...Our world is becoming increasingly consistent in its hatred of Christians and more and more prepared to receive God's judgment for its open rebellion against His commands. Soon, I fear for the lost, the festive singing and musical blasphemy embedded below is going to be over for them.
The Bible makes it clear - and in no uncertain terms - that when the world becomes as it was when Lot lived in Sodom, God is going to shake this world like a sapling in a hurricane...
It's coming around! It's coming around as clear as crystal, isn't it?
...It's a Satan thing, you know?
Gee, and I thought these folks wanted the son o'Jehovah to hurry back.
OOGA BOOGA! Satan Satan Satan Satan! The tooth fairy is coming to judge the living and the dead and yank out the fillings of all the bad little boys and girls and toss them into your War on Christmas stockings!
There are moments when something like reason still manages to push its head above the floodwaters of fear and superstition and bigotry. Things change because sooner or later reason stops drowning and starts swimming.
Such a moment happened in a courtroom in Miami, Florida this morning. A circuit judge ruled the state's ban on adoption by homosexuals unconstitutional precisely because it is unreasonable to deny a right or privilege to one group that is granted to another if there is no sound, rational or — dare I write the word! — scientific reason for doing so.
A 1977 Florida state law that bans gay individuals from adopting has received its biggest challenge thus far: Foster father Frank Martin Gill won his suit to adopt two brothers he has been fostering since 2004...
In her decision this morning, Miami Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman ruled that there was no "rational basis" to prevent the children from being adopted. The case, which marks the first time that a gay adoption case has been taken before a trial court in Florida, seems likely to go before the Florida Supreme Court, which could overturn the ban.
Although several states have de facto bans against gay couples adopting and an unknown number of conservative-leaning courts make it virtually impossible, Florida is the only state that prohibits gay individuals from adopting...
...In one successful case earlier this fall in Key West, a judge ruled that the ban was unconstitutional and arose from "unveiled expressions of bigotry." But that case's legal effects were limited.
The Gill case, however, could have wide-reaching consequences. This morning's decision has already been appealed by the state. If the appellate court upholds the ruling that the law is unconstitutional, which seems probable, then the case is likely to go up to Florida's Supreme Court. Even if the appellate court reverses the ruling, the Supreme Court still has the option to hear the case. And if the Supreme Court agrees to reverse the law, that would strike the ban down statewide—without having to go through the state legislature...
...The state's defenders argued that gay people are more prone to a host of problems, ranging from alcohol and drug abuse to depression. Experts on the other side testified that while gays as a group do struggle more with particular issues, so do other demographic groups—but they're not banned from adoption, because adoption is meant to be decided on a case-by-case basis, rather than with group generalizations. Meanwhile, no credible scientific study has shown that the children of gay parents are at more of a disadvantage than the children of straight parents, they said...
Perhaps it's putting the cart before the horse to maintain that gay people are "more prone" to depression and related symptoms than straight ones, no? Perhaps that depression arises from the fact that they don't have the hope of ever being able to get married, to adopt a child that they've cared for, to not be discriminated against. I don't know how the depression rate among homosexuals compares to that among heterosexuals, but if it is higher, maybe not treating them like second-class citizens could change that. I'm sure the same things that apply to same-sex oriented people could be applied to other groups throughout history that have received the same sort of treatment. American Indians, African Americans, and many immigrant demographics have had the same problem and responded in the same way. Some still are.
I think, or at least I like to believe, that things are changing and that in the end the light of reason and compassion is going to win the day. I still believe there's that much good to hope for out of fellow human beings. If there isn't, as a well-known gay man once said, "If it's not love then it's the bomb that will bring us together."
Beginning today, Connecticut joins Massachusetts as the second state in the US to issue licenses for same-sex marriages. Not civil unions or domestic partnerships or some other separate-but-equal concept, but full-on marriages. The overwhelming reaction in the state appears to be that it's no big deal.
Connecticut begins issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples today, a historic milestone that gays and lesbians will celebrate and social conservatives will grieve.
Many others are likely to respond with a shrug.
"They could do what they want to do," said Karen Dowdell, a 61-year-old Hartford resident who was shopping at Corbins Corner in West Hartford Tuesday morning. "I could care less..."
...Citizens here have long displayed a distaste for the culture wars that have riven so much of the nation...
Same-sex marriage comes to Connecticut more than four years after it arrived in Massachusetts. Those first-in-the-nation gay weddings were met with a burst of hoopla. Reporters from as far as Japan came to cover the story...
Contrast that to Connecticut, where the gay rights coalition Love Makes a Family has received a smattering of calls from international media, "but nothing compared to what they received in Mass.," said Anne Stanback, the group's president...
Now, "at least in New England, it's becoming ... old hat," Stanback said. In fact, she added, for most people in Connecticut, same-sex marriage is "a big yawn..."
A big yawn? Well, yes, and that's exactly what it should be. Why should anyone care about what two consenting adults do in terms of their own relationship? It's nobody's business but their own. How many of us look through the marriage announcements in our local newspapers at all, let alone do so with any sense of either excitement or revulsion? If it weren't for the magical thinking of culture warriors who wish others to accept their strange, as-yet-unexplained notion that the effects of somebody else's marriage extend to the rest of the world, nobody would care about this. Even objections based in religion would, if they were statements of honest faith instead of bigotry given a cosmetic gloss of godliness, culminate with nothing more than a shrug and a "God will sort this out, so I'm not worried" sort of a statement.
See, that's the thing about equality. It's only exciting in the moments prior to and immediately after it is extended to some group that didn't previously have it. After that, it quickly becomes a pretty ho-hum situation. That's a good thing. That's what acceptance looks like. Sure, there may be a few radical racists who feel otherwise, but does anyone get revved up today over the fact that a vote cast by a black person in the USA is weighted equally with one cast by a Caucasian — a situation which was once made otherwise by nothing less than a Constitutional amendment? For the vast majority of people, this is just the way things are and we accept it, even though there were once movements as passionately for and against the arrangement we now take for granted and great celebration when it first changed.
So today, Connecticut will yawn a little and shrug a little and a few more people will enter into a situation that was previously prohibited to them. There will be the little, personal celebrations and a few more people will be happier than they were yesterday. The rest of the people will go on about their lives as if nothing had happened because it's not a big deal.
"No big deal" can be a wonderful phrase sometimes. This, I think, is one of them.
In case you haven't seen this video already, this redolent summation of the depths of ignorance and paranoia, watch it now. There will be a quiz.
As much as I find the video itself appalling insofar as what it reveals about just how much the stupid can burn, the recent passage of California's Proposition 8 and similar referenda in places like Florida, Arizona and Arkansas leave me asking the same question the benighted woman narrating it asked. What the hell is oozing out of our ground?
There is a meanness in these new laws, a cruelty that is most loudly voiced by the fact that California will not only put a halt to future same-sex marriages but there are those who are now attempting to void those which have already taken place. Surprise, surprise... they're based in Florida:
Mathew Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel, a Florida-based conservative legal group, said last week that if Prop. 8 passes, Liberty Counsel would seek to invalidate all same-sex marriages already performed in California. Randy Thomasson, president of the Sacramento-based SaveCalifornia.com, said his group would support any lawsuit.
"One of the main reasons for passing Prop. 8 was to have real marriage be a role model for the next generation," he said. "Since these are a bunch of false marriages and false marriage licenses, they are bad examples for little children."
Anyone who still harbors doubt that much of Florida is a percolating, roiling bowl of fundamentalist mythological contagion need look no further than the anthropoid vector of pestilence that is Matthew Staver and his Orwellianly-monikered Liberty Council to put those doubts to rest. Staver, by the way, is a dean at ignorance-factory Liberty University.
That there is no hope that someone like Staver will ever attain to a degree of empathy reminiscent of the better parts of the human race is without question. There are poisonous things in this world and there will always be poisonous things in this world. The question is not whether fundamentally sociopathic, inherently divisive and morally bankrupt people like Staver and Falwell and Don Wildmon can ever be reformed. I would submit that they cannot. Such people will always remain self-made enemies of the culture upon which they have declared war. This is the point of their existence. They thrive on pain and seek the increase of human suffering as a sign of upcoming divine intervention that will usher in a time when the better part of humanity will be tortured for all eternity by their invisible and vindictive father-figure in the sky. They feed on the decay, the hate, the division and the ignorance produced by their activities as surely as any leech slithering from a festering fen seeks to cling to and suck from the femoral artery of some victim. They are beyond all reproach in the perfection of their destructiveness.
