Are they bigots?

The Right Wing is up in arms over a (straight) Washington Post reporter who calls those opposed to marriage equality "bigots". His response:

Unlike with most activists, I don't really see the direct impact on their lives, or on the lives of the people who agree with them, of the cause they oppose. Antitax protesters are threatened by higher taxes. Anti-health-care-bill protesters fear their coverage will get worse. Anti-meat-eating protesters believe animals are being murdered and the environment is being made worse....

But who's threatened by legal same-sex marriage? Whose life is made worse? If there was science suggesting that children raised by same-sex parents are worse off than children raised by traditional families, that would be one thing, but I haven't seen it. We've watched legal same-sex marriage in several European countries and several states, and it hasn't ushered in some decline in the quality of life, or marriage, for those who don't participate in it.

That's what I don't understand. That's my bias, for now. I'll happily entertain arguments for the contrary.

Lutherans reinstate gay pastor (video Sunday)

Slowly, surely, justice is done.

Faith in America: ending religion-based bias

This group, Faith in America, is very interesting. It exists to challenge religion-based bias. Recently, they hired former Obama advisor Steve Hildebrand. In an interview with LGBTPOV, he says,

Every time we try to get a voter who opposes marriage to switch their support our way, most use their religion or their fear that gay marriage will be taught to their children in schools. The opposition to teaching children in schools is most often based on their religious views. That has led me to believe that reducing religion-based bigotry towards gay people will help us win these important battles. Until we get beyond religion, we will continue to struggle.

The programs and dialogue developed by Faith in America are compelling. We will not change every mind. This is a war we have to win before we can win each of the battles.

Till death do us part

What is it with Republican governors? First it was Rhode Island Gov. Don Carcieri who, back in November, vetoed legislation that would let a gay person plan his dead partner's funeral, ostensibly because that was a slippery slope to marriage. (The veto was overridden in January 2010).

Now Gov. Tiim Pawlenty of Minnesota is trying the same thing (and situating himself for a possible attempt at the GOP nomination since homophobia is apparently a tea party value).

Gov. Tim Pawlenty vetoed a bill Saturday that would have given same-sex partners the right to decide what to do with the body of their loved ones, should they die.

These people have no values, and certainly no humanity nor Christianity. How awful can you be.

New Gallup poll: Americans' views on GLBT relations

It's still very close, but there has been a modest shift in the view of Americans overall towards the status of gay relationships, whether or not we should have legal protections, and whether or not we should marry. As you would expect, the seat of anti-GLBT sentiment is older people, religious conservatives, Republicans, and southerners.

Data here and here. When I have a chance, I'll look at some of the breakdown numbers more closely, but here are the big ones:

The biggest is that for the first time, the number of Americans who think GLBT relationships can be "moral" exceeds 50%.

"Moral". It's an odd term, and an odd concept. Would we be more moral if we were married? Isn't that a catch 22?


This one strikes me, it's all over the chart, whether we should be legal or not. This is the "civil unions + marriage" group. And isn't it odd more people consider that we should be legal, than consider us "moral"?

Finally,


This one is basically a flat line. We are making slow, if agonizing, progress on the other two issues. But this one seems intransigent, overall, even though we know that state by state we are improving. Not sure why that's the case.

Over 10,000 served

I started this blog on May 8th 2009 in the trauma of the first Prop8 trial. Would we stay legally married? What could I do, one middle aged married lesbian, to help the cause? My first goal was to tell our stories, we gay married Californians. From there, I started consolidating news on this one issue.

Today we crossed 10,000 visitors. We generally get about 20 a day, with an occasional spike of traffic driven by my cross posts at the community blogs to which I belong, including the progressive Episcopal blog Friends of Jake, the progressive faith-issues blog Street Prophets, and the just-plain-progressive Daily Kos. But I think the biggest thing to drive us above the 0-1 visitor per day was the fact I now link these to my facebook.

It's not a lot. It pales in comparison to most of the blogs I read. But it's all mine, this one, with a single minded fixation on one issue:

MARRIAGE EQUALITY.

