Today in Definitely-Not-Deplorable

"Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence spoke out against Hillary Clinton's description of half of Trump supporters as in 'the basket of deplorables.' 'They are not a basket of anything,' Pence said on Sept. 10. 'They are Americans and they deserve your respect.'"

He says, standing behind the podium of FRC Action, the legislative arm of anti-LGBT hate group Family Research Council, at whose Values Voters summit he spoke over the weekend, exactly three months after the deadliest terrorist attack against LGBT people in US history.

Election 2016 in a nutshell, folks.

"Both sides,""worse to call someone a bigot than to be one," etc.

Conservatives Try to Monopolize Values

So, Trump spoke at the definitely-not-deplorable Values Voter Summit this weekend, where he and various speakers like that definitely-not-deplorable Duck Dynasty guy and Kirk Cameron spoke for about a hundred-odd minutes ("and I do mean odd") about definitely-not-deplorable "bedrock" conservative values.

You know, real intellectual firepower. Ker-pow!

Mostly what I want to say today is that the phrase "values voter" has long chapped my hide. It suggests that those who share the values of this summit hold values. Which, sure. They do. But, the implication is that those who do not hold these same values do not hold values at all.  After all, they are "values voters." Everyone else votes for.... other reasons.

When, no. We hold values. They just happen to be different ones.

In conversations with some conservatives, I've found that they often genuinely don't get that - which seems remarkably self-centered. It's as though, if a person doesn't believe the way the conservative believes, then that person can't possibly believe in anything at all! 

Anyway. The summit. Not many female-chattel speakers in the lineup, I noticed.

Like I always say. Where there's regular, good old-fashioned male-supremacist values, we'll also find some homophobia, transphobia, Christian supremacy, and thinly-veiled white supremacy, all brought to you by millionaires masquerading as aww shucks gee whiz folksy folk ordinary people.

Happy Heterosexual Pride, I Guess

Imagine being the kind of person who says this, two weeks after the worst mass shooting in US history, which occurred at a gay nightclub:

"In my experience, there is nothing like the hatred that comes from the LGBT movement and its allies, even straights."

Sadly, this kind of ongoing rhetoric, uttered by none other than conservative Christian Rod Dreher (and proponent of Christian segregation from the rest of depraved, secular society) is to be expected after various LGBT victories (and mass shootings, I guess).

People of this sort seem to so misunderstand, indeed they don't even try to understand, what it is to grow up transgender, bisexual, lesbian, gay, or queer and thus what it is to be on the receiving end of multiple hatreds, that they trivialize our pain as whining or political correctness while their pain - their having to endure living in a society that treats us equally- they categorize as a human rights violation of the first order.

The message, consistently, is: our pain matters, yours doesn't.

And, I suppose most (all?) groups of people have this attitude to a degree.  Oppression Olympics and all that.

At this juncture, I could list some of the historical pain and grief of the LGBT movement in the US: our government's inaction with respect to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, the religious right's approval of LGBT oppression under law, historic sodomy laws, the categorization of homosexuality as a mental illness, the disrespect of trans individuals' bodily autonomy and mental integrity, "love the sinner hate the sin" rhetoric, laws that disrespect the dignity of LGBT families.

I could analyze how all of what I list above is the result of various hatreds, and hell I suppose that's much of what I've done here over the course of years (plus femslash, obvs, because you have to have fun too).

And I really don't know what to say anymore about anti-LGBT Christians who have both large platforms to rail against "the LGBT movement" and yet who seem to so profoundly not understand our pain at all.

At a certain point, as I've quoted Karen Armstrong before, we have to ask ourselves (no matter how victimized we feel):

"'How much do I really know about [the other side's] history of pain, achievement, oppression, disappointment, fear, idealism, and aspiration ~ all of which, on both sides, have contributed to this violence?'"

Many days, I don't have the capacity for this, to be honest - and I don't blame others who feel the same. I suspect most people don't, and that's why... the world is what it is (ugh, worst sage philosophical saying ever: "it is what it is").

