Larry Ray : The Right of Americans to Love and Marry

There's a problem when the stars and stripes exclude some Americans, forcing them to have their own flag. Image from iHandbill.

The right to love and marry:
Picking the fly specks out of the pepper

Conservative judges on the Supreme Court were literally stewing and sputtering as they questioned attorneys speaking in support of same-sex marriage.

By Larry Ray / The Rag Blog / April 9, 2013

It would seem reasonable that most folks could agree that no person decided to be born with red hair, or with a club foot, or as a prodigy, or with black skin or white skin, or as a government issue "normal" person. An embryo doesn't get to decide that kind of stuff.

So, when a male and a female produce a child, how much does their genetic material, their parenting, and their environment have to do with that child's eventual sexual orientation? And if the kid is homosexual are the parents OK with that kid eventually living like a second class citizen in America?

Prior to the Middle Ages we don't hear much about homosexual acts other than they seem to have been accepted with no big problem back then, even by the Christian Church. But the Renaissance of the 12th Century saw a birth of intellectual revitalization and a steady growth of open hostility against homosexuals. This vilification was taken up and quickly spread through the Christian Church and also into secular organizations.

The normative characteristics of human sexuality have been debated probably since homo erectus learned to talk. In the late 1600's the most influential of the so-called Enlightenment thinkers, John Locke, argued that the mind is a "tabula rasa" or blank slate and that the environment in which a child is raised determines its sexuality. In the early 1900's Sigmund Freud's papers on sexuality ultimately held that sexual drives are instinctive and a central source of personality. And in recent years most researchers ask whether either of those ideas ever had much merit whatsoever.

What has never changed is the fact there have always been people born who have a sexual attraction to their own sex, and that has always seemed to others to be rather, well, queer.

So by the end of the 19th century, in addition to long having been being labeled a sin by the Church, homosexuality also became viewed as a deviant mental disorder. And it was not until 1986 that the American Psychiatric Association finally completely removed the classification of homosexuality as a mental illness from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.

And now not quite 30 years after that milestone, the Supreme Court has finally heard two sets of oral arguments regarding same-sex marriage. One argument basically deals with the Constitutionality of the 1996 Federal Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, and the other whether California's Proposition 8 can single out any group of people and prevent them from being legally married in that state.

But in both instances the arguments don't come right out and talk about homosexuality itself. Instead, the arguments are about marriage, both religious and secular. The Christian Church makes a singular claim to marriage as a sacred and crucial part of the religious life of their adherents and their definition of marriage is that it can only be between a man and woman. Anything else and Leviticus is loudly quoted.

Section 3 of The Federal Defense of Marriage Act codifies the non-recognition of same-sex marriages for all federal purposes, including insurance benefits for government employees, Social Security survivors' benefits, immigration, and the filing of joint tax returns. Not recognizing same-sex marriage is federal law.

President Clinton, under whose administration DOMA was created and passed, now says same-sex marriages should be just like any other marriage. Clinton and a number of other elected career politicians have recently disavowed DOMA and called for its repeal... but since 1996 none of them have stepped up and done anything to see that it is, in fact, repealed.

President Obama has simply dodged the issue by saying Section 3 is unconstitutional, but that he would still continue to enforce the law, but, however, that he would no longer defend it in court. No profile in courage here. More like the statement of a Lewis Carroll character from Alice in Wonderland.

Reaffirming their blatant discrimination and clearly indicating strong opposition to same-sex marriage, the U.S. House Republican leadership quickly instructed the House General Counsel to defend the the Defense of Marriage Act in place of the Department of Justice.

Public opinion polling now shows consistently that around 58% of the country supports homosexuals marrying one another. And their message is that this should not be such a big deal.

The trend in a 2012 Mercer survey of employee health benefits shows "about half, or 47% of employers with more than 500 workers made health coverage available to same-sex domestic partners, with large employers it’s even more prevalent, with figures in the 60-75% range."

So imagine America's politicians, particularly conservative Republicans now in a 2014 election minefield, where not voting to finally recognize homosexuals as equal to all other Americans might cost them votes back home.

Conservative judges on the Supreme Court were literally stewing and sputtering as they questioned attorneys speaking in support of same-sex marriage. And attorneys questioning the Court about the issue of alienating a group of citizens from the institution of marriage brought forth not answers but more questions as answers.

Justice Scalia replied, asking, "...when did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage?" clearly indicating Scalia's view that society has always excluded homosexuals. And Justice Alito lightly commented that same-sex marriage is “newer than cell phones and the Internet,” suggesting that perhaps all of a sudden homosexuals just up and decided they want the same rights as every other American citizen. Risible and disappointing evasion from the high court.

The U.S. Supreme Court's position on marriage was once crystal clear when it came to a black marrying a white. That meant a prison sentence in many states if a white man married a black woman or vice versa. That law stayed on the books for 84 years until a case was brought before the Supreme Court in 1967 by Mildred Loving, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, who had been sentenced to a year in prison in the State of Virginia for marrying each other.

After the Loving case was championed by Attorney General Robert Kennedy and the ACLU, the Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision,  overturned the 1883 Supreme Court ruling which had affirmed that Alabama's anti-miscegenation statute was constitutional.

It was overturned after 84 years of a court-approved, hate-defined prohibition of marraige between blacks and whites. The law clearly was finally struck down because of the Civil Rights act of 1964... and then only because Mr. and Mrs Loving filed suit for the right to legally love one another and marry.

Yet in 2013, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that outlawed major forms of discrimination against racial, ethnic, national, and religious minorities, and women still does not seem to apply to homosexuals. Those American citizens whom the Catholic and Protestant Christian churches define as sinners, are not allowed to legally marry with all rights and benefits guaranteed by the Federal government. It is fair to ask if Church and State are indeed separated in this case?

What the Supreme Court and our politicians are doing is what in Texas we call "picking the fly specks out of the pepper," an earthy expression meaning delaying, ridiculously arguing, failing to act through use of excuses or plain old bullheadedness.

Same-sex marriage poses no more threat to our society than did black folks who were not allowed to sip a soda at Walgreens. We have mostly gotten over the ugliness of our racist American past.

Now it is time to also end the hate and judgmental exclusion that still makes it illegal for some folks in America to get married to the person they love.

[Retired journalist Larry Ray is a Texas native and former Austin television news anchor who now lives in Gulfport, Mississippi. He also posts at The iHandbill. Read more articles by Larry Ray on The Rag Blog.]

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RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : Gay Marriage and Social Justice with Gail and Betsy Leondar-Wright

Betsy, left, and Gail Leondar-Wright, were Thorne Dreyer's guests on Rag Radio, Friday, June 22, 2012.
Rag Radio:
Gail and Betsy Leondar-Wright
on gay marriage and social justice

By Rag Radio / The Rag Blog / June 28, 2012

Gail and Betsy Leondar-Wright, who have been together since 1991, were among the first same-sex couples to be legally married in the United States -- on May 23, 2004, in Arlington, Massachusetts, the week the state made same-sex marriage legal.

Gail and Betsy were our guests on Rag Radio, initially broadcast Friday, June 22, 2012, on KOOP-FM, Austin's cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station.

You can listen to the show here:


On the show, we discuss their marriage, the gay marriage and LGBT movements in America, and the larger issues of class and progressive social change to which they are both committed.

Gail Leondar-Wright is the founder of gail leondar public relations, which promotes progressive books. She has publicized over 600 titles on sustainability, peace, economic justice, and human rights.

Betsy Leondar-Wright, an economic justice activist, is the Project Director for the nonprofit organization, Class Action. She is the author of Class Matters: Cross-Class Alliance Building for Middle-Class Activists and the co-author of The Color of Wealth: The Story Behind the U.S. Racial Wealth Divide. She holds a PhD in sociology from Boston College.

Rag Radio, which has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, features hour-long in-depth interviews and discussion about issues of progressive politics, culture, and history.

Hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement, Rag Radio is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CST) on KOOP, 91.7-fM in Austin, and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EST) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.

The show is streamed live on the web by both stations and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in the KOOP studios, in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Tracey Schulz is the show's engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.


Coming up on Rag Radio:

FRIDAY, June 29, 2012: Peruvian Social Psychologist Cristina Herencia on the impact of globalization on the world's indigenous peoples.

