Category Archives: Gay Rights

As empowering as the blogosphere has been for gay and gay-friendly folks, it is always worth remembering that the virtual world is also host to plenty of hateful and reactionary rhetoric. In Indiana, one such site is a right-wing blog called Veritas Rex. Recently, a friend called my attention to a post there, headlined piteously “No Choice for Pro-Family Voters.” The post had been triggered by news that the local Stonewall Democrats had hosted a reception for the Democratic Gubernatorial candidates. And the candidates actually attended! And candidates who openly take money and/or solicit votes from citizens who are gay can’t possibly be “pro-family.”

 

Right.

 

Odd as it may seem to the exemplars of Godliness over at Veritas Rex, I have always considered myself pretty damn pro-family. (We have five kids! We’ve been married for thirty years! I couldn’t stand being any more pro-family!)   

 

Admittedly I have a rather different take from the wingers on what a real family looks like, but then, I live in the reality-based community, where we’ve noticed that families have changed since the 1960’s.

 

In 1960, according to the U.S. census, 44.2% of Americans lived in “Ozzie and Harriet” households, defined as a married couple living with their own children under eighteen. (Okay, so maybe mom was hitting the bottle in her suburban kitchen and dad was smacking the kids around when he came home from golfing with his buddies, but in Ozzie and Harriet time we didn’t ask impertinent questions. They were married, the kids were theirs, God was pleased. End of story.)

 

By 2000, however, only 23.5% of Americans fell into that category, and the folks at places like Veritas Rex (the folks who know exactly which families God approves of) are anguishing over what went wrong.

 

Data not being the wingers strong suit, permit me to enlighten them.

 

One big piece of the puzzle is pretty value-neutral: people got older. The life expectancy and average age of the population has increased, and those kids aren’t under 18 any more. More women are widowed. But there are, of course, many other factors. Maybe mom got the hell out of the kitchen, found out she could make a living and didn’t have to stay any longer in a sterile or miserable marriage. Maybe Dad found the courage to come out, and is living happily with his life partner in Upper Sandusky. Or maybe Mom and Dad are happily married, but have joined the growing numbers of married couples who’ve decided—for whatever reason—not to become a Mom and Dad.

 

When we look at couples who do have children, it is certainly true that two-parent families have more money, and more personal resources, and that money and other resources are important to childrearing. In a society that truly valued children, the census findings would motivate us to find ways to help children who are living in poverty, children whose custodial parent is overwhelmed. A number of initiatives come immediately to mind: expanded Day Care and Head Start programs, easier access to Medicaid coverage for children and pregnant women, increased educational and job opportunities for single parents.

 

Whatever the merits of such programs, however, they aren’t even being discussed. They cost money, and we need to save our money to make war in Iraq, and to ensure that the richest 1% of the population continue to enjoy tax relief. Instead, for the poor folks, George W. Bush and his administration have pursued programs that “provide incentives” for marriage by those receiving government aid. (Add a breadwinner to that household and get off the dole, you slut!)

 

Leaving aside the general lunacy of this approach, gays have to appreciate the irony. The Bush Administration says marriage is the answer to all our social ills. It will provide jobs for the unemployed, make an uncaring father into an earnest and helpful mentor, improve public school test scores and keep people off welfare. (Hell, it might even cure cancer! Worth a try—maybe we can avoid expanding health care.) But even though marriage is the prescription for what ails you, we sure aren’t going to let those homosexuals marry! Two parent families are more financially secure, and have more resources to devote to childrearing, but we aren’t going to let gays and lesbians in committed relationships adopt children!

 

Those who bemoan the demise of “traditional families” and “family values” refuse to admit that there are many different kinds of families, and that no one type has a monopoly on the ability to raise emotionally healthy children and contribute to the public welfare.  They are too intent on seeing to it that everyone accepts their limited and limiting definition of “family.”

 

Real  “family values” would require valuing families. Everyone’s families. 

 

As gay communities celebrate Pride this year, they can take comfort—and pride—in the knowledge that the culture wars are ending. And that the good guys won.

 

Verily.

 

 

    

Comments

By the time this column hits newsstands, readers will have heard more than most of them ever wanted to hear about Barack Obama’s pastor, Jeremy Wright. So I apologize in advance for belaboring the subject, but I remain steamed.

Why, you may ask, is a white Jewish grandmother (a demographic to which Hillary considers herself entitled) brooding over the coverage of an African-American Christian pastor? I’ll tell you: because I come from a tradition that is all about Justice. On matters of faith, any three Jews will hold at least five different beliefs; we’ll argue into the wee hours about politics, public policy and whether nice Jewish boys should attend medical school or law school. But most of us imbibed the Talmudic injunction “Justice, justice shalt thou pursue” with our mothers’ milk. And the brouhaha over Reverend Wright has been unjust on so many levels.