In short, they are what is "oozing out of our ground." Still, they and those like them could not alone have passed the barbarisms that are these new laws, including Proposition 8. They must have had complicity in their efforts to corrupt the notion of human rights and the role of government intervention in the lives of others. I do not think that everyone who voted for new laws like Proposition 8 is a leech like Staver, but I do think that many of these people have been deceived, and deception is possible only in the presence of ignorance. The notion that people who prefer sexual interaction with members of their own gender would be in favor of pederasty, bestiality or any number of other outrageous perversions is precisely a product of that ignorance.
These warriors against rational and inclusive culture exploit this ignorance in several ways, or perhaps it is more accurate to say that they exploit several varieties of ignorance. Let's face it — most Americans don't know many gay people, or at least aren't aware that they know any. To the bulk of the populace, gay people are an unknown. They're something that doesn't exist as a portion of their community as integral to its proper functioning as any heterosexual individual. They're something that one sees in the media, frequently as a caricature. They're an abstraction; gay people aren't human beings so much as a phantasm that is somebody else's "problem." By keeping them in the abstract, anything can be laid upon them. Gay people can be made out to be abnormal, villainous, scheming... in short, hobgoblins coming from some other reality, some other universe, with malicious intent, like some shadowy horde poised at the border and ready to sack the little villages in which far too many Americans fancy themselves to live. The American Family Association is particularly adept at exploiting this strain of ignorance, peddling videos like They're Coming to Your Town. The probability is that "they" are already in your town, have been there all along, and that your town — and any town — is all the better for it.
They exploit, too, an ignorance that puts forth the idea that the highest purpose of human existence is procreation. It's an assertion I see made time and time again — that homosexuality is a perversion because it doesn't result in reproduction, and that reproduction is the goal which gives purpose to all living things, thus making homosexuality itself a force that runs counter to life. What could be worse than that? What reasonable person could be opposed to the continuation of life itself!
The thing is, when one actually looks at life, that's not what we actually see, particularly as biological individualism gives way to social organization. In any number of truly social insects, for example, the vast bulk of the members of the society do not reproduce, yet they contribute essentially to the continuation of their society. When cognition enters the picture, sex often becomes less bound to reproduction and more a means of enforcing social bonds, too. Even among humans, we do not remember the important figures throughout our history because of the number of offspring they had. Indeed, most Americans would be hard-pressed to rattle off the names of the children of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington or John Adams. We don't remember how many children Einstein had. Would it make any difference to us how we view such people if they'd never reproduced at all? We humans are not bound to our biology in the way that animals are bound to theirs. We can think, we can create, and we can go far beyond the limitations of our bodies. To say that the greatest achievement to which any one of us may attain is mere reproduction is to reduce all of mankind to animals in a menagerie. It robs all of us, even those who promulgate this nonsense, of the basic dignity of what it is to be human. We are more than molecular machines who eat and shit and fuck, and if we are not then we may as well tear down all the churches and all the laboratories and all the museums and stop distracting ourselves from this allegedly greatest good that any of us can spew forth from our various orifices. I, for one, think that we can be more than mere gamete factories. I think more of humanity, and I have a crazy notion that even those who have fallen under the contrary viewpoint would as well if they stopped and considered the sum total of civilization instead of having fallen prey to those who have declared war upon the better angels of human nature.
The questions that Proposition 8 and these similar referenda raise for me, and perhaps now for you, too, is whether we Americans will choose to see ourselves as something debased. Are we the product of a history that has finally cut us loose from the muck of basic biology, that allows us to aspire, to achieve, to no longer be identified in terms of merely what we contribute to some gene pool... or are we the product of some long-ago fall from grace that leaves every individual stained with sin? Will we use our powers of imagination and abstraction to cast one another as enemies, as "outsider" and "insider," to divide ourselves into camps that deserve to dwell either in sunlight or shadow based upon some accident of biology or — perish the thought — even some personal choice that involves no lives apart from our own, or will we use these boons to go beyond these superficial differences to find out that we are all essentially the same, that we all want the same things, and that we are all deserving of the same rights to associate with whom we will, to love whom we will, and to find in each of us that which we have to offer to the rest of us and so to allow every other member of our society the right to do the same?
We know what the Stavers and Wildmons of this country have to say on the matter. They are believers in the essentially impurity or each of us, a blood libel that began in a garden at the confluence of rivers. I suppose we know equally well (especially if you've read through all of this!) what those of us who don't believe in any such "fall from grace" and "original sin" think about it. But there is a great mass of American flesh and blood and mind between these two extremes that live their lives without ever seeing the effect that their decisions about "sanctity" have upon those who now must bear the weight of the stigma that they attach to them. Would they reach the same conclusions if they knew these people? If they saw what a same-sex marriage actually looked like in the light of day? If they came to know, on a personal basis, that the hearts and minds of the people who have entered into them were no different from their own save for the gender of the object of affection?
It is easy enough to be cruel toward an abstraction. Despite our fallibility, though, I think that most of us could not be so callous when called to look into the eyes of fellow human beings. Doing this will be a first great stride in doing away with not only one of the final malingering divisions in American social philosophy, but also in ridding ourselves of a pernicious war that allows a few men to exploit the shortcoming of many. America can be better than this. Just as some little bit of knowledge about the principles of refraction would remove the paranoid fears of the silly woman who made the video that began this entry, so would a little knowledge about what a same-sex marriage really is would remove the paranoia that the possibility "they're coming to your town" portends something terrible.
I am privileged to live in a place, one of only two states in this country, that allows same-sex marriage. I'm thinking of a way in which I might be able to use that happy coincidence in such a way as to lend some aid to those who do not enjoy it. I'll write more about that soon. It is enough to say, at this moment, that I feel like I have to do more about this than I have done until this moment.
In my recently less-than-sporadic efforts to bring you the latest news, I'm sure I'll be the first to mention that Barack Obama won the election and will be the next president. I'm glad for this. The alternative was clearly a very poor one and, of course, we're all aware by now about the historic context of his victory. This is big stuff, a sea-change, a climax in a struggle that began long before my own ancestors ever arrived in America.
I have followed the election closely for these past couple of months, even though I haven't had time to write about it. I have been all too aware of the hatred and panic, as well, that certain elements of our society have expressed over the impending turn in US history as my email box was besieged by dire and dirty "warnings" from Don Wildmon's American Family Association and their nethermost organ, OneNewsNow. To hear them tell it, we are all about to be swept up in a vast wave of stoned, gay, incestuous prostitutes in leather chaps, bearing pitchforks and crucifixes on the soles of their Birkenstocks. Their weather report, now that Obama has been elected, calls for periods of void-swallowing darkness followed by a rain of brimstone with a 30% chance of pale horses storming through the streets of America. In truth, or at least we need all hope, that these are the final fervent prayers and feverish visions of small people with tiny and malign minds, the kind that are ultimately drowned in the eddying currents of human progress.
In all honesty, one of the things that I most look forward to now that the election has been conducted and the ballots tallied is the impending absence of the whiny, shrill, nasal sound of Sarah Palin. I look forward, too, to the absence of scientific research being held up by the losing side every time they wanted to bring up an example of "earmarks" or "pork." Whether they understood basic research or not, the fact that McCain and Palin cited research into population genetic structure or molecular biology or a new projector for a planetarium — a place of science education — did not exactly endear them to this researcher. Had they won, I had visions of funding for research not entirely unlike my own simply vanishing in a puff of ignorance. They will not have the chance to do this, it seems. I count myself and my colleagues fortunate in this regard.
Aside from the historical coincidence (albeit an important one) of his ancestry, we have instead gotten a president elect who, as far as I can discern, is one of the most intelligent and well-educated in our history, and certainly in my lifetime. There are those to whom such qualifications make him, ironically, a member of the elite which, they believe, is a bad thing. There are those who will still judge the fitness of their governmental leadership on the basis of how much they'd like to have a beer with them, and those people will not shut up and go away based simply on the fact that their strange criterion has been repudiated by the electorate. On the other hand, I think that I would enjoy a beer with Barack. I would be very interested in sitting in a conversation with him without any beverages whatsoever, for that matter. We're not too far apart in age, after all, and more to the point I could easily envision a long and deep discussion of political and general philosophy with him. I felt no such thing in regard to McCain, certainly never have for Dubya, and I fear that were beer present during a one-on-one conversation with Palin, I might have sprayed it through my nose soon after she began wagging her chin. That would be rude, and I prefer not to be impolite when at all possible. The likelihood of any of this happening is nil, of course. I'm just Joe the Bio Grad Student and Obama has a government to run... and I have tarsomeres to measure. Still, my sense is that Obama gets it. He understands that the basic research of ten and twenty years ago is the technology of the present, and that once the pipeline empties it takes a long time to fill back up. America has dodged a bullet in a manner of which few people will ever be aware. It was a bullet aimed at our brain and the majority of my fellow Americans were smart enough to duck. Good for us.
