4/30/14
4/29/14
This Tennessee wedding venue denied this gay couple, who were Iraqi War veterans, the right to have a commitment ceremony there and then changes its mind
WSMV Channel 4
"As owners of Mint Springs farm we have had time to regroup and reflect. We have reached out to the community and started a dialogue with Tennessee Equality Project. The Executive Director, Chris Sanders was able to meet with us. In order to move forward we have decided to change our policy. We will offer commitment ceremonies for any future couples that have a legal license from other states or countries. We also want to broaden this offer to include couples who simply want a commitment ceremony with no intention of obtaining legal marriage license. This will be our policy moving forward, it will remain true to all future prospective clients."
Celebrating male beauty
The late Ayrton Senna, one of Formula One's great drivers, who died in a race in the 1990s. He wasn't gay, but he sure was handsome.
From The Brady Bunch to The Fosters in my lifetime, what a journey! JLo's new family drama, centered around a lesbian couple and their foster kids, is heartwarming
Is this show the best, new thing on TV? No, but it is well-done, full of family love, and incredible to see an even more realistic gay couple than the one on Modern Family. Thank you, Jennifer Lopez for creating and producing this show.
Rightly, The LGBT Rights movement heads south and west
From The New York Times:
The country’s leading gay rights groups and donors, after a decade focused on legalizing same-sex marriage, are embarking on a major drive to win more basic civil rights and workplace protections in Southern and Western states where the rapid progress of the movement has largely eluded millions of gay men and lesbians.
The effort will shift tens of millions of dollars in the next few years to what advocates described as the final frontier for gay rights: states like Mississippi, Georgia, Arkansas and Texas, where Republicans dominate elected office and traditional cultural views on homosexuality still prevail.
The new strategy reflects the growing worry within the movement that recent legal and political successes have formed two quickly diverging worlds for lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender Americans: one centered on the coasts and major cities, and another stretching across the South and up through the Rocky Mountains, in states where gays enjoy virtually no legal protections against discrimination.
Spiritual lesson of the day, via a Mary Oliver poem
"Wild Geese"
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
~~ Mary Oliver
Via Doug Powell
4/28/14
The wisdom of Nelson Mandela that applies to the LGBT community at this moment
It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man's freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else's freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.--Nelson Mandela
4/27/14
4/26/14
Quote of the day, on who deserves the credit for the recent successes of the LGBT movement
This movement for love belongs to all of us, the LGBT, our allies, and all those who has changed their minds and opened up their hearts. Not just one leader or action. The community anger and fallout from Jo Becker's controversial book glorifying Chad Griffin, Ted Olson, and David Boies continues, but saner heads, like David Mixner below, remind us of this essential truth:
Each and every one of us made history. The early pioneers who suffered so much at the hands of the bigots brought us to this point. The young men who died of AIDS and fought for justice to their dying breaths made it happen. The thousands who were beaten, killed or had their homes attacked for being an LGBT American brought us to this point in history
That is the simple truth.
Many leaders and many books will give us different versions of this journey. Some will rightfully honor heroes, and some will come off as frantic egotistical attempts by figures desperate to be remembered as crucial to this epic moment in history. Some will downplay others' roles in this struggle and some will achieve justified acclaim.
What will be remembered by future generations is our incredible and noble struggle for equality. Very few names will be known but our collective effort will never be forgotten.
Long after I am gone my name will be known to very, very few. What I do know gives me great joy. Deep within my heart I know that I have given everything possible. By joining with other LGBT Americans and our allies I have not only witnessed history but participated in it.
That is a damn good feeling to me and should be enough for everyone.
--David Mixner, longtime LGBT and AIDS activists
Wrong! The Archbishop of Minneapolis demonizes same-sex marriage and the LGBT, but has been negligent in policing child-abusing priests in his diocese
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Watch as Archbishop John Nienstedt squirm and avoid taking responsibility as he is being deposed by a lawyer for the victims of Catholic priest sexual abuse in Minneapolis diocese.
Watch as Archbishop John Nienstedt squirm and avoid taking responsibility as he is being deposed by a lawyer for the victims of Catholic priest sexual abuse in Minneapolis diocese.
4/24/14
4/22/14
My favorite car, the Mazda Miata, turns 25 years old. I owned one for seven glorious years
As Tom Voelk says, "those who dismiss it as a chick car have never driven one." Amen!
