Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Thoughts on the LGBT rights debate (from a FRIEND)

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The second purpose is to take the initiative to explain my own thoughts since simply reacting in the form of comments seems to have created a distorted view of where I stand and how strongly I believe in this.  I’ve never been someone to be out front and vocal about anything.  It’s just not me, so it shouldn’t be taken personally by those passionate about this issue.  I did contact my Rep. and Senator prior to the Constitutional Convention where this might have been put on the ballot, though I’m not sure what good it did; my Senator was already with us and my Rep. was a lost cause.  So let’s run down where I stand:

Marriage – I believe this can and should be defined as an exclusive relationship between ANY TWO consenting adults.  Same-sex couples should have EVERY right afforded to straight married couples, and yes, my strong preference is to actually call it “marriage”.  I believe that state laws and amendments defining marriage as one man and one woman violate the Equal Protection clause.  I believe that the federal DOMA violates Equal Protection as well as Full Faith and Credit.  I also supported the repeal of the 1913 law regarding the validity of marriages in the state of one’s residence.

Military – The sooner Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is repealed the happier I will be.  As Barry Goldwater once said you shouldn’t have to BE straight, you should only have to SHOOT straight.  I also think President Clinton botched this big time in 1993.  He should have just given the order like Truman did when he racially integrated the armed forces.  The President is after all, Commander-in-Chief and shouldn’t have to even go through Congress for something like this.

ENDA – Is this really not law yet?  Sounds like one of the biggest no-brainers to me.

Sin – Some of us Christians actually know how to pull our noses out of the Bible long enough to look around and realize it is the year AD 2008.  There are supposedly eight verses in the Bible condemning homosexuality, but at least in Leviticus it’s in the same section as condemning the mixing of different threads in the same garment.  I’m sure we would prefer to have our virgin daughters violated as Lot offered in Sodom as well!  I’m not going to judge our ancient ancestors for not knowing what we know now, but some provisions of a 2000-3000 year old document are certainly worth ignoring.

There is no excuse whatsoever as far as I’m concerned for any person to not be treated equally under the law.  Certainly one’s civil rights have no business being put to a public vote.  Unfortunately, it has been proven by these votes that a majority of voters in every state in which it has been tried are willing to block civil rights.

I would think that given this any ally would be appreciated.  Instead, so often when I comment on these issues I get called insulting, offensive, and/or get low-rated so I’m writing this diary in part to vent my frustration.  In order for your outrage to have an impact I suggest saving it for the Fred Phelps and Pat Robertsons of the world.  If I ask a question please answer it rather than taking umbridge.  We really do want the same things and I am confident we will get there, but sniping at each other won’t help.

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  1. about “any two consenting adults?”  Do you think siblings should be allowed to marry each other?  Shouldn’t they each have to find someone else to marry, with whom they could ethically conceive children together?  How about a father and his 18 year old daughter?

  2. but something you said helps me boil down what I think our differences are.  You said

    There is no excuse whatsoever as far as I’m concerned for any person to not be treated equally under the law.

    The problem is that you do make excuses for not pursuing equality under the law on a timescale that is sensible to those of us living without that equality.  “Later will be a better time”, and “other issues are more important” are the most common excuses.  Do you personally recognize either of those excuses?

    <

    p>I’m going to continue with a series of posts that illustrate why the excuses are not acceptable.  Stay tuned…

    • I take your point on the timing issue, though I’m not sure I would say later would be better.  In fact, the sooner we get where we want to be certainly the happier I’ll be.  I’m sorry if some of my comments acknowledging that these things take time were construed as approving that fact; that was not the intent.

      <

      p>Thank you also for posting the stories on this thread.  It’s important to shine a spotlight on these obviously inexcusable acts of violence and other instances of discrimination, etc.  I suspect many people (myself included, frankly) don’t realize how common these are.  I don’t agree with the rulings you cite and certainly don’t condone the violence.  Hopefully, the personal stories can be used to get people to see each other as neightbors.

  3. The NYT says:

    A woman in the San Francisco Bay area was jumped by four men, taunted for being a lesbian, repeatedly raped and left naked outside an abandoned apartment building, authorities said Monday.