First—and most obvious—is the highly selective nature of the clips being shown endlessly on cable television. As many columnists and reporters have pointed out (notably, Anderson Cooper on his own blog), all of the Reverend’s hundreds of sermons are digitally available. Very few of them contained inflammatory passages. Indeed, even the statements that have aroused so much anger don’t sound nearly so incendiary when shown in context, as part of the larger message. (I shudder to think how I would sound—not being the most temperate person around—if someone selected the least reasonable statements I had made and presented them as representative.)

Second, there are the pious statements from people who were shocked, shocked, that Obama didn’t leave his church. How could he stay if he really disagreed with portions of his pastor’s sermons. Oh, yeah—as a Catholic friend of mine wondered aloud, how many of those people are Catholics who left the Church over the predatory priest scandals? As a student of mine remarked, “I’m a conservative Christian. I don’t agree with everything Pat Robertson says. But I agree with a lot, and I don’t stop being a Conservative Baptist just because there’s stuff I disagree with.”

Third—and perhaps most telling—where is all the righteous indignation about the homophobes and anti-Semites whose endorsement John McCain has actively sought?  Whatever the Reverend Wright’s positions on responsibility for 9-11 or AIDS in the African-American community, he has, according to the Washington Blade, “largely supported gay rights and welcomed gays into his 8,000-member congregation.” According to Equality Illinois, “Trinity [Wright’s congregation] has been among the strongest supporters of LGBT rights.” The church has a gay and lesbian singles ministry, and Wright has spoken up in defense of gay pastors.

Contrast that with pronouncements by Televangelist John Hagee, the virulently anti-gay, anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic Religious Right figure whose endorsement was actively sought and publicly welcomed by John McCain. (Hagee calls the Catholic Church “the great whore.”) Or with McCain’s acceptance of support from radical right leader Janet Folger, who—among other charming sentiments—has declared that “Anita Bryant was right.” Or the Reverend Ron Parsley, who McCain calls his “personal spiritual advisor.”  According to People for the American Way, “You won’t hear Parsley rail against Catholics, but you will hear him rail against gays, abortion, Islam, judges, and People for the American Way.” In Ohio, Parsley has built a political machine of “Patriot Pastors” who turn their churches into get-out-the-vote campaigns during elections—undoubtedly the “spiritual” element that most appeals to Mr. McCain.

If we are going to obsess endlessly over Rev. Wright’s less elevated pronouncements,  we might expect the media to give equal time to the considerably more florid and consistent positions of these “spiritual advisors.” If you have somehow failed to notice prominent reporting about the positions taken by Mr. McCain’s spiritual gurus, however, you aren’t alone—The Carpetbagger Report ran a Lexis-Nexis search to see just how many stand-alone articles were written about “McCain’s outreach to a bigoted and nutty televangelist” in the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal. The total? Zero.

Will this focus on handpicked passages from Reverend Wright’s sermons sink Barack Obama? The answer is no. If Barack Obama loses, Reverend Wright may be the excuse; he won’t be the reason.

Obama has frequently said that this election is a choice between the past and the future. The use of Reverend Wright’s sermons to stir up racial resentments is consistent with the politics of the past. It remains to be seen whether Americans will vote for a different, fairer future.

Comments

 

The Indiana Senate has demonstrated that it will spend its limited time during this short session on those matters most important to—who, exactly?

 

At a time when public passions are at a boiling point over our dysfunctional tax system, when citizens are demanding that we streamline Indiana’s wasteful, overlapping government structures, the Senate has decided to take decisive action—to ban same-sex marriage.

 

By this point, the arguments against SJ7 are well-known. It “solves” a problem that doesn’t exit, by denying still-theoretical gay couples access to hundreds of legal rights that heterosexual citizens enjoy. Those include the right to be appointed as a guardian of an ailing or injured partner, the right to take family leave, and the right to half of the partnership’s accumulated property if the relationship dissolves. Same sex partners pay more taxes because they aren’t entitled to spousal gift and estate tax exemptions and deductions. They can’t seek damages for a partner’s wrongful death. There are hundreds more—rights enjoyed by heterosexuals married two days, but denied to gays who have been partners for 30 years.

 

Worse, as constitutional expert Aviva Orenstein testified, part B of this poorly-drafted Amendment is likely to hurt all unmarried couples, not just gay ones, and is an invitation to the “judicial activism” that proponents claim to detest. No one has a clue what “legal incidents of marriage” are.

