Syndicate and Hague

In light of my “rah rah gay marriage” posts over the last few months, I thought I’d point you to the Alternatives to Marriage Project, which takes up the social justice issues that marriage does not/should not solve and that we have a responsibility to address in our society.

Unlike those who decry advances in gay marriage because it means monogamy (it doesn’t if you don’t want it to) or because we should focus on other things first (nothing would ever happen if we looked at issues that way), the Alternatives to Marriage Project appears to have their collective heads screwed on straight. (Ha. So to speak.)

I’ll disclaim that a friend of mine just joined the board, so there you have that, but my friends are smart people…so…yeah.

From their website:

The Alternatives to Marriage Project is not against marriage. But we believe that unmarried relationships also deserve validation and support. People may be pressured to marry by their families, friends, and communities. They may also face marital status discrimination. We oppose this unfair treatment and advocate for the equal rights of unmarried people.

According to the 2000 Census, there are eleven million unmarried people living with an unmarried partner in the United States today, and this number has grown 72% in the last decade alone. Millions more people are not currently in relationships or do not live with their partner, and have no plans to marry. There are many reasons people choose not to get married. Some people, like same-sex couples and those in relationships of more than two people, are not legally allowed to marry.

The Alternatives to Marriage Project is open to everyone, including singles, couples, married people, people in relationships with more than two people, and people of all genders and sexual orientations. We welcome our married supporters, who are among the many friends, relatives, and allies of unmarried people.

Just as I am sick of Tony Perkins and the bile of the Family Research Council that he runs, I am sick of the people on my side of the aisle who castigate the GLBT folks who have been working to win the right to get married because they see it as too normative.

Feministing highlighted an article off of Alternet by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore that just succeeded in irritating the hell out of me. I’m just going to paste the quotes in and dissect as we go. Have fun! If you get bored, check out this week’s Savage Love, in which Dan Savage reams some straight people who plan on getting married but are relationship idiots because Tony Perkins tormented him. (That’s all Perkins knows how to do.) Or you could watch Stephen Colbert undercut Perkins on The Colbert Report from last night. So those are your other options. On to me tormenting fellow lefties!

Sycamore begins by saying that she flat out doesn’t support gay marriage and, to illustrate why, says:

Gay marriage does nothing to address fundamental problems of inequality. What is needed is universal access to basic necessities like housing, health care, food, and the benefits now obtained through citizenship (like the right to stay in this country)…

Nope. It sure doesn’t address those things. When you start with sweeping expectations like that in an essay, it’s pretty impossible to argue. And yet…I continue.

Legalized gay marriage means only that certain people in a specific type of long-term, monogamous relationship sanctioned by a state contract might be able to access benefits. While marriage could confer inclusion under a spouse’s health-care policy, it does nothing to provide such a policy. Marriage might ensure hospital visitation rights, but not for anyone without a spouse. Marriage may allow for inheritance rights between spouses, but what if there is nothing to inherit?

Now, I hate to be nitpicky (no I don’t), but you don’t actually have to be monogamous–straight or gay–to get married. You just have to pick someone as primary partner. Other than that, there’s nothing Sycamore says here that is inherently wrong, but the inverse argument doesn’t really help. I mean, what if there is something to inherit? What if there is a health policy that can be provided? An argument that bases itself on absence isn’t very meaningful.

For a long time, queers have married straight friends for citizenship or health care, but this has never been enshrined as “progress.” The majority of queers — single or coupled (but not desiring marriage), monogamous or polyamorous, jobless or marginally employed — would remain excluded from the much-touted benefits of legalized gay marriage.

Dude. Marrying straight friends has been what is known as “working the system.” Of course it isn’t progress. It reaffirms the double standard of what relationships are worth. As for the “majority of queers” remaining excluded from marriage benefits…how is she coming up with what constitutes a majority? Who does she consider queer? I’m in no way saying that marriage is a saving grace for the queer community, but let’s stop throwing around vague quantitative terms. Give me numbers, even rounded ones. I’d also argue that jobless and marginally employed folks wouldn’t necessarily not benefit–especially if their spouses were employed…

And let’s not forget the history of marriage as a legal method for keeping property within specific dynasties (property that originally included women and slaves). In fact, marriage still exists as a central venue for spousal and child abuse — there’s a reason divorce is so popular, and suicide attempts among queer teens so prevalent.