So here we are on the first Wednesday in November. In about 60 days, ShrubCo at last begins its well-deserved dissolution and, we can be sure, a new track will be charted. We live in interesting times. Obama will need to exercise what I can only describe as greatness at a time when greatness may at best suffice only to staunch our collective bleeding as a nation. Anything less than greatness, anything short of a full application of his capacity to reason, to plan, to anticipate, is likely to result in a single term. Considering the smoking craters left by ShrubCo across our societal landscape, if Obama doesn't have greatness in him, it follows that we will need to find someone who does in four years' time. I am hopeful for now; the possibilities are endless and in most ways we have nowhere to go but up. Still, I am also a pragmatist, even in my idealism. I will say the same thing now to myself (and those who have read this far) that I said eight years ago: Let's see what this guy can do.
Having said all this, I do think it is important that Obama begin reaching out to the other side after this long and often fear-mongering contest. One way in which he could do this, I think, is to offer John McCain an appointment in his cabinet. As much as I loathe some of the tactics, even what passed for a strategy, in the campaign now ended, McCain should be given the benefit of the doubt and it should be recalled that he was not some fiend before the Ring of Power that was his quest for the presidency turned his Smeagle into our Gollum. McCain's strength, it has been said, was in foreign policy. He might be well-employed as a Secretary of Defense. Even making the offer would help to heal the divisions that were pried wide open in these past months. This might have another, even more important, effect in the near future.
Obama is in a good position, I think, to have an impact on the upcoming reformulation of the Republican Party. I believe that one thing that the GOP will learn from this election is that the base is not enough and, indeed, the very constituencies that make up what they have come to consider their base are, in fact, a polarizing power that precludes their having the support of more reality-based Americans. In the end, after all, McCain had to distance himself from Ted Hagee every bit as much as he sought to distance himself from George Bush. Obama could drive that point home with a few key appointments, I think. Few things could be healthier for this country, even for this civilization, than the showing of the door to the Dominionists and Millennialists by the party over which they have exercised enough influence to pry perilously loose from the reality of American life. We saw the base (and base they were!) "energized" by Sarah Palin, and we saw the GOP lose big. Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan have recently said the same thing, so I don't think this idea is too radical. It's time to disentangle that which was supposed to be the party of fiscal conservatism from the business of attempts to legislate morality. Giving Americans a choice of a party in which these two things are no longer intricately wound together will be a boon for all of us, even if we are not ourselves fiscal conservatives.
Which brings me, sadly, to the thing arising from this election that most drags upon my spirit this morning. It appears that Proposition 8, which would ban same-sex marriage in California, is going to pass by a narrow margin. It is for this reason that I prefaced this long and much overdue entry with the point that Obama's win marks a climax in a long struggle but not the climax. Just as there will continue to be intolerance to people of African ancestry in places in America, even though one will be our next President, just so we should keep in mind that others will still be marginalized as well. Even though they lost the Presidential election of 2008, those small-minded busybodies determined to stick their noses in everyone else's crotches as a test for righteousness are still very much with us and they may very well win this victory, as short-lived as it is likely to turn out, on the West Coast of the United States. They are, and will continue to be, dedicated to a "culture war" in which our own culture makes war upon itself. They will continue to seek to do harm in the name of nothing more than personal belief and preference.
They will be with us, I am sorry to say, for many years to come.
It took nearly 400 years for people somewhat like the man we have just elected President to get the right to self-determination, the right to own property, the right to vote as a whole human being (and not just some fraction thereof), and to marry whomever they liked. It took generations to get to this point, and it took sacrifice and struggle and, yes, the deaths of some very good people brought about by some of the worst people who opposed them. This is the course, too, that gay equality advocates have faced. It was once a crime punishable by death to prefer sexual friction with a member of one's own gender. It is not so now. As long as there are people courageous enough to speak out, progress will continue and the tiny, malign minds will, in the end, be swept away by the current of human history once again.
It really makes my day when I receive a "Dear Manmeat" letter from Don Wildmon, and the one I received yesterday afternoon was a particularly fun one. The American Family Association is in a lather because Hallmark has started selling greeting cards for same-sex marriages. Now, the friends of gay people can send the same sort of overpriced cardboard bits of sentiment that the friends of straight people can send. The horror!
Hallmark defends gay marriage cards - Urge your local Hallmark store to refuse to carry them
Take Action!
Urge your local Hallmark store owner to join others in refusing to carry Hallmark gay marriage cards in their stores.
You can find your local Hallmark store contact information here. [Note: I have changed the link to one directly to Hallmark; the one in the email tracks the clickthrough to give the AFA numbers it can claim as people objecting to Hallmark's policy even if the person clicking supports Hallmark's decision.]
Please be polite, but firm when you contact your local store.
August 25, 2008 Dear Manmeat,
Hallmark is reinforcing their decision to carry gay marriage cards with a message to supporters of traditional marriage – buzz off!
According to their website, corporate emails, and in response to phone calls, Hallmark is telling those who contact the company it will carry “cards that use specific language and images appropriate for same-sex wedding ceremonies.”
Same sex marriage is not recognized in 48 states, but Hallmark has chosen to become a corporate advocate in advancing homosexual marriage.
However, some local Hallmark store owners are refusing to carry them. Earlier this week, Jordan's Hallmark, which owns seven Hallmark Gold Crown stores in Idaho, announced its stores will not carry gay marriage cards in their stores.
Donald E. Wildmon, Founder and Chairman American Family Association
Ah, the dumbness, how shall I count the ways?
Let's start with the assertion that Hallmark shouldn't sell gay marriage cards because same-sex marriages aren't recognized in 48 states. How many states recognize bar mitzvahs with legislation that recognizes 13 year old boys as adults? And the survey says... zero. Precisely no states consider thirteen year olds as something other than minors, despite the fact that Jewish religious custom proclaims them to be adults. Hallmark had better stop selling greeting cards for that occasion. The same number of states also recognize officially your daughter's third birthday, your wedding anniversary, or the fact that your nephew got an A in math last year. In short, whether or not a given state has a law recognizing something is absolutely meaningless in this context. Hallmark is in the business of selling greeting cards, not of marking the passage of laws.
But let's pretend for a moment that Hallmark only sells greeting cards for occasions that are sanctioned by state laws. If this were the case, then Hallmark would sell same-sex marriage cards only in states where such unions were recognized, which is only a few. Not the two states which this latest "Dear Manmeat" letter asserts, however, but fourteen states in all which recognize gay marriage in some form or another, whether it is called "marriage" or "civil union" with the same rights as different-sex marriage or with some more limited number of rights. That's nearly a quarter of all the United States; a redundant statement to make, I know, but since the AFA's Grand Poobah appears incapable of distinguishing between two and fourteen, we shouldn't take for granted that he knows how many states there are.
But let's sink deeper into the AFA's fantasy world and pretend that there really are only two states — Massachusetts and California — that recognize gay marriage in some form. Should Hallmark not sell appropriate greeting cards for gay weddings in the other 48 states? Well, I don't know. Do people sometimes mail cards from one state to another? Hmmmm... anybody have statistics? This one's a real head-scratcher. I mean, it's not like someone living in New Mexico might have a gay friend in Massachusetts, right? Nobody from Florida could possibly know anyone in California! Surely, God has commanded that there shall be no mixing between states upon penalty of smiting.
Perhaps the most shocking news to Wildmon and Co. might be that (gasp) same-sex weddings take place even in states where gay marriages aren't recognized. Believe it or not, for a lot of people who get married, the main thing is commitment to one another, not the question of legal status. The fact that there are states heartless enough to deny the right of one human being to sit at the hospital bedside of a sick or dying loved one notwithstanding, people who happen to be of the same biological gender still have ceremonies to declare their mutual commitment in places that don't provide legal recognition of that commitment. Note that none of Hallmark's cards, for this or any other occasion, include phrases like "Congratulations on the government recognition of your relationship." Greeting cards mark personal occasions, not changes in legal status.
