The Rainbow Flag (video Sunday)

What if you gave a march and nobody came?

From Slate:

Four of the five stages of grief—denial, anger, bargaining, and depression—were on full display today at the March for Marriage, a rally outside the U.S. Capitol organized by the National Organization for Marriage and other co-sponsors. NOM President Brian Brown had promised attendees the chance to be a part of “showing that there still exists in this country deep and wide support for the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman," but, judging by photos of the event that revealed a shallow and thin crowd that seemed to gradually disperse as the two and a half hours of repetitive speeches wore on, the rally may have shown just the opposite....

It’s in the constant invocation of persecution, which positively soaked the day’s proceedings, that bargaining comes into play. Many of the speakers seem to be wagering that if they can just convince people...that, in the most religious First World country in the world, Christians are more oppressed than LGBTQ people, they will finally see how mean and hurtful this marriage equality stuff really is. According to Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, things are basically as bad now as they were for the early Christians in pagan Rome....

News reports show that religion was the primary justification given by the attendees for their opposition to equality. But it's just one type of religion. Polls show convincingly that majorities of (lay) Catholics, Jews, mainline Protestants, as well as religiously unaffiliated folks all support marriage equality.

And on the same day the Presbyterians voted overwhelmingly to allow same sex marriages.

The march4marriage

The anti-equality troops are marching today in DC. Let's be clear on what they want. They want to forbid LGBT couples from marrying. They want to forcibly divorce my wife and me, and deny any recognition of our marriage. They want children of LGBT families to have no legal rights. They want to prevent The Episcopal Church, The UCC, the Lutherans, etc exercising their religious freedom to marry LGBT couples. They want the right to discriminate against us, to fire us from jobs, and to refuse to serve us in restaurants and shops. They may claim they do this out of "love", but they do not. Listen, and you will hear the words of fear.

And over and over again, although they are a minority, they are given prominent opportunities by the media to spread their hate.

NOM & Bishop Sal in new group to attack equality

Jeremy Hooper at NOM Exposed has found that NOM, its ardent defender, Salvatore Cordileone, Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco, and a spattering of other  anti-gay activists have formed "The Princeton Group" to plot their efforts to stop the advance of equality and play up this whole religious freedom meme

over in Princeton, NJ, Maggie Gallagher (NOM cofounder and past president), Robert George (NOM cofounder and chairman emeritus), Brian Brown (current NOM president), John Eastman (NOM's current board chair), and a number of other individuals who were responsible for creating NOM back then (like founding board members Luis Tellez and Chuck Stetson, for instance) and are responsible for maintaining NOM now (like Sean Fieler, a key funder, and Diego Von Stauffenberg, NOM's current development director) were holding a secret, invite-only meeting focused on "developing and deploying an action plan to protect marriage and preserve religious liberties." It certainly seems like some sort of secret, shadowy version of NOM (Super NOM?) is going on behind the scenes.

Is this the post-NOM identity, to continue to attack equality?  Is this a cynical way to rebrand to keep the money flowing?  Do they honestly think they can hold back the tide?

Incidentally, Abp Cordileone is going to speak at NOM's anti-gay rally tomorrow.

Video Sunday: Jim PArsons on getting married

Why Marriage Equality is going to start losing

Important analysis from Think Progress:

Currently, six federal appeals courts, the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth and Tenth Circuits, face marriage equality cases. Though it is fairly likely that equality will prevail in most of these circuits — the legal arguments for marriage equality are very strong, especially after the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision, and supporters of discrimination are left with a questionable states rights argument that no judge has yet embraced — it is unlikely that appellate court judges will show the same unanimity as their counterparts on the trial bench. Among other things, appointments to federal circuit courts have historically been much more politically charged than appointments to the lower-ranking district courts, so litigants are far more likely to encounter a judge who was selected for their loyalty to a particular ideology.

They go on to enumerate where the problems are most likely to be: the 5th,6th, and 7th. THis is because Appeals Court judges are appointed by the president and are often appointed for ideological grounds. It's why the presidency really matters, because the President appoints the judiciary.

Voices of Faith at LA Pride

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Voices of Faith

From the LA Times,

Before the parade, a transgender preacher, Dr. H. Adam Ackley, led a morning Holy Eucharist service on the street for the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. Ackley, a former theology professor at Azusa Pacific University, was asked to resign from his position after announcing that he was a transgender man, according to the advocacy group GLAAD.

