Archive for New York category
Marriage Law Hypocrisy Proven Again. TWICE.
The ban on same-sex marriage, both by states and by the federal government, is plainly hypocritical. We in the LGBT community know that, as do our allies.
Sometimes, though, we need to re-teach the rest of America the inherent hypocrisy of civil marriage laws. This week saw two new educational attempts.
Our first stop in incredulity is the campaign from Brian Feldman. He promised to marry any woman who showed up at the Orange County, FL Courthouse Marriage License Office last Monday. Three strangers showed up, and he chose Hannah Miller for his bride with a simple game of Spin the (Water) Bottle, which you can see in the below video.
The wedding between two virtual strangers took place this afternoon. Neither Feldman nor Miller has any apparent romantic affection for the other. There is no expectation of sexual intercourse, let alone children. Lifetime commitment is out of the question.
I do wonder if Feldman will apply for coverage on Miller’s health insurance plan. That would be an interesting test.
Then there’s the wedding of Kitty Lambert and Ed [Unknown]. Two days ago, Kitty went to the Buffalo, NY City Hall and applied for a marriage license with her long-time partner Cheryl. The couple has five children and twelve grandchildren.
When the city worker refused their request for a marriage license, Kitty turned around and asked the group of supporters if any man would volunteer to marry her. Ed raised his hand, and about ten seconds after learning each other’s first name, a government worker granted their marriage license.
Lambert and [Unknown] don’t plan to go through with the marriage, saying that they’ll wait until they can marry the person they choose.
For two strangers with under $100 and no desire for real commitment, the government allows marriage as long as they have different genitals, even if the government knows the marriage is a lie. (That’s good, by the way.)
Lesbian or gay couples with decades-long relationships and complete families? That’s when the government cries foul.
What We Can Gain From NJ Senate’s Vote Against Civil Rights
The civil rights movement has seen some remarkable losses in the last few months. In early November, voters overturned a marriage law in Maine. A month later, the New York Senate voted against civil rights in marriage. Then yesterday, after a brief period of debate, the New Jersey Senate voted against a similar civil rights bill. David Badash of The New Civil Rights Movement was good enough to put some of the speeches online. Below are four of them.
And so to the question: What can we gain from this experience? I think we can use this failure (theirs, not ours) as an opportunity to reconsider our strategy.
We need to remember that we never chose this war. Remember, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) came about 14 years ago because the Hawaii Supreme Court ordered that the state must show compelling reasons to exclude lesbians and gays from marriage. Anti-gay forces recognized the repercussions if that battle didn’t go their way, so they got DOMA passed to preempt a potential loss.
Then they got busy on individual states. In every single case (someone correct me if I’m wrong), the Religious Right pushed us into a marriage battle, most notably in 2004 under the direction of twice-divorced Karl Rove. Now Maggie Gallagher uses lies to continue their assault on civil rights.
Understand, even if civil rights were to win at the ballot box, you can bet they would be ready to drop another load of lies that we would waste another couple million dollars defending against, and then we’d lose. Again, that’s not because we’re doing something wrong, but because bigotry and fear are easy sells, especially when the opponent has no relationship with the truth.
My point is that we’ve been on the defense from the start. That’s a losing plan. After 31 popular votes and I-don’t-know-how-many state legislature votes, it’s time to start playing offense.
And that’s not the only reason.
The biggest problem is that when the votes from the legislature or the people are counted up we’ve still encouraged either the legislature or the people to vote on someone’s rights, regardless of who wins. That’s not just unethical, it’s downright Unamerican.
You know what I’d really like to see? The next time the question goes to the public, we make one ad, not telling people to vote for us, but telling them not to vote on the issue at all. We should acknowledge up front that we anticipate a loss but have made that sacrifice in favor of the greater constitutional principle. Then we take the millions we would have spent on a losing campaign and give it to the homeless or some other worthy cause.
In other words, stop playing the game. Opt out.