Marriage=venue for abuse=queer teen suicide. The leaps in logic here, ignoring the complete lack of data correlating these things…just, wow. Queer teens are harassed, are a part of society where queer relationships are denigrated, and are made to feel alienated by the larger culture. This happens with/without married parents. Show me data that says that queer teen suicide is predominantly taking place in households with married parents and I’ll eat my words. But right now…dumping bad things into a paragraph together doesn’t make an argument.

Also? Bringing up the history of marriage? The Family Research Council does that too. Moving on.

In fact, the push for gay marriage has shifted advocacy away from essential services like HIV education, AIDS health care, drug treatment, domestic violence prevention, and homeless care — all crucial needs for far more queers than marriage could ever be.

Agree/disagree. In the absence of the push for gay marriage, would these things be getting addressed better? I’m not entirely sure I buy that argument.

You know, I have a number of friends who have worked hard over the course of years and years to deal with domestic/sexual violence and the only constant I’ve seen in terms of funding is eternal crisis. There is never enough money, they are always overworked, severely underpaid, and stressed to an extraordinary point. Also, a lot of these things rely on grants in addition to private donation. Grants aren’t on the menu for marriage advocates, so that money isn’t even in the picture.

I can’t say for sure that resources aren’t being diverted, but I question whether a=b.

The spectacle around gay marriage draws attention away from critical issues — like ending U.S. wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, stopping massive Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids across the country, and challenging the never-ending assault on anyone living outside of conventional norms.

True that. But I’m afraid that arguing that we’re doing ourselves a disservice by drawing attention to ourselves is defeatist. There will always be more “pressing” issues (homelessness, war, etc.) than exclusively queer rights. And I’m talking about more than marriage here. Someone will always be able to argue that something like war trumps civil rights. But just because you can make the argument doesn’t mean it’s a good one.

While many straight people are reaping the benefits of gay liberation and discovering new ways of loving, lusting for and caring for one another, the gay marriage movement is busy fighting for a 1950s model of white-picket fence “we’re just like you” normalcy. And that’s no reason to celebrate.

Oh, come on! That’s how it ends? The trite “if you want something they have, you’re vanilla and boring and not one of us” line? Ugh.

Look, whether or not marriage is personally something I want or not, I think it’s terribly presumptuous to ask queer/GLBT people to identify as transgressive. There’s nothing wrong with monogamy, there’s nothing wrong with having a primary partner if you sleep with more than one person, and there’s nothing wrong with consenting adults figuring out their relationships however they’d like. My problem is with any of us forcing our values on the others.

Marriage is not the solution, but in a society where the very question of whether or not GLBT people should be allowed into the club sends our entire society into a manic episode, it’s not something to be so easily dismissed.

Back when I had a customer service job and had to interact with random people when I was younger, I found that a fake wedding ring made my life a million times easier. If some idiot hit on me and I said I had a boyfriend, it didn’t even dent his game–if I said I was married, it was usually over. Despite the problems marriage has in our society, it still carries with it a level of respect for the relationship that you just don’t get otherwise. It’s a big deal, culturally, and to pretend that it and all the privilege it gets you are some minor irrelevancy in the face of Big Problems like homelessness, war, etc…well, that’s just naive. Or willfully ignorant.

This post crosses a couple of topics that have been on my mind lately. Little things, you know, like pervasive racism and the second-class status of GLBT folks in this country.

Jack and Jill Politics wrote on a particularly heinous op-ed in the Chicago Tribune last week. The article embodies a lot of the problems I’ve had with Clinton’s campaign–which has used racist sentiment…actually, let’s be honest…it’s used white supremacist sentiment to rally rural and older white voters. Obama is too uppity for his own good, know what I mean?

Anyway, Kathleen Parker’s nasty piece dwells on the concept of “full-blooded” Americanness.

