Saro, who first said he liked boys to a classmate in sixth grade, is like many of today’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youths who openly discuss their sexual orientation and identity with friends, and sometimes family, before entering high school. In doing so, experts say, these youths are escaping the isolation of generations before them but also finding themselves vulnerable to harassment — or worse. A California eighth-grader who expressed interest in asking another boy to be his valentine was fatally shot in February in a case that drew national attention.
“Within any given school system, there may be a very accepting crowd and a very hateful crowd,” said Robert-Jay Green, executive director of the Rockway Institute in San Francisco, a national center for LGBT research and public policy. “You have to find a way to avoid the people who will hurt you and keep close to the group that will accept you.”
In recent years, 110 Gay Straight Alliance clubs, which are common in high schools nationwide, have sprouted in middle schools, including nine in Maryland and Virginia. Kevin Jennings, the founder of the first club, said he “never anticipated” they would also form in middle grades. His organization, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, is creating age-appropriate pamphlets to respond to the trend.
This year, students in 1,046 middle schools took part in the Day of Silence, a protest against LGBT intolerance, organizers said, double the participation level of the previous year.
“Unlike people of my generation, where there was very little visibility and a great sense of sadness, these kids know gay people are out there,” Jennings said. “They have a language now to understand their feelings.”
And there’s this:
The first time Saro said aloud what he had always felt — that he liked boys — came when he lived in Prince George’s County. The words tumbled out, Saro said, as he and another sixth-grader were walking home. The boy shrugged it off with a “So?”
Later that year, that boy called him an anti-gay slur. When Saro ran to tell the teacher, according to a letter his parents wrote to the school, he was told: “Well, you act like one, so you should be used to it by now.”
The issues are difficult and complex — for parents and for kids. The article is sensitive and complete. Please read it.
July 6th, 2008 by MICHAEL STICKINGS, Assistant Editor
So says Weekly Standard editor and Fox News host Fred Barnes, who argued today on the latter that McCain should win over the right by bashing gays:
In particular, gays in the military for one. We know Barack Obama is for allowing gays in the military, and Bill Clinton tried to do, but backed off. This is not a popular issue. Gay marriage is another one. These are both issues that I think McCain’s going to have to use. You can’t ignore the right. If he does, he’ll lose.
Beautiful.
Playing on Americans’ fears of the Other — that is, playing to their bigotry (towards blacks, towards foreigners, towards gays, etc.) — has long been a core Republican “strategy,” notably for Nixon, who, during the upheavals of the late-’60s and early’-70s, employed the Southern Strategy to great effect (playing on fears over civil rights and the counter-culture), but also for Reagan, Bush I (the ‘88 campaign against Dukakis was particularly nasty), and Bush II (who has done his utmost to terrify Americans about terrorism), and it continues to this day, literally. Indeed, we have seen it already in the smear campaign against Obama, and it will only get worse going forward.
And it’s helpful when a prominent smearer (and bigot) like Barnes — he may not speak officially for McCain, but the Standard backs McCain all the way, and both it and Fox News are two of the leading vehicles for the smear campaign) — comes out and exposes the strategy publicly in offering advice to McCain on national television. Read the rest of this entry »
In his hilarious post Monday noting that the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow website auto-replaces the word “gay” with the word “homosexual” — which led to some blogger fun when a sprinter named Tyson Gay won the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials — Jazz asks:
Is the word “homosexual” somehow perceived to be more pejorative than “gay” these days?
The answer, Jazz, is YES! There is a linguistic battle going on. And in my circles it’s got a long and contentious lineage.
While, as gays and lesbians, we seek to expand ourselves and our relationships to become whole people and full participants in broad communities, the Religious Right seeks to reduce us to nothing more than a sex act.
It’s as if we reduced every heterosexual to that too explicit coupled moment we all wish we hadn’t been forced to watch taking place on the park bench or at the beach or in the movie theater or any place else in public! Only with the gay person, the Religious Right hopes to evoke that moment — to force us to witness it — with just that one little word…
H o m o S E X u a l
For that — or whatever reason — the Religious Right has fought to keep the word homosexual in use in newsrooms across the country. And I have been following their fight for decades. In February The Washington Times, pretty much the last big hold out, tossed ‘homosexual’ out and approved the use of the word ‘gay’ instead.
Most everywhere else long ago accepted the use of ‘gay’ and/or ‘lesbian.’ In 2006 the AP updated its stylebook. Here is a history of LGBT-related Stylebook entries. Here the New York Times, Washington Post LGBT-Related Style Guidelines.
In 1982 I wrote a paper on the etymology of the word gay. I’ve excerpted a good bit of it again below…
Knowing that it hasn’t got the slightest chance of passage, I completely ignored the introduction of a marriage protection amendment in the U.S. Senate this week.
Now of course this is old news to all of you, but it only hit me just now that two of the principal sponsors are a far-right Republican who hired prostitutes and another far-right Republican who was arrested for soliciting gay sex in an airport men’s room.
I couldn’t let it pass without posting. What kind of gay blogger would I otherwise be???