My startling revelation here is that I'm not sure what the best solution ever is in such situations - call people out? (which the Drehers of the world perceive as us oppressing them with charges of bigotry), dialogue (which can be incredibly draining: "Yes, please tell me how you're being oppressed, Straight Christian Anti-Gay Person"), blogging about it (somewhat cathartic, I guess)?

Dreher wrote a lot of words in his post from which I've pulled his quote. So, when I started the post by asking us to imagine being the kind of person who says what he says, well, I think it takes a strong LGBT person to get past (to want to get past) being called the Biggest Hater On Earth by an anti-LGBT individual.

And, simply put, because I read his blog on the regular, I do understand his position. I understand it far better than he has appeared to ever understand ours (ours being the LGBT movement) - which he often mocks relentlessly. I understand he has books to sell, too.

I also understand that when one is both interested in and adept at "mixed-company" conversations, they also understand that understanding itself furthers civil discourse and distances us from hatred. 

Bigots Gonna Bigot

Thought I'd check in to see if regular purveyor of anti-LGBT animus National Organization for [Heterosexual] Marriage (NOM) had anything to say about the largest mass shooting in US history, in which the killer targeted NOM's regular targets- LGBT individuals.

At its blog, NOM did not acknowledge the shooting.

As of today, it has posted 5 articles promoting its March For Marriage, which seeks to protest marriage equality in the US.

Inauspiciously, less than a week prior to the shooting, on June 7, 2016, it promoted an article at The Federalist, written by Rachel Lu, in which both NOM and The Federalist highlighted the following quote, implicitly approving of it:

"Within my lifetime, the LGBT movement will die."

How nice for Rachel and NOM that on June 12th, 2016 a piece of their apparent fantasy was fulfilled.

My cynical point here is not meant to be a "gotcha."  It's a plea, rather. Here, perhaps it would be best to quote from Rachel Lu's piece again, the context of which is to bemoan political correctness and the acceptance of transgender individuals:

"Ideas have consequences, and gender ideologues are only beginning to grapple with the fruits of theirs."

Yes, and when, if ever, will anti-LGBTs grapple with the fruits of theirs?

The Extreme Self-Centeredness of the Anti-LGBT

My title doesn't reference a clinical diagnosis, but rather a sort of cultural narcissism that would seem unbelievable perhaps to anyone not familiar with the LGBT "culture wars" in the US.

I'm referring today to anti-LGBT Christian Rod Dreher turning the worst terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11, one in which LGBT people primarily of color were specifically targeted, all about.... you guessed it... the oppression of anti-LGBT Christians. His concern seems to be that Christianity-motivated hate speech and laws against LGBT equality will no longer be as tolerated in the US after this attack. Thusly, does he rally his brave, oppressed Christian soldiers:

"Now we will see the price individual Christians are willing to pay to remain faithful. Now we will see how many Christians have the inner strength to obey Jesus’s command: 'But I say to you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which spitefully use you, and persecute you.'

When I talk about the need for the Benedict Option, this is part of what I mean: the need for orthodox Christians to come together in thick communities to keep our faith, to help each other through things like what’s to come, and to remind one another that no matter what, we cannot return hatred for hatred. That is forbidden to us."

He Godwin-labels his post "Orlando: The Reichstag Fire," suggesting that the Orlando attack will be the precipitating event that turns the US into Nazi Germany, with anti-LGBT Christians being the equivalent of Jews under Nazi Germany.

This absurd, histrionic view, of course, is the very belief that enables homophobe oppressors to mistakenly believe they are victimized underdogs which is what, cyclically, many anti-LGBTs use to justify their oppression of LGBTs.

What else can you say, really to such a despicable, self-centered view. Except maybe, Rod Dreher, how dare you? How fucking dare you co-opt this tragedy to further your own anti-LGBT agenda. You are part of the problem.

A homophobe living in a homophobic society just killed 49 people at a gay club and Rod Dreher takes a moment to navel-gaze about the harmful impact the shooting could have on religious bigots.

Like I said in my original post about the incident:

"[M]ost of all, what those who utter [anti-LGBT] rhetoric know with 100% certainty is that any harm LGBT people experience is 100% not their fault.

Well, I see you, bigots. I've seen you for years. You don't fool me and you don't fool many other people.