Full-bloodedness is an old coin that’s gaining currency in the new American realm. Meaning: Politics may no longer be so much about race and gender as about heritage, core values, and made-in-America. Just as we once and still have a cultural divide in this country, we now have a patriot divide.

Now, I understand that Parker may think her own audience is blind to their own motivations, but how is something about “heritage” and “made in America” and not about race?

She’s hardly masking her racist white supremacist sentiment:

It’s about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots.

Man, you really can’t get much more KKK than that.

Here’s the thing, it’s all code. She’s not talking about my background. Fuck all that Mayflower and Daughters of the American Revolution bullshit. The WASPs never did think much of the Irish or the Slavs. But when she talks about full-blooded Americans, she’s also not using that code to slur me. It’s not about the old immigrants who are now neatly rolled up into whiteness, it’s the new immigrants…like Obama’s dad.

Now, where this does become about me is when the issue of…

Yet, white Americans primarily—and Southerners, rural and small-town folks especially—have been put on the defensive for their concerns with “guns, God and gays.”

And the justification for both their racism and their general hatred of anything not like them is:

What they know is that their forefathers fought and died for an America that has worked pretty well for more than 200 years. What they sense is that their heritage is being swept under the carpet while multiculturalism becomes the new national narrative. And they fear what else might get lost in the remodeling of America.

Today, Governor Pawlenty vetoed the SF 960 bill that the Minnesota House and Senate passed. It would have allowed local governments in Minnesota to provide domestic partner benefits. I realize that “teh gayz” are a big selling point for the Republicans in a time when their economic and international policies are being shown for the shams that they are, but damn if it doesn’t break my heart every time they try to make life harder for us.

We’re part of this “multiculturalism” that Parker and her allies are scared of. (Or, rather, that she exploits this line of thinking to advance her name and get a book deal at some point. Controversy sells!)

And why are they scared of it? Because their heritage is being swept under the carpet? Bullshit. It’s the time-honored tradition of: if you’re doing better, it must be at some cost to me, so I don’t want your lot to improve.

Does it actually hurt heterosexual couples if I got Megan health insurance through my job or vice versa? I mean, unlike y’all, we have to pay taxes on the amount paid (FYI: that’s approximately $100 a month in taxes for health care at the U. On top of the normal cost of adding someone to your insurance.).

In order to be against gay marriage or domestic partner benefits or civil unions or black people becoming president or women becoming president or whatever, you have to believe that if any of these things occurs, you will have lost something.

And, you know what? If you think that people don’t deserve the same rights and privileges that you have because you’re afraid of a level playing field, you need to really think about what that means. It means you don’t think you’re good enough, it means you’re insecure about your position in the world, and it means you are petty and exploitative and just plain mean.

Congrats to Californians, by the way, whose largely Republican (I believe 6 of the 7 judges were Republican appointments) court said that not allowing gay marriages in CA was unconstitutional. It’s going to kick off a firestorm, but if marriage is going to remain a thing in this country (um, that’s a definite), then it needs to be across the board. Knock it down like miscegenation was knocked down.

/rant

Via Slog:

A public high school principal in Memphis, Tennessee, outed a pair of gay male students—to their teachers, classmates, and parents—after she found out that they were a couple. The principal also called the mother of one of the boys to tell her that she, “didn’t like gay people and wouldn’t tolerate homosexuality at her school,” and posted the names of the boys on a publicly posted list of known students couples in order to prevent public displays of affection, “hetero and homo.”

…

In Tuesday’s letter to the Memphis City Schools Board of Commissioners, the ACLU points out that the principal ordered the boys not to even walk or study together at school.

