When Barney Frank was asked if Dreier was not elected House majority leader because he was too “moderate,” Frank replied: “Yes, in the sense that I marched in the moderate pride parade last summer and went to a moderate bar.”
Mr. Blankenhorn, who was raised in the South and attended Harvard, had long stood out among opponents of same-sex marriage because he did not invoke a biblical or religious justification and did not oppose civil unions for gay men and lesbians. Instead, he argued that marriage was society’s most important institution and had in recent decades come under attack, and that same-sex marriage was only adding to its decline.So, he too has been put off by the anti-gay ferocity, and feels that the anti-equality side has hurt itself with that. Blankenhorn writes,
He said that he had long hoped the debate over same-sex marriage would center on parenthood, not private relationships, but that in the public’s mind today the issue was simply about equality for gay men and lesbians — in other words, civil rights.
“And to my deep regret,” he wrote, “much of the opposition to gay marriage seems to stem, at least in part, from an underlying antigay animus. To me, a Southerner by birth whose formative moral experience was the civil rights movement, this fact is profoundly disturbing.”
Instead of fighting gay marriage, I’d like to help build new coalitions bringing together gays who want to strengthen marriage with straight people who want to do the same. For example, once we accept gay marriage, might we also agree that marrying before having children is a vital cultural value that all of us should do more to embrace? Can we agree that, for all lovers who want their love to last, marriage is preferable to cohabitation?Yes, I can go there, at least part of the way. Many of us in the LGBT community who want marriage want it precisely for the same reasons that BLankenhorn values it, in terms of stability and family (even if we may disagree on his extremism). Many of us are as concerned about the sexualization of society as Blankenhorn is. Maybe this will be a way to start that conversation and find a productive way to move ahead.
Traditional marriage is one man with multiple wives, multiple concubines, wives conquered in war and wives acquired in levirate marriage, possibly including girls under the age of ten, but definitely not including anyone of a different ethnic group, in an arranged marriage with disposition of property as its purpose. That seems very different from “one man, one woman,” does it not?
Of course, it’s easy to say that marriage as an institution evolves—but then, if we admit that, we have to admit that sanctioning loving, same-sex unions is just another step in that evolution. Perhaps this is why the Tony Perkinses of the world simply ignore the Bible when it doesn’t suit their purposes, instead preferring to make pseudo-scientific (and wholly unsupported) claims about what’s best for children and society. The Bible’s truths are just too inconvenient.
Gill v. Office of Personnel Management and Massachusetts v. Department of Health and Human Services: These two cases, decided by the First Circuit on May 31, are waiting on a filing by the Department of Justice and/or the House Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group to the Supreme Court asking the high court to hear the case.
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Golinski v. Office of Personnel Management: This case, an appeal from U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey S. White's Feb. 22 trial-court opinion striking down the law, is being briefed before the Ninth Circuit....
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Windsor v. United States: DOJ filed a notice of appeal in the case in which U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Jones found Section 3 of DOMA unconstitutional on June 6.
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Dragovich v. Department of Treasury: No notice of appeal has been filed from this May 24 decision, which involves both state and federal defendants due to the specific DOMA-impacted law -- affecting tax treatment for a California-offered long-term care plan -- being challenged.
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McLaughlin v. Panetta and Cooper-Harris v. United States: These two cases are addressing the constitutionality of different military and veterans' benefits given to married, same-sex couples. ...On June 6, DOJ was granted a request in McLaughlin to stay the case, or put it on hold, until the final mandate is issued by the First Circuit in the Massachusetts case. BLAG is seeking a similar delay in Cooper-Harris...
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Pedersen v. Office of Personnel Management: This case is pending in federal trial court in Connecticut. It has been fully briefed, and the parties are awaiting a decision.
We can fill a room with my screaming partisans and your screaming partisans and we’ll both play to our respective peanut galleries and I think both of us have a little bit of grandstander in souls and we will work that and I think that will create more heat than light. And so what I’d like to do is challenge you to come to my house for dinner. Bring the wife. My husband will be there. and I will hire a video crew and we will videotape sort of an after dinner debate.
