homophobic slurs, apparently didn’t say anything at all, just opened fire.  They wore masks, and there have been as I write this, no arrests.

But 365Gay.Com does not field their own reporters.  They mostly get their stories off the wire and serve as a news aggregate.  That story was based on the reporting from the Chicago Sun-Times.  So I went around looking for the story via Google News to see if there were any other takes on it.  This is typical of what I found:

Masked men shoot 6 at party

Six people were wounded, two of them critically, when masked gunmen opened fire early Sunday on a South Side party, authorities said.

About 100 people were at the party in the first-floor apartment of a two-story building in the 7900 block of South Woodlawn Avenue in the Grand Crossing neighborhood about 5:30 a.m. when two men–armed with semiautomatic handguns–kicked down the front door and starting shooting, said Chicago police spokeswoman Monique Bond.

"Because the gunmen who kicked in the door and opened fire were masked, we don’t have a good description," she said.

The men fled into a nearby gangway, Bond said. Detectives were still questioning witnesses and neighbors.

The victims were all men between the ages of 19 and 35, she said. None lived there.
…

Neighbors said residents of the apartment often held loud parties that lasted into the morning and that police had been called there several times recently. Bond confirmed that officers had been called to the apartment several times since October, including some calls for complaints of aggravated battery.

Outside the apartment Sunday, blood still stained the front steps, porch and door. .

"All I want is for my friends to be OK and healthy," said a man in his 20s who spoke from a window but declined to give his name.

A neighbor who lives in the unit above the apartment, who also declined to give her name because the gunmen were still at large, said the party was going full force when she fell asleep about 2:30 a.m. Then, about 5:30 a.m., she heard shots from directly below her and tumbled out of bed.

… 

She said the men who live there held raucous parties almost every weekend and many times on other nights of the week. Officers also had gone there several times responding to shouting and physical confrontations, she said.

"It’s not just on Friday or Saturday; the police have been here Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, when normal people have to work," the woman said.

Not a word, not a breath, about the fact that the victims were gay, and that the renters had been complaining about harassment from the neighbors.  The only neighbor quoted complained about the parties and the noise they made (the landlord, also quoted in that article, said he’d only had one complaint and that was when they held a party after they moved in and the upstairs neighbor complained).  This was from the Chicago Tribune.  Yet another reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times had no trouble getting neighbors of the men to state that they thought the attack was motivated by the men’s sexual orientation.  But that reporter, Mark Konkol, was apparently the only one at the scene who thought it was noteworthy.

And it was the Tribune’s take on the matter, that it was merely an attack on a loud party (and whoever heard of loud parties happening on New Year’s Eve), that made the wires.  The story came up on google news and I went through one after the other, from papers in California to the Jerusalem Post, and none of them breathed a word to me that the victims were gay men, that they’d previously complained of harassment by their neighbors, and that there was the slightest bit of hostility toward them in the neighborhood where they lived.  You saw none of that in the media reporting. 

I constructed a google search string using that quote from the kid who said that the men were giving people "that gay look, like you’re a female or something".  The only stories that popped up were from the online gay news organizations, and that one Chicago Sun-Times article.  That was it.

Now…maybe this shooting wasn’t motivated by anti-gay hate.  But there is at least a reasonable suspicion that it was.  In the days before the Internet, all I’d have seen of this, perhaps, would have been the sanitized version set out by the Tribune, and accepted by most of the rest of the heterosexual news editors around the country, and in my local neck of the woods, who all decided that the gay angle on it wasn’t worth printing.  Nobody outside of Chicago would ever have any inkling that there might be a hate crime here.  And so the gay community wouldn’t have had any reason to pay attention to it, to how well it was being investigated, to question what was going on in that neighborhood, and whether hate had once again turned into bloodshed.

I can well remember a time when violence toward homosexuals just didn’t matter to the police, let alone the press.  And we are not out of those woods as much as some would like to believe.  Between covering that aspect of it up because you believe they had it coming, and not reporting on it because you just don’t give a good goddamn about the faggots anyway and can’t imagine why any normal person would, anti-gay violence would still be swept under the rug, even today.  And even the most committed gay rights activists won’t make their voices heard, if they don’t even know what is happening.  Silence equals death.  What has made a difference now is the Internet.  We are not many small and isolated ghettos anymore.  The heterosexual majority can avert their eyes all they want, but now we can see what is happening to us as a people in this country.  We can’t make the rest of the world pay attention too, if we ourselves don’t even know what is going on.  That is why for so many decades, we believed it when they told us we had it coming.  We endured the violence in silence and shame.  Those days are over.

There is natural ignorance and there is artificial ignorance. I should say at the present moment the artificial ignorance is about eighty-five per cent.  -Ezra Pound

Via the Log Cabin Republicans (yes…I know…) A little bit of shear brilliance from Chandler Burr:

The raging debate about gay rights ultimately turns on one simple question.  And, bizarrely, the fact that answering this question will put a definitive end to the national battle over gay rights is almost completely unknown, not only in America in general, but among gay people as well. At its core, the answer to this question is the only one that matters, the one that determines the most appropriate public policy course, and the one that will win the political struggle over gay rights: Is homosexuality a lifestyle choice or is homosexuality an inborn biological trait?  Put another way, does someone choose to be gay or are they just born that way?  You may be surprised to find out that we already know the answer to this question. In fact, surprising as it may be, we’ve known the answer for several decades.

