Gay college student commits suicide

Words fail. From AmericaBlog:

18 year old Tyler Clementi, a freshman at Rutgers University in New Jersey, reportedly jumped off a bridge to his death after his roommate secretly set up spy cameras in his dorm room, filmed him making out with another guy, and then posted the videos on Twitter.

The roommate also invited his Twitter followers to come watch Tyler, live, via hidden camera during a second date. The day after, Tyler announced on Facebook that he was going to kill himself, and shortly thereafter jumped off a bridge to his death....

This is what it means to be gay in America in 2010. I think a lot of people who aren't gay, and even many who are, like to think that we're all rich and live in big welcoming cities where being gay is about as big a handicap as being left-handed. We say we want our civil rights, but I think a lot of people think we've got things pretty good, and behind closed doors, they probably call us whiners too.

And I'm sure our lives are pretty good, and just as good as straight people's, except for the part about not being able to get married, have children in many states, keep a job - oh yeah, and that nagging desire to kill ourselves because so many of us grew up thinking we were horrible people who would never be loved, or find love....

Gay civil rights isn't a "social issue." It's our lives. A lot of us, myself included, grew up thinking we'd never see the age of 30 because we'd have to kill ourselves once people found out we were gay. A lot of people have no idea how hard it is to grow up being gay. To grow up thinking God made you wrong. Thinking you will never find love. Thinking your own family and friends will disown you once they know who you really are. And hearing the President of the United States - one of the "good" guys - say that you don't deserve the right to marry the person you love.

Right on, John.

NOM exposed; New Website

Tired of the lies and vitriol from Maggie Gallagher and the NOMmers? The Courage Campaign and the HRC have put all the facts about NOM in one convenient website: NOMexposed.org. Now you can find out the facts about their massive, anti-gay money laundering operation.

Newsweek reviewed the site and its effort to expose the facts.

The Courage Campaign and the HRC say they will continue in the coming months and years to expose NOM and its donors so that religious communities will be aware that their fundraising may not necessarily be directed to poor and struggling families during the recession but to political campaigns to fight gay marriage. The site highlights a recent news report on how the Knights of Columbus has donated about $1.4 million to NOM, versus channeling that money to initiatives for the poor. The NOM Project also details specific legal challenges to NOM by state so that local activists can educate voters. For example, according to the site “NOM provided more than $1.8 million of the $3 million spent by opponents of marriage equality to pass Question 1—but it illegally failed to disclose where the money came from. Public disclosure laws create transparency by informing voters who is behind a campaign effort. Maine’s law does this by requiring that any funds raised to support or oppose a ballot question be made public.”

Marriage is for mating?

The National Review has published an article about marriage equality, making (yet again) the procreation argument--you know the one: the only REAL purpose of marriage is childbearing. Only they don't call it procreation, not always. They call it mating. And in response to the obvious distinction that we do not limit marriage to the fecund, they comment,

"An infertile couple can mate even if it cannot procreate. Two men or two women literally cannot mate."

Do you get that? Infertility is fine, as long as it involves inserting a penis into a vagina: mating, the way we think of animals. MATING. This is not about childrearing, which the gays do, and single parents, and adoptive parents. No, it's about missionary-position straight sex. This is what conservatives have to offer as an argument.

Andrew Sullivan responds:

Leaving the countless existing gay families to one side, adoption, artificial insemination, and surrogates all regularly produce children. And there is no actual evidence that children begotten not by parental mating fare worse than those who are. There is even some research suggesting that lesbians are better parents than heterosexual couples. If your concern is children, why does the process by which a couple obtain a child matter more than the quality of that child's upbringing?

And Dan Savage:

[Y]our case for discriminating against "childless" same-sex couples—when some of us, ahem, are out there raising children—is transparently bigoted horseshit sprinkled with double-standard jimmies. Until you start advocating for the denial of marriage licenses to the elderly, fertility tests for the young, and the nullification of the legal marriages of straight couples who are childless-by-choice, no one should take you seriously when you argue that children define marriage because it's clear that you don't believe that either. Otherwise you would promote a "seamless garment," if I may borrow a phrase, where marriage is concerned, i.e. no marriage licenses for oldies, inferties, vasectomies, etc.

Jonathan Rauch:

Confronted with the obvious fact that no society has ever excluded sterile heterosexual couples from marriage, and that excluding them would be absurd, the editorial simply baffles. “An infertile couple can mate even if it cannot procreate.” It can mate? If “mate” means “have heterosexual intercourse,” the argument merely assumes the conclusion, and “procreativity” has gone right out the window. The article notes that the inclusion of sterile straight couples does not prove that marriage “has nothing to do with” procreation. Right! But it also does not prove that marriage has only to do with procreation. In fact, it quite strongly suggests the contrary.