IN OTHER MARRIAGE NEWS: The LATimes reports that same-sex unions have boosted California’s June wedding totals — more than two and a half times the usual number of couples were issued a license.
Arizona Friday, “In the final hours of one of the longest state legislative sessions on record, state Senators approved a measure sending a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to the fall ballot.”
Today Gloria Borger said on Chris Matthews that pollsters are wondering if, for the first time in history, young voters will outnumber those over 60. Whether this time or next, beware their wrath! They will take their country back!
As lgbt pride marches step off in big cities across the country, it’s important to note what takes place at some of the smaller ones.Central Pennsylvania was a focal point in the Democratic primary for its white working class voters. Those same voters are made uncomfortable by gays on the march.While this year marks the 38th pride march in San Francisco and New York, it will be only the third time that gays march in Pennsylvania’s state capital, Harrisburg.
When marchers there were greeted that first year by a strong chorus of opposition, a husband and wife team spontaneously set up a program rooted in their church’s teachings. [See clarification below.]
Silent Witness PA (SWPA) is an organization of gay and straight allies dedicated to providing a non-confrontational buffer between those who condemn others based on their sexual orientation or identity and those they condemn. We provide visual protection from “street preachers” and protesters at events such as Pridefests…using our bodies and rainbow umbrellas as shields. In times of need, we intervene to prevent confrontations between protesters and event participants, often acting as escorts for those who would like to attend such events. Where there are those who publicly promote hate, we will be there to help provide a loving, supportive front opposing them. We are not counter-protesters. Instead, we provide a visual representation of support for those in our society who may feel marginalized… Our purpose is to act as a “human spiritual firewall” between GLBT folks and those individuals who believe GLBT’s are an abomination on the face of the earth.
They travel to pride events throughout PA. Their event schedule is here. Their training schedule is here.
RELATED: Those Pennsylvania protesters hit the big cities too. They lost a court battle in Philadelphia in January 2007. Said the judge, “There is no constitutional right to drown out the speech of another person.”
UPDATE: Alanna Berger emails a clarification:
We did not spontaneously set up a program rooted in our church’s teachings. Originally, Silent Witnesses, organized by MCC of the Spirit in Harrisburg, held up signs welcoming the GLBT community to the PrideFest. In 2005, this tactic no longer proved adequate in preventing angry and violent responses to the protesters, so Blaise and I worked with one of the original Silent Witnesses and brainstormed new tactics. We came up with ideas in the spring of 2006, purchased safety vests that we modified to be easily identified as Silent Witnesses, found a donor of 24 rainbow umbrellas and trained more than 70 additional people from four Unitarian Universalist churches as well as members of the Greater Harrisburg Area in responding to spiritual violence with non-violence. The teachings are similar to Gandhi’s and Dr. Martin Luther King’s and not exclusive to Unitarian Universalism. We were asked by the Harrisburg Parade organizer to lead the parade, so this was not spontaneous – we knew months in advance.
The original founder is Yvonne Wilson from MCC of the Spirit in Harrisburg, and we refer to that group she started as the Original Silent Witnesses. Blaise and I – along with Rosemary Mirocco from MCC – came up with the ideas to use the safety vests and umbrellas. We consider this the second generation of silent witnesses, which we refer to as Silent Witness PA.
My mind started thinking of the infamous Senator Larry Craig, then of Conservatives, then of hypocrisy, and then of “family values and moral values”–perhaps not in that exact order.
Then, my mind somehow wandered back to the 2,000 and 2004 elections, and how, during those elections, Conservatives blanketed the electronic and printed media with messages of how our country had lost its moral compass; how Americans had lost their family and moral values; how Republicans and Conservatives–if elected–were going to re-instill those values in government, in society and anywhere else they could; how our new president would “restore honor and dignity to the White House.”
As a matter of fact, just prior to the 2004 elections a whole new class of voters was created, the “values voters,” and political analysts claim that moral values and family values trounced every other value or issue in the 2004 elections–even the economy, the Iraq war, and terrorism–and were responsible for the Republican victories that year.
Our great, fair and balanced Fox News proudly proclaimed on November 4, 2004,
“Though the airwaves preceding the election were rife with talk of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, the management of the war in Iraq, job creation and even the so-called legions of angry, young voters — it turns out good old ‘family values‘ may have been the key to President Bush’s successful Election Day strategy.”
The Democrats were “doomed” until they can woo the voters who belong to this new political force, the values voters.
But wait, it is now 2008 and the presidential campaign is in full swing. It is awfully quiet out there when it comes to “good old” family values and moral values. Where are the Republicans to once again tout their moral and family values superiority and to claim such values as Conservatives-only territory?
The last time I remember a Republican presidential candidate addressing that issue was Mitt Romney back in December of 2007.
… there are signs that family values have lost their punch as a campaign issue. Most voters say family values in general are important to them, but a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds they don’t care much about candidates’ personal lives. Political analysts say voters and candidates have broader, more immediate concerns: the ongoing U.S. action in Iraq and Afghanistan, nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea, the threat of terrorism and an economy that’s putting stress on low- and middle-income people.
