doubting thom

Zoethe posted Saturday about the ACLU’s offer to fax a message on your behalf to your congressfolk, faxes generally considered to have more impact than a letter or email.

After submitting my fax, I also finally contributed my dollars to join the ACLU as an official card-carrying member, something I’d been thinking about for years without taking action.

I’ll say a couple of good things for George and his public stand on enshrining bigotry into the Constitution. He and his administration absolutely have turned me back into a queer activist. For starters, in addition to finally joining the ACLU, I’ve donated extra money to HRC beyond my annual membership fee, and sent dozens of faxes and emails to Washington; Jeff and I also are attending the HRC Rally Against Discrimination downtown at 5:45 this evening, outside the HRC headquarters building at 1640 Rhode Island Ave. And I’m delighting in the Schadenfreude of so many gay Republicans now speaking out against this administration, and some even defecting from their party.

Last night I was updating my favorite channels list on my DirecTV with TiVo, primarily in order to remove all the latest sports channels from my guide listings and channel search, when I came across a network I’d not seen before, FitTV, apparently another of the Discovery stable of channels. The program on at the time was Urban Fitness TV, a Canadian import, featuring hunky host Derek Noble and what clearly seemed to be a gay male aesthetic, with camera shots almost lovingly focusing now on Noble’s sweaty chest, now on his armpit, now travelling along the body of a shirtless male model lying on a massage table, with shots of male nipples even part of the end title graphics; I remarked to Jeff that Urban Fitness TV seemed practically to be soft porn for gay men. [And Googling the names of the host and the show seems to suggest that Urban Fitness TV was created originally for PrideVision TV, the Canadian-originated “world’s first GLBT television network.”]

While the content of this news, also courtesy of Queer Day, won’t surprise anyone who has even the merest honest familiarity with history and/or anthropology–which leaves out, apparently, the current administration and its speechwriters, and part of its right-wing base–“the Executive Board of the American Anthopological Association, the world’s largest organization of anthropoligists, the people who study culture,” released a statement in response to the president’s “call for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage as a threat to civilization,” noting that the White House doesn’t seem to know much about human cultures.

The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies.

The Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association strongly opposes a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to heterosexual couples.

The San Francisco Chronicle added:

The statement was proposed by Dan Segal, a professor of anthropology and history from Pitzer College in Claremont (Los Angeles County), who called Bush’s conception of the history of marriage “patently false.”

“If he were to take even the first semester of anthropology, he would know that’s not true,” said Segal, a member of the anthropological association’s Executive Committee.

Ghita Levine, communications director for the association, said the issue struck a nerve in the profession.

“They feel strongly about it because they are the people who study the culture through time and across the world,” she said. “They are the people who know what cultures consist of.”

Segal pointed to “sanctified same-sex unions in the fourth century in Christianity” and to the Greeks and Romans applying the concept of marriage to same-sex couples, not to mention the Native American berdache tradition in which males married males.

Also courtesy of Queer Day, the Rocky Mountain News reports that the chief of staff for Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, the originator of the current version of the Federal Marriage Amendment before Congress, claims that President Bush pledged to support the amendment back in November, three months before he made his public announcement in February. The White House disputes this, claiming that Bush only made the decision to push for a constitutional amendment after officials in San Francisco and New Mexico granted marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Even scarier, though, is what the White House does explicitly confess:

White House press secretary Scott McClellan, speaking to reporters after the president’s announcement, said Bush resolved to support an amendment after a process that involved consulting with constitutional scholars, theologians, religious leaders and others.

Why is the President of the U.S. consulting with theologians and religious leaders on an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the very document that establishes and enshrines (if you’ll forgive the pun) the separation of church and state? What these religious leaders think about the amendment, at least in their role as religious leaders, is not supposed to matter one whit. But then again, I’ve long believed that George W. was whit-less.

An item in Queer Day today points to an article in the San Mateo Daily Journal about a lesbian couple who were married on February 13 in San Francisco. When they returned to their church, the Santa Cruz Bible Church, the next day for a “power of love” sermon, they stood when a moderator asked couples who had been recently married to stand to be recognized in order to honor the most recent newlyweds.

