Asterisk

Sad news from Texas today as former GWB Chief of Staff Karl Rove’s divorce is official.

Dana Perino *, [family spokesperson and former GWB press secretary], said: “Karl Rove and his wife, Darby, were granted a divorce last week. The couple came to the decision mutually and amicably, and they maintain a close relationship and a strong friendship. There will be no further comment and the family requests that its privacy be respected.”

The Roves were married in January 1986.

It’s a sad day, and one we should have seen coming. After all, Karl Rove was the “mastermind” behind 2004′s eleven state gay marriage amendments, the man who set the terms of debate, and one who was keenly aware of the danger to straight marriage. He even took to the airwaves shortly after the 2004 election saying that the 2005 Congress needed to pass a federal gay marriage amendment to protect marriage.

ROVE: Well, marriage is a very important part of our culture and our society. If we want to have a hopeful and decent society, we ought to aim for the ideal. And the ideal is that marriage ought to be and should be a union of a man and a woman.

And we cannot allow activist judges to overturn that. We cannot allow activist local elected officials to thumb their nose at 5,000 years of human history and determine that marriage is something else.

Since that amendment hasn’t passed, I’d say that the Roves’ marriage was destroyed by us, the Militant HomoSEXual Activists. Because we insisted on thumbing our noses at 5,000 years of human history, Mr. and Mrs. Rove thumbed their noses at 4,965 years of human history by getting a no-fault divorce, at 4,800 years of human history by allowing Mrs. Rove to own property, and at 3,100 years of human history by allowing Darby to work rather than taking care of their home.

Here, I’ll let Dan Savage briefly explain about some of the ways Mr. and Mrs. Karl Rove have thumbed their noses.

So on behalf of Militant HomoSEXual Activists everywhere, I apologize, Karl. I apologize, Darby.

To get you back on track, may I inquire when you’re going back to the church you were married in to finalize your divorce?

* I don’t want to go too far afield, but last month Perino made news with the shocking revelation that 9/11 didn’t happen under GWB. Neither host Sean Hannity nor guest Stuart Varney questioned her assertion and no correction has aired, so she must be right. ⇧

I’m reposting a few of this year’s important posts during the holiday limbo. This post from January 29, 2009 still affects me nearly a year later, probably because it’s so literally close to home in this town of around 6,000. The New Carlisle News (edited by Dale Grimm) is now a paid weekly newspaper and has opened an office in town.

I picked up a copy of the new freebie community newspaper last night at the laundromat. They’ve decided to print the headlines in Arial Rounded MT Bold for some reason, but it was otherwise unobjectionable. Unobjectionable, that is, until I got to the obituaries.

The first one on the page had a picture of a relatively young guy. Turns out he was 50. As I read the family roll call I realized that he must’ve been gay. The list of survivors began with the sentence Jeffrey is survived by his friend, Ronald S. Ronald was followed by a listing of Jeffrey’s living brothers and sisters, who were followed by a listing of Ronald’s living family.

I thought that was sweet. Sweet that the obituary had been written to include both of their families, just as you see in many obituaries of straight married people. Sweet that Jeff and Ronald were comfortable enough with their homosexuality to do that so publicly in rural Ohio. It’s a real sign of progress. But something bothered me about it, and as my clothes hit the final spin cycle I figured out what it was.

Friend. Ronald was identified as Jeff’s friend. That’s not typical use even in a small town like this one, especially when you make it clear in the same paragraph that you consider each other’s family your family. An out and proud person generally doesn’t willingly downgrade his apparently long-term, committed relationship to friendship.

Later, I checked the funeral home’s website for the original version. It didn’t say friend. It said Jeff is survived by his partner, Ronald S.

I checked the websites of two other newspapers, one in the nearest city and one where Jeff had lived. Both used the word partner. Clearly someone at this little community newspaper made the change on his/her own. I sent an email requesting clarification on the change this morning, but I don’t expect to hear anything. ¹

This is one more reason that civil marriage equality needs to happen. We need to be permitted to marry just like straight folks do and finally use the terms that they do.

It was easy for some small town editor to cross off the word partner and substitute it with friend. Would it be as simple or as accepted to cross off the word husband from a man’s life?