"We praise you for being who we are, who you created us to be — gay, trans, bi, lesbian, gender-queer and in so many other ways — with greater beautiful diversity than we can ever imagine," Ackley said in prayer.

The diocese has been leading a service before the Pride Parade for two decades, said the Rev. Susan Russell, a priest at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena. In the first few years, there was suspicion of the group, she said.

"We're here to undo the damage that the religious right has done to Jesus when they portray him as homophobic," she said. "We're here to undo that damage and tell the good news that God loves everybody."

Video Sunday: Invisible Parents

50% of Americans agree marriage equality is a Constitutional right

From the Washington Post:

A full 50 percent say gay marriage is protected by the Constitution’s Equal Protection clause, an argument repeated by judge after judge in a string of federal rulings against state bans since a pivotal Supreme Court decision last summer. Some 43 percent do not believe gay marriage enjoys constitutional protection. Support for gay marriage overall — regardless of views on whether it is constitutionally protected — enjoys broader support, with 56 percent saying they back the right for same-sex couples to marry and 38 percent opposing it.

Ads reflect culture (video Sunday)

yes, it's an ad.   And it's why we're winning.

Gay Dads' brains activate parenting neurons

This is really cool!

Having a baby alters new mothers' brain activity, researchers have found, and a new study adds the first evidence of such changes in the brains of gay men raising children they adopted through surrogacy. 

The men's pattern of brain activity resembles that of both new mothers and new fathers in the study....

The 48 gay fathers raising children with their husbands seemed to be both mom and dad, brain-wise. Their emotional circuits were as active as those of mothers and the interpretive circuits showed the same extra activity as that of heterosexual fathers'.

Sealed with a kiss

Like most gay couples, my wife and I are careful about when we kiss in public.  On the lips or not?  Long enough to make it clear that we are a couple?  Fortunately we live in an urban area that is fairly friendly, but still, we are cautious.  If we're in the gayborhood, it's different than if we're downtown.

Frank Bruni has a column this weekend about That Kiss:  the full on joyful kiss between NFL draftee Michael Sam and his slim swimmer boyfriend.  Not just a kiss between two men, but an inter-racial kiss as well.  Freighted with meaning, that exchange.  Bruni writes, 

From NBC news

And they’re still rare enough that the initial, internal reaction that I and many other gay people had to the way Sam clutched and kissed his boyfriend on national TV wasn’t exultation. It was alarm. Had he gone too far? Asked too much? 

.... I still sometimes feel panic when my partner, meeting me in a restaurant, gives me a perfunctory kiss on the lips. And yet I feel robbed — wronged — if I sense that an awareness of other people’s gazes and a fear of their judgment are preventing him from doing that. 

We shouldn’t be bound that way, and on the day of the pro football draft, in front of the cameras, Sam rightly declared that he wasn’t. He did so with a gesture at once humdrum and heroic, a gesture that connects everyone who has been in love and affirms what every love shares: physical tenderness, eye-to-eye togetherness. It was something to behold. It was something to hold on to.

Utah for Marriage (Video Sunday)

Five reason equality is winning

Great article in the WaPo identifies 5 reasons we are winning.

1. Rapid cultural shifts: more gay people coming out
2. An ally in the White House: the President evolved
3. A problem of overreach: if the other side had compromised, offering civil unions and legal rights, but they went out of their way to deny us any recognition
4. Religious influence rises — and falls: the rise of the nones
5. Belligerence

Perhaps the biggest obstacle facing proponents of traditional marriage was a negative image that they were never able to overcome. While chafing at comparisons to racism and Jim Crow laws, the matriarch of the traditional marriage movement, Maggie Gallagher, concedes that her side has been labeled as “hateful and bigoted.” ...

Some conservative activists say they brought it on themselves. 

“There was the evangelical belligerence, often, in the last generation that spoke, for instance, about the gay agenda, in which there was this picture, almost as though there is a group of super villains in a lair, plotting somewhere the downfall of the family,” Moore told a gathering of journalists in March. 

Conservatives also weathered a host of guilt-by-association charges, which were equally hard to dislodge. In Arizona, a bill that supporters said would protect religious freedom was conveyed as license to turn gays away from public businesses. Evangelical opposition to homosexuality was exported to Africa, which took the form of harsh laws to jail or even sentence to death known homosexuals. 

In short, it was no longer popular or politically correct to stand against popular culture and a swiftly changing popular opinion. 

“They showed no compassion for gay people, they didn’t offer any substitutes like protecting gay families or gay kids,” Rauch said. “That lack of compassion came through. It took a little while to register, but the American public does not like lack of compassion.”