    Detectives say the 28-year-old victim was attacked Dec. 13 after she got out of her car, which bore a rainbow gay pride sticker. The men, who ranged from their late teens to their 30s, made comments indicating they knew her sexual orientation, said Richmond police Lt. Mark Gagan.

    ”It just pushes it beyond fathomable,” he said. ”The level of trauma — physical and emotional — this victim has suffered is extreme.” …

    The 45-minute attack began when one of the men approached the woman as she crossed the street, struck her with a blunt object, ordered her to disrobe and sexually assaulted her with the help of the other men.

    When the group saw another person approaching, they forced the victim back into her car and took her to a burned-out apartment building, where she was raped again inside and outside the vehicle. The assailants took her wallet and drove off in her car. …

    Gay rights advocates note that hate crimes based on sexual orientation have increased nationwide as of late. … “Anytime there is an anti-LGBT initiative, we tend to see spikes both in the numbers and the severity of attacks,” he said. “People feel this extra entitlement to act out their prejudice.”

    “Entitlement to act out their prejudice”.  Do you suppose that’s because national leaders and those elevated by them spew anti-LGBT hate?  

  4. Margaret‘s story.

     I’ve never written a diary [on Pam’s House Blend] before but I am just so sick of the reaction by some in the hetero community who seem to feel that we in the LGBT community are somehow “whining” about Obama’s selection of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at Obama’s inauguration. John Cole for example thinks that we are “an idiot chorus” and that we are guilty of “crazy outrage” and “whining”. Lynda Resnick calls our hurt and anger “unwarranted” and she goes on to say:

    “Rev. Rick Warren is a cuddly bear of a fellow, full of good cheer and a great sense of humor, even about himself.”

     There are many others who seem to feel the same way about Warren and about the issue but these two represent on the one hand, the anger at the LGBT commubity for daring to speak up and on the other hand, the patronizing bullshit from those who truly don’t get the cause of our upset. Let me attempt to explain to the clueless, (the Resnicks) and to the STFU crowd, (the Coles) where my own anger comes from.

     I have been transgendered my whole life and it’s always been reasonably apparent that I was not born female. I mean, I can look drop dead gorgeous if I wanted to spend several hours getting ready to go outside every day but the reality of my existence is that I get up an hour before I have to be at work, take a shower, slap on some rudimentary make-up and go. The result being that the attentive can always tell that I used to be male.

     There lies the problem. I used to be much, much worse at being able to “pass” as a woman, having not had the benefit of being taught to use cosmetics properly. This had caused me to be threatened and a couple of times, attacked and beaten. On one infamous occasion, I suffered several broken ribs and the Houston police arrested me on the grounds that I “should have taken a different route” having been threatened by those people before. No charges were ever filed but I was forced to walk home from the downtown police station. Lacking a job and health coverage, (and being young), I never had those ribs treated. In fact, I only found out that they had been broken years later. On a different occasion. I had the orbit of my right eye shattered and my skull fractured. On still another occasion, I was raped, (something I’ve never told anybody until this very second), and repeatedly kicked in the groin.

     What all of these people who find or outrage “tiresome” or “crazy” have in common is that it’s likely that none of them have ever been beaten for their orientation or for their appearance. Oh I know most males at one time or another get the shit knocked out of them, usually by a drunk friend but I seriously doubt that any of them have been literally beaten to within an inch of their lives. How easy it must be to be so sanctimonious and to call people names for trying to speak up for the wrongs committed against and upon us.

     Personally, I would like to see John Cole take any one of the beatings that I have endured. I’d like Lynda Resnick to be taunted and have objects hurled at her head for walking down the wrong street. I’d like to see both of them denied employment, unemployment benefits and shelter because their sex doesn’t match their gender. I’d like them to have to walk a mile in my shoes before they tell me to shut the fuck up about the Warren selection.

     Remarkably, there are some in the LGBT community who feel the same way as the heteros which I totally don’t get at all. Melissa Etheridge seems to think that Warren is a nice guy and has “open arms and an open heart”. I think that she may be conflating personality with ideology. I once had a roomate who worked for John Cornyn when he was Attorney General in Texas. I’ve met the man and in person he is a super nice guy. Soft spoken, respectful and even warm but that doesn’t stop him from being a narrow minded, bigoted asshole ideologically, He voted with Bush nearly 100 percent of the time and he pushed for that abominable Constitutional ammendment in my state. Melissa, I hate to say this but you are dead wrong. Of course Rick Warren seems like a nice guy! He’s a preacher and he wouldn’t be a very succesful one if everybody thought of him as a pompous, self rightgeous, bigoted jerk!

