Asterisk

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported Monday that a local couple will be celebrating their 70th anniversary in August. It’s a charming story, one that would be a big deal if even if they were a straight couple.

Photo courtesy South Florida Sun Sentinel

This is how it went recently for Caroline Leto and Venera Magazzu as they sipped lemonade on their couch in Dania Beach: “We’re not going to have a party,” said Magazzu, 97, insisting they are too old for such things.

“Oh, yes we are,” responded Leto, 96, who noted the two can still polka. “This is a big one.”

Indeed. A party celebrating 70 years together is a big deal for any pair. But a celebration of this couple’s love takes on special meaning, considering they had to keep silent about it for decades.

“You just couldn’t tell everyone we were lovers,” said Leto. “You tell people we’re friends, and some thought we were sisters.”

Leto and Magazzu downplay their pioneering role in the gay and lesbian community. But many of their friends and relatives talk it up anyway, marveling at how their love was able to transcend a lifetime’s worth of obstacles.

To mark their Aug. 17 milestone, members of Etz Chaim, a gay and lesbian congregation in Wilton Manors, are planning a party. They hope Leto and Magazzu will attend and show everyone how to do the polka.

“Honestly, I think they are more in love with each other than they were back then,” said longtime close friend and congregation member Gayle Scott. “Look at straight couples. You are lucky if you are married after seven years. … That is an amazing love story.”

In 1939 Leto and Magazzu met at a party in New York. Leto thought Magazzu was stylish. Magazzu thought Leto was funny.

After a courtship of about a year, Magazzu, a teacher, and Leto, a telegraph operator, moved into a tiny house in New York. They spent most of their lives there, with only close family members and closer friends knowing about their relationship.

Magazzu, a former Army medic, said she often fought the urge to tell others, and feared what “outsiders” would think. She believes society back then was more receptive to two women living together than two men — or at least less inquisitive.

“I think most people had their suspicions, but they didn’t really make a big deal about it because it was just two women,” she said. “They didn’t ask, and we just didn’t talk about it.”

Leto’s niece, Patricia Dillion, said she grew up believing the two were sisters and referred to them as aunts. One day, at a family party, an apparently tipsy Leto let Dillion in on a secret.

“She mentioned they got married,” said Dillion. “I was so happy, but then I got sad thinking that all that time they really couldn’t be upfront about it.”

In 1996, the couple registered as domestic partners in New York City. They said they did it because they felt the need to tell everyone about their life together.

Happy anniversary, ladies. Thanks for living your lives fully and showing us how it’s done.

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The Council of Bishops won’t make their final announcement until October, but I’ve seen enough results to call the winner on the United Methodist Church (UMC) All Means All Amendment (go here for more details on Amendment One). We lost.

A tally appeared online in mid-June, I don’t know from whom, and while the spreadsheet is now offline I do have a pdf of the page taken June 29. After Desert Southwest and Indiana voted in early July, the spread shrank 0.16%, with 50.08% against the amendment and 49.92% for it. The sheet went offline shortly thereafter.

If all we had to worry about were the remaining 11 conferences, I’d still be holding out hope. However, the international nature of the UMC puts us solidly in the loss category. This tally excluded non-US conferences where the UMC is a much more conservative body. It’s a foregone conclusion that votes from African and Asian countries where even speaking out in favor of gays is literally illegal will be nearly unanimous against Amendment One. To withstand the avalanche of international NO votes, we needed to have a buffer several times larger than the 1% that we seem to have had.

The sad part is that generally speaking, I think the people in the pews are much less rigid than this. My experience is that most people who are uncertain about the issue of homosexuality are solidly in the “Let’s put that aside” category. Unfortunately, AC representatives tend to be older and more conservative (they can afford to go to conference for a week) and they tend to hold the position for many years.

In some churches it’s nearly impossible to get people, even pastors, engaged in issues concerning the greater church. Consequently, change is slow in coming because of outdated ideas, outright lies from our opponents, and simple inertia. And so just like last April, the bigots win the day while more people are harmed by the United Methodist Church.

The UMC has made its decision against welcoming all people in our church. For at least the next three years, we will continue to allow pastors to make heterosexuality a requirement for discipleship.

Like it or not, this is the Church we are. Forgive me for not being a proud Methodist.

This documentary from In Their Boots made the rounds a few weeks ago, but I didn’t get a chance to watch it until last night. It’s powerful footage, a reminder that it’s not just the soldiers who suffer because of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Their spouses suffer as well.