I disagree that this is the only question that matters.  But never mind.  The brilliance I’m referring to here, isn’t in Burr’s framing of the question, but of his framing of the answer.  We’ve known the answer for several decades.  Yes.  Just so.  If the question is a pitch by the religious right, then Burr smacks it clear out of the ballpark with this…

A bit of Biology 101: For every human trait they study, clinicians and biologists assemble what’s called a "trait profile," the sum total of all the data they have gathered clinically (clinical research basically means research done through 1. questions and 2. empirical observation to answer the questions) about a trait. Researchers gather groups of subjects from different areas of the world, question them about their trait, observe the trait in them, and record the data. The various aspects of the trait are precisely described: gradations and variations in eye color are assessed, eye color’s correlation or lack thereof with gender, geography, race, or age is noted, scientists observe the way eye color is passed down through generations—all of which are clues as to whether or not eye color is a biological trait. The data are summarized in papers and charts and published in the scientific literature. That, in sum, makes up the trait profile.

Here is the profile of a trait on which clinical research has been done for decades. It is taken from the published scientific literature. The trait should be rather obvious:

1) This human trait is referred to by biologists as a "stable bimorphism"— it shows up in all human populations as two orientations— expressed behaviorally.

2) The data clinicians have gathered says that around 92% of the population has the majority orientation, 8% has the minority orientation.

3) Evidence from art history suggests the incidence of the two different orientations has been constant for five millennia.

4) The trait has no external physical, bodily signs.  That means you can’t tell a person’s orientation by looking at them. And the minority orientation appears in all races and ethnic groups.

5) Since the trait itself is internal and invisible, the only way to identify an orientation is by observing the behavior or the reflex that expresses it. However—and this is crucial—

6) –because the trait itself is not a "behavior" but an internal, invisible orientation, those with the minority orientation can hide, usually due to coercion or social pressure, by behaving as if they had the majority orientation. Several decades ago, those with the minority orientation were frequently forced to behave as if they had the majority orientation— but internally the orientation remained the same and as social pressures have lifted, people with the minority orientation have been able to openly express it.

7) Clinical observation makes it clear that neither orientation of this trait is a disease or mental illness. Neither is pathological in any observable way.

8) Neither orientation is chosen.

9) Signs of one’s orientation are detectable very early in children, often, researchers have established, by age two or three. And one’s orientation probably has been defined at the latest by age two, and quite possibly before birth.

These data indicated that the trait was biological, not social, in origin, so the clinicians systematically asked more questions. And these started revealing the genetic plans that lay underneath the trait:

10) Adoption studies show that the orientation of adopted children is unrelated to the orientation of their parents, demonstrating that the trait is not created by upbringing or society.

11) Twin studies show that pairs of identical twins, with their identical genes, have a higher-than-average chance of sharing the same orientation compared to pairs of randomly selected individuals; the average rate of this trait in any given population— it’s called the "background rate"—is just under 8%, while the twin rate is just above 12%, more than 50% higher.

12) This trait’s incidence of the minority orientation is strikingly higher in the male population— about 27% higher—than it is in the female population. Many genetic diseases, for reasons we now understand pretty well, are higher in men than women.

13) Like the trait called eye color, the familial studies conducted by scientists show that the minority orientation clearly "runs in families," handed down from parent to child.

14) This pattern shows a "maternal effect," a classic telltale of a genetic trait. The minority orientation, when it is expressed in men, appears to be passed down through the mother.

Put all this data together, and you’ve created the trait profile. The trait just described is, of course, handedness.

Yes.  What we’re all seeing with regard to human sexual orientation, is nothing new or surprising.  Burr compares the two traits, handedness and sexual orientation side-by-side and the likenesses are striking, as is the obvious conclusion.  We already know this…  I entered first grade back in 1959.  I remember vividly the sight of a classmate having his left arm tied down to his side by the teachers (two of them).  The boy’s parents had asked them to do that, if they saw the boy using his left hand to write or draw with.  The thinking being that if you just forced a kid to use their right hand, they would eventually grow out of using their left.  That was 1959.  You may notice that they’re not doing that to left handed kids anymore.  But there was a time when left-handedness was considered a mark of the devil.

It’s an image that has stuck in my mind ever since, and all the more so after I began my own process of coming to grips with my sexual orientation.  I’m gay.  You can pressure me into acting against it…teach me one lie after another about homosexuality, make me come to fear and loath my sexual nature so much I might never touch another male with desire without experiencing waves of guilt and self hatred and fear.  You can pass one law after another, penalizing and even criminalizing same sex relationships…in effect tying that part of me down.  And yet I am still gay.  The idea that you can make me not-gay by tying that part of me down is false.  You can no more make me not-gay then you can make me left handed by tying down my right arm.  That model of sexual orientation, as a learned or adaptive behavior is wrong.  It isn’t like that.  Neither was handedness.  But…we know that.