Soon Boxer and Zapata, just two days into their marriage, were the only ones standing.

A tense silence filled the church. The moderator turned to whisper with church leaders. The lesbian couple stood, surrounded by their congregation, feeling more humiliated by the second, they said.

After several minutes, a decision was reached.

The moderator handed the couple a prize–dinner at a local Italian restaurant–for being the newest married couple in the congregation. Then, Pastor David Gschwend rose and condemned gay marriage.

Well, there’s the “power of love” for you, in at least one Christian context. The article goes on to report that the pastor has since extended an invitation to meet with Boxer and Zapata.

“At least I want to look them in the eye and tell them they have value and dignity,” [Gschwend] said.

<screech /> Er, whuh?

In my own life, yesterday morning I attended church services with my family in my home town. I decided to let Jeff sleep in and just join us later for lunch, and boy am I glad I did. Every time I visit that church–in which I grew up, and where my family are still very active–I get angry and swear I’ll never go back again, yet I always end up going anyway for my family’s sake. Yesterday I arrived to find a slick insert in the order of service from James Dobson of Focus on the Family which included an announcement about two upcoming workshops to “heal” homosexuals and bring them into a life of heterosexuality; during the sermon the minister spoke out against faiths, like the historical roots of my own contemporary Unitarian-Universalism, that teach that everyone merits salvation, and went on to note that changes to certain U.S. laws–he didn’t speak explicitly about sodomy and gay marriage, but in context I made an assumption that these were included–are “evil” and “wrong”–comparing them, in fact, to laws mandated by Hitler and Stalin–and that “laws of the land” do not need to be honored and obeyed by Christians if such laws go against biblical principles, literally expressed. Personally, I think among our most evil laws that ought to be condemned are those that provide tax exemptions to churches.

And this time I really mean it: I am never going back to that church again. Later, though, I did find it amusing to reflect that what’s happening in San Francisco and elsewhere in the U.S. is the result of others standing up to what they see as unjust laws, though I suspect this minister probably wouldn’t see it in the same light as his call for Christians to ignore the law. Incidentally, there is divorce and illegitimacy in the minister’s own marital and familial relationships, but hey, never mind, even his fundamentalist God still loves and forgives him because he’s not a homosexual.

Thanks so much to my friend Anna for pointing the way to this site. Specifically, these two columns–here and here–should be required reading from the pulpit of every mainstream Christian church in the U.S.

So you want to talk about homosexuality? YOU want to talk about homosexuality? You want to talk about homosexuALITY?

Sit down CHRIStian. Give me that bible you’re waving before you hurt yourself. I’m going to resist the temptation to snatch it from your hands and beat you with it. I am your worst nightmare, a Texas preacher who knows The Book better than you do.

You cannot wave your unread bible and scare me. I know its larger story and I will tear you a new biblical asshole.

Show me your scriptures. Show me how you justify condemning homosexual people.

Show me what you got, Christian. The Sodom story? That story is about people who wanted to commit a brutal rape. Let’s all say it together, “God doesn’t like rape”. You could have listened to your heart and learned that, Christian. Move on. What else you got?

….And you come to me with two little scraps of scripture to justify your persecution of God’s children?

…Sit down Christian. You have not earned the right to speak to this generation. The right to speak is earned with love.

…I do not think the bible teaches that every expression of homosexual love is sinful. The scriptural witness on this subject is shaky at best.

Even if you do not buy my claim that we have no right to demand specific explanation of scriptures from homosexuals since we don’t provide similar explanations for the hundreds of passages we blatantly ignore…

Even if you do not agree that the Bible never really addresses the subject of homosexuality as a sexual orientation…

Even if you reject my biblical analysis and decide that the bible is condemning of homosexuals…

Would you at least agree that the passages are ambiguous and open to many interpretations? Would you at least agree that others may responsibly interpret them and not agree with you?

If you could at least acknowledge that scripture is far from clear on this subject, then perhaps you would be willing to err on the side of compassion. Perhaps you would be willing to open your churches to our homosexual brothers and sisters, trusting them to read the bible just as you do, with love and hoping for Grace from God.

