Land of 10,000 Lakes

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family, gay

The Minnesota Senate today narrowly passed a bill for marriage equality by a vote of 37-30.  The bill was passed last week by the Minnesota House.  Minnesota’s governor Mark Dayton has already promised to sign the bill into law.

The passage of marriage quality in Minnesota is particularly striking since just 6 months ago, voters in the state were debating whether to amend the state constitution to ban same sex marriage.  During the November 2012 election, voters decided against amending the constitution.

Minnesota is the 3rd state this month to pass marriage equality legislation, following in the foot steps of both Rhode Island and Delaware.  Minnesota becomes the 12th state in the nation to affirm the importance of equal rights and marriage equality.

The next question is… will Illinois become the 13th?

Colorado civil unions

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gay

Civil unions are scheduled to begin today in Colorado.  The Democratic Governors Association was obviously very excited about this historic occasion in the Centennial State when it tweeted the following:

There’s just one problem.  Civil unions aren’t equal rights.  The very fact that they are separate from marriage means they are not equivalent, otherwise it would be called marriage.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m excited for our brothers and sisters in Colorado who can finally be legally recognized as a couple.  And I do think it’s a momentous step in the right direction, especially after Colorado voters banned gay marriage a mere 7 years ago.  But the fact remains, as we’ve learned in the past, “separate but equal” is always separate and never equal.

Starting the conversation

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gay, opinion

I didn’t set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport. But since I am, I’m happy to start the conversation. I wish I wasn’t the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, “I’m different.” If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I’m raising my hand.

Today marks a rather important day in sports history in the United States.  For the first time, an active player in one of the four major sports leagues came out to the country as a gay man.  Jason Collins’s story is heartfelt and personal, including references to Representative Joe Kennedy and the recent Boston Marathon bombings.  To put it in his own words, Jason’s story is both “authentic and true”.

I think I speak for much of the LGBT community when I say that I hope for the day when people, including athletes and celebrities, don’t need to fear coming out of the closet.  I think I speak for the LGBT community when I say that I long for the day when an athlete or a celebrity holding a press conference about being gay is no longer a headline but rather another boring piece of everyday news.  Scratch that – I hope for the day when those press conferences never have to occur in the first place.

The conversation in professional sports has been a long time coming.  Thank you to Jason Collins for raising your hand and starting that conversation.

overread

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gay, overread, ridiculous

“My admiration runs deeper than a drag queen’s love of hooker heels.”

Congrats Rhode Island

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family, gay

… the rest of New England thanks you for finally “evolving”

the changing landscape of marriage equality

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gay

In case you haven’t been paying attention to the news, in the weeks since the Supreme Court heard arguments in the cases for California Proposition 8 and the federal Defense of Marriage Act, there have been quite a few changes in the US and abroad leading toward greater recognition of marriage equality.

Abroad:

Exactly two weeks ago today, lawmakers in Uruguay voted to legalize gay marriage.  With the vote, Uruguay became the second nation in Latin America to approve of marriage equality and only the third in the Western Hemisphere.  Uruguay joins Argentina and Canada.

Lawmakers in New Zealand also voted in favor of marriage equality one week ago, making New Zealand the 13th country in the world to recognize same sex marriages.  New Zealand is the only country in the Asian-Pacific region to recognize same sex marriages.

And just yesterday, the French National Assembly voted in favor of marriage equality in a 331 to 225 vote.  The vote in France was not without contention, as Paris has seen a series of protests against the measure.  President Francois Hollande is expected to sign the bill into law.

In the US:

Closer to home, several states are currently considering marriage equality bills.

Delaware: A marriage equality bill passed through the Delaware House 5 days ago and heads to the Senate.  Governor Jack Markell has expressed support for the bill.  Delaware currently recognizes civil unions.

Nevada: Monday night, the Nevada Senate voted to repeal the state’s constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and replace it with a law legalizing same sex marriage.  The measure now heads to the Nevada House.

Illinois: Marriage equality in Illinois has remained slightly in limbo since it’s defeat earlier in the year and subsequent passage by the state’s General Assembly.  The bill is awaiting a vote in the Illinois House, and it’s prospects remain uncertain.  Just today, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan posted this opinion piece in the Chicago Tribune.

Rhode Island: Lastly, the Rhode Island Senate is expected to vote on the state’s marriage equality bill today.  The bill was previously passed by the Rhode Island House of Representatives with strong bipartisan support earlier this year.  The Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday voted to put the bill to a full floor vote in the Senate.  Rhode Island is the only state in New England that currently does not endorse same sex marriage.

overheard

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gay, overheard

“I want a good yelp review at the end of the night.  5 stars.  Good service!”