We’ve known the answer for several decades…  Burr, and many other people of good conscience, need to look at that simple fact.  I mean…really look at it.  Ironically, Burr gives it a glancing shot here:

Behavior isn’t sexual orientation, and the difference between behavior and orientation is as obvious as lying: When you tell a lie, you know perfectly well what the truth is inside…

And so do people like James Dobson, and all the others of his kind in the religious right, who routinely lie about the work of real scientists in order to incite anti-gay passions.  Because inciting anti-gay passions translates into money in the collection plate, and votes at the polls, and tens of thousands of obediant followers who jump whenever you tell them to…and more importantly, bend their knees.  You can’t distort the science the way the leaders of the religious right are, without knowing that you’re distorting it.  That’s lying.  And when you lie, you know you’re doing it.  They Know.

This is where Burr, and others, chiefly honest men and women of science and other civilized people, get it wrong.   Yes, facts matter, because ultimately you cannot fool nature.  But this isn’t a matter of convincing the opposition that they’re wrong.  They know they’re wrong, or they wouldn’t be lying.  The only question that matters isn’t whether sexual orientation is chosen or not, it’s whether the people who still insist that it is, have a conscience or not.  Because if they don’t have one, then appealing to it is utterly futile.

But…you should go read the rest of Burr’s piece.  For the shear pleasure of watching him smack the ball out of the park.  For the next time next time someone like Dobson goes babbling on about homosexuality and choice, so you can see with sickening clarity what a moral runt they are.  We don’t force right handedness on left handed kids because we know how damaging that is to them.  It’s damaging to gay kids too.  Profoundly so.  And yes…the religious right knows that too.  They’ve known for several decades.

Gay Couple Beaten In Scottsdale, Arizona Hate Attack

A gay couple holding hands as they left a Scottsdale restaurant were attacked by as many as seven men leaving the pair badly beaten.

Andrew Frost and Jean Rolland say the attack took place just feet from the restaurant’s front doors.  

Frost, 19, needed numerous stitches to close wounds on his head and face. Rolland, 28, suffered many bumps and bruises.

"I had blood pouring out of me and I actually blacked out at one point," Frost told the Arizona Republic.

He said that as he and Rolland exited the restaurant he heard someone yell "fag". He said he turned and saw two men. Frost said that he replied to the slur and one of the men punched him. He said that at least five others rushed from the restaurant and joined the attack.

Frost and Rolland have filed a police report, but no one at the restaurant seems to have seen anything. The couple said they had never seen their attackers before.

Worcester rally takes ugly turn

Tempers boiled over at an anti-gay marriage rally yesterday when the executive director of the Boston-based Catholic Citizenship emerged from behind a lectern outside City Hall, rushed toward a female counter-demonstrator, and pushed her to the ground.

Sarah Loy, 27, of Worcester was holding a sign in defense of same-sex marriage amid a sea of green “Let the People Vote” signs when Larry Cirignano of Canton, who heads the Catholic Citizenship group, ran into the crowd, grabbed her by both shoulders and told her, “You need to get out. You need to get out of here right now.” Mr. Cirignano then pushed her to the ground, her head slamming against the concrete sidewalk.

"It was definitely assault and battery,” said Ronal C. Madnick, director of the Worcester County Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. Police interviewed Mr. Madnick and several others moments after the incident.

As Ms. Loy lay motionless on the ground, crying, Mr. Cirignano ran back behind the lectern, where moments before he had opened the afternoon rally by leading a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.

Emphasising the words "under God" and Leaving out "indivisible", no doubt…

FBI Enters Probe Of Attacks On Lesbians

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been asked to help with the investigation into two attacks on women Ada Oklahoma where homophobic epithets were marked on their bodies.

But apart from helping develop a profile of suspects in the case there is little the FBI can do.  Gays and lesbians are not protected under federal hate crime legislation.

Sara Kaspereit, 20, said she was grabbed by two men as she got out of her car in front of her home on Monday.  One of the men carved the word lesbian into her forearm.

Earlier this month a second woman said she was blindfolded, bound to a tree and the word "Hellbound” was written in marker pen across her chest.

…

In previous homophobic attacks where the FBI has been asked for assistance there is little the bureau could do.

Last July the FBI was called for help in investigating an incident involving a burning cross in front of the home of a gay man in Athens, Tennessee.  After determining the incident was homophobic rather than race related the bureau declined to help. (story)

Federal investigators examined evidence but said that even if the people responsible are caught they cannot be prosecuted under federal law. (story)

Legislation that would have included crimes against gays and lesbians in federal hate crime laws was dropped in the Senate in May. (story)

Emil Steiner at the Washington Post asks, "What’s going on in Colorado’s Evangelical community?"  Well…here’s what’s going on, and not just in Colorado…

Sitting cross-legged in jeans and an open-collar shirt, Barnes spoke in his video about evolving feelings growing up in a firm moral family: from confused little boy to adolescent racked with self-loathing and guilt.

In their only talk about sex, Barnes said his father took him on a drive and talked about what he would do if a "fag" approached him.

Barnes thought, "’Is that how you’d feel about me?’ It was like a knife in my heart, and it made me feel even more closed."

I have a strong hunch that dad was having some thoughts about how manly his boy was, and decided to lay it on the line for him.  It did it’s work.  When Abraham took his son to the sacrificial altar, so the story goes, an angel stayed his hand just at the moment he was about to put the knife into his son.  But I don’t think even an angel could stop some parents. 