The trick here is you have to knowledge my humanity by accepting my hospitality and I have to acknowledge yours by extending my hospitality to you. And I’m willing to do that.And Family Equality Council Executive Director Jennifer Chrisler has invited notorious anti-gay Tony Perkins, of the Family Research Council, to dinner at her house:
I would like to extend an open invitation for you and your family to visit my home and have dinner with my spouse and children with the full hope that you will witness the love that exists in our families. While I recognize it may not change your mind, I hope that it might soften your heart. As Christians, I think we can both agree that ours is not to judge and that we must live by the golden rule. I open my table to you and invite you to get to know me and my family.
Even if nothing comes of the experience, at least you can say you spent time with our families and knew us and still deny us our equality. But I know you will find that our families have much in common and share the same hopes and dreams for our children.Both men have accepted the invitations in principle, although their wives will not be attending.
Regnerus is also explicitly giving scientific credibility to parenthood-related arguments against gay marriage, which have played a large role in the political fight over the issue. Despite claiming that his research is descriptive of a previous generation and offers no causal explanation of the supposed discrepancy between gay and straight parents, Regnerus says outright that his study could reasonably lead to caution against legalizing gay marriage. It could lead to support for gay marriage to stabilize gay families, he writes, but it “may suggest that the household instability that the [study] reveals is just too common among same-sex couples to take the social gamble..."
Regnerus’s research doesn’t really “suggest” anything of the kind; he admits that it’s not clear sexual orientation had anything to do with inferior life outcomes of certain respondents in his survey or that his research has anything do with marriage at all. If we go by his own claims about the study, it has no bearing on what is at stake in the political debate over gay marriage and parenthood: whether gay couples who get married and decide to have children are any different from straight ones. But the way Regnerus is selling the research seems designed to bait pundits like Rod Dreher, who gave his post on the study the headline “Traditional Families Are Best for Kids” and touted it as evidence that “deconstructing marriage” will have dangerous consequences.
There is a larger point, however, that can be lost in the debate over how to read the data. There is no basis in the recent history of American social policy for testing the parenting skills of a class of citizens before we grant them permission to parent — or to marry. Given all the research on the hardships of children raised by single parents, there is still no movement to preemptively remove kids from broken homes after every divorce or to ban single people from having kids; such policies would be patently inhumane and unenforceable. Growing up in poverty increases the risk of a wide range of social and psychological ills, yet since the craze for eugenics died down, no one is proposing banning poor people from marriage or child rearing. And some ethnic and racial groups are statistically less likely to get or stay married, yet there is no ethnic litmus test for marriage or parenting — only a gay one.
There is, however, a unifying theme to the diverse pictures of God-ordained marriages in the Bible, and it is that different kinds of unions are accepted in different places and times, evolving in tandem with broader cultural shifts. ...
we see two principles at work: that biblical mandates for marriage shifted according to perceived cultural needs, and that the interpretive choice of what is seen as applicable today begins with the reader's preconceived notions before ever opening the Bible....
Each of these biblical standards for marriage -- polygamy, marriage within the family, reproduction with a late husband's closest kin, prohibitions against intermarriage -- were seen as vital in some historical contexts as reflected in the Bible, and not in others....Kinship and property are important factors in many biblical marriages; one element that rarely figures into biblical standards for marriage, however, is love.
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Some point to Adam and Eve as the authoritative model because Jesus refers to them in Mark 10:1-12. ...He adds -- and this is the clearest statement about marriage that Jesus makes -- that anyone divorced and remarried is committing adultery. The logic behind reading this as the authoritative statement about heterosexuality and not about divorce or remarriage is, shall we say, questionable. Notably, it's hard to find too many heterosexual married people (including those who appeal to the Bible in opposition of gay marriage) who argue that divorce and remarriage should be illegal.