Marriage Equality

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gay, opinion

This symbol and several variants of it began appearing on social media sites on Monday night, in anticipation of the arguments before the Supreme Court over California’s Proposition 8 and the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

Opponents and naysayers are quick to point out that posting this image to one’s Facebook profile is pointless, for despite the thousands (if not millions) of people who changed their photo, the symbol itself is unlikely to overturn any law or change the opinion of any lawmaker or Supreme Court justice.  They are quick to ridicule this form of “Facebook activism”, noting that expressing symbols such as these on a social media website does not compare to championing civil rights “on the streets” and does not adequately put one’s “skin in the game”.  But by deriding those who choose this form of self-expression, opponents and naysayers entirely miss the point.

Let me be clear – we all know that this symbol will not change America overnight.  We all know that this image will not overturn laws, rewrite constitutions, alter history instantly, or sway the minds of politicians or judges.  We are very well aware of what this symbol cannot and will not do.

But this is a powerful symbol.  For thousands of LGBT men and women out there, it is a symbol that they are not alone.  It’s a sign of love and solidarity from fellow LGBT individuals.  It’s a symbol of love from those in the straight community that support the rights of their LGBT family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, and fellow Americans.  It is a sign of hope that the future of marriage equality is bright even if the recognition of this right does not come today, tomorrow, or even three months from now.  It is an acknowledgment that we are here.  It is a representation of changing attitudes, changing tides, and changing times.  This image is a beacon of hope to all the young gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals living in fear, who feel they are alone, that out there in the world are people who at the very least support them, and at the most are championing their fundamental rights as citizens.  No… rather their fundamental rights as human beings instead of second class citizens.

For those in the LGBT community, this symbol is a recognition of what has been a long time coming.  For those in the straight community who support their LGBT brothers and sisters, it is a way of freely and unabashedly demonstrating their support without coercion or pretense.  No my friends, this is not an empty gesture; this is a recognition of just how far we have come… and how much farther we have to go to ensuring that all Americans have the opportunity to marry the one they love.

#nohomophobia

Tags

gay, overread, twitter

Many thanks to fellow blogger So…Over The Rainbow for posting about this.

Homophobic slurs cut deep, no matter who is saying them.  But have you ever wondered how often they are said?  Well, now you can find out.

The site NoHomophobes.com tracks the number of tweets in a day that contain casual homophobic references, including the words “faggot,” “dyke,” “no homo,” and “so gay”.  According to the website, these words are used casually in everyday language, despite promoting the continued alienation, bullying, isolation and in some tragic cases suicide of sexual and gender minority (LGBTQ) youth and adults.  Now, the website obviously doesn’t get everything correct; for example, if you were to tweet “no homo sapiens have ever been to Mars”, the website would pick that up.  That’s why they also include a rolling trend of the tweets these words were found in.

In truth, as a nation we collectively no longer tolerate racist language.  We’re getting better at dealing with sexist language, but sadly we’re still not actively addressing homophobic and transphobic language in our society.  Perhaps NoHomophobes.com is a step in the right direction

Meet the Gaybros?

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gay, opinion

I’m not going to win any popularity points with this one, but I don’t care.

Brian Lowder wrote an article for Slate that posted yesterday titled “Meet the Gaybros.” The subtitle was “They like sports, hunting, and beer. They make the gay community mad.”

I’ll tell you what makes me mad… articles like this one.

The article starts off with Lowder walking around Boston with a group of men who have dubbed themselves “Gaybros”, gay guys with traditionally manly interests like sports, hunting, and beer.  They travel to the city’s “premiere gay sports bar” Fritz, where Lowder comments on the diversity of the crowd.  To call Fritz a “premiere” anything is a joke; the fact of the matter is that Fritz serves a clientele who, unlike so many other places in Boston, don’t give a f*ck who you THINK you are.  People go to Fritz not because it’s a great place to watch sports but because it’s low key and unpretentious.  The “Gaybros” later head off to Club Cafe, a locale I would ironically dub the exact opposite of Fritz… but also not “premiere”.  Lowder, on the other hand, makes an exit and heads to a house party at a “handsome” townhouse where he is surrounded by the “Crate and Barrel brand of gayness.”