Emails of the school board and principal:

Principal:
Daphne Beasley
BeasleyD@mcsk12.net

The Board of Commisioners:
hartt@mcsk12.net
jonesmartaviusd@mcsk12.net
williamsf@mcsk12.net
whalumkennetht@mcsk12.net
gatewoods@mcsk12.net
MallottBettyJ@mcsk12.net
robinsonp@mcsk12.net
warrenj@mcsk12.net
webbsharona@mcsk12.net

Superintendent:
superintendentward@mcsk12.net

My response that I emailed them:

What you did to those two gay students of yours is absolutely shameful. I am appalled at the lack of compassion, empathy, and judgment that went into such a flagrant violation of the relationship between the student and the school. By outing the students, you intended them to be subjected to harassment, hoped for them to be shamed, and misused your authority. What you succeeded in doing is contributing to the long and storied history of oppression that GLBT people face in our society and others–and I am proud of those kids for standing up to you instead of internalizing what you did, which decades of young GLBT people have done. I am proud of them because they’re not letting you lead to depression or suicide. I am proud of them because they have taken what you thought would shame them and turned it into something that is shameful for you.

I am horrified that you hold such an advanced position in educating our youth.

(just a sidenote: that list in general strikes me as strange and overly, um, zealous on the part of administrators.)

It’s not that I don’t/didn’t know about what Iran does to gays, but rather that I’m pissed at Western Europe’s complicity. From The Independent and BBC News via Slog.

An Iranian lesbian who fled to Britain after her girlfriend was arrested and sentenced to death faces being forcibly returned after losing the latest round in her battle to be granted asylum.

The case of Pegah Emambakhsh, 40, comes a day after The Independent reported on the growing public outcry over the plight of a gay Iranian teenager who fears he will be executed if he is deported to Iran.

Both cases have provoked international protests against Britain and led to calls for an immediate moratorium on the deportation of gay and lesbian asylum-seekers who fear they will be persecuted in Iran.

More than 60 MEPs have signed a petition asking Gordon Brown to reverse the decision on Mehdi Kazemi, 19, who escaped to the Netherlands after the Home Office refused him asylum last year. His case is still before Dutch judges who will decide this month whether he should return to Britain where he faces deportation to a country which has already executed his boyfriend.

and

In turning down Ms Emambakhsh and Mr Kazemi’s asylum applications, the Home Office has said that, provided Iranians are discreet about their homosexuality, they will not be persecuted.

and

Mehdi Kazemi has said his life is in danger if he is returned to Iran, where he says his boyfriend named him as a partner before being executed.

Homosexual acts are illegal in the Islamic republic.

A Dutch spokesman said Mr Kazemi would now be sent to the UK, the first European country he entered.

A claim for asylum in the UK had already been turned down.

I mean, is there really any more to say about this?

Technorati Profile

So there’s an open letter from Barack Obama to the LGBT community that he released today. You can see the letter in its entirety on Wonkette. I’m going to post it here too, but I’m going to interrupt it with commentary.

I’m running for President to build an America that lives up to our founding promise of equality for all - a promise that extends to our gay brothers and sisters. It’s wrong to have millions of Americans living as second-class citizens in this nation. And I ask for your support in this election so that together we can bring about real change for all LGBT Americans.

Change! Actually, I rather like this opening statement. It’s not subtle. He comes right out and says that we’re second-class citizens. It’s great–but I’m not so easily impressed. I mean, we’ve been teased with hope before…

Equality is a moral imperative. That’s why throughout my career, I have fought to eliminate discrimination against LGBT Americans. In Illinois, I co-sponsored a fully inclusive bill that prohibited discrimination on the basis of both sexual orientation and gender identity, extending protection to the workplace, housing, and places of public accommodation.

Moral imperative. I like it. Actually, I think this section addresses part of that “he doesn’t have enough experience kind of thing.” He talks about the work he did for us in the Illinois senate. That he also addressed gender identity in this older bill is of interesting.

In the U.S. Senate, I have co-sponsored bills that would equalize tax treatment for same-sex couples and provide benefits to domestic partners of federal employees.

YES! Taxes! You know, this might not seem to be such an exciting thing…but let me tell you…as I’ve started trying to figure out economic issues for the future it has become brutally apparent that our economic lives is vastly more complicated and punished because all the tax structures of married folks are denied us. Throw in survivor pensions/benefits and I’ll be in a pool at your feet.

And as president, I will place the weight of my administration behind the enactment of the Matthew Shepard Act to outlaw hate crimes and a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act to outlaw workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Well. Sounds good to me.