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Ted McLaughlin : Equal Rights? Don't Ask, Don't Think

Ignorance is bliss. Image from Rosemblumtv.
Equal rights in America:
The legacy of the Fourteenth Amendment

A misguided and wrong-headed Dred Scott-type decision by the Supreme Court could set [gay rights] back by many years...

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / September 26, 2010

The fight for equal treatment for all Americans by their government has been a long and hard-fought battle, and it still has not been won. Although our Founding Fathers loved to talk about democracy and equal rights, the country they created did not initially give equal rights to all of its citizens. In fact, the only people who could vote in the newly-created nation were white male property-owners.

Fortunately they gave us not only a dream of equality, but also a Constitution that could be interpreted and amended to further the cause of granting equality to all citizens. After the Civil War, the Constitution was amended for the fourteenth time. That Fourteenth Amendment not only guaranteed that former slaves were to be guaranteed the full rights of an American citizen, but has also been used by the Supreme Court since that time to guarantee the rights of many others.

Thanks to the Fourteenth Amendment and Supreme Court decisions regarding it, most Americans now accept that things like race, ethnicity, sex, and age should not bar any citizen from equal protection and equal rights in America (although some battles are still being fought to fully realize these rights). The newest battle for equal rights is now being fought over sexual preference. There are many in this country, especially religious fundamentalists, who still believe that gays and lesbians should not share the same rights as other Americans.

I know that most of these people use their religion as an excuse to deny rights to other Americans, but I tend to think that there are just some that need to have another group of people to look down on -- maybe to boost their own feelings of inadequacy. After all, religion was also used to deny equality to minorities and women. Those "religious beliefs" have fortunately been largely overcome, and now the battle is being fought over extending full equal rights to American homosexuals.

Currently the battle is being waged on two fronts -- equality in the military and equal marriage rights. Recently the right-wingers in the United States Senate (mostly Republicans) refused to allow a Defense Appropriation bill to come up for a vote by invoking cloture (ending unlimited debate). T

hey did this because the bill included a provision that would end the "don't ask, don't tell" policy (DADT) of the United States military. DADT is a military policy that dictates the expulsion of gays/lesbians who don't hide their sexual preference from their fellow soldiers and the military command structure.

Homosexuals have always served proudly and bravely in the military of the United States. To force them to hide their sexual preference and live a lie is a basic denial of their equal rights as citizens of this country. It also denies this country the service of many qualified and valued military professionals simply to satisfy the bigotry of some Americans -- people who would not be affected in the least manner by granting homosexuals the right to serve their country (the same right all others, including non-citizens, are granted).

But I think the DADT policy will soon be a thing of the past. We may have to wait until the election is over, since many right-wingers and "blue dogs" are currently playing to their base of social conservatives, but it will end. A clear majority of people in America are opposed to DADT and its days are numbered.

The much harder fight is over granting gays/lesbians the right to marriage (with all its legal and social ramifications). Several states have granted this right but many others have not, and of those who haven't many are refusing to grant the constitutional "full faith and credit" recognition to legal marriages conducted in states that allow homosexual marriage. This is a question that will soon be decided by the United States Supreme Court.

Library of Congress / Wikimedia Commons.
Sadly, it seems that some right-wing Supreme Court justices are already positioning themselves to deny equal rights to homosexuals -- sort of a latter-day Dred Scott decision. One justice, Antonin Scalia, recently declared that the Fourteenth Amendment does not cover or grant equal rights to women. He said the amendment was only meant to grant equal rights to former slaves when passed in the late 1800s, and therefore should be limited to that purpose.

Scalia went on to say that he was in favor of equal rights for women, but it should be done through state or federal law and not because these rights are covered by the Fourteenth Amendment. Unfortunately, he is not the only justice that feels this way (in spite of many Supreme Court decisions to the contrary). The past decisions and writings of Justices Thomas, Alito, and Roberts show that they also would be open to a similar interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Now I don't think any of these justices, including Scalia, are actively trying to deny equal rights to women (although a decision that the Fourteenth Amendment referred only to former slaves could be used that way in the future). What they are really trying to do is justify a decision that the Fourteenth Amendment does not grant equal rights to those discriminated against because of their sexual preference. If they can deny women's coverage by the Fourteenth Amendment, that makes it easy to deny coverage to homosexuals.

I am an optimist. I believe that full equal rights will someday be granted to all American citizens -- including homosexuals (and bisexuals and trans-gendered individuals). It is simply the right thing to do. But a misguided and wrong-headed Dred Scott-type decision by the Supreme Court could set this back by many years (and even open up opportunities for legal discrimination against other groups).

It is conceivable that the court is just one vote away from severely restricting the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment. At this point all we can do is cross our fingers and hope that wisdom prevails on the court. The alternative would be a huge step backwards for America.

Why is the concept of equality for all so hard to understand for many Americans?

[Rag Blog contributor Ted McLaughlin also posts at jobsanger.]

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Mexico City Legalizes Gay Nuptials : Catholic Clergy Aghast

Gay rights activist cheer after a session at the city's assembly in Mexico City last December. Photo by Daniel Aguilar / Reuters.
Mexico City sanctions gay marriage:
Catholic Church warns of Sodom and Gomorrah

In Morelia, Michoacan, Bishop Alfredo India added to the homophobic frenzy by avowing that even dogs did not engage in same sex fornication.

By John Ross / The Rag Blog / February 8, 2010

MEXICO CITY -- As Valentine's Day approaches, stationary stores in the old quarter of this megalopolis are awash with Cupids and hearts and the effusive iconography of romance. Ten-tiered wedding cakes spire to the chandeliers in the windows of the Ideal, the palace of such confectionary extravaganzas.

Down the block, beribboned classic cars are lined up outside La Profesa, a colonial church much favored for high society weddings. Marriage is merchandise for the Roman Catholic Church -- priests charge sumptuous (30,000 pesos) fees for tying the knots.

Meanwhile, Church and State, ancient rivals for the affections of the Mexican people, are nose-to-nose over who exactly can marry whom.

The Princes of the Catholic Church are aghast at the recent vote of the Mexico City Legislative Assembly to legalize same sex marriage that in their jaundiced vista has transformed this megalopolis into one monstrous Sodom and Gomorrah. This past December 21, local legislators, led by the left-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) which holds a lopsided majority in the Assembly voted 39 to 20 to amend the city's civil code by modifying the definition of marriage, striking down language that restricted such coupling to a man and a woman, and upgrading civil unions ("societies of conviviality") between lovers of the same sex to matrimony.

The new law also specifically stipulates that same sex couples can adopt children, a right they previously enjoyed -- any Mexican can adopt a child so long as they are 17 years older than the adoptee -- but which has the Church's testicles in a major uproar.

In the aftermath of passage, the scene in the old, ornate chambers of the Legislative Assembly was one of widespread jubilation -- with pockets of bitter recrimination. Up in the balconies, gays and lesbians smooched and waved enormous rainbow flags. Down on the Assembly floor, the right-wing PAN party delegation led by Mariana Gomez, cousin of first lady Margarita Zavala, stomped out, threatening to take the notorious changes in the civil code straight to the Supreme Court.

Like with passage of such liberalizing social measures as free abortion on demand, a right to die act that promotes euthanasia, and the aforementioned civil unions, both the PAN and its perpetual allies in the Catholic hierarchy have gone ballistic at the prospect of homosexual nuptials.

Under the vaulting arches of the ancient Metropolitan Cathedral, Cardinal Norberto Rivera, the shepherd of the most populous archdioceses in Christendom, condemned same sex marriage as an "aberration" that "will invariably lead to the ruin of society" and called upon Mexico's Catholics to disobey the new law, an edict that spurred threats by "Jacobins" as secularists are quaintly maligned by Holy Mother Church, to take the Cardinal to court on charges of "treason." Grievously offended, Rivera protested that leftists are "trying to prohibit us from speaking in the name of Jesus Christ."

Such Church-State conflicts have stippled the history of this neighbor republic since it declared its independence from the Spanish Crown 200 years ago this year, a bicentennial that is being celebrated with much hoopla here and which the Church demands a piece of despite separation from the Mexican State that has been defined as a secular institution by three of its Constitutions.

