What's happening in Utah (video Sunday)

A little Broadway Christmas -- SFGMC

Merry Christmas everybody!

From the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus:

The Rabbi tells it like it is (voices of faith)

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Voices of Faith

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: (my emphasis)

I am an orthodox Rabbi, and I freely acknowledge that the Bible clearly labels homosexuality a sin. However, it is not a moral sin but rather akin to the prohibition of lighting fire on the Sabbath or eating bread on Passover. It may violate the divine will, but there is nothing immoral about it....

Judaism, I feel, has a very healthy approach to homosexuality. It’s this simple. There are 613 commandments in the Torah. One is a prohibition on homosexual relations. Another is an obligation to have children. I tell gay couples all the time. “You have 611 commandments left to you. That should keep you busy. Now, go give charity, honor the Sabbath, put a mezuzah on your door, keep a kosher home, and pray to God three times a day for you are his beloved children and He seeks you out.”
.....
Faith-based opposition to homosexuality as a religious sin is understandable, just as religious opposition to eating on Yom Kippur is understandable. But all this other stuff—it is immoral, doesn’t lead to procreation, is part of a promiscuous lifestyle—seems more relevant to the revolting and growing culture of drunken hookups, particularly on the American campus, where women are treated by men as little more than fleshy masturbatory material. Yet we almost never hear religious leaders decrying the promiscuity of the heterosexual club culture with anything near the intensity with which they attack gays. Indeed, the strangest thing about traditional people attacking gay marriage is that the only men left in America who seem eager to marry are gay. While homosexuals petition the U.S. Supreme Court for the right to marry, straight guys are living with their girlfriends for half a millennium and still struggle to commit.

As an orthodox Rabbi, I am not pro-gay marriage. I feel the best solution to the same-sex marriage debate is simple: marriage for none, civil unions for all. Let our government withdraw fully from the marriage business, opting instead to grant civil unions to the couples who seek them, be they straight or gay. This is simply a question of equal rights for government matters like tax and inheritance benefits and end-of-life decisions. But marriage, a religious institution, should be consecrated by priests and clergymen as dictated by their conscience.

By ending the gay marriage debate once and for all, we might even address the real values corrosion in America, such as the 50 percent divorce rate, the lack of a national year of service and the death of family dinners. But obsessing over gays guarantees that we’ll forever duck America’s problems. Just because it walks like a duck, sounds like a duck and quacks like a duck doesn’t always mean it’s a duck. And just because religious people blame gays for the moral decline of marriage doesn’t mean that we straight people haven’t done a mighty fine job of ruining the family ourselves.

Thea and Edie.... family photos (video Sunday)

Thea Spyer and Edie Windsor had.... have.... a great love story.  And Edie lives life fully, in love and remembrance of Thea.

Marriagei n UTAH?

Unexpectedly, a federal district judge has rule in favor of equality in Utah. From the decision:

Rather than protecting or supporting the families of opposite-sex couples, Amendment 3 perpetuates inequality by holding that the families and relationships of same-sex couples are not now, nor ever will be, worthy of recognition. Amendment 3 does not thereby elevate the status of opposite-sex marriage; it merely demeans the dignity of same-sex couples. And while the State cites an interest in protecting traditional marriage, it protects that interest by denying one of the most traditional aspects of marriage to thousands of its citizens: the right to form a family that is strengthened by a partnership based on love, intimacy, and shared responsibilities. The Plaintiffs’ desire to publicly declare their vows of commitment and support to each other is a testament to the strength of marriage in society, not a sign that, by opening its doors to all individuals, it is in danger of collapse.

Remarkably, he didn't stay the decision, so couples have rushed out to get married.

The Governor is not happy.  Nor is the Mormon church.

An appeal has been filed, and a request for a stay is expected. Whether the marriages will remain intact or be annulled?  well....we pre-Prop8 couples have been there, done that.  Ours were "grandfathered in" after Prop H8.  Good luck, brothers and sisters!

UTAH?

Update:  excellent analysis from Think PRogress here.

Equality in New Mexico! Merry Christmas!

From the Albuquerque Journal:

The New Mexico Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in favor of same-sex couples, granting them all the same rights of marriage enjoyed by heterosexual couples. 

The court’s 31-page ruling states, in part, that: “All rights, protections, and responsibilities that result from the marital relationship shall apply equally to both same-gender and opposite-gender married couples.”

From the opinion:

Although this question arouse sincerely-felt religious beliefs both in favor and against same-gender marriages, our analysis does not and cannot depend on religious doctrine without violating the Constitution....

Procreation is not the overriding purpose of the New Mexico marriage laws. The purpose of the New Mexico marriage laws is to bring stability and order to the legal relationships of committed couples by defining their rights and responsibilities as to one another, their property, and their children, if they choose to have children....