Case in point: a few years ago, two gay friends of mine and LL's had a wedding ceremony and reception in St. Petersburg, Florida. Florida doesn't recognize same-sex marriage, and their official civil union had actually taken place in Vermont. They did that in full knowledge of the fact that they would not have anything like the rights and privileges of other married couples when they returned to Florida... but they did it anyhow, as a statement to one another. As the majority of this couple's friends and family lived in America's nethermost realm, however, they also had a purely symbolic ceremony and reception when they got back home. Finding an appropriate greeting card for the occasion was a matter of some deliberation, and having had cards like those Hallmark now sells at that time would have been quite helpful. So, whether Florida had or had not recognized the legal status of this couple at the time, I would have bought such a card to go along with the very nice picnic set that LL and I gave them as a wedding present. You see, there's a difference between a committed relationship, a marriage and a wedding. I don't suppose that a bunch of dunces like the AFA, who apparently can't even count up to 14 successfully, would understand a concept as abstract as that.
So if Hallmark is really telling the AFA's deluded Paul Reveres, galloping clumsily through our cultural countryside and shouting their fool heads off that "The homos are coming! The homos are coming!", to "buzz off," then all I can do is mark the fact that they've made the right decision in this instance. I would have used a different four-letter word than "buzz," and it's quite possible that Hallmark did, too. The AFA's membership likes to pretend that they're too timid to use the more appropriate word "fuck" for "buzz," although any of us who have been on the receiving end of a fundienutter's vitriol knows what kind of language they really use when they think nobody's looking (and they can always pray for forgiveness, which they "know" they'll get... which is a big part of what makes them such immense pricks in the first place).
And about the graphics that accompanied today's daily dose of Donald Wildmon's "meanmeat" fantasy life; am I the only one confused by this? Is an image of two tuxedos too horrible to contemplate? Is that all it takes to shock the flock? Is the email implying with the second graphic that the 12 apostles were involved in gay marriages? I mean, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were, and I wouldn't think less of them if it were the case that John had jammed his joystick up James. It's hard to think less of something than not at all. Nonetheless, I'm a bit surprised that Don Wildmon would be promulgating that sort of thing as historical fact. Then again, I was a bit surprised when I got an email from him asking me to make his dreams come true on a Saturday night in March, too.
In the end, like most of these moon-faced assassins of joy, Wildmon just needs reassurance that even with gay people getting married, he'll someday find the right man to fulfill his failingly-suppressed needs. He's got the same basic problem that all Christian literalists have. They've signed on to a cult that, on the one hand, is filled to the rafters with homoerotic imagery and on the other hand tells them to disregard the attraction they feel toward it, a conflict sloppily tied up with the promise that if they can just wait for it long enough that they'll get to sit back and watch the pain they've inflicted upon themselves all their lives acted out as sadistic fantasy by stern judges and bloodthirsty horsemen who will torture and behead those who actually enjoyed life. Without the sadism of the apocalyptic vision, which they demand we all believe is a truth rather than the product of asceticism driven to the point of hallucinatory madness, none of this pays off in the end. It is only through the infliction of suffering upon the other that they can derive meaning from the torture they inflict upon themselves.
Attacking greeting cards is no big deal when you're determined to spend eternity lending a hand at driving red-hot pokers into the eye sockets of real people, after all.
It's a done deal. Governor Deval Patrick signed legislation yesterday that repeals Massachusetts General Law Title III, Chapter 207, Section 11, better known as the 1913 Law. Any two consenting adults from anywhere in the country can now get married in this state, including same sex couples. The law does nothing about how such marriages are regarded in other states, of course, a situation like that of age of marriage laws (example: in Mississippi, the age of consent to marry without parental consent for a woman in 15. In neighboring Alabama, it's 18).
Professional concern troll Kristian Mineau of the Massachusetts Family Institute is terribly worried about how the marriages of non-residents of the state will be treated elsewhere. So, so concerned:
Kristian Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, said repeal of the law will result in lawsuits around the country after couples married in Massachusetts file suits to have their marriages recognized in their home states. He has also argued that the repeal will put gay divorce in question because same sex couples will face "a legal limbo" when seeking to dissolve their marriages in their home states.
How awful, no? Of course, Mineau will now begin crusading to get laws changed in other countries so that gay married couples won't face such problems, just like straight couples and 15 year olds from Mississippi, right?
The 1913 law passed to prevent interracial marriages in Massachusetts, which went unenforced until invoked by Mitt Romney in 2004 as a means to prevent same-sex marriage, now has both feet in the grave. Our state Senate voted to repeal Massachusetts General Law Title III, Chapter 207, Section 11 on July 16. Today, the House did the same:
...The Massachusetts House voted 118-35 Tuesday to repeal a 1913 law that bans couples from marrying in the state if the unions would not be legal in their own states.
The Senate also voted for the repeal earlier this month, and Gov. Deval Patrick has said he would approve it...
By the end of the week, perhaps even tomorrow, Patrick will sign the bill and a piece of bad legislation, marginalizing and bigoted from the outset, will be no more. Any two unrelated people of the age of consent will be able to get married in Massachusetts.
On July 10, the American Family Association's feckless leader said that if same-sex couples could get married in California after Election Day, the Culture War would be over and that his side would have lost. This was the reason he gave:
The vote in California, Wildmon explains, will affect the entire nation. "California is a big dam, holding back the flood -- and if you take down the dam in California, it's going to flood 49 other states," he illustrates. "It will destroy marriage as it has been known for thousands of years, and with that the cultural decline that normally would follow."
However, if — no, not if but when — the 1913 law is repealed in Massachusetts this week, will not Wildmon's dam (and probably a few blood vessels) have burst? Even if Proposition 8 were to be approved in California, as increasingly unlikely as that may be, will it matter? The couple that would have gotten married there can still get married here.
I still wish I could believe it, you know. I still don't, though. Don Wildmon will go back on his word. He makes far too good a living at spreading hate to ever capitulate to a little thing like a victory for love.
I'm proud to be a MassachusetterMassachusettianMassachusettan Masshole.
Dr. Donald Wildmon is founder of the American Family Association and an organizer of the Arlington Group. He says passage of the California marriage amendment is critical.
"If we lose California, if they defeat the marriage amendment, I'm afraid that the culture war is over and Christians have lost," says Wildmon, a 30-year veteran of the culture war. "I've never said that publicly until now -- but that's just the reality of the fact.
"If the homosexuals are able to defeat the marriage amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman, then the culture war is over and we've lost -- and gradually, secularism will replace Christianity as the foundation of our society," he adds.
Californians are likely to uphold the right to gay marriage in the state by voting against a ballot measure that seeks to override a court ruling allowing same-sex unions, poll results showed on Friday.
The Field Poll survey firm found 51 percent of voters oppose the measure, which proposes an amendment to the state's constitution recognizing marriage as only between a man and woman, while 42 percent were in favor...
Could it be? Will the defeat of Proposition 8 in California really mark the end of the Taliban's influence so-called Culture War in America? Will Don Wildmon quietly close the doors and disconnect the phone banks of the American Family Association, pack his bags and move to whatever country is the Christian fundamentalist equivalent of Afghanistan circa 1999? Will Ann Coulter have to take a part-time job as a hat rack in order to make ends meet? Will Bill O'Reilly at long last answer to his true calling and become a Muppet? Will I actually live to see the day that the shrilling of those who use deity as a periscope to peer between the bedsheets of America and pass judgment upon what they find are no longer met with microphones?
I would like to believe it. For once, I wish I could believe something that oozed from betwixt the labia of Don "Dear Manmeat" Wildmon. I am not that naive, however. I know all too well that the eventual defeat of California's Proposition 8 will only trigger off more excited ejaculations from the radical right. I wish that I could believe that a day was coming as soon as this November that would mark the end of more than 30 years of the degradation of the promise of personal liberty upon which America was founded. I hope fervently to see a time in this country where whatever quirk of nature or nurture or personal choice or whatever it is that decides which gender attracts and which does not attract some person ceases to be a deciding factor in what share of the rights, privileges and responsibilities to which that person will be admitted. There has only ever been one issue in this Culture War, and it is that of who gets to define morality. It has always been about whether our culture will take it upon itself to decide on absolutes that would be applied to acts undertaken by consent of the parties involved that have no effect upon those who do not participate.