While the traditional view is that the Bible sets standards, and cultures either follow these standards or don't, the Bible itself shows us that cultural norms and biblical positions shifted in tandem. This does not mean that anything goes; it's simply what we see in the biblical texts themselves. It does not mean that there are no standards; there were always incest taboos, for example, but what counts as incest is culturally dictated, and our society does not embrace many biblical perspectives on this (e.g., the ideal of marrying one's first cousin). It does not mean that God is a pushover; it shows, if anything, a God who will engage people in the world in which they live.
Had the study actually focused on “same-sex families,” it might have shed some light on the issue.
Instead, Regnerus—a sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin—asked respondents whether their mothers or fathers had ever had a same-sex relationship, regardless of the duration of the relationship and “regardless of any other household transitions.” He then allowed those answers to trump others in order to increase the “Lesbian Mother” and “Gay Father” sample size and treated all of the family-form categories as mutually exclusive, even though they are not. ...
In other words, Regnerus’ “Lesbian Mother” and “Gay Father” categories (unlike the “Intact Biological Family” Category) included children of adoptive parents, step-parents, single parents, and, notably, a large number from divorced parents. Regnerus then observes in the resulting data that the children of his “Lesbian Mothers” and “Gay Fathers” look less like children of married biological parents than they do like children of adoptive parents, step-parents, single parents, and divorced parents. Well, duh.Jim Burroway
Identifying a parent who has had a same-sex relationship is not the same as identifying a parent who is gay, lesbian or bisexual in a functional relationship....
Did a short affair count? What about a relationship that only lasted two weeks? Four months? Social conservatives who reduce gay and lesbian relationships to behaviors only would say yes to all of those, many eagerly so. Actual gay and lesbian couples in committed, long-term relationships naturally scoff at that, and rightfully so.
But already you can see where this is headed, can’t you? We will be asked to accept as legitimate the comparison of children raised by parents in those less stable and unenduring situations with stable, longtime married heterosexual parents without knowing the answers to those question. So already, Regnerus puts that comparison in starkly unequal footing.And the New Civil Rights Movement::
The paper fails to consider the impact of family arrangement or family transitions on children, invalidating any attempt on its part to assess the impact of sexual orientation on parenting. The paper inappropriately compares children raised by two heterosexual parents for 18 years with children who experience family transitions – like foster care – or who live with single or divorced parents, or in blended families. Moreover, the limited number of respondents arbitrarily classified as having a gay or lesbian parent are combined regardless of their experiences of family instability.Regenerus admits that what he's really comparing is children from a broken marriage of mixed-orientation (one straight and one possibly gay parent) with children from stable straight marriages (non broken). It's the usual excuse: there simply aren't enough stable gay-only families to be used in the study. It can't be done.
A loosely organized group of Mormons called Mormons Building Bridges are marching in Pride parades this summer, in church clothes, to express their support for LGBT people. I’m marching because I want to make a statement to [the] LGBT community and my friends that I support and accept them and I believe they should have the same rights as I do. And I want to demonstrate as well that Mormons are willing to stand up for fairness. We are not foes. And we’re not a monolith. Mormons have all sorts of different views about LGBT issues....
It comes down to the fact that I recognize and appreciate that we live in a pluralistic society. I don’t believe it’s right to legislate our morality based on our beliefs. I wouldn’t want some other religion to do that to me. There is no compelling state interest in denying marriage to gays and lesbians. I know the blessings marriage and family has brought me, and I don’t enjoy knowing that there are many people who don’t have that opportunity....
Now, faithful Mormons are banding together to share a powerful message, and we hope that other Mormons who may have been previously afraid to show their support for civil marriage equality will see us and feel emboldened to "come out of the closet". That pioneer spirit is still in our blood, and it's sorely needed here and now on one of the most critical civil rights issues of our time. So like pioneers, we walk. I will be walking with my wife and two kids. In church clothes. I’ll be wearing a white shirt. And a pink tie.Well done! There's a coalition called Mormon Pride organizing their participation in multiple events this summer. I look forward to seeing the Mormon supporters marching in San Diego's gay pride parade on July 21st. ( I'll be there as part of one of the biggest contingents: Saint Paul's Episcopal Cathedral. We'll be the one in the purple shirts.)