Writing in the Archdioceses' weekly From the Faith, Cardinal Rivera's mouthpiece, Father Hugo Valdemar, advocated for excommunication of all legislators who had voted up same sex marriage and suggested that couples who adopted children would do so to abuse the youngsters or exploit them for kiddie porn.

If a child has two fathers which one would be his role model, inquisitioned Father Valdemar? Would he emulate his parents by wearing make-up and mini-skirts? In Morelia, Michoacan, Bishop Alfredo India added to the homophobic frenzy by avowing that even dogs did not engage in same sex fornication.

The Catholic Church was hardly alone in its vivid vindictiveness. Both Antonio Chaudruhi, Patriarch of the Orthodox Church, and Arturo Favela, president of the Confraternity of Christian Churches, joined in denouncing such "sinfulness."

The Mexico City Archdioceses' hypothesis that same sex couples are child molesters is a textbook exhibition of the Church's malignant hypocrisy. Recent scandals involving pederast priests have stained the hierarchy's reputation and depleted its coffers. The Legionnaires of Christ have paid out millions USD to compensate victims of the order's founder and serial sodomist Macial Marcial. (The omnisexual priest also fathered children with three different women.)

Cardinal Norberto himself has been implicated in multiple imbroglios -- as Bishop of Tehuacan Puebla and Mexico City, Rivera personally shielded Father Nicolas Aguilar, accused of as many as 600 incidents of pedophilia by moving him from parish to parish, ultimately shipping him off to Los Angeles where Cardinal Roger Mahoney continued the subterfuge. Mahoney and Rivera have been called to account for their cover-up by authorities in both countries.

Separation of Church and State as mandated by the Mexican Constitution has narrowed dramatically in the 10 years that the PAN has held the presidency. Vicente Fox, the first opposition party candidate to take power, campaigned literally wrapped in the banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe and stunned so-called Jacobins by kneeling to kiss Pope John Paul II's ring during the late pope's last visit to Mexico. His successor, Felipe Calderon, whose Catholic zealot father was a hero of the "Cristero War" against the federal government that took 30,000 lives between 1925 and 1929, shares the podium with high Church officials at Vatican-sponsored venues such as the 2008 Catholic Families Congress in Mexico City.

The PANista governor of Jalisco lavishes state funds to refurbish churches that served as sanctuaries for the "Cristeros" and the governor of Mexico state Enrique Pena Nieto, the frontrunner for the once and future ruling PRI party's nomination in 2012 presidential elections, just returned from a pilgrimage to Rome to obtain Pope Benedict's blessing for his impending marriage to soap opera mega-star Angelica Rivera (no relation) AKA "La Gaviota" ("the Seagull").

Pope Benedict used the occasion to rail against same sex marriage in Mexico as "a crime against creation that will destroy the differences between sexes…"

When Mexico City legalized abortion in the first 12 weeks of gestation, Cardinal Rivera ordered the capital's churches to ring their bells in mourning. Collaboration between the PAN and the PRI has resulted in the criminalization of abortion in 18 states and the two parties are expected to soon announce the introduction of a constitutional amendment to outlaw the procedure everywhere in Mexico, including the capital.

Despite raging homophobia in the provinces, Mexico City remains an oasis of sexual liberation. Men holding hands and women soul kissing women in public no longer invoke horrified stares in this cosmopolitan capital where every June since the Stonewall riots convoked the movement for gay, lesbian, and transgender rights, tens of thousands march and party to celebrate their sexual orientation.

Despite the PAN's and Cardinal Norberto's obstreperous recriminations, in a recent survey of the right-wing party's own base in preparation for an upcoming lawsuit to nullify same sex marriage when it kicks in March 4, half of those polled supported the new law -- although 70% vehemently opposed adoption.

As the tide shifts north of the border where six U.S. states, the nation's capital, and one Canadian province now provide legal cover for same sex marriages and unions, in Latin America, a bastion of virulent Machismo, the times too are a-changing. Uruguay and Colombia have put a legal stamp on such arrangements, as have three provinces of Buenos Aires and a Brazilian state. Cuba, led by President Raul Castro's daughter Mariela, is moving in the same direction. Mexico City was not even Mexico's first jurisdiction to approve such legislation -- Coahuila in the north held its first same sex wedding three years ago.

This Valentine's Day all over the Latin continent, gays and lesbians will be exchanging hearts and flowers and vows of undying love as they hand out slices of wedding cake to celebrate unholy matrimony.

[John Ross is touring Obamalandia from sea to stinking sea with his latest cult classic El Monstruo: Dread and Redemption in Mexico City ("a gritty, pulsating read" -- NY Post). This week he will be in Los Angeles at Cal State L.A. (Feb 9, 4:20 p.m., Student Union), Eso Won Books (Feb 10, 7 p.m.), Pomona College in Claremont (Feb. 11 -- noon lecture, Oldenborg Center), and the Urban Survival art space (Feb 13, Boyle Heights 4-7 p.m.)

Here are John's upcoming Texas visits: Austin: Feb. 15, 7 p.m., Resistencia Bookstore; Feb. 16, 2 p.m., UT Journalism School (Talk: "Five decades of Journalism in Latin America"); Feb. 16, 7 p.m., MonkeyWrench Books; Houston: Feb. 17, 7 p.m., Sedition Books; Feb. 18, 11:30 a.m., University of Houston, with John Mason Hart; Edinburgh: Feb. 19, 7 p.m., Pan American University (Talk: "1810-1910-2010: Cycles of Mexican Revolution"); San Benito: Feb. 20, 7 p.m., Narciso Martinez Cultural Center.]

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Rabbi Arthur Waskow : 'The Mormons are Coming, the Jews are Coming'

"The Mormons are Coming" / Californians Against Hate.

As Martin Buber said, 'I do not even know what it means to say that "The ends justify the means," but I can tell you this: The means that you actually use will become the ends that you actually achieve.'

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow / The Rag Blog / May 31, 2009

"The Mormons are Coming, the Jews are coming!"

Suppose you read that opponents of same-sex marriage had taken ads in newspapers shouting, "The Jews are Coming, the Jews are Coming!” to warn people against the nefarious influence of Jewish organizers who were (disproportionately to their numbers) involved in supporting same-sex marriage?

I would think it was disgusting bigotry.

Now imagine that supporters of same-sex marriage take ads in newspapers shouting, "The Mormons are Coming, the Mormons are coming!" to warn people against the nefarious influence of Mormon organizers who were (disproportionately to their numbers) involved in opposing same-sex marriage?

I would think it was disgusting bigotry.

The former has not happened; the latter has.

The Shalom Center and I strongly support the legalization of same-sex marriage by society as a whole and the practice of it by Jewish communities (and have done so since long before it was a salient public issue). AND -- that does not prevent us from thinking this way of winning support for it is disgusting.

Mormonism -- like Roman Catholicism, Orthodox Judaism, evangelical Protestantism -- is a mixed bag. (I'm sure there are many people, including me, who think "renewal Judaism," let alone Judaism in general, is a mixed bag.) And therefore, "the Mormons" must not be condemned any more than "the Jews."

We support same-sex marriage for the sake of love and justice. For the same reasons, we oppose such unjust and hateful means of supporting it.

The ironies are astounding. The bigoted ads were placed on newspaper Web sites in three Eastern states last month -- by "Californians Against Hate"!!

The ad was rejected by the Kennebec Journal in Maine, which said that the copy "borders on insulting and denigrating a whole set of people based on their religion." Right on, Kennebec Journal!

This incident reminds us of the wisdom of the biblical teaching, "Justice, justice, shall you pursue!" Why is "justice" mentioned twice? To remind us that just ends must be pursued by just means. People who claim to be "against hate" should not mobilize hatred in support of their goals.

This teaching was ignored or subverted this past week by the FBI itself – an institution presumably committed to pursue justice.

In Riverdale, New York, four Muslim men were accused by the police of plotting to blow up two synagogues and actually buying what they thought were bombs to do it. On the surface of most of the news stories, this seemed like a simple abomination. Hatred of Jews, sparked by fury at various behaviors of some Jewish institutions, had turned into terrorism. Period. Scared me. Could have been my synagogue.