To the LGBT community: I stand with you. In fear, anger, pride, courage, and determination, we grieve and we vow to carry on."

Not in spite of people like Dreher, but because of them.

So, Rod Dreher Seems Nice

Here, Dreher, the Christian conservative writes:

"The 'Status Update' episode of of This American Life was one I almost didn’t listen to. Why? Because the first segment is a discussion of among the most annoying people on the planet — young teenage girls — talking about the most boring subject on the planet: their social media habits."

Oy. Adults bullying teen girls as a class is not a good look on anyone, least of all a middle-aged male blogger with a relatively large following. Petty.

Then here, Dreher has a bee in his bonnet about the TV show Transparent (a) existing at all, and (b) being featured in The New York Times. He hyperventilates:

"A political response is necessary, but a political response alone is radically insufficient, in part because it’s nothing but a delaying action. This Weimar America madness has to run its course. We religious conservatives had all better do everything we can to protect our institutions and our families from it. It’s not going to be easy, but it’s not going to get any easier as the years go by, no matter who sits in the White House, and we had better prepare ourselves."

In comments, Dreher explains his Nazi allusion "Weimar America": it's "shorthand for an unstable and decadent state and culture marked by left and right extremism, in which the center could not and did not hold."

The suggestion seems to be that Transparent is a herald of the US turning into a Nazi-like state in which the rounding up and murdering of conservative Christians like him is imminent.

I chose both quotes to highlight here because, to me, they demonstrate the Christian Persecution Complex well in its current post-marriage-equality incarnation.

Out of one side of his mouth, Dreher and his people are victims, he claims. Yet, out of the other side of his mouth, he uses his voice to belittle teenage girls. "Transgenders." College kids. Black Lives Matters activists. Take your pick at the Dreher blog. When people such as these advocate for themselves, it is "decadence." They are being whiny "titty-babies."  Yet, take away a religious school's "right" to discriminate against gays, let a show featuring trans people be featured in a major newspaper, and watch out everyone it's a human rights violation of the first order.

The problem with Christians such as this is not that they are being persecuted in any meaningful sense of the word. It's both that previously-excluded groups are gaining platforms and visibility while conservative Christians are losing their previously-privileged standing and disproportionate power in US society, law, and culture.  It is akin to Men's Rights Activists (MRAs) who interpret gains for women as the sexism/oppression of men.

There is literally no threat to anti-LGBT Christians in the US right now that merits comparisons to either Nazi Germany or its precursor conditions.

As I noted back in June, when Dreher was given space in Time (because.... ummm?) to share his histrionics about the SCOTUS ruling, "The chief harm to opponents of equality is not that it impacts their own rights or liberty, but that the state no longer officially agrees with their moral and/or religious views about the matter. The state not being a Christian one is framed, not as neutrality, but as aggression and unfairness."

Yet, unfortunately, to paraphrase a quote, when God is a man, some men see themselves as God.

Many white Christian men are used to being authoritative overlords - indeed grow up with their scriptures affirming that status for them. They have it ingrained in them that their - our - voices don't matter, that our voices are, say, "the most annoying on the planet," unworthy of listening to, dangerous, a beginning to the end times.

In a recent essay, Rebecca Solnit makes an observation about that peculiar group of white guys who, because of the way society has long centered them and their voices, now demand constant coddling (while of course claiming it's others who need to be coddled):

"A group of black college students doesn’t like something and they ask for something different in a fairly civil way and they’re accused of needing coddling as though it’s needing nuclear arms. A group of white male gamers doesn’t like what a woman cultural critic says about misogyny in gaming and they spend a year or so persecuting her with an unending torrent of rape threats, death threats, bomb threats, doxxing, and eventually a threat of a massacre that cites Marc LePine, the Montreal misogynist who murdered 14 women in 1989, as a role model. I’m speaking, of course, about the case of Anita Sarkeesian and Gamergate. You could call those guys coddled. We should. And seriously, did they feel they were owed a world in which everyone thought everything they did and liked and made was awesome or just remained silent? Maybe, because they had it for a long time.

