From Australia: Family values (video Sunday)

Stay lifted: Marriages begin in California!!!

I started this blog in the dark days after the passage of Prop8, and it's been a long road.  But it's over.  Today, the 9th circuit lifted its stay (lacking a  little decorum, as the SCOTUS was not yet "official" for 25 days) and the plaintifs in the long, long Prop8 case got married.

From the SF Gate:

A federal appeals court issued an unexpected order Friday that allows gays and lesbians to marry in California. 

Two days after the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed an appeal by the sponsors of Proposition 8, the 2008 initiative that banned same-sex marriage, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco lifted its September 2010 injunction that had blocked a federal judge's ruling declaring Prop. 8 unconstitutional. 

Two plaintiffs in the Prop. 8 case, Sandy Stier and Kris Perry, were first in line at San Francisco City Hall waiting to get their marriage license. State Attorney General Kamala Harris officiated the ceremony on Mayor Ed Lee's balcony. 

San Francisco City Hall is staying open late Friday to allow couples to marry. City Hall will also stay open through the weekend for weddings, said Lee's spokeswoman, Christine Falvey.

The LA TImes: 

Los Angeles' first marriage between gay men since this week's Supreme Court ruling on Proposition 8 — and Friday's lifting of a stay on same-sex weddings by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals — united Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo in a ceremony presided over by outgoing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

The two Burbank residents had raced from Los Angeles to the county registrar's office in Norwalk on Friday afternoon after learning that an expected 25-day delay in issuing wedding licenses for same-sex couples was voided. Heavy freeway traffic slowed the trip and delayed their plans to tie the knot about 5 p.m.

Congratulations to all!!!

Apparently, I have a You-tube channel

I guess the computers at Google noticed us! 

Fighting hate with humor (video)

So, a little while ago Cheerios had an adorable on-line video ad, where a little girl wants her dad to be healthy. Thing is, it was a biracial couple and the haters came out of the woodwork to leave the most vile comments Youtube. Really really scary.You can read more here. So, here's a spoof version of the ad that....well, you'll see.

Eat it, haters!

DOMA clause 3 falls, Prop8 supporters denied standing

I'm out of the country, but in case you haven't heard:

The Supreme Court released two major decisions expanding gay rights across the country on Wednesday as hordes of cheering demonstrators greeted the news outside. The justices struck down a federal law barring the recognition of same-sex marriage in a split decision, ruling that the law violates the rights of gays and lesbians and intrudes into states' rights to define and regulate marriage. The court also dismissed a case involving California's gay marriage ban, ruling that supporters of the ban did not have the legal standing, or right, to appeal a lower court's decision striking down Proposition 8 as discriminatory. 

The decision clears the way for gay marriage to again be legal in the nation's most populous state, even though the justices did not address the broader legal argument that gay people have a fundamental right to marriage. 

The twin decisions throw the fight over gay marriage back to the states, because the court ruled the federal government must recognize the unions if states sanction them, but did not curtail states' rights to ban gay marriage if they choose

Quote from the opinion:

DOMA instructs all federal officials, and indeed all persons with whom same-sex couples interact, including their own children, that their marriage is less worthy than the marriages of others. The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity. By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment

Times are a-changing

From the New Civil Rights Movement, an op-ed by a Colorado senate candidate announcing his support for full equality.  This is the thing that jumped out at me:

On a personal note, my 92-year-old grandfather is a decorated WWII veteran and an openly gay man. He has been with the love of his life, Joel for more than two decades. He served his country honorably, fighting for the freedoms we enjoy today. Religions and some private institutions are free to exclude others as they see fit, but the government must be in the business of inclusion, not exclusion.

Firstly, Grandpa is one brave soldier.

Second, another example of what happens when we come out and live honestly.  With LGBT folk coming out at younger and younger ages, and refusing to ever enter the closet, the era of "not telling" is passing. In 50 years, I sincerely hope that being LGBT will be no more remarked upon that being left-handed.  The closets will all be empty.

When did you choose to be straight? (video Sunday)

If she's your wife are you her husband?

Recently, BP and I suffered a broken pipe in the bathroom of our new (to us) house.  This  has required demolition of much of the shower, loud blowers , insurance negotiations, and so on.  The contractor in charge of restoration is a nice young man who has been very patient and helpful.

As we were working on plans with him, he said "Can I ask you a question?"

Of course.

"What do you call each other? Partners, or…"

Wives, we said.  We call each other "wife", which is what our society  calls married women. We are wife and wife.