And,
The “traditional” family — a married couple with kids — made up fewer than 22% of U.S. households last year, according to the Census, down from 40% in 1970. Roughly one-fifth of Americans have been divorced. Nearly two in five U.S. births last year were out of wedlock, more than twice as high as in 1980. More than half the country says same-sex partners should be able to marry or form civil unions.
It could also be that when comparing the major Republican presidential candidates against the major Democratic presidential candidates during this year’s elections in terms of “family values,” the Republicans do not fare as well as the Democrats. According to USA Today:
Among the Republicans, Giuliani is in his third marriage while McCain and Thompson are each in his second… Romney and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee are married to their high school sweethearts. On the Democratic side…Dennis Kucinich, 61, is in his third marriage…Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, former North Carolina senator John Edwards and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson are married to their original spouses. So is New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, despite her husband’s affair while he was president…Overall, “the Democratic candidates actually have more stable family lives than the Republicans,” says Tony Fabrizio, a GOP pollster
On Giuliani, in particular, USA Today said:
The most surprising candidate this year has been Giuliani. He remains a top GOP contender despite his longstanding support for abortion rights and his widely publicized extramarital affair with Judith Nathan — to whom he is now married — during his previous marriage. He’s even been endorsed by Pat Robertson, a leading Christian conservative who says the key issue is who can best fight terrorism.
And finally,
Americans also have seen major cultural changes become woven into society. Divorce, blended families and women in the workforce are common, and polls show most people support gay civil rights. “First we had the feminist and the sexual revolutions, and then we went through a long period where so much of politics was a backlash against those movements,” says Frances Fox Piven, a sociologist and political scientist at the City University of New York Graduate Center. “That’s kind of been worked out now. People have adjusted.”
Yes, these are all plausible explanations as to why Democrats are not being lectured as much on “values” by Republicans. But on a lazy, summer Saturday afternoon in Texas, the mind does funny things, like recalling names such as:
David Vitter, Jack Abramoff, Mark Foley, Bob Packwood, Bob Ney, Randy “Duke” Cunningham, Ted Haggard, Rick Renzi, Bob Allen, and, yes, the one that got my mind wandering to begin with, the inimitable Larry Craig.
And the mind comes up with additional and interesting explanations.
A note to my gay friends and readers: This lazy afternoon’s epistle should in no way be viewed as critical of anyone’s sexual orientation. On the contrary, I find it distasteful when people cover-up their God-given sexual orientation for political purposes, and I find it morally unforgivable when people misuse their positions of power to legislate against, prosecute or punish the perfectly legal and human actions and behavior of those of their own sexual orientation.
It’s been tried before, in a variety of ways. Starting with the time of our American Revolution…and continuing through the War of 1812, the Mexican army attack on the Alamo, the Spanish American War, and the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor – through two world wars – this country, when united, has never been defeated.
In fact, history will show that each time America has been attacked from without, she has grown notably stronger!…
The Communists took a different tack. … they devised a cunning plan to establish Communist cells in this country, made up almost totally of Americans…
By changing the moral compass of our country, especially in the young generation, they would literally take over our culture – and eventually our government – from within.
That’s right folks! Like the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and the cunning communists, we’re sneaking into your towns to recruit the young!
And now, according to facts just revealed by Focus on the Family, a frightening new assault is well under way, on our very processes of government. Focus is the leading family advocacy outfit in the country and happens to be based in Colorado, where they’ve had a ringside seat for the activities of a multimillionaire named Tim Gill. This man and other extremely wealthy men who share his priorities have demonstrated that enough money can buy virtually anything … maybe even a country.
Tim Gill founded Quark, a very successful software company, and 14 years ago began pouring much of his massive wealth into the homosexual rights movement. Dozens of gay rights organizations owe their existence to Gill. That list includes the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN – the nation’s leading homosexual activist group in America’s schools). I’ve written here before about the goals GLSEN has for our schools and the minds of our young; they are determined to see that all teachers imbed acceptance, even admiration, for every kind of deviant behavior into the curricula and permanent perceptions of America’s students.
I’m sad to say how many people in my rural Georgia community agree with Pat Boone. We’ve got some real work to be done here.
RELATED: It was nice to see Peter Wehner write in the WaPo today that Christian conservative “critics of Obama have an obligation to provide a fair and honest critique, and the attacks leveled by Dobson fall terribly short of that standard.”Morbo has the entire James Dobson salvo against Barack Obama and detects an air of desperation. I certainly agree.
Scott at World o’Crap has some fun walking us through WorldNetDaily CEO Joseph Farah showing us how to sniff out the subversive elements infesting America’s vital news organs. He begins with a quote from a Dobson radio ad:
“Mom…”
If the Colorado legislature has its way…
“A man in a dress came into the girl’s restroom at school today.”
We could all be dealing with a new type of predator.
“Honey, there was a man in the women’s showers at the gym today, and the management said it was, it was Colorado law.”
