from the Huffington Post - August 6, 2013:
The mayor of Braddock, Penn. performed his county's first gay wedding Aug. 5 in spite of the statewide ban on same-sex marriage.
Calling Pennsylvania's Defense of Marriage Act "a fundamentally unjust piece of legislation," Braddock Mayor John Fetterman said he was happy to marry John Kandray and Bill Gray, who have been together for 11 years and had obtained a marriage license in Montgomery County, CBS Pittsburgh is reporting.
The ceremony took place around 9:30 p.m. on Monday in front of the couple's family and friends, who had gathered at Fetterman's home.
“We pay the same taxes, we do everything the same, but we don’t have the same rights,” Kandray is quoted as saying. “It felt like, you know what, let’s stand up for ourselves and do this."
Meanwhile, Pennsylvania officials have filed a lawsuit alleging that D. Bruce Hanes, the register of wills in Montgomery County, violated state laws when he began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples last month, the Associated Press reported.
"I decided to come down on the right side of history and the law," Hanes said, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. More than 60 marriage licenses have reportedly been issued to same-sex couples by Montgomery County so far.
Showing posts with label gay marriage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gay marriage. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Gay Marriage in the Year 100 AD
by Annalee Newitz:
Gay marriage sounds like an ultra-contemporary idea. But almost twenty years ago, a Catholic scholar at Yale shocked the world by publishing a book packed with evidence that same-sex marriages were sanctioned by the early Christian Church during an era commonly called the Dark Ages.
John Boswell (below) was a historian and religious Catholic who dedicated much of his scholarly life to studying the late Roman Empire and early Christian Church. Poring over legal and church documents from this era, he discovered something incredible. There were dozens of records of church ceremonies where two men were joined in unions that used the same rituals as heterosexual marriages. (He found almost no records of lesbian unions, which is probably an artifact of a culture which kept more records about the lives of men generally.)
Bolstered by this evidence, Boswell published a book in 1994, the year before his death from AIDS, called Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe. The book comes out next month for the first time in a digital edition. It was an instant lightening rod for controversy, drawing criticism from both the Catholic Church and sex pundit Camille Paglia. Given the Church's present-day views on gay marriage, these detractors argued, Boswell's history seemed like wishful thinking.
But it wasn't. Boswell had actually begun his research back in the 1970s, and published an equally controversial work in 1980 called Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century. His Same-Sex Unions book refined and expanded a lot of what he'd learned over a lifetime of research into primary sources in scattered libraries and archives.
How could these marriages have been forgotten by history? One easy answer is that — as Boswell argues — the Church reframed the idea of marriage in the 13th century to be for the purposes of procreation. And this slammed the door on gay marriage. Church scholars and officials worked hard to suppress the history of these marriages in order to justify their new definition.
Of course, history is more complicated than that. Boswell claims that part of the problem is that we define marriage so differently today that it's almost impossible for historians to recognize 1800-year-old gay marriage documents when they see them. Often, these documents refer to uniting "brothers," which at the time would have been a way of describing same-sex partners whose lifestyles were tolerated in Rome. Also, marriages over a millennium ago were not based on procreation, but wealth-sharing. So "marriage" sometimes meant a non-sexual union of two people's or families' wealth. Boswell admits that some of the documents he found may refer simply to non-sexual joining of two men's fortunes — but many also referred to what today we would call gay marriage.
Legal scholar Richard Ante wrote a law journal article explaining that Boswell's book could even be used as evidence for the legality of gay marriage, since it shows evidence that definitions of marriage have changed over time. He describes some of Boswell's evidence of these same-sex rites in the early first millennium:
The burial rite given for Achilles and Patroclus, both men, was the burial rite for a man and his wife. The relationships of Hadrian and Antinous, of Polyeuct and Nearchos, of Perpetua and Felicitas, and of Saints Serge and Bacchus, all bore resemblance to heterosexual marriages of their times. The iconography of Serge and Bacchus was even used in same-sex nuptial ceremonies by the early Christian Church.
The main piece of evidence that these same-sex unions were marriages is that they so closely resembled heterosexual ceremonies. Literary scholar Bruce Holsinger describes Boswell's detailed stories of same-sex ceremonies:
[Boswell] cleverly posits the development of heterosexual and same-sex nuptial offices as a single phenomenon, tracking the growth of the latter from "merely a set of prayers " in the earlier Middle Ages to its flowering as a "full office" by the twelfth century that involved "the burning of candles, the placing of the two parties' hands on the Gospel, the joining of their right hands, the binding of their hands . . . with the priest's stole, an introductory litany crowning, the Lord's Prayer, Communion, a kiss, and sometimes circling around the altar." Boswell devotes a full chapter to comparing these rituals with their heterosexual counterparts, revealing a number of extraordinary similarities between the two; in several appendixes totaling almost 100 pages, he has compiled numerous examples of the documents themselves (including heterosexual matrimony ceremonies and adoption rituals for comparison) to let "readers . . . judge for themselves," as he puts it. (Boswell translates most of the ceremonies, so general readers won't have to worry about brushing up on their Old Church Slavonic.)
Were these same-sex unions in the middle ages the same thing as today's gay marriages? Probably not. People at the time may not have viewed two men forming a union as anything out of the ordinary. Marriage itself meant something different thousands of years ago, and social taboos against homosexuality had not yet solidified. Still, in Boswell's work, we find records of institutions where same-sex couples were honored with the same ceremonies that opposite-sex couples enjoyed. Two men could live as "brothers," sharing wealth, home, and family. And yes, they could love each other, too.
Though Boswell died before his country began to allow similar kinds of unions, he could draw hope from knowing something that most people did not. Even the most fundamental kinds of human relationships change over time. Those who have been banished today may be blessed tomorrow — just as they were over a thousand years ago.
Gay marriage sounds like an ultra-contemporary idea. But almost twenty years ago, a Catholic scholar at Yale shocked the world by publishing a book packed with evidence that same-sex marriages were sanctioned by the early Christian Church during an era commonly called the Dark Ages.
Illustration of Serge and Bacchus, in a same-sex union.
John Boswell (below) was a historian and religious Catholic who dedicated much of his scholarly life to studying the late Roman Empire and early Christian Church. Poring over legal and church documents from this era, he discovered something incredible. There were dozens of records of church ceremonies where two men were joined in unions that used the same rituals as heterosexual marriages. (He found almost no records of lesbian unions, which is probably an artifact of a culture which kept more records about the lives of men generally.)
But it wasn't. Boswell had actually begun his research back in the 1970s, and published an equally controversial work in 1980 called Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century. His Same-Sex Unions book refined and expanded a lot of what he'd learned over a lifetime of research into primary sources in scattered libraries and archives.
How could these marriages have been forgotten by history? One easy answer is that — as Boswell argues — the Church reframed the idea of marriage in the 13th century to be for the purposes of procreation. And this slammed the door on gay marriage. Church scholars and officials worked hard to suppress the history of these marriages in order to justify their new definition.
Of course, history is more complicated than that. Boswell claims that part of the problem is that we define marriage so differently today that it's almost impossible for historians to recognize 1800-year-old gay marriage documents when they see them. Often, these documents refer to uniting "brothers," which at the time would have been a way of describing same-sex partners whose lifestyles were tolerated in Rome. Also, marriages over a millennium ago were not based on procreation, but wealth-sharing. So "marriage" sometimes meant a non-sexual union of two people's or families' wealth. Boswell admits that some of the documents he found may refer simply to non-sexual joining of two men's fortunes — but many also referred to what today we would call gay marriage.
The burial rite given for Achilles and Patroclus, both men, was the burial rite for a man and his wife. The relationships of Hadrian and Antinous, of Polyeuct and Nearchos, of Perpetua and Felicitas, and of Saints Serge and Bacchus, all bore resemblance to heterosexual marriages of their times. The iconography of Serge and Bacchus was even used in same-sex nuptial ceremonies by the early Christian Church.
The main piece of evidence that these same-sex unions were marriages is that they so closely resembled heterosexual ceremonies. Literary scholar Bruce Holsinger describes Boswell's detailed stories of same-sex ceremonies:
[Boswell] cleverly posits the development of heterosexual and same-sex nuptial offices as a single phenomenon, tracking the growth of the latter from "merely a set of prayers " in the earlier Middle Ages to its flowering as a "full office" by the twelfth century that involved "the burning of candles, the placing of the two parties' hands on the Gospel, the joining of their right hands, the binding of their hands . . . with the priest's stole, an introductory litany crowning, the Lord's Prayer, Communion, a kiss, and sometimes circling around the altar." Boswell devotes a full chapter to comparing these rituals with their heterosexual counterparts, revealing a number of extraordinary similarities between the two; in several appendixes totaling almost 100 pages, he has compiled numerous examples of the documents themselves (including heterosexual matrimony ceremonies and adoption rituals for comparison) to let "readers . . . judge for themselves," as he puts it. (Boswell translates most of the ceremonies, so general readers won't have to worry about brushing up on their Old Church Slavonic.)
Were these same-sex unions in the middle ages the same thing as today's gay marriages? Probably not. People at the time may not have viewed two men forming a union as anything out of the ordinary. Marriage itself meant something different thousands of years ago, and social taboos against homosexuality had not yet solidified. Still, in Boswell's work, we find records of institutions where same-sex couples were honored with the same ceremonies that opposite-sex couples enjoyed. Two men could live as "brothers," sharing wealth, home, and family. And yes, they could love each other, too.
Though Boswell died before his country began to allow similar kinds of unions, he could draw hope from knowing something that most people did not. Even the most fundamental kinds of human relationships change over time. Those who have been banished today may be blessed tomorrow — just as they were over a thousand years ago.
Friday, June 21, 2013
The Gay Guide to Wedded Bliss: What Straights Can Learn From Same-Sex Couples
Research finds that same-sex unions are happier than heterosexual marriages. What can gay and lesbian couples teach straight ones about living in harmony?
by Liz Mundy - Atlantic Magazine - June 20, 2013:
It is more than a little ironic that gay marriage has emerged as the era’s defining civil-rights struggle even as marriage itself seems more endangered every day. Americans are waiting longer to marry: according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median age of first marriage is 28 for men and 26 for women, up from 23 and 20, respectively, in 1950. Rates of cohabitation have risen swiftly and sharply, and more people than ever are living single. Most Americans still marry at some point, but many of those marriages end in divorce. (Although the U.S. divorce rate has declined from its all-time high in the late ’70s and early ’80s, it has remained higher than those of most European countries.) All told, this has created an unstable system of what the UCLA sociologist Suzanne Bianchi calls “partnering and repartnering,” a relentless emotional and domestic churn that sometimes results in people forgoing the institution altogether.
Though people may be waiting to marry, they are not necessarily waiting to have children. The National Center for Family and Marriage Research has produced a startling analysis of data from the Census Bureau and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing that women’s median age when they have their first child is lower than their median age at first marriage. In other words, having children before you marry has become normal. College graduates enjoy relatively stable unions, but for every other group, marriage is collapsing. Among “middle American” women (those with a high-school degree or some college), an astonishing 58 percent of first-time mothers are unmarried. The old Groucho Marx joke—“I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member”—applies a little differently in this context: you might well ask why gays and lesbians want to join an institution that keeps dithering about whether to admit them even as the repo men are coming for the furniture and the fire marshal is about to close down the clubhouse.
Against this backdrop, gay-marriage opponents have argued that allowing same-sex couples to wed will pretty much finish matrimony off. This point was advanced in briefs and oral arguments before the Supreme Court in March, in two major same-sex-marriage cases. One of these is a constitutional challenge to a key section of the Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, and bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages. The other involves California’s Proposition 8, a same-sex-marriage ban passed by voters in 2008 but overturned by a federal judge in 2010. Appearing before the high court in March, Charles J. Cooper, the lawyer defending the California ban, predicted that same-sex marriage would undermine traditional marriage by eroding “marital norms.”
Read Entire Story HERE
by Liz Mundy - Atlantic Magazine - June 20, 2013:
It is more than a little ironic that gay marriage has emerged as the era’s defining civil-rights struggle even as marriage itself seems more endangered every day. Americans are waiting longer to marry: according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median age of first marriage is 28 for men and 26 for women, up from 23 and 20, respectively, in 1950. Rates of cohabitation have risen swiftly and sharply, and more people than ever are living single. Most Americans still marry at some point, but many of those marriages end in divorce. (Although the U.S. divorce rate has declined from its all-time high in the late ’70s and early ’80s, it has remained higher than those of most European countries.) All told, this has created an unstable system of what the UCLA sociologist Suzanne Bianchi calls “partnering and repartnering,” a relentless emotional and domestic churn that sometimes results in people forgoing the institution altogether.