I hope you find it informative, inspiring, and worth the visit. I plan to keep going, so please stick around. And tell a friend. ;-)

Visitor number 10,000 came to us on a Google search for "gay married boy" from Kathmandu, Nepal.

Enough of the hypocrisy!

EJDionne writes in the WaPo about the Republican religious hypocrites using religion as an excuse to attack. Make sure to read the whole thing!

...I want to shout as forcefully as I can to my conservative Christian friends: Enough! Enough with dividing the world between moral, family-loving Christians and supposedly permissive, corrupt, family-destroying secularists.

Enough with pretending that personal virtue is connected with political creeds. Enough with condemning your adversaries, sometimes viciously, and then insisting upon understanding after the failures of someone on your own side become known to the world. And enough with claiming that support for gay rights and gay marriage is synonymous with opposition to family values and sexual responsibility.

It's not the self-righteousness of religious conservatives that bothers me most. We liberals can be pretty self-righteous, too. It's the refusal to acknowledge that the pressures endangering the family do not come from some dark secular leftist conspiracy but from cultural and economic forces that affect us all.

...[T]hose of us who are liberal would insist that our support for the rights of gays and lesbians grows from our sense of what family values demand. How can being pro-family possibly mean holding in contempt our homosexual relatives, neighbors and friends? How much sense does it make to preach fidelity and commitment and then deny marriage to those whose sexual orientation is different from our own? Rights for gays and lesbians don't wreck heterosexual families. Heterosexuals are doing a fine job of this on their own......How many more scandals will it take for people who call themselves Christian to rediscover the virtues of humility and solidarity?

Hypocrite alert

US Representative Mark Souder of Indiana is very conservative, and considers his own Evangelical religion to be a deep foundation of his governing. He is deeply opposed to marriage equality.

Media matters points out his part of the debate over whether there could be any benefits to domestic partners of Federal employees.

I take deep offense and-and personal offense at some of the, the comments regarding the whole uh, gay rights issue.  ....I do not like [clears throat] to talk about this subject.  It is a very deep and difficult subject.  I personally have [clears throat] deeply held [clears throat] excuse me, moral views that [clears throat] are obviously shared by the Catholic Bishops....
as a country that was founded in these values we have always paid tribute to these values of traditional marriage...and that the thrust of this bill, which a number of these amendments have tried to address, have highlighted what is clearly a deep cultural divide in this country.  And that when it's thrust at us we're going to defend it. ...Christians, such as myself, have an obligation to say that that is wrong behavior.

And therefore, he actively opposes any recognition of partnered couples.

But, as the latest in what is becoming a long line of Republican sexual hypocrites, he doesn't exactly do a great job upholding the ideals he espouses. Seems he's been having an affair with an aide who worked with him on a video about (get this) sexual abstinence. As the SF Gate blog comments

Rep. Mark Souder is a 14-year, eight-term House of Representatives veteran who campaigned on a "family values" ethic, campaigned against the Obama Health Care Reform Plan, and said he was interested in preserving the idea of traditional marriage, has resigned after revealing that he'd cheated on his wife with a female staff aide.
While liberal blogs like The Huffington Post point to Mark Souder's commitment to the idea of one man and one woman, technically, Mark Souder didn't say he was opposed to having a mistress in a marriage for himself, just Democrats.

You cannot make up this stuff. It seems clear that the more a conservative fulminates about illicit sex, the more he is engaged in it.

Let's see: back when they attacked Clinton for his sleazy affair, The Repubicans ignored the mistresses of Newt Gingrich and Henry Hyde. Then we had Mark Foley, David Vitter, Larry Craig, and John Ensign. California's legislature gave us Roy Ashburn. On the religious side we got Ted Haggard and George "Rentboy" Rekers. And those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. And now we add Mark Souder to the mix.

Listen, Republicans: maybe you had better just stop talking about sexual ethics for other people if you can't live with them for yourself.

UpdateDiana Butler Bass:

Souder's actions underscore something much worse: the use and abuse of religious faith to 1) manipulate and control others without having to submit the same standards yourself, and 2) cover for one's own sins. Of such actions, the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote that "only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core." These are the reasons why so many people in contemporary America are rejecting Christianity -- and why they are rightfully criticizing Christians for failing to act as Jesus would have his followers act.