But when I read past the first four paragraphs of the New York Times story, the story became much more complex. Turns out the four alleged miscreants had been recruited by an FBI agent who came to their mosque, talked big about blowing up enemies, had money to spend on supporting these attacks and paying those who would join up. He found and organized the group of four. He arranged for them to buy fake bombs. All this with the knowledge and cooperation of the FBI.

It seems likely that if it had not been for this FBI agent., the four would never have lifted a finger against the synagogues. The news stories portray them as incoherent, small-time criminals who had served small-time prison terms. It seems likely that if no one had organized and paid them, the synagogues never would have been in danger at all.

Was justice served and were people protected by their arrest? Sort of. They had – assuming always that the news reports were accurate – actually taken what they thought were steps to blow up the synagogues.

But was the goal of justice served by just means?

What is to be done? Assuming the truth of the allegations, the four men did violate the law and endanger lives. They violated the standards of personal ethical responsibility.

But what about the standards of social ethical responsibility – society embodied in the FBI? If the FBI invented the crime, what to do?

The conventional answer is that if the four men were "entrapped," they are entitled to be acquitted -- just as a confession beaten out of a suspect, even if it turns out to be true, is nullified. (The courts have concluded that is the best way of deterring the police from beating suspects.)

But this means releasing men who, when the opportunity to commit mass murder was laid before them, went for it instead of going to the police and scotching the plot.

The analogy that occurs to me is what ought to happen when high officials plan torture and lowly grunts carry it out. "Obeying orders" is no defense. Neither is "high office." Both the planners and the perpetrators ought to be punished.

(That is precisely why I think the Obama Doctrine of "Even if they tell, don't ask!" and "Don't look back" is a bad mistake.)

So in the Riverdale case, maybe the FBI agent ought to be charged as a co-conspirator, and if he is proved to have invented the crime and organized the criminals, he too should be punished -- along with them.

Progressives and conservatives, the government and its critics, all need to affirm and act on the teaching -- "Justice, justice shall you pursue."

As Martin Buber said, "I do not even know what it means to say that 'The ends justify the means,' but I can tell you this: The means that you actually use will become the ends that you actually achieve."

He was talking to early Bolsheviks who were trying to protect the Russian Revolution by using the "Red Terror" against its opponents. The result, as decade by decade the "means" became the "ends," was Stalinism and the gulag.

Buber was right. Remember. Do not forget.

With blessings of shalom, salaam, peace,

Arthur

[Rabbi Arthur Waskow, a regular contributor to The Rag Blog, is director of The Shalom Center. Rabbi Waskow is co-author of The Tent of Abraham, author of Godwrestling -- Round 2, Down-to-Earth Judaism, and a dozen other books on Jewish thought and practice, as well as books on U.S. public policy.]

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California Supremes on Prop. 8 : The Return of Separate But Equal

Demonstrators placed signs on a statue of Lincoln in front of San Francisco City Hall on May 26, 2009, after the California Supreme Court ruling upholding Prop. 8. Photo by Paul Sakuma.

In reality, the point of the Court’s muddled ruling is to legally justify homophobic discrimination.

By Jeff Jones / The Rag Blog / May 27, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO -- Yesterday's California Supreme Court decision to uphold Proposition 8 created a bizarre post-modern version of "separate but equal" with three separate water fountains to drink from.

First, the court ruled that California's Constitution officially reserves the designation of the term “marriage” for opposite-sex couples. Second, the court ruled that despite restricting the word “marriage" to opposite-sex couples, the 18,000 same-sex couples who got married before the passage of Proposition 8 remain officially "married" and their marriages are legally recognized by the state.

Finally, the Court claimed that same-sex couples have the same rights as opposite sex couples: supposedly, we have the right to "choose one's life partner and enter with that person into a committed, officially recognized, and protected family relationship (translation: civil union) that enjoys all of the constitutionally based incidents of marriage."

At the center of this controversy is the first paragraph of California's State Constitution, which guarantees all citizens equal rights. So let me state the obvious by paraphrasing Gertrude Stein: equality is equality is equality is equality.

In yesterday’s bizarre ruling, the California Supreme Court codified three different sets of rules for three different types of supposedly "equal" citizens: all non-LGBT people have the right to get married; some LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) individuals have this right; most do not. Chief Justice Ronald M. George said the measure "carves out a narrow and limited exception” to the citizens’ constitutional rights but leaves undisturbed "all of the other extremely significant substantive aspects of a same-sex couple's (rights).”

But how can this ruling meet the constitutional guarantee of equality if some queers can be legally married while the rest are legally prohibited from doing the very same thing? In essence, the ruling implies that words have no meaning; ”marriage,” apparently, is essentially symbolic.

But such thinking is patently absurd: as any LGBT individual knows, the state and federal governments use legal definitions of marriage to determine eligibility for numerous rights and benefits including sick leave, tax breaks, prison visitation rights, property, health benefits, adoption, social security benefits etc. As an article in today’s New York Times pointed out, the Supreme Court’s tortured logic is like telling black people that sitting in the back of the bus is not important, as long as the front and the back of the bus arrive at its destination at the same time.

In reality, the point of the Court’s muddled ruling is to legally justify homophobic discrimination. As the lone dissenter -- Justice Carlos Moreno -- wrote: “Proposition 8 strikes at the core of the promise of equality that underlies our California Constitution and “places at risk the state constitutional rights of all disfavored minorities.”

Also see The Laudable Dissenting Opinion in Today's California Court Decision by Rieux / Daily Kos / May 26, 2009

And read Justice Moreno's dissent here.

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Annie Leibovitz and The Gay Tax : The Cost of Love

Susan Sontag. Photo © Annie Leibovitz / Politics, Theory & Photography.
Annie Leibovitz and the gay tax

Same-sex couples do not have the same privileges as straight married couples when it comes to inheritance. If your partner passes away and leaves her estate to you, you have to pay up to 50 percent of the value of your inheritance in taxes. However, if you and your partner were recognized as a married couple, you wouldn't have to pay a dime.

By Nancy Goldstein / March 5, 2009

Poets swoon about it and singers croon about it, but LGBT people can calculate the cost of love down to the last penny. In my household it comes to around $329.25 monthly: that's the gay tax my wife and I shell out for me to be on her health insurance plan, because her company must treat that benefit as additional taxable income. It doesn't matter that our Massachusetts marriage is recognized in New York. Companies pay for their employees' health insurance with pre-tax money through a federal program, and same-sex marriage isn't federally recognized.

But that's chump change compared to what love is currently costing celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz. Back in late February the NYT noted that Leibovitz had borrowed a total of $15.5 million from a company called Art Capital Group using "as collateral, among other items … town houses she owns in Greenwich Village, a country house, and something else: the rights to all of her photographs."

But what the NYT missed, along with every other straight newspaper that picked up the story, is why Leibovitz suddenly found herself in such dire financial straits. It took AfterEllen's Julie Miranda to put two and two together and figure out that "most of Leibovitz' financial woes stemmed from her inheritance of her longtime partner, Susan Sontag's estate." Writes Miranda (who, in turn, is channeling Suze Orman's Valentine's Wish for Gay Marriage):

"Same-sex couples do not have the same privileges as straight married couples when it comes to inheritance. If your partner passes away and leaves her estate to you, you have to pay up to 50 percent of the value of your inheritance in taxes. However, if you and your partner were recognized as a married couple, you wouldn't have to pay a dime...When Sontag died in 2004, she bequeathed several properties to Leibovitz, who was forced to pony up half of their value to keep them."

Will this profoundly unfair issue be challenged now that attention's being drawn to it by the situations of couples like Sontag and Leibovitz who are far higher-profile than me and my gal? We're about to get a shot at finding out. As my Broadsheet colleague Judy Berman reported on Tuesday, Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders filed suit earlier this week on behalf of same-sex couples who have tied the knot in states that have marriage equality, seeking to challenge their blocked access to federal benefits. The plaintiffs include Dean Hara, spouse of the late Rep. Gerry Studds. But even with the spectacle of a U.S. Congressman's widower being denied Social Security benefits, the case isn't a slam dunk, since its slingshot is aimed at the big federal law that institutionalized this discrimination: the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. It's likely to face a long slog up to the U.S. Supreme Court. Until then, there's a high price on our heads, dead or alive.

Source / broadsheet / salon.com

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Oscars 2009 : Sean Penn: 'You, Commie, homo-loving sons of guns...'