And so it goes. When men like Dreher are offended by, say, Transparent, we are to take it as a valid, serious, important concern. His delicate sensibilities - the priggish way he talks about trans people and "SJWs" -  demand coddling. Other people's sensibilities are seen as political correctness gone too far.

In all, it's a profound failure of empathy.

In her essay, Solnit goes on to note that, indeed, art can be dangerous. It can change the world. It can make us or break us.  It can elevate other voices. And, in the case of something like Transparent, can shift the female gaze from the margin to the center, and tell the previously-untold stories of people who have previously been marginal to the white male protagonist's story.

Only under the mindset that one particular group's story is the only one worth centering can the telling of other people's stories be framed as "decadent."  I mean, let's really take a step back and examine the self-absorption inherent in that claim: telling stories that center trans and female individuals is a sign of decadence, it is a luxury and sign of decline; unlike say the telling of cisgender white male stories, which is a social necessity, and a social good.

Perhaps to a conservative white Christian man with such a mindset, the celebration of other stories, perspectives, lifestyles feels akin to - for him - genocide.  If in metaphor only.

Make no mistake, though, it's not.

What a world.

In Which I Agree With NOM For First Time Ever

Yesterday, the National Organization for [Heterosexual] Marriage (NOM) endorsed Ted Cruz for president of the United States.

Obviously, I don't agree with that endorsement. But, in the organization's press release about it, they wrote:

"The decision to endorse in the Republican primary race was a very difficult one," [NOM's Brian] Brown said. "There are many tremendous candidates remaining who have made support for marriage a pillar of their careers in public service, including Sen. Rick Santorum, Gov. Mike Huckabee, Dr. Ben Carson and Sen. Marco Rubio. We realize that our endorsement of Sen. Cruz will be very disappointing to them. Should any of these candidates emerge as the Republican nominee we would enthusiastically support them. However, there is a real danger that conservatives will split the vote allowing someone like Donald Trump to emerge from the crowded field, which would be disastrous."

Yes, it's like a "who's the worst person ever" contest as judged by the worst group ever, but I bolded the part I agree with.

And at the same time, I have absolutely no sympathy for bigots and Republicans who are now seeking to distance themselves from Trump and acting appalled that he says out loud what they only dog whistle and imply. For decades, Republican and conservative leaders have fostered bigotry for their own political gain, thereby creating this very base of millions of people for whom Trump is their un-PC hero. As a result, they (and we) are all reaping what they've sown on that front.

What even is this country right now?

Radical Conservative Activists Call For Rebellion

I really hope that post-apocalyptic Earth will contain better remnants of our society than cockroaches, Twinkies, and symbolic conservative statements in which signees are make a big show of Taking A Stand on the issue du jour.

Via NOM's weekly newsletter (don't ask), I learned that a group of "prominent" legal scholars has signed a declaration calling on citizens and public officials to "resist" the US Supreme Court's marriage ruling.

What a world when predominately-white, male, conservative college professors and "think-tank" folks can call for legal obstruction and rebellion without being widely disparaged as thugs, yeah?

Anyway, this group's chief complaint is nothing new. The ruling will supposedly lead to a host of "evils" BLAH blah BLAH, and that the scholars oh-so-nobly "stand with" Abraham Lincoln and James Madison in believing that constitutional matters should not be decided by 5 judges.

7 years ago, I reviewed Leonard Levy's excellent book Original Intent and the Framer's Constitution. In it, Levy makes a strong case that we should question conservatives' claim that they eschew judicial activism and, unlike liberals, merely discover and apply law.

Judicial review - that is, the power of the Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution and say what the law is - has existed since the very beginning of the Supreme Court, albeit not without controversy.  Indeed, that controversy is why declarations such as these, coming as they do only in instances which coincide with a groups' political leanings, ring so hollow.

Here, I suspect that it's not the Supreme Court's power of judicial review that these conservative folks are opposing, but rather, judicial review in the case of same-sex marriage.

This statement, like so many before it, is the cowardly whinging of privileged folks about an issue that disproportionately affects other people.  Truly taking a stand would be for this group to call for the eradication of judicial review even in cases that they believe have "come out right" for them.