Hypocrisy isn't just about a single individual -- it is, sadly enough, about a community. The hypocrite not only embarrasses himself but also places all those who share his faith tradition in the awkward situation of having to defend themselves as well. It jeopardizes the whole of the church.

George Rekers is completely heterosexual (Video Sunday)

Happy Birthday Harvey

Hope will never be silent.

--Harvey Milk

George Rekers and child abuse

People continue to dig into the past of Dr George Rekers. While we are inclined to laugh at him now, it's important to remember that he is a brutal hypocrite who has actually caused great harm. As Frank Rich writes,

[O]nce we stop laughing, we must remember that culture wars are called wars for a reason. For all the farcical shenanigans they can generate, they do inflict real casualties....

Rekers is no bit player in these wars. Though he’s not a household name, he should be. He’s the Zelig of homophobia, having played a significant role in many of the ugliest assaults on gay people and their civil rights over the last three decades....

Thanks to Rekers’s clownish public exposure, we now know that his professional judgments are windows into his cracked psyche, not gay people’s. But there is nothing funny about the destruction his writings and public activities have sown. His fringe views have not remained on the fringe. His excursions into public policy have had real and damaging consequences on a large swath of Americans.

The crusade he represents is, thankfully, on its last legs......But the rear-guard remnants of the Rekers crowd are not going down without a fight.....

An example of Rekers' activities and their consequences is reported by The Miami New Times (who broke the original story).

What do you do with a little boy who likes cross-dressing and playing with dolls? If you're George Alan Rekers, you "extinguish" the boy's feminine behavior with a sometimes violent Pavlovian regimen while your scientific team observes through a one-way mirror.

....In 1974, Rekers, a leading thinker in the so-called ex-gay movement, was presented with a 4-year-old "effeminate boy" named Kraig.....Kraig received red chips for feminine behavior and blue chips for masculine behavior. The blue chips could be cashed in for candy or television time. The red chips earned him a "swat" or spanking from his father. Researchers periodically entered the family's home to ensure proper implementation of the reward-punishment system.

More detail comes from a 1970's newspaper article describing the program Kraig was in, posted at As Good as You, that describes Kraig's "progress":

Now, he regularly returns aggressiveness in his male-peer interactions. In fact, the researchers write, Kraig's mommy was alarmed at her son's transformation into 'a roughneck' -- so reckless in play that he was hurting himself and damaging the furniture. The psychiatrists reassure the mother that her son's 'mildly delinquent ' behaviour would be far easier to overcome in later years than effeminacy.

(The article also notes that Rekers had a colleague in this program "known for his use of electric cattle prods in behaviour modificaiton therapy on autistic children." Even for the 1970s, that seems very grim.)

The Miami New Times picks up the story again:

After two years, the boy supposedly manned up. Over the decades, Rekers, who ran countless similar experiments, held Kraig up as "the poster boy for behavioral treatment of boyhood effeminacy."

At age 18, shamed by his childhood diagnosis and treatment, Rekers's poster boy attempted suicide.

How many lives and psyches were wrecked by this man? How many of his victims were successful in ending their lives as a result of his own self-loathing internalized homophobia? We may indeed enjoy mocking his spectacular flame-out with the RentBoy. But let us not forget that most of this story is not the least bit funny.

And these arguments aren't over. Remember, in the Prop8 trial, so-called "experts" testifying about those Horrible Gay People included those who cite Rekers (though they try to deny it, he's in their list). Some speculate that this scandal may influence the Prop8 trial..

Still, as Andrew Sullivan says,

It's time we took a stand against tortured gay men abusing children to vent their own demons.

And George Rekers, a man who claims to be Christian, should beg his victims for forgiveness.

Update This article from the St Petersburg Times describes the arguments he used as an "expert witness". More on that lucrative business here.

Marriage legal in Portugal

The 6th European country to legalize same sex marriage

Portugal's conservative president announced Monday he is reluctantly ratifying a law allowing gay marriage, making the predominantly Catholic country the sixth in Europe to let same-sex couples wed.