Sean Penn Wins for "Milk" -- Acceptance Speech

Sean Penn: 'For those who saw the signs of hatred as our cars drove in tonight, I think it's a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect and anticipate their great shame...'

By Chad Rubel / February 23, 2009

See Video of Penelope Cruz' acceptance speech, mostly in Spanish, Below.

It felt like the Oscars got the memo that the U.S. embracing of the world will be much improved under an Obama Administration.

The Oscars last night had a wide-ranging international feel. An British film set in India, "Slumdog Millionaire," won 8 Oscars. Acting awards went to a Brit (Kate Winslet, Best Actress), a Spaniard (Penelope Cruz, Best Supporting Actress), and an Australian (the late Heath Ledger, Best Supporting Actor). The host was a fellow Australian, Hugh Jackman.

Cruz, whose performance consisted of speaking mostly in a foreign language in winning the Academy Award, summed up that international feeling last night in her acceptance speech:

... this ceremony was a moment of unity for the world because art, in any form, is and has been and will always be our universal language and we should do everything we can, everything we can, to protect its survival.

The night was also about embracing those different from most of us on domestic soil as well. "Milk" picked up two awards: Best Actor (Sean Penn) and Best Original Screenplay (Dustin Lance Black).

From Penn's acceptance speech:

"For those who saw the signs of hatred as our cars drove in tonight, I think it's a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect and anticipate their great shame and the great shame in their grandchildren's eyes if they continue that way of support," Penn said. "We've got to have equal rights for everyone."

From Black's acceptance speech:

Referring to "gay and lesbian kids," Black said: "No matter what everyone tells you, God does love you ... very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights federally across this great nation of ours."

The Academy is considered a conservative organization. For those who felt that "Brokeback Mountain" deserved more Oscars, there was a concern that the conservative Academy wasn't ready for a film where two gay men were at the center. Last night might have proven that they are a little more ready than they were before.

Source / BuzzFlash

'You, Commie, homo-loving sons of guns...'

From Advocate.com:

"You, Commie, homo-loving sons of guns,” Sean Penn said to laughs as he took to the stage to accept the Oscar for Best Actor in a Motion Picture for his work in the biopic Milk at Sunday's Academy Awards.

The outspoken activist won for playing an outspoken activist and, true to form, quickly changed his tone and took the opportunity to make a political statement in support of marriage equality.

Penelope Cruz gana el OSCAR a la Mejor Actriz de Reparto



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Bigotry Still Rules : The Special Suffering of Gay Americans

Civil rights pioneer Bayard Rustin was fired from the Friendship for Reconciliation, a pacifist group, for being gay.

The way anti-gay bigotry works is that a great deal of the violence and suffering is conducted away from the public eye. The resulting pain suffered is turned inwards, which is why one out of every three gay teens attempts suicide and why some of the most virulent anti-gay bigots turn out, in the end, to be gay themselves.

By Lisa Szefel / January 9, 2009

[Ms. Szefel is an assistant professor of modern American history at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon where she teaches classes on the 1970s, the Reagan era, and the history of capitalism.]

In the summer of 2006 I attended the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard. One of the guest presenters was ninety-five year old Johnnie Carr, the woman who took over the Montgomery Improvement Association in 1956 after the successful bus boycott when Martin Luther King, Jr. went on to form the Southern Christian Leadership Convention.

Carr told stories and fielded questions. I'm not sure how the topic of gay people came up but at the mention of the word "homosexual" her face shriveled up and she moved her hand in a wide sweeping gesture, then exclaimed, "Those DISGUSTING people!" She made some inaudible comments then said the word “DISGUSTING” again. She said this even though Bayard Rustin, the man who co-founded SCLC with King, who assisted in the creation of the Committee on Racial Equality in 1942, organized the first freedom ride and the March on Washington, and helped King convert wholeheartedly to non-violence, was gay. I looked at Waldo Martin and Pat Sullivan, the two seminar leaders, and they looked away but, to their credit, they did not stop the tape recorder.

After Carr left and our group reconvened, I looked around and asked (it took no small amount of courage for me to raise this question and risk losing their respect or being seen as a troublemaker): "Did she really say that gay people were disgusting?” Everyone shrugged it off. An African American professor from North Carolina said, "Oh, that's just her generation." Martin replied, "She's a devoted church lady, that's just the way they see things." I responded, "That doesn't make it hurt any less."

Now imagine someone lobbed the same spiteful word at a black person in 1955, at a time when key constitutional rights were not yet secured and violence or at least censure was always a risk. That person's entire character would be defined as essentially racist. It would not be shrugged away, especially not now because we as a nation have come to understand the history and impact of bigotry on African Americans.

Would a newspaper or website run this article with this story and thereby run the risk of tainting the reputation of one of the great civil rights leaders? Is Carr’s reputation more important than the wave of anxiety and shame she triggered in me with her comments? Shouldn’t I be quiet? Am I simply being over-sensitive?

Understanding the sensitivity of the oppressed requires raising awareness. When I was growing up in blue collar Buffalo during the early 1970s busing was in full swing. Everyone talked about the violence at local P.S. 43. Fearing for the safety of their children, my parents sent their kids to Catholic school. I had to clean the hallways and bathrooms after hours (a job affectionately referred to as “the scum crew”) to help defray tuition costs. Years later when I was in graduate school, I told my middle class liberal friends about this. They all insisted my parents were racists and should have sent their kids to public school. In Buffalo as in Boston, it was the poorest school districts that were subjected to busing edicts and the term “limousine liberals,” coined in 1969, became widespread.

My family members were not racist but they did experience cognitive dissonance. They had black friends, neighbors, and co-workers with whom they got along well. Then, as their story goes, their African American acquaintances “one day just up and got angry.” It turns out that, as white people, while they had good intentions, they had very little idea what a black person had to endure. Adjusting to the fact that they had been dead-wrong all-along took them by surprise.

During the recent imbroglio over Barack Obama’s Inaugural invitation to Rick Warren gay people have been demonstrating their anger. Moderate liberals have jumped to the President-elect’s defense. In "Letter from Birmingham Jail" Martin Luther King, Jr. reserved his strongest rebuke for white moderates who want order and peace more than justice. "Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection," he wrote. King also quoted a letter from a white moderate who cautioned patience: “All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry,” to which King angrily responded: “Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills.” To the white clergy who had urged him to desist from public protests, King eloquently made the case for why blacks can no longer wait, insisting that freedom is never given but must be demanded, and he detailed the psychological impact of having waited 340 years to receive constitutional and God-given rights. He fiercely rejected justifications of bigotry based on majority opinion.

Few leaders have spoken so powerfully on behalf of gay rights. Hillary Clinton has made eloquent speeches in front of the Human Rights Campaign. She led the fight against the Federal Marriage Amendment and throughout the recent election spoke movingly about gay people she has known. During the primaries when I expressed my support for her over Obama, another professor asked, “Hillary and Obama are both against gay marriage, so they have the exact same stance on that issue. Am I missing something?" To me that demonstrated such a world of ignorance, as if gay people cared only about this one subject, and it neglected the senator’s history of support. Hillary opposed gay marriage as a strategy and argued for a state-by-state plan. Obama, conversely, repeatedly stated that he opposed gay marriage “as a man of Christ,” as if Jesus would be appalled. That is ideology. He also explained by saying that, if he were an advisor to the civil rights movement in 1962, he would not focus on the illegality of racial marriage, preferring to focus first on attaining voting rights.

However, this is an incorrect historical analogy. No gay person is arguing for the right to marry a straight person. They want to marry each other. Black people, after all, were allowed to get married during the hell of Jim Crow. Jewish people were allowed to get married in interwar Germany. The Untouchables in India, Japan, and Korea are allowed to get married. Moreover, many scholars have argued that a link exists between the fact that black people in antebellum America were not allowed to form families and high rates of contemporary poverty; slavery denied black men the ability to be responsible fathers. The veracity of this argument is debatable but, nevertheless, it was expected, that African Americans wanted to form relationships and experience love. What does it signify that, of all the humans on earth, only gay people are singled out as exempt from this right, from these desires? How does the restriction against participation in the most fundamental institution of every civilization on earth from time immemorial affect a gay person’s sense of self-worth? To be hopeful in such an environment would be far too audacious.