4/21/14
Cause boys just wanna have fun!
You can kiss and play around with whoever you want or like and it doesn't mean anything. But, in my own life, who you fall in love with determines your sexual orientation.
Having said that, I know that many bisexual guys tend to fall in love with women but often enjoy sex more with men. However, that is not my experience so I leave it to them to explain their experiences.
Just another reason we don't give up on anyone: Prop 8 attorney's views are evolving after his stepdaughter came out
The lawyer who argued before the supreme court in favor of upholding California's ban on gay marriage learned while he was handling the case that one of his children is gay and now is helping her plan her wedding with another woman.
Attorney Charles Cooper says his view of same-sex marriage is evolving after having argued in court that gay unions could undermine marriages between a man and a woman.
The revelation is an unexpected footnote in the years-long debate over Proposition 8, the California measure struck down by the supreme court last year. It is also offers a glimpse, through the eyes of one family, of the country's rapidly shifting opinions of gay marriage, with most public polls now showing majorities in favor of allowing the unions.
Cooper learned that his stepdaughter Ashley was gay as the Proposition 8 case wound its way through appellate court, according to a forthcoming book about the lengthy legal battle. And with the supreme court ruling now behind him, Cooper cast his personal opinion on gay marriage as an evolving process.
"My views evolve on issues of this kind the same way as other people's do, and how I view this down the road may not be the way I view it now, or how I viewed it 10 years ago," Cooper said in journalist Jo Becker's book "Forcing the Spring: Inside the Fight for Marriage Equality."
Cooper's words are reminiscent of the language President Obama used throughout his first term to describe his "evolving" views on gay marriage. In 2012, Obama announced publicly that he did, in fact, support the rights of same-sex couples to marry.
Quote of the day, on being true to yourself
"Don't wait. Take advantage of everything that you have in front of you. Don’t wait because you’re scared. Don’t wait until you’re 35 or 40 years old and done playing the sport that you love. Because it’s stressful to live that way. I cried most of the nights when I was in the closet just because it starts to take a toll on you just because you’re worried about how people are going to think about you and what they’re going to say about you. Take advantage of it now. It’s going to make your life so much easier."-- UMASS basketball player Derrick Gordon,
4/17/14
Another reason we never give up on anyone: Debby Booe explains how she came to support LGBT rights
“I'm really happy to be here in support of GLAAD, because I am one of the people that has made the transition from an old way of thinking to a new one. And I think that's really the crux of what GLAAD is all about...I have really good friends and family members that have changed my mind. And the couple that we're with tonight is a lesbian couple who attended the church where my husband was associate rector.”--Debby Boone
4/16/14
On my way home tonight, I saw something that brought tears to my eyes: a young gay male couple sleeping with their heads together. My San Francisco!
My inner 16-year-old weeps for joy! The courage and sacrifices of countless gay people and their allies have made this scene possible. Bravo.
4/14/14
4/13/14
4/12/14
Quote of the day: "We have moved in the right direction...but we still have a long ways to go in the country. The bigger difference is that back then they had hoods."
"A lot of things have happened in this country, but we have so far to go. There's not a whole lot that has changed. We can talk about baseball. Talk about politics. Sure, this country has a black president, but when you look at a black president, President Obama is left with his foot stuck in the mud from all of the Republicans with the way he's treated. We have moved in the right direction, and there have been improvements, but we still have a long ways to go in the country. The bigger difference is that back then they had hoods. Now they have neckties and starched shirts."
- Baseball legend Hank Aaron, 80, speaking yesterday on the 40th anniversary of his having broken Babe Ruth's all-time home run record.
4/11/14
4/10/14
4/8/14
4/7/14
Two opposing views of the Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich resignation
A civil rights movement without toleration is not a civil rights movement; it is a cultural campaign to expunge and destroy its opponents. A moral movement without mercy is not moral; it is, when push comes to shove, cruel. For a decade and half, we have fought the battle for equal dignity for gay people with sincerity, openness, toleration and reason. It appears increasingly as if we will have to fight and fight again to prevent this precious and highly successful legacy from being hijacked by a righteous, absolutely certain, and often hateful mob. We are better than this. And we must not give in to it.
--Andrew Sullivan, founder of the Daily Dish.