Update See how Rob Tisanai takes this kind of reasoning apart on his blog today

About those Democrats: DNC steps back from gay rights

Remember the Fierce Advocate? He wanted to repeal DADT and DOMA, and pass ENDA. Now the DNC steps back from that. From Americablog

The DNC has a new Web site up. Included is a page devoted to "civil rights." Here are the gay civil rights promises the party is now making us:

- Enacting the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which includes measures prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity;
- Ensuring full civil unions and federal rights for LGBT couples;
- Repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in a sensible way that strengthens our armed forces and our national security

First off, what happened to repealing DOMA? I do believe our fierce advocate mentioned it repeatedly during the campaign. Why is it gone now? Are there no gay people advising the DNC, or did they just throw out one of the President's top three promises to our community?

Second, "civil unions"? How very 1999 of you.

Someone was listening, because a few days later, DOMA repeal showed up again on the DNC website.

But still, civil unions. I don't have a second class relationship. I don't pay second-class taxes (far from it). Why don't I have first class rights?

We gave plenty of money to the Fierce Advocate's campaign. But from here on, there is NO Democrat that I will support without an explicit statement of support for marriage equality. If I'm not good enough for marriage, you don't need my dollars.

I can't believe that the Fierce Advocate and the Dems squandered their majority. The people who would have been angered by pro-GLBT stance never voted with them anyway. In their effort to pander to the Republicans, they threw their own constituencies under the bus, and probably contributed to the upcoming electoral bloodbath. So the DNC can go whistle. This lesbian's wallet is shut.

It gets better (video Sunday)

In response to the recent youth suicides, journalist Dan Savage and his husband made this video, and started a video project to give GLBT youth perspective and hope.

Traditional Marriage License, revisited (Video)

I posted this on the humorous videos page, but it's worth another look...


The LIcense: what if civil marriages really WERE Biblically traditional?

The real reason the LDS supported Prop8

A student at BYU wrote a piece for the school paper about Prop 8.

The way Cary Crall tells the story, his letter was first rejected, then turned into a full blown "guest" editorial, published, and then quickly removed from the newspaper's website and labeled, "offensive."

Crall wrote that Mormons ought to be honest about the real reasons they put so much time, money and effort into passage of prop 8. After reading the decision of the federal judge in the prop 8 case, he concluded there is little rational basis for many of the arguments for prop 8. So if such arguments were not the real reasons for their support, then what? "The real reason," he wrote, "is that a man who most of us believe is a prophet of God told us to support the amendment."

Crall read the Prop8 decision by Judge Vaughan Walker, and realized that all the talking points used in the election were not supported in trial. So, he comments, the Mormons should be honest that their reason to oppose marriage equality is fundamentally a religious one.

You can read his entire editorial here (.doc file). But here's the conclusion, that got it censored as "offensive":

The question remains that if proponents of Prop. 8 were both unwilling and unable to support even one rational argument in favor of the amendment in court, why did they seek to present their arguments as rational during the campaign?

It is time for LDS supporters of Prop. 8 to be honest about their reasons for supporting the amendment. It’s not about adoption rights, or the first amendment or tradition. These arguments were not found worthy of the standards for finding facts set up by our judicial system. The real reason is that a man who most of us believe is a prophet of God told us to support the amendment. We must accept this explanation, along with all its consequences for good or ill on our own relationship with God and his children here on earth.

Smart young man.

Study: who is family?

From the WaPo:

A majority of Americans now "consider same-sex couples with children" to be a family, according to a study released Wednesday...... When asked "Which living arrangements count as family?", respondents then judged several categories, among them "husband and wife, with children," "two men, with children" and "two women, with children."

The study found that a majority define two women or two men with children to be a 'family.'
...
The researchers also found "a strong link between religious views and the exclusivity of family definitions," a discovery that may reflect the 'one man, one woman' marriage advocacy undertaken by several major religious and cultural organizations in opposition to a political and cultural movement for gay rights, including gay marriage.

From the study:

"Respondents who relied on religious explanations were among the most steadfast opponents to enlarging the scope of family definitions and extending the rights and privileges of marriage to same-sex couples, frequently invoking 'God's will' ('It's not in God's will for it. God created man for woman and woman for man').

The Company we Keep (DADT)

From America Blog:

It is an effective point to ask those supporting the current DADT policy to have them defend being grouped with:

Cuba, China, Egypt, Greece, Iran, Jamaica, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, South Korea, Syria, Turkey, Venezuela, Yemen

Versus being included in the following group:

Albania, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bermuda, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom, Uruguay

Now seriously, Senator, which group do you want America to be aligned with?