And instead of our kids worrying about class work, they’ll be worrying about who might be in the restroom with them.
“No way I’m going in there (school bell), I’d rather wait all day if a guy’s in there.”
Our children must be protected from predators, but if Governor Ritter won’t veto Senate Bill 200, all public restrooms, including those in our public schools, will be open to anyone of any sex.
Have you ever opened up your local newspaper and wondered why there is so much coverage of homosexuals and issues of concern to homosexuals?
Next year is my ten year “anniversary” with my spousal equivalent — though we’ve always had to wonder, anniversary of what??? In our case we chose the date that made the difference. (There’s also the question of which finger to wear the ring on — by wearing it on the traditional wedding finger am I trying to pass as a married straight man in this rural Georgia town?)We’re thinking maybe to celebrate that decade we’ll pack up a dozen of our best friends and head for California:
Ride a cable car. Visit Alcatraz. Walk across the Golden Gate Bridge. Get hitched?
Massachusetts was the first state to legalize same-sex weddings, but California is the first to allow nonresidents to marry - and 87 same-sex couples from other states and countries have already filed marriage licenses during their trips to San Francisco.
The number of non-Californians getting married in the city is expected to spike today as tourists arrive in advance of this weekend’s gay pride events. As of Thursday afternoon, 206 same-sex couples had appointments to get marriage licenses at City Hall today, making it the busiest day so far.
Already, the same-sex pairs have come from all corners of the United States, including liberal places like Seattle and New York City and conservative bastions such as South Carolina, Kentucky and Kansas.
We wouldn’t be the first from Georgia:
David Whatley, 31, and Michael Potts, 34, live in Atlanta and know Georgia won’t recognize their marriage anytime soon. But when they saw the California weddings on the news June 17, they bought their plane tickets immediately. They purchased wedding rings two days later, arrived at SFO last Friday morning and were married within hours - with a stranger serving as their witness.
“We figured we couldn’t wait for Georgia to get onboard. We had to come across the country to do it instead,” Whatley said. “We’re tired of intolerance. San Francisco’s a very forward-looking city, and we’re glad to be a part of it.”
Catching up in other gay marriage news: the Arizona Senate rejected a proposed ballot measure to amend the state constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage.
Gill Action, in my estimation, bears some resemblance to GOPAC, the political action committee Gingrich wielded to obtain the GOP’s landslide victories in 1994, when — along with taking control of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in four decades — Republicans stormed state legislatures to seize power in 18 chambers. In the 2006 election, by its own account, Gill Action’s nationwide donor base directed some $2.8 million to 68 candidates across 11 states. And 56 of those candidates won — presumably knocking out 56 other candidates who weren’t so friendly with the gays.
Gill Action isn’t the financial juggernaut that GOPAC was, nor does it have the sweeping ideological agenda of Gingrich’s Contract With America. But Gill’s emphasis on growing power from the bottom up — planting one school board member or city council person at a time until Congress is eventually overrun by politicians who support LGBT rights — is strikingly similar to the way GOPAC helped create a Congress full of pols who had been vetted by the Christian right before rising up through the GOP ranks. It was Gingrich’s revolution that laid a foundation for the Rovian politics of fear that has locked gays out of relationship recognition at the state level nearly across the country.
In the course of my conversation with [Executive Director Patrick] Guerriero and [Political Director Bill] Smith, I hesitatingly offer up the Newt analogy, thinking that few self-respecting LGBT activists — of Republican persuasion or not — would welcome the comparison. Instead, Smith and Guerriero flash a glance at each other. Far from drawing a distinction, Smith offers, “We’re not afraid to learn from anyone across the political spectrum who’s doing really smart work, be it EMILY’s List or GOPAC.” Sure, you could call these guys activists, but what Smith just gave me is neither gay nor straight. It’s the response of a political operative.
[…]
Gill Action was intended to address the LGBT movement’s most troubling deficits: its inability to provide direct candidate support, put lobbyists on the ground, and attract backing even from politicians who were genuinely pro-gay but too intimidated to act on it.
[…]
Asked which organization Gill Action most resembles, Guerriero and Smith stumble a bit trying to find a good comparison. It’s not a membership-based organization like the Human Rights Campaign, because even though it has a donor network, those donors don’t give money to Gill Action. Instead, they send their money directly to candidates that Gill Action has handpicked as pro-gay, in races that have been deemed strategically important. The donor base, said by insiders to be several hundred people strong and growing, is the sacred lifeblood of the organization.
Gill Action is also more than a political action committee. Beyond simply pumping money into LGBT equality organizations, Gill provides political counsel in everything from lobbying to field operations. … The focus is intentionally, bipartisan and so is its leadership team.
Read the full article for the tale of the New York/New Jersey race to become the first state to legislatively legalize same-sex marriage without having been instructed to do so by court order.
As of 5pm today it became legal for county clerks to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples. One of the first couples to be married in San Francisco have been together for the last fifty years.
I think this fact is worth mentioning because of some of the objections that people have made over the concept of same sex weddings. They talk about the lack of commitment, promiscuity, etc.