Though people may be waiting to marry, they are not necessarily waiting to have children. The National Center for Family and Marriage Research has produced a startling analysis of data from the Census Bureau and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing that women’s median age when they have their first child is lower than their median age at first marriage. In other words, having children before you marry has become normal. College graduates enjoy relatively stable unions, but for every other group, marriage is collapsing. Among “middle American” women (those with a high-school degree or some college), an astonishing 58 percent of first-time mothers are unmarried. The old Groucho Marx joke—“I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member”—applies a little differently in this context: you might well ask why gays and lesbians want to join an institution that keeps dithering about whether to admit them even as the repo men are coming for the furniture and the fire marshal is about to close down the clubhouse.
Against this backdrop, gay-marriage opponents have argued that allowing same-sex couples to wed will pretty much finish matrimony off. This point was advanced in briefs and oral arguments before the Supreme Court in March, in two major same-sex-marriage cases. One of these is a constitutional challenge to a key section of the Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, and bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages. The other involves California’s Proposition 8, a same-sex-marriage ban passed by voters in 2008 but overturned by a federal judge in 2010. Appearing before the high court in March, Charles J. Cooper, the lawyer defending the California ban, predicted that same-sex marriage would undermine traditional marriage by eroding “marital norms.”
Read Entire Story HERE
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
As More Republicans Come Out In Support of Gay Marriage, Will Venango County Remain Behind The Times?
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) Becomes Third GOP Senator To Back Marriage Equality
The Washington Post - June 19, 2013:
A third Republican senator has come out in favor of gay marriage, with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) announcing her support Wednesday morning.
“I am a life-long Republican because I believe in promoting freedom and limiting the reach of government,” Murkowski wrote on her Web site. “When government does act, I believe it should encourage family values. I support the right of all Americans to marry the person they love and choose because I believe doing so promotes both values: it keeps politicians out of the most private and personal aspects of peoples’ lives – while also encouraging more families to form and more adults to make a lifetime commitment to one another.”
Murkowski joins Sens. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who earlier this year became the first GOP senators to back gay marriage. Murkowski is also the 54th sitting senator to endorse gay marriage. (All but three of the 54 members of the Senate Democratic caucus have also backed gay marriage.)
The Supreme Court is expected to rule in the coming days on cases involving legalizing same-sex marriage.
Murkowski noted that Ronald Reagan’s daughter recently said the former president would have backed gay marriage today (something another of his children has disputed).
“Like Reagan, Alaskans believe that government works best when it gets out of the way,” Murkowski said. “Countless Alaskans and Americans want to give themselves to one another and create a home together. I support marriage equality and support the government getting out of the way to let that happen.”
Earlier Wednesday morning, Murkowski broke the news in an interview with KTUU-TV.
“There may be some that when they hear the position that I hold that are deeply disappointed. There may be some who embrace the decision that I have made,” she said. “I recognize that it is an area that as a Republican I will be criticized for.”
The news was hailed by the pro-gay marriage Human Rights Campaign.
“We hope other fair-minded conservatives like Sen. Murkowski stand up and join her,” HRC President Chad Griffin said. “Alaska may be nicknamed ‘the Last Frontier,’ but we’ve got to make sure that LGBT Alaskans don’t have to wait to find justice.”
Murkowski was long seen as a likely recruit for the pro-gay marriage camp. She is among the Senate’s leading moderates and earlier this year said her views on gay marriage were “evolving.”
The Washington Post - June 19, 2013:
“I am a life-long Republican because I believe in promoting freedom and limiting the reach of government,” Murkowski wrote on her Web site. “When government does act, I believe it should encourage family values. I support the right of all Americans to marry the person they love and choose because I believe doing so promotes both values: it keeps politicians out of the most private and personal aspects of peoples’ lives – while also encouraging more families to form and more adults to make a lifetime commitment to one another.”
Murkowski joins Sens. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who earlier this year became the first GOP senators to back gay marriage. Murkowski is also the 54th sitting senator to endorse gay marriage. (All but three of the 54 members of the Senate Democratic caucus have also backed gay marriage.)
The Supreme Court is expected to rule in the coming days on cases involving legalizing same-sex marriage.
Murkowski noted that Ronald Reagan’s daughter recently said the former president would have backed gay marriage today (something another of his children has disputed).
“Like Reagan, Alaskans believe that government works best when it gets out of the way,” Murkowski said. “Countless Alaskans and Americans want to give themselves to one another and create a home together. I support marriage equality and support the government getting out of the way to let that happen.”
Earlier Wednesday morning, Murkowski broke the news in an interview with KTUU-TV.
“There may be some that when they hear the position that I hold that are deeply disappointed. There may be some who embrace the decision that I have made,” she said. “I recognize that it is an area that as a Republican I will be criticized for.”
The news was hailed by the pro-gay marriage Human Rights Campaign.
“We hope other fair-minded conservatives like Sen. Murkowski stand up and join her,” HRC President Chad Griffin said. “Alaska may be nicknamed ‘the Last Frontier,’ but we’ve got to make sure that LGBT Alaskans don’t have to wait to find justice.”
Murkowski was long seen as a likely recruit for the pro-gay marriage camp. She is among the Senate’s leading moderates and earlier this year said her views on gay marriage were “evolving.”
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Marriage, Fairness, and the Supremes: No Going Back
by Frank Bruni - New York Times - 3/23/13:
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen advocates of gay rights — of equal rights, I should say — as revved up as they are right now, with the Supreme Court poised, on Tuesday and Wednesday, to consider same-sex marriage in two separate cases.
But while they’re watching this moment raptly and hopefully, it’s not with a sense that the fate of the cause hangs in the balance. Quite the opposite. They’re watching it with an entirely warranted confidence, verging on certainty, that no matter what the justices say during this coming week’s hearings and no matter how they rule months from now, the final chapter of this story has in fact been written. The question isn’t whether there will be a happy ending. The question is when.
That’s what’s truly remarkable about this juncture: the aura of inevitability that hovers over it. In an astonishingly brief period of time, this country has experienced a seismic shift in opinion — a profound social and political revolution — when it comes to gay and lesbian people. And it’s worth pausing, on the cusp of the court hearings, to take note of this change and to mull what’s behind it.
As for the change itself, look at the last month alone. Look merely at the Republican Party. Although its 2012 platform called for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, scores of prominent Republicans, including a few senior advisers to Mitt Romney’s campaign, broke ranks in late February and put their names to a Supreme Court amicus brief in favor of marriage equality.
That these dissidents can’t be dismissed as pure anomalies was made clear at the annual gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend. CPAC, mind you, is no enclave of moderation and reason. It’s more like an aviary for the far-right “wacko birds” whom John McCain recently called out.
But as BuzzFeed’s Chris Geidner, who covered the conference, noted, “Opponents of gay rights spoke to a nearly empty room, while supporters had a standing-room-only crowd.” That observation came under a headline that said, “At CPAC, the Marriage Fight Is Over.” The article went on to quote a bit of counsel that the Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin gave her fellow conservatives. On the issue of same-sex marriage, she told them, the country was headed in one and only one direction. Republicans could either get with the program or get comfy with their image of being woefully out of touch.
The BuzzFeed article was posted last Sunday. On Thursday, in Politico, came the sweeping declaration that March 2013 would perhaps go down as “the month when the political balance on this issue shifted unmistakably from risky to safe.” That assessment reflected formal endorsements of same-sex marriage, in less than a week’s span, by both Rob Portman and Hillary Clinton.
Clinton, tellingly, didn’t just articulate her position in the course of a broader interview or speech. She released a precisely scripted video dedicated to marriage equality, and that spotlight and care spoke volumes about the way this issue has suddenly become central to Democratic politics: something a serious national figure who wants party approval and donor dollars must support and must get right.
What a difference four years make. In 2008, both Clinton and Barack Obama publicly opposed same-sex marriage. Just a year ago, that was still Obama’s formal stance. But by the summer of 2012, marriage equality had made its way into the party platform. Now it’s woven into the party’s very fiber.
There’s no going back. In an ABC News/Washington Post survey released early last week, respondents nationwide favored marriage equality by a 58-to-36 margin. That’s an exact flip of a similar survey just seven years ago, when the margin was 36-to-58.
And among young Americans, who will obviously make up more and more of the electorate as time goes by, support was stronger still. The ABC/Washington Post survey showed that 81 percent of people in the 18-to-29 age group endorsed marriage equality.
The buildup to the Supreme Court hearings has demonstrated the breadth of diversity of support for it. There have been amicus briefs signed, or proclamations of solidarity issued, by dozens of professional athletes and by the American Academy of Pediatrics, by tech giants and accounting firms and retailers and airlines. Somewhere along the way, standing up for gay marriage went from nervy to trendy. It’s the Harlem Shake of political engagement.
And the unstoppable advances made by gays and lesbians were suggested by a quiet but revealing statement recently by the president of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, who signaled that the organization would put a new emphasis on transgender equality.
THESE advances happened in largest part because of the increased visibility of gay people who have had the courage and optimism to share their lives and truths with family, friends, colleagues. Although many critics nitpicked Portman for changing his views only out of what was deemed a selfish concern for his own gay son, that’s precisely the way many people are illuminated and tugged along: by emotion, not abstraction; by what’s immediate and personal, not what’s foreign and theoretical. Clinton has acknowledged as much by citing the influence of gays and lesbians she has known and respected. And the decades-long rallying cry of the gay-rights movement — come out, come out, so that Americans understand the impact of discrimination on people they care about — was predicated on that wrinkle of human nature.
Additionally, the quest for same-sex marriage has forced many Americans to view gays and lesbians in a fresh light. We’re no longer so easily stereotyped and dismissed as rebels atop parade floats, demanding permission to behave outside society’s norms. We’re aspirants to tradition, communicating shared values and asserting a fundamentally conservative desire, at least among many of us, for families, stability, commitment. What’s so threatening about any of that?
And who really loses if we win? Where’s the injured party? The abortion debate grinds on in part because to those who believe that life begins at conception and warrants full protection from then on, every pro-choice victory claims victims. The gun debate grinds on because new restrictions are just that — restrictions — and no matter how justifiable and necessary they may be, opponents will rail that their freedom is being curtailed.
But the legalization of same-sex marriage takes nothing from anyone, other than the illusion, which is all it is and ever was, that healthy, nurturing relationships are reserved for people of opposite sexes.
The Supreme Court cases and their resolutions indeed matter. If the court doesn’t dismantle the Defense of Marriage Act, there’s no telling how many more years will pass before this repugnant 1996 law tumbles in some other way and before gay and lesbian couples married in states that allow such weddings are treated equally under federal law.
And the court could, in its ruling on the constitutionality of a California ban against same-sex marriage, hasten the spread of marriage equality beyond those nine states and the District of Columbia. For now the count builds slowly, through time-consuming, patience-fraying, expensive legislative and referendum battles, and a matter of basic fairness is beholden to local politics and pockets of enduring bigotry.
But fairness is where we’re heading, at least in regard to marriage, which has emerged as the terrain on which Americans are hashing out their feelings about gays and lesbians. The trajectory is undeniable. The trend line is clear. And the choice before the justices is whether to be handmaidens to history, or whether to sit it out.
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen advocates of gay rights — of equal rights, I should say — as revved up as they are right now, with the Supreme Court poised, on Tuesday and Wednesday, to consider same-sex marriage in two separate cases.
But while they’re watching this moment raptly and hopefully, it’s not with a sense that the fate of the cause hangs in the balance. Quite the opposite. They’re watching it with an entirely warranted confidence, verging on certainty, that no matter what the justices say during this coming week’s hearings and no matter how they rule months from now, the final chapter of this story has in fact been written. The question isn’t whether there will be a happy ending. The question is when.
That’s what’s truly remarkable about this juncture: the aura of inevitability that hovers over it. In an astonishingly brief period of time, this country has experienced a seismic shift in opinion — a profound social and political revolution — when it comes to gay and lesbian people. And it’s worth pausing, on the cusp of the court hearings, to take note of this change and to mull what’s behind it.