I challenge them to do so, if they have any integrity at all.

Public Discourse Continues to Disappoint

Like their peers at the National Organization for [Heterosexual] Marriage (NOM), writers at The Public Discourse* blog (oh, I'm sorry "online journal") continue to wail about the evils of same-sex marriage.

There, Melissa Moschella writes:

"A crucial aspect of liberty is respect for subsidiarity—in particular, recognition that the family, based on marriage, is a pre-political community with natural and original authority over its internal affairs, especially the education and upbringing of children. Redefining marriage in law to include same-sex couples undermines the principled basis for the primacy of parental childrearing authority by obliterating the link between marriage and procreation as well as the norm of conjoined biological parenthood that conjugal marriage laws help to foster."

First things first, I'll address that argument regarding "the link between marriage and procreation" being severed by same-sex marriage.  Sorry-not-sorry but, allowing infertile couples to marry "obliterated" that connection long before same-sex marriage was a twinkle in anyone's eye.

Secondly, this is your semi-regular reminder that, in many conservative circles, anti-feminism and anti-LGBT advocacy go hand in hand.

Did that phrasing, that particular longing for the days of ye 'olde when families (i.e., fathers) had dominion over the "internal affairs" (i.e., women and children), send a shiver down anyone else's spine?

Yep, me too.

The thrust of her argument is that "conjoined biological parents" (adjectives in all my years of writing about this stuff I've never seen combined before and which are now inducing interesting mental pictures) should have dominion over their children and that the state should not be able to interfere with that. The state, let me repeat, should not be able to interfere with the internal affairs of child-rearing.

Incidentally, I'm guessing she would be, however, in favor of allowing the state to force someone to give birth.

Moschella goes on to reference a litany of, well, nothing that hasn't already been said by her allies about a gazillion times already, including comparing the public education system in the US to Nazi Germany and claiming that pro-LGBT folks are practically kidnapping children of Real Families, soooooooo I'm going to slowly. back. away. from. the computer and see if I can get the latest American Horror Story on Netflix instead.


*The Public Discourse is run by the conservative Witherspoon Institute. For background see, here.

Related: Same-Sex Marriage, Feminism, and Women

Christian School Denies Entry to Child of Same-Sex Couple

A Christian school in San Diego is not allowing a 5-year-old girl to attend kindergarten because she has two moms.

Via MSN:

"When asked by the news team if it was discrimination to stop the child from attending because of her mothers, a woman who described herself as the school's director, said, 'The Bible says homosexuality is a sin. We don't condone any sinful lifestyles.' 

KGTV got a copy of the school's parent and student handbook which was revised over the summer. Under the school's statement of nondiscrimination, the handbook declared the school's right to "refuse admission of an applicant or to discontinue enrollment of a student." 

'This includes, but is not necessarily limited to, living in, condoning or supporting sexual immorality; practicing homosexual lifestyle or alternative gender identity; promoting such practices; or otherwise having the inability to support the moral principles of the school,' the handbook continued, according to the news station."

I have two items of note here.

One, I highlight how the conservative National Review frames the situation only because it's indicative of a mindset held by many anti-LGBTs. There, David French asks, in a piece entitled, "Lesbian Parents Try to Force a Christian School to Educate Their Child":

"Here’s a question for the secular left — when religious liberty collides with the desires of LGBT citizens, is there any case where religious freedom should prevail? How about when a lesbian couple tries to force a private Christian school to educate their child?" (emphasis added)

Ah, note the use of the phrase "desires of LGBT citizens," a word that, oh, maybe suggests that a lesbian couples' simple, decent wish for their daughter to attend school is in some way related to sex.

But, more pertinently, notice how French centers the beliefs (and prejudices) of adults in this scenario when, in fact, it is the child who is actually most profoundly impacted by the discrimination. How different does it sound when we ask:

Here's a question for all - when religious "freedom to discriminate" collides with the rights of children to attend school, when should religious freedom to discriminate prevail?

This case isn't one of Christians v. LGBTs, or even the Christian right v. the secular left.  It's one of Christian anti-LGBTs v. children who happen to have same-sex parents. That is, grown-ass adults punishing a child because they disagree with the "lifestyle" of her parents.