President Anibal Cavaco Silva said he would not veto the bill because majority liberal lawmakers would only overturn his decision......

The country's parliament passed the Socialist government-backed bill in January, with the support of all of Portugal's left-of-center parties, who together have a majority. ...

Elsewhere in Europe, gay marriage is permitted in Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Norway. Five U.S. states and Washington, D.C., have also legalized same-sex marriage, as have Canada and South Africa.

Cavaco Silva's announcement came three days after Pope Benedict XVI left Portugal. During his four-day visit, which attracted hundreds of thousands of people, the pontiff said same-sex marriage and abortion were some of the most "insidious and dangerous" threats facing the world.....

Portugal is nearly 90 percent Catholic. However, only around 2 million of its 10.6 million people describe themselves as practicing Catholics and Portugal has drifted away from the church's teachings.....

Portugal lifted a prohibition on homosexuality in the early 1980s. In 2001, it passed a law allowing "civil unions" between same-sex couples, which granted couples certain legal, tax and property rights. However, it did not allow couples to take a partner's name, nor inherit his or her possessions or state pension.

Malawi couple convicted

You may recall a gay couple in Malawi who tried to marry were arrested. They have now been convicted and may be sentenced to 14 years.

A judge convicted a gay couple in Malawi Tuesday of unnatural acts and gross indecency after a trial that drew worldwide condemnation of this southern African country's colonial-era laws on homosexuality...... The couple could be imprisoned for up to 14 years.

Hearings in the trial also have drawn Malawians who have ridiculed the couple, an indication of views on homosexuality in this traditional society — and elsewhere in Africa.

Homosexuality is illegal in at least 37 countries on the continent. In Uganda, lawmakers are considering a bill that would sentence homosexuals to life in prison and include capital punishment for "repeat offenders." Even in South Africa, the only African country that recognizes gay rights, gangs have carried out so-called "corrective" rapes on lesbians.

Update THe New York Times:

Two gay men in Malawi, convicted this week of unnatural acts and gross indecency, were sentenced Thursday to the maximum penalty allowed by law, 14 years of hard labor in prison.

The harsh sentence was immediately deplored by human rights groups around the world.

Progress in New Jersey?

From Garden State Equality:

Garden State Equality and five children’s and family organizations filed an amicus brief with the New Jersey Supreme Court which details the profound psychological harm that the New Jersey’s civil union law inflicts on children. The brief is in support of Lambda Legal’s motion to the Supreme Court seeking marriage equality in light of the civil union law’s failure to fulfill the Court’s 2006 decision mandating equality for same-sex couples and their children.

The Advocate Reports,

The New Jersey marriage equality battle returned to the court this year after the state legislature failed to pass same-sex marriage legislation in January. The state must file its response to Lambda Legal’s motion before the end of May, after which time Lambda Legal will have a chance to respond. It may be known by early fall what action the court wants to take.

“Our side is saying, supreme court of New Jersey, you have already ruled that same-sex couples must get equal protection under the law as a constitutional matter and that the civil union law has not fulfilled that,” said Steven Goldstein, chair of Garden State Equality, in a phone interview with The Advocate. “This is very much not a new question for the court. Our side is simply seeking to have the court enforce what it already delivered, which is equality."

GLAD challenges DOMA (Video Sunday)

Update on the case here.

It's not just immigration: Arizona update

Arizona's immigration law empowers police to demand citizenship documents of any "suspicious" individuals. Based on how the same policies play out in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's district, Hispanics (legal or not) can expect harassment, detention, and disruption for "breathing while brown".

But this isnt the only wingnuttery that Arizona is engaged upon. Did you know that scarcely a year after former Gov Janet Napolitano approved DP benefits for state workers, the new governor deleted them? And this rescission also included the children of GLBT couples. The Governor says she did this because of her belief in God.

The head of the Interfaith Alliance wrote,

Governor Brewer, why would you choose to take away benefits from domestic partners?  This certainly is not upholding the vision of our founders, who believed that practitioners of religion should not impose their beliefs on our civil society.  Additionally, your action signals disrespect for the thoughtful leadership of Governor Napolitano.  These state employees deserve better.  As a minister who believes that faith should be the best friend of equal rights for all people and a citizen concerned about a violation of the Constitution, I urge you to both rethink the legislation, now in legal review, and the mindset that it appears you have applied to this important matter.