I want America's obsession with other people's relationships and other people's sex lives to end. I would like to see Wildmon's prediction about the end of the effort to impose a Christian shariah upon America come to pass. For all of the admonitions about America being a Christian country, I don't see the Wal-Marts and McDonald's empty on Sundays. As far as I'm aware, remembering to keep the sabbath per the third commandment doesn't mention anything about shopping being exempt and yet stores find enough customers to make it worth their while to stay open and nobody is putting propositions on state ballots to change this. Let's not kid ourselves as to what this has always been about and what the nature of this country is and what the nature of the Wildmons and Hagees and Robertsons of this land is.
There isn't enough space between these people and Fred Phelps to pass a thread as it is. The death of Proposition 8 will only push them further into the realms of fury. These Christian Culture Warriors have already come quite close to proclaiming that "God Hates America." What did they say when 3,000 innocent people died horribly in a Manhattan skyscraper? What was the reaction when a hurricane decimated New Orleans? What was it that Ray Comfort has to say about the reason that people are losing their homes and their livelihoods in the conflagrations that have dotted California — and largely in conservative areas, mind you, but it serves his purpose to make such statements?
They all come down to exactly the same thing that Phelps' incestuous little clan waves about on placards at the funerals of those who were shoved into danger's way at the behest of one of Evangelicism's own in the first place. "God hates America."
A little bit of prediction here. If (I think it is a matter of when, not if, but I'll let it go for now) Proposition 8 is defeated, we won't see the end of the American Culture War. We'll simply have Don Wildmon making some bizarre statement to the effect that Jehovah has come down from on high to whisper into his ear and urge him to stand and fight. We'll hear the screechings of the usual harridans and bullyboys as they pray publically for California to fall into the sea. That's all we'll get.
I do think there will come a time when this ends, when America finally tires of this stupid game of ruining people's lives and that last shudder finally runs down its collective spine as it finally shrugs off the last of these hate peddlers and casts them into the obscurity their ilk inhabited in more reasonable eras. I don't know whether that will be within the remaining 20 or 30 or 40 years of my lifetime, but everything I have seen, from the ascendancy of the Moral Majority to the present day, tells me that the defeat of one proposition in California won't be the end of this. I know that what Wildmon is doing is telling a lie to rally his stormtroopers. All is fair, after all, in love and war.
Someday, perhaps there will be a Culture Love instead of a Culture War. That day will not come upon us in November 2008.
The Massachusetts Senate has voted to repeal the 1913 Marriage Law that was designed originally to stop out-of-state interracial couples from getting married in this state if interracial marriage was illegal in their home states. On a historical note, such marriages have been legal in Massachusetts since 1843, but social norms at the time were such that enforcement of the 1913 law was rare if it happened at all. The reason the law was passed 70 years after Massachusetts legalized interracial marriage is cited by Senator Dianne Wilkerson in today's Boston Globe article:
The 1913 law has racist roots. It grew out of the national backlash over the interracial marriage of heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson, Wilkerson said. At the time, 30 of 48 states banned interracial marriage, and many other states, including Massachusetts, enacted provisions that would keep interracial couples from crossing borders to marry in their jurisdiction.
Next up is the state House of Representatives, which could vote to repeal the law as early as the end of this week. If it clears that hurdle — and it's expected to do so — the repeal will be signed by Governor Deval Patrick.
Same-sex couples from any state can already get married in California as that state didn't have a law like the 1913 Marriage Law on its books. Governor Ahnold had already extended a public invitation to those couple to do so. Moreover, New York's Governor David Paterson has already directed that state's agencies to recognize same-sex marriages licensed in other states. With the repeal of the law, couples from New York will have a shorter trip ahead of them.
Of course, the usual suspects are lining up to oppose the deserved demise of this moldy old piece of legislation. For instance,
Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston joined with the state's three other Catholic bishops in appealing to lawmakers to keep the 1913 law on the books for constitutional, religious, and cultural reasons. They said eliminating the law would infringe on the rights of other states to set their own marriage laws, and they emphasized their commitment to the traditional definition of marriage.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Stick to protecting your magical crackers and leave the questions about marriage to people who can actually get married and haven't taken on unnatural vows of celibacy. It's always heartwarming to see clergy sticking up for laws designed to "protect" society against miscegenation. Some things never go out of style, especially when one is a dedicated adherent to a belief system that still practices Iron Age ritual incantation. The fact is, other states don't have laws like this on the books and nobody was complaining about it. This has nothing at all to do with constitutional rights and everything to do with committed intolerance. Aren't priests as duty-bound to be honest as they are to keep their little bishops in their pants? I've never had much respect for clergy, but even my respect for people like O'Malley as human beings wanes that much more with dissemblance such as this.
And, of course, there's always a few of these in the crowd:
Kris Mineau, who has lobbied against the repeal as president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, said he hopes the House will deliberate at greater length on the bill and consider the "legal quagmire" that could result for other states if their residents flock to Massachusetts to marry...
"We're going to be here until the cows go home," he said. "We're going to continue to advocate what we believe is right and what is in the best interest of our society and our children, and when the time comes that this Legislature starts waking up to reality, our voice will be there..."
The cows are going home, and Mineau should join them. The Legislature has already awakened to reality by euthanizing an outdated law that was born in bigotry and has lingered like a malignancy in the dark recesses of dusty law tomes until it was brought forth again in the 21st century to be used as a blunt force against a different set of marginalized people than those against which it was initially intended to discriminate. I do like that last line, though. The voice of Mineau and his Massachusetts Family Institute will only be there so long as the Legislature hasn't quite awakened to reality. Once they do so — and the Senate's vote certainly indicates that the alarm clock's gone off — then that voice will vanish in a mephitic puff of disintegrating dream-stuff.
I rarely find reason to praise government, but this is one of those instances. Not only is the repeal of the 1913 Anti-Miscegenation Statute the right thing to do, it will also bring money into the state. To that end, I hope that some of these couples will consider tying the knot in scenic Worcester. In fact, I hope they'd consider settling here. I'd rather see a gay-friendly enclave along the lines of San Francisco's Castro District than what now squats in the dilapidation of the Main South area; wouldn't anyone?
Don't be too concerned about the O'Malleys and Mineaus of our state; those cows are going home.
For all its problems, have to say are really like living in Massachusetts. Not only was it the first of so far only two states to legalize same-sex marriage, but now it seems that Massachusetts is finally getting ready to allow same-sex couples from other states to get married here.
The reason that they haven’t been able to up until now is due to a 1913 law that prohibits any couple from getting married in Massachusetts if their marriage would be illegal in the state in which they reside. What kinds of marriages were illegal in some states in 1913? Why, interracial marriages, of course! To be fair, incestuous marriages were also covered under this law, but the reason the law was passed early in the last century was very likely the then-scandalous marriage of a black boxer to a white woman. Besides, Massachusetts already had laws preventing such marriages (see Massachusetts General Law, Title III, Chapter 207, sections 1 and 2). There's little doubt that the 1913 Law was passed due to racist motivations.
The law wasn’t even enforced in Massachusetts until 2004, when governor Mitt Romney started thinking about running for president. When it came time for him to start worrying about pandering to the right-wing religious base of the Republican Party, he invoked as quintessentially racist law to make it look like he was opposed to gay marriage — even though he wasn't strongly opposed to at least civil unions as late as 2002 (note: the site I've linked to here is one run by one of the most conservative political action groups in Massachusetts, so this is not "liberal" anti-Romney material but conservative-generated info). The national spotlight seems to have changed that.
Our current governor and state legislature looked to be on the verge of kicking the 1913 marriage law off the books, and it’s about time. A vote on this may be held in the state Senate today and in the House by Thursday. If the law is overturned, it will be legal for a couple from any state to be married in Massachusetts if their union is legal in this state.
the best-known act of the Massachusetts Legislature of 1913 is a law denying marriage licenses to nonresident couples if their union would be illegal in their home states.
The measure has a miserable history. Though it resurfaced as part of the same-sex marriage debate in 2004, its origins lie in racial discrimination...
...Back in 1913, interracial marriages were legal in Massachusetts, but not in most states. Yet it's not at all clear that any interracial couples were ever turned away under the law. Instead, it fell into obscurity and only resurfaced four years ago, when Governor Mitt Romney cited it in telling towns to refuse marriage licenses to same-sex couples from out of state.
Other states can enforce their own laws. And if most states refuse to recognize some marriages that are legal in Massachusetts, that's their loss...
No marriage shall be contracted in this commonwealth by a party residing and intending to continue to reside in another jurisdiction if such marriage would be void if contracted in such other jurisdiction, and every marriage contracted in this commonwealth in violation hereof shall be null and void.