Two, notice the moral code in the handbook which specifically calls out homosexuality.  Yet, does the school also prohibit children of divorced, adulterous, or single parents from attending the school?

Of course not. Nor should it.

But that's how it so often is with the Christian bigot crowd, isn't it?

In the debates about marriage, many opponents of allowing same-sex couples to marry held that marriage was about "procreation," yet they had no issue with allowing infertile heterosexuals to marry. It's LGBTs and same-sex couples who these sorts of folks so often single out for their special brand of entitled, discriminatory treatment that they rarely reserve for other groups.

Bigot Kim Davis doesn't deny marriage licenses to people on their third, fourth marriage. No, her hill to die on is same-sex marriage. For special lucky reasons, I guess.

Even as these folks wail that it's LGBT people who constantly seek "special rights," these are the folks who seek both the special right to discriminate against LGBT people without consequence and to in no way face public shaming (or being called a bigot) for doing so.

The Power of the Opinion

Well, Team Inequality is being reasonable about things:

"One can certainly understand the joy that LGBT Americans and their supporters feel today. But orthodox Christians must understand that things are going to get much more difficult for us. We are going to have to learn how to live as exiles in our own country. We are going to have to learn how to live with at least a mild form of persecution. And we are going to have to change the way we practice our faith and teach it to our children, to build resilient communities."

That's conservative Rod Dreher, blogging at Time.

Of course, at his regular domain over at The American Conservative, he regularly expresses his persecution complex much more dramatically, as well as his vitriol toward progressivism and, especially, trans people. That is, when he isn't pitching one of his books.

Nonetheless, I've been reading these musings by opponents of equality with some fascination.  Scalia, in one of the most petulant, infantile, and unprofessional dissents I've ever read, naturally set the tone for conservative man-babies everywhere. The outrage, the persecution complex, the calls to revolution. None of it surprises me - remember, these are the people we've tried, with varying degrees of success, to reach for the past few decades. I know their narrative framings well.

As a practical consequence, I doubt marriage equality would have much impact on Dreher or many conservatives, if they simply didn't know that it was legal. Same-sex couples would get married, all of Dreher's Gay Friends wouldn't invite him to their weddings anyway, and none of it would have any bearing on his or his family's daily life.

The chief harm to opponents of equality is not that it impacts their own rights or liberty, but that the state no longer officially agrees with their moral and/or religious views about the matter. The state not being a Christian one is framed, not as neutrality, but as aggression and unfairness. At the same time, by harping on a small handful of instances of equality opponents losing their job, or their bakery,  or their flower shop, because of, however tangentially, their opposition to equality, the situation is further exaggerated as though every opponent of equality is at dire risk of being imminently sent to a concentration camp.

It is fear manufactured by some of those in the most privileged classes in the US- cushy white heterosexual men who get paid to write blogs and books for a living about the very culture wars they are, via their writing, complicit in perpetuating.

This talk of revolution and exile, because they, this time, didn't get their way on an issue that doesn't really impact them but so intimately impacts others is the blustering of former overlords being brought down a notch, with the rest of us who have long accepted that we sometimes don't get our way and that's part of the political and legal process in the US. Yet, many equality opponents, long our tormentors, speak of persecution as though they have invented the suffering of it, when the reality is that they have long inflicted it upon us - the non-religious, the gender nonconforming, the LGBT - and would continue to do so if granted the power.

Of course, these loser blusterings are likely not intended to placate the masses, or least of all to appeal to pro-equality folks. I've seen precious little concession that we have had benign motives for being for same-sex marriage in the first place.

And so. Now that we have won, can I maybe forgive anti-equality folks for their tireless advocacy against my dignity and equality, even if they haven't really apologized and still frame themselves as victims? It may be too soon for that for me, friends. Yet, with the weight of the Supreme Court majority backing me up, I can now care less about these anti-equality voices than I used to.

For me, there's peace in that.

Thoughts on Marriage Equality Victory!

Holy shit!