    So, for me, every time it gets cold and the left side of my rib cage hurts, every time I try to use the peripheral vision in my right eye and see flashes of gold, every time I can’t sleep because my urinary tract is burning and I’m popping Urelle and Pyridium like m&m’s, I’ll think about Obama selecting Pastor Rick Warren. A man who, despite not having been personally involved in the injuries I’ve suffered, is just as guilty as the perpetrators of the violence because by encouraging his flock that we, the LGBT aren’t really human after all, he may as well have been there, holding me down and egging them on. And that’s just the way it is, regardless of what Cole or Resnick or even Etheridge think about it.

    Maybe when one or more of them have the shit beaten out of them for the “crime” of wanting to pursue happiness like everybody else gets to do, maybe then they’ll change their opinions. Either way, right now, they have no standing to even address the issue.

     I’m not going to say that I will no longer support Obama but I will no longer trust him. I’d be an idiot to do so.

  5. Waymon has this to say:

    1 of 18,000 Being Attacked This Holiday Season

    My “homosexual agenda” is pretty much the same everyday.  Wake-up, give my husband a kiss on the cheek, give one of our dogs his allergy medicine and make sure there is food in their bowls, decide if I can skip another day of going for a jog as I munch on leftover holiday cookies, eventually make my way over to the computer to check my email and start my work day.  Pretty sinister, right?

    It’s this threat to society as we know it that has kept the “Yes on H8” folks marching forward, now seeking to nullify the over 18,000 marriage that occurred in California, of which me and my husband are part of.

    Yes, as I type this sitting on my couch with my dog sleeping in my lap, looking at my Christmas tree that symbolizes the season of giving, my marriage is up for debate and being challenged by people that have nothing to do with it.

    Wrap a bow on that gift and put it in your stocking…
    I often wonder if the people fighting to strip away our marriage really stop to think of the individuals involved, to really put a face on the news story and the nameless numbers.  They are great about putting out press releases, commercials, and emails talking about the dangerous homosexual agenda, but I wonder if they think about the people they are working so hard to take things from.

    I wonder how they would feel waking up one day to read a headline in a newspaper that their marriage is not valid and is over.  Talk about being breaking news- the two people who are directly affected, whose marriage is being dissolved, have no real say in it.

    So once again, our relationship is suddenly making headlines.  Our marriage is a “political issue”, not the simple expression of love between two people.  Talk about redefining marriage…

    It’s interesting that the people that are quite literally destroying marriages, mine and 18,000 others, are somehow taking the stance of moral authority.  I know for certain that part of my day does not include trying to break up other marriages.  Can they say the same?

    So for now I sit next to my husband, the man I love, and wonder how someone else gets the right to decide if our marriage is valid.  I know they can never change how we feel for one another, but it doesn’t stop it from stinging as you read a headline about how your marriage is getting dissolved.

    Happy Holidays, indeed…

  6. QScribe writes:

    My own private homophobia

    “Personal writing” isn’t at all my usual thing, but for some reason I feel compelled to write about this.  Maybe the holidays are softening me up; I don’t know.   And I don’t know where I’d post this but on the Blend, the web community where I feel most at home.  But there is more to this than mere nostalgia; I hope you’ll hang on through the first few paragraphs.  Anyway, here goes:

    When I was five years old I had a boyfriend.  Yes, that’s right, five.  He was the kid across the street, and his name was Davy.  He was just about exactly my age, and he had flame red hair and the bluest eyes you can imagine.  (The red hair got imprinted on me.  To this day I’m a sucker for a guy who’s a redhead.)

    We were “best friends,” the way kids that age often are.  Inseparable.  Constantly together.  On alternate nights, we’d sleep over at each other’s houses, in each other’s beds.  In each other’s arms.  I’m sure it was terribly naive of me, but Davy seemed the only one I’d ever want to share my life with.   To the extent two kids that age can be in love, we were.