Here’s why I hate this article.  The “us versus them” mentality and the compartmentalization of gay culture in this article (and in real life) is ridiculous and does us a disservice.  At a time when the community should be rallying behind each other in support of legal rights for ourselves and the rest of the LGBTQIA community, instead we continue to separate and ridicule one another.  We do to each other exactly what the straight (male) community continually does to us.  Gay men are, in fact, our own worst enemies.

The whole notion of “masc” versus “fem” is utter ridiculousness.  The idea that gay men can only fall into one category or another is ludicrous.  These labels, if you will, are not mutually exclusive. What this article highlights is a nasty division within the gay community, one that employs labels taken directly from the very people who oppress the gay community in the first place.  The fact of the matter is, there is plenty of room within the gay community for everyone – Gaybros included.

In the words of the person who sent the article my way, “I can love watching the Emmy’s and watching the Pats on the same day.  I totally go to Red Sox games because I’m a fan, but I also love to watch my design shows on HGTV.  Cut the crap – ALL OF US.”

Gays – it’s time to grow up.

in defense of marriage

Tags

gay, opinion, overread

Among social conservatives, the argument against marriage equality that reigns supreme is the notion that same-sex marriage undermines the very institution of marriage.  Since Massachusetts began to recognize same-sex marriages in 2004, voters in many states have approved amendments to their state constitutions barring same-sex marriage.  A number of states have also granted marriages to same-sex couples, and certainly the 2012 election ushered in a historic moment for marriage equality in the United States.  The compromise position for the remainder of the states has been the recognition of civil unions and domestic partnerships, as most recently demonstrated in Colorado.

In 1995, David Boaz wrote an essay for the New York Times on the subject of civil unions and domestic partnerships called “Domestic Justice”.  In that article, he noted that politicians “overlook that there are two kinds of domestic partnerships – heterosexual and same-sex.  Although the most vocal opposition to domestic partnerships is aimed at gay couples, giving them [legal] benefits does not undermine marriage.  Rather, it remedies the injustice that homosexuals can’t marry the people with whom they share their lives, and it creates financial incentives for stable relationships.”  Boaz wonders that for social conservatives who are so opposed to affirming marriage equality, are these not the same goals that we seek in encouraging heterosexual couples to marry?

Giving domestic partnership benefits to unmarried heterosexual couples, on the other hand, does undermine marriage.  They give people who can marry all the financial benefits of a legal union without demanding commitment.

If social conservatives really want to stand on a platform of family values, shouldn’t they be encouraging the creation of long lasting committed partnerships and families?  By offering domestic partnership benefits to heterosexual couples who do not marry, social conservatives undermine the very institution they hold so dear and continually wave in the face of same-sex relationships.  Instead, domestic partnerships and civil unions are seen as a peace offering to the gay community, relegating them to second class citizens and simultaneously undermining the institution of marriage by offering a similar set of rights to unmarried heterosexual couples.

Perhaps because domestic partnerships and civil unions are a step toward correcting a wrong, perhaps they have more bipartisan support than marriage equality, perhaps they are viewed as a compromise, or perhaps people believe the gay community will tolerate domestic partnerships and civil unions and therefore cease the push for marriage equality.  But we know from history that separate but equal is all too clearly separate but never in fact equal.

On the recently passed civil union bill in Colorado, state senator Pat Steadman (D) had this to say. “Civil unions are not marriage. They are something that are separate, and distinct, and lesser, and unequal.  And that really is not good enough. We passed this bill because this is the best we can do.”

this is pretty amazing…

Tags

gay

Several images were floating around the internet yesterday on this subject.  The owner, Aaron Jackson, along with the charity Planting Peace purchased the house across the street from the Westboro Baptist Church and decided to add a little color to the building.  He painted the house like a rainbow, in defiance of the anti-homosexual Westboro Baptist Church.  Aaron Jackson – you get the awesome award for the week, and maybe even the year.

Everybody’s Irish on St Patrick’s Day

Tags

gay, holidays, ridiculous, someecards

Happy St Patrick’s Day everyone!  Couldn’t help but post this completely inappropriate someecard…

growing up alone

Tags

gay, overread

In his book, Beyond Queer, Bruce Bower includes a speech from 1994 that he gave to the Saint Johns Episcopal Cathedral in Denver, Colorado in an effort to help straight parishioners to better understand the issues surrounding homosexuality.  In the essay, he recounts the story of a teenage boy standing alone at the magazine rack in a bookstore in New York City, a boy who timidly approaches and then in secret feverishly devours the contents of the New York Native.  Bawer questions what he may have found and therefore thought of gay life in the early 90′s, and laments that he did not talk to this boy about the reality.  Bawer notes that many gay readers responded strongly to this anecdote, and a few straight readers have protested that this was similar to when they read Playboy for the first time.  Below is Bawer’s response to these critics about the terrible isolation felt by so many who grow up gay.