It is unlikely that this is the last question related to domestic partner benefits that you will face.  I trust that you will revisit some of the core tenets of our Constitution – equality of all people and the clear boundary between government and religion – as you deal with this issue moving forward.  If you do, I believe you will conclude that domestic partners, as equal citizens, deserve the same benefits as all other Americans.

So the wingnut fringe of Arizona , which appears to be in the ascendent, hates Hispanics and hates gays. They are going after ethnic studies classes now, which they claim promote "resentment" in brown people. They have a streak of "birthers" among them, so I suspect they aren't so happy with the guy in the White House either. (Remember Arizona also resisted making Martin Luther King day a holiday). I love the state; it's beautiful and has a lot to offer. But common sense has been replaced by racist innuendo and fringe politics. Arizona doesn't want "our kind" there whether we are GLBT, Latino, and/or African American. I hear ya loud and clear, 'zonies.

The lucrative business of George Rekers

The recent revelation that Dr George Rekers, reliably anti-gay "expert", travels with a rentboy, has led to closer examination of Rekers' activities. What a comfortable scam he has established for himself.

Trading on his education (he's a retired professor of neuropsychiatry and behavioral science at the University of South Carolina), Rekers claims to be an expert in child psychiatry. He is a co-founder of the Family Research Council and a member of NARTH, a group promoting the disproven "treatment" called "reparative therapy". Both those groups have erased his name from their websites in the wake of the current scandal.

He founded the American College of Pediatrics, a small group of anti-gay activists that deliberately mis-states the facts about homosexuality. (It is not to be confused with the actual American Academy of Pediatrics, which like all other mainstream medical associations has depathologized homosexuality, and recognizes being gay as a normal human variant).

But the most interesting aspect of Rekers' career is being a witness-for-hire in cases that attack GLBT rights. Turns out that he was hired by the state of Florida as an expert witness during their recent trial about gay adoption. Initial reports were that this cost the state about $60,000 but more recent reports indicate that Rekers was paid on the order of $120,000, at the behest of Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum.

(Though you have to wonder why, with that much money in the bank, Rekers couldn't afford a better room for his rentboy, who commented that their accommodations were far from deluxe and that their hotel in London was "like a crappy Days Inn or something." )

In fact, McCollum insisted the state hire Rekers despite the expense. It might not have been such a good deal, however, because the judge dismissed Rekers' testimony as inaccurate and clearly biased:

Dr. Rekers’ testimony was far from a neutral and unbiased recitation of the relevant scientific evidence. Dr. Rekers’ beliefs are motivated by his strong ideological and theological convictions that are not consistent with the science. Based on his testimony and demeanor at trial, the court can not consider his testimony to be credible nor worthy of forming the basis of public policy.
PDF source.

Similar results came from a trial in Arkansas a few years ago.

This expensive debacle might cause McCollum a little trouble in his bid for governor. As Steve Benen comments in the Washington Monthly,

Indeed, the heart of the controversy here is McCollum's bizarre judgment and questionable use of taxpayer money. Rekers was, in effect, part of a sad, right-wing scheme -- collecting big checks to say crazy things in court. But the real question is why McCollum personally intervened to deliver Rekers a lucrative, publicly-financed, intolerant payday.

Still, the bigotry in Florida is probably strong enough to survive.

It's quite a deal, don't you think? Travel the country spouting pseudo-scientific bigotry as a professional witness for hire. Is he a really cynical scam artist? Or does he really believe his lies justify the payment?

Leonard Pitts in the Miami Herald says,

[T}here is a moral crime here. We are, after all, talking about men in positions of authority and reach, men who could make laws and influence public perception and who used that power against their own.....That's more than hypocrisy, more even than self-loathing. It is a betrayal of one's own, a sellout of the most vulnerable. And what's sad is not just that a George Rekers would do this, but that ours is a culture that would encourage and reward such duplicity in the first place.