Section 12 then explains how out-of-state residents are to be prevented from getting married in a way that's legal in Massachusetts but not legal in, say, Oklahoma:
Before issuing a license to marry a person who resides and intends to continue to reside in another state, the officer having authority to issue the license shall satisfy himself, by requiring affidavits or otherwise, that such person is not prohibited from intermarrying by the laws of the jurisdiction where he or she resides.
This is probably why Section 11 was never enforced before it was dredged up from obscurity in the case of same-sex marriages. Enforcing something like this would have meant that any couple without a Massachusetts address would have needed a note from their local justice of the peace or lawmakers or what have you that explained the laws of some other state in order to get married here, in which case why would they bother to get married here at all? Essentially, this would have had the effect of barring anyone from out of state from getting married in Massachusetts.
As one might expect, the moon-faced assassins of joy are up in arms about the death of this bigoted blight on the Massachusetts law books. "But this will make Massachusetts the Las Vegas of gay marriage," whine people such as Peter LaBarbera, to which I can only reply, so what if it does? Right now, isn't Las Vegas the Las Vegas of straight marriage? Don't half of all opposite-sex marriage end in divorce? If concerned women like Bam-Bam are worried about Massachusetts becoming a Mecca for same-sex couples who want to have a go at a formal commitment, there's an easy solution; simply make their marriages legal in lots of other places. Then they wouldn't be forced to come here or go to California to get married. Problem solved. Of course, what the whiners are really opposed to is that these couples will be able to get married at all. This isn't about Massachusetts, it's about their watching their ability to prevent same-sex marriages from happening at all.
As far as I'm concerned, if every homosexual couple in the world decides they want to get married in Massachusetts starting next week, fine! Come on over! Welcome; sorry to have kept you waiting while our government got around to finally obliterating a law intended to enforce one form of bigotry that had been used to maintain another that has at last become a minority view after a four-year experiment has demonstrated that allowing two committed men or two committed women from wedding one another does not, in fact, cause invisible sky-giants to rain meteors down upon us all. Good luck and may you have many years of happiness together.
With the Crackertholic Crusade going on yesterday, I almost forgot about a second incident of a raving religious reichsfuhrer dictating dietary do's and don'ts. While Bill Donohue was fretting about the failure to swallow Jesus, Don Wildmon was spreading the word that McDonald's is eeeeeeeeevil. You guessed it, I've gotten another Dear Manmeat letter from Donny, and he is ever so righteously furious at McDonald's for failing to roll over and capitulate to his edicts.
Dear Manmeat,
Throwing out any pretense of being neutral in the culture war, McDonald's has taken up the rhetoric of gay activists, suggesting those who oppose same-sex marriage (SSM) are motivated by hate.
I kind of see why Wildmon is upset here. McDonald's is putting far too much emphasis on hate. They've left out the fear and ignorance that Wildmon has worked so long and hard to cultivate. Shame on you, McDonald's. Give credit where credit is due.
AFA has asked for a boycott of McDonald's restaurants because of the company’s promotion of the gay agenda. AFA asked McDonald’s to remain neutral in the culture war. McDonald’s refused.
And McDonald's did the right thing by refusing to obey your nonsense. Oh, that horrible gay agenda... demanding equal protection and recognition under the law. The humanities! When will McDonald's adopt the Fundamentalist agenda and declare Don Wildmon the fearless leader he knows himself to be? They should name a hamburger after him.... you know, the Mississippi Meat Mound or something. Or better yet, they could team him up with Bill Donohue and make a hamburger with Jesus stamped on the bun. They could make it the only item on their menu not available for take-out orders and then beat anyone who tries to smuggle it out of the restaurant. And they could certify it "100% gay-free" and attach a cute little slogan to it. Something like "Put a Mississippi Meat Mound in your mouth and swallow... but it's not gay." I dunno, something like that. What am I, a marketing consultant?
In response to the boycott, McDonald's spokesman Bill Whitman suggested to the Washington Post that those who oppose SSM are motivated by hate, saying "...hatred has no place in our culture." McDonald's has decided to adopt the "hate" theme used by gay activist groups for years.
Hey, maybe gay activists use the hate theme (why the quotes?) because you... you know... hate them? Just a guess here, but perhaps the videos the AFA sells about hordes of homosexuals raping and pillaging quaint little towns that never left the 1950's has something to do with it.
Whitman went on to say, "We stand by and support our people to live and work in a society free of discrimination and harassment." Mr. Whitman has intentionally avoided addressing the reason for the boycott. This boycott is not about hiring gays or how gay employees are treated. It is about McDonald's choosing to put the full weight of their corporation behind promoting their agenda.
I think Whitman addressed the issue a lot better than that weasely bit of sleight-of-mind that this note attempts to foist off upon the hateful, fearful and ignorant. I didn't notice Whitman saying anything about employing gay people. He's talking about "a society free of discrimination and harassment," not "a restaurant free of discrimination and harassment." Whitman was being as honest as a PR person can be expected to be. Wildmon is simply attempting to twist the minds of his followers a little bit more than they were already twisted.
McDonald's donated $20,000 to the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce in exchange for membership and a seat on the group’s board of directors. The NGLCC lobbies Congress in support of same-sex marriage.
$20,000 is the full weight of the corporation? This is McDonald's we're talking about; they could have easily given $20,000,000 if they wanted. That's pocket change to them. In fact, in the first quarter of 2008 alone McDonald's reported earnings in excess of $945,000,000, a sizable increase over the same period from the previous year (so much for the AFA's boycott). In light of this, $20,000 is hardly the "full weight" of the corporation! In fact, I don't think they're doing enough. They ought to give at least $1,000,000 to the NGLCC next time around. $20,000 barely even qualifies as a token gesture.
McDonald's CEO Jim Skinner said the company will promote issues they approve. "Being a socially responsible organization is a fundamental part of who we are. We have an obligation to use our size and resources to make a difference in the world...and we do."
Good for Jim Skinner. Let's see McDonald's do more next time. After all, their contribution to NGLCC represented 0.0002% of their profits. That means that the Quarter Pounder combo meal that I bought for dinner last night after receiving Wildmon's latest "Dear Manmeat" epistle, which cost $5.66, contributed about a hundredth of a penny to combating the fear, hatred and ignorance promulgated by organizations like the AFA. That hardly seems like much in consideration of eating such crummy food for a good cause. I'm not about to eat 100 spongy, flavorless Quarter Pounders to contribute a mere penny. I mean, I could just write a check directly to NGLCC, but then I don't get the pleasure of doing exactly the opposite of what some bunch of fundamentalist is trying to order people to do, and I don't get to take a picture like this:
I can't afford the $100 membership fee for the NGLCC and they don't appear to solicit small contributions of $5.00 at a time, so I guess I'll just have to choke down a bad burger every so often and take a photo to show my support for the outlandish notion that gay people deserve equal treatment under the law. Or I can preferentially patronize the numerous other companies that support them, including UPS, Capital One (hey Don Wildmon... what's in your closet?), Albertson's Supermarkets, Merck, Century 21, Johnson and Johnson, Continental Airlines, Burger King, IBM, American Express, Motorola (I already have a Motorola cell phone), American Airlines, Coors Brewing, Avis, OfficeMax, Xerox, Shaws (I already shop there), Cisco... well, the list just goes on and on.
In fact, looking at this list of companies that NGLCC counts among its corporate partners, I'd be willing to bet that at least a few of them contribute more than McDonald's does with its measly $20,000. I'd also bet that Wildmon and his Wild Bunch/AFA are contributing much more than I am to the NGLCC with my purchase of a Quarter Pounder. Good for you, AFA members!
An article from the New York Times and appearing in this morning's Worcester Telegram and Gazette provides a sketch of the number and state of same-sex marriages in Massachusetts after four years of it being legal here.
Four years after Massachusetts became the first state to allow gay couples to marry, there have been blissful unions, painful divorces and everything in between...
As same-sex marriage begins in California, Massachusetts's experience may offer hints of what is to come. For example, after an initial euphoric rush to the altar, the number of gay weddings in Massachusetts fell sharply, and has declined each year since. Of the more than 10,500 same-sex couples married here since May 17, 2004, 6,121 wed in the first six months. There were 2,060 weddings in 2005; 1,442 in 2006; and 867 in the first eight months of 2007, the most recent data show...
The census recorded 23,655 same-sex households in Massachusetts in 2006...