Here we have a couple that has been dedicated to each other for five decades without being able to legally join in matrimony. Given that the current divorce rate is somewhere in the range of 50% I think it’s pretty impressive this couple has been together for 50 yrs.
Indeed, when I hear discussions of couples married for 30 or 40 years the normal reaction of the group is to be impressed they have made it that long. I am still, by most standards, a young pup and yet I still know many people my age who have been married and divorced, sometimes more than once.
In fact one could argue that many same sex couples have been more dedicated to each other for years without any legal requirement they do so. By contrast I know of many opposite sex couples who have stayed together for years despite being in sad sometimes abusive relationships.
This is not to say of course that there are not straight couples that have been together forever or that there are not gay couples that have been through dozens of different relationships. That is unfortunately part of society today (and indeed has probably been part of society for centuries).
But the idea that same sex couples cannot be committed to themselves is one of the worst stereotypes out there and one that needs to be stamped out.
I’m on St. Simons Island, GA; a far more conservative beach community than the gay haunts (Fire Island, Provincetown) of my younger years. I am interested to read that the Cape Cod National Seashore is teaming up with local officials this summer for a “public education” approach to the soaring number of citations for debauchery in Cape Cod’s dunes.
Middle age finds me in agreement with the new Provincetown police chief Jeff Jaran that it’s “not acceptable, decent, moral behavior. There is a time to be discreet, and there are places to go and do those types of things.”
I said as much in this post where I quoted a plaintive NYMagazine piece in which a married man of my age “struggled with the desire for sexual variety.” The key line from the article comes from a Kinsey Institute researcher:
“I think we’re getting into a question of social stability. The male libido is considered a very dangerous and a potentially disruptive force in society. I think that’s why there are so many religious dictums and taboos around that. The idea that one is allowed multiple partners—this is something that has to be rigidly controlled.”
As true for the homo as for the heterosexuals among us, I’m ready to be bound by all the rights and obligations of civil society. So I also enjoyed the news that Kern Count, CA is moving to end weddings:
In the wake of the California Supreme Court’s ruling allowing same-sex couples to marry starting next week, Kern County Clerk Ann Barnett said that after today, the county will no longer officiate weddings for any couples - gay or straight. […]
Heterosexual couples who had weddings scheduled in coming days and weeks were forced to change their appointments to this week.
Defying social conventions of the 1950s and ’60s, the two men navigated Hollywood society as an openly gay couple, withstanding the slings and arrows of homophobes like the actor Joseph Cotten, who during a dinner party at David O. Selznick’s house made loud, derisive remarks about “half-men.”
Navigation was made all the more treacherous by the 30-year age difference between the two, who met on a Santa Monica beach and became lovers when Mr. Bachardy was 18, but looked several years younger. They spent what passed for a honeymoon in Monument Valley, where the director John Ford, who was shooting a western, and his crew assumed they were father and son.
Mr. Bachardy, now 74, recalls a traumatic experience that sealed their bond: a trip to Morocco to visit the author Paul Bowles during which Mr. Bachardy consumed hashish for the first time. He and Isherwood experienced a blind terror during which, afraid to let go, they clung to each other all night in their hotel room.
The stereotype for same-sex relationships is that they do not last. But that may be due, in large part, to the lack of legal and social recognition given to same-sex couples. Studies of dissolution rates vary widely.
After Vermont legalized same-sex civil unions in 2000, researchers surveyed nearly 1,000 couples, including same-sex couples and their heterosexual married siblings. The focus was on how the relationships were affected by common causes of marital strife like housework, sex and money.
Notably, same-sex relationships, whether between men or women, were far more egalitarian than heterosexual ones. In heterosexual couples, women did far more of the housework; men were more likely to have the financial responsibility; and men were more likely to initiate sex, while women were more likely to refuse it or to start a conversation about problems in the relationship. With same-sex couples, of course, none of these dichotomies were possible, and the partners tended to share the burdens far more equally.
While the gay and lesbian couples had about the same rate of conflict as the heterosexual ones, they appeared to have more relationship satisfaction, suggesting that the inequality of opposite-sex relationships can take a toll. […]
Other studies show that what couples argue about is far less important than how they argue. The egalitarian nature of same-sex relationships appears to spill over into how those couples resolve conflict.
One well-known study used mathematical modeling to decipher the interactions between committed gay couples. The results, published in two 2003 articles in The Journal of Homosexuality, showed that when same-sex couples argued, they tended to fight more fairly than heterosexual couples, making fewer verbal attacks and more of an effort to defuse the confrontation.
Controlling and hostile emotional tactics, like belligerence and domineering, were less common among gay couples.
The Gottman Institute is likely to be responsible for a good bit of the work cited above. Their findings are here.
Also in the news today, a USAToday poll showing that 63% of adults say same-sex marriage is “strictly a private decision” between two people. And Tim Rutten writing in the LATimes says the California Marriage amendment may backfire on the GOP. He suggests the people behind it are anything but a broad coalition:
Protect Marriage, the organization seeking to overturn the recent decision by the California Supreme Court, presented the secretary of state with a petition bearing 1.1 million signatures — and yet it is hardly a mass movement. California allows professional contractors that pay people to gather signatures for political measures, so anyone with enough money to spend can get an initiative on the ballot.