So, think about it. Rekers appears to be a deeply closeted gay man who has made a lot of money out of hurting GLBT people. His recent indiscretion with a male prostitute has led to his public shaming. He's been dismissed from the cozy relationship with the prominent anti-gay organizations and he has very likely lost his comfortable livelihood as a professional witness.

Payback's a bitch.

Update: Here's Keith Olbermann on Rekers:

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Suit in Minnesota

From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Three same-sex couples who have tried, and failed, to get marriage licenses in Hennepin County are suing to overturn the state's ban on such marriages.

The men and women, who have organized a group called Marry Me Minnesota, are challenging the state's Defense of Marriage Act.

Homophobes, hypocrites, and the possibility of redemption

"If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us." - Hermann Hesse

In 1996, a research team recruited a group of straight men and used a questionnaire to determine how gay-friendly they were. They divided them into two groups: homophobic, and non-homophobic. Then they showed them straight and gay porn videos, while monitoring their sexual response. Remarkably, the firecely straight, homophobic men were sexually stimulated by gay porn, while the gay-friendly men were not. Adams HE, et al, J Abnorm Psychol. 1996 Aug;105(3):440-5

Lots of writers are wondering if that study explains the spectacular crash-n-burn of fulminating anti-gay activists, preachers, and politicians: people like George "Rentboy" Rekers, Ted "Meth-n-Sex" Haggard, Larry "wide stance" Craig, and Roy "gay clubber" Ashburn. These men make careers out of attacking GLBT individuals and families while at the same time seeking gay sex. (In fact, Rekers may have found this particularly lucrative; I'll tell you about that next time). Ashburn at least now admits he's gay, which could put him on a path to recovery (think the former Governor of NJ, Jim McGreevey, who also came out).

Writing in the Daily Beast, Michelle Goldberg says,

Rekers deserves a measure of pity as well as scorn. If he portrayed homosexuality as a life-destroying temptation that only the strictest of measures could contain, that’s because, for him, it was.

I think this is the kernal of truth in the matter. These men all have internalized homophobia. They have denied who they are, and made that denial at the root of their being. How much they must resent the healthy gay men who are open and happy, while they have deeply invested in the worst type of self-loathing closet.

Moreover, it is probably significant that these men were all engaged in the most soulless sexual encounters. That's all they know, so of course, that's what they think describes all gay relationships. The absolute bile and bigotry they spew makes some twisted sense if you realize that to them, pickups and prostitutes and anonymous sex are all there is to it. They don't experience healthy sexuality, faithfulness in relationships, or family life. Homosexuality to them really is only about furtive, hidden, and dirty sex. Of course that's counter to what any of our goals are for healthy lives. Sadly, their own secret desires lead them to attack those who disprove their own experience.

For many of us in our middle years, the dawning awareness of our sexuality came late. And for a variety of professional reasons, many of us lived in the closet for some period of time. It seemed safer in there, though absolutely suffocating. Coming out in mid-life is therefore nothing new, though it can be painful and messy. Yet the serenity that comes from the freedom to live honestly cannot be overstated. No career is worth the lies of the closet.

Let's compare the difference in two preachers. Longtime Jerry Falwell associate Mel White was an active participant in Falwell's anti-gay evangelical movement. But he acknowledged his sexuality, was cast out of Falwell's moement, and now lives as an openly gay man. White founded the progay religious group Soulforce. Redemption, new life, happy ending.

In contrast, Rekers, also a Baptist minister, is still twisting in the breeze as his name is erased from all the gay-phobic right wing groups that he helped found, while bleating unconvincingly that he is not, and never has been, a homosexual. This story is pretty dark right now. Any bets on whether he'll find the light?

Can't marry anyone

I've discussed previously the crazy quilt of state laws dealing with marriage where one partner is trans. Depending on the state, a transwoman may be legally female in one place, and legally male in another, meaning her marriage can come and go as she drives across the country. It's even more confusing than it is for us married gays and lesbians, and utterly random, showing the lunacy of the whole situation.

Here's the latest conundrum. A transwoman in Texas plans to marry her partner.