Nearly two-thirds of the weddings have been lesbian marriages... more same-sex married couples of both sexes are older — nearly a third are in their 40s...
"It's been a mixed bag," said Jacob Venter, a 44-year-old child psychiatrist... "Nothing turns out the way you imagine," Venter said. "There are no role models for gay marriage..."
"I feel totally different inside my skin," said Linda Bailey-Davies, 62, who married her longtime partner, Gloria Bailey-Davies, 67. With marriage, she said, "I felt legitimate in the world..."
"It makes me completely think differently about the relationship," said Lance Collins, 38, a colorist at a Boston hair salon...
but his partner does not want to marry. "I know he cares about me quite a bit," Collins said. "I just think he doesn't want to."
Collins said he believes his partner is his ideal match because he "gets as excited about seeing me as I get about seeing him," because "sometimes he'll do my laundry and fold it the way I like it," and because "he makes my coffee really well — one Equal with just a tablespoon of fat-free half-and-half..."
The article points up well how similar gay and not-gay people really are. More gay women have gotten married than have gay men, for example. Could it be that gay men and straight men both are more gun shy about commitment than are women overall?
Some of these marriages are working out, some of them aren't. That sounds familiar, too.
I think I'm beginning to see what those who are viscerally opposed to same-sex marriage have been so worried about, and it has nothing to do in the end with some metaphysical mechanism by which the marriage of one couple can alter the commitment of another unrelated pair. No, I think for a lot of the Matt Barbers of the world, the worry runs much deeper.
Maybe they're just scared that aside from their preferences in selecting a partner, it's turning out that gay people aren't significantly different from straight ones. I mean, these people are supposed to be demonic and wicked and doing all sorts of awful perverse things, working some sort of spell over we heterosexuals to turn us all into stereotypically mincing androgynes and cause churches to burst into flame and raping and pillaging their way across our cultural landscape, and here they are being just like us. Here they are worried about working on their relationships and compromising with their partners and making commitments and being afraid to make commitments and keeping in mind how their partners like their coffee.
If the nefarious scapegoats turn out to be like everybody else, then upon whom will the Concerned Women of America vent their spleens? At whom will Pat Robertson be able to point next time there's a mass murder and say, "We're being punished for what those people did?" Whatever is poor Don Wildmon going to do with his American Family Association if it turns out that the "homosexual agenda" isn't much more than wanting to be able to settle down, collect the same perks and penalties that other couples have long gotten, and then spend the rest of their lives getting old together and having the occasional argument over the bills and how to decorate the living room... or not succeeding and getting the same divorces that about half of all straight couples wind up getting? How can there be an "us" if there is no "them?" Won't somebody please think of Fred Phelps; what happens to the poor guy if the issue upon which he's practically built his whole life goes away and he has to get a real job? It's an American tragedy in the making!
It's so hard to find someone to hate these days, after all. Dark-skinned people can vote and one might even be elected president within the year. Antisemitism is just passé. Beating up the Amish is frowned upon. If it turns out that gay people are just like everyone else — just as happened with Jews and Blacks and Italians at various points in America's long history of not liking people who were somehow "different" — then what's left? It's so hard to pick the people who like spicy food out of a crowd...
Hyphal tip to Ed Brayton's Dispatches from the Culture Wars for this heartwarming story of the true importance of love to the hierarchy of the Catholic church.
A paraplegic Italian man and his fiancée were denied a church wedding by a bishop because the man's injury also left him impotent. The denial came in spite of the fact that the bride-to-be was aware of this aspect of his condition and declared that she was alright with it.
An Italian bishop has denied a young paraplegic a church wedding because he is impotent, media in Rome have reported.
Although the man's fiancée is aware of the problem, a spokesman for Bishop Lorenzo Chiarinelli of Viterbo, central Italy, told SkyTG24 television that "no bishop, no priest can celebrate a wedding when he knows of impotence as it is a motive for annulment."
The 26-year-old groom has been paraplegic since he was involved in a car accident. He and his fiancée were married in a civil ceremony on Saturday, June 7, in Viterbo, news agency AFP reported.
Attending the ceremony was their parish curate, who was banned from marrying the couple in church.
First off, I wish this couple all the hapiness they can get their hands on. The man involved certainly deserves it. The woman involved must truly love the guy, willing as she is to forgo certain physical aspects of their relationship.
Who needs these dress-wearing medieval ritualists, anyhow? All they're ultimately good for is propagating superstitions and nonsense that at least some of the world has outgrown including, apparently, this couple. The decision by this moon-faced assassin of joy in a cassock has nothing to do with annulment. Both parties to the marriage are aware of their situation and have given their consent. This garbage about annulment is an excuse made in an attempt to cover up the true nature of this organized bastion of sorcery.
Here's the real deal: it's about reproduction. It's no secret that the Catholic church teaches that sex is all about procreation. The reason this bishop booted a clearly committed couple is that it's unlikely that they'll start popping out new parishioners. It's the same reason that the church opposes contraception, same-sex marriage, masturbation, or anything else that feels good sexually but doesn't result in somebody going through a few weeks of morning sickness.
You have to understand, the church is obsessed with sex. It's just about the most dangerous thing in the world to them. When you have control over people's sexuality you literally have them grappled by the short hairs. It's like having control of their food supply. Were the church to ever relinquish their pubic grasp they'd ultimately be giving up much more, or so they believe. No sex outside of marriage, no sex inside of marriage if it can't result in offspring, no marriage at all for priests... I guess if it doesn't involve a crosier, an altar boy and the word "daddy," it just doesn't fly. After all, it's not really sex if it's not a man and a woman having it, right?
Screw them... or better yet, don't. I hope the groom told the bishop that he could go sit on his pointy hat and the bride came up with a fine suggestion of a place in which the loveless, merciless, dried-up old fart could go store his crosier so as to safeguard it against fading in the light of day. Hasn't this man, who has clearly found a good-hearted and giving partner, had enough pain in his life without this additional humiliating kick in the crotch? The bishop should be restricted to going on demon-hunting expeditions with Gabriele Amorth.
These wizened clerics wield the fear of divine retribution like a cudgel over the credulous. But you know what? It's bogeyman stories, and that's all it is. Nobody goes to hell and nobody goes to heaven. The closest we get is right here, right now. We have the power within our all-too-fallible grasp to make this world into one or the other.
At least we know now which extreme Bishop Chiarinelli favors. I hope he takes his stone-cold heart and all those within that dusty Romanesque autocratic citadel of mythology that countenance his pronouncement and arrives at the destination he seeks in his own life. The world need Chiarinelli like it needs a good manufacturer of buggy whips.
You know, he'll probably try to get this couple excommunicated for violating his version of the laws of god and nature. And so what? No more ooga-booga meals of human flesh and blood for them! Big deal. I'll send them my ma-po tofu recipe as a wedding gift. I'm glad they're ignoring the bishop's obsessive edict that sex is more important than love.
Officials in two California counties have come up with a novel way of insuring the preservation of allegedly traditional marriages against same-sex marriages. If they have to perform weddings for same-sex couples, they'll simply refuse to perform any weddings at all. That way marriages can only be performed in religious settings — in the case of these two counties, that means a church — and churches almost entirely will refuse to perform same-sex weddings. The counties in question are Butte and Kern, both largely rural and not places with large numbers of gay people, but their excuse is that they don't have the resources to perform same-sex and opposite-sex weddings, so they won't do either one.
County officials in at least two California counties say they'll stop performing all wedding ceremonies by next week, arguing that they don't have enough resources to marry both gay and straight couples.
Officials in Kern and Butte counties cited budget and staffing constraints as the rationale for halting the ceremonies. But clerks in other counties say that claim is specious. Some activists went further, arguing that the decision to stop the ceremonies amounts to poorly disguised discrimination against gay and lesbian couples...
Gee, ya think?
In Kern County, Clerk Ann Barnett announced her decision only after county lawyers told her she could not refuse to marry gay couples. Butte County Clerk Candace Grubb, meanwhile, blamed budget constraints, telling the Chico Enterprise-Record that her decision was made long before the court ruling...
Am I the only one who sees a bit of low-brow humor in talking about "Grubb in Butte?"
Both counties have conservative populations that overwhelmingly supported a 2000 ballot measure that defined marriage as between a man and a woman, a law found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court on May 15. Advocates of that law are going back to the ballot in November with a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages...
Steve Weir, Contra Costa County's clerk and president of the California Association of Clerks and Elected Officials, noted that the state allows counties to set their own fees for marriage ceremonies so they can recover the costs associated with performing the duty.
