Marriage News Watch: March 24, 2014

United Kingdom Pardons Alan Turing

The Military & Same-Sex Spousal Benefits

How Gays Are Destroying America

In all seriousness, great for Vicco, Kentucky. Breaking stereotypes and spreading equality; two birds, one stone.

Children of Same-Sex Couples Speak Out

The Agony of Denial

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH)

From Queerty:

If you need an example of just how unmoored the right wing is from reality, look no further than the decision of anti-marriage activists to petition the Supreme Court to stop marriage in California just two days after the Court gave it the go ahead. Yes, in what has to be a textbook case of denial, marriage opponents somehow thought that the same folks in robes who just lectured them on the dignity of gay and lesbian relationships would suddenly change their minds and agree with them. Of course, that was a short-lived belief. Justice Anthony Kennedy swatted the petition down without a second thought. 

If the right wing wants to throw good money after bad, that’s their choice. But by pursuing such a quixotic (which is a nice way of saying hair-brained) appeal, they underscore one key fact: they can’t admit that they’ve lost. It’s not that they are in denial. In their more lucid moments, they know marriage equality is inevitable. 

James Dobson, one of the patriarchs of the religious right, says that the Supreme Court ruling was devastating “even if eventually legally we are able to walk it back a bit.” That is hardly a trumpet call to battle victory. Instead it’s a monument to qualifiers. Any more hedging and the entire phrase would have to be in air quotes...

It is yet another example of conservative hypocrisy. They often talk about not spending money on programs that do not work. That is exactly what they are doing when it comes to marriage equality. Clearly, their continue expenditures on fighting marriage equality is not working given the fact that more and more people support marriage equality. Even a rising proportion of conservatives, Republicans, and people of faith are supporting full equality for the LGBT community and same-sex couples. Also, the GOP-led House of Representatives wasted at least $3,000,000 of taxpayer money defending the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act" which was struck down (or at least the discriminatory Section 3 of that law) by the United States Supreme Court. Clearly the human capacity for denial is very strong and very sad.

Know Your Allies: Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)

Congresswoman Says Women Don't Want Equal Pay Laws

From the Huffington Post: 

During a roundtable discussion on NBC's Meet The Press, former White House advisor David Axelrod asked if she would support a law promoting workplace gender equality. Blackburn responded: 

"I think that more important than that is making certain that women are recognized by those companies. You know, I’ve always said that I didn’t want to be given a job because I was a female, I wanted it because I was the most well-qualified person for the job. And making certain that companies are going to move forward in that vein, that is what women want. They don’t want the decisions made in Washington. They want to be able to have the power and the control and the ability to make those decisions for themselves." 

Blackburn voted against the 2009 Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a landmark bill for women's rights in the workplace. The law makes it easier for women to file wage discrimination suits against employers. She also voted against the Paycheck Fairness Act of 2009.

With all due respect to Congresswoman Blackburn (which is not much), she is conflating employment discrimination with pay discrimination. The Ledbetter Act would ensure that if a woman discovers she is not getting paid equal to her male counterparts doing the same job at the same quality, she can sue for the difference plus damages. I find it mind-boggling that a female member of Congress would be against such a measure. It makes you wonder who her corporate donors are and how they feel about equal pay for equal work.

How Homophobes Are Helping Equality

Linda Harvey

From Pink News: 

Mrs [Linda] Harvey, who broadcasts an obscure radio programme, at the very least provides the most comical and deluded arguments you have ever heard against homosexuality. 

Mrs Harvey has recently claimed that gay people are not human, so are not protected by the US constitution. She also believes that Jesus could be forced to marry a man if he is resurrected and that gay rights is killing children. 

Listening to Mrs Harvey’s clap trap is not unlike the bizarre experience I had when the British writer Lynette Burrows debated me at the Oxford Union. She claimed that a child would be brought up better by a “drug addict slut” than the “pretend fathers”, my boyfriend and I would one day like to be. Her ludicrous and offensive comments made my victory over more mild mannered anti-equality speakers she was grouped with a lot easier. 

The reality is that around half of the readers of these sorts stories are not LGBT, they are people who have been shared them by their LGBT friends. Their sense of moral outrage is in my view incredibly useful in dispelling the more reasonable arguments of mild mannered homophobes. They share the stories on Facebook, Twitter and Reddit all with a sense of shock at what hateful people say about LGBT people. 

Remember the US judge who claimed that lesbians could be ‘cured’ by being forced to have sex with male soldiers? That was shared 62,000 times on Facebook and has been read more than two and a half million times over the past three years, primarily, we believe, by straight people.

Canada Ends Ban On Gay Men Donating Blood

From The Star: 

The federal blood donor agency is lifting its lifetime ban on gay men giving blood.

Canadian Blood Services announced Wednesday it has received approval from Health Canada to reduce its restriction on men who have sex with men donating blood from indefinitely to five years.

“We recognize that many people will feel that this change does not go far enough, but given the history of the blood system in Canada, we see this as a first and prudent step forward on this policy,” Dr. Dana Devine, vice-president of medical, scientific and research affairs at the federal blood donor agency said in a news release Wednesday.