Sabrina J. Hill, 60, was born male and is listed as male on her birth certificate, which allowed her to marry her girlfriend Therese "Tee" Bur. Texas identifies marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

The precedent comes from a previous case in Texas, Littleton v. Prange, in which it was decided that the marriage between Christie and Jonathan LIttleton was invalid, because Christie Littleton was a transwoman and was born male.

So Sabrina's original birth certificate, which says she's a male, should be enough to allow her to marry her female partner, right?

Wrong: Texas is challenging this marriage too, because Sabrina has other documents saying she's female.

As Autumn Sandeen writes,

The bottom line is that in Texas, a trans woman (or a trans man) may find that even though Loving v. Virginia states: The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.
Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.
...he, she, or ze may find that he, she, or ze functionally doesn't have the fundamental right to marry anyone at all.

Can Justice be Gay?

Justice is blind. Can she also be gay?

I posted previously about the kerfuffle over rumors of gay candidates for SCOTUS, in What if a Supreme Court Justice be Gay? I also commented acidly on the expectation that only straight white Christian men can be objective. Somehow, it is assumed that a minority, a woman, or a gay person can't see the world apart from their membership in those groups. (Our friend Mike in TX has some examples of how being straight, male Christians can lead to its own judicial perversions.)

Now the American Family Association has updated its comments (H/T RightwingWatch; I will not link to hate sites):

Speculation continues to swirl about the sexual preference of likely Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. She is apparently out to her friends and others in her academic and social circles, but not out to the public at large.

The White House has flatly stated that she is not gay, which could prove a tad embarrassing if the open secret of her lesbianism is confirmed at some point. ...It's time we got over the myth that what a public servant does in his private life is of no consequence. ....The stakes are too high. Social conservatives must rise up as one and say no lesbian is qualified to sit on the Supreme Court. Will they?

I don't care if Kagan is gay or not. (If she were, I wish she were out, but that's another issue). I DO care that rightwingnuts are somehow pretending that orientation is a litmus test. It would be offensive for there to be a test for faith, or race, and it's just as offensive to invoke a test for sexuality. Being GLBT is not illegal.

Sadly, neither is being stupid.

UpdateAndrew Sullivan writes:

And yet we have been told by many that she is gay ... and no one will ask directly if this is true and no one in the administration will tell us definitively.

In a word, this is preposterous - a function of liberal cowardice and conservative discomfort. It should mean nothing either way. Since the issue of this tiny minority - and the right of the huge majority to determine its rights and equality - is a live issue for the court in the next generation, and since it would be bizarre to argue that a Justice's sexual orientation will not in some way affect his or her judgment of the issue, it is only logical that this question should be clarified.....

To put it another way: Is Obama actually going to use a Supreme Court nominee to advance the cause of the closet (as well as kill any court imposition of marriage equality)? And can we have a clear, factual statement as to the truth? In a free society in the 21st Century, it is not illegitimate to ask. And it is cowardly not to tell.

And From Slate:

Whether or not the strategy works politically, the White House's announcement that Kagan isn't gay should end the matter, unless and until someone come up with some real proof to the contrary. The unfounded insistence that Kagan is a lesbian isn't about lies or hypocrisy (shades of, oh, Larry Craig and John Edwards) or even journalistic ethics. It's about making things up. There's simply no evidence that Kagan's pretending to be anything she's not. The underlying lesson may be that the confirmation wars are so completely toxic that we have come to assume every nominee reflexively lies about everything, up to and including his or her sexuality.

George Rekers, come out (video Sunday)

Our Rachel takes him down:

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The DOMA arguments

Yesterday, arguments were heard in a targeted challenge to DOMA, in Gill v. Office of Personnel Management. From GLAD's press release:

Bonauto presented a three-pronged legal argument: By singling out only the marriages of same-sex couples, DOMA violates the equal protection clause of the United States Constitution; DOMA represents an unprecedented intrusion of the federal government into marriage law, which for 230 years has been legislated by states; and by denying federal protections to families, DOMA burdens the marriages of same-sex couples and their right to maintain family integrity.