The political risk of supporting GLBT rights

From Sunday's LA Times:

[T]there may be good reasons for the president to move slowly. Historically, American presidents have rarely gotten far ahead of public opinion on civil rights issues, and the few times they have, they've paid a substantial price for doing so.

There follows a long list of examples, including this one:

During the first two years of his presidency, John F. Kennedy refused to support civil rights legislation, which would have alienated the Southern Democrats who had proved vital to his election in 1960 and whom he was likely to need again in 1964. Kennedy even declined to fulfill his campaign promise to eliminate racial discrimination in federally subsidized housing "with the stroke of a pen," leading civil rights critics to deluge the White House with ballpoint pens in their "Ink for Jack" campaign.

It was only the momentous street demonstrations in Birmingham, Ala., and other Southern cities in the spring of 1963 that prompted Kennedy to act on civil rights. After opinion polls found that the percentage of Americans ranking civil rights as the nation's No. 1 priority had increased to 52% from 4%, Kennedy went on national television to announce that civil rights was a "moral issue as old as the Scriptures and as clear as the American Constitution." That summer, the administration introduced groundbreaking civil rights legislation, which was enacted into law the following year.

Concluding,

Should Obama be reelected in 2012, he almost certainly will endorse gay marriage during his second term. By then, a majority of Americans, and an overwhelming majority of Democrats, will support the practice. Could Obama shift his position before 2012 without endangering his chances at a second term? Possibly.

But in many of the states that proved to be battlegrounds in the 2008 presidential campaign — Ohio, Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida — majorities still oppose same-sex marriage. A presidential pronouncement in favor would rally conservative opposition and could prove crucial to some swing voters. For many political progressives who believe that the issue already may have cost Democrats one presidential election (and, with it, two Supreme Court appointments), the risk isn't worth taking

. So much for fierce advocating.

Another poll shows increased support for marriage equality

A poll released last Thursday from the AP shows more support for marriage equality. When asked whether gay couples should receive the same benefits as straight couples, a majority says yes. When asked whether gay couples should have federal recognition of their marriages, a majority says yes. This is just the latest in a series of polls showing increased support for gay families.

Why it matters: a real life wedding (video Sunday)

Ed Urbaniak and Erwin Lobo got married in Washington. Erwin has cancer.

Bad Guys File Prop8 appeal, attack judge

From Prop8 trial tracker, describing the appeal brief:

it targets Judge Vaughn Walker for being “egregiously selective and one-sided.”

An example:

The State, it follows, “has no obligation to produce evidence to sustain the rationality of” its laws. Heller, 509 U.S. at 320 (emphasis added). To the contrary, the State’s “legislative choice is not subject to courtroom factfinding and may be based on rational speculation unsupported by evidence or empirical data.”

A trial tracker comments,

It’s true that it can be based on rational speculation…. but the key word here is “rational.”

IF the standard of review is only “rational basis”, then the court can actually come up with its own rationale for the law, even if the parties have not presented one. However, neither the Proponents nor Walker could come up with any justification for the law that was “rationally related” to a “legitimate” government interest.

AFER's response

:
“Regardless of the defendant-intervenors’ protests, the fact remains that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional, as was proven conclusively and unequivocally through a full federal trial. There is no getting around the fact that the court’s decision was based on our nation’s most fundamental principles, and that the Constitution does not permit unequal treatment under the law,” said Chad Griffin, Board President of the American Foundation for Equal Rights. “We are eager to proceed with affirming the unconstitutionality of Prop. 8, and the equality of all Americans, in the Ninth Circuit and the Supreme Court.”

DADT vote: call your senators

Senate votes needed to break filibuster on defense bill and DADT.

Harry Reid has filed for cloture on the National Defense Authorization Act, which contains an amendment for DADT repeal. The vote to break the planned Republican filibuster will be on Tuesday afternoon....For repeal to happen advocates need one more vote to break John McCain's filibuster. All supporters must call their senators now.

KEY SENATORS UNCOMMITTED ON BREAKING THE FILIBUSTER:
--Susan Collins (R-ME)
--Olympia Snowe (R-ME)
--Mark Pryor (D-Ark.);
--Richard Lugar (R-IN);
--Judd Gregg (R-NH);
--Jim Webb (D-VA)
--George Voinovich (R-OH)

Phone numbers and talking points here.