"Would Sullivan rush to this guy's defense if it turned out he was a Grand Wizard in the KKK? Of course not. We are allowed to be intolerant of people who operate outside the bounds of civil decency. This wasn't governmental action infringing on any Constitutional rights. This was Mozilla developers saying they refused to do work with a bigot, private websites blocking access to the Firefox browser because they refused to do business with a bigot, and employees of the firm speaking up because they refused to work for a bigot. In short, it was the free market expressing itself. Eich was perfectly within his rights to stay at Mozilla, but he would then face a hostile market and eventually faced the reality that he couldn't do his job in that environment. The free market spoke, and a free market enterprise was forced to react."
-- Markos Moulitsas, founder of Daily Kos
I tend to agree to Markos on this situation but Andrew is right to remind us to not to be hateful or too triumphant as we continue to win in the courts and in the court of public opinion. This is a hard thing to do for a group of people who have been bullied, vilified, discriminated against, and invalidated.
We need to aggressively move ahead with kindness and grace.
--Andrew Sullivan, founder of the Daily Dish.
"Would Sullivan rush to this guy's defense if it turned out he was a Grand Wizard in the KKK? Of course not. We are allowed to be intolerant of people who operate outside the bounds of civil decency. This wasn't governmental action infringing on any Constitutional rights. This was Mozilla developers saying they refused to do work with a bigot, private websites blocking access to the Firefox browser because they refused to do business with a bigot, and employees of the firm speaking up because they refused to work for a bigot. In short, it was the free market expressing itself. Eich was perfectly within his rights to stay at Mozilla, but he would then face a hostile market and eventually faced the reality that he couldn't do his job in that environment. The free market spoke, and a free market enterprise was forced to react."
-- Markos Moulitsas, founder of Daily Kos
I tend to agree to Markos on this situation but Andrew is right to remind us to not to be hateful or too triumphant as we continue to win in the courts and in the court of public opinion. This is a hard thing to do for a group of people who have been bullied, vilified, discriminated against, and invalidated.
We need to aggressively move ahead with kindness and grace.
4/5/14
Rightfully, hundreds of parents show up at the Charlotte Catholic High School after a nun stigmatizes gays during a student assembly
Imagine what those (closeted) gay students felt sitting there listening to this judgement and hatred of them. It boils my blood when I think about it!
Fortunately the Catholic Church leadership is beginning to realize that the laity is correctly rejecting its institutionalized homophobia, instead promoting Jesus' central teaching of love and acceptance of all God's children, LGBT included.
Just another reason we are winning in our movement for full equality: straight allies are speaking out for what is right and fair
From the Washington Post:
A Marine silent no longer on gay marriage
By Roger Dean Huffstetler,
Roger Dean Huffstetler is a former Marine Corps sergeant.
I slept with a gay man for six months in Afghanistan. No one asked. He did not tell.
In 2005, I and 200 Marines in my squadron deployed to Afghanistan to support the global war on terrorism. We were stationed at Bagram air base, a deep bowl surrounded by snowcapped mountains, where it rained and snowed while the sun beamed, prompting one Marine to remark, “Welcome to Afghanistan, the only place on Earth where you get all four seasons and a rocket in the same day.”
We lived in “B-huts,” wooden houses with no internal structure, subdivided into “rooms” by flimsy plywood boards. Every moment was spent in close quarters: working in small offices, eating meals in the chow hall, sleeping in our racks, exercising. We saw each other at our best and our worst, shared secrets and fears, lost patience with and supported one another through the duration of deployment.
Sgt. Santiago and I spoke often, if casually. He routinely had one of the highest physical fitness test scores in our unit and never missed a chance to go salsa dancing stateside with fellow Marines, including our senior enlisted Marine and his wife, whom he persuaded to join a few times. He also proudly displayed his Puerto Rican flag in his barracks. Nevertheless, he was a reserved man, quiet, private. I assumed these were inherent personality traits. I didn’t realize that he was hiding something.
I believed I knew the men in my B-hut better than I knew most of my friends at home, yet the man sleeping next door had a secret he dared not reveal for fear of being removed from active duty. It never crossed my mind that he was gay — or that I could have done so much more to be his friend.
Even as a kid, Andy was exceptionally affable, the kind of person who could talk to a trash can. He never met a stranger, and he unfailingly seemed to know where he was going. Andy was surrounded by a close group of friends, always together, always laughing. It’s fair to say everyone enjoyed being around him.
