doubting thom

Yes, it’s another gay marriage post; I hadn’t intended for this blog to become so practically exclusively focused on that debate, but at the same time I can’t deny that it has a very personal dimension for me. But if you read no other article about this issue, please read this powerfully moving story, a story a year old but never more relevant. I found the link at Go Fish and, just as Mac decided therein, I don’t want to try to distill it to quotes; I think it’s important that you read the whole thing.

As Jeff noted last week and Cornelia followed up yesterday, tomorrow is the DC area’s Dining Out for Life event, in which a number of local restaurants will donate between 25% and 100% of their meal proceeds to Food & Friends, which “prepares and delivers meals and groceries to nearly 1,000 people living with HIV/AIDS and other life-challenging illnesses such as breast, lung and colon cancer” (and for which I used to volunteer when I worked downtown; I need to look into doing so again here in northern Virginia).

Jeff and I will be meeting Cornelia and her partner, Kat, for dinner at Annie’s Paramount Steakhouse, a DC institution popular among the local queer community. Cornelia’s bringing her camera, and I need to try to remember to take mine, too; I just wish I’d been able to get a haircut recently, so I didn’t look so Bozo-the-clown shaggy.

The list of DC GLBTQ blogs and journals is now up to 117 118 sites, with 89 90 of those having RSS feeds. The OPML file for the latter also is available.

[Update 03.10.04 10:20: Just added Jol’s television-related blog to the list. Welcome, Jol.]

Today’s Times has an article (“Gay and Republican, but Not Necessarily Disloyal to President”) about gay Republicans who have decided to continue their support for Bush and to vote for him come November, despite his call for a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Now, at some level I understand the concept that a given gay person might consider their ability to get married to be less critical than their personal economic situation or the greater economy, terrorism or other political issues, but it’s very difficult for me to see how they could continue to ignore so blithely such a clear and consistent rejection and antipathy from the Republican party (or how they can consider Bush to be particularly good for the economy or against terrorism–I sure as hell don’t feel any safer now, though I certainly feel a lot less free–but that’s another post). Nor can I understand how they are able, as several gay Republicans are quoted in this article, to so easily separate their personal–what they call their “private,” though this administration has made it anything but–lives from their professional activities. The article notes, for example:

Mike Smith, the former executive director of the Colorado gay and lesbian community center, who became friendly with Ms. [Mary] Cheney in her old job as liaison to gays and lesbians for Coors Brewing, said that in the 2000 race he asked her how she made peace with her father’s politics. “She said they have a very close relationship, and that he had come to understand her and to love her partner,” Mr. Smith recalled. “She had tried not to involve his political life and her private life, in the same way she felt that her own work life was separate from her private life.”

When your father’s political life suggests that you are a less valuable citizen of the community, and that your relationship is worthy of being singled out for Constitutionally-mandated discrimination, how do you separate it from your personal life? Precisely what kind of “love” and “understanding” does a father have for his daughter and her partner when he is willing to write into the Constitution that their relationship is of an inferior degree?

The article continues:

In the last election, Mr. Bush did little to court gay voters. He appeared at Bob Jones University, an evangelical Christian college that teaches that homosexuality is a sin. He refused to meet with the Log Cabin Republicans. And he opposed some legislation intended to protect gays from discrimination. But after he was elected, he appointed a handful of gays to his administration.

Brett Robben, another gay friend of Ms. Cheney’s in Denver, who used to work in Washington, said he learned to discount antigay statements from politicians. “Those stands were more for the constituents back home,” he said. “It wouldn’t be that offensive because it was just, you know, politics.”

What? We don’t generally forgive racist, sexist or otherwise hateful or ignorant pronouncements by our legislators as “just politics” for the folks back home. Why are these gay Republicans, then, willing to give them a pass for their antigay remarks?

Ingrid E. Barnes, a lesbian who is associate director of undergraduate admissions at Pace University in New York and a Republican, said she was shaken but not necessarily deterred from voting for Mr. Bush.

“I believe in small government,” Ms. Barnes said. “I believe in taxpayers holding on to their money. I believe in individual responsibility.”

She added, “I think we need to work against this amendment passing, and I think we have to stand with our president on the national level.”

Let’s put aside the bizarre implication that Bush is in any way a force for smaller government, or for individual responsibility. But how exactly do you do both these things? How do you simultaneously stand with the president and work against him?