He nodded, and explained.  "One of the gay couples I work with, they won't use 'husband'.  The one guy said, if one is a husband people think the other one is the wife."

This is very familiar.  I have had a number of people (including my own mother!) ask, when I refer to BP as my wife, whether I'm the husband.

No, I say.  There is no husband here.  We are both women.  We are both wives.

Part of straight America has a need to see things as a gender-binary. If there's a girl, there must be a boy.  If there's a wife, there must be a husband.  They assume that as a lesbian couple we must still fulfill gender-binary roles.  They have rude slang for it. Goy and birl.   And, it  is true that some lesbian couples do recapitulate aspects of those roles (at least superficially), with their own slang, like butch and femme.

But many do not.  We do not.  BP and I are both happily women, typical suburban professional women of certain age.  We like to wear jeans on weekends and we also like to dress up for church. (We don't wear makeup, however, so you can't call us lipstick lesbians ;-)

The assumption that one of us "wears the pants" or "is the husband" is quite tiresome. Ours is not a gender binary relationship.  It's a same sex partnership.  We both cook, we both clean up.  We split up other tasks as needed.  I do the laundry.   BP handles the power drill and builds things.  I do the electrical.  She does the mending.  We aren't aping gender norms.

And actually we aren't that different to many straight couples we know, particularly younger folks, where both husband and wife have busy careers and have to coordinate to manage the house and do the chores.

I think it is no surprise that many of the opponents of marriage equality believe in "traditional" roles for women.  Brian Brown, for example, who is president of NOM (the National Organization for straight-only marriage) has 8 children and a wife who home-schools them.  Scratch under the surface of most of the arguments against marriage equality and they are arguments against women's equality.

They blame us, but modern marriage is already de-gendered.  Women have equal rights, and are no longer subservient to their husbands.

Complaints about gays changing marriage are missing the point that society has already changed marriage so much that it no longer makes sense to keep Teh Gay out of it.

And so, yes, I have a wife, and so does my wife!

International Poll: Majority supports marriage

When it comes to developed countries, there is robust support for equality.

"What we see is that in every one of the 16 countries we surveyed, there is a majority in favor of allowing same sex couples to have some sort of legal recognition," said Nicolas Boyon, an Ipsos senior vice president. 

"In nine out of 16 countries we see an outright majority in favor of full marriage equality," he added. 

Nearly 60 percent of people polled thought gay couples should have the same rights as heterosexuals to adopt children and 64 percent thought same-sex couples were just as likely to raise children successfully.

Analysis: regardless of SCOTUS, there's a long way to go

Thoughtful analysis of what comes next (hint:  a lot more work, both on the ground, at the ballot, and in court)

Close observers of state legislatures say that action in Democrat-dominated states may soon run its course and that about half the states are likely to remain entrenched against gay marriage because of their conservative cast. 

..."There may be a slim national majority for same-sex marriage, but there isn't a majority in a large number of states," said Jack Tweedie, director of the children and families program at the National Conference of State Legislatures. Tweedie noted that a majority of states have reinforced their opposition to gay marriage with constitutional amendments in the past decade. About 30 states now have such bans on the books.

Gay rights advocates say if the court strikes down the law denying federal benefits in the case of United States v. Windsor, state action on same-sex marriage might accelerate, especially in states that already allow civil unions for gays and lesbians. Still, lawyer David Codell, who specializes in gay legal rights and is a director at UCLA's Williams Institute, predicted some states would never go that route on their own. 

"It seems likely that at some point a constitutional ruling from the court will be necessary for full equality nationwide," he said. "The issue remains tougher than people think."

How we got here: AFER's journey to SCOTUS (video Sunday)

Survey of LGBT Americans

There's a new poll out from Pew, surveying LGBT Americans.  One caveat, they have about 40% self-identified bisexuals, which seems a bit high.  And as Andrew Sullivan says, aggregating LGBT all together is a bit problematic, since the experience of bi or trans people is obviously quite different from that of lesbians and gays.  Still, it's interesting.  Some of the findings:

Bisexuals are closeted.

And,

As for gender patterns, the survey finds that lesbians are more likely than gay men to be in a committed relationship (66% versus 40%); likewise, bisexual women are much more likely than bisexual men to be in one of these relationships (68% versus 40%). In addition women, whether lesbian or bisexual, are significantly more likely than men to either already have children or to say they want to have children one day.