As for the change itself, look at the last month alone. Look merely at the Republican Party. Although its 2012 platform called for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, scores of prominent Republicans, including a few senior advisers to Mitt Romney’s campaign, broke ranks in late February and put their names to a Supreme Court amicus brief in favor of marriage equality.
That these dissidents can’t be dismissed as pure anomalies was made clear at the annual gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend. CPAC, mind you, is no enclave of moderation and reason. It’s more like an aviary for the far-right “wacko birds” whom John McCain recently called out.
But as BuzzFeed’s Chris Geidner, who covered the conference, noted, “Opponents of gay rights spoke to a nearly empty room, while supporters had a standing-room-only crowd.” That observation came under a headline that said, “At CPAC, the Marriage Fight Is Over.” The article went on to quote a bit of counsel that the Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin gave her fellow conservatives. On the issue of same-sex marriage, she told them, the country was headed in one and only one direction. Republicans could either get with the program or get comfy with their image of being woefully out of touch.
The BuzzFeed article was posted last Sunday. On Thursday, in Politico, came the sweeping declaration that March 2013 would perhaps go down as “the month when the political balance on this issue shifted unmistakably from risky to safe.” That assessment reflected formal endorsements of same-sex marriage, in less than a week’s span, by both Rob Portman and Hillary Clinton.
Clinton, tellingly, didn’t just articulate her position in the course of a broader interview or speech. She released a precisely scripted video dedicated to marriage equality, and that spotlight and care spoke volumes about the way this issue has suddenly become central to Democratic politics: something a serious national figure who wants party approval and donor dollars must support and must get right.
What a difference four years make. In 2008, both Clinton and Barack Obama publicly opposed same-sex marriage. Just a year ago, that was still Obama’s formal stance. But by the summer of 2012, marriage equality had made its way into the party platform. Now it’s woven into the party’s very fiber.
There’s no going back. In an ABC News/Washington Post survey released early last week, respondents nationwide favored marriage equality by a 58-to-36 margin. That’s an exact flip of a similar survey just seven years ago, when the margin was 36-to-58.
And among young Americans, who will obviously make up more and more of the electorate as time goes by, support was stronger still. The ABC/Washington Post survey showed that 81 percent of people in the 18-to-29 age group endorsed marriage equality.
The buildup to the Supreme Court hearings has demonstrated the breadth of diversity of support for it. There have been amicus briefs signed, or proclamations of solidarity issued, by dozens of professional athletes and by the American Academy of Pediatrics, by tech giants and accounting firms and retailers and airlines. Somewhere along the way, standing up for gay marriage went from nervy to trendy. It’s the Harlem Shake of political engagement.
And the unstoppable advances made by gays and lesbians were suggested by a quiet but revealing statement recently by the president of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, who signaled that the organization would put a new emphasis on transgender equality.
THESE advances happened in largest part because of the increased visibility of gay people who have had the courage and optimism to share their lives and truths with family, friends, colleagues. Although many critics nitpicked Portman for changing his views only out of what was deemed a selfish concern for his own gay son, that’s precisely the way many people are illuminated and tugged along: by emotion, not abstraction; by what’s immediate and personal, not what’s foreign and theoretical. Clinton has acknowledged as much by citing the influence of gays and lesbians she has known and respected. And the decades-long rallying cry of the gay-rights movement — come out, come out, so that Americans understand the impact of discrimination on people they care about — was predicated on that wrinkle of human nature.
Additionally, the quest for same-sex marriage has forced many Americans to view gays and lesbians in a fresh light. We’re no longer so easily stereotyped and dismissed as rebels atop parade floats, demanding permission to behave outside society’s norms. We’re aspirants to tradition, communicating shared values and asserting a fundamentally conservative desire, at least among many of us, for families, stability, commitment. What’s so threatening about any of that?
And who really loses if we win? Where’s the injured party? The abortion debate grinds on in part because to those who believe that life begins at conception and warrants full protection from then on, every pro-choice victory claims victims. The gun debate grinds on because new restrictions are just that — restrictions — and no matter how justifiable and necessary they may be, opponents will rail that their freedom is being curtailed.
But the legalization of same-sex marriage takes nothing from anyone, other than the illusion, which is all it is and ever was, that healthy, nurturing relationships are reserved for people of opposite sexes.
The Supreme Court cases and their resolutions indeed matter. If the court doesn’t dismantle the Defense of Marriage Act, there’s no telling how many more years will pass before this repugnant 1996 law tumbles in some other way and before gay and lesbian couples married in states that allow such weddings are treated equally under federal law.
And the court could, in its ruling on the constitutionality of a California ban against same-sex marriage, hasten the spread of marriage equality beyond those nine states and the District of Columbia. For now the count builds slowly, through time-consuming, patience-fraying, expensive legislative and referendum battles, and a matter of basic fairness is beholden to local politics and pockets of enduring bigotry.
But fairness is where we’re heading, at least in regard to marriage, which has emerged as the terrain on which Americans are hashing out their feelings about gays and lesbians. The trajectory is undeniable. The trend line is clear. And the choice before the justices is whether to be handmaidens to history, or whether to sit it out.
Friday, March 22, 2013
Family Values Explained So People With Extra-Thick Heads Can Understand
Hillary Clinton really breaks it down for the proud people of the United States of America. Whether you believe in family values, economic prosperity, freedom, or old-fashioned setting a good example, fully legalizing gay marriage is obviously the right choice.
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Family Values that Diane Gramley, and Other Right Wing Bigots, Could Never Understand
Dear Justice Roberts,
My name is Daniel Martinez-Leffew. I'm 12 years old and I live in northern California. I have a younger sister named Salina, and we were adopted by two dads.
We were adopted when I was five and my sister was about twelve months old.
When I was in foster care I was told that I was considered unadoptable because of my Goldenhar syndrome. That is a genetic disorder that affects the whole left side of my body.
I lost my little brother Emilio because some people wanted to adopt him, but they weren't willing to adopt me because of my medical conditions.
Lucky for me, that's when my two dads came along.
I recently found out that you yourself adopted two kids, a boy and a girl, kind of like me and my sister.
Family means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but some people believe that you have to have the same blood to be a family.
You and I both know that family goes deeper than blood.
I was lucky to be adopted by two guys I can both call dad. They give me and my sister so much love. My dad Jay works in San Francisco as a deputy sheriff, and my dad Bryan stays at home and takes care of me and my sister.
My dads really encourage me to excel in life. Since I want to be a cook when I grow up, they're letting me take cooking classes. My parents want me to improve, whether it's schoolwork, or my social life.
I know you have a tough decision to make with the gay marriage issue, but my family is just as valuable and worthwhile as any other.
It's especially tough for you because I know you don't necessarily believe in gay marriage religiously.
Lucky for us, though, you also don't believe in taking away a right, even from people like us.
My family and I have spent the last four years making YouTube videos to show people who don't understand that our family is like any other. If Prop 8 is allowed to stand, imagine the pain we would feel knowing that we are not considered equal to everyone else.
I guess to end this, it is important that all families are protected and valued. In our country we may not all be the same, but we are all Americans and deserve an equal chance at bettering our lives.
I hope you make the right decision in the end.
Sincerely,
Daniel
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Is George Will Homophobic?
His Rejection Of The Social Science On Gay Marriage
Is Incoherent, Embarrassing, And Anti-Gay
by Nathaniel Frank for Slate:
In a conservative movement seized by extremists, George Will is one of the sane ones. But his recent rejection of social science as having any role to play in the gay marriage debate is wildly off the mark. It’s intellectually dishonest, scientifically ignorant, and—I’ll say it—anti-gay.
Will claims that reasonable people disagree about gay marriage “because so little is known about its consequences.” He quotes a legal brief by conservative scholars affiliated with a famously anti-gay think tank that calls research about gay marriage and parenting “radically inconclusive.” He then warns the Supreme Court—which will hear oral arguments on two gay marriage cases next week—to be wary “about social science that purports to prove propositions … for which there cannot yet be decisive evidence.” In other words, he suggests the value of research on gay marriage is currently zero.
Suppose a group of people claim that redheads can’t enter the town square because they’ll drive away commerce, badly harming the economy—and then this group gets a law passed barring redheads from public spaces. To reverse the discriminatory law, they then argue, redheads must spend however long it takes to amass definitive proof that entering the town square won’t cause harm (which is impossible since you can’t conduct research on scenarios you won’t permit). When redheads nevertheless begin to produce a growing body of research that points conclusively to the fact that their presence does not harm commerce, the law’s defenders consistently reply, “It still might; more research is needed.”
That is the position Will is defending in the gay marriage debate. The very idea that gay equality would cause serious harm is the kind of belief you hold if you’re already inclined to think, usually for moral reasons, that homosexuality is harmful, that is, if you’re anti-gay. Otherwise, there’d be no better reason to assume gay marriage is harmful than there is from letting redheads go to market.
Although the real basis of most opposition to same-sex marriage is moral, conservatives have found that arguments alleging harm to society are more powerful than ones that simply declare what they don’t like to be morally wrong. So they have spent a generation making the case that gay equality would cause all kinds of social disruptions. It’s exactly the same tactic that was recently proven profoundly wrong when the Pentagon lifted its ban on openly gay service despite continuous claims that doing so could destroy the military.
Advocates of equality have responded by conducting research on gay families that has consistently shown such fears to be ungrounded. George Will calls this body of work “spurious social science by supporters of same-sex marriage” and complains that it “purports to prove” something that can’t yet be proven. But serious scholars don’t claim that social science proves gay marriage is OK. It’s the other way around: Anti-gay activists dream up harms that gay equality would cause and claim social science proves it—even though they’ve never supplied such proof. What the most responsible advocates of gay equality claim is that social science helps dismantle conservative claims of harm and strongly suggests the kids are OK. We use the research defensively, out of necessity, because anti-gay advocates make baseless empirical predictions that we’re obligated to refute.
Will also gets the scientific method wrong, offering an impossibly high—and wholly incorrect—bar for what constitutes scientific proof, leaving no way for the pro-gay side to ever convince him that the bogus harms conservatives have dreamed up are unlikely to happen. He suggests that the “scientific standard” requires “large random samples with appropriate control samples” and concludes, quoting the conservative legal brief, that “there neither are nor could possibly be any scientifically valid studies from which to predict the effects of a family structure that is so new and so rare.”
But research doesn’t have to use random samples to be scientific. The scientific method demands systematic analysis based on empirical observation. While large random samples are the gold standard, that doesn’t mean that all other research is unscientific. It just lessens—somewhat—its predictive value. And bear in mind that even the largest research studies on public policy issues only offer predictions, not guarantees, about future outcomes. The difference here is one of degree.
What does the social science actually tell us? Statistics on marriage rates show consistently that they have not dropped in states and countries that allow gay marriage, as examined in Slate. But since gay marriage is so new, so are these results, and no one ever promised civilization would end in a day.
The bulk of the controversy surrounds research on gay parenting. At least 45 scholarly studies have compared children of gay and straight parents and found no disadvantages to the former. It’s true that many have small, nonrandom sample sizes—often about 30-50 families. But when you aggregate 45 consecutive studies—even small ones—that all reach the same conclusion, what you end up with is an almost unheard-of scholarly consensus. “Rarely is there as much consensus in any area of social science as in the case of gay parenting,” said Judith Stacey, the New York University sociologist who is one of the deans of gay parenting scholarship.
In any event, not all the studies are small or nonrandom. A 2010 Stanford study used census data, instead of a convenience sampling or self-reporting, to examine 3,500 children of same-sex couples. It compared their school progress to more than 600,000 kids of straight parents and found no differences. Other studies are “longitudinal,” increasing statistical reliability by tracking developments over many years. The longest-running and largest such study, the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study, followed 78 lesbian-headed households for more than 25 years. Led by Nanette Gartrell, a UCLA-based psychiatrist and researcher, the study found no disadvantages (and a few advantages) to children with lesbian moms.
Is there any research showing disadvantages for kids with gay parents? Try as they might, conservative scholars, often funded by anti-gay think tanks, have failed to produce a single study. In the most embarrassing recent effort, University of Texas professor Mark Regnerus was formally reprimanded for publishing a study (which he wrote about for Slate) that he claimed had a massive sampling pool; in reality the number of children of same-sex couples he surveyed was a whopping two. (Last week it was reported that conservative funders bankrolled the study and urged Regnerus to rush it to maximize its influence on the Supreme Court.) Whatever you may say about the limits of the gay parenting studies—and all research has limits—the pro-gay research is currently winning, 45-0.