And then there’s the gay Republican, in a long-term relationship–whose viewpoint I found most frightening, most incomprehensible and most reprehensible in this article–for whom the right to carry a handgun apparently is more important than her right to marry the person she loves:

As a lesbian in a long-term relationship, Margaret Leber objects to the idea of amending the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage.

But Ms. Leber, a software engineer and a registered Republican in Jeffersonville, Pa., is also a member of the Pink Pistols, an organization of gay and lesbian gun owners, and marriage is not the only issue on her mind.

“Right now, I am leaning toward Bush,” Ms. Leber said. “All the Democrats just rolled into Congress to vote for this gun-control bill. Somebody with my values and beliefs can’t be a single-issue voter.”

Today during my departmental staff meeting with my boss and her direct reports, our librarian talked about an upcoming conference she’ll be attending on libraries and computing; she noted that there was going to be a session on “blogging,” and that she hadn’t known previously what that was. So I ended up defining and describing blogging, and at the same time acknowledging my own experience as a blogger. So it will be interesting to see if any of my colleagues end up searching for, finding and reading elf-reflection, something I first mused about last May and after which I’ve realized that–although I thought I would not–I have occasionally censored myself when writing about my job and my co-workers, just as I’ve probably left some relationship musings unblogged now that I’m partnered with a fellow blogger. The latter, especially, I find intriguing to ponder. There’s nothing in that category I haven’t shared directly with Jeff, but some of the details of my–now our–private life now feel less solely mine to divulge, and certainly less anonymous, since the man in my life has an online face, name and identity of his own.

As I sat here on the futon reading a column by Jonathan Rauch on nytimes.com, I pointed it out to Jeff (a few days ago he had noted another upcoming Rauch article in the Atlantic, which he was reading at brunch today), who mused as he pulled it up on his own laptop about this being in some way the modern equivalent of the stereotypical couple reading the Times together in bed Sunday morning.

Anyway, in today’s Times article, “Power of Two,” Rauch points out that in calling for a constitutional ban on gay marriage, Bush actually “established himself as the most prominent advocate of the best arguments for gay marriage, even as he roundly rejected gay marriage itself.”

Rauch dissects the salient points of Bush’s statement, showing how “[t]he logic of Bush’s speech points clearly toward marriage for all. It is this logic, the logic of marriage itself, that Bush and other proponents of a constitutional ban defy in their determination to exclude homosexuals.”

It’s a provocative and intelligent article. One thought of Rauch’s I particularly like is the following: “So today’s real choice is not whether to redefine marriage but how to do so: as a club only heterosexuals can join or as the noblest promise two people can make. To define marriage as discrimination would defend its boundaries by undermining its foundation.”

Those who would “save” marriage from gays, then, may be the very ones dooming the institution to irrelevance in a world of civil unions, domestic partnerships and other such legal options available to both straight and gay couples.

“America stands at a defining moment. The only comparison is our battle for independence for England.”

No, that quotation wasn’t George Bush talking about the war on terror, John Kerry speaking about the dangers of the Patriot Bill, Abraham Lincoln during his Gettysburg Address, or even Ralph Nader’s ego holding forth on his candidacy for U.S. President. Rather, it was from Reverend Louis Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, speaking about, of all things, gay marriage (in an Associated Press article on CNN.com). Yes, folks, there are people–and they have the ear of this Administration–who absolutely believe that the fight for and against gay marriage is equivalent to the American Revolution in terms of its importance in defining our country.

The focus of the article in which this quote is found is that many opponents of gay civil rights and gay marriage are actually welcoming the attention on gay marriage, because they believe that it will draw new audiences for their bigoted and hateful rhetoric and beliefs.

Even as they issue dire warnings, many longtime opponents of the gay-rights movement are welcoming the furor over same-sex marriage as a chance to expand the audience for their unfavorable views of homosexuality.

Activists in this camp — clergy, conservative lobbyists, men and women who say they moved away from homosexuality through prayer or therapy — have been dismayed by gay-rights advances in recent years. But they see new opportunities for their cause if, as polls indicate, a majority of the Americans oppose the spreading push for gay marriage.

“People are taking us more seriously,” said Joseph Nicolosi, a leading proponent of the contested concept that homosexuality is a disorder treatable by therapy.