As a final insult, the reality of Jeff’s life was whitewashed even after he died. Presumably it was done for the comfort of people reading the obituary. But Ronald didn’t bury a friend last week. He buried his long-time companion, his lover, his partner.

His husband.

¹ Less than an hour after publishing this post, I received the following response from the editor of the New Carlisle (Ohio) News:

Matt,

Thank you for contacting the New Carlisle News.

The editing of Jeffrey [redacted]‘s obituary was an editorial decision.

Dale Grimm
New Carlisle News

(Here’s a screencap of the email.)

Just so everybody’s clear, Mr. Grimm censored an obituary to hide the fact that the person who died was gay. Unbelievable. I find more than a little pathetic that Jeff’s pride and honesty in life was trampled immediately upon his death.

Dale Grimm, who also owns ISP KBAnet.com, can be contacted at 1-877-652-2638 or (937) 284-2715. Or if you prefer email, contact him through this contact form at NewCarlisleOhio.net or this one at his hosting business, though I wouldn’t be surprised to see that disappear again (like it did a few minutes ago). ⇧

Note: A commenter to the original post had further communication with editor Dale Grimm. Below is his statement to her.

The idea that a man can consider another man his “spouse” is ludcrious (sic). Had the obituary come in identifying his daughter as his “spouse”, should I have printed it that way? What if it had identified his dog as his “spouse”?

If you had cared so much about this individual as you imply in your e-mail, why did you not encourage him to seek help for his problem? Homosexuality is a demon that thousands of people have escaped.

We are not in the business of promoting sexual activity or political agendas. We are a small town newspaper informing our community of events that they will want to know about. We have the right to print what we wish and to edit anything that we find objectionable.

I was so glad to catch The Rachel Maddow Show last night, when she talked about a video battle between two rival Washington high schools. Here’s the clip from her show, but I’ve embedded the full videos below that.

The challenge came from Shorecrest High School‘s video department to arch rival Shorewood High. Mr. Mitchell’s class produced a four-minute, one-shot, apparently all-hands video for OutKast’s Hey Ya.

Not to be outdone, Shorewood High School’s video production class turned in Hall & Oates’s You Make My Dreams Come True. Student Javier Cáceres taught himself and other students to lip sync the song backward, then taped (assisted by teacher Mr. Ballew) the entire four minutes in one shot, then ran the backward-lip syncing, backward-walking, backward-everything-ing tape backward and set it to Hall & Oates singing forward.

Trust me, it’s a whole kettle of awesome.

We’re still waiting for Shorecrest’s response, but as Rachel points out, other schools around the country are preparing to jump into the fray.

So what does this have to do with anything gay? I would have posted this anyway just because I like the videos, but on a hunch I checked out the two schools’ websites this morning. Both Shorecrest and Shorewood have GLSEN-registered Gay/Straight Alliances (Washington’s GLSEN Chapter, region 4).

I’m not sure exactly why, but that didn’t surprise me.

Good on ya, Shorewood and Shorecrest, for all of it. Now let’s see some more videos!

Well, it happened again. The Obama administration dropped more horrible news last Friday afternoon once the news cycle ended for the week. It’s another administration challenge to health care benefits for lesbian and gay partners of federal employees.

The administration has previously vigorously argued in defense of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), saying that the Department of Justice is responsible for upholding current statute even as they announce that they will actively ignore other federal statutes like the medical marijuana prohibition. The Advocate and AMERICAblog have more, but you know the drill.

Before his election, Barack Obama was clearly and convincingly on our side, even when he wasn’t speaking on LGBT issues directly. He had this to say five days before his election:

I mean, the— the right to marry who you please isn’t in the Constitution. But I think all of us assume that if a state— decided to pass a law saying, “Brian, you can’t marry the woman you love,” that you’d think that was unconstitutional. Well, where does that come from? I think it comes from a right to privacy— that may not be listed in the Constitution but is implied by the structure of the Constitution.

How do we reconcile that with what President Obama’s administration has enthusiastically supported during his first year in office? There must be something going on besides mere post-election forgetfulness. I mean, even GWB’s administration defended DOMA less stridently than Obama’s has.