Paul? How can that be? Doesn’t he condemn homosexuality famously and in strong terms?...
In “Paul Among the People,” Sarah Ruden, a classical translator and scholar, uses ancient sources to look at Paul as he would have been seen in his own time and context. ...By the standards of his day, Paul was a progressive social reformer.
....No one in Paul’s day had any inkling of a loving, consensual homosexual relationship. “There were no gay households; there were in fact no gay institutions or gay culture at all,” writes Ruden. “The only satisfying use of an adult passive homosexual was alleged to be oral or anal rape — the satisfaction needed to be violent, not erotic.”
Roman mores of Paul’s day regarded male-male intercourse as an act not of love but of domination....Because families with social standing took pains to guard their children, “predators naturally turned to those with no protectors, young male slaves and prostitutes,” writes Ruden. “An adult could exploit an abused slave child’s loneliness and humiliation again and again.”
...This was the context in which Paul condemned “unnatural acts” as “wickedness.” Where others before him had condemned only the passive partner, he condemned both. “He makes no distinction between active and passive: the whole transaction is wrong.” In his time, his teaching would have been ethically innovative, a blow against sexual relations that were at best grossly unequal and that often amounted to what we would today call sexual abuse or rape.
...And if his aim was to replace sexual domination, coercion and exploitation with mutuality, consent and caring, then same-sex marriage is a logical step along the path he opened. Someone with Paul’s values who is around today might look at caring and committed gay couples and conclude that there is an honored place for their love within the church, and indeed within marriage.Cue fundy heads exploding!
Polls taken since President Obama expressed support for same-sex marriage have shown an astonishing shift in black support on marriage equality. The shift in Maryland is so dramatic that the state may become the first state to actually uphold same-marriage rights in a referendum....
Understand that exploiting the divide between socially conservative but religiously liberal minority groups and social liberals was the linchpin of NOM's strategy in Maryland, which is a very blue state with a large black population. NOM simply can't win without winning black voters, and Obama may have made that impossible. Instead of black voters torpedoeing marriage equality in Maryland, as NOM had hoped, they now stand poised to secure it.
More remains to be done to ensure every single American is treated equally, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. Moving forward, my Administration will continue its work to advance the rights of LGBT Americans. This month, as we reflect on how far we have come and how far we have yet to go, let us recall that the progress we have made is built on the words and deeds of ordinary Americans. Let us pay tribute to those who came before us, and those who continue their work today; and let us rededicate ourselves to a task that is unending ‑‑ the pursuit of a Nation where all are equal, and all have the full and unfettered opportunity to pursue happiness and live openly and freely.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2012 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon the people of the United States to eliminate prejudice everywhere it exists, and to celebrate the great diversity of the American people.
While giving credence to several of the factors -- from sexual orientation discrimination to federalism -- that each independently were considered decisive by U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Tauro, the appellate opinion, written by Judge Michael Boudin, was a far more narrow ruling that decided the case on the sole grounds that Congress gave no rational basis for enacting the law.
Whether or not children raised by opposite-sex marriages are on average better served, DOMA cannot preclude same-sex couples in Massachusetts from adopting children or prevent a woman partner from giving birth to a child to be raised by both partners.
DOMA does not increase benefits to opposite-sex couples--whose marriages may in any event be childless, unstable or both--or explain how denying benefits to same-sex couples will reinforce heterosexual marriage. Certainly, the denial will not affect the gender choices of those seeking marriage. This is not merely a matter of poor fit of remedy to perceived problem, but a lack of any demonstrated connection between DOMA's treatment of same-sex couples and its asserted goal of strengthening the bonds and benefits to society of heterosexual marriage.