Canadian Prime Minister Stephan Harper, who campaigned on a promise to hold a free vote on restoring the traditional definition of marriage, read the tea leaves and instead ended up holding a vote on whether or not to hold a vote.  You can’t govern from the far right in a country whose political process and news media haven’t been utterly corrupted by right wing billionaires and big business. 

Demonizing minorities for the sake of driving the bigot vote to the polls can only get you so far in the civilized world, and Harper apparently wants to keep on being prime minister…

Same-sex marriage file closed for good, PM says

Tory attempt to restore traditional definition fails in House; social conservatives cry foul as Harper declares debate over

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper has declared the contentious issue of same-sex marriage to be permanently closed.

After a Conservative motion calling on the government to restore the traditional definition of marriage was defeated yesterday by a resounding 175 to 123, Mr. Harper said he will not bring the matter back before Parliament.

"I don’t see reopening this question in the future," he told reporters who asked whether same-sex marriage would return to the table if the Conservatives won a majority government.

Nor does he intend to introduce a "defence of religions" act to allow public officials, such as justices of the peace, to refuse to perform same-sex marriages.

"If there ever were a time in the future where fundamental freedoms were threatened, of course the government would respond to protect them," said the Prime Minister, who voted for the motion. "The government has no plans at this time."

The declared end of the same-sex marriage debate brought comfort to those who have been fighting for such unions. But social conservatives who have supported Mr. Harper’s government said they felt betrayed by his decision to quit their fight; some said it will come back to haunt the party in the next election campaign.

"I am afraid that the Conservative Party feels that they can take social conservatives for granted in this country," said Joseph Ben Ami, executive director of the Institute for Canadian Values.

Social Conservatives…? That’s a polite way of saying ‘bigot’ isn’t it?  And as I understand recent Canadian political history, calling Harper a Tory is a bit misleading.  Harper’s party, the Conservative Party of Canada, was formed from a really odd (to this outsider) merger between the Progressive Conservative Party and the Canadian Alliance, which, particularly in Alberta, couldn’t seem to fag bash enough.  The Alliance was Canada’s bigot right, in morals and tone not all that dissimilar from the southern state republicans down here in the U.S,.  They can’t be happy with this.

But the rest of the western industrial world isn’t still arguing about evolution.  Whatever levers big money has to pull in Canada, it looks like playing the fundamentalists for votes isn’t a winning proposition.  So for now anyway, gay people in Canada don’t have to play the roll of the bogeyman herald of the apocalypse who drives the batshit crazies to the polls and keeps the conservatives in power.  They can have lives.  Real lives.

From Good As You, some thoughts about marriage verses civil unions…

The "Whites Only" fountain once dispensed the same water as the "Coloreds" one did; but the implications of having to walk the alternate line to obtain the H20 spoke volumes.

Via Blue Jersey, here’s an example of how the consequences of separate but equal play out in the lives of gay people…

Consider Paula Long and Rosalind Heggs of Camden who have been together over 15 years. They were registered as domestic partners and also had a civil union from Vermont. Under New Jersey law, they have hospital visitation rights and the right to make decisions on behalf of each other when the other is sick. That’s what’s on paper, but when Rosalind had a heart attack and needed a blood transfusion, the hospital refused to allow Paula to give consent. Paula even had a highlighted copy of the relevant law with her, but that didn’t matter to the hospital. They demanded to see their marriage certificate. (see video of their story)

This story happens over and over again from one end of this country to the other, in red states and blue alike, and it’s indicative of a mindset.  Here’s that mindset in a nutshell:

However emotionally bonded a pair of homosexual lovers may feel themselves to be, what they are doing is not marriage. Nor does society benefit in any way from treating it as if it were.

However emotionally bonded a pair of homosexual lovers may feel themselves to be…  Bigots such as Orson Scott Card cannot, will never, acknowledge there is a bond between same sex couples, but only, and grudgingly, that they may feel themselves to have one.  Card later wrote another column, in which he reduced the struggle of gay and lesbian Americans for simple justice, to a childish demand for "fairness"…

The single most effective argument being used to gain support for the redefinition of marriage to mean anything, therefore nothing, is this:

"It’s not fair that homosexuals can’t get married just like heterosexuals."

This argument is only effective because nobody is bothering to define "fairness" or to figure out whether the result will be in any way more fair than the hitherto universal definition of marriage.

When our kids were little, we made it a very clear rule in our family that fairness didn’t mean that everybody got exactly what anybody else got.

"Suppose we buy a dress for your sister," I said to my son. "Would you want us to get a dress for you too?"

Never mind for a moment, the brain dead sexism in that example (picture Card telling his daughter, "suppose we buy blue jeans for your brother.  Would you want us to get blue jeans for you too?"  "Well…yeah dad…why not?"  But maybe females aren’t allowed to wear pants in Card’s family…)  Just look at it for a moment.  Card is saying there, that to ask hospital staff to let you be with your other half as they lay sick, and maybe even dying, is like a child throwing a tantrum because daddy didn’t bring him a present too.  Read that entire column, and if you aren’t a bigot like he is, one sickening thing just leaps out at you like a ghoul at a fun house, and laughs in your face: nowhere in that column is there even the slightest hint that Card can see there may be a deep and profound bond of love between a same sex couple.  It just doesn’t even cross his mind.

Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex.  Homosexual sex.  Because they’re disfunctional…. 

But it is grossly unfair to demand, in the name of "fairness," that the normal pattern of marriage and family be deprived of its privileged position in our society, just so a few people can feel better about dysfunctions that even they insist are nobody’s fault.

This is the mindset that same sex couples have to face every time they try to assert their rights as a couple.  The hospital staff that kept Paula Long out of the room where her other half was suffering from a heart attack, treated their union like it was some kind of pathetic imitation of their own, because that’s exactly what they thought of it.  Equal marriage rights won’t change their minds about that.  But what it can do is warn them upfront, that if they let their cheap conceits and bar stool prejudices devastate the lives of innocent people, there will be consequences.   Separate but equal on the other hand, merely validates their prejudices and conceits.  As long as they believe they can put the knife in our hearts and get away with it, they’ll keep doing it.  Because it is unfair to demand that normal families loose their privileged position in our society, just so a few people can feel better about their dysfunctions .

When Bill Flanigan admitted his partner Robert Daniel to the hospital because of AIDS-related complications his loss was tremendous.

Kept from Daniel during his last hours alive, Flanigan was denied the chance to say goodbye to his partner of more than five years. He filed a lawsuit against the University of Maryland Medical System in Baltimore City Circuit Court on February 27.

Not only was Flanigan refused the right to be with Daniel, he was also not permitted to share Daniel’s treatment wishes with his physicians, according to a statement issued by Lambda Legal. All because the staff from the Maryland Medical System Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore said Flanigan was not family.

…

It was only after Daniel’s sister and mother arrived from out of town that the Shock Trauma Center released information on Daniel’s status that had been repeatedly denied to Flanigan, and allowed the entire family — including Flanigan — to see Daniel. But it was too late — Daniel was no longer conscious and his eyes were taped shut, and his wishes not to have life prolonging measures performed had been denied. There were tubes in his throat.

That was particularly hard for Flanigan to take.

At one point Daniel briefly regained consciousness, according to a nurse, and he tried to pull out the breathing tube. In response hospital staff tied down Daniel’s arms.

You want us to get a dress for you too?

From the Cartoon Page…

Last month, a conference of US Catholic bishops approved and released a letter entitled "Ministry to Persons With a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care". Calling homosexuality "objectively disordered" the document complains that western culture recognizes "no acts as intrinsically evil". It asserts that "any tendency toward sexual pleasure that is not subordinated to the greater goods of love and marriage is disordered, in that it inclines a person towards a use of sexuality that does not accord with the divine plan for creation". Then later, without any apparent irony, the document states that "many in our culture have difficulty understanding Catholic moral teaching because they do not understand that morality has an objective basis."

The document ultimately demands that homosexuals abstain from any and all forms of sexual intimacy congruent with their nature, and says that "chaste living is an affirmation of all that is human, and is the will of God. It is we who suffer when we violate the dictates of our own human nature."

Which is true enough, as any gay person who has tried to deny their nature will tell you. In 1975, one of Love In Action’s first clients, Jack McIntyre, committed suicide rather then, by his own reckoning, make one more promise to God he knew he could not keep. The effect of the Guidelines for Pastoral Care will without a doubt be to drive other gay men and women into self annihilating behaviors, if not outright suicide. "Chastity", say the Bishops, "means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being." But it is precisely that inner unity they intend to doggedly destroy within gay and lesbian people, in the name of god, in the name of Jesus, and in the name of love. How easy it is, to take that body and soul wholeness away from someone else, when you don’t have to live with the pain and the emptiness. It is we who suffer, when we violate the dictates of our own human nature, not the ones who teach us to fear and loath our human nature, the nature that our creator bestowed upon us.

Matthew Shepard would have been thirty years old today.

Card 18 – Milt Romney:

Milt – while running against Ted Kennedy in the 1994 Massachusetts senate race…

When Romney ran…for the Senate in 1994, he wrote a letter to the Mass Log Cabin Club in which he pledged: “[A]s we seek to establish full equality for America’s gay and lesbian citizens, I will provide more effective leadership than my opponent.” During the same campaign, when he was accused of having once described gay people as “perverse” during a religious meeting of Mormons, Romney’s campaign issued a forceful statement decrying the accusation as false and reiterating that Romney respected “all people regardless of their race, creed, or sexual orientation.”

Milt – February 2006…while campaigning for the 2008 GOP nomination for President of the United State…

SALT LAKE CITY — Speaking before an adoring audience of Utah Republicans last night, Governor Mitt Romney drew a link between America’s prestige around the world and the legalization of same-sex marriages in Massachusetts.

”America cannot continue to lead the family of nations around the world if we suffer the collapse of the family here at home," Romney said, calling the Supreme Judicial Court’s legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts ”a blow to the family."

Milt – while running for governor of Massachusetts in 2001…

During his 2001 run for governor, his campaign distributed bright pink flyers at the June Pride parade declaring “Mitt and Kerry wish you a great Pride weekend!” During his inaugural speech, he said it was important to defend civil rights “regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or race.” He appointed eight openly gay and lesbian people to high profile positions in his administration. And before he decided to run for president — that is to say, before he needed to establish some strong anti-gay bonafides — Romney doubled the budget line item for the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth.

