Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
2/22/12
Before Bobby Brown, there was Robyn...
From the Daily Beast:
Peter Tatchell, the legendary international gay rights activist, reminiscences about younger Whitney's closest friend, Robyn Crawford:
When I met them, it was obvious they were madly in love. Their intimacy and affection was so sweet and romantic. They held hands in the back of the car like teenage sweethearts. Clearly more than just friends, they were a gorgeous couple and so happy together. To see their love was infectious and uplifting.
Whitney was happiest and at the peak of her career when she was with Robyn. Sadly, she suffered family and church pressure to end her greatest love of all. She was fearful of the effects that lesbian rumours might have on her family, reputation and career. Eventually she succumbed.
The difference between Obama's stance on marriage equality and that of Santorum's
Andrew Sullivan sums it up quite well, and spares no one:
Yes, I think Obama is patently disingenuous in his "evolving" bullshit on marriage equality. I think it's fair game to pummel him for it, from right or left (and both have). But there is no equivalence here at all. None.
All Obama has ever said is that he is concerned with the word "marriage" but still favors state and federal civil unions that contain every single right that civil marriage contains, the repeal of DOMA, and has refused to defend DOMA's constitutionality in court. Santorum, in contrast, wants to amend the federal constitution to nullify all civil unions, domestic partnerships, and civil marriages for gays recognized in any state law. He would single out a minority within this country for discrimination in the federal constitution itself! He would tear bi-national couples apart and remove children from their parents. Does McGurn really not see that this is a distinction with a huge difference?
Santorum believes also that all non-procreative marital sex is sinful and certainly has no constitutional protection under some penumbra called "privacy." This means he also in principle believes the government has the right to criminalize masturbation, even if, on prudential grounds, he wouldn't back enforcing it. He opposes all contraception and has compared gay relationships with "man-on-dog" bestiality. He has defined himself, unlike Obama, as a candidate motivated primarily by social issues throughout his career. He is the most radical of the religious fanatics yet to emerge from the Republican base. Quit pretending otherwise.
Amen! -- Joe
Steve Locke argues that gay men should stop having sex "with Republican homophobes, no matter how hot they are."
From the Good Men Project, read part of Steve's rant:
Paul Babeu, George Rekers, Troy King, Richard Curtis and the beat goes on. These men aren’t worthy of being called gay. They’re cowards. I’m tired of hearing about people who “can’t come out.” No one ever said it was easy being gay. There are lots of people like myself who could never pass for being straight and moreover, we never wanted to. We got the shit beaten out of us. We fought back. We marched. We got in people’s faces. We fought for our jobs and our rights. We advocated when we started to die from a plague and with the help of the many lesbians who went into the healing professions, a lot of us survived to today. So don’t tell me about how hard it is to come out. And don’t call these men gay. They aren’t gay. They are liars and cowards. They haven’t earned the right to be called gay.
The thing that makes sick bastards like this come–the thing that really gets them off–is the knowledge that they are doing something dirty. It’s so much hotter for them if it’s a secret. So that’s what sex with men is to them, a dirty little secret. That’s not what gay people are and that’s not what we deserve from someone who says that they love you, but they won’t be seen in public with you. Or worse yet, someone that will sleep with you on Sunday night and then advocate for the removal of your rights and humanity on Monday morning.
...So it’s past time to stop fucking these guys. And don’t believe the crap they tell you. They hate you almost as much as they hate themselves, and they’ll discard you like a used condom when they are done with you.
Read the whole article here.
While I don't share the intensity of Steve's anger, I understand why he feels the way he does: men who enjoy the hard-fought freedoms of being gay but vote against their own interests, freedoms, and community by supporting homophobic Republicans, like George W. or Chris Christie, at the ballot box. What self-hatred! This is why I never knowingly dated or had sex with a gay Republican -- most of them don't share my core value of equality for all people -- marriage equality for gays, abortion/contraception choice and equal pay for women, affirmative action for oppressed minorities, and basic human rights for undocumented workers and others. (Having said that, there are exceptions: for example, I do respect openly gay candidate Fred Karger for running in the GOP presidential primaries and conservative Andrew Sullivan, two men who walk their talk.) I don't think I have missed much.
2/21/12
Zen lesson: "Today is today"
Reality is a staircase going neither up or down,
we don't move,
today is today, always is today.
--Octavio Paz
via Zen Calendar
Andrew Sullivan on Gov. Christie's "act of cowardice" in vetoing NJ's marriage equality law: "..this is what a legislative debate can do that no referendum can, and it's why the founders established a republic not a pure democracy..."
Andrew Sullivan calls out GOP hypocrisy:
As the GOP moves relentlessly off the far right cliff, the country is edging relentlessly toward accepting the humanity of gay couples and our marriages and relationships. But Chris Christie's veto - after New Jersey's legislature backed equality - and Maryland's upcoming referendum - after its legislature and governor passed a marriage equality law - form a sad last ditch.
To give some perspective, when we first started this push for marriage equality 23 years ago or so, we were told this was an interesting if obviously nuts idea. But the opposition was adamant about one thing: the courts had nothing whatever to do with ensuring minority rights, if that minority were gay. Going the court route was undemocratic. I remember being lectured on this by the Congressional Committee in the DOMA hearings in 1996.
And I saw their point at the time when public opinion was so hostile. I was always more leery of the court strategy than my friend and ally in the fledgling movement, Evan Wolfson, at the time. I didn't want a Roe-style over-reach. I thought that public education and state legislative debate was the right way forward. If in the end, the courts reacted to a shift in public opinion, and we won the constitutional and legal arguments, great. But I thought state legislatures were the main way to go.
So we did. And guess what? They moved the goalposts on us. When we actually began to win in state legislatures, such as California (twice!), or New Hampshire, or now Maryland and New Jersey and Washington State, that process became suddenly unacceptable - and undemocratic! - as well. Even on an issue many hold to be a core civil right, we were told the courts were irrelevant and now that the legislatures were irrelevant. This was particularly odd coming from conservatives who at one point in time were strong believers in restraints on majority tyranny. But this is what a legislative debate can do that no referendum can, and it's why the founders established a republic not a pure democracy...
I am not afraid of referendums in New Jersey or Maryland. Let's do all we can to win them. The polls are now increasingly on our side. But the way in which a tiny 2- 3 percent minority seeking basic civil equality has been forced now to be subject to state referendums, even after winning legislative victories, strikes me as revealing. It's basically an attack on representative government, a resort to the forms of decision-making which maximize the potential for anonymous bigotry and minimize the importance of representative government, a core achievement of Anglo-American democracy, that can help enhance reason of the accountable against the sometimes raw prejudice of the majority.
Christie is a man whose candor I admire in many ways. But this was an act of cowardice and unfairness and a misguided disregard for representative democracy. How many other duly enacted laws must now be sent to the referendum process for final judgment. Why have a legislature at all? And this from the party that claims to defend the Constitution.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)