It’s sad and a little frightening that there are people who spend so much time, thought, energy and money to paint gay folk as sick, evil or both. Just think what good they might do if they spent as much time worrying about the real evils that plague our society.

Both Jeffs (mine and the other one) have posted about Mark Morford’s recent column in SF Gate, “Where Is My Gay Apocalypse,” wondering why we’ve not seen the wrath of God that the religious right would have us believe should have occurred upon the granting of gay marriages in San Francisco (and elsewhere).

I have been waiting patiently.

I have been staring with great anticipation out the window of my flat here in the heart of San Francisco, sighing heavily, waiting for the riots and the plagues and the screaming monkeys and the blistering rain of inescapable hellfire. I have my camera all ready and everything.

….After all, gay marriage is supposed to ruin the nation, is it not? Induce actual rioting and civil unrest and shirtless anarchy as millions of stupefied citizens pray to a bloody pulverized Mel Gibson-y Jesus for redemption, as they suddenly begin questioning whether ogling the Pottery Barn catalog for more than 10 minutes might mean they’re gay.

“It’s anarchy,” some guy named Rick Forcier, of the Washington state chapter of the Christian Coalition, actually whined. “We seem to have lost the rule of law. It’s very frightening when every community decides what laws they will obey.” Why, yes, Rick. It’s total anarchy. Just look at all the screaming and the bloodshed and the gunfire. Run and hide, Rick. The gay people in love are coming. And they’ve got tattoos and funny haircuts and want to get married and celebrate their love and be left alone. Hide the children.

It’s funny. Go read it.

[Update: 2:41 am. I see that Anna also had posted a link to this piece, as had Mac over at Go Fish. That’s what I get for not having had the time to check all my Bloglines feeds since Thursday evening until now. Friday was such a bitch at work, I didn’t even get to check my personal email until after 4pm, and only for 5 minutes, and still ended up working an hour and 15 minutes past closing.]

Jeff already has reported on our outing to the HRC-organized rally for gay marriage last night, about which our impressions largely are in sync. Turnout seemed high; a lesbian employee had predicted a small crowd, but the numbers looked pretty impressive to us, though it’s hard to tell since the space was not a large open arena. There were a lot of speakers, almost too many, and I’m still not sure why in the world they invited Republican DC Councilwoman Carol Schwartz, who bragged about the huge number of gay friends she has (“more than Madonna”) at the same time that she admitted that while she opposes a constitutional amendment she does not, in fact, support gay marriage, exhorting us to be happy with domestic partnership at the back of the bus rather than seeking marriage with the white folks up front. Feh.

The highlight of the evening, though, included an amazingly poised, thoughtful and intelligent 13-year-old Jake, who talked about his life with his two mothers, and the issues he and they face in the absence of a legal relationship between the two women. It was also amazing to look around and see the number of babies and young children in the crowd; Jeff and I walked in behind a cute young lesbian couple wheeling a stroller, and for a while stood next to two handsome young men carrying a baby. And it was a pleasant surprise to hear from two openly gay Republican elected officials–David Catania of DC and a cute goateed man, whose name and state I’ve regrettably forgotten [update, March 6: a friend of the latter has emailed me to remind me of the name, Karl Rohde from Oregon]–who noted that they would not be supporting W come fall.

It was a beautiful near-spring evening and, despite my sense sometimes that even after 16 years in DC I don’t know anyone, I saw at least a half-dozen friends and acquaintances in the crowd. It is disappointing, though, that the pre-Rally publicity was so sparse–it’s great that the turnout was so high, considering–and that there appeared to be zero coverage in the press; I watched the local 11:00 news last night for the first time in years, and there was nothing about it. Ditto in today’s Post. Still, I’m glad we were part of it.

When I first saw an item in a Forbes column about the amount of money Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is raking in for him, I thought the sentence about his receiving a percentage of the merchandising from the sale of “mugs and nail necklaces” must be a joke. But it’s true. The official merchandising site for the movie, Share the Passion of the Christ, in addition to “witnessing tools” like lapel pins and witness cards, is hawking mugs with images of a cross on them and, however tasteless and grotesque it may appear, 1-7/8 inch and 2-5/8 inch pewter “Passion Nail™” pendants on 24-inch leather cords.

It’s estimated that Gibson’s percentage of the film grosses, merchandising and DVD licensing and sales will net him more than $300 million personally.