Milt – Last May…while campaigning for the 2008 GOP nomination for President of the United State…

This would be the same commission, mind you, that Romney tried to disband in highly public fashion last May.

There’s this ethical question that goes something along the lines of, If someone offered to give you a million dollars to kill some random person, with the certainty that you would get clean away with it…would you do it?  There was a time when I would have been shocked to hear people admit that they would. 

What I would like to do now is change the terms of the test a little…

If you were running for President of the United States…and someone offered you a million votes in a swing state to kill some completely random person, with complete certainty that your name would never be attached to that murder…would you do it…?

This is not a theoretical question.

Via Pam’s House Blend…  More anger from the kook pews…

Subject: re: you
From: "P. BELL"
Date: Wed, November 22, 2006 3:39 am
To: pam [at] pamspaulding.com

Why should you get the same privledges as we married couples do? I am not here to judge you. Love the person, hate the sin. But about you and Bush? I pray that law will be passed so you will NEVER be recognized in the US. Your beef will him is because he actually wants us to be more like we were when we first started this country-Chrisitian roots and all. I am not talking about the nutso Chrisitians out there who make a fool of themselves to be seen, I am talking about the people who really have a relationship with God, living the truth.

Did you know that homosexuality is specifically mentioned in the bible? Listed as ABNORMAL, DISCUSTING, and an ABOMANATION. You were not created to be this way, and so when you SLANDER a person who is againist you, mock their beliefs, and try to screw up this nation even more than it is for my children’s future, than you will deal with me.

I am not talking about the nutso Christians…  You know this is only going to get worse, now that their White House messiah has lost his rubber stamp congress.  And never mind the nutso Christians.  Take a long hard look at how Mitt Romney and John McCain are belly flopping into the fundamentalist gutter now that the next presidential election cycle is closing in on us.  

The problem the republicans face is that their policies are just not popular.  Make the rich, richer…make the poor and middle-class poorer…rape the environment…curtail civil liberties…war, war and more war…  There is no majority in America for any of that.  So for the past few decades the republicans have been cobbling together a rough coalition of faux libertarians, fascists, Me-First Americans and bigots and with the ascendancy of George Bush, it’s won them elections…barely.  Corruption and wild deficit spending cost them enough of the faux libertarians and the Me-Firsts that they lost last time.  But make  no mistake: the religious right and the rest of the bigot vote stuck with them.  They lost the voters who finally got fed up with the spending and the corruption and the war.  They loose the bigot vote now, and they’re done for decades to come and they know it.

The point being…don’t assume that as the Gay Bogyman looses it’s power to sway the independent voters that the republicans will stop using it.  They can’t take even a middle ground position on gay rights, without loosing the bigot vote.

So republicans running for president in the coming years are going to fall all over themselves in the coming election to prove that they’re bigger gay bashers then the other guys.  And in the process, they are going to deliberately rouse the passions of the mob.  Because that mob is a vital part of their political base.  Even long after it stops winning them elections.  Because there is loosing, and there is having the bottom fall out.  So they will keep inciting the mob.

And somewhere right here in America, some random gay people are going to die for the sake of giving those campaigning politicians some extra votes they wouldn’t otherwise have gotten.  Think about that, the next time you hear one of them talk about Morals, and Values and God and Country.

…and why I’m so thrilled that our gutter crawling bigot of a Governor John Ehrlich got the boot last Tuesday.  In May of 2005, Ehrlich vetoed a domestic partnership bill, saying it would "…open the door to undermine the sanctity of traditional marriage."  This was, some of us noted, at a time when he was conducting a whisper smear campaign against the family of Baltimore Mayor O’Malley, who everyone figured would be his democratic challenger in the upcoming election.  Ehrlich and his henchmen spread lies that O’Mally was having secret extramarital affairs utterly without concern for the effect on O’Malley’s wife and children.  So much for the sanctity of marriage.

Ehrlich Vetoes Bill Extending Rights to Gay Couples

Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. vetoed a bill yesterday that would have granted rights to gay partners who register with the state, concluding after weeks of intense deliberations that the legislation threatened "the sanctity of traditional marriage."

The emotionally charged bill was among 24 that Ehrlich (R) rejected yesterday afternoon, including legislation to raise the state’s minimum wage by $1, allow early voting in elections and heighten oversight of the state’s troubled juvenile justice system. Another measure sought by gay rights activists that would have extended a property transfer tax exemption to domestic partners was also scuttled.

(Emphasis mine)  His staff made a big noise to the news media afterward that he would "probably" sign the bill adding gay people to Maryland’s anti-discrimination laws.  But that was another of his little moves to the middle made only when he knew he had no choice.  The statehouse would have overridden a veto of that particular bill and he knew it.  But it was useful to put the word out there that he’d sign it, because he’d just made a move which shocked, shocked, the chattering class…

Ehrlich’s decision to side, almost without exception, with business interests and social conservatives surprised some analysts, who thought he might try to burnish his credentials as a moderate by allowing some of the session’s more controversial bills to become law.

Most of the legislation vetoed yesterday had been strongly opposed by Republican lawmakers. But Ehrlich’s appeal to swing voters was key to his 2002 election in a state where registered Democrats still hold a nearly 2-to-1 advantage.