Absent actual evidence, the religious right has routinely used studies of single-parent and divorced households to allege that any family lacking a father—that is, even if it has two loving moms—is bad for kids. They cite research showing that two parents are better than one, and since all that research has focused on opposite-sex parents, they conflate number with gender and rally around the talking point that kids need “a mother and a father.” Appallingly, George Will has now stooped to this level, citing the allegation of conservative scholars that “research concluded that growing up without fathers had significant negative effects on boys,” even though that research never included households with two gay parents—and this after complaining about “inappropriate invocations of spurious social science” by liberals.
None of this should matter. Even if gay parenting did disadvantage kids, it wouldn’t follow that gay marriage should be banned since gay people—like single and divorced people—will have kids no matter what. How could banning gay marriage help those—or any—kids? And if we based straight marriage rights on predicting durability, half the country wouldn’t be allowed to wed.
But the research does matter, because conservatives have made it matter, and it may very well influence the Supreme Court. It’s true we don’t know everything about gay marriage and parenting, but what we do know is important to get right.
Monday, March 18, 2013
From Harvey Milk to 58% Support for Marriage Equality
by Jonathan Capehart in the Washington Post 3/18/13:
In a powerful 1978 speech celebrating the defeat of California’s Proposition 6, banning gays from teaching in the public schools, Harvey Milk, the openly gay member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, urged other gay men and lesbians to come out. It would be an extension of a vast campaign to humanize the gay community.
"So far, a lot of people joined us and rejected Proposition 6 and now we owe them something. We owe them to continue the education campaign that took place. We must destroy the myths, once and for all, shatter them. We must continue to speak out. And, most importantly, most importantly, every gay person must come out. As difficult as it is, you must tell your immediate family. You must tell your relatives. You must tell your friends, if indeed they are your friends. You must tell your neighbors. You must tell the people you work with. You must tell the people in the stores you shop in. Once they realize that we are indeed their children, that we are indeed everywhere, every myth, every lie, every innuendo will be destroyed once and for all."
Nearly 35 years later, we are seeing the incredible impact of those words.
Will Portman came out to his family two years ago. That his father is Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), a powerful establishment Republican who has anti-gay votes and rhetoric in his past, makes what Will did all the more brave. But Will’s action and his father’s reaction — coming out in favor of same-sex marriage — is one of two examples of the power of coming out in the last few days.
Today, The Post-ABC News poll reports that support for marriage equality is at 58 percent. That’s an all-time high. Republicans remain firmly against it (59 percent) and Republicans older than 65 really are against it (68 percent). But 52 percent of the GOP age 18 to 45 support same-sex marriage.
“Public attitudes toward gay marriage are a mirror image of what they were a decade ago,” writes Jon Cohen, director of polling at Capital Insight, the independent polling group of Washington Post Media, “in 2003, 37 percent favored gay nuptials, and 55 percent opposed them.” Also, “Fully 62 percent of Americans now say being gay is just the way some people are, not something people choose to be,” Cohen points out.
These are remarkable statistics because gay people like Will Portman had the courage to be honest with themselves and their families. This turnaround is also due to straight people being moved to acceptance by relatives, friends, neighbors and anyone else capable of opening their eyes to the fight for equality by gays. As Milk so poignantly said, “Once they realize that we are indeed their children, that we are indeed everywhere, every myth, every lie, every innuendo will be destroyed once and for all.”
In a powerful 1978 speech celebrating the defeat of California’s Proposition 6, banning gays from teaching in the public schools, Harvey Milk, the openly gay member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, urged other gay men and lesbians to come out. It would be an extension of a vast campaign to humanize the gay community.
"So far, a lot of people joined us and rejected Proposition 6 and now we owe them something. We owe them to continue the education campaign that took place. We must destroy the myths, once and for all, shatter them. We must continue to speak out. And, most importantly, most importantly, every gay person must come out. As difficult as it is, you must tell your immediate family. You must tell your relatives. You must tell your friends, if indeed they are your friends. You must tell your neighbors. You must tell the people you work with. You must tell the people in the stores you shop in. Once they realize that we are indeed their children, that we are indeed everywhere, every myth, every lie, every innuendo will be destroyed once and for all."
Nearly 35 years later, we are seeing the incredible impact of those words.
Will Portman came out to his family two years ago. That his father is Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), a powerful establishment Republican who has anti-gay votes and rhetoric in his past, makes what Will did all the more brave. But Will’s action and his father’s reaction — coming out in favor of same-sex marriage — is one of two examples of the power of coming out in the last few days.
Today, The Post-ABC News poll reports that support for marriage equality is at 58 percent. That’s an all-time high. Republicans remain firmly against it (59 percent) and Republicans older than 65 really are against it (68 percent). But 52 percent of the GOP age 18 to 45 support same-sex marriage.
“Public attitudes toward gay marriage are a mirror image of what they were a decade ago,” writes Jon Cohen, director of polling at Capital Insight, the independent polling group of Washington Post Media, “in 2003, 37 percent favored gay nuptials, and 55 percent opposed them.” Also, “Fully 62 percent of Americans now say being gay is just the way some people are, not something people choose to be,” Cohen points out.
These are remarkable statistics because gay people like Will Portman had the courage to be honest with themselves and their families. This turnaround is also due to straight people being moved to acceptance by relatives, friends, neighbors and anyone else capable of opening their eyes to the fight for equality by gays. As Milk so poignantly said, “Once they realize that we are indeed their children, that we are indeed everywhere, every myth, every lie, every innuendo will be destroyed once and for all.”
Friday, March 15, 2013
On Gay Marriage, Dick Cheney Says Follow Your Heart
GOP Senator Reverses Gay-Marriage Stance After Son Comes Out
by Joel Roberts for Yahoo News:
A prominent conservative senator said Thursday that he now supports gay marriage.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, told reporters from the Columbus Dispatch and other Ohio newspapers that his change of heart on the hot-button issue came two years after his son, Will, told him and his wife that he is gay.
"It allowed me to think of this issue from a new perspective, and that's of a Dad who loves his son a lot and wants him to have the same opportunities that his brother and sister would have -- to have a relationship like Jane and I have had for over 26 years," Portman said.
In an interview with CNN, Portman said his son, then a freshman at Yale University, told him "that he was gay, and that it was not a choice, and that it's just part of who he is, and that he'd been that way for as long as he could remember."
The dramatic announcement comes just a week before the U.S. Supreme Court is to hear oral arguments on the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars federal recognition of same-sex marriage, a measure Portman co-sponsored as a member of the House in 1996.
Portman was on the short list to be Mitt Romney's running mate last year. He said he informed Romney during the vetting process that he had a gay son, but that the issue was not a deal breaker for Romney.
He also told CNN that he sought guidance from former Vice President Dick Cheney, whose daughter Mary is openly gay.
Portman said Cheney's advice to him was simple: "Follow your heart."
Monday, February 4, 2013
Obama’s Shifts Affect U.S. Legal Plan on Gay Marriage
by Adam Liptak for the New York Times 2/4/13:
WASHINGTON — The practice of law would be much more pleasant, many lawyers will tell you over a second Scotch, if it did not require clients. It is one thing to construct an airtight legal argument and quite another to deal with the demands of inconstant human beings.
Consider Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr.’s most prominent client, President Obama. In May, in announcing his support for same-sex marriage, Mr. Obama said the issue should be decided state by state. In his Inaugural Address last month, Mr. Obama seemed to make a case for a more national approach.
The timing was awkward. Mr. Verrilli is in the midst of considering what to tell the Supreme Court in a pair of momentous same-sex marriage cases to be argued in March. Just days before the inauguration, he met with lawyers challenging California’s ban on same-sex marriage, who urged him to weigh in on their side. He was noncommittal, but his client’s public marching orders until then had suggested that he should sit that one out.
Here is what Mr. Obama told Robin Roberts of ABC News in May: “What you’re seeing is, I think, states working through this issue in fits and starts, all across the country. Different communities are arriving at different conclusions, at different times. And I think that’s a healthy process and a healthy debate. And I continue to believe that this is an issue that is going be worked out at the local level, because historically, this has not been a federal issue, what’s recognized as a marriage.”
That reasoning fits tolerably well with the Justice Department’s position in one of the two cases before the Supreme Court, United States v. Windsor, No. 12-307. That case is a challenge to the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, a 1996 law that defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman in connection with federal benefits. The Defense of Marriage Act, Mr. Obama explained in May, “tried to federalize what has historically been state law.”
Mr. Verrilli will presumably make much the same point on March 27, when the Supreme Court hears arguments in the Windsor case.
But there is a second case, and there Mr. Verrilli faces tough choices. On March 26, the day before the argument about the 1996 law, the justices will hear Hollingsworth v. Perry, No. 12-144. It seeks to overturn Proposition 8, a voter initiative that banned same-sex marriage in California.
If marriage is a matter for the states, as Mr. Obama announced in May, you might think that California should be permitted to prohibit same-sex marriage.
The federal government is not a party to the California case, and it is not required to file a brief or to take a public position. Ms. Roberts asked Mr. Obama a direct question in May about whether he had given his lawyers instructions about what to do: “Can you ask your Justice Department to join in the litigation in fighting states that are banning same-sex marriage?”
Mr. Obama changed the subject.
All of this might have allowed Mr. Verrilli to concentrate on the case concerning the federal law and stay quiet in the California case. There is a precedent for this: the federal government took no position in 1967 in Loving v. Virginia, the case in which the Supreme Court struck down bans on interracial marriage. Nor did it weigh in on the last major gay rights case, Lawrence v. Texas, which in 2003 struck down state laws making gay sex a crime.
The solicitor general in 2003 was Theodore B. Olson. He is now in private practice and is one of the lawyers challenging the California ban on same-sex marriage. On Jan. 18, he and his colleague David Boies, along with lawyers from the San Francisco city attorney’s office, met with Mr. Verrilli to urge him to take a stand in the California case. Defenders of Proposition 8 made the opposite pitch a few days later.
Mr. Verrilli was noncommittal, but there is now reason to think that Mr. Olson will prevail in persuading Mr. Verrilli to ignore the precedent Mr. Olson had set. That is largely because Mr. Obama’s thinking on same-sex marriage continues to evolve.
In his Inaugural Address last month, Mr. Obama was no longer talking about leaving the issue to the states.
“Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law,” he said, “for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal, as well.”
Mr. Verrilli has until the end of the month to file a brief in the California case. Paul D. Clement, a former solicitor general who represents House Republicans defending the 1996 federal law, said he detected some paradoxes in Mr. Verrilli’s predicament.
“It will be interesting in the end,” Mr. Clement said dryly at a Georgetown University Law Center forum last week, “if the litigation position of the Justice Department and the president’s position kind of realign.”
Mr. Clement said the solicitor general’s position always had weight at the Supreme Court. But he added that it may be less consequential in the California case than in some earlier ones, given the administration’s general, if nuanced, support for gay rights.
Thomas C. Goldstein, the publisher of Scotusblog and a lawyer who argues frequently before the Supreme Court, said the justices were not the only relevant audience for a brief from the Obama administration’s top appellate lawyer.
“Part of what is going on in the Inaugural Address and part of what would happen in a brief like that is a statement of what’s morally right and wrong,” he said. “It could matter to Americans much more than it matters to the Supreme Court.”
WASHINGTON — The practice of law would be much more pleasant, many lawyers will tell you over a second Scotch, if it did not require clients. It is one thing to construct an airtight legal argument and quite another to deal with the demands of inconstant human beings.
The timing was awkward. Mr. Verrilli is in the midst of considering what to tell the Supreme Court in a pair of momentous same-sex marriage cases to be argued in March. Just days before the inauguration, he met with lawyers challenging California’s ban on same-sex marriage, who urged him to weigh in on their side. He was noncommittal, but his client’s public marching orders until then had suggested that he should sit that one out.
Here is what Mr. Obama told Robin Roberts of ABC News in May: “What you’re seeing is, I think, states working through this issue in fits and starts, all across the country. Different communities are arriving at different conclusions, at different times. And I think that’s a healthy process and a healthy debate. And I continue to believe that this is an issue that is going be worked out at the local level, because historically, this has not been a federal issue, what’s recognized as a marriage.”
That reasoning fits tolerably well with the Justice Department’s position in one of the two cases before the Supreme Court, United States v. Windsor, No. 12-307. That case is a challenge to the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, a 1996 law that defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman in connection with federal benefits. The Defense of Marriage Act, Mr. Obama explained in May, “tried to federalize what has historically been state law.”