I think we win something if we opt out of their battle and lose. We’re 0-31 in the popular vote, and the last one in Maine was lost by a nearly perfectly run campaign. We will continue to lose that battle regardless of what we do, so why not turn that energy toward a different battle, one of our choosing?
We should pour some money and effort into finding the best attorneys to fight the best court cases, like the upcoming challenge to Prop 8 (more on that later) and the case being brought by Lambda Legal and Garden State Equality against yesterday’s decision in the New Jersey Senate.
In the end, that’s where we’ll win.
The New York Marriage Vote
After nearly six months of stalling, the New York Senate voted yesterday on marriage equality. They voted against it 38-24.
Please read Paul Schindler’s article in the Gay City News for details on the vote and what happened. Most notable in the response to the vote is the revelation from at least three sources that eight senators who had privately pledged to vote for equality went back on their word. The mass betrayal was apparently led by freshman Senator Joe Addabbo of Queens, who was elected with major help from the local LGBT community.
“We should be incredibly angry,” [bill sponsor Tom Duane] told Gay City News. “I’m incredibly angry. I think the community should be very, very, very, very, very angry.”
Stating emphatically, “I’m not the one who ever lied throughout this entire process,” Duane charged that at least eight of his colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, had broken promises made to him, and said that he felt “betrayed.”
After initially declining to respond about what the consequences of such a betrayal are, Duane stated, “I believe in redemption and rehabilitation. No matter what people did today, we need to quickly provide them an opportunity to redeem themselves. That will get us the votes we had, that we have, and that we rightly deserve.”
Duane is not the only one who is alleging duplicitous behavior on the part of state senators. Paterson, who made the extraordinary gesture of going to the Senate floor after the vote, told Gay City News, “It’s very disappointing. It’s very disheartening. Certainly the promises that were made would have made it a much closer vote, if not a successful vote.” [...]
Senator Kevin Parker, a Brooklyn Democrat, was less charitable toward those he believed had walked on their commitments.
“I’m profoundly disappointed and sad about the outcome, partly because many of us were given assurances that we had support from colleagues on both sides of the aisle who said they would vote for this today and did not,” he said. “I think this is the worst case of political cowardice that I’ve ever seen.”
Amidst the disappointment, there is reason to hope. Many senators spoke about their YES votes during debate (for some reason the NO voters were represented by only one speaker, the horrendously anti-gay Sen. Ruben Diaz, may God forgive his hate). None were more eloquent and touching than Sen. Ruth Hassell-Thompson of Suffolk, who was previously undecided on the issue.
This is important. Sen. Hassell-Thompson and others yesterday acknowledged religion and acknowledged their responsibility to lead in government regardless of strictly religious objection. We’ll get there, just not today.
Don’t lose hope.
Bloviating Morons Treated as Experts
I just hate politics so much. So. Much. Seriously.
I hate that we have to ignore the fact (yes, fact) that NOM is funding the anti-equality campaign in Maine through less-than-ethical, less-than-legal means.
I hate that in Washington, we have to ignore the fact (yes, fact) that the anti-equality measure got on the ballot by falsifying signatures. (Special thanks to Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy for putting a lock on this one till after the election.)
I hate the fact that we participate in putting civil rights laws up for a popular vote in the first place.
And today, I hate that we all have to act like stupid arguments from blustering fools are worth our time.
On October 14th, a marriage equality debate was held in Maine where the “expert” from the anti-gay side was retired community college instructor and failed 2008 candidate for Congress John Frary. He’s the one in the dopey hat who thinks he’s Garrison Keillor.
Chino Blanco had the video on Friday, but I didn’t get a chance to watch it until today. This is part three of seven, so please go over to Chino’s to see the rest. God bless MCLU Executive Director Sheena Bellows and host Paul Mills for attempting to have a reasoned debate around Frary’s community theater grade theatrics.
What bothers me most is that this incident is far from isolated. There’s also new video of a debate at Hofstra University in New York with NOM President Maggie Gallagher changing the subject and making false statements lying about the horrible effect of civil rights while MENY Board President Cathy Marino-Thomas does her best to inject reason into the discourse.