Voice of Faith: a way forward in things unsaid

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Voices of Faith

Responding to the recent Op/Ed denying Biblical Credibility to the anti-equality side (which I highlighted yesterday), blogger Joel Watts in the HuffPo seeks "a Christian Way Forward on Gay Marriage in the Things Unsaid":

What gets lost in the middle are Christians who believe in the authority of Scripture but hope for a path forward whereby all of God's Creation is honored. 

...I base my affirmation of the validity of same-sex marriages based on the experience of Christian salvation. I do not have the power to categorically deny the love, the companionship, the compassion involved in a consensual relationship of two people in a same-sex relationship. Rather, I affirm the beauty of human flourishing in this rather dark world of ours. ... 

I believe the passage in Luke gives Christians today a certain amount of pause. Let us pause and consider all of the things Jesus could have possibly said -- and yet didn't -- to the Centurion who loved his pais enough to debase himself in front of the traveling Galilean prophet. While Jesus neither publicly affirmed nor denied the Centurion's relationship with his pais, although we may allow a passive affirmation, Jesus praised the man's faith as greater than all of Israel's. Like Amos, who from outside of the Kingdom became a prophet to the Kingdom, the Centurion stands as a testament to what real Faith is supposed to be -- in that he willingly laid down everything he was an officer in the Roman army to save the person he loved. 

But what does this do for the interpretation of Scripture? It beckons us always to stand willing to reform our views and theological assessments when sound scholarship presents an alternative view without going completely overboard and allowing our desires to replace the soundness of a Scriptural viewpoint. Finally, it reminds us that in Scripture, the story is not just about what is said, but often times what is unsaid.

Read the whole thing!

(Those so inclined can read the referenced story in Luke 7:1-10 ).

No, the Bible DOESN'T say that

From the Des Moines register, actual Biblical Scholars correct the misconception:

As academic biblical scholars, we wish to clarify that the biblical texts do not support the frequent claim that marriage between one man and one woman is the only type of marriage deemed acceptable by the Bible’s authors.
...
In fact, there were a variety of unions and family configurations that were permissible in the cultures that produced the Bible.

They go on to cite chapter and verse for monogamy, Levirite marriage (marrying a brother's widow, even if already married), celibacy, proscriptions against marriage across races or nations, and even a call to celibacy. They go on:

This is not only our modern, academic opinion. This view of the multiple definitions of “biblical” marriage has been acknowledged by some of the most prominent names in Christianity. ... 

Accordingly, we must guard against attempting to use ancient texts to regulate modern ethics and morals, especially those ancient texts whose endorsements of other social institutions, such as slavery, would be universally condemned today, even by the most adherent of Christians.

Glad to see actual experts speaking out against the malignant misconceptions.

It's not about sex (update)

Apparently, many of our opponents think that we stop being gay if we are not actively having sex.  And they also think we are all about sex.  So something as gentle as holding hands is "flaunting it".

Writing in the HuffPo, Marissa Higgins takes them down,

Being gay isn't just about what happens in the bedroom. It isn't just about sexual positions. It isn't just about consummating passion or fulfilling a fantasy. It's about love. It's about understanding. It's about emotional connections. It's about all the good -- and bad -- parts of a relationship that all couples experience. 

 She tells a sad, familiar story  (familar, that is, for any LGBT couple that has dared to show the slightest personal affection in public):

Last summer my wife and I went to a baseball game. We sat next to each other and held hands. A man in the row in front of us walked down the aisle to his seat with a tray of sodas and hot dogs. I watched him pass a family with children, the parents giving each other a peck on the lips as he approached, as well as a middle-aged couple with their arms around each other's shoulders and a teenage girl who had her head on her boyfriend's shoulder. He didn't have a visible reaction to them, other than apologizing for walking by. 

He turned toward us as he bent to put his soda in his cup holder. ... We made eye contact, and... I watched his eyes flicker to my hand in my wife's and remain there for several seconds without blinking. They traveled up and down our bodies, unapologetic and unblinking. His eyes returned to mine, and they were wide. There was a flash of color in his cheeks. His lips ticked. I blinked. He furrowed his brow and dropped his eyes. He turned and sat quickly. He fussed with his tray and napkins erratically. His female companion asked if he was all right, and he scowled. As he passed his companion a hot dog, he said, "I just don't know why they have to hold hands." She turned slowly over her shoulder and glared at us. 

The couples he walked by in his aisle were innocent. They showed gentle, sweet affection between them. Their behavior was not inappropriate for a Thursday-night baseball game. What was different about my wife and me? We were two women. We were not in a porn film he'd found online. We were not giggling and drunk at a bar. We were not topless on a poster board. We were a normal couple at a baseball game. But in his eyes we were sexualized.