A straight kid is surrounded by images of what it means to be straight, surrounded by potential role models.  His parents, his parents’ friends, the couples on TV shows and in movies, the relationships that are sung about on the radio and MTV, the family situations in the stories and books that he’s given to read in school.  His inner sense of himself, or his sexual identity, is reflected all around him in a spectrum of images of which Playboy is only one extreme.  For a gay kid, things are utterly different.  It’s not easy to explain how different it is, and how it feels.  To be a gay kid in most families is to grow up very confused.  It’s to find an utter contradiction between your very powerful but unarticulated inner sense of who you are and the notions of who you are that are communicated to you by your parents and other peopl ein your life and in fact by the whole world.  It’s to look around and see all of these images of men and women sharing their lives together and being intimate, and to feel an utter lack of identification with those images.  From infancy onward, your parents assume you’re straight.  It’s expected that when you reach a certain age you’ll want to start dating someone of the opposite sex; everybody asks what kind of girl you like and if you have a girlfriend.  And somehow, even if you haven’t figured it out yet and connected who you are with that funny word gay, it all feels wrong, as if somehow you’d been set down on the wrong planet.

For too many gay kids, there’s no one in their lives to make them feel right.

Profiles of Love

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gay

I’m down in New York City this weekend, visiting friends and taking in the city’s St Patrick’s Day festivities.  I have the pleasure of staying with two very close friends of mine who happen to be recently engaged.  The combination of Valentine’s Day merely a month ago and my friends recently becoming engaged makes me think about love, that enigmatic emotion and feeling that we as human beings all ultimately strive for.  Never having been in love myself – that I know of – I decided to ask various couples I know what love meant to them and how long it was after they started dating their significant other that they knew they were in love.

I hadn’t intended for us to be in a relationship.  But as we started to get to know each other, I knew that our connection – whatever it maybe – was special. I fall in love with him everyday, and that’s how I know that I love him.

warm fuzzies; unexplained giddiness. It’s not always easy, and long term takes work, but the heightened emotions can come pretty quickly and pretty early on.

I guess I knew because the thought of him not in my life, and possibly in someone else’s, disturbed me greatly.

I’d say it was 3 months or so. It was a feeling that came out verbally when we were talking, and I guess I just knew. And there are ups and downs. So if on one day I feel totally in love and the next day I don’t, I trust both as completely normal, and realize that love is like that. But at least for me, it is something I just know in my gut.

The last quote came from one of my recently engaged friends, and the idea that love can be there one moment and gone the next was surprising to me.  What may be surprising to you is that all of these quotes came from men, and more than that from gay men.  The point here is that love is universal.  Love does not care if you are white or black, gay or straight, Jewish or Catholic.  Love does not judge us or cast us out for being different.  Love crosses – no smashes – through boundaries;  language, religious, cultural, and ethnic barriers on which we as human beings often place far too much emphasis.  At our core, every human being strives to achieve love, and there is no choice in that matter.  We do not choose to love or choose who we love.  We just do.

Kindle supports marriage equality

Tags

gay

Amazon’s new ad for the Kindle Paperweight makes no secret of the company’s stance on same-sex marriage.

The new commercial shows a man and woman lounging next to each other on a beach. The man finds it difficult to read his iPad in the glare of the sun while the woman is reading from her Amazon Kindle Paperwhite and mentions how great it is.  After the man then purchases a Kindle, he tells the woman that they should celebrate with a drink.  You can see how the ad ends here.

This isn’t the first time Amazon has openly supported same-sex marriage. In 2012, CEO Jeff Bezos announced a $2.5 million donation to the campaign to defend Washington state’s marriage equality legislation, the Associated Press reported.

 

self absorbed?

Tags

gay, overread

Another great quote from Bruce Bawer’s book Beyond Queer, this one by Daniel Mendelsohn.