It almost makes me want to shout, “Amen, brother!”

Tomorrow morning Jeff and I are planning to get up early for a road trip. We’re taking the new Prius from Arlington to the mountains for a short visit with my Mom and the rest of my family. This will be the first time he’s been there or met any of them. I’m looking forward to showing him where I grew up, and to showing him off to my Mom. And the weather is supposed to be warming up, 50s tomorrow, 60s on Sunday, so it’ll be a nice weekend to take him to the country, and to actually get some quality time with the new car.

And it looks like we’re not the only ones in this boat. This weekend Matt is meeting [the other] Jeff’s folks for the first time, too.

From an HRC mailing I just received:

RALLY AGAINST DISCRIMINATION

Oppose the Federal Anti-Marriage Amendment

Corner of 17th and Rhode Island Ave. NW
Washington, DC
In front of the HRC Building

March 3, 2004 (Wednesday)
6:00pm

Let’s rally together on the heels of President Bush’s endorsement to permanently deny marriage rights to same-sex couples! Rally to demonstrate your opposition to the Federal Anti-Marriage Amendment, and show your support for marriage rights for the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community!

Erstwhile celeb, uber geek, blogger extraordinaire, and budding talented author Wil Wheaton has taken a principled stand today in his blog against amending the U.S. Constitution and in support of gay marriage. Noting first that he debated whether to post at all, given the divisiveness of the issue, his wide readership and that he has a new book coming out in just two weeks, he then went on to post a lengthy, intelligent and impassioned piece regardless of the consequences because he “has to stand up for his beliefs”:

And this brings me to the first thing that’s so profoundly upsetting about this entire issue: it’s not about marriage, it’s not about love, it’s not about family, it’s not about commitment. It’s about hating homosexuals. It’s about treating homosexuals as if they are second-class citizens. It’s about dividing this country into those who support discrimination, and those who don’t. It’s about Karl Rove updating The Southern Strategy.

It comes as no surprise to me that, as part of that strategy, George W. Bush wants to take the Constitution, a document that is supposed to limit government and guarantee freedoms to all Americans, away from millions of our fellow citizens who are homosexual. I didn’t buy the “I’m a uniter, not a divider, compassionate conservative” bullshit during the 2000 campaign, and this is just another example of Mr. Bush revealing his true colors. And this argument that it’s a response to “activist judges?” That’s a huge load of crap too. Mr. Bush has a lot of nerve talking about “activist judges,” considering that he owes his presidency to five of them….

Now, I have no doubt that this effort will fail. I believe that it will ultimately backfire on the Bush Administration, and contribute to his defeat in November. The United States just isn’t the Theocracy that Mr. Bush wants to create.

There is a wonderful opportunity here, though, that I haven’t heard anyone talk about, yet: we are now forced, as a nation, to acknowledge and confront the widespread discrimination against gays and lesbians, and I believe that Americans will unite against segregation now, just as we did during the Civil Rights movement.

I believe in America. I believe in the Bill of Rights, and the founding principals of this nation. I believe that goodness, compassion, and tolerance will triumph over hatred, bigotry, and ignorance.

And I am proud to stand up for these beliefs, whatever the consequences.

Given the overwhelming agreement with his position in the comments posted to his entry, I don’t suspect Wil will see much negative fallout to having taken this position. But it could have been different, and I applaud him for being willing to stand up for what’s right despite the potential cost. Just in case someone decides to boycott him because of his political beliefs, I think I’m going to buy a copy of both of his books.

I‘ve just created a “Defend Equality” page on the HRC web site; on this page you can quickly and easily shoot off an email to your Congresscritters opposing the Federal Marriage Amendment and document that you’ve called the White House to express your opposition to amending the Constitution. There’s also a page where you can donate to HRC’s campaign to fight this amendment. I’ve already donated $100 myself.

My Take Action Campaigns
I’ve set a goal of at least 100 actions by family, friends, blog readers. Help me reach this goal, if you can.

My Fundraising Page
If you’d also like to donate cash to the campaign, “every little bit helps.”