As your President, I will use the bully pulpit to urge states to treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws. I personally believe that civil unions represent the best way to secure that equal treatment. But I also believe that the federal government should not stand in the way of states that want to decide on their own how best to pursue equality for gay and lesbian couples — whether that means a domestic partnership, a civil union, or a civil marriage.

This is a line that many on the blogs claim is him saying to the conservative states “I’ll ask you to do this, but I don’t really care–do whatever you want to them.” And I can’t blame them–anything “states rights”-like immediately rankles me because it’s often anti-woman, anti-gay, etc. However, I think he’s saying something else in this. He’s saying that the rights are the baseline. Equal treatment includes the things he’s spoken of–tax benefits and such–but that he’s not going to force the word “marriage.” Domestic partnership, civil union, civil marriage–states, call it what you would like. That’s just my interpretation. I don’t see this line as undercutting his argument.

Unlike Senator Clinton, I support the complete repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) - a position I have held since before arriving in the U.S. Senate.

Reminder: Bill Clinton signed DOMA. Just refreshing your memory about who put that in place.

While some say we should repeal only part of the law, I believe we should get rid of that statute altogether. Federal law should not discriminate in any way against gay and lesbian couples, which is precisely what DOMA does.

Thanks, Bill.

I have also called for us to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and I have worked to improve the Uniting American Families Act so we can afford same-sex couples the same rights and obligations as married couples in our immigration system.

Again, hey, thanks Bill Clinton for DADT. Rockin.

The next president must also address the HIV/AIDS epidemic. When it comes to prevention, we do not have to choose between values and science. While abstinence education should be part of any strategy, we also need to use common sense. We should have age-appropriate sex education that includes information about contraception. We should pass the JUSTICE Act to combat infection within our prison population. And we should lift the federal ban on needle exchange, which could dramatically reduce rates of infection among drug users. In addition, local governments can protect public health by distributing contraceptives.

The abstinence line rankles me–but I see what he’s doing here…when I see an action plan for what it means, I’ll have more to say. It could be good (develop body positivity and develop conscious choice-making) or bad (here’s how you use a condom IF YOU’RE A WHOREDEVILHELLBOUNDSLUT!)

We also need a president who’s willing to confront the stigma - too often tied to homophobia - that continues to surround HIV/AIDS. I confronted this stigma directly in a speech to evangelicals at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, and will continue to speak out as president. That is where I stand on the major issues of the day. But having the right positions on the issues is only half the battle. The other half is to win broad support for those positions. And winning broad support will require stepping outside our comfort zone. If we want to repeal DOMA, repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and implement fully inclusive laws outlawing hate crimes and discrimination in the workplace, we need to bring the message of LGBT equality to skeptical audiences as well as friendly ones - and that’s what I’ve done throughout my career. I brought this message of inclusiveness to all of America in my keynote address at the 2004 Democratic convention. I talked about the need to fight homophobia when I announced my candidacy for President, and I have been talking about LGBT equality to a number of groups during this campaign - from local LGBT activists to rural farmers to parishioners at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Dr. Martin Luther King once preached.

I’ve seen video of this. It’s impressive. I blogged about it before. Really impressive, bringing a sore topic up in a room that is not only skeptical, but largely hostile to our struggle. It’s, as I said, impressive.

Just as important, I have been listening to what all Americans have to say. I will never compromise on my commitment to equal rights for all LGBT Americans. But neither will I close my ears to the voices of those who still need to be convinced. That is the work we must do to move forward together. It is difficult. It is challenging. And it is necessary.

Again, some in the blogosphere are saying “What? Listen to the bigots?” Well…you never know what arguments will work with people if you don’t talk to them. Just sayin.

Americans are yearning for leadership that can empower us to reach for what we know is possible. I believe that we can achieve the goal of full equality for the millions of LGBT people in this country. To do that, we need leadership that can appeal to the best parts of the human spirit. Join with me, and I will provide that leadership. Together, we will achieve real equality for all Americans, gay and straight alike.

Damn straight, Obama.