It’s no surprise that a lot of gay social life takes place in spots that provide plenty of reflective surfaces: mirrored gym or bars and clubs where you might go to ‘see and be seen’.  When it comes to desire, we men are all eyes.  Whatever we say about looking for husbands, many of us spend a lot of time in places where the only thing we look at is… ourselves.

the marriage question

Tags

family, gay, opinion

In light of all the debate around DADT & marriage equality, the results from the most recent election in Maine, Washington, Maryland, and Minnesota, as well as President Obama’s inauguration speech, I want to leave you all with an excerpt from Bruce Bawer’s book Beyond Queer, which contains a piece from author Andrew Sullivan, former editor of the New Republic.  This excerpt appeared in the piece “The Politics of Homosexuality” which he wrote for the New Republic on May 10, 1993.

But the critical measure necessary for full gay equality is something deeper and more emotional perhaps than even the military.  It is equal access to marriage.  As with the military, this is a question of formal public discrimination.  If the military ban deals with the heart of what it is to be a citizen, the marriage ban deals with the core of what it is to be a member of civil society.  Marriage is not simple a private contract; it is a social and public recognition of a private commitment.  As such, it is the highest public recognition of our personal integrity.  Denying it to gay people is the most public affront possible to their civil equality.

This issue may be the hardest for many heterosexuals to accept.  Even those tolerant of homosexuals may find this institution so wedded to the notion of heterosexual commitment that to extend it would be to undo its very essence.  And there may be religious reasons for resisting this that require far greater discussion than I can give them here.  But civilly and emotionally, the case is compelling.  The heterosexuality of marriage is civilly intrinsic only if it understood to be inherently procreative; and that definition has long been abandoned in civil society.  In contemporary America, marriage has become a way in which the state recognizes an emotional and economic commitment of two people to each other for life.  No law requires children to consummate it.  And within that definition, there is no civil way it can logically be denied homosexuals, except as a pure gesture of public disapproval.

In the same way, emotionally, marriage is characterized by a kind of commitment that is rare even among heterosexuals.  Extending it to homosexuals need not dilute the special nature of that commitment, unless it is understood that gay people, by their very nature, are incapable of it.  History and experience suggest the opposite.  It is not necessary to prove that gay people are ore or less able to form long-term relationships than straights for it to be clear that, at least, some are.  Giving these people a right to affirm their commitment doesn’t reduce the incentive for heterosexuals to do the same, and even provides a social inventive for lesbians and gay men to adopt socially beneficial relationships.

But for gay people, it would mean far more than simple civil equality.  The vast majority of us – gay and straight – are brought up to understand that the apex of emotional life is found in the marital bond.  It may not be something we achieve, or even ultimately desire, but its very existence premises the core of our emotional development.  It is the architectonic institution that frames our emotional life.  The marriages of others are a moment for celebration and self-affirmation; they are the way in which our families and friends reinforce us as human beings.  Our parents consider our emotional lives to be more important than our professional ones, because they care about us at our core, not at our periphery.  And [therefore] it is not hard to see why the marriage of an offspring is often regarded as the high point of any parent’s life.

overread

Tags

gay, overread

So I just started reading the book Beyond Queer by Bruce Bawer, which thus far is incredibly more interesting than Proof of Heaven by Dr. Eben Alexander), when I came across this little passage.  And it made me laugh, especially when I think about how Kathy Griffin often says she “speaks fluent gay”, so now I’m sharing it with you.

“When gays speak about themselves, they are speaking one language; when most straight people speak about gays, they are speaking another.  Most heterosexuals look at gay lives the way I look at a page of German.  I may be able to pick out a few familiar words, but I feel awkward when I use them, and if I try to put together a sentence I’m likely to find myself saying something I don’t mean at all, perhaps even something offensive or hurtful.”

the year of marriage equality?

Tags

gay

The past two weeks have seen the introduction of marriage equality bills in both Illinois and Rhode Island.  After the stunning wins for marriage equality of last year’s election in Maine, Maryland, and Washington – one has to wonder if this is the year for marriage equality.

The fight in Illinois has an interesting ally, and I’m not talking about Jessie Tyler Ferguson.  In fact, the chairman of the Illinois Republican Party is also calling on GOP lawmakers to pass marriage equality in the state.  Though the bill made it out of committee last week, it hit a snafu without enough votes to bring the measure to vote on the Senate floor.  The bill now stands in limbo, although many believe that Illinois will be the next state to approve marriage equality.

In the meantime, bills were introduced in both the House and the Senate in Rhode Island – the only state in New England to not have marriage equality.  The success of these measures is less clear in Rhode Island, a state that is heavily Catholic.  But perhaps Rhode Island will follow her New England neighbors in defining history.