A New Jersey judge ruled Friday that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry under the state constitution, ordering marriage equality will take effect on October 21, 2013 — assuming the decision is not stayed. The decisiondoes not overturn the civil unions law, but asserts that same-sex couples must also have the right to marriage, including all the federal benefits now associated with it post-Defense of Marriage Act.Because separate is not equal.
So far, Americans United to Preserve Marriage has paid Bauer more than $260,000 — and between 2009 and 2012, Bauer received more than half of the committee’s total spending.So, you donate money to this group and half of it goes to Bauer. Hmmm. And then this:
The Campaign for Working Families PAC, a traditional political action committee first created in 1996, began 2013 with nearly $1 million left in the bank. The committee, which calls itself “the leading pro-family, pro-life political action committee in America,” claims to exist “solely to raise funds to support or oppose candidates based upon their political views.” But starting in March, Bauer began paying himself $13,750 a month for “political and admin” consulting — $68,750 over the past five months, and several times more than the $8,250 the committee has given, total, to federal political candidates so far this year.The "Great Gay Menace" drives donations to these groups, which use those donations to pay the leaders large amounts of money. So, being anti-equality is big business, and they are getting rich on it. It may also explain why people like Brian Brown are getting increasingly shrill and more anti-gay, not limiting his remarks to marriage. Because slowly but surely, his marks are realizing that marriage equality is inevitable. He's got to yell and instill fear if his big business model is going to keep going.
After the Christian Right tapped out the pro-life issue, the captains of Christian industry needed a new sales pitch to keep the coffers filled. These folks thought they saw the light in 2003 when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declared a fundamental right to same-sex marriage....
[T]he Christian Right had invested heavily in a propaganda machine that specialized in promulgating unjust stereotypes. Instead of letting the flock see gay couples as the neighbors next door, the Christian Right made it a point to portray all gays with the wildest pictures they could find from the Castro.
It was a brilliant strategy, for if groups like AFA could scare the faithful with pictures that portrayed the gay community in the worst light, it could frame the debate as one of deviancy versus decency. There were two problems with this strategy, though:
First, in order for the campaign to succeed the Right had to forsake the very Christian principles it claimed to be protecting. In typical fashion, a few Ben Franklins made it much easier for them to put profit over principle.
Second, the strategy would only work if the Christian Right could force gays, as well as those Christians that supported them, into the closet. It was the second problem that would result in the demise of the Christian right.
...Look at the lunacy pouring out of the Christian right. Don Wildmon claims to defend marriage, but endorses twice divorced, three times married Newt Gingrich for president. Mat Staver and Matt Barber of the Liberty Counsel are out there invoking Jerry Sandusky to support the medieval notion that you can “pray the gay away.”
And, of course, Bryan Fischer is like a drunken uncle at a wedding who must continually be outrageous in hopes that someone will pay attention.
Why is this happening? Because the Christian right doubled down on gay discrimination and lost.
NALT, however, will be a devastating blow the Christian Right. Frankly, all the videos pouring into NALT re-affirm one basic fact –- the Christian Right no longer can claim to have a monopoly on morality.
I read this self-serving attempt to be the “nice” bigot by Halee Gray Scott at Christianity Today’sher•meneutics blog, “I Am Not Charles Worley: The Plea of a Christian Who Opposes Gay Marriage.”
Scott wants you to understand that she’s not at all like the infamous homophobic preacher Worley. She’s totally different.
Worley wants to deny LGBT people their basic civil rights and legal equality because he hates them. Scott wants to deny LGBT people their basic civil rights and legal equality for other reasons.
See? See how very different they are? Same result. Same vote. Same fundamental discrimination enshrined in law. But Worley is mean. Scott is nice.
And Scott has had it up to here with people not recognizing the extreme importance of that distinction....
....
Look, here’s the deal: It doesn’t matter if you think you’re a nice person. And it doesn’t matter if your tone, attitude, sentiments and facial expressions are all very sweet, kindly and sympathetic-seeming. If you’re opposing legal equality, then you don’t get to be nice. Opposing legal equality is not nice and it cannot be done nicely. ....
Scott wants to carve out a space in which she can be unfair, but still kind. Such a space does not exist and cannot exist.
Equal Marriage Arizona, the primary group behind the initiative, says efforts were scuttled because key national advocacy groups withheld backing of the initiative for 2014 because they believed there would be a greater chance of winning in 2016.
“They didn’t feel like Arizona was ready for equal marriage in 2014,” said Equal Marriage Arizona cochair Erin Ogletree Simpson. “I’m just happy our effort has prompted a focus from the various groups to look at 2016 and start putting together a strategy.”Arizona is very, very conservative. There's a big Mormon contingent there too.
Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie (D) has called for a special legislative session to consider a marriage equality bill, pointing out that allowing same-sex couples to marry is important to address in a timely fashion because of implications for those couples’ taxes next year. The session will begin October 28 and last a couple of days, but Abercrombie believes that every view “has been aired, has been analyzed, has been discussed” such that “no one has been left out or has been marginalized in the process to this point.”
The proposed bill specifically references the Supreme Court’s decisions earlier this summer in the Windsor case overturning the Defense of Marriage Act, highlighting how the state’s civil unions deprive couples of the federal rights they could now access with marriage....
Marriage equality legislation was proposed earlier this year, but did not advance due to procedural hurdles by a few lawmakers that prevented it from advancing through the committee process. Nevertheless, polls consistently show that a majority of Hawaiians support full marriage equality.Aloha, indeed!
When you insist being gay couldn’t possibly matter less, what you actually insist is that the subject never be brought up in the first place.
One day, it will not matter whether Diana Nyad, Tim Cook, Sally Ride, or any other noteworthy person is openly gay. But we’re not there yet. Until we are, it is our responsibility as LGBTQ people to remind the rest of the world that we’re still here, we’re comfortable in our own skins, we come in all shapes, sizes and specialties, and, once in a blue moon, some of us can even swim from Cuba to Florida. We should be proud to say so.
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