    And there was sex, and I don’t mean just “playing doctor” the way little kids do.  There was never any anal penetration; I don’t think it ever occurred to us.  But we did everything else, kissing, oral, oral-anal, even stuff like foot worship, you name it.  I remember us playing little games where we’d tie each other up and pretend to whip each other.  We even did water sports.  And more.  The sense of joy we got exploring one another’s bodies was more wonderful than I can say.  We were very advanced little boys.

    It couldn’t have been more idyllic, or more ideal.  Two innocents in paradise.  But it ended when I was eight and my family moved to another neighborhood.  That was that.  No more boyfriend love for this kid.  It took me ages to get over the loss.

    Fast forward to high school.  I spent my freshman year in a Catholic seminary.  (It turned me into an atheist.)   When I was, er, disinvited to return because I asked too many embarrassing questions about church history and doctrine, my parents put me into a Catholic high school.  I was sure being a failed priest would carry a mark of shame there, so I was dreading it.  But to my surprise, nobody seemed to give a damn.  And there was an even better surprise waiting for me there.  

    Davy was there.  His hair had darkened a bit, but I knew him the moment I saw him.  
    It took me awhile to get over the shock of seeing him again (I can be pretty slow on the uptake).  Then the truth sank in, a truth I was hardly prepared to deal with.

    Davy had turned out queeny.   He was the school faggot, the one who got beaten up and spit on just for walking down the hall.  The ultimate outsider.  And since this was a good, loving, Catholic school, the abuse was vicious, frequent and unrelenting.  

    I was horrified.  It had only just begun to dawn on me what being gay meant.  I was a very naïve kid, and I had internalized the church’s “teachings,” not intellectually (I was bright enough to realize they were bullshit) but emotionally.  I wanted to be with Davy again.  I wanted it more than anything in the world.  But I was terrified.

    Much too terrified to bond with him again, to let anyone suspect I was “one of them.”  I forced myself to be polite but aloof to him.  And it killed me.  Almost literally.  That awful mixture of desire for him and fear of being like him paralyzed me in more ways than I could begin to list here (and probably more than I’m aware of even today).

    I even remember him approaching me once and asking me, almost in tears, if we could be friends again.  I was too terrified to do anything but stare at him and then walk away.

    Since high school I have never seen him again.  I’d give anything to be able to find him again-and apologize for what I did to him and for what I had let myself become.  He’s not listed in the phone book, and web searches turn up nothing.  

    I’ve moved on and grown in the thousand years since high school, of course.  But I’ve always carried that sadness inside me.  It is, I think, a large part of what motivated my gay activism and even a lot of my professional writing.  I’m not enough of a romantic fool to imagine that the two of us might have been together and happy to this very day.   But it was a possibility, I guess.

    A part of me-and only a part-hates straight society for what it does to us.  It wasn’t Davy’s queeniness that kept me away from him(I find that softness in a man’s character very appealing); it was blind terror of what would happen to me, and to us.  Every time I saw him punched in the school hallway, I died a little.  But I was too crippled by fear to do a thing about it.

    When I see “men of God” attacking us on TV; when I hear clowns like Rick Warren quoting ancient texts to prove there was something wrong with the uncomplicated love these two boys felt for each other; when I hear of families being torn apart by bigoted churches and their ballot initiatives; the blend of sorrow and rage I feel an hardly be expressed.  

    We must keep fighting, all of us, not only for ourselves and our relationships but for all the gay kids yet to come.

  7. were relayed in just the past few days.  Except for the NYT story, all the others were unprompted personal outpourings from readers at Pam’s House Blend.  In my several years of reading her blog and in a lifetime of being gay and reading widely, I have never seen the high level of personal testimonials that are happening now as reflected on that blog.  We are undergoing a sea change.  Clever people will recognize this and recalculate their priorities.

  8. From Leonard Link:

    Unconstitutional Alabama Sodomy Law Disrupts Lesbian Household

    Despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling that state laws penalizing private consensual adult “sodomy” are unconstitutional, the unrepealed Alabama sodomy law was invoked to break up a lesbian household in the context of alimony litigation in J.L.M. v. S.A.K., 2008 Westlaw 5265051 (Court of Civil Appeals of Alabama, December 19, 2008). Although the appeals court noted the Supreme Court ruling, it commented that the Alabama sodomy law had never been held unconstitutional, and found no fault with a trial judge ruling that only restored the ex-wife’s full alimony payments when her partner moved out of state.