"The Fourteenth Amendment requires a State to license a mar- riage between two people of the same sex and to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawful- ly licensed and performed out-of-State." (Full decision, here, in PDF)

When I started Fannie's Room about 8 years ago, I more frequently wrote about marriage equality, regularly interacting with and, yes, battling it out with opponents of equality here and elsewhere on Internet. I sometimes wonder what various cast of characters are up to these days, as I've seen many anti-LGBT blogs come and go during this time: the various Digital Network Army blog group that was supposedly a "grassroots" blogging network dedicated to opposing marriage equality; the hateful little Opine Editorials; the Family Scholars Blog, where I used to guest blog until David Blankenhorn stopped opposing equality and the blog was later shut down.

Today feels good.

In 2008, when Proposition 8 eliminated the right for same-sex couples to marry in California, it felt devastating.  Likewise, I remember the couple dozen or so states that passed constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage between 2000 and 2008, most of which had implicit or explicit support from, at the time, President George W. Bush.

I'm grateful for the sway in public opinion, and for the efforts of so many allies and advocates, that has occurred just in my lifetime.  In many ways, I think one of the great successes of the movement was to demonstrate the humanity of gay men and lesbians, work that is not as advanced and must continue for bisexual and trans people.

In my opinion, the anti-gay movement's great failing has been, actually, their insistence on acting like bigots while manufacturing outrage at being called bigots - a tactic that exposed them as both hateful and not credible narrators of reality.

I know there is still so much social justice work to be done, but today - hell, maybe all weekend! - I'm just going to be happy.

Oh yeah, and I'm once again feeling some big-time schadenfreude that the discredited Regnerus study on parenting did not sway the biggest court decisions on marriage, even though public records show it was released precisely to do so.

Anyway, anybody getting hitched?

A Most Civil Response

An update to yesterday's post: The anti-gay Christian writer has responded to Ellen's clip in an "open letter." It's an extremely odd mix of complimentary and incredibly condescending, demeaning commentary.

In it, he acknowledges that Ellen is indeed a funny gal, and pleads, "hasn't the time arrived for everyone involved in this dialogue on gay-related issues to lower our voices and approach one another with respect and civility though we have our differences?" He then continues:

"Being 56 years old, childless and with your third 'partner,' you may not understand the awesome responsibility it is to shape impressionable and vulnerable children. I've done it with children and grandchildren plus helped parents for over 42 years with this most challenging task. 

....Ellen, a nation rises or falls on marriage. If we dismantle this pillar of society, as it has existed for over 5000 years of Western civilization and redefine it to accommodate other arrangements such as yours (or those advocating for polyamorous, polygamous or other configurations) what will be the consequences for this sacred institution and the future of our nation?"

Previous articles of his include, "Are You Aware of the Avalanche of Gay Programming Assaulting Your Home?" and "Archie Comics Now Includes Homosexuality, Witchcraft, Demons and Occult."

These anti-gay (and Christian supremacist) viewpoints are nothing new, of course, but it's worth pointing out the profound disconnect.  Many LGBT people view people like this guy as obvious raging bigots who lack all awareness of the harm their words cause. To many ant-LGBT Christians, though, accusations of bigotry feel incredibly unfair, and as though the label is used to intentionally "shut down conversation." As though, by virtue of these beliefs being religious, the beliefs cannot by definition be problematic, uncivil, or immoral.

I encountered this attitude a lot when I was a guest blogger at Family Scholars Blog when we discussed civility. To me, and many LGBT people, statements like this guy's about same-sex marriage and homosexuality having the power to destroy civilization are demeaning to our human dignity. In this case, to make it super personal, referencing Ellen's past relationships and using scare quotes in reference to her legal wife, which suggests that Portia is not actually her wife, in order to make a point suggesting that she can't possibly therefore understand the implications of same-sex marriage is, simply put, an asshole move.

Over the years, it has been a learning experience to me that these kinds of statements can be so obviously demeaning to me, while many anti-LGBT Christians think they are being perfectly civil and respectful. Many anti-LGBT Christians and LGBT people/allies are operating from different definitions of civility. Working from the simplistic notion, for instance, that both swearing and slurs are "uncivil" and that basically everything else is fair game, many Christians believe that if they state their anti-LGBT opinions politely enough, without saying "fuck" or "fag," then they can cause no harm and as though there's nothing offensive or wrong about what they say.  They think there's a stark difference between the message, "all fags are going to hell" and "you're going to hell because of your homosexuality." (Erm, to me, there's not a meaningful difference between the two).