"I think it’s just breathtaking that he’s casting his lot with the right wing of his party," said Tom Hucker, executive director of Progressive Maryland…"He ran for governor as the moderate, affable son of an automobile dealer who would stick up for working-class families."

No it wasn’t breathtaking.  It was eminently predictable.  Ehrlich ran as a moderate.  But he wasn’t.  A simple glance at his political career would have made it obvious to anyone. He’s pure Ellen Sauerbrey Republican, and there are no moderates in the Maryland republican party since the Sauerbrey wing took it over.

A leading Republican lawmaker praised him for making "a principled decision."

"I know the governor wrestled with this decision because he may be sympathetic to some of the intentions," said House Minority Whip Anthony J. O’Donnell (R-Calvert). "But sometimes bad laws are the result of good intentions."

Modeled after laws in California, Hawaii and other states, the legislation would have granted nearly a dozen rights to unmarried partners who register with the state. Among those: the right to be treated as an immediate family member during hospital visits, to make health care decisions for incapacitated partners and to have private visits in nursing homes.

A principled decision.  Anyone who knows a same sex couple, knows exactly the threat that constantly hangs over them from their lack of legal recognition…

A woman who could have benefited from the bill, Stacey Kargman-Kaye of Baltimore, said yesterday that she was heartbroken. "I don’t understand how a human being who has a significant other and children could not see the need for this," she said.

Kargman-Kaye, 37, said that after she emerged from heart surgery five years ago, a nurse literally pushed away her longtime partner, who was there to support her, "because we’re not considered a family in the eyes of Maryland."

But republicans just can’t seem to twist the knife in us enough… 

A group of conservative activists had launched a petition drive in recent weeks that sought to repeal the bill if it became law. They argued that it was part of a "homosexual agenda" advancing in Annapolis. Maryland allows residents to put legislation passed by the General Assembly to a public vote if enough signatures are gathered.

Del. Donald H. Dwyer Jr. (R-Anne Arundel), a leader of the petition drive, said organizers would soon decide whether to continue, in case lawmakers override Ehrlich’s veto in January. Dwyer said he was "very pleased that the governor has sent a strong message about the morality of the state."

Dwyer had been puking anti-gay venom into the Maryland statehouse for years now, and I am delighted to say he lost in his bid for re-election this year.  Good riddence.  Perhaps the voters in Anne Arundel Country had just about enough of his brand of morality…

Baltimore man wins gravesite battle

A gay Baltimore man has won a courtroom battle to keep his late partner buried in the Tennessee grave the two men chose.

But the victory is not absolute. Kevin-Douglas Olive said the parents of Russell Groff have indicated they plan to appeal the Nov. 2 ruling that Olive received Thursday.

“This is awesome,” Olive said. “It may not be over if they appeal, but I feel so good.”

Baltimore City Orphans’ Court Judge Karen Friedman ruled against Lowell and Carolyn Groff, who sought to overturn their son’s will and move his body to a family cemetery.

Groff’s parents argued in court Sept. 25 and 26 that their 26-year-old son didn’t know what he was doing when he completed his will and burial instructions shortly before his death on Nov. 23, 2004.

Groff, who was HIV-positive, died from a staph infection that spread throughout his body.

Olive said Groff was estranged from his parents at the time of his death, and completed a will and burial instructions in anticipation of the legal battle.

So he knew what he was doing all right.  He knew his own parents would try to take him from the man he loved after death.  And they tried.  And they might Still succeed.  Morality. 

Olive, who married Groff according to local Quaker tradition in 2003, said his battle illuminates the need for equal marriage rights for gay couples.

“I won, but I wouldn’t have had to go through this at all if the state had some sort of provision that allowed my partner and I to have legalized our relationship in some sense,” he said. “This is kind of bittersweet because I had to go through a lot of shit to get this.”

A principled decision…  That simple Quaker marriage of two young men in love in 2003 did nothing, Nothing to harm the marriage of any heterosexual couple in this state, or anywhere else.  It takes nothing away from anyone save for this one thing:  the ability to twist the knife in the broken heart of a gay person who has just lost the love of their lives.  There is no pain like the loss of a loved one.  What kind of person wants to make that bottomless loss even harder for someone to bear?  What kind of person sees righteousness in it? 

You have to utterly dehumanize the person who suffers.  (Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex…)  But before you can do that, you have to take your conscience around behind the barn and kill it.  And you do that, so you can make other people scapegoats for everything fine and noble and honorable that a human being could be, that you could never live up to.  All your cheap failures of character, all your pathetic evasions of reality, all those need a scapegoat.  Otherwise, you’ve only yourself to blame.  And the best scapegoat of all, the one you can hate the most without reservation, is the one who faced their life squarely, honestly, and honorably, and became everything a human being can, that you could never be.  It isn’t the sanctity of marriage but the sanctity of gay bashing that they’re afraid of loosing.  Because if we don’t bleed, if we can’t be made to bleed, then they’re not righteous.

Why we fight:

So after a generally positive election day, one where I can take some solid comfort in the fact that although seven states voted to strip same sex couples of any and all legal rights one state refused to go along, I find myself sweating blood again over the situation in Massachusetts, the only state in the union so far, to allow same sex couples to actually marry, as opposed to being civil-unioned.