    The former husband is identified in the opinion by Judge Terry A. Moore as J.L.M., and the ex-wife as S.A.K. The ex-wife’s lesbian partner is identified as L.B.

    Judge Moore’s opinion relates that the parties divorced in 2006, S.A.K.’s relationship with L.B. having contributed to the breakup of the marriage. The divorce decree, which gave J.L.M. custody of the children, required J.L.M. to pay $1,000 a month in alimony to S.A.K. The Dale County trial judge at that time struck from the divorce decree a provision that would have barred either parent from having “members of the opposite sex or members of the same sex in their respective homse while exercising custody or visitation with the children for the purpose of having extra-marital relations or contract.” J.L.M. did not object to this modification.

    On June 7, 2007, however, J.L.M. petitioned the court to terminate his alimony obligation because S.A.K. and L.B. had begun “cohabiting” in a house they rented from a longtime friend of S.A.K. In his petition, J.L.M. argued that he should not be required to support S.A.K.’s “immoral sexual relationship” with L.B.

    At the hearing on J.L.M.’s petition, S.A.K. testified that she and L.B. were in an “exclusive, committed relationship,” which she called a “life partnership.” They had exchanged rings, were living together as a couple and maintained a joint checking account for household expenses. L.B., who had previously lived in Nebraska, was unemployed and was receiving unemployment benefits from Nebraska. S.A.K. had not worked full-time since before her marriage, and was living on the alimony payments and a monthly property settlement payment that she was receiving from J.L.M. She was attending school to obtain teacher certification.

    J.L.M. testified that he should not have to pay alimony because he believed S.A.K. was not making a good-faith attempt to find employment and because he did not want to “pay for their existence,” referring to S.A.K. and L.B.’s relationship. J.L.M. testified that he had known of the relationship between S.A.K. and L.B. at the time of the divorce, but that he believed that circumstances had changed – a prerequisite for a change in the alimony decree – because the women had begun living together and were, in his phrase, “all but married.”

    On October 5, 2007, the trial judge issued an order reducing the alimony payment to $500 a month. J.L.M. then filed a motion objecting to the court’s failure to terminate his alimony payments completely, based on “the former wife’s living arrangements and lifestyle choices.” (The quoted phrasing is Judge Moore’s.) The trial judge granted this motion, issuing an order that stated: “So long as [S.A.K.] cohabitates in an illegal relationship with a member of the same sex, alimony shall be terminated pending further orders of the Court. If [S.A.K.] is not cohabitating in an illegal relationship with a member of the same sex, alimony shall continue.”

    The purported “illegality” of S.A.K. and L.B.’s relationship was based on the Alabama sodomy law, which the legislature has never repealed despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling. Ironically, at the time the trial judge issued this order in January 2008, S.A.K.and L.B. were no longer living together. As S.A.K. testified at a new hearing held in February 2008, just before Thanksgiving 2007, she had received a letter (from a source unnamed in the trial record) advising her that her relationship with L.B. was illegal. Based on that letter, S.A.K. testified, L.B. had moved back to Nebraska and the women were no longer living together, although they remained in regular phone contact and made occasional visits to each other. Based on this testimony, the trial judge restored her alimony to the full $1,000 a month.

    J.L.M. appealed this to the court of appeals. An Alabama statute specifically provides that if a divorced spouse receiving alimony cohabits with a member of the opposite sex, their alimony shall be terminated. J.L.M. argued that this should be broadly construed to include same-sex cohabitants as well. The court of appeals rejected this argument, finding the statutory language plain on its face. While a trial judge could, as a matter of discretion, decide to terminate alimony as a result of same-sex cohabitation if the court concluded that this change in circumstances merited reconsideration of the necessity for alimony, the appeals court would not interpret the statute to mandate automatic termination.

    J.L.M. renewed his argument that he shouldn’t be forced to finance his wife’s “illegal” relationship with L.B., citing the sodomy law as well as the Alabama “Marriage Protection Act,” which forbids same-sex marriages. J.L.M. also cited some Alabama court opinions describing homosexuality as a crime of “moral turpitude.” “The former husband argues that, in light of the foregoing concerns, it is unjust to compel him to ‘abet’ his former wife’s criminal conduct by subsidizing her illicit relationship with his money through the payment of alimony,” wrote Judge Moore. “The former husband urges this court to prevent that perceived injustice by recognizing as a rule of law that alimony is terminated once a recipient former spouse enters into a homosexual relationship.”