In this case, most of the money came from two wealthy Orange County residents who also happen to be fervent evangelical Christians. Billionaire Howard Ahmanson donated $400,000 through his Fieldstead & Co., and Edward Atsinger, owner of a chain of Christian radio stations, gave $12,500. (Each man previously contributed $100,000 to Proposition 22, the statute struck down by the Supreme Court’s May 15 ruling.) Another significant contributor — $133,000 — is Colorado-based Focus on the Family. Its founder, James Dobson, is a leader in the religious right’s anti-gay wing.
Meanwhile John Aravosis reports that John McCain — “on his second marriage, after having dumped his first permanently disabled wife for a rich trophy bride 17 years his junior” — “welcomes” the anti-gay ballot initiative to revoke marriage in CA.
The California Supreme Court has just issued an order denying requests for a rehearing and stay in gay marriage case.
Opponents to the ruling legalizing gay marriage in California had requested that the court issue an order that put things on hold until after the voters had a chance to vote on a proposal which would overturn the decision.
The ruling means that counties can begin to issue marriage licenses at any time. Most counties had planned to wait until June 17th since the court had until then to make a decision but they are now free to act at any time. Voter will have a chance to overturn the ruling in November but polls have been mixed on the issue and it is very possible they will reject the proposal.
But for now the people of California have a little extra freedom and justice.
Former Georgia senator Sam Nunn was a major player foiling President Bill Clinton’s effort to lift the ban on gays in the military in 1993. He helped push through the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law that lesbian and gay servicemembers have suffered under since. As a consequence, he is universally reviled in the gay community.
“I think [when] 15 years go by on any personnel policy, it’s appropriate to take another look at it — see how it’s working, ask the hard questions, hear from the military. Start with a Pentagon study,” Nunn said. […]
Pressed for his position on the matter, Nunn said, “I’m not advocating anything — except I’m saying the policy was the right policy for the right time, and times change. It’s appropriate to take another look.”
Amanda at Think Progress has some great related links including this December 2006 survey (pdf) of servicemembers who had served in Iraq or Afghanistan finding that 73 percent are “comfortable with lesbians and gays.”
Nunn was also asked today about the speculation that he might make a good Obama running mate:
Nunn, who retired from the U.S. Senate in 1996, gave the same answer he had last month. “I think it’s highly improbable that I would be invited to be on the ticket, and I think it’s also highly improbable that I would be going back into government,” he said.
Nunn as veep has not gone over well in gay circles. Chris Crain came out strongly against the early speculation and Wayne Besen’s I’m having Nunn of it post last week was widely quoted within the LGBT blogosphere. But gay fears were somewhat mollified by a Sunday post from Citizen Crain’s Andoni:
I bumped into Nunn last month and my first impression was, oh my God,he looks older than McCain. As it turns out Nunn will be 70 in September while McCain will be 72 in August. But if Nunn looks older than McCain, that is a problem.
A major subtext in this election is that McCain is too old to be Commander in Chief. I don’t think Obama is going to throw away that advantage by choosing someone to be a heartbeat away from the presidency who looks older than his opponent whom many voters think is too old to be president.
With the recent ruling by the California Supreme Court legalizing gay marriage, I thought it a good time to rework a post I made regarding the topic several months ago.
As a lawyer I have become the go-to guy for many of my friends when it comes to legal issues. As you might imagine, they have contacted me to decry the ruling and go into the usual mantra about how evil/bad/dangerous that gay unions are.
Continuing discussions we have had before, I have tried to convince them of why they are wrong on this issue, and will offer my views as follows.
Doug Carlson sees a firestorm unleashed by the California court’s marriage ruling. Me too. But I see the fire burning in a totally different direction than Doug. What got me going in Doug’s post, though, was his use of quotation marks around the word “marriage.”
Yesterday on Fresh Air linguit Geoff Nunberg had a stirring essay on just that topic. I urge you to listen in its entirety. To entice you I quote extensively from it here. It’s titled, Love and Marriage: Still Going Together?
A couple of months ago, the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary made some long-overdue revisions in the definitions for a bunch of gender-related words. Before then, the dictionary definition of girlfriend, in the meaning sweetheart, read “a man’s favorite female companion,” which would have precluded lesbians from having girlfriends in the romantic sense. And the old definition of love read “that feeling of attachment which is based upon difference of sex and which is the normal basis of marriage.” So both words were given new definitions that would cover their use to refer to same-sex relationships.