Wow  Yes.  we have been there--the insolent raking with the eyes. Then the expression of disgust.

 She goes on to argue that this is particularly related to being two women. The onset of "lesbian chic", and the packaging of two women to appeal to straight men is part of this.   "Lesbian pornography" is aimed directly at straight men.  They cannot see two women together without thinking of sex.

I think there is also a very visceral response against two men, also because the immediate thought isn't "how sweet they are" but a thought of what they might do in bed.  Certain straight men are incredibly hung up on the mechanics of gay sex (taken down here by John Corvino).

But it is certainly true that the argument against marriage is heavily, heavily an argument about sex.  And it misses all the rest of it: love, relationship, commitment, fidelity.  I'm gay all the time, not just when I'm in bed with my beautiful wife.

Higgins finishes,

The immediate conflation of the gay community with sex is dangerous. It puts us on a primitive level beneath our heterosexual peers. It highlights the importance of our sex and negates the importance of us as people -- whole, complex people with personalities, opinions and feelings that go beyond our sexual urges and practices. The focus on the "sex" in "sexuality" threatens to make us caricatures of the people we really are.

I talked about this at length in an essay I wrote two years ago.  I commend it to your attention;  Talking about Sex

The possible outcomes at SCOTUS

From Lambda Legal:

What if the world were gay....and a child were straight? (Video Sunday)

This is long, but worth it.

Letter from a Bishop (Voices of Faith)

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Voices of Faith

The Bishop of Buckingham (UK, Church of England) writes an excellent blog, taking on the usual anti-gay clap-trap.  Bishop Alan Wilson is a staunch supporter of equality, not in spite of, but because of his faith.  Next time someone tries to use the clobber verses or say marriage equality goes against Christianity, point them his direction.

This letter takes down some of the usual arguments, from a deeply Christian perspective.

There is no single biblical concept of marriage. There are seven in the Hebrew Scriptures alone, including some that are far from ours (like 1 man and 700 women). Indeed there actually is no root in Hebrew that expresses the concept of "marriage" as we know it. People "take" or "procure" their women according to the custom and definition of the context. Similarly there is no link between marriage and procreation which, in the Hebrew Scriptures, as in the rest of life, can happen entirely separately. What is judged is not the definitions of their marriages but people's behaviour within them. We have to work with the Bible we've got, not the one we would have written, given our own prejudices. 

What I do find is that many people who begin with a saloon bar approach find that when they try to apply it to real people they love in their own circle of friends and families, its inadequacies soon reveal themselves for Pharisaic cant. An ethic that cannot be applied to people you actually love is sub-Christian by the standards of the Good Samaritan. The sermon on the mount is not a discussion starter, but a way of life. We all have to try and engage with it, as Nelson said in another context, more closely!

The more people of faith speak out, the more it is clear that opposition to equality is NOT a Christian value.  Our community too often lets the opposition paint this as "LGBT vs. Christian" but it is not.

Let's reach out to these people of faith and make common cause. (Obl disclaimer, I'm not a Christian, but I am married to one. And our marriage was, and is, blessed by her faith community.)

Even our foes admit we'll win

Then why are they still fighting?

From the Atlantic Wire, via Yahoo:

59 percent of gay marriage opponents nevertheless believe that gay marriage is historically inevitable. According to a new Pew Research study published today, 72 percent of Americans polled, and 85 percent of gay marriage supporters, believe that gay marriage will be written into law — both figures being significantly more, but not that far off, from the number of citizens who don't want marriage equality ... but think it's coming anyway. To put this in context: 51 percent of all the Americans polled by pew support legalizing gay marriage, approximately the same percentage as in a poll released last night by Bloomberg News. (Ten years ago, nationwide support for gay marriage was 46 percent.) Gay marriage may be inevitable, but for now it remains a divisive issue.

Marriage bill passes Lords: there WILL be equality in the UK!

Voices of Faith: Bishop compares anti-equality to supporting apartheid or slavery

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Voices of Faith

The UK currently offers civil partnerships but the Parliament is debating full marriage equality (the House of Lords should vote on Tuesday; the House of Commons already approved it.) On the eve of the Lords' debate, the Bishop of Salisbury (Church of England) has come out with this letter:

 Bishop Holtam told peers that allowing gay couples to wed would be a “very strong endorsement” of the institution of marriage....