We fail to see how depriving committed same-gender couples, who want to marry and raise families, of federal and state marital benefits and protections will result in responsible child-rearing by heterosexual married couples. ...

Excluding same-gender couples from civil marriage prevents children of same-gender couples from enjoying the security that flows from the rights, protections, and responsibilities that accompany civil marriage. There is no substantial relationship between New Mexico's marriage laws and the purported governmental interest of responsible child-rearing. There is nothing rational about a law that penalizes children by depriving them of state and federal benefits because the government disapproves of their parents' sexual orientation.

60 years: a love story (Why it Matters)

From Oregon Public Broadcasting:

This is the story of an Oregon couple. They married in Washington after more than 60 years together but were racing against the clock.
....
But one couple that made the rainy trek is trying to meet a different kind of deadline. 

Eric Marcoux and Eugene Woodworth have been together since they the day they met in Chicago in 1953. 

“I am here today to be legally married to Eugene Woodworth, with whom I have had an intimate deeply committed relationship for a little over sixty years,” Marcoux says.
Marcoux is 83 years old and Woodworth is 85. 

They can’t marry in Oregon, where a constitutional amendment outlaws same-sex marriage. When same-sex marriage was legalized in Washington last year, they didn’t rush across the state line to get married. 

“No, no, no….” says Woodworth.

“We wanted to have it in Oregon,” Marcoux explains. 

But Woodworth has been diagnosed with congestive heart failure, and he’s been given weeks to live. They’re getting married today with the hope that Marcoux might be eligible to receive social security benefits as the surviving spouse.
....
The couple say today’s ceremony is merely a formality. But Woodworth chokes up as his partner slips the ring on his finger. 

“And now by the power vested in me by the state of Washington, I declare you to be legally married. And you may kiss,” the judge finishes the ceremony. 

“We met sixty years ago and this is the first legal thing. It’s such a pity we had to wait that long, ” Woodworth tells the judge. 

After the ceremony ends, the two make their way out to their car for the 20-minute drive home to Oregon.

“We made it. Wonderful we made it,” Marcoux says closing the door.

Polygamy case is about religious freedom

A follow up on our previous discussion about the recent court decision in Utah. From The HuffPo first, de-coupling polygamy and same sex marriage:

Gay rights however do not inexorably lead to the legalization of polygamy. While the ability to choose one's sexual partners is an important element of constitutionally protected privacy, the government may have stronger reasons to ban polygamy than gay sexual or marital relationships. Polygamy has long been associated with unique harms: the repression of women; underage girls too young to consent forced into ma rriage; the severe displacement of young men in geographically concentrated communities. Gay rights don't pose any of these problems. Rather, they are about the very opposite: reducing the oppression of minorities, allowing adults to engage in consensual sexual activity, and minimizing the social and psychological displacement caused by anti-gay discrimination....

And next, explaining how this is really about religious freedom. You remember religious freedom, don't you? (my emphasis)

What's unconstitutional is Utah's ban on a married person cohabiting with another, and here's why. First, the court says the law impinges on religious freedom by targeting only religious people for prosecution. Adulterers sometimes cohabit -- that is, live as a spouse with someone else -- but the state admitted to only going after Mormon cohabiters. As a result, the judge ruled, Utah's law was in practice discriminatory. Second, the court said that this distinct treatment of cohabiters was irrational. If a married person cohabiting with another is a threat to society, then why target only religiously motivated people? Utah, by only restricting in practice some cohabitation by married people, violates the baseline requirement of the Constitution that every law must further some rational government policy.

No, the Utah decision has nothing to do with civil marriage

In Utah, as in other states, it is illegal to seek a marriage license when you are already married to someone else.  THat is, no civil poly-marriage.

However, in Utah, they also criminalize people who cohabit for religious reasons.  That is, even if you aren't seeking civil marriage, if you simply live in a polygamous situation, you are breaking the law.  But only if you are doing it for religious reasons.

You know what?  As long as your sexual expression is private and consensual, the state has no business criminalizing it.

And that's all the judge found.

From Think Progress:

The Utah case involved a suit filed by Kody Brown and his wives, Meri, Janelle, Christine, and Robyn, who are featured on the TLC documentary show Sister Wives. They argued that Utah’s anti-polygamy laws infringed upon their Mormon religious practice and their privacy, and District Court Judge Clark Waddoups, a George W. Bush appointee, agreed. But Waddoups’ decision leaves in place that it is illegal in Utah to be legally married to more than one person at the same time, which begs the question of what exactly he actually overturned.