Mr. Verrilli will presumably make much the same point on March 27, when the Supreme Court hears arguments in the Windsor case.
But there is a second case, and there Mr. Verrilli faces tough choices. On March 26, the day before the argument about the 1996 law, the justices will hear Hollingsworth v. Perry, No. 12-144. It seeks to overturn Proposition 8, a voter initiative that banned same-sex marriage in California.
If marriage is a matter for the states, as Mr. Obama announced in May, you might think that California should be permitted to prohibit same-sex marriage.
The federal government is not a party to the California case, and it is not required to file a brief or to take a public position. Ms. Roberts asked Mr. Obama a direct question in May about whether he had given his lawyers instructions about what to do: “Can you ask your Justice Department to join in the litigation in fighting states that are banning same-sex marriage?”
Mr. Obama changed the subject.
All of this might have allowed Mr. Verrilli to concentrate on the case concerning the federal law and stay quiet in the California case. There is a precedent for this: the federal government took no position in 1967 in Loving v. Virginia, the case in which the Supreme Court struck down bans on interracial marriage. Nor did it weigh in on the last major gay rights case, Lawrence v. Texas, which in 2003 struck down state laws making gay sex a crime.
The solicitor general in 2003 was Theodore B. Olson. He is now in private practice and is one of the lawyers challenging the California ban on same-sex marriage. On Jan. 18, he and his colleague David Boies, along with lawyers from the San Francisco city attorney’s office, met with Mr. Verrilli to urge him to take a stand in the California case. Defenders of Proposition 8 made the opposite pitch a few days later.
Mr. Verrilli was noncommittal, but there is now reason to think that Mr. Olson will prevail in persuading Mr. Verrilli to ignore the precedent Mr. Olson had set. That is largely because Mr. Obama’s thinking on same-sex marriage continues to evolve.
In his Inaugural Address last month, Mr. Obama was no longer talking about leaving the issue to the states.
“Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law,” he said, “for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal, as well.”
Mr. Verrilli has until the end of the month to file a brief in the California case. Paul D. Clement, a former solicitor general who represents House Republicans defending the 1996 federal law, said he detected some paradoxes in Mr. Verrilli’s predicament.
“It will be interesting in the end,” Mr. Clement said dryly at a Georgetown University Law Center forum last week, “if the litigation position of the Justice Department and the president’s position kind of realign.”
Mr. Clement said the solicitor general’s position always had weight at the Supreme Court. But he added that it may be less consequential in the California case than in some earlier ones, given the administration’s general, if nuanced, support for gay rights.
Thomas C. Goldstein, the publisher of Scotusblog and a lawyer who argues frequently before the Supreme Court, said the justices were not the only relevant audience for a brief from the Obama administration’s top appellate lawyer.
“Part of what is going on in the Inaugural Address and part of what would happen in a brief like that is a statement of what’s morally right and wrong,” he said. “It could matter to Americans much more than it matters to the Supreme Court.”
Friday, January 18, 2013
The Lowest Form of Hatred - The Self-Righteousness of the Religious Mob
Wendell Berry Expounds On Gay Marriage
A Kentucky farmer, essayist, writer and activist, sometimes described as a modern-day Thoreau, criticizes theological strategies used to marginalize gays.
By Bob Allen, ABP News:
Christian opponents to same-sex marriage want the government to treat homosexuals as a special category of persons subject to discrimination, similar to the way that African-Americans and women were categorized in the past, cultural and economic critic Wendell Berry told Baptist ministers in Kentucky on January 11.
Berry, a prolific author of books, poems and essays who won the National Humanities Medal in 2010 and was 2012 Jefferson lecturer for the National Endowment for the Humanities, offered “a sort of general declaration” on the subject of gay marriage at a “Following the Call of the Church in Times Like These” conference at Georgetown College. Berry said he chose to comment publicly to elaborate on what little he has said about the topic in the past.
“I must say that it’s a little wonderful to me that in 40-odd years of taking stands on controversial issues, and at great length sometimes, the two times that I think I’ve stirred up the most passionate opposition has been with a tiny little essay on computers (his 1987 essay “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer” published in Harper’s led some to accuse him of being anti-technology) and half a dozen or a dozen sentences on gay marriage,” Berry said.
Berry said he could recall only twice before when he commented publicly on the issue, in a single paragraph in a collection of essays published in 2005 and in an interview with the National Review in 2012.
“My argument, much abbreviated both times, was the sexual practices of consenting adults ought not to be subjected to the government’s approval or disapproval, and that domestic partnerships in which people who live together and devote their lives to one another ought to receive the spousal rights, protections and privileges the government allows to heterosexual couples,” Berry said.
Berry said liberals and conservatives have invented “a politics of sexuality” that establishes marriage as a “right” to be granted or withheld by whichever side prevails. He said both viewpoints contravene principles of democracy that rights are self-evident and inalienable and not determined and granted or withheld by the government.
“Christians of a certain disposition have found several ways to categorize homosexuals as different as themselves, who are in the category of heterosexual and therefore normal and therefore good,” Berry said. What is unclear, he said, is why they single out homosexuality as a perversion.
“The Bible, as I pointed out to the writers of National Review, has a lot more to say against fornication and adultery than against homosexuality,” he said. “If one accepts the 24th and 104th Psalms as scriptural norms, then surface mining and other forms of earth destruction are perversions. If we take the Gospels seriously, how can we not see industrial warfare -- with its inevitable massacre of innocents -- as a most shocking perversion? By the standard of all scriptures, neglect of the poor, of widows and orphans, of the sick, the homeless, the insane, is an abominable perversion.”
“Jesus talked of hating your neighbor as tantamount to hating God, and yet some Christians hate their neighbors by policy and are busy hunting biblical justifications for doing so,” he said. “Are they not perverts in the fullest and fairest sense of that term? And yet none of these offenses -- not all of them together -- has made as much political/religious noise as homosexual marriage.”
Another argument used, Berry said, is that homosexuality is “unnatural.”
“If it can be argued that homosexual marriage is not reproductive and is therefore unnatural and should be forbidden on that account, must we not argue that childless marriages are unnatural and should be annulled?” he asked.
“One may find the sexual practices of homosexuals to be unattractive or displeasing and therefore unnatural, but anything that can be done in that line by homosexuals can be done and is done by heterosexuals,” Berry continued. “Do we need a legal remedy for this? Would conservative Christians like a small government bureau to inspect, approve and certify their sexual behavior? Would they like a colorful tattoo verifying government approval on the rumps of lawfully copulating parties? We have the technology, after all, to monitor everybody’s sexual behavior, but so far as I can see so eager an interest in other people’s private intimacy is either prurient or totalitarian or both.”
“The oddest of the strategies to condemn and isolate homosexuals is to propose that homosexual marriage is opposed to and a threat to heterosexual marriage, as if the marriage market is about to be cornered and monopolized by homosexuals,” Berry said. “If this is not industrial capitalist paranoia, it at least follows the pattern of industrial capitalist competitiveness. We must destroy the competition. If somebody else wants what you’ve got, from money to marriage, you must not hesitate to use the government – small of course – to keep them from getting it.”
Berry said “so-called traditional marriage” is “for sure suffering a statistical failure, but this is not the result of a homosexual plot.”
“Heterosexual marriage does not need defending,” Berry said. “It only needs to be practiced, which is pretty hard to do just now.”
“But the difficulty is not assigned to any group of scapegoats,” he said. “It is rooted mainly in the values and priorities of our industrial capitalist system in which every one of us is complicit.”
“If I were one of a homosexual couple -- the same as I am one of a heterosexual couple -- I would place my faith and hope in the mercy of Christ, not in the judgment of Christians,” Berry said. “When I consider the hostility of political churches to homosexuality and homosexual marriage, I do so remembering the history of Christian war, torture, terror, slavery and annihilation against Jews, Muslims, black Africans, American Indians and others. And more of the same by Catholics against Protestants, Protestants against Catholics, Catholics against Catholics, Protestants against Protestants, as if by law requiring the love of God to be balanced by hatred of some neighbor for the sin of being unlike some divinely preferred us. If we are a Christian nation -- as some say we are, using the adjective with conventional looseness -- then this Christian blood thirst continues wherever we find an officially identifiable evil, and to the immense enrichment of our Christian industries of war.”
“Condemnation by category is the lowest form of hatred, for it is cold-hearted and abstract, lacking even the courage of a personal hatred,” Berry said. “Categorical condemnation is the hatred of the mob. It makes cowards brave. And there is nothing more fearful than a religious mob, a mob overflowing with righteousness – as at the crucifixion and before and since. This can happen only after we have made a categorical refusal to kindness: to heretics, foreigners, enemies or any other group different from ourselves.”
“Perhaps the most dangerous temptation to Christianity is to get itself officialized in some version by a government, following pretty exactly the pattern the chief priest and his crowd at the trial of Jesus,” Berry said. “For want of a Pilate of their own, some Christians would accept a Constantine or whomever might be the current incarnation of Caesar.”
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
While America Moves Into The Light, The American Family Association of Pennsylvania Keeps Venango County In The Dark
Gay Marriage, The Issue That Lost Its Bite
by Ruth Marcus for the Washington Post:
Sometimes in politics, you have to listen for what’s not being said to understand how things really stand. In the 2012 presidential campaign, the telling — and comforting — silence involves same-sex marriage and gay rights.
Think about it: In 1992, Pat Buchanan, speaking at the Republican convention in Houston, warned that Bill Clinton wanted to impose a “homosexual rights” agenda on America.
In 2004, Republicans engineered ballot initiatives against same-sex marriage in 11 states, hoping to bolster George W. Bush’s reelection chances by spurring conservatives to go to the polls.
It may not have worked — former Bush adviser Matthew Dowd has written that the initiatives “had no discernable effect on turnout among conservatives” — but those ballot initiatives didn’t turn up by accident.
Flash-forward to 2012. President Obama pushed to lift the ban on gays serving openly in the military, undoing the “don’t ask/don’t tell” policy put in place by the last Democratic president. He instructed the Justice Department to stop defending the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), also signed into law by President Clinton. Obama completed his slow evolution on same-sex marriage and came out in support.
The platform approved at the Democratic convention in Charlotte included a plank supporting same-sex marriage. Last week, Obama urged voters to back initiatives in Maryland, Maine and Washington state to allow gay couples to marry; he had previously urged Minnesotans to vote against a marriage prohibition.
If this is exacting a political price, it’s hard to discern. Republicans and their nominee, Mitt Romney, have not raised the subject — not at their convention, not on the campaign trail, not during the debates.
“It just shows how different the politics are, and how profoundly the center of gravity on the freedom to marry has shifted,” said Evan Wolfson, president of Freedom to Marry. Gay rights and the right to marry, he noted, “used to be something Republicans campaigned on, and Democrats wanted to be on the right side but didn’t want to talk about it. Now it’s the exact opposite because a majority of the country favors it and a majority of independents favor it.”
The difference is striking. I remember questioning a parade of Democratic presidential contenders about same-sex marriage during the 2004 campaign. They would stammer and talk about hospital visits, maybe civil unions. Their aides would glare at me for broaching this unwelcome topic.
The Republican Party hasn’t transformed itself — far from it. The party platform calls for a constitutional amendment to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Romney has signed a pledge from the National Organization for Marriage to back the amendment and support DOMA.
Still, said Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, “this is the first time we have seen a major national election in which one party has not overtly attacked LGBT people and opposed their equal rights in order to gain votes and motivate a base.”
The most interesting test involves the marriage initiatives on the ballot in four states (Maine, Maryland and Washington, where voters are being asked to affirmatively support same-sex marriage, and Minnesota, where opponents of marriage equality have an initiative to prohibit it).
In 32 out of 32 previous ballot initiatives — including an attempt in Maine just three years ago — voters have rejected same-sex marriage. Now, that string of intolerance may be broken; polls are tight in all four states.
But the message of those opposing same-sex marriage has shifted — to emphasize tolerance but draw the line at marriage. One spot against the Washington state measure opens with a rainbow flag, and assures voters, “Gays and lesbians already have the same legal rights as married couples. . . . You can oppose same-sex marriage and not be anti-gay.”
Polling explains this soft sell. A new report from the centrist Democratic group Third Way shows that most of the increase in support for marriage equality comes not from the changing demographics of younger voters, who are more open-minded, but from older voters reconsidering. “Americans in every demographic, political and religious group across the country are changing their minds on this issue,” the report found.