Activist judges.....be afraid... (video)

California's upcoming election: why it matters

Support marriage equality? Then get on the streets and work for the election of Jerry Brown as Governor and Kamala Harris as Attorney General. From Marc Solomon of EQCA.

Between now and November 2, our priority is clear in California. We must do everything we can to elect Jerry Brown and Kamala Harris as governor and attorney general, respectively. That neither Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger nor Atty. Gen. Brown was willing to put the state of California on record in defense of Prop. 8 in court made a tremendous difference. Both Brown and Harris have pledged to maintain the state’s present position, while their Republican opponents, Meg Whitman and Steve Cooley, have both pledged to defend Prop. 8. There is consensus among legal experts that having the key constitutional officers of the state on our side refusing to defend Prop. 8, rather than arguing that the state has a compelling interest in defending the discriminatory measure, is a potential game-changer when an appeal is heard by the courts.

From Labor Day through Election Day, Equality California and its candidate political action committee will use every means at their disposal to elect Brown, Harris, and other California candidates who stand for full LGBT equality. We will have continuous volunteer phone banks at each of our field offices across the state, we will send hundreds of thousands of direct mail pieces, and will make our strongest case to our 600,000 members and to the entire LGBT and allied progressive communities of the critical importance in voting for a pro-equality slate. We will send a powerful message to all elected officials and candidates that we will hold officials accountable as we fight hard for our equality.

When a critical court case is pending, the governor and attorney general in particular are crucial — in ways we now know, and in ways we can’t predict. From my time in Massachusetts fighting for marriage equality, I can recount horror stories of all the maneuvers that then-governor Mitt Romney employed in an attempt to block marriages from taking place in the state. In California we cannot let a Romney clone — a wealthy businessperson trying to burnish conservative credentials on the backs of LGBT people — get elected without a vigorous fight.

Bullying drives boy to suicide

Whether he was gay or not, the bullies went after him and he died last week in Indiana.

Students told Fox59 News it was common knowledge that children bullied Billy and from what they said, it was getting worse. Last Thursday, Billy's mother found him dead inside their barn. He had hung himself.

Students said on that same day, some students told Billy to kill himself.

"They said stuff like 'you're like a piece of crap' and 'you don't deserve to live.' Different things like that. Talked about how he was gay or whatever," said Swango.

Principal Phil Chapple doesn't deny that students are bullied in the high school, but he said he didn't know Billy was one of the victims.

"We were not aware of that situation," said Chapple.

So when we talk about Focus on the Family opposing laws against bullying, or the danger to kids in school, this is why.

And this about a boy in MInnesota:

In the weeks since she found her son dead in his room on July 9, Tammy Aaberg has heard from many of her son's friends at Anoka High School. They told her Justin Aaberg had been bullied and had recently broken up with his boyfriend.

Those same students also opened up about their own experiences, telling her they feel harassed and unsafe as gay and lesbian students.

"These kids, they just hate themselves. They literally feel like they want to die. So many kids are telling me this," said Tammy Aaberg, fighting tears.

But students harassing them are the real victims of Focus on the Family, who think that their religious values require them to bully other students unto death.

Update Homophobic bigots are posting messages of hate on the memorial facebook page set up for Billy. THe mind boggles. Wonder how many of them think that is the "Christian" thing to do.

Testify to love (video)

H/T Susan Russell

Prop8 harms the kids in school

Think of the children! The GSAnetwork, which helps Gay-Straight alliances in schools, reports,

Specifically, we asked if attitudes toward LGBTQ people at school "got better", "stayed the same", or "got worse" during the fall election season and after Prop 8 passed. The results were that 20% said the climate got worse, 41% said it stayed the same, and 39% said it got better. In a typical school year, the numbers are quite different. For instance, the year before, 52% of respondents said the general environment for LGBTQ students at their school got better and only 4% said it had gotten worse.

What's sad is what the kids say.

• “More people were singled out for being LGBTQ as the school seemed to divide between those who opposed and those who supported Proposition 8.”


• “People have told me that since the government says we can't get married, their religion was right and we don't deserve to be treated as full people.”


• “I think it made people think that because the majority of California voters chose to revoke the rights of citizens, it would be okay to make their homophobia apparent in social settings.”


• “After the election, there seemed to be students that didn't have as much of a fear to say anti-LGBT slurs at school. It seemed like when Prop 8 passed, it reassured them that its okay to say those things.”


• “Generally, language in unsupervised settings (the hallways, etc.) got worse and people seemed to feel like it was OK to speak negatively about LGBTQ students in general.”

Why is it that the haters never remember that GLBT have kids, and that some kids are GLBT? Can you imagine being a gay kid in a household of hate?

The back to school gay agenda (video Sunday)