When I was growing up I never expected I would have a family of my own. Gay people were openly spoken of and depicted as pedophiles and psychopaths. A sea change occurred when Ellen Degeneres came out on national tv in 1997. Until Ellen there was no figure of stature to reference or model. If rich, powerful people were too afraid to be honest, how should poor, vulnerable people feel? The coming-out episode of her self-named TV show brought a collective sigh of relief: “Finally, someone who admits it.” Yet the visibility this brought spurred Americans across the country to insert anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives in 2000 and 2004. If earning a Ph.D. in History has taught me anything, it is that history is not a straightforward march of progress; often it takes two steps forward then one step backward. Oprah Winfrey, who played the psychologist in Ellen’s coming-out episode, said that she received more hate mail for that role than for any other thing that she has done in her life.

One year after Ellen’s coming out, 21-year-old Matthew Shepard was tortured, pistol whipped, then tied like a scarecrow to a fence and left to die in a remote area of Laramie, Wyoming. News reports indicated that the only part of his face not covered in blood was the skin cleansed by the tracks of Matt’s tears. The lynching shocked the gay community as much as the photo of Emmet Till’s bloated, distended face affected African Americans in 1955: just as young blacks were surprised to learn they could be killed simply for their skin color so too were gays shaken to discover they could be targeted just for the gender of the person who moves their heart.

After the incident Bill Clinton tried to extend the federal hate crimes laws. Before that he had the courage, the moment he became President, to try and do something about the prejudice gays endure. He failed and compromised with “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” but at least he tried before it was politically correct to do so. No one else had cared enough to make the attempt. On the contrary, these were the years when the sex abuse scandal rocked the Catholic Church and the uniform response of the all-male clergy was that only gay men commit child molestation. The first black president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Wilton D. Gregory went on television to say that if the Catholic Church ferreted out all the gay clergy, there would no longer and not ever again, be a problem. Then Clinton blundered in signing the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. But he still invited Ellen and Anne to Washington.

When I saw the picture of them with the President at the White House I almost fainted -- an openly gay person was allowed inside?

Bernice King was three weeks old when her father wrote “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in 1963. In 2004, at the age of 41 and now a minister, Bernice marched in protest, just as her father did, but only this time, she was campaigning against gay marriage. She moved the funeral of her mother, Coretta, from her home church to a conservative anti-gay church, causing Julian Bond to refuse to attend. Coretta Scott King did believe the gay rights movement was similar to the struggle for black civil rights, for which she received rebuke from her community. She countered: “I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice. But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ ” Before another group, Coretta insisted that “Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity.” Former SNCC leader and Congressman John Lewis too has stood up to denounce homophobia as just another variant of the same “fear, hatred, and intolerance” that animates racism, and he castigates civil unions as just another version of separate but equal.

Similarly, in a 1970 letter to his “Revolutionary Brothers and Sisters about the Women’s Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements,” Black Panther Party co-founder and leader Huey P. Newton urged cooperation while acknowledging prejudice. “I say ‘whatever your insecurities are’ because as we very well know, sometimes our first instinct is to want to hit a homosexual in the mouth.” Newton urged deleting the word “faggot” from the black activist’s vocabulary and he pleaded for understanding: “homosexuals are not given freedom and liberty by anyone in society. They might be the most oppressed people in society.”

Bayard Rustin, Langston Hughes, and James Baldwin had been marginalized from the movement because of their sexuality. Rustin was fired from the Friendship for Reconciliation, a pacifist group, for being gay. In an effort to assume a more prominent position for himself, Adam Clayton Powell, the heroic civil rights leader and congressman from Harlem, threatened to leak news about Rustin’s homosexuality unless King distanced himself from Rustin. Before Rustin died in 1987 he asserted that, just as the treatment of blacks was the barometer of human rights standards, now it was conduct toward gays that determined progress.

Too many Americans, liberals included, have no idea about the amount of suffering gay people endure. To speak in an informed way about gay marriage requires knowledge, whether speaking to a range of gay people about their experiences or reading on a regular basis websites of The Advocate, the Human Rights Campaign, and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. Just in the past two weeks a lesbian in San Francisco was gang-raped by four men who shouted anti-lesbian epithets at her during the attack, and the US and the Vatican refused to sign a UN declaration decriminalizing homosexuality (the Vatican’s head of the Congregation for Catholic Education, Cardinal Grocholewski, has deemed homosexuality not only a “deviation” but a “type of wound”).

The Advocate published a story about the last known gay survivor of the Holocaust, 95-year-old Rudolf Brazda, who, like thousands of others, had to remain silent for decades after World War II ended because homosexuality remained a crime (it was decriminalized in France only in 1982). And Pope Benedict XVI preached that gays are as ominous a threat to the world as climate change. Today, it is illegal for gays to adopt in Florida, Mississippi, Utah, and Arkansas. It is legal in twenty states to fire someone just for being gay. Until last week gays were not allowed to become members in Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church. Gay people in nursing homes are treated like pariahs and shunted off to Alzheimer’s wards to appease their bigoted roommates.

When I once suggested this reading strategy to a friend he furrowed his eyebrows: "Why would anyone want to torture themselves, reading all that bad news?" It was the same friend who, the day after John Kerry lost the 2004 election, said “To be realistic, we have to get rid of support for gay issues otherwise we’ll never win a national election.” That was easy to say for someone who feels secure and who has not endured a lifetime of prejudice.

Hatred for gay people is a global affair. Despite the Holocaust and almost constant warfare against the state of Israel conducted by hostile Muslims, Orthodox Jews turn around and conduct their own brand of global bigotry, protesting vehemently against homosexuals. Despite the thousand-plus years of hostility between Jews, Christians, and Muslims, they join hands in their hatred for gay people. In 2002 when Jerusalem hosted the city’s first gay pride parade, Eli Simchaioff, a city council member and deputy mayor complained, “These are sick people.” Other people held signs, “This is not Sodom!” and chanted, “There’s no place for homosexuals in the Jewish state,” and blamed attacks on Israel as a sign of divine punishment for blasphemy. Pope John Paul II delivered a sermon from the balcony on St. Peter’s Square, calling the parade an “offense to the Christian values of a city that is so dear to the hearts of Catholics across the world.”

Anti-gay bigotry is so omnipresent and potent it offers one way to unite the world. On March 31, 2005, the New York Times front page featured a photo of the religious leaders of the three major religions, Christianity (including Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Armenian), Judaism, and Islam, who met in Jerusalem to join in protest against the Jerusalem Gay Pride 2005 festival. These individuals would encourage their sons and daughters to die in battle against their religious enemies but they hate gay people even more than they hate each other. “They [homosexuals] are creating a deep and terrible sorrow that is unbearable,” Israel’s Sephardic chief rabbi Shlomo Amar proclaimed at a news conference. An Orthodox Jewish man stabbed three gay men in the parade. “We can’t permit anybody to come and make the Holy City dirty,” Abdel Aziz Bukhari, a Sufi sheik warned. “This is very ugly and very nasty to have these people come to Jerusalem.”

The Clintons were ahead of the zeitgeist. Few people even talked about gay issues before Bill Clinton was elected in 1992. Gay people do not have a political party, a country, or a continent and too often they do not have families because they are disowned the moment they are open and honest about who they are.

My godmother's husband died of AIDs and it was taken for granted that no one would mention his name again yet alone discuss the cause of death. Another relative was on the verge of dying of AIDs in 1993—his partner had already died—and when he came out to his mother she was horrified. Once she regained her composure she told him she would tell everyone he died of a heart attack. He wrote a letter to my mom to tell her the truth because he did not want his mother to have to live with the shame and endure knowing he died of AIDs on her own. I was too afraid to come out to my father but I did tell my mother and she cried as if I were dying. "Is that why you always wear black?" was the first thing she said. The second thing was, "You can’t tell anyone else, especially Tim [my sister's husband] because he won't let you near the boys” [my nephews were young at the time]. At one point I did try and talk with my father about it. He immediately turned beat red, cut me off, and said, "Your sister doesn't tell us about her sex life. I don't want to hear about yours!" How he made that leap is ridiculous but understandable considering the prevalence of stereotypes.