Why does our society continue to lend respectability to these idiots? Their arguments are gibberish. I don’t mean that I think their arguments are silly, I mean that they’re silly on their face.
Is it because they give comfort to people afraid to face the world as it is? I suppose it’s easier to be a bigot when you have other bigots around teaching you what to say.
I suspect the reason is that people just don’t care. They’d rather we disappear from the face of the earth and stop interrupting their dinners, so why should we expect them to complain about people who agree with their ultimate solution?
I just… I just hate it so much.
Worship Service Canceled Because of Gay Marriage
For 24 years, the churches in Oakfield, New York came together for a Sunday morning ecumenical worship service during the annual “Labor Daze” festival.
That all came to an end this year. In May 2009, Rev. Larry Eastlack of Oakfield United Methodist Church wrote a letter to the editor in favor of civil marriage equality. In early August, the pastors in charge of the service demanded that Rev. Eastlack recant his views or be excluded from the service. A month after Rev. Eastlack removed himself from the committee, they scrapped the worship service for fear of protesters.
From The Batavian:
The brigade against his views is led by fundamentalist pastors at Oakfield Community Bible Church, led by Bill Smith, and Mark Perkins, who leads the Oakfield Alabama Baptist Church. They’ve been coordinating the Community Worship Service for the past several years and wanted to exclude [Rev. Larry] Eastlack from the Community Worship Service this year specifically because of his now publically (sic) known views on gay marriage.
They asked to sit down with the reverend and Perkins said they, including Eastlack’s associate Dave Phelps, discussed their views cordially and the meeting ended with Eastlack’s decision not to participate if that meant creating more strife.
A letter prepared Aug. 10 by Perkins and Smith — which amounts to an ultimatum to disavow gay marriage or else be shunned — was given to Eastlack afterward “almost as an afterthought,” said Perkins to emphasize the amiable tone at the meeting’s conclusion.
The letter rejects the notion of gay marriage as a civil rights issue and the idea that homosexuality is determined genetically. It cites Scripture on the issue and urges Eastlack to change his stance, with this caveat:
“…our Elders have stated that having you take part (in the Sept. 6 service) would send a message to our community and respective congregations that 1. We are in agreement with your stance or 2. We are willing to pretend that unity exists.”
The mayor finds the whole thing ugly.
“My personal feeling is that it just saddens me down to my soul,” Pastecki said.
That mayor’s a smart man.
I haven’t been able to find the text of the August 10th ultimatum yet, but I did find Rev. Eastlack’s letter to the editor. Prepare to clutch your pearls, girls:
When Miss California, of the Miss USA Pageant, said she believed that marriage should be reserved for one man and one woman, she ignited strong opposition and support. Later she said, “As a Christian, I’d rather be biblically correct than politically correct,” as if Christians have no other option.
So far, same-sex marriage has been legalized in six states, with New York considering similar legislation. Most evangelical leaders are encouraging their congregations to oppose the Marriage Equality Act because they believe it is incompatible with biblical teachings.
Well, I believe it is possible to stay true to your religious convictions and still support legislation that would allow homosexuals to enjoy all the rights and responsibilities that come with matrimony. It is possible to spiritually oppose same-sex marriage without using the law to impose those views on others who believe differently. If evangelical Christians want all Americans to respect and protect their rights, it is imperative that they also respect and defend the legitimate rights of those with differing beliefs. As a pastor, I am encouraged when any couple in a loving and committed relationship desires to exchange vows that would publicly and contractually bind two loves as one.
This should not be a controversial viewpoint! It’s a positively middle-of-the-road, rational, constitutional understanding of the issue. It seems to me that Smith and Perkins need to re-read the third sentence in the last paragraph. Here, I’ll repost it:
If evangelical Christians want all Americans to respect and protect their rights, it is imperative that they also respect and defend the legitimate rights of those with differing beliefs.
My thanks to Rev. Larry Eastlack, for making his view public and for sticking to his convictions under pressure. We need more like him.
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