In our teens, Andy and I would go on mission trips around the country, helping to clean or build homes, with a little vacation Bible school on the side. Perhaps Andy knew then that he was gay — it seems likely — but he flirted with girls, same as the rest of us. If he did know, he kept it to himself, and I lived in ignorance about it.
It would be 20 years before Facebook told me what I didn’t know about my childhood friend. About the same time, Sgt. Santiago’s news broke through the same social network: Both men were engaged to be married. To men.
There was suddenly nothing I wanted more than make amends.
No, I never gay-bashed. I didn’t bully, I didn’t hate, I didn’t torment.
But I did say “fag” to a fellow Marine in front of Sgt. Santiago. I did stay seated in the pew when my minister challenged, “Don’t let anyone tell you that this church is soft on homosexuality.” Silence is a most powerful consent.
I would think: Civil unions, what’s wrong with that? I considered myself “accepting” and “tolerant,” excusing the soft discrimination that’s easy to shrug off, the implicit inequality of separate but equal.
The irony was that I had always imagined that if I’d lived in the time of segregation and the civil rights movement, I would be the white Southerner who was proud to march with the NAACP — that I would tear down bigoted beliefs and demand equality for all, even putting myself at risk if need be.
But I didn’t do those things. I watched the fight right in front of me without question, inactive and accepting — just like the generations before me.
Well, no longer.
Andy and Sgt. Santiago both happen to live in New York now, and in a single visit I managed to apologize to and feel the weight of my embarrassment before each of them.
I blinked back tears as I spoke to Sgt. Santiago, who slept next door in Afghanistan, watching for my life as I watched for his:
“I’m sorry I let you down.”
To Andy, my childhood friend who still worships the same God as I do:
“Finding out you are gay has been instrumental in my supporting gay marriage. I’m sorry it took this long.”
And to both of them:
“I aim to do everything I can to make up for being late to the party.”
We don’t need to look backward for a chance to stand up for principles. Life isn’t about always being right — I was wrong for a long time — but about learning from mistakes and making amends. So I started with those conversations and writing about the effect these two men had on me, about how someone raised a Southern Baptist can love everyone equally and can advocate marriage equality.
If you’re reading this and you go to church every Sunday but you know that discrimination is wrong, or you’re serving overseas and worried that you or others in your squadron can’t be themselves, there is something you can do. Write. Speak out. Find the Andys and Sgt. Santiagos in your life and make amends. There is still time to be on the right side of history.
Watch this Notre Dame athlete now after he nearly took his own life, then came out, and was supported by his team. Rising!
Matt Dooley is discovering that we all are God's children, including the LGBT, despite the flawed teachings of the Catholic Church say about homosexuality. Because of people like Matt and his team, we are rising!
4/3/14
Photo of the day, from the Britain
Last weekend, when same-sex marriage went into effect in Britain, the gay pride flag was hoisted about many government buildings, in the same country that had tried Oscar Wilde and chemically castrated Alan Turing. And this change was championed by a Conservative prime minister. It's a reminder of the good things people can do when they overcome small-mindedness and fear.
Obama talks about the Republican worldview of "trickle down" economics where they cut foodstamps, medicaid, and social security
From thenewcivilrightsmovement.com:
Giving the Republicans “credit,” the President said, “they do have one original idea, which is to repeal Obamacare — because they haven’t tried that 50 times. Fifty times they’ve tried to do that. So that means they would take away health coverage not only for more than 7 million Americans who’ve done the responsible thing, signed up, bought health care for themselves and their families, but for the 3 million young adults who’ve been able to stay on their parents’ plan under this law. What I just told you about being able to stay on your parent’s plan — the Republicans don’t like that.”
“And their budget guts the rules we put in place to protect middle-class families from another financial crisis like the one that we’ve endured. So if this all sounds familiar, it should be familiar because it was their economic plan in the 2012 campaign, it was their economic plan in 2010. It’s like that movie Groundhog Day — except it’s not funny. If they tried to sell this sandwich at Zingerman’s, they’d have to call it the Stinkburger, or the Meanwich.
4/2/14
4/1/14
As my grandmother used to say, "If it is on 'Days of Our Lives', so goes America." Sonny and Will become the first same-sex couple to marry on a soap
I am thinking of my Grandma Myrtle today.
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