“It’s the right thing to do and we are committed to regular review of this policy as additional data emerge and new technologies are implemented,” Devine said in the statement.

The new policy will come into effect this summer...

LGBT Tolerance in Europe

Boy Scouts For Equality

From Think Progress:

In Bethesda, Maryland, dozens of Eagle Scouts, current Scouts, parents, and volunteer leaders gathered outside the National Capital Area Council headquarters. Scores of cars passing on the highway next to the building honked in support, while attendees held signs urging and end to the ban. 

ThinkProgress talked with several participants. Debbie Heller, mother of an Eagle Scout and wife of a former Scoutmaster, said that “I think Scouting is the greatest organization in the world, but if they continue to discriminate, I could couldn’t support” the BSA. 

Eagle Scout David Churchill observed: “Discrimination is wrong.” Noting that the Boy Scout law requires all Scouts to be kind, he said “the organization needs to reflect that as well. 

Jody Benjamin, a former Den leader and committee chair, objected to the current requirement that troop leaders kick out youths who identify as gay. “The Scouts are asking me to be a liar or to do a really hurtful thing to a child. I can’t do it, and so I think it’s wrong.” 

Justis Tunia, who earned his Eagle Scout award in Layton, Utah in 1995, lamented that events like this were necessary. “It’s a shame that we as former members and families associated with Scouting have to push the organization in this direction, as these were values that were taught to us throughout our period in Scouting.”

Civil Disobedience to Fight Equal Rights

Why We Call You Bigots

I cannot tell you how many times I have heard you social conservatives against LGBT equality say “…but we aren’t bigots,” “we can have a civil discussion without calling folks bigots,” or “we can disagree without being bigots.” If we were having a simple policy disagreement, perhaps those claims would be correct. However, this is no simple policy disagreement. This is not about infrastructure funding, this is not about renewable energy versus fossil fuels, this is not about how to address the national debt. This is about what rights people will or will not have. Given how “George Wallace” you have decided you will be, how are we not to think you are bigots? While not every person against LGBT equality has done all of the below, you as a community have given no shortage of reasons to be justifiably called bigots.

We call you bigots because whenever something bad happens, you blame gay people. Hurricane Katrina? Blame the gays. A bunch of birds falling from the sky? Blame the gays. 9/11? Blame the gays. Seriously, we were blamed for all of that and more. And now, with North Korea ratcheting up threats against the United States, Fred Luter of the Southern Baptist Convention, you guessed it, blaming the gays. It would be great if being gay allowed me to control weather so I would never have to suffer through Winter weather again. Alas, we are not so powerful as you make us out to be.

We call you bigots because many of you have voluntarily dedicated your lives and/or careers to subjugating and demonizing gay people, and that is quite a time commitment. There are multitudes of people that work for organizations whose mission is to deny gay people legal equality; organizations including the Family Research Council, the National Organization for Marriage, Focus on the Family, and more. Despite many of these people citing some spiritual calling as an excuse for their personal views, the net affect is still that they have singled out a minority group against whom to systematically discriminate based on characteristics over which there is no control. History will not look kindly on people who spend their lives away in such a manner. 

We call you bigots because every year, you spend tens of millions of dollars in an effort to deny gay people equal rights. This is particularly disgusting given all of the good you could be done with that money; the naked you would cloth, the homeless you would shelter, the sick you would heal, the hungry you would nourish. Instead of all of the undeniable good that you would accomplish, all of that money is aimed at a concerted campaign to misinform people into believing that equal rights for gay people will destroy humanity. I would suggest you do an about-face on your priorities.

We call you bigots because whenever the subject of marriage equality comes up, you equate our relationships to screwing farm animals. Do you really think that same-sex couples in a loving and committed relationship will lead to farmer Joe marrying Bessie the Cow? Eleven countries (with France and Uruguay poised to join their ranks) have marriage equality and none of them have given rise to legalized man-horse marriage. Gay people are not the ones with bestiality on the minds, it is always you, the social conservatives, who bring that up. The fact that you constantly bring it up says something of you that you may not realize.

We call you bigots because you think we are all pedophiles. The ironic thing is that there are far more straight pedophiles than gay pedophiles but that is beside the point. Equating homosexuality and pedophilia is as offensive is it is factually incorrect. When you attempt to compare same-sex couples in a consenting relationship on the one hand with an adult taking advantage of an innocent child on the other hand,  you are showing how little you know about both scenarios. Just like with bestiality, constantly having pedophilia on the brain is more a social conservative tendency than a gay tendency. Seriously, we are not NAMBLA and it is utterly foolish to think otherwise.