In 2004, 16 percent of Republicans backed same-sex marriage; by 2011, 26 percent did. In 2004, 33 percent of self-described moderates supported marriage equality, by 2011, 54 percent were in favor. And although the Catholic Church is a major financial backer of groups opposing same-sex marriage, support among Catholics has grown from 35 percent to 52 percent.
From ultimate wedge issue to relative nonissue — a stunning transformation.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
The Right’s Righteous Frauds
By Frank Bruni for The New York Times:
Say what you will about Bristol Palin, she’s a quick study. It didn’t take her long to master the ways of her elders on the censorious right and decide that personal circumstance and past error needn’t prevent someone from claiming righteous leadership. Uncle Rush must be proud.
Soon after President Obama stated support for same-sex marriage, Bristol publicly weighed in. Because, you know, the world was on tenterhooks.
In a blog post she focused on the reference that Obama made to his daughters — and to the same-sex parents of some of the girls’ friends.
“It would’ve been helpful for him to explain to Malia and Sasha that while her friends (sic) parents are no doubt lovely people, that’s not a reason to change thousands of years of thinking about marriage,” wrote Bristol, making her heady debut as the new Dr. Spock for a nascent millennium. She added that “in general kids do better growing up in a mother/father home. Ideally, fathers help shape their kids’ worldview.”
Fathers like...Levi Johnston? It’s with him that she conceived her child — out of wedlock, at the age of 17 — and by most accounts, his relationship with her and the Palin family isn’t any warmer than Juneau in January. A mother/father home is not what he and Bristol have succeeded in creating.
What’s more, she has made sure that their son, Tripp, will at some point be treated to a worldview-shaping image of Dad as something akin to a date rapist. That’s the description of him immortalized in her memoir, one of her many efforts to monetize her surname. It recounts the loss of her virginity as a result of getting drunk and blacking out in the company of Levi, who pounced. What a gift that narrative is to Tripp, now being hauled into a TV reality show, “Bristol Palin: Life’s a Tripp,” already in production. Little children are known to thrive in such environments.
I hesitated before picking on Bristol because she’s an easy target. It’s like shooting moose from a helicopter flying low over the tundra.
But she so perfectly distills the double standards and audacity of so many of our country’s self-appointed moralists and supposed traditionalists: hypocrites whose own histories, along with any sense of shame, tumble out the window as soon as there’s a microphone to be seized or check to be cashed.
She proves that they’re not going away anytime soon — a new generation rises! — and that they haven’t been daunted by the ridicule justly heaped on Newt Gingrich during the Republican primaries, when he dared to cast himself as a religious conservative.
Certainly Rush thunders on. Last week he bellowed that Obama had decided to “lead a war” on traditional marriage. Seems to me Limbaugh started those hostilities long ago, if not with his first divorce then certainly with his second and third.
For entertainment at Wedding No. 4, to a woman 26 years younger than he is, he hired Elton John (who very questionably took the gig). Gays shouldn’t be allowed to tie the knot, but they sure can carry a tune.
More interesting than the tired, press-a-button condemnations from Bristol and Rush was Mitt Romney’s comportment. He didn’t hasten to turn same-sex marriage into a wedge issue, the way Rick Santorum urged him to, or use his commencement speech at Liberty University to fan the flames of hellfire.
He instead held back a bit, no doubt partly because his need at this particular juncture, as he recovers from the compromising and brutalizing primaries, is to pivot to the center, not cling to the right. I think Obama and his tacticians counted on as much.
And I think that the extent to which Romney continues to hold back will have enormous consequence for the Republican Party’s destiny.
Within its uppermost ranks are many champions of small government who squirm at the small-mindedness of the scowling theocrats in an increasingly uneasy coalition. These fiscal conservatives take advantage of the religious right’s political muscle but have reservations about its hectoring piety, and their own views on social issues are often moderate or somewhat liberal. Recall that Republican money played a pivotal role in the successful campaign for same-sex marriage in New York.
It came from donors who don’t want to see Romney take up an anti-gay mantle and who understand that a reputation for intolerance and bigotry imperils the future of the party, which they would like to orient away from stone throwers in glass houses. They’re Rush-fatigued. Palin-weary.
Bristol’s recent parenting advice to the Obamas extended into the realm of TV. She seemed to question whether they were watching “too many episodes of ‘Glee.’ ”
“Life’s a Tripp,” starring a single mom who once sold a family revelation to Us Weekly, will be more edifying, I’m certain. And it will showcase a woman who’s a shining testament to conventional, old-fashioned families.
Say what you will about Bristol Palin, she’s a quick study. It didn’t take her long to master the ways of her elders on the censorious right and decide that personal circumstance and past error needn’t prevent someone from claiming righteous leadership. Uncle Rush must be proud.
Soon after President Obama stated support for same-sex marriage, Bristol publicly weighed in. Because, you know, the world was on tenterhooks.
In a blog post she focused on the reference that Obama made to his daughters — and to the same-sex parents of some of the girls’ friends.
“It would’ve been helpful for him to explain to Malia and Sasha that while her friends (sic) parents are no doubt lovely people, that’s not a reason to change thousands of years of thinking about marriage,” wrote Bristol, making her heady debut as the new Dr. Spock for a nascent millennium. She added that “in general kids do better growing up in a mother/father home. Ideally, fathers help shape their kids’ worldview.”
Fathers like...Levi Johnston? It’s with him that she conceived her child — out of wedlock, at the age of 17 — and by most accounts, his relationship with her and the Palin family isn’t any warmer than Juneau in January. A mother/father home is not what he and Bristol have succeeded in creating.
What’s more, she has made sure that their son, Tripp, will at some point be treated to a worldview-shaping image of Dad as something akin to a date rapist. That’s the description of him immortalized in her memoir, one of her many efforts to monetize her surname. It recounts the loss of her virginity as a result of getting drunk and blacking out in the company of Levi, who pounced. What a gift that narrative is to Tripp, now being hauled into a TV reality show, “Bristol Palin: Life’s a Tripp,” already in production. Little children are known to thrive in such environments.
I hesitated before picking on Bristol because she’s an easy target. It’s like shooting moose from a helicopter flying low over the tundra.
But she so perfectly distills the double standards and audacity of so many of our country’s self-appointed moralists and supposed traditionalists: hypocrites whose own histories, along with any sense of shame, tumble out the window as soon as there’s a microphone to be seized or check to be cashed.
She proves that they’re not going away anytime soon — a new generation rises! — and that they haven’t been daunted by the ridicule justly heaped on Newt Gingrich during the Republican primaries, when he dared to cast himself as a religious conservative.
Certainly Rush thunders on. Last week he bellowed that Obama had decided to “lead a war” on traditional marriage. Seems to me Limbaugh started those hostilities long ago, if not with his first divorce then certainly with his second and third.
For entertainment at Wedding No. 4, to a woman 26 years younger than he is, he hired Elton John (who very questionably took the gig). Gays shouldn’t be allowed to tie the knot, but they sure can carry a tune.
More interesting than the tired, press-a-button condemnations from Bristol and Rush was Mitt Romney’s comportment. He didn’t hasten to turn same-sex marriage into a wedge issue, the way Rick Santorum urged him to, or use his commencement speech at Liberty University to fan the flames of hellfire.
He instead held back a bit, no doubt partly because his need at this particular juncture, as he recovers from the compromising and brutalizing primaries, is to pivot to the center, not cling to the right. I think Obama and his tacticians counted on as much.
And I think that the extent to which Romney continues to hold back will have enormous consequence for the Republican Party’s destiny.
Within its uppermost ranks are many champions of small government who squirm at the small-mindedness of the scowling theocrats in an increasingly uneasy coalition. These fiscal conservatives take advantage of the religious right’s political muscle but have reservations about its hectoring piety, and their own views on social issues are often moderate or somewhat liberal. Recall that Republican money played a pivotal role in the successful campaign for same-sex marriage in New York.
It came from donors who don’t want to see Romney take up an anti-gay mantle and who understand that a reputation for intolerance and bigotry imperils the future of the party, which they would like to orient away from stone throwers in glass houses. They’re Rush-fatigued. Palin-weary.
Bristol’s recent parenting advice to the Obamas extended into the realm of TV. She seemed to question whether they were watching “too many episodes of ‘Glee.’ ”
“Life’s a Tripp,” starring a single mom who once sold a family revelation to Us Weekly, will be more edifying, I’m certain. And it will showcase a woman who’s a shining testament to conventional, old-fashioned families.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
The Tide of History Flows from Intolerance to Acceptance
There are so many good things emerging in Venango County, but, as home-base for a viciously anti-gay hate group, the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, which side of history will it be on when it comes to inclusion, fairness and equality for all?
Los Angeles Times Editorial - Feb. 17, 2012
A quarter-century ago, 65% of Americans thought interracial marriage was unacceptable for themselves or for other people. Yet in the span of a generation, as intermarriage has become more common and the United States has grown more racially diverse, a dramatic change in attitudes has taken place. Today, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, 87% of Americans say that the rise in interracial marriage has either been good for society or made no difference, while only 11% think it's a change for the worse.
That's the thing about the tide of history: It tends to flow from intolerance to acceptance. The same shift that occurred in opinions about interracial marriage is happening in attitudes about same-sex marriage. Just ask folks in Washington and New Jersey.
Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire signed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage on Monday, and on Thursday the New Jersey Assembly approved a similar measure. Voters in those states will probably have the final say; opponents are organizing a petition drive for a Washington ballot measure to ban gay marriage, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has vowed to veto his state's marriage bill and present the issue as a referendum instead. There's no telling what voters in either state will decide, but such occasional shoals matter less than the overall direction of the tide, and we know which way that's turning.
Surveys show a major generational divide in attitudes about gay marriage, with younger people widely favoring it while older people are generally opposed. As time passes, there's only one direction this trend can lead. And it's the same direction this country charted during the civil rights era, when anti-miscegenation laws were overturned amid a raucous outcry from conservatives who feared that interracial marriage would unravel our social fabric.
Through surveys like Pew's, we also know what will happen in the decades that follow the widespread legalization of same-sex marriage: An issue that divides Americans as intensely as any in our ongoing culture wars will simply cease to matter, as conservatives discover their own marriages are in no way devalued. Today, according to Pew, 63% of Americans say they "would be fine" if a family member opted to marry someone outside his or her racial or ethnic group, and the overall percentage of interracial marriages is soaring: It hit 15.1% nationwide in 2010 and is even higher in California, where the majority of such unions are between whites and Latinos.
Someday, we suspect, most Americans won't be bothered by the prospect of their sons or daughters marrying someone of the same sex. All it takes is time, and enough examples to demonstrate that the fears of marriage-equality opponents are baseless.
The Many Faces of Marriage in America
The same shift that occurred in opinions about interracial marriage — from disapproval to approval — is happening in attitudes about same-sex marriage.
Los Angeles Times Editorial - Feb. 17, 2012
A quarter-century ago, 65% of Americans thought interracial marriage was unacceptable for themselves or for other people. Yet in the span of a generation, as intermarriage has become more common and the United States has grown more racially diverse, a dramatic change in attitudes has taken place. Today, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, 87% of Americans say that the rise in interracial marriage has either been good for society or made no difference, while only 11% think it's a change for the worse.
That's the thing about the tide of history: It tends to flow from intolerance to acceptance. The same shift that occurred in opinions about interracial marriage is happening in attitudes about same-sex marriage. Just ask folks in Washington and New Jersey.
Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire signed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage on Monday, and on Thursday the New Jersey Assembly approved a similar measure. Voters in those states will probably have the final say; opponents are organizing a petition drive for a Washington ballot measure to ban gay marriage, and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has vowed to veto his state's marriage bill and present the issue as a referendum instead. There's no telling what voters in either state will decide, but such occasional shoals matter less than the overall direction of the tide, and we know which way that's turning.
Surveys show a major generational divide in attitudes about gay marriage, with younger people widely favoring it while older people are generally opposed. As time passes, there's only one direction this trend can lead. And it's the same direction this country charted during the civil rights era, when anti-miscegenation laws were overturned amid a raucous outcry from conservatives who feared that interracial marriage would unravel our social fabric.