 

SJR 7 is opposed by Indiana’s largest employers, by many clergymen and religious organizations, by university professors, by dozens of professional organizations, and in recent polls, by a majority of Indiana citizens. So what compelling justifications are offered for cluttering the Indiana constitution with this confusing and discriminatory language?

 

Basically, proponents say gays shouldn’t be allowed to marry because some religions teach that homosexuality is immoral. (Of course, all religions teach that rape and murder are immoral—but Indiana allows rapists and murderers to marry. Go figure.) They say marriage and sex are for procreation (although we allow sterile folks to marry). Most of all, they insist that recognizing gay unions will undermine families and the institution of marriage. (Similar claims were made about interracial marriage, and about allowing women to own property and vote.)

 

Let’s at least be honest. This isn’t an effort to protect families—it is an effort to privilege some families at the expense of others. SJ7 is not about religion or morality—it is about whose religion, whose morality.

 

This is also not about our Senators responding to some groundswell of public opinion. This is an issue rapidly losing its salience with most voters, who are understandably a lot more concerned about taxes, crime, access to health care and other bread-and-butter and quality of life issues. To the extent the Senate is responding to public pressure, it is pressure coming from a small but highly vocal constituency.  

 

We can only hope that when SJR7 arrives in the Indiana House, our Representatives give it the priority it deserves—and bury this bad bill whose time has thankfully passed.

 

 

 

   

 

 

Comments

Word Column                                                              Sheila Suess Kennedy

January 29, 2008                                                          811 words

 

A Post-Culture-War America?                                                                        

Okay, let me begin with an admission—I’m obsessed with the Presidential campaign. Totally, hopelessly obsessed. I spend really embarrassing amounts of time emailing back and forth with two of my sons who are equally obsessed, and equally enamored of “my” candidate.

By the time this column appears in print, the primary may well be decided. Worse, on those rare occasions when I force myself to be realistic, I have to admit that the odds are against my guy; the smart money says he isn’t going to be the candidate. The thing is, it has been so long since there has been a national candidate I could wholeheartedly support; it’s sort of like falling in love, even when you know—as my husband keeps warning me—you are likely to get your heart broken. Again.

When I sat down to write this column, I wasn’t going to write about the primary. But then I thought about why it is that I am so enthusiastic about Barack Obama, why his emergence has made me feel almost hopeful for the future of the country I love, and it seemed a phenomenon worth exploring, because his candidacy has a particular message for America’s minority communities, including the gay community.

The past seven years have been a disaster for America, and if polls are to be believed, a significant majority of Americans recognize the dimensions of that disaster. We are a sour, dispirited electorate. (My husband says I’ve been in a really bad mood since 2000.) In the immediate aftermath of 9-11, there was a rush of national solidarity and the best kind of patriotism, but it didn’t take long for this Administration to slam that window shut, and to turn us against each other. “Good Christian Amuricans” were under attack by “Islamofascists,” “homosexual deviates,” “secular humanists” and other assorted heathens—and they weren’t going to let us forget to be very, very afraid.

Fair is fair; this Administration didn’t invent the culture wars. They just used culture war issues to gain and retain power. I don’t have to remind readers of The Word how Karl Rove and his political disciples sliced and diced the electorate in order to win elections; anyone who voted in a swing state in 2004 knows just how well the cynical use of state constitutional marriage amendments worked—bringing out the haters to vote against the “queers” and not coincidentally to pull a lever for George W. Bush.

Bush and his crowd will be gone in November, and we can all breathe a sigh of relief. (Hell, we can have a party! I certainly intend to.) It is certainly true that almost anyone who takes the oath of office next January will be an improvement. But we have a chance to do more than trade a sleazy, incompetent Commander in Chief for a sleazy, competent one. We have a chance to elect a post-culture-war President, and begin to put the nastiness and intolerance behind us.

When the campaign began, I’d have gladly taken any of the Democratic front-runners. (Someday, perhaps, if the sane people retake control of the GOP, I can feel that way about Republicans again…). But after watching the Clintons’ willingness to say and do anything in South Carolina—their willingness to distort, smear and shamelessly use the race card a la Karl Rove—I no longer feel that way.

The Clintons have been allies of the African-American community for decades—but they were clearly willing to throw blacks under the bus when they thought it served their purposes. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” gave the gay community a taste of how lasting their commitment to gay rights was. Hillary is running well among Hispanics, but she was quick to retreat from her statement at an early debate that undocumented workers should be able to obtain drivers’ licenses—an issue very important to that community. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the Clintons’ alliances are strategic—and disposable—rather than principled and enduring.