In a letter sent to Lord Alli, a gay Muslim peer, and published in The Daily Telegraph, Bishop Holtam distanced himself from the Church of England’s official opposition to same-sex marriage, saying: “Christian morality comes from the mix of Bible, Christian tradition and our reasoned experience. 

“Sometimes Christians have had to rethink the priorities of the Gospel in the light of experience.

“For example, before Wilberforce, Christians saw slavery as Biblical and part of the God-given ordering of creation. Similarly in South Africa the Dutch Reformed Church supported Apartheid because it was Biblical and part of the God-given order of creation. No one now supports either slavery or apartheid. The Biblical texts have not changed; our interpretation has.”....

“Indeed the development of marriage for same sex couples is a very strong endorsement of the institution of marriage.”

The Church of England is more conservative than its American cousin, the Episopcal Church. Officially, the CofE is opposed to marriage equality but more and more members are speaking out in favor.  (It also has its cassock in a twist over allowing women priests to become Bishops). Bp Holtam is the first "Diocesan" Bishop to break ranks with the official view although a couple of lower ranking ("suffragen") Bishops are also outspoken supporters (including the Bp of Buckingham, Alan Wilson, whom we have featured before.)

It is widely rumored that several of the CofE bishops are deeply closeted.  We know how that story ends.

Former opponent David Blankenhorn: why fighting equality is wrong

David Blankenhorn was one of the two "expert witnesses" who testified in favor of Prop8. He subsequently reversed his view and came out against it. From an Op/Ed in the LA Times: 

A very few years ago, most Americans (including me) viewed the idea of gay marriage as both undesirable and wildly improbable. Today, most Americans (including me) believe that permitting gay and lesbian couples to marry is the right thing to do, a matter of simple justice. ...

It may sound trite, but for me the key was the gradual breakthrough of empathy. I found that as friendships develop, empathy becomes at least possible, no longer kept at bay by a wall of fixed belief. Put simply, becoming friends with gay people who were married or wanted to get married led me to realize that I couldn't in good conscience continue to oppose it.

But another reality was also becoming clear. At the same time that gay and lesbian couples and their supporters are struggling for the right to marry, millions of straight couples are abandoning marriage entirely, with tragic consequences for them and their children. Further, this abandonment is occurring among our once heavily married middle and working class.
...
This class-based marriage divide is not only large, it's constantly getting larger. Scholarship shows that it's contributing significantly to the rise of economic inequality. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that it's threatening the American dream.

....: The goal of marriage equality is to make marriage available and achievable for all who seek it — gay and straight, the upscale minority and the non-upscale majority. And the strategy for achieving full marriage equality is a strategy of strange bedfellows: social conservatives and gay rights liberals, a coalition that could put an end forever to the conflict between gay rights and family values.

That coalition is waiting to be born, no matter what the Supreme Court decides.

 

Marriage on Oprah on marriage (video Sunday)

From Super Soul Sunday, Oprah and a panel of thought leaders -- Rev. Ed Bacon, author Elizabeth Lesser and author Mark Nepo -- take on the topic of gay marriage and get to the heart of the issue: Is same-sex marriage a threat to the institution of traditional marriage? And the answer is No.

Voices of Faith: Supporting marriage in IL

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Voices of Faith

From the Episcopal Bishop of Chicago, the Right Rev Jeffrey Lee, on why he supports equality:

I am writing today to express my support for the bill currently before the Illinois legislature that would allow same-sex couples to marry legally. ...

The state of Illinois and the Christian church face different questions in determining whether it is good and wise to allow same-sex couples to marry. If one believes in equality before the law, it is extremely difficult to justify denying the benefits of civil marriage to same-sex couples. Opponents of the current legislation would have to present compelling evidence that marriage equality will harm our state so deeply that we must continue to deny same-sex couples the rights that opposite-sex couples freely claim for ourselves. I do not believe that the experience of states and countries in which same-sex couples are already free to marry legally supports this case. Rather, extending the benefits of civil marriage to same-sex couples has made it easier for them to order their lives together, to care for one another and to raise children in a stable home. Creating stronger, happier households contributes to the common good, and that is enough reason to support any legislation.
...
I believe that marriage is a sacred vocation. The union of two persons in heart, body and mind is a school of holiness, a way of ordering our lives so that we might learn to be more faithful servants of Christ. I also believe that the faithful, loving, and lifelong union of two persons--of the same sex or of opposite sexes--is capable of signifying the never failing love of God in Christ for the church and the world. Such unions can be sources and signs of grace, both for the couple and for the wider community.

When the haters get you down, remember there are a lot of Christians who have our backs.