But this isn’t a matter of rampant political correctness or of giving the words new meanings. It isn’t as if the English language has ever ruled out talking about lesbians having girlfriends, much less kept Shakespeare from describing a romantic attachment between two men as “love.” It’s just that when the original definitions were written, those sorts of relationships were officially invisible. Those re-definitions came to mind as I was listening to the renewed debate about gay marriage. To a lot of people, that notion isn’t simply a threat to God’s plan or the social order but an affront to English. As one conservative columnist put it, “It’s a desecration of language.” Do a Google search for Web pages containing “same-sex marriage” and the like together with “oxymoron,” and you turn up 125,000 hits, most of them posted by people who would tell you that the phrase same-sex marriage is as semantically anomalous as female rooster.
Now, it’s true that most people with reservations about gay marriage aren’t primarily motivated by their concern for the proprieties of English usage. But it’s always useful to be able to frame your position on an issue as a defense of the traditional definition of a word. It’s a way of folding your argument into the language itself so that it doesn’t require analysis. What could be more cut and dried than a dictionary entry?
In this particular case, though, dictionaries themselves aren’t always helpful in sorting things out. Lexicographers know that nobody’s going to go to the mattress to defend the traditional definitions of words like love and girlfriend. But when it comes to marriage, they start looking nervously over both their shoulders. People only look the word up to make a point, and when they don’t find what they want, they’re liable to organize a letter-writing campaign or punch in an angry blog entry.
Some dictionaries try to placate both sides with a Solomonic solution. Both Merriam-Webster’s and the Oxford American Dictionary have retained their old definition of marriage as a union between people of the opposite sex and added an additional sense of the word that applies specifically to same-sex unions that resemble traditional marriages. It recalls the editorial practice The Washington Times followed until recently, where it always put marriage in quotes when referring to homosexuals.
But there’s no way to split the baby here…
For more on that allusion to The Washington Times, see here for the memo marking the day the threw in the towel and accepted the inevitable.
Heres’s Nunberg’s wonderful concluding paragraph:
[This] discussion would benefit if everybody could agree to lose the word “traditional,” which has probably worked as much mischief over the last half century as any other word in American public life. It’s a word people use to muddle the past so that it doesn’t have to explain or justify itself. In fact, when people defend something as traditional, what they have in mind almost always turns out to be a purely modern concoction, like the pastiche of Chippendale, French Provincial, Queen Anne and Colonial that goes by the name of “traditional” on an Ethan Allen bedroom set.
“Traditional marriage” brings to mind the same sort of thing, a hodgepodge of customs, laws, and restrictions, secular and religious, jumbling places and periods willy-nilly. In either case, you can’t tell what’s the frame and what’s the filigree.
“I’ve read the constitution forwards and backwards,” Colbert continued, “and I see nothing in there that protects gays.
“Why,” he asks Perkins, “do these judges keep seeing gay things in the Constitution?”
“They’re afforded the same rights and privileges as you and I are,” Perkins responded. “They don’t have a right to marry just as you and I don’t have the right to marry anybody we want to. We don’t have a right to marry our first cousin…” […]
“There is a reason,” Perkins continued, “that in public policy, that we work to strengthen and uphold the institution of marriage, because that is…really the building block for society.”
“Do you keep Kosher?” Colbert asks. “I think it would really be better for the anti-gay-marriage side if they obeyed everything in the Bible, not just the anti-gay-marriage part. Don’t you?”
“When did Jesus talk about gay people?” he presses further. “Because I keep on looking for that so I could win some arguments.”
Recently, Henry Farrell caused plenty of blogosophere buzz about research (pdf) demonstrating that The Colbert Bump — the phenomenon whereby those who appear on his show receive a bump up in their support — is realish. Thing is, it only works for Democrats!
Now Tony Perkins knows this. He knew what he was walking into and that we bloggers would be laying in wait. I’ve always believed one thing you’ve got to give to Tony Perkins and his crowd is that they totally and completely believe in their cause. I’ve always respected their willingness to go before a hostile audience and make their case:
PERKINS: We need to address all of the issues that concern people… If you ask your audience the issues that concern them I imagine that all of these issues somewhere would register, and as Christians…
COLBERT (to audience): Do any of these register with you?
AUDIENCE: No… Nah…No… No…
PERKINS: None of them?
AUDIENCE: No… (laughter)
COLBERT: Do you even know what they are?
AUDIENCE: No… (inaudible)
PERKINS: Why don’t you tell them?
COLBERT: It’s my show.
I don’t like Tony Perkins or his argument and I believe we will beat him fair and square in the public sphere. But I admire him for his willingness to put his arguments out there in every forum imaginable. I think he sees the writing on the wall, knows that the tide is turning and he’s going to lose and lose big and lose especially big with young people. So rather than duck that fight he goes on Colbert.
I’m a Democrat and I’d like to see more of us taking our message, taking our arguments, right out into the heart of the other side’s media message machine. And I’d like to see us do that with gay marriage and gays in the military and all of the rest of the social justice issues that I’d like to see at the heart of our message.
RELATED: The joyous news that NY Gov. David A. Paterson has directed all state agencies to begin to revise their policies and regulations to recognize same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions, like California and Canada.
Here’s video of the funny and eloquent speech the governor gave at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Leadership Awards dinner on April 7 on the subject.
In a dramatic reversal of decades of public opinion, California voters agree by a slim majority that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, according to a Field Poll released today.