As Ted Kennedy said when he endorsed Obama, we have a chance to make this a transformational election. We can put a new kind of candidate in office; multi-ethnic, multi-racial and post-culture-war. As Obama himself said in his South Carolina victory speech, this is not an election about gender or race or ethnicity—it is about the old politics versus a new politics. It is about the past versus the future.

I am so ready for that future.

It may be that by the time you read this column, the primary is effectively over. It may well be the case that the “old politics” has won. (There’s an old saying that goes, “age and treachery will beat youth and skill every time,” and for all I know, that’s true.) But for right now, for the first time in a very long time, I’m in a good mood.

 

Comments

Well, I see that in addition to recipes for cooking squirrels in popcorn poppers, Mike Huckabee has shared some wisdom about God’s plan for the U.S. Constitution, specifically His desire to insert provisions prohibiting abortion and same-sex marriage. As in, God doesn’t want us aborting or cavorting (with or without state sanction), and we ought to revise the U.S. Constitution to reflect God’s will on those matters.

Leaving aside the broader issue—i.e., why, if I wanted to live in a country where some people’s narrow vision of religiosity was made the law of the land, I wouldn’t just move to Saudi Arabia—I want to address one claim Huckabee made, because it is a common theme of arguments against same-sex marriage. Huckabee said, “Marriage has historically, as long as there’s been human history, meant a man and a woman in a relationship for life.”

Except that’s simply untrue. And not just untrue around the edges; it is massively, demonstrably, wildly untrue.

In Ancient Greece, marriage was important, but for entirely practical reasons. Parents chose their children’s partners for economic reasons, and the purpose was to produce children. Women were considered inferior to men, who were free to indulge their romantic and sexual desires elsewhere; as Demosthenes famously explained, “We have prostitutes for our pleasure, concubines for our health, and wives to bear us lawful offspring.” Many men also established sexual and emotional relationships with young boys, and those relationships were widely accepted. Husbands could divorce relatively easily, especially if the wife proved infertile.

In Rome, marriage was personal and optional, and evidently so widely disregarded that the Emperor Augustus found it necessary to pass laws compelling people to marry. Even then, there were three kinds of marriage: one called “usus” where the couple simply moved in together; a more formal variety that involved a ceremony with witnesses; and an upper-class version requiring ten witnesses and a priest. Divorce was common for all three types, and tended to be pretty informal.

In early Israel, a man could have several wives and concubines. You’d think that Huckabee, who is so hung up on God’s law as revealed in the bible, might recall the story of Jacob, who married two sisters, Leah and Rachel. Or that of Solomon, who had 700 wives and 300 concubines. (Solomon was evidently one busy dude!)  Divorce was permitted if you were the husband—wives weren’t so lucky. Both marriage and divorce remained entirely civil matters.

Over the following centuries, marriage came increasingly under the influence of the Catholic church, which was extending its authority over more aspects of life generally. Catholic theologians decided that marriage was for life (although there were grounds for annulment), and imposed a number of other rules. Even so, however, it wasn’t until the 12^th Century that priests got involved in the marriage ceremony, and not until the 13^th that they actually took charge of it. Marriage continued to be a practical, economic arrangement.

Martin Luther declared marriage “a worldly thing” that belonged to the realm of government, not religion, and the English Puritans decreed that marriage was purely secular. (When the English Reformation occurred, the religious significance of marriage was reasserted.) The Protestant reformers also allowed divorce.

Here in America, there have been various experiments with marriage. In 1848, the Oneida community cultivated a form of group marriage. They called it “complex marriage” and every woman was married to every man in the community. (They also practiced so-called “scientific breeding.”) And we all know about Mormon polygamy. While the Mormons have formally renounced the practice, polygamy persists in many parts of the Middle East to this day—among President Bush’s princely pals in Saudi Arabia, for example. (Not only that, a so-called “Christian polygamy movement,” unrelated to Mormonism, began in the U.S. in 1994.) In Senegal today, it is estimated that 47% of marriages are “plural” or polygamous.

Why this brief—and incomplete—excursion down history lane? Because it really fries me the way the radical right manufactures history out of whole cloth. They have succeeded in promulgating an ahistorical mythology in which the Founding Fathers—most of whom were Deists—created a “Christian Nation” that looks remarkably like their own version of Christianity. Like Huckabee, they blithely fabricate wholly fanciful historical “facts”—confident, evidently, that no one reads  history anymore.

Mike Huckabee knows a lot more about fried squirrel than I do. But he obviously doesn’t know  much about other countries, world history, U.S. history or the Enlightenment philosophy that guided those who drafted our Constitution.

 

Comments