"It's a nice service that we provide to the public, and it's not costing me anything. In this day and age with the budget situation, how can you go wrong providing a public service that helps with your overhead? It's a no-brainer..."
Others said they doubt that the clerk's office in any rural, conservative county would be overwhelmed with gay couples come next week. Kings County Clerk Ken Baird, for example, said he would be surprised if more than a handful of same-sex couples wanted to get married there.
"Bakersfield (the Kern County seat) is not a very safe place to be out," added the Rev. Byrd Tetzlaff of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Kern County. "We are not expecting that many couples, maybe 10 or 12..."
After hearing of the decision, Tetzlaff announced she would perform free marriages to same-sex couples until Nov. 4, when voters will weigh in the proposed constitutional amendment.
Next Tuesday she plans to offer her services to all couples getting licenses at the county building. But she said she and other gay-marriage supporters have been told that the police will not allow them to conduct the ceremonies there...
[Kern County Supervisor Don] Maben said he is "getting a lot of flak" for raising concerns about Barnett's decision but, that to him, it's not a gay-rights issue - it is simply a marriage issue. At least 25 opposite-sex couples who had weddings scheduled at the clerk's office are also being forced to make other plans, he said...
Opponents of same-sex marriage have long argued that they oppose it precisely because it weakens the kind of marriage that they favor. In light of this development in Butte and Kern, it appears that this was a case of self-fulfilling prophecy. I find it hard to believe that performing a few additional ceremonies — a very few — for which the counties in question recover all expenses wuld tax local budgets to any extent at all, and certainly if that were the reason for their refusal, they could still make facilities available for others to carry out the ceremonies free of charge. That they refuse to do so and that a minister who is willing to do it has been told that the local police won't allow her to do so gives a clear lie to the justification being used by the Butte and Kern moon-faced assassins of joy.
Ironically, it would appear to be religious conservatives who are the real threat to marriage. Personally, I support the right of two people of the same religious persuasion to get married. The officials in Kern and Butte have a problem with that, too. Really, this is a cynical attempt to exploit a very old loophole in the laws governing marriage. By refusing to perform weddings, these counties — and I'm sure they won't be the only jurisdictions that try this — are turning over the right to make a contract exclusively to religious institutions. It's a loophole that ought to be closed; we shouldn't have a situation in which religious groups get proprietorship of decision making regarding such contracts. If government is going to provide any sort of recognition to marriage by way of tax benefits and responsibilities then it is also incumbent upon government to do everything necessary to make marriage itself a governmental, secular function and leave the religious aspect of it as a personal and non-necessary choice. Either that or government should stop recognizing marriage as a special condition and treat everyone equally when it comes to these things, making no distinction for married status. What is going on in Butte and Kern merely points out how government fails in this regard. The door has long been left open for something like this, and it was only a matter of time before someone decided to exploit the situation as it has existed for far too long.
I hope that I will be forgiven for the rather cliched title of this entry, but I just couldn't resist.
I don't do celebrity gossip as a rule, but this is just a great story. George Takei, best known as Mr. Sulu from the original Star Trek series, is marrying his partner of 21 years, enabled by the California Supreme Court's recent ruling on that state's former same-sex marriage ban.
George Takei, best known for playing Sulu on "Star Trek," will never forget the first time he saw Brad Altman, the man he plans to marry, more than two decades ago.
They were working out in a running club and he couldn't take his eyes off Altman, who had a "lean, tightly muscled" body, the 71-year-old actor told AP Radio in an interview.
Takei said he asked Altman to help him train for a marathon, they fell in love, and now they've been living together for 21 years.
Altman said he proposed by getting down on one knee in their kitchen while Takei was eating a sandwich after seeing on TV that the California Supreme Court had legalized same-sex marriage. It surprised Takei, who thought he would be the one who popped the question.
They bought each other turquoise and silver wedding rings.
Takei and Altman plan to marry Sept. 14 in the Democracy Forum at the Japanese National Museum in Los Angeles.
Walter Koenig, who played Chekov in "Star Trek," will be the best man and Nichelle Nichols, who played Uhura, will be the matron of honor. Castmate Leonard Nimoy will be among the 200 guests, but probably not William Shatner...
These two have been together for a generation. Is that love? Commitment? Looks like it to me. Certainly no mere five year mission!
Of course there are moon-faced assassins of joy in America who would love to prevent George and Brad from tying the knot because in their tiny minds this relationship somehow threatens commitment. The rest of us, I'm sure, will join in wishing Mr. Sulu and his First Mate another generation's worth of happiness — together.
The moon-faced assassins of joy have achieved a goal on their way to having a say in which consenting monogamous adults can marry which other consenting monogamous adults in California. It may not be exactly the result they were looking for, though.
A constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in California was placed on the Nov. 4 ballot Monday, kick-starting an election struggle that will have repercussions across the nation.
Secretary of State Debra Bowen's certification of the initiative, which would amend the state Constitution to limit marriage to a union between a man and a woman, comes as no surprise to either side of the same-sex marriage issue.
When backers of the initiative, who needed 694,354 valid signatures to make the ballot, turned in more than 1.1 million signatures, the only question was when the certification would come...
Opponents of same-sex marriage already are arguing that the court should not have overturned the vote of the people on same-sex marriage and have said they are confident that their fall campaign will draw support not only from voters in California but from citizens across the nation...
Not from this one.
A Field Poll released last week showed that for the first time in 30 years of polling on the gay marriage question, a majority of Californians now supports same-sex marriage and a more voters are unwilling to overturn the state Supreme Court decision...
The Field Poll mentioned can be viewed online, and it should be noted that another poll contradicts the reported result. The Field Poll shows the kinds of divisions among respondents that one might expect. Younger respondents were far more likely to support same-sex marriage and oppose the anti-marriage amendment than were those 65 and over. Self-described Born Again Christians overwhelmingly disapprove of same-sex marriage and support was also concentrated in big cities along the coast.
A decisive percentage who oppose amending the state's constitution appear to do so not out of personal support for same-sex marriage but based upon a general leeriness of amending the constitution in the first place. I hope that's a response conditioned at least in some of these people by an opposition to the notion that a constitution should be used to take away rights that a court, in interpreting the constitution in its current form, has said that the targeted minority already possesses. In a democracy, the proper role of a constitution is to ensure that the same rights are guaranteed to all those governed by it, not to carve up the populace into groups that do or don't get equal treatment according to the whims of other groups that seek to reserve those rights to themselves. I have yet to see an explanation of why the state has a compelling interest in insuring that marriage is defined as "one man, one woman" or that personal distaste or religious belief should be allowed a say in the matter of who has what rights. It's not as if allowing the marriage of two adults over the age of majority compels anyone else to enter into such an agreement anymore than allowing two consenting adults to engage in non-procreative sex forces other adults to do so. No one has yet demonstrated any causative principle by which same-sex marriage causes any more or any less harm to others than opposite-sex marriage. As far as I have ever been able to tell, the whole basis for opposition boils down to nothing more than a desire to see personal notions of morality enforced as law.
Part of this, I think, is a bit of desperation on the part of fundamentalist groups. Not that I think all of the people who want to amend California's constitution are religious fundamentalists, but I do think that the organizational infrastructure behind the push is largely, if not entirely, theocratic in nature. There are telling signs that those organizations are losing their ability to mold social norms. They have no candidate in the race for president and have lost much of their grip on Congress. The evangelical movement itself is changing and beginning to split away from a political raison d'être. The theocratic front needs a big win somewhere, somehow to remain viable. I've no doubt that they're going to put a lot of effort into this Californian campaign.
I would still question the wisdom of allowing any constitution to be amended in a manner which, to my mind, subverts the whole purpose of such documents as we know them in this country. Can't a plebiscite result in something unconstitutional being added to a constitution? If an amendment like that proposed here can become law, what's to stop the return of things like miscegenation laws? For that matter, why couldn't an amendment be passed by voters that goes so far as to say who can live in a state, where they are allowed to travel within the state, or what service could be withheld from any group at the state level that the majority might dislike at some point in history?
I suspect that a lot of people are getting sick of religious influence over the law and, after years of seeing the results such an arrangement yields, just don't want to play that game anymore. I could be wrong about that, of course, but it seems like something in the wind these days. I've never been an optimist about it, but I can't help but be a bit more hopeful than usual that the religiously-motivated far right has peaked and is going into the downside of its arc. What happens in California might not be a bad bellwether.
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