Through surveys like Pew's, we also know what will happen in the decades that follow the widespread legalization of same-sex marriage: An issue that divides Americans as intensely as any in our ongoing culture wars will simply cease to matter, as conservatives discover their own marriages are in no way devalued. Today, according to Pew, 63% of Americans say they "would be fine" if a family member opted to marry someone outside his or her racial or ethnic group, and the overall percentage of interracial marriages is soaring: It hit 15.1% nationwide in 2010 and is even higher in California, where the majority of such unions are between whites and Latinos.
Someday, we suspect, most Americans won't be bothered by the prospect of their sons or daughters marrying someone of the same sex. All it takes is time, and enough examples to demonstrate that the fears of marriage-equality opponents are baseless.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Gays Apologize To Adulterous, Anti-Gay Lawmaker for Ruining Her Traditional Marriage
from Truth Wins Out:
OH, funny! Amy Koch is the erstwhile Senate Majority leader in Minnesota who resigned after admitting an “inappropriate relationship” with a staffer, all while being traditionally married. She is also an anti-gay politician, having been a leader of the effort to write marriage discrimination into Minnesota’s constitution. Realizing that gay and lesbians, and our marriages, are the cause of most traditional marriage problems, some of the gays in Minnesota have decided to apologize to Koch for ruining her marriage. Here is their letter:
Dear Ms. Koch,
On behalf of all gays and lesbians living in Minnesota, I would like to wholeheartedly apologize for our community’s successful efforts to threaten your traditional marriage. We are ashamed of ourselves for causing you to have what the media refers to as an “illicit affair” with your staffer, and we also extend our deepest apologies to him and to his wife. These recent events have made it quite clear that our gay and lesbian tactics have gone too far, affecting even the most respectful of our society.
We apologize that our selfish requests to marry those we love has cheapened and degraded traditional marriage so much that we caused you to stray from your own holy union for something more cheap and tawdry. And we are doubly remorseful in knowing that many will see this as a form of sexual harassment of a subordinate.
It is now clear to us that if we were not so self-focused and myopic, we would have been able to see that the time you wasted diligently writing legislation that would forever seal the definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman, could have been more usefully spent reshaping the legal definition of “adultery.”
Forgive us. As you know, we are not church-going people, so we are unable to fully appreciate that “gay marriage” is incompatible with Christian values, despite the fact that those values carry a biblical tradition of adultery such as yours. We applaud you for keeping that tradition going.
And finally, shame on us for thinking that marriage is a private affair, and that our marriage would have little impact on anyone’s family. We now see that marriage is more than that. It is an agreement with society. We should listen to the Minnesota Family Council when it tells us that marriage is about being public, which explains why marriages are public ceremonies. Never did we realize that it is exactly because of this societal agreement that the entire world is looking at you in shame and disappointment instead of minding its own business.
From the bottom of our hearts, we ask that you please accept our apology.
Thank you.
John Medeiros
Minneapolis MN
We at Truth Wins Out are also super sorry.
OH, funny! Amy Koch is the erstwhile Senate Majority leader in Minnesota who resigned after admitting an “inappropriate relationship” with a staffer, all while being traditionally married. She is also an anti-gay politician, having been a leader of the effort to write marriage discrimination into Minnesota’s constitution. Realizing that gay and lesbians, and our marriages, are the cause of most traditional marriage problems, some of the gays in Minnesota have decided to apologize to Koch for ruining her marriage. Here is their letter:
An Open Apology to Amy Koch
on Behalf of All Gay and Lesbian Minnesotans
Dear Ms. Koch,
On behalf of all gays and lesbians living in Minnesota, I would like to wholeheartedly apologize for our community’s successful efforts to threaten your traditional marriage. We are ashamed of ourselves for causing you to have what the media refers to as an “illicit affair” with your staffer, and we also extend our deepest apologies to him and to his wife. These recent events have made it quite clear that our gay and lesbian tactics have gone too far, affecting even the most respectful of our society.
We apologize that our selfish requests to marry those we love has cheapened and degraded traditional marriage so much that we caused you to stray from your own holy union for something more cheap and tawdry. And we are doubly remorseful in knowing that many will see this as a form of sexual harassment of a subordinate.
It is now clear to us that if we were not so self-focused and myopic, we would have been able to see that the time you wasted diligently writing legislation that would forever seal the definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman, could have been more usefully spent reshaping the legal definition of “adultery.”
Forgive us. As you know, we are not church-going people, so we are unable to fully appreciate that “gay marriage” is incompatible with Christian values, despite the fact that those values carry a biblical tradition of adultery such as yours. We applaud you for keeping that tradition going.
And finally, shame on us for thinking that marriage is a private affair, and that our marriage would have little impact on anyone’s family. We now see that marriage is more than that. It is an agreement with society. We should listen to the Minnesota Family Council when it tells us that marriage is about being public, which explains why marriages are public ceremonies. Never did we realize that it is exactly because of this societal agreement that the entire world is looking at you in shame and disappointment instead of minding its own business.
From the bottom of our hearts, we ask that you please accept our apology.
Thank you.
John Medeiros
Minneapolis MN
We at Truth Wins Out are also super sorry.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
The House of (Hateful) Cards is Falling
As usual, the brilliant minds at the Venango County-based Hate Group, the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, are way behind the curve.
by Michelangelo Signorile for the Huffington Post:
I'm not exactly ready to say we've reached the end of the line for political gay-bashing in presidential election campaigns. But Rick Perry's widely-ridiculed "Strong" ad, in which he attacks the idea of gays serving openly in the military, surely shows we're getting there.
The ad has over 650,000 "dislikes" on YouTube as opposed to just under 21,000 "likes" and has been parodied mercilessly - and often hilariously. George Takei pointed to Perry's wearing the same jacket as Heath Ledger in "Brokeback Mountain," and the Harvard Political Review notes the music was inspired by or lifted from gay composer Aaron Copland. The ad only seems to show how much gays are woven into the fabric of American culture even as Perry laughably seeks to marginalize them. It's a "fail" on all counts.
Whatever uptick Perry may get in the polls among the evangelical base, the question is: Was it worth the high cost of political gay-bashing in 2011? The answer is clearly no. Rifts erupted in his campaign over the ad - with Perry's own top pollster calling the ad "nuts" - causing a distraction in the media. Perry got heckled by activists at an event in Iowa and there's likely to be more. The usually highly accommodating gay Republican group, GOProud, whirled itself into a tornado of rage, demanding that Perry's top pollster, Tony Fabrizio - the one who called the ad "nuts" - step down, claiming he's a gay sell out. This was somewhat ludicrous coming from a group that only a few weeks ago said it would support Michele Bachmann if she won the nomination. But that only underscored the anger that the ad inspired.
When conservative activist Andrew Breitbart quit the GOProud board in response to the supposed outing (yes, more irony, watching Breitbart expressing concern about revelations that might harm political figures' careers), it only brought more attention to the issue: Even FoxNews.com named Fabrizio.
It might now dawn on some evangelical voters to ask: If Rick Perry truly believes open gays shouldn't serve in the military why does he appear to believe they can serve so close to him in his own campaign? And it's not like he's the only choice for the hard-core antigay crowd, as true believers Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are vying for their votes as well. It's true that evangelicals have been stereotyped as being driven by one issue, and, like everyone else, the economy appears to be a driving factor in their election decisions too. No candidate is going to get by on "family values" alone.
But it's also true that the gay issue is no longer as potent for GOP politicians because more and more GOP moderates and independents aren't willing to go along with the antigay line. A few years ago the same kind of political gay-bashing Perry has engaged in worked like a charm for the GOP. When George W. Bush, ramping up for the 2004 election, pushed a federal marriage amendment - claiming we needed to "protect" marriage - it brought in the religious right crowd while obviously not disgusting moderates in the party enough to scare them off.
But now, Ken Mehlman, the man who orchestrated that strategy as both chair of the Republican National Committee and head of Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, is out of the closet and working in the party to gain support for marriage equality.
The majority of Americans opposed marriage equality in 2004 and even in 2008, unlike today when in most polls a slim majority favors it. And on "don't ask, don't' tell," - one of the issues that Perry decided to stake his campaign on - almost 80% favored repeal last year when Congress voted on it.
Back in October, weeks before the "Strong" ad, I wrote an essay for The Advocate in which I noted how the decades-long antigay strategy in the GOP could finally come back to haunt the party this year. In 2011 all the candidates in fact steered clear of LGBT issues until they were either called on it (Santorum was actually questioned by Chris Mathews on "Hardball" earlier in the summer about why he wasn't bringing up gay marriage) or got desperate, as in the case of Bachmann and now Perry.
Once they see that whatever help it gets them in the polls isn't worth the high cost of gay-bashing today, GOP politicians and their strategists may drop this ugly strategy once and for all.
The High Cost of Political Gay-Bashing
by Michelangelo Signorile for the Huffington Post:
I'm not exactly ready to say we've reached the end of the line for political gay-bashing in presidential election campaigns. But Rick Perry's widely-ridiculed "Strong" ad, in which he attacks the idea of gays serving openly in the military, surely shows we're getting there.
The ad has over 650,000 "dislikes" on YouTube as opposed to just under 21,000 "likes" and has been parodied mercilessly - and often hilariously. George Takei pointed to Perry's wearing the same jacket as Heath Ledger in "Brokeback Mountain," and the Harvard Political Review notes the music was inspired by or lifted from gay composer Aaron Copland. The ad only seems to show how much gays are woven into the fabric of American culture even as Perry laughably seeks to marginalize them. It's a "fail" on all counts.
Whatever uptick Perry may get in the polls among the evangelical base, the question is: Was it worth the high cost of political gay-bashing in 2011? The answer is clearly no. Rifts erupted in his campaign over the ad - with Perry's own top pollster calling the ad "nuts" - causing a distraction in the media. Perry got heckled by activists at an event in Iowa and there's likely to be more. The usually highly accommodating gay Republican group, GOProud, whirled itself into a tornado of rage, demanding that Perry's top pollster, Tony Fabrizio - the one who called the ad "nuts" - step down, claiming he's a gay sell out. This was somewhat ludicrous coming from a group that only a few weeks ago said it would support Michele Bachmann if she won the nomination. But that only underscored the anger that the ad inspired.
When conservative activist Andrew Breitbart quit the GOProud board in response to the supposed outing (yes, more irony, watching Breitbart expressing concern about revelations that might harm political figures' careers), it only brought more attention to the issue: Even FoxNews.com named Fabrizio.
It might now dawn on some evangelical voters to ask: If Rick Perry truly believes open gays shouldn't serve in the military why does he appear to believe they can serve so close to him in his own campaign? And it's not like he's the only choice for the hard-core antigay crowd, as true believers Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are vying for their votes as well. It's true that evangelicals have been stereotyped as being driven by one issue, and, like everyone else, the economy appears to be a driving factor in their election decisions too. No candidate is going to get by on "family values" alone.
But it's also true that the gay issue is no longer as potent for GOP politicians because more and more GOP moderates and independents aren't willing to go along with the antigay line. A few years ago the same kind of political gay-bashing Perry has engaged in worked like a charm for the GOP. When George W. Bush, ramping up for the 2004 election, pushed a federal marriage amendment - claiming we needed to "protect" marriage - it brought in the religious right crowd while obviously not disgusting moderates in the party enough to scare them off.
But now, Ken Mehlman, the man who orchestrated that strategy as both chair of the Republican National Committee and head of Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, is out of the closet and working in the party to gain support for marriage equality.
The majority of Americans opposed marriage equality in 2004 and even in 2008, unlike today when in most polls a slim majority favors it. And on "don't ask, don't' tell," - one of the issues that Perry decided to stake his campaign on - almost 80% favored repeal last year when Congress voted on it.
Back in October, weeks before the "Strong" ad, I wrote an essay for The Advocate in which I noted how the decades-long antigay strategy in the GOP could finally come back to haunt the party this year. In 2011 all the candidates in fact steered clear of LGBT issues until they were either called on it (Santorum was actually questioned by Chris Mathews on "Hardball" earlier in the summer about why he wasn't bringing up gay marriage) or got desperate, as in the case of Bachmann and now Perry.
Once they see that whatever help it gets them in the polls isn't worth the high cost of gay-bashing today, GOP politicians and their strategists may drop this ugly strategy once and for all.