By 51-42 percent, registered voters said they believed same-sex marriage should be legal in California. Only 28 percent favored gay marriage in 1977, when the Field Poll first asked that question, said Mark DiCamillo, the poll’s director.
“This is a milestone in California,” he said. “You can’t downplay the importance of a change in an issue we’ve been tracking for 30 years.”
Terrance at Republic of T says it’s happening and he’s got a wealth of links to prove it.
Andrew Sullivan says, yes we can, and his reason for optimism is the timing of civil marriages:
It now seems likely that the first civil marriages in California will take place in June. By the fall, thousands of Californians will be married. The initiative will be asking voters to do two disruptive things: change the state constitution and retroactively impugn these already-existing marriages. This is a tall order. And it’s one more reason that the gay movement needs to understand that this referendum is the most important in the history of our civil rights struggle. To win a democratic vote in favor of marriage equality in the most populous state in the country is a victory unlike any we have had before. We need to organize, raise funds, raise awareness and not be intimidated.
Two weeks after deciding that same-sex couples are entitled to marry, the California Supreme Court appeared inclined today to rule that physicians may not discriminate against gays in medical treatment, regardless of the doctors’ religious views.
May 24th, 2008 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
I’ve got a junior reporter down on the Libertarian National Convention floor today. Rachel Hawkridge, is a Libertarian activist and delegate from the state of Washington to the Convention being held in Denver over five days.
She phoned in to me just a few minutes ago to say the front runners in the race for nomination to run for POTUS have now been tallied in the first ‘tokens’ vote. The people with the highest votes will now be placed into major debates tomorrow… to be followed by delegates’ final vote for who will become the Libertarian Candidate for POTUS.
The candidates thought to be in hottest contention for the final nomination are:
Senator Mike Gravel from Alaska, 78 years old, who also ran on the Democratic ticket to be nominated for 2008 President. Senator Gravel, is revered by many for long ago reading into the congressional record, non-stop- the entirety of the Pentagon Papers which Nixon was trying to suppress. He believes in “direct democracy” wherein sovereign authority is kept by the citizens to govern themselves, rather than “representative democracy” with an elected representative who works and lives at arms’ length from the people. He’s a Unitarian Universalist
Representative Bob Barr, age 59, a Republican from Georgia, and a Methodist who entered office when Newt Gingrich’s Republican Majority (first time R majority in forty years) was going sweep clean and bring a new day, but Barr was turned out of office by a huge margin eventually. Since, he now has helped to found an organization called Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances, a bipartisan group wanting to eliminate clauses of the Patriot Act that could wrongfully penalize innocent citizens. He is also recently involved with the ACLU.
Dr. Mary Ruwart, 59, is a Libertarian activist with a Ph.D., in biophysics. With F. Kendall and L. Louw, Dr. Ruwart is the author of Healing Our World in the Time of Aggression and Short Answers to the Tough Questions. She has a large number of supporters from her 30 years of libertarian activism. Amongst other human concerns, she advocates that people ought to be able to choose how they die and when, if confronted with grievous illnesses. Her sister was a person who engaged Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s aid. Ruwart spent 19 years as a pharmaceutical research scientist for Upjohn Pharmaceuticals and has written extensively on the subjects of government regulation of the drug industry. She holds three patents for life-giving procedures.
Mr. Wayne Allen Root, soon to be 48 years old, is Jewish, and a millionaire Las Vegas odds maker. He runs a media corporation, also has penned books, and some say, he seeks to “finish the job that Ron Paul started.” He is a self-described S.O.B. (son of a butcher), who plans, amongst other things, to eliminate the Department of Education, and “end all federal income taxes immediately and move all of them to the state level… The Founding Fathers never envisioned a government that could take away 50 percent of the money we make…” He graduated from Columbia in the same class as Barack Obama, and he and his wife home school their children.
The Denver Post today speculates that Bob Bar can win the Libertarian nomination “ for his fame.” Meaning, his profile in the nation is higher than other candidates here today. But, my girl-reporter on the Convention floor today says some of the reaction to Bob Barr is very much otherwise:
“Many delegates are walking around with big buttons that feature a rainbow, with Bob Barr’s name over it, and over his name a huge red circle and slash…”
“ There is a large GLBT contingent in the Libertarian party,” says Miss Hawkridge, and “Bob Barr was the author of the ‘only man-woman marriage allowed’ bill.” In additional to issues for GLBT regarding marriage, for Libertarians, the intrusion of ‘church’ into state, is anathema.
Also, according to Hawkridge, a significant number of the delegates remember Barr as one of the most conservative and loud members of the Federal Congress.
Barr not only wrote and sponsored the Defense of Marriage act, but also voted for the Patriot Act; proposed the Pentagon ban a religious group from practice in the military: Wicca; and advocated complete federal prohibition of medical marijuana—succeeding in this last with his “Barr Amendment”– which also forbid any future law that would decrease penalties for marijuana use.
Hawkridge says it is clear that Barr has had some kind of change o
The Advocate is out with 