Voices of Faith Speak Out on the ruling in PA

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Voices of Faith

Statement from the Rt. Rev. Sean W. Rowe, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania and Bishop Provisional of the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem:

“Today is a joyful day for Pennsylvanians who believe as I do that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry in our state. These couples work hard, raise children, volunteer for good causes and pay taxes. Pennsylvania would be poorer without them, and I am pleased that Judge John E. Jones III has moved them one significant step closer to equality under the law.

“The Episcopal Church has struggled faithfully with the issue of same-sex relationships for more than three decades, and in that struggle most of us have come to understand that same-sex couples and their families are blessings to their communities and to their neighbors and friends. Like opposite-sex couples, their love draws them more clearly into fidelity to one another and service to the world. Like opposite sex couples, they are signs and sacraments allowing us to see the boundless love of God more clearly.

“I am aware that faithful Episcopalians in the Dioceses of Bethlehem and Northwestern Pennsylvania disagree with me on this issue. I want to assure them that our dioceses will remain places where people of good conscience can differ charitably and remain united in the hope and healing of Jesus Christ.

“After reflection and consultation, I will write to both dioceses with guidance for clergy who want to officiate at same-sex marriages. For today, I am grateful to live in a state that has taken a step toward justice.”

And Oregon. Prophetic words from the decision

...and a district judge has found that Oregon's marriage ban, which was undefended, is unconstitutional.  It's a beautiful opinion.  

My decision will not be the final word on this subject, but on this issue of marriage I am stuck more by our similarities than our differences. I believe that if we can look for a moment past gender and sexuality, we can see in thee plaintiffs nothing more or less than our own families. Families who we would expect our Constitution to protect, if not exalt in equal measure. With discernment, we see not shadows lurking in closets or the stereotypes of what was once believed; rather we see families committed to the common purpose of love, devotion, and service to the greater community.

Where will all this lead? I know that many suggest we are going down a slippery slope that will have no moral boundaries. To those who truly harbor such fears, I can only say this: let us look less to the sky to see what might fall; rather, let us look to each other…..and rise. 

How to talk to your kids about Michael Sam (video Sunday)

How marriage equality reinforces marriage

Not surprisingly, many of the gay and lesbian couples who are tying the knot have been together a long time. They already have forged a relationship and entwined their lives. And so when they marry, they are strengthening the institution.

Perhaps more powerful, this generation of gay couples is modeling an affirmative approach to marriage — and assigning a respectful significance to it — that straight couples often do not. How often, after all, are longtime heterosexual couples forced to ask (let alone answer): If you had to renew the lease on your marriage in midlife, would you do it? Would you legally bind yourself to this same person all over again? By embracing an institution that straight people take for granted, they are, to use Bradbury’s word, making a “purposive” decision rather than falling into an arrangement by default. 

Whether same-sex marriages will prove as stable as different-sex marriages (or more so, or less so) remains to be seen. In Europe, the dissolution rates of gay unions are higher. But here, according to Badgett’s work, the opposite appears to be true, at least for now. This doesn’t surprise Cherlin. “We have a backlog of couples who’ve been together a long time,” he says. “I’m guessing they’ll be more stable.” This first wave of midlife gay marriages seems to be celebrating that stability; they’re about relationships that have already proven durable, rather than sending off untested, fresh-faced participants in a fingers-crossed bon voyage. What stood between these couples and the institution of marriage wasn’t a lack of desire. It was the parsimony of the law. “Half of all divorces occur within first seven to ten years,” Cherlin points out. “These couples are already at low risk.”

Video Sunday: A story from France

Award winning video:

and....Arkansas?

Arkansas Times:

Circuit Judge Chris Piazza today invalidated the Arkansas ban on same-sex marriage and recognition of marriages legally entered by same-sex couples in other states.

An appeal is expected. The judge did not stay his ruling, though the state probably can be expected to request a stay. Reaction was quick, with Republican politicians first out of the box to decry the ruling.

Offices have closed so no marriages (yet).  A stay is requested.

From the ruling:

The Arkansas Supreme Court applied a heightened scrutiny and stnrck down as unconstitutional an initiated act that prohibited unmaried opposite-sex and sarne-sex couples from adopting children. The exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage for no rational basis violates the fundamental right to privacy and equal protection as described in Jegley and Cole, supra. The difference between opposite-sex and same-sex families is within the privacy of their homes.

This case is in state, not federal court. The ban on marriage passed with 75% of the vote.