Friday, December 9, 2011
Gays, Guns & God
Unbeknownst to the Venango County-based Hate Group, the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, "conservative orthodoxy is badly out of step with emerging majority support for full citizenship rights of gays."
by Timothy Egan for the Opinionator:
How do you praise the sanctity of traditional heterosexual marriage when the best-known nuptials of the year, between a Kardashian and a basketball player, lasted all of 72 days? Or, for that matter, when a possible Republican nominee for president, Newt Gingrich, cares so much about marriage that he’s tried it three times?
You don’t. The above mockeries of marriage are just the latest reasons one of the most potent wedge issues of American politics — the banner of gays, guns and God — will have little impact next year.
This trio is usually trotted out in big swaths of the West, in rural or swing districts and in Southern states at the cusp of the Bible Belt. The proverbial three G’s was the explanation in Thomas Frank’s entertaining book “What’s the Matter With Kansas” for why poor, powerless whites would vote for a party that promises nothing but tax cuts for the rich.
It’s misleading to think people will vote against their economic interests simply because a candidate doesn’t mouth the same pieties as they do. But the cultural cudgel works to a point. I’ve certainly seen the three G’s launched late in a campaign, to great effect. Jim Inhofe won a Senate seat in Oklahoma in 1994 using the three G’s as an overt slogan.
At the same time, I’ve watched smart politicians, like Montana’s two-term Democratic governor, Brian Schweitzer, blunt the attack by showing off their guns and waving away the God and gay questions as none-of-your-business intrusions.
But this year I think we’ve reached a tipping point on these heartless perennials. When George W. Bush won re-election in 2004, political sophisticates were stunned by a national exit poll in which 22 percent of voters picked “moral issues” from a list of things that mattered most — more than any other concern. This was heralded as the high-water triumph for evangelicals.
Later analysis showed that the phrase “moral issues” was being used rather broadly by voters, from concern about character to worry over poverty. It was a catch-all. Still, the ranking of moral issues as the top reason to pick a president came as a surprise.
Now look at this week’s New York Times/CBS News Poll of likely Republican caucus-goers in Iowa, about as conservative a cohort of voters as anywhere in the country. Iowa, for Republicans, is where gays, guns and God will grow in political fields long after corn is no longer planted for ethanol subsidies.
Topping the list of voter concerns was the economy and jobs — picked by 40 percent of respondents, followed by the budget deficit at 23 percent. Social issues came in a distant third, with 9 percent. And the candidate who polled highest as the one who “most represents the values you try to live by,” Michele Bachmann, has nothing to show for that rating in the overall race, where she is in fifth place.
But the decline of the three G’s hasn’t stopped a few of the dead-enders in the Republican field from raising the flag. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, last seen trying to find a verb to follow “oops,” is out this week with a very specific culture-war ad in Iowa, vowing to end “Obama’s war on religion,” whatever that is.
“I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Christian,” says Perry, in a folksy drawl. “But you don’t need to be in a pew every Sunday to know that there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military, but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.” The surprise here is that he actually completed several sentences, though it may have required a number of takes.
Perry and Rick Santorum, another badly wounded culture warrior, blasted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this week for saying that the United States would assist human rights groups fighting for tolerance in countries where people have been imprisoned, and even killed, for their sexual orientation.
“This administration’s war on traditional values must stop,” said Perry, siding, apparently, with mullahs living in caves.
This is Perry’s last gasp; in desperation, he shows how this particular balloon has run out of hot air. Poll after poll has found that Americans now overwhelmingly favor letting gays serve openly in the military — a sentiment backed even by a sizable majority of Republicans.
The gay marriage issue is moving in the same direction. Earlier this year, Gallup reported that, for the first time in its tracking of the issue, a majority of Americans believe same-sex marriage should be legal. In 1996, only 27 percent felt that way.
Which brings us to guns. President Obama has done nothing to curb gun use. If anything, he’s expanded gun rights. There are probably a dozen Democrats in Congress from the West who know more about guns than Mitt Romney or Professor Newt Gingrich. That dog, as they say, will not hunt — not this year.
The irony is that two of the G’s could actually hurt Republicans in 2012. Conservative orthodoxy is badly out of step with emerging majority support for full citizenship rights of gays. And with religion, some Republicans have already made an issue of Romney’s Mormonism, and Gingrich’s switch to Roman Catholicism. In Gingrich’s case, questions have been raised about how a multiple-married man could win the favor of high-ranking Catholic clerics who usually look askance at people who ditch their wives.
Do we dare expect these two fine men to be the ones, at long last, to bring an end to the gays, guns and God wedge issue, even if it’s by accident?
by Timothy Egan for the Opinionator:
How do you praise the sanctity of traditional heterosexual marriage when the best-known nuptials of the year, between a Kardashian and a basketball player, lasted all of 72 days? Or, for that matter, when a possible Republican nominee for president, Newt Gingrich, cares so much about marriage that he’s tried it three times?
You don’t. The above mockeries of marriage are just the latest reasons one of the most potent wedge issues of American politics — the banner of gays, guns and God — will have little impact next year.
This trio is usually trotted out in big swaths of the West, in rural or swing districts and in Southern states at the cusp of the Bible Belt. The proverbial three G’s was the explanation in Thomas Frank’s entertaining book “What’s the Matter With Kansas” for why poor, powerless whites would vote for a party that promises nothing but tax cuts for the rich.
It’s misleading to think people will vote against their economic interests simply because a candidate doesn’t mouth the same pieties as they do. But the cultural cudgel works to a point. I’ve certainly seen the three G’s launched late in a campaign, to great effect. Jim Inhofe won a Senate seat in Oklahoma in 1994 using the three G’s as an overt slogan.
At the same time, I’ve watched smart politicians, like Montana’s two-term Democratic governor, Brian Schweitzer, blunt the attack by showing off their guns and waving away the God and gay questions as none-of-your-business intrusions.
But this year I think we’ve reached a tipping point on these heartless perennials. When George W. Bush won re-election in 2004, political sophisticates were stunned by a national exit poll in which 22 percent of voters picked “moral issues” from a list of things that mattered most — more than any other concern. This was heralded as the high-water triumph for evangelicals.
Later analysis showed that the phrase “moral issues” was being used rather broadly by voters, from concern about character to worry over poverty. It was a catch-all. Still, the ranking of moral issues as the top reason to pick a president came as a surprise.
Now look at this week’s New York Times/CBS News Poll of likely Republican caucus-goers in Iowa, about as conservative a cohort of voters as anywhere in the country. Iowa, for Republicans, is where gays, guns and God will grow in political fields long after corn is no longer planted for ethanol subsidies.
Topping the list of voter concerns was the economy and jobs — picked by 40 percent of respondents, followed by the budget deficit at 23 percent. Social issues came in a distant third, with 9 percent. And the candidate who polled highest as the one who “most represents the values you try to live by,” Michele Bachmann, has nothing to show for that rating in the overall race, where she is in fifth place.
But the decline of the three G’s hasn’t stopped a few of the dead-enders in the Republican field from raising the flag. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, last seen trying to find a verb to follow “oops,” is out this week with a very specific culture-war ad in Iowa, vowing to end “Obama’s war on religion,” whatever that is.
“I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Christian,” says Perry, in a folksy drawl. “But you don’t need to be in a pew every Sunday to know that there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military, but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.” The surprise here is that he actually completed several sentences, though it may have required a number of takes.
Perry and Rick Santorum, another badly wounded culture warrior, blasted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this week for saying that the United States would assist human rights groups fighting for tolerance in countries where people have been imprisoned, and even killed, for their sexual orientation.
“This administration’s war on traditional values must stop,” said Perry, siding, apparently, with mullahs living in caves.
This is Perry’s last gasp; in desperation, he shows how this particular balloon has run out of hot air. Poll after poll has found that Americans now overwhelmingly favor letting gays serve openly in the military — a sentiment backed even by a sizable majority of Republicans.
The gay marriage issue is moving in the same direction. Earlier this year, Gallup reported that, for the first time in its tracking of the issue, a majority of Americans believe same-sex marriage should be legal. In 1996, only 27 percent felt that way.
Which brings us to guns. President Obama has done nothing to curb gun use. If anything, he’s expanded gun rights. There are probably a dozen Democrats in Congress from the West who know more about guns than Mitt Romney or Professor Newt Gingrich. That dog, as they say, will not hunt — not this year.
The irony is that two of the G’s could actually hurt Republicans in 2012. Conservative orthodoxy is badly out of step with emerging majority support for full citizenship rights of gays. And with religion, some Republicans have already made an issue of Romney’s Mormonism, and Gingrich’s switch to Roman Catholicism. In Gingrich’s case, questions have been raised about how a multiple-married man could win the favor of high-ranking Catholic clerics who usually look askance at people who ditch their wives.
Do we dare expect these two fine men to be the ones, at long last, to bring an end to the gays, guns and God wedge issue, even if it’s by accident?
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Children are the Real Victims of Anti-LGBT Laws and Stigma
by Michael Cole-Schwartz for The Huffington Post:
One of the oft-repeated arguments for excluding gay and lesbian couples from marriage is that it will somehow "protect children." People like Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage want Americans to believe that if only we lock the doors to marriage and don't let anyone but straight couples in, children will be healthy, happy and safe from harm. But a new report from our movement colleagues at the Center for American Progress, the Family Equality Council and the Movement Advancement Project makes clear that children are actually the victims of the laws and stigma that disadvantage lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adults.
First, it's critical to acknowledge that LGBT people are parenting in large and growing numbers. Studies estimate that 2 million children are being raised by LGBT parents in nearly every county in the country. Interestingly, same-sex couples in the South are most likely to be raising children, and LGBT families are more likely to be racially and ethnically diverse. When you hear the Maggie Gallaghers of the world talk about doing what's best for children, remember that 2 million of this country's children are being denied what children of other families get.
One of the chief obstacles to children of LGBT families being protected is the federal Defense of Marriage Act. By limiting marriage to only one man and one woman for federal purposes, DOMA denies 1,138 rights, responsibilities and benefits to legally married same-sex couples and their children. These are things like the ability to take family and medical leave, receive social security survivors' benefits or take advantage of numerous tax provisions aimed at strengthening families. This is true even for families in the six states and D.C. where same-sex couples can legally marry.
Even opponents of marriage or other relationship recognition for same-sex couples agree that discriminating against gay parents hurts their children. During this summer's landmark hearing on the Defense of Marriage Act, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy got Focus on the Family's Tom Minnery to admit under oath that when you have some families with fewer rights than others, it disadvantages kids.
This week we heard from Chairman Leahy that he is continuing to push this issue with a markup next month. In early November, the full committee will consider the Respect for Marriage Act -- the bill to repeal DOMA and level the playing field for all families. If you want to do what's actually best for the children of this country, tell Congress it's time to end discrimination against LGBT parents.
One of the oft-repeated arguments for excluding gay and lesbian couples from marriage is that it will somehow "protect children." People like Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage want Americans to believe that if only we lock the doors to marriage and don't let anyone but straight couples in, children will be healthy, happy and safe from harm. But a new report from our movement colleagues at the Center for American Progress, the Family Equality Council and the Movement Advancement Project makes clear that children are actually the victims of the laws and stigma that disadvantage lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adults.
First, it's critical to acknowledge that LGBT people are parenting in large and growing numbers. Studies estimate that 2 million children are being raised by LGBT parents in nearly every county in the country. Interestingly, same-sex couples in the South are most likely to be raising children, and LGBT families are more likely to be racially and ethnically diverse. When you hear the Maggie Gallaghers of the world talk about doing what's best for children, remember that 2 million of this country's children are being denied what children of other families get.
One of the chief obstacles to children of LGBT families being protected is the federal Defense of Marriage Act. By limiting marriage to only one man and one woman for federal purposes, DOMA denies 1,138 rights, responsibilities and benefits to legally married same-sex couples and their children. These are things like the ability to take family and medical leave, receive social security survivors' benefits or take advantage of numerous tax provisions aimed at strengthening families. This is true even for families in the six states and D.C. where same-sex couples can legally marry.
Even opponents of marriage or other relationship recognition for same-sex couples agree that discriminating against gay parents hurts their children. During this summer's landmark hearing on the Defense of Marriage Act, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy got Focus on the Family's Tom Minnery to admit under oath that when you have some families with fewer rights than others, it disadvantages kids.
This week we heard from Chairman Leahy that he is continuing to push this issue with a markup next month. In early November, the full committee will consider the Respect for Marriage Act -- the bill to repeal DOMA and level the playing field for all families. If you want to do what's actually best for the children of this country, tell Congress it's time to end discrimination against LGBT parents.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)