The DoJ attorney defending DOMA agrees that the president opposes it, but argued that it is constitutional and must be defended. Which he did, aggressively. But he had to deal with the fact that prior to DOMA, the federal government accepted the definition of marriage from each individual state. For example, some states allow marriage between cousins; others do not. But if the marriage is legal in the state in which it was performed, traditionally the federal government has accepted that state's determination.

From the Advocate:

[Judge Tauro] asked Bonauto whether the government had legitimate arguments in saying DOMA was necessary to preserve a “status quo” concerning the federal understanding of marriage or to adapt federal law to the changing understanding of marriage incrementally.

“No, your honor,” said Bonauto: DOMA did not preserve a status quo, it upended one. Bonauto pointed out that prior to DOMA the federal government accepted each state’s definition of marriage.

It was on this point that Judge Tauro pressed the government most vigorously, asking Department of Justice attorney Scott Simpson, “When did it become a federal matter — dealing with marriage?”

Simpson, who has been DOJ’s point man for defending DOMA, tried to step around the question, but Tauro redirected his question more bluntly. “Specifically, point to an incident,” said Tauro, when marriage has been a federal matter prior to DOMA. Simpson had to concede: “it’s true” that, up until DOMA, the federal government has “simply followed the states’ definition of marriage.”

More arguments will follow.

Good sites for updates:
Prop8trialtracker
Hunter of Justice
LGBT POV
And of course, the Advocate and GLAD.

Hyporite alert: George Rekers

Just when you thought all the Republican secret homos had been exposed, there's another one. There's a new euphemism to add to Larry Craig (remember the "wide stance"?)

Dr George Reker is a Baptist minister, co-founder of Dobson's Family Research Council, founder of the anti-gay American College of Pediatricians, and outspoken opponent of marriage or adoption by same sex couples. He was recently paid $87,000 by the state of Florida to oppose gay adoptions (and Native American adoptions too). His pseudoscience would be funny if it weren't doing such damage.

This week Rekers was caught coming home with an escort after a European trip. The escort came from a sex site called Rentboy. Rekers claims that he hired the escort to help him "lift his luggage" as he couldn't do it himself.

So that's what they call it now.

Now Rekers is claiming he hired the boy so he (Rekers) could cure the boy of his sins.

The Advocate reports,

In a Tuesday afternoon post, Unzippedidentified the profile of the RentBoy, titled "Boynextdoor/Geo." By Tuesday evening, Family Research Council had removed Rekers' name from its website.

Yes, the forces of Hate are quick to turn on their own and "disappear" them.

It's hard not to cackle with glee at another hypocrite revealed. (Colbert does a great piece on it).

But Rob Tisinai has some measured words,

It’s dehumanizing — to him and to us — to gloat over this poor wreck of a life. Yet we have a human duty to protect others from Rekers and his colleagues in deceit. Don’t caricaturize him as a villain exposed. Present him instead as a victim-turned-abuser, a perfect symbol of the cycle — the vicious, hateful machine — we’re trying to break.

Of course, that doesn't excuse him from the evil he's done . What a poor excuse for a human being he is.

Federal Court to hear DOMA challenge

I've told you about the Gill case, in which Massachusetts is challenging DOMA on the grounds of equal protection for its married gay citizens. The Obama DoJ has released a series of briefs ranging from rankly insulting to denying standing. (Yes, that's our fierce advocate's DoJ, not only defending DOMA but doing it with relish). Previous commentary here. From GLAD's press release:

Judge Tauro will hear GLAD’s motion for summary judgment as well as the federal government’s motion to dismiss. The hearing will address the issue of whether DOMA Section 3 is constitutional six years after the first same-sex couples in the country started marrying in Massachusetts, the result of GLAD’s groundbreaking marriage case, Goodridge v. Department of Public Health.

As a result of DOMA, passed by Congress in 1996, plaintiffs in GLAD’s lawsuit have been denied survivor benefits on a deceased spouse’s pension; denied health insurance coverage for a spouse on a federal family plan; denied Social Security spousal, death, and widower benefits; and denied the ability to file federal income taxes jointly as married.

Fingers crossed.

Blessings (video Sunday)

American Idol contestant RJ Helton, formerly a big star in the Christian music industry, sings this song about coming out.