In states where it only takes a minority of voters to sign enough petitions to put a referendum on the ballot, and only a minority of registered voters actually vote on the measures, anti-gay bigots have been enormously successfully in writing their gay and lesbian neighbors out of their state constitutions.  But in most of those states, the state-houses have had little to no backbone in them to resist the hate.  The religious right is powerful in the heartland, and in the south in particular, and many politicians in those regions make their careers either catering to it, or kowtowing to it when necessary.  Standing for the devil and against the baby Jesus just isn’t a winning proposition. 

But more and more in the blue states, the fight against hate is being joined.  In California, the statehouse there actually passed a law granting same sex couples the right to marry (which Arnold to the everlasting shame of his name promptly vetoed).  And in Massachusetts they’re not taking the venomous hatreds of the anti-gay gutter laying down.  And they’re not just fighting on principle either.  They’re fighting, finally, just like the enemy does.  To win.  By any means necessary. 

Good.  Because that is what it will take.

Lawmakers voted to recess the ConCon until 2 p.m. Jan. 2, 2007 by a 109 to 87 vote, which is the last day of the legislative session. Technically, lawmakers could reconvene to take the issue up, but it’s extremely unlikely. Which means that the amendment has died by procedural maneuver.

When I first read the news I was both elated, and still a bit worried.  Why not just adjourn altogether?  Why leave prejudice and hate that one last chance and keep gay couples in the state, and all over the nation looking to Massachusetts for hope, still holding their breaths?  Well…here’s why:

The significance of the recess vote as opposed to an adjournment vote is that Governor Mitt Romney cannot call the legislature back into session.

Tactics.  They have a bigot governor who is kissing up to the religious right in hopes of making a run at the presidency.  He’s been kicking the homosexual devil for their approval for months now (which he’ll never get because he’s a Mormon, but that’s another story…).  But in this state the fighters for liberty and justice for all have taken full measure of the enemy.  They understand perfectly well that they’re in a knife fight, and so they brought a knife.  That’s how you fight a knife fight: to win.  Let the gutter howl that they’re being denied their rights.  It was their neighbor’s rights after all, that they were seeking to take away.  This fight was never about rights.  It was about power.  It was about a group of venomous haters trying to reserve democracy, and its promise of liberty and justice for all, to themselves.  If that’s what you’re about, then don’t complain when someone else comes along and takes some of that away from you: brother, you asked for it.

"I’m probably 3,000 feet to the right of Attila the Hun. But the gracious people, the socially conscious people, the liberal people, you’re the ones who always want everyone to be heard. What about these 170,000 people?" said Democratic Rep. Marie Parente.

Yes, we’re the ones who are always wanting everyone to be heard.  And yes, you’re not.  And that’s the whole point here. One-hundred and seventy billion people would still not have the right to take away a single individual’s right to equality under the law, let alone the rights of tens of thousands of their neighbors.  They only way you do that, is to assert a right of force, by virtue of the power of your shear numbers.  The term for that isn’t democracy, it’s mob rule.  And that’s why we have checks and balances in our form of government, to prevent democracy from degenerating first into the rule of mobs, and then into tyranny.  We The People includes your gay and lesbian neighbors too you drooling moron.  It includes all of us.  And yes, we are the ones who believe that.  And yes, you’re not.

The people can always vote the politicians who stood by the gay minority out of office.  But that takes more work, and it means every voter must weigh one vote taken in the statehouse against many.  Maybe a voter does not like the vote their representative made on the same sex marriage amendment, but they generally like their other votes.  Do they vote a politician they generally like out of office on that one single issue?  Now suddenly, the bigots need the rest of the population to be as passionate about denying gay people equality as they are.  And the population at large just isn’t.  They might vote against us if it’s presented to them as a single issue.  But it is not the single issue of most voters and the bigots know it.

This is how the tables turn on the bigots.  For decades now they’ve been fighting against equality for gay people in situations where they’ve been able to win on their sheer passion, against a voting public that is lukewarm at best in support of us, but only lukewarm at worst in their own prejudices.  They may find us distasteful, but they’re not going to throw out a politician they generally like because that politician let the homos marry each other.  At least not in the blue states.  Every time the gay haters have tried to hold a blue state statehouse accountable when it has supported, in some measure, the rights of same sex couples, they have failed.  They failed in Vermont. They failed in California.  And they failed in Massachusetts.  And that is why there were 109 votes to recess yesterday.  The voters Have spoken, and what they’ve said is they really don’t care that much about gay rights.  And the bigots know it.  That’s why the bigots want to fight this in a forum where they know they only need a minority of the registered voters to win, and where they can make the stab against their gay and lesbian neighbors as easy and painless as possible for just enough voters, to rewrite their constitutions.  Tactics.  They can’t complain now that they were outmaneuvered.

Well…they can…they’re hypocrites too after all.  And they can probably still keep winning this way in the red states.  Most of them.  They lost after all in Arizona, which is more "leave us alone" libertarian then conservative (no daylight savings time for us, thank you…).  But they’ve about picked off all the low hanging apples now, and the rest of it is going to be a fight, and no bigot ever wanted a fair fight.  A fight where they massively outnumber their victims, sure. Their vision of democracy is more mob rule then anything resembling the vision of the founders.  Which is why the founders put in all those checks and balances.  A democracy is a government of citizens, of equals, not of mobs.