Gay Soldier’s Husband blogs regularly (and anonymously) at Servicemembers United. Ben Cartwright (his real name, I swear) is active in the San Diego LGBT community (possibly NSFW). I haven’t been able to find information on the anonymous lesbian couple, probably because both are in the service. If anyone runs across some information please leave a comment.

Also, keep your eye on In Their Boots. The series of documentaries is based around the military, not DADT issues specifically.

This video should be required viewing. In fact, I order you –ORDER YOU– to sit down and watch it. It was made in 1993 (The fashions haven’t aged well, have they?), but it’s still relevant and it’s still powerful. Unfortunately, it’s still true. The speaker is author and educator Brian McNaught, from his video Growing Up Gay and Lesbian.

Straight people, it’s ten minutes long and you need to watch it uninterrupted. Make it happen. (Yes, I’m bossy today.)

LGBTs, I’ll advise you to watch it in a safe environment and alone if possible. I’m not going to lie, I started crying halfway through.

I’d like the straight people who watched this to do as McNaught said at the end. Don’t think on it for long, and don’t censor yourself. Leave it as a comment, if you would.

There’s another clip from the video at McNaught’s site, but I’ll let you go over there to see it. It’s vital that straight people know what we’ve gone through and the differences that have been built into society.

h/t Towleroad

Last week after I posted some news coming from the Episcopal Church General Convention, I found out that there would be a whole lot more to come. For the sake of I decided to hold off until it was over rather than posting it piecemeal. Well, it’s over now and the news is just about 100% positive. Here are a few snippets from An Inch at a Time, the blog of Rev. Susan Russell:

We saw those goals realized in the adoption of the following resolutions:

D025 — Ordination
It can – and has – been said that D025 does not “repeal” B033 – and that is, of course, true. There will still be bishops with jurisdiction and standing committees who will choose to “exercise restraint” when consenting the election of a bishop whose “manner of life” would cause concern to the wider Anglican Communion. (And we all know that is code for “partnered gay or lesbian bishop.”) Nevertheless, the inclusive and expansive language of D025 states “this is where we are in 2009″ – and frees bishops and standing committees to focus on the theological orientation rather than the sexual orientation of qualified candidates to the episcopate if they choose to.

Furthermore, by stating unequivocally that “God has called and may call any individual in the church to any ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church, in accordance with the discernment process set forth in the Constitution and Canons of the church” – D025 actually states for the first time as an official resolution of the Episcopal Church that the extra-canonical requirement of celibacy of gay and lesbian candidates for ordination is not the mind of this church.

C056 — Blessings
What the Episcopal Church adopted in Resolution C056 is a broad local option for the blessings of the marriages, unions and partnerships of same sex couples and a call to the church to work together toward common liturgical expressions of those blessings.

The Rev. Sam Candler (Atlanta), chair of the committee that presented the resolution, called it “an elegant blend of theological care, ecclesiastical breadth and pastoral generosity.”

In other historic action, the General Convention adopted resolutions supporting the enactment of anti-discrimination [ENDA] and hate crimes legislation protecting transgender people at local, state and federal levels. Both houses also adopted resolutions adding “gender identity and expression” to its nondiscrimination policy for hiring lay employees and calling for the revision of church paper and electronic forms to allow a wider range of gender identifications.

It’s almost impossible to overstate the importance of these decisions. The House of Deputies and House of Bishops gave the Episcopal Church access to powerful new tools that will allow the Church to reach so many people who have been outcast for so long.

And it’s already yielding results. In a later post, Rev. Russell talks about the highlights of her experience at the convention.

The woman who stopped me in the worship hall to thank Integrity for our work and then to share that she had attended the Integrity Eucharist with her 14 year old son — and that afterwards in their hotel room he had come out to her.

“I’ve known he was gay since he was about 4,” she said, her eyes welling up. “And have been waiting for him to figure it out. The fact that he came to himself in the context of a celebration of the Eucharist — that he’s never going to have to wonder if his church or his family will love and accept him as he is — I just can’t thank you enough.”

“He’s a really great kid,” she said, wiping her eyes. “And he’s going to be FABULOUS gay man! “

This is how coming out should be. No anger, no estrangement, no hatred. No fear. Only joy, love, and acceptance. What a gift.

I join this mother in thanking Rev. Russell and Integrity^USA for their tireless efforts for the Church Universal and the LGBT community.