A few years later I tried to talk to my sister about it and she walked away, saying "That's gross!" When I came out to friends their reactions ranged from “You just haven’t met the right man” to “only ugly women are gay because they can’t get a man.” Some close friends stopped calling or returning my calls and my Christian friends gently told me that I am an abomination in God’s eyes. To this day my best friend from college, a black woman from Nigeria, shushes me when I use the word “gay” in front of her two children. “That’s so gay!” is a staple of teen insults.

This lack of support is a reason that the cause of gay rights has not advanced as much as it should. During the African American civil rights movement, family, friends, and church played a decisive role in the lives of activists. Memoirs of those involved in the black freedom struggle routinely discuss the critical part played by their church as well as their mothers and grandmothers who gave them advice and unconditional love on a daily basis as they faced their tormentors and fought their battles.

Melba Beals, one of the nine teenagers who integrated Little Rock high school in Arkansas, Septima Clark, the “Grandmother” of the civil rights movement, Ella Baker, the “Godmother” of the movement, Mary McLeod Bethune, college president and member of Franklin Roosevelt’s “Black Cabinet,” Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee organizer Dorothy Haight—the list of black women who attributed their strength to the aid given by their mothers and fellow Christians is extensive. Even while facing down dirty looks, water hoses, and attack dogs, black activists learned about their culture, went to church, on dates, married, and had children. National organizations sent leaders to their communities to provide counsel and financial aid. Could they have accomplished what they did without their families and community networks, the normality of socially-accepted dating and anticipation of marriage?

By families, friends, churches, and leaders, gay people are routinely silenced, ignored, and denied the hope of being able to build their own families. The way anti-gay bigotry works is that a great deal of the violence and suffering is conducted away from the public eye. The resulting pain suffered is turned inwards, which is why one out of every three gay teens attempts suicide and why some of the most virulent anti-gay bigots turn out, in the end, to be gay themselves. The societal-induced self-loathing cuts deep. Too many gay people become accustomed to dealing with problems by hiding, by digging a whole and wallowing because continuing alone only bodes further despair.

Coming out of the closet does not immediately result in happiness. Resentment over lost time brims. Memories resurface about taunts while a young kid, about the whole range of distasteful notions about gays that saturate society. The step after coming out is often not a celebration but a cauldron of frustration and anger, more akin to post-traumatic stress disorder. Rage, depression, and longing over missed opportunities jostle with the realization that entire years were wasted, spent worrying instead of growing. Huge gaps of time have simply vanished. Chunks of your life fell off yet no one noticed because the torment was invisible.

The bruises of bigotry have a long half-life. Self-loathing cannot remain hermetically sealed; it always seeps out. If it were a chemical element it would be plutonium, oozing out of steel drums, contaminating everything it touches, from water tables to blood.

That is why if gays suffer abuse from others, they suffer even more from among their own ranks. The self-hatred instilled in a young gay boy or girl is so searing and all-consuming that they will go to great lengths to hide their essential identity, even so far as persecuting others to deflect suspicion. It is similar to the “double-consciousness” that W.E.B. Du Bois discussed in his classic 1903 The Souls of Black Folk, where two identities, one legitimate, the other illegitimate, are in constant conflict. “Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house?” Du Bois wrote about the plight of blacks in the white world of America:

a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, -- an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings.

In 2006 another incident revealed that the constant negotiation of two sets of standards results in dissonance and erratic behavior. Ted Haggard, founder of the megachurch New Life Church and head of the National Association of Evangelicals, preached against homosexuality but secretly had sex with a male prostitute. “There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I’ve been warring against it all of my life,” he confessed.

A precedent had already been set by televangelist Paul Crouch, who founded Trinity Broadcasting Network, one of the largest Christian television and radio network in the world. Crouch paid almost a half of a million dollars, as part of a sexual harassment lawsuit, to a former male employee who alleged a homosexual encounter. In Congress, Larry Craig, the Republican senator from Idaho was arrested for “lewd conduct” in a public bathroom. For years, he voted against laws introduced in the House of Representatives designed to protect gay people, and he sang alongside Senator John Ashcroft and Trent Lott in the barbershop quartet “The Singing Senators.” Jim McGreevy, the married governor of New Jersey, resigned after revealing his affair with a man he had appointed to a lucrative state job, reluctantly making history as the first openly gay governor in U.S. history. Not exactly a hallmark of achievement to celebrate.

I did come out to the rest of my family in 2000 when Hillary was running for the Senate. I was living in Rochester, and family members in Buffalo regularly sent anti-Hillary mass emails. I finally wrote a mass email of my own, informing them that Hillary was the only one willing to stand up for me and requesting they stop circulating the scornful messages. They did. I have a deep and abiding sense of gratitude for Bill and Hillary’s words and actions on behalf of the gay community.

Now that there is increasing public support and momentum to do away with Don't Ask, Don't Tell, I have no doubt Obama will revoke it. But during the election he repeatedly said he was against gay marriage "As a man of Christ." We are so used to hearing Biblical justifications for preventing gay people from marrying that it sounds normal, so Obama's statement seems ordinary. His invitation to Rick Warren, a man who equates gay marriage with incest, pedophilia, and polygamy, seems reasonable enough. But it is damaging and hurtful.

Martin Luther King had to find an answer for his son’s question: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?” A child knows that words hurt, symbols matter, and bullies and bigotry should never be rewarded

Source / History News Network

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Melissa Etheridge on Making Peace With Rick Warren

Grammy Award winner Melissa Etheridge with Tammy Lynn Michaels.
The Choice Is Ours Now: Give Peace a Chance
By Melissa Etheridge / December 22, 2008

See 'Why Gay Marriage is the Wrong Issue' by Bob Ostertag, Below.

This is a message for my brothers and sisters who have fought so long and so hard for gay rights and liberty. We have spent a long time climbing up this mountain, looking at the impossible, changing a thousand year-old paradigm. We have asked for the right to love the human of our choice, and to be protected equally under the laws of this great country.

The road at times has been so bloody, and so horrible, and so disheartening. From being blamed for 9/11 and Katrina, to hateful crimes committed against us, we are battle weary. We watched as our nation took a step in the right direction, against all odds and elected Barack Obama as our next leader. Then we were jerked back into the last century as we watched our rights taken away by prop 8 in California. Still sore and angry we felt another slap in the face as the man we helped get elected seemingly invited a gay-hater to address the world at his inauguration.

I hadn't heard of Pastor Rick Warren before all of this. When I heard the news, in its neat little sound bite form that we are so accustomed to, it painted the picture for me. This Pastor Rick must surely be one hate spouting, money grabbing, bad hair televangelist like all the others. He probably has his own gay little secret bathroom stall somewhere, you know. One more hater working up his congregation to hate the gays, comparing us to pedophiles and those who commit incest, blah blah blah. Same 'ole thing. Would I be boycotting the inauguration? Would we be marching again?

Well, I have to tell you my friends, the universe has a sense of humor and indeed works in mysterious ways. As I was winding down the promotion for my Christmas album I had one more stop last night. I'd agreed to play a song I'd written with my friend Salman Ahmed, a Sufi Muslim from Pakistan. The song is called "Ring The Bells," and it's a call for peace and unity in our world. We were going to perform our song for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a group of Muslim Americans that tries to raise awareness in this country, and the world, about the majority of good, loving, Muslims. I was honored, considering some in the Muslim religion consider singing to be against God, while other Muslim countries have harsh penalties, even death for homosexuals. I felt it was a very brave gesture for them to make. I received a call the day before to inform me of the keynote speaker that night... Pastor Rick Warren. I was stunned. My fight or flight instinct took over, should I cancel? Then a calm voice inside me said, "Are you really about peace or not?"

I told my manager to reach out to Pastor Warren and say "In the spirit of unity I would like to talk to him." They gave him my phone number. On the day of the conference I received a call from Pastor Rick, and before I could say anything, he told me what a fan he was. He had most of my albums from the very first one. What? This didn't sound like a gay hater, much less a preacher. He explained in very thoughtful words that as a Christian he believed in equal rights for everyone. He believed every loving relationship should have equal protection. He struggled with proposition 8 because he didn't want to see marriage redefined as anything other than between a man and a woman. He said he regretted his choice of words in his video message to his congregation about proposition 8 when he mentioned pedophiles and those who commit incest. He said that in no way, is that how he thought about gays. He invited me to his church, I invited him to my home to meet my wife and kids. He told me of his wife's struggle with breast cancer just a year before mine.