Utah’s laws go far beyond limiting an individual to only one marriage license. As Waddoups recounted in his decision, the statute also prohibits “cohabitation,” referring to any situation in which a married person “purports to marry another person or cohabits with another person.” Even though Kody Brown only has a marriage license with one of his wives, the fact that he has a living arrangement that includes other individuals he refers to as wives — deemed “religious cohabitation” in the Mormon context of multiple marriages — was thus a violation of the law. Indeed, the law seems to punish those who claim multiple marriages even if those marriages exist only in a religious — not civil — context. This, Waddoups ruled, was not only an intrusion into their religious beliefs, but also a violation of their right to private consensual sexual behavior as guaranteed by the Supreme Court in the 2003 decision Lawrence v. Texas, which overturned the country’s so-called “sodomy laws” criminalizing same-sex relations.

Not about marriage.  Simply about religious freedom and privacy.

If conservatives REALLY believed in preserving marriage....

In France, the "civil union" equivalent or PAC is as popular with straights as with gays.  They like that it isn't so rigid.  Some of our opponents have claimed to be pro-civil union (though usually that's a fig leaf that falls off pretty fast).  But if they were pro-civil union, they might have a problem--if such arrangements were available to straights. From the HuffPO:

Once the marriage monopoly is broken up so that different-sex couples have a choice, the competition is likely to last. Where they are available to all couples, experimental new alternatives to marriage have been resilient to change, even after marriage equality is achieved. This has proven true from Belgium and the Netherlands, to Washington, D.C., Hawaii and Illinois, which all recognize gender-neutral marriage alternatives as well as marriage. Apparently, political majorities are hesitant to surrender their existing choices. 

In the end, all couples could be left to pick-and-choose among a menu of civil unions, domestic partnerships and reciprocal beneficiary relationships, as well as marriage for both same and different-sex couples. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, it certainly cannot appeal to conservatives if they care more about preserving traditional marriage than about showing disapproval of LGBT families. By refusing marriage to same-sex couples, social conservatives are undermining traditional marriage more than lesbian brides and gay grooms ever could.

Duncan's bar mitzvah (video Sunday)

Bakery in CO loses case

here's the deal.  If there is an anti-discrimination statute that protects LGBT people, you can't discriminate against LGBT people.

It doesn't matter if your religion hates LGBT people.

Similarly, it doesn't matter if your religion hates Muslims, or people who eat pork, or Catholics, or black people.  You don't get to deny service to someone in a head scarf, or wearing a cross.  Your faith thinks women should be seen and not heard?  You still don't get to deny women service.

If you run a business (which is licensed by the state, remember), you can't choose whom to serve .

And the courts in CO agree.  Says the judge,

Compelling a bakery that sells wedding cakes to heterosexual couples to also sell wedding cakes to same-sex couples is incidental to the state’s right to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and is not the same as forcing a person to pledge allegiance to the government or to display a motto with which they disagree. To say otherwise trivializes the right to free speech....

And because baking a cake is not part of religion,  or speech,

Respondents’ refusal to provide a cake for Complainants’ same-sex wedding is distinctly the type of conduct that the Supreme Court has repeatedly found subject to legitimate regulation. Such discrimination is against the law; it adversely affects the rights of Complainants to be free from discrimination in the marketplace; and the impact upon Respondents is incidental to the state’s legitimate regulation of commercial activity. Respondents therefore have no valid claim that barring them from discriminating against same-sex customers violates their right to free exercise of religion. Conceptually, Respondents’ refusal to serve a same-sex couple due to religious objection to same-sex weddings is no different from refusing to serve a biracial couple because of religious objection to biracial marriage. However, that argument was struck down long ago in Bob Jones Univ. v. United States.

Our progress...and a big black blot

From Joe.My.God

What do Lesbians look like? (Video Sunday)

A gay brain drain from unfriendly states?

I've argued this before, but don't be surprised if gays are leaving unfriendly states--at some cost.

[Search Consultant] McCormack says his gay and lesbian clients who are hot prospects now have clear choices when it comes to legal protections. 

"I would say one of the first questions we get from any LGBT candidate is about corporate benefits, and whether they are available to same-sex partners. If that answer is no, that is a big red flag for them."...

Certainly many gay and lesbian professionals, managers, professors and members of the creative class may simply vote with their feet and leave. In this mobile society, it's too easy for a talented worker who is in demand to move to the other America....

Corporate headhunter McCormack expects LGBT employees to be pro-active and move, and the same goes for many of his straight clients. 

"It's not just because LGBT people may choose to work there," McCormack says about gay-friendly states and companies, "It's a whole generation who have grown-up accepting LGBT co-workers as equals who do not want to work for companies that aren't progressive."

We all have closets (video Sunday)