    The court could have responded to this argument by pointing out that the since Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, the Alabama sodomy law may not be constitutionally applied to the kind of relationship that S.A.K. has with L.B., but instead, after referencing Lawrence in a footnote, the court observed that the Alabama sodomy law “has not been declared unconstitutional by any court.” Rather than declare it unconstitutional in this case, the court instead declared it irrelevant to the issue of alimony, while refraining from commenting adversely on the trial judge’s reliance on the “illegal” nature of the relationship in the prior order that briefly terminated S.A.K.’s alimony.

    “In general, the purpose of alimony is ‘to preserve, insofar as possible, the economic status quo of the parties as it existed during the marriage even though the marriage is judicially terminated,” wrote Judge Moore. “If the legislature believes that the purpose of providing alimony is overcome by the immoral or illegal conduct of the recipient, it may so provide,” Moore commented, but “this court may not assume the role of the legislature and create laws, even if they would be consistent with that policy.”

    The court rejected J.L.M’s argument that he was being “forced to abet the former wife’s criminal conduct and to subsidize her relationship,” pointing out that the payment to S.A.K. was based on her financial need. “The former husband offered no evidence indicating that the former wife is using her alimony for anything other than the payment of her ordinary living expenses.” The court also rejected the argument that the trial court’s decree placed in improper burden on him to monitor his former wife’s living arrangements if he wanted to get his alimony reduced or eliminated due to her cohabitation. The court observed, perhaps a bit tongue in cheek, “A paying former spouse may vigilantly protect his or her own financial interests by regularly checking on the receiving former spouse’s living arrangements,
    but [the statute] does not require the paying former spouse to do so,” the decision being “left entirely to his discretion.”

    One judge on the five-judge panel dissented, but wrote no opinion. Two judges filed concurring opinions, but neither opinion stated anything contradicting the implication of Judge Moore’s opinion that the Alabama sodomy law remains alive and effective until it is finally declared unconstitutional. As such, the court of appeals decision, although not itself premised on the sodomy law, perpetuates an odd situation where the trial court’s original order reducing and briefly terminating alimony because of the former wife’s “homosexual relationship” stands as an illegitimate use of an unconstitutional law. The failure of the court of appeals to make any adverse comment about the trial judge’s misuse of the sodomy law in light of Lawrence v. Texas, or of the improper advice to S.A.K. about her “illegal” relationship that resulted in L.B. moving back to Nebraska, is simply outrageous..

  9. A West Virginia family has taken its case to the state Supreme Court, arguing that their prospective adoptive daughter should not be taken from their home and placed with a “traditional” family simply because the couple that has cared for the infant since her birth are two women…

    [A] Dec. 11 story reported that Cheryl Hess and Kathryn Kutil appealed the decision, made by Judge Paul Burke of the lower Fayette Circuit court, on the grounds that Burke had no authority to reassign care of the girl to a mixed-gender married couple for no reason other than that Hess and Kutil are a same-sex couple.

    Moreover, Hess and Kutil claim that the court’s attempt to take their adoptive daughter infringes on their rights.

    Hess and Kutil also claimed that West Virginia’s Department of Health and Human Resources had backed their bid to adopt the 11-month-old infant, prior to revising its stance on the basis that the baby created a situation in which there were too many children in the women’s care.

    According to the article, the couple sees the court’s intervention in their domestic arrangement as “setting a dangerous precedent” that could imperil future adoptions by unmarried or same-sex couples or single prospective parents.

    Under current state law, unmarried individuals may adopt children, the article said.

    The couple posited that the state was concerned with politics rather than the welfare of the infant. …

    Kutil had adopted a 12-year-old daughter, the article said, and the couple have been cleared by the state as adoptive parents. …

    The case goes before the state Supreme Court on March 11, 2009.

    Note that gays are now forbidden via state constitutional amendment to adopt or be foster parents in 3-4 states and by lesser laws in countless other polities.  Map of adoption laws.  Map of second-parent adoption laws.  Map of foster care laws.

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