When we met later that night, he entered the room with open arms and an open heart. We agreed to build bridges to the future.

Brothers and sisters the choice is ours now. We have the world's attention. We have the capability to create change, awesome change in this world, but before we change minds we must change hearts. Sure, there are plenty of hateful people who will always hold on to their bigotry like a child to a blanket. But there are also good people out there, Christian and otherwise that are beginning to listen. They don't hate us, they fear change. Maybe in our anger, as we consider marches and boycotts, perhaps we can consider stretching out our hands. Maybe instead of marching on his church, we can show up en mass and volunteer for one of the many organizations affiliated with his church that work for HIV/AIDS causes all around the world.

Maybe if they get to know us, they wont fear us.

I know, call me a dreamer, but I feel a new era is upon us.

I will be attending the inauguration with my family, and with hope in my heart. I know we are headed in the direction of marriage equality and equal protection for all families.

Happy Holidays my friends and a Happy New Year to you.

Peace on earth, goodwill toward all men and women... and everyone in-between.

Source / The Huffington Post

Why Gay Marriage is the Wrong Issue
By Bob Ostertag / December 21, 2008

It's just plain sad what the gay and lesbian movement has come to. November 4 was so extraordinary, so magical. The whole world seemed to come together. Except for gays and lesbians in California. We were supposed to feel crushed over Proposition 8. And now the whole scenario is gearing up to repeat itself on January 20: the whole world will celebrate the inauguration of the first black American president and the end of the George Bush insanity - the whole world except gays and lesbians who will be protesting Rick Warren's presence at the inaugural.

How is it that queers became the odd ones out at such a momentous turning point in history? By pushing an agenda of stupid issues like gay marriage.

"Gay marriage" turns the real issues of equal rights for sexual minorities upside down and paints us into a reactionary little corner of our own making. Yes, married people get special privileges denied to others. Denied not to just gays and lesbians, but to all others. Millions of straight people remain unmarried, and for a huge variety of reasons, from mothers whose support networks do not include their children's fathers, to hipsters who can't relate to religious institutions. We could be making common cause with them. We could be fighting for equal rights for everyone, not just gays and lesbians, but for all unmarried people. In the process we would leave religious institutions to define marriage however their members see fit.

That's how you win at politics, isn't it? You build principled coalitions that add up to a majority, and try not to hand potent mobilizing issues to your opposition in the process.

We have done the opposite. Instead of tearing down the walls of privilege enjoyed by the nuclear family, we are demanding our own place at the married couples' table (leaving all those other unmarried people out in the cold).

I know the idea of gay liberation is ancient by today's standards, but it wasn't so long ago that a lot of gay and lesbian activism began from the premise that the queer perspective was one that could offer a particular contribution to a more just society as a whole. My how times change.

Is this really where decades of struggle for sexual freedom ends? With the state granting its blessing to homosexual nuclear families emerging from City Hall, husband-and-husband or wife-and-wife, with the photographer and the rice and the whole bit, finally having become just like them?

Not for me. Not for my family, with its various men, each of whom I love in a different way, a child, and two moms. Not that my family is any sort of queer norm. But that's the beautiful thing about queer culture: there is no norm. We piece together our families, holding on to those relationships that work.

The fact is most of us won't marry even if we have the right to. We are putting all our resources into winning a right that only the few of us in long-term conventional couple relationships will enjoy. What's more, we are creating a social climate in which young queers are encouraged to recast their vision of the relationships they seek to favor the married couple. This is not only a loss for the vibrancy of queer culture, it is a disservice to young people who will not be well served by their nuclear family ambitions. Just consider the high number of gay and lesbian divorces (yes, the rate is already high despite the fact that we have not even fully won the right to marry yet).

It is no secret that marriage isn't working for straight people. That's why religious institutions are so up in arms about it. The institution of marriage is in crisis. On what basis does anyone imagine it is going to work better for queers?

Through years of queer demonstrations, meetings, readings and dinner table conversations, about gay bashing, police violence, job discrimination, housing discrimination, health care discrimination, immigration discrimination, family ostracism, teen suicide, AIDS profiteering, sodomy laws, and much more, I never once heard anyone identify the fact that they couldn't get married as being a major concern. And then, out of the blue, gay marriage suddenly became the litmus test by which we measure our allies. We have now come to the point that many unthinkingly equate opposition to gay marriage with homophobia.

Rick Warren is now the flash point, the one all our political allies, even Barack Obama, are supposed to denounce because he doesn't pass gay marriage the litmus test.

I disagree with Rick Warren on many things. To start with, he believes that 2000 years ago God sent his only Son to die on a cross so that mankind would not perish but have everlasting life. To me, that's weird. I don't know how to even begin to address an idea that far out. And he believes that everyone who does not accept Jesus as their savior will go to hell. He doesn't single out gays and lesbians in particular. To me, the weirdest thing there is not that he thinks queers will go to hell, but that he believes in hell at all. But mainline Protestants believe in hell too. So do Catholics, who also add purgatory and limbo.

Steve Waldman, founder of Belief.net (where you find the most thoughtful exchanges on present day religion), did an extended interview with Warren which has been hyped all over the blogosphere as an example of why we should all be screaming for Obama to disinvite Warren from the inaugural. The quote that got all the attention was when Warren said gay marriage would be on a par with marriage for incest, pedophilia and polygamy. And yes, I think that's off-base. Not up there are the scale of the whole God-sent-his-only-Son-to-die-on-a-cross bit, but weird nonetheless. But let's look the rest of the interview, the parts that didn't get as much attention as that one line:

Q: Which do you think is a greater threat to the American family - divorce or gay marriage?

A: [laughs] That's a no brainer. Divorce. There's no doubt about it.

Q: So why do we hear so much more - especially from religious conservatives - about gay marriage than about divorce?

A: Oh we always love to talk about other sins more than ours. Why do we hear more about drug use than about being overweight? [Note: Warren is quite overweight.]

Q: Just to clarify, do you support civil unions or domestic partnerships?

A: I don't know if I'd use the term there but I support full equal rights for everybody in America. I don't believe we should have unequal rights depending on particular lifestyles so I fully support equal rights.

Q: What about partnership benefits in terms of insurance or hospital visitation?

A: You know, not a problem with me.

I have an idea: let's accept equal rights for all. Equal rights are the issue when it comes to national politics. That's Obama's position, and I think he has it right.

Then, for those of you who are truly concerned with marriage above and beyond the issue of rights, you should go to your church, or synagogue, or mosque, and have that battle. In your community of fellow believers. I wish you all the best. And the rest of us can move on to things that matter to everyone, regardless of religious beliefs. Like, say, global warming.

Which brings us back to Rick Warren. Warren is the shiny new star of American evangelicalism. Just one of his many books has sold over 20 million copies. And his books, like his ministry, are all about rallying evangelicals to battle global warming, poverty, and AIDS. He rarely mentions culture war issues like gay marriage. And it is not just talk, he puts his money where his mouth is. As Waldman points out in a blog right here on the Huffington Post,

Warren has used his fame and fortune primarily to help the most destitute people in the world. He reverse tithes, giving away 90% and keeping 10%. Please contemplate all the religious figures who have gotten rich off their flock and pocketed the money... he's worked hard to get other conservative evangelicals to care more about poverty...

Just a reminder to all those gays and lesbians who never look beyond their cultural ghetto: we've got some serious problems going on in the world today that need to be addressed now. Global warming in particular can't wait. For thirty years Evangelical Christians have been the anchor that has pulled this country to the right, giving us first Reaganism and then Bushism. Wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. And a decade of world-threatening climate change denialism.

At a minimum, 80 million Americans identify as evangelicals, and up to double that depending on how you define evangelical. They are the largest single religious group in the country, and the fastest growing. They are not going away. Somehow, some way, queers are going to have to share this country with all these people.

I am delighted that there is a new generation of evangelicals that thinks the biggest issue isn't homosexuality but global climate change, AIDS, and poverty. And who "don't believe we should have unequal rights depending on particular lifestyles." I am so ready to make common cause with them. I couldn't care less about what they think of gay marriage.

Source / The Huffington Post

Thanks to Jim Retherford / The Rag Blog

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