Keeping all of that in mind, and with the knowledge that lasting civil rights progress always begins in the courts, and understanding that some will call me an Obama apologist for it, I ask this question:

Could it be that the Obama administration is so violently pushing DOMA to its furthest extent so the Supreme Court will have no choice but to rule once and for all that DOMA targets gays as a protected class, violates the suspect classification doctrine, and is unconstitutional?

(Is that reference too old?)

I wish I were accustomed to outright bigots in government by now. It’s common enough, after all. But every once in a while, someone repeats a slur so openly that it surprises even me.

The Mecklenburg County (North Carolina) Commission held their regular meeting Tuesday night. On the agenda was a proposal to provide same-sex domestic partner benefits to county employees. The issue ultimately passed by a vote of 6-3 along party lines, but it’s what came during debate that has caused a stir. Here’s video from local News 14.

“To think about the son that I birthed, that died of AIDS, and I did not know that in 2010 I would be sitting here to defend that process, and his lifestyle,” said Commissioner Vilma Leake. “So I stand gloriously to vote for this issue.”

While some in the crowd applauded, [Commissioner Bill James] can be heard saying to Leake: “Your son was a homo? Really?”

To which Leake responded: “You’re going to make me hurt you. Don’t do that to me. Don’t talk about my son.”

Bill James was later pressed for comment by the Charlotte, NC Fox affiliate. Here’s their report with additional comments from Mr. James on a sympathetic radio program. It was there that he claimed he was interrupted in the middle of the word “homosexual”. After hearing the clip proving he was lying, he changed his defense and said that “homo” isn’t a slur.

Obviously Mr. James is allowed to use the word “homo” all he wants. I actually disagree with those (with the exception of Ms. Leake) who are calling for an apology. I’d rather get this man on the record and reveal him for who he is. Forced apologies and fake contrition are meaningless.

But there’s no need to worry about an apology anytime soon. Mr. James released this statement today via email. (He still won’t go on camera. That could be troublesome come campaign season.)

Vilma is a religious hypocrite.

She was married to a Bishop in the AME Zion church. A church that has historically opposed homosexuality.

She used her son’s ‘lifestyle’ and his death from HIV-AIDS to justify in public voting for benefits to allow more individuals to use tax dollars to engage in the very behavior that resulted in her son’s death.

It is akin to someone whose son is an alcoholic and died from the disease, using his death from drinking as justification to have the taxpayers pay for more booze.

Her position was that her ‘faith’ demanded that she do this to support her son and his ‘lifestyle’ which she acknowledges killed him.

Since she didn’t define what ‘lifestyle’ she was referring to I asked her. Asking the question is completely legitimate since she used him as the basis for explaining her public vote.

Her response to me was threaten violence. This is also nothing new for Vilma as she did that on the School Board as well.

Leake: “Don’t make me hurt you. Don’t do that to me. Don’t talk to me about my son.”

Well, with all due respect to Ms. Leake – if she didn’t want to talk about her son then why did she use his death from his ‘lifestyle’ contracting HIV/AIDS as the public justification for spending tax dollars to support the very behavior that killed her son. (sic)

I can type but I have lost my voice. Feel free to use this in your story.

Helpful ordered list of responses:

1. He fools no one by trying to change the subject. The problem wasn’t his question, it was the use of a slur in doing so. It’s the same as if he’d asked her if her son was a n**ger. Obviously.
2. You can’t contract HIV/AIDS from being gay. You can contract HIV/AIDS from having sex. Tuesday’s vote was about the former, not the latter.
3. The issue wasn’t to “allow more individuals to use tax dollars to engage in the very behavior”. It was to provide health insurance to domestic partners. Just like is done near-universally for straight couples.
4. Ms. Leake wasn’t “justifying” her vote, she was explaining why this is more personal for her.
5. Ms. Leake should be applauded for understanding both the separation of her religious beliefs from her civic duty and the words of Jesus the Christ.
6. Drop the victim routine. When you use a slur like that against someone’s dead child, you deserve what’s coming.

Incidentally, this isn’t the first time Mr. James’ bigotry has been in the news. While he’s focused on the “homos” for quite some time (see Pam’s House Blend), he’s also been in hot water for calling the urban black community “a moral sewer”.

Ms. Leake, my sympathies on your son’s death, and my thanks for standing gloriously beside us in the fight for equality.