We call you bigots because many of you take a very American concept - equal protections under the law - and call it radical. How is it radical to want to be treated as a first class citizen? How is it radical to want the 14th Amendment to actually mean something? Do you know who else has been considered radical? People who had the crazy idea that women should be able to vote were considered radical. A black woman who decided she would not be told where on a bus to sit was considered a radical. The founders of this very country who decided that taxation without representation was wrong, broke the American colonies away from the most powerful empire in the world, and plunged the fledgling nation into a war with the most powerful military of its day were also considered radicals. All of these radicals fought, all of these radicals won, and all of their radical causes are today seen as no-brainers. These causes had a common thread: the “radicals” had no intention of settling for Citizenship-Light. Gay people have no intention of settling either.

And lastly, we call you bigots because you have thrown a barrage of excuses against us in an attempt to justify your anti-gay animus and those excuses have been summarily thrown down, proven false, or been debunked. We have empirical studies on our side. We have common sense on our side. We have the Constitution on our side. Despite all of the evidence supporting equal rights and the facts that stand in opposition to your views, you still hold onto those views. While you are certainly entitled to your opinion, you are not entitled to deny the rights of your fellow citizens. And we are just that: YOUR FELLOW CITIZENS!!! It is high time you treated us as such.

When Parents Discriminate Against Their Kids

I do not have children myself. However, what I do know from friends who are parents is that having kids and watching them grow into being their own person changes how a parent views things they once thought they had a handle on. While parents spend so much time and effort (and money) trying to teach their children they ways of the world, the children have the effect of teaching their parents. Often times, the child can open their parents‘ eyes to a perspective they may not have thought of as viable.

It was a major news story last month when Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) announced his support for marriage equality in the wake of his son Will coming out as gay about two years beforehand. The Senator is certainly not the first person to site a familial connection as the catalyst for supporting LGBT equality, nor will he be the last. Many people - be they public figures or private citizens - who once stood in opposition to equality viewed those issues differently when they could put faces on them as a result of someone close to them coming out of the closet. 

For many people, even such a personal connection as a gay family member is not enough to induce open-mindedness. Case-in-point, Representative Matt Salmon Sr. (R-AZ). Like Portman, Salmon has a gay son (named Matt Jr.). Unlike Portman, Salmon is utterly unmoved on marriage equality, even though he has had more time with an openly gay son than Portman. Even though it takes longer for some folks to come around than others on any given topic, it appears that Rep. Salmon feels no need to make a change regardless of how the policies he advocates negatively effect his own flesh and blood.

What does it say about a parent when they are unable or unwilling to alter their views for the sake of their child‘s freedom and equality under the law? The bottom line is that a parent who is comfortable with the institutionalized discrimination their child faces is a prime example of poor parenting. It is hard to fathom that some people have such an unwavering disregard for the well-being of those they profess to love. On the positive side, in terms of the quest for LGBT equality, evidence points to Representative Salmon being far more the exception while Senator Portman is far more the rule.

Letterman Calls Anti-Gay Policies "Nonsense"

Senator Casey (D-PA) Supports Marriage Equality

From Philadelphia Gay News: 

“After much deliberation and after reviewing the legal, public policy and civil-rights questions presented, I support marriage equality for same-sex couples and believe that DOMA should be repealed,” Casey said in a statement exclusively first released to PGN Monday afternoon.

Casey previously backed civil unions for same-sex couples and has said he opposes constitutional bans on same-sex marriage. He has supported pro-LGBT measures such as the Employment Nondiscrimination Act and the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Casey said this week that he began to reassess his position on marriage equality in 2011 when the Respect for Marriage Act, which would lift DOMA, was introduced for the first time in the Senate.

“I began to focus on the issue of same-sex marriage much more intensely than I had before,” he said.

Tweet of the Day: March 26, 2013

An Outpouring of Support

For those who are somehow unaware, oral arguments took place today in the Supreme Court regarding California’s infamous Proposition 8, a voter initiative which denied same-sex couples the right to marry under the law (the law was passed in 2008). In honour of this, a campaign was begun to bring awareness and spread support for the freedom to marry. This campaign included wearing red or changing Facebook icons to red to symbolize love.

I did not expect to see much of an effect from this campaign except from the usual sources such as friends I have who are gay, organizations like the Human Rights Campaign, and so on. However, I saw a much larger outpouring of support for equality than I expected, including some unexpected sources. There were personal sources like former school and university mates, family members, friends and acquaintances, several of my fraternity brothers, and co-workers. There was also support from some more far reaching sources such as YouTube sensations like Philip DeFranco, bands like Carbon Leaf (one of my favourites), various political groups (not including the ones are that are LGBT-specific). Brendon Ayenbadejo of the National Football League was speaking at a rally in front of the United States Supreme Court building. Even Ben & Jerry’s ice cream voiced their support.

This is also coming on the heels of several United States senators (Warner of Virginia, Tester of Montana, Begich of Alaska, and McCaskill of Missouri) affirming their support for marriage equality in the span of about three days. While I have been cognizant of the ever-spreading support for equality, I am truly and happily astonished at the flood of support over the past several days for which I am truly thankful (as I am sure the rest of the LGBT community is as well). So much progress has been made recently and it is so important that we as a nation keep moving forward in our quest to being a more perfect union with liberty and justice FOR ALL!!!

Alaska Republicans Laugh At Equal Rights