When such Christians state their anti-LGBT views while simultaneously believing they're replicating the "word of god," well, there's really no telling them that they're actually being quite awful.

I suspect that's what's going on here, as well.  Mr Christian Guy suggested that he and Ellen get coffee and talk about things in a civil manner, and he deigns to elevate the discourse to a higher, nicer level. What offers like that tangibly mean for LGBT people, however, is subjecting ourselves to verbal assaults from people who inflict them with the approval of their own consciences.

Our Leader Has Spoken

This clip is being widely circulated, but it demonstrates pretty well why I have so much respect for Ellen DeGeneres. She's consistently funny without being mean about it.  In the clip, she addresses one anti-gay Christian writer's contempt of her marriage and her purported Lesbian Agenda. I highly recommend watching it, if you're able.

Meanwhile, most anti-LGBT individuals that I have experienced, particularly those who dedicate to their livelihoods to opposing LGBT equality, are consistently both cruel and absolutely humorless.  It's probably a matter of time until some anti-LGBT group photoshops the above image and presents it as Ellen's sincere effort to recruit young girls into a life of lesbianism.

Remember, oppressors are often the reverse of what they claim to be, with their accusations of their opponents largely being psychological projections.

The views of bigots who refer to same-sex marriages as "marriages" and who continue to sprout Anita Bryant-era rhetoric are being increasingly marginalized, both morally and legally, as they should be.

Using her large platform, and unlike many anti-LGBT individuals, Ellen's response demonstrates both grace and humor.  That, fundamentally, is one of the largest failings of the anti-LGBT movement in the US. This is very "pop evidence," but when people post Buzzfeed-style articles about The Year's Most Movement Moments In Pictures, often included are same-sex couples, legally married for the first time in various states.

Do such photo arrays ever include opponents of equality rejoicing, holding these moments up as profound, touching statements on the human experience? Not that I've seen. With their corny anti-equality "party kits" and traveling hate buses seeking "crazy" photos of gay people, and underneath its narratives of how "Christians" are being oppressed by the legal recognition of same-sex marriage, the anti-equality movement is, simply put, unhip. Cruel. Humorless. Utterly lacking in self-awareness, thinking it can convince Americans that theirs is the real message of love and justice.

Rome Hosts Conference on Complementarity

Last week, several offices of the Roman Catholic church held an event in Rome called The Complementarity of Man and Woman: An International Colloquium.

Many American opponents of marriage equality were thrilled by this conference and some, such as Rick Warren, were even speakers.

I guess, if you're looking to better understand what is meant by "gender complementarity" that is at the root of many people's opposition to marriage equality and, oftentimes, anti/non-feminism, the conference site would be good to check out.

What I'm so often struck by is the almost childish, emotional, romanticized way that complementarists talk about "man and woman." And yes, they often use the singular versions of these terms - which speaks to the belief that little variation exists within each gender category.

Anyway, from the conference's Affirmation about marriage and gender:

"See man and woman together. They are not just two people. He is for her, and she for him; it is inscribed in their bodies. Their union will bring life that binds and mingles families, encourages faith to flourish, and brings humankind and the world’s diverse cultures to flower again."

So, it's fine to be emotional about this stuff - but this Disney version of reality shouldn't be the determining basis for whether same-sex families deserve equality rights, protections, and dignity.  And, people are right to call out this thinking as irrational, unfair, and yes bigoted when it's consistently put forth to erase and marginalize non-heterosexual, non-cisgender, and gender non-conforming individuals.

A final note is that complementarists often talk about how "man and woman" are "different but equal."

7 out 32 speakers at this conference were women. Unlike their male counterparts, it is impossible for any of these women to be at the top of the hierarchy within the Roman Catholic church.

Just like within the US anti-equality movement, which is grounded in complementary thinking (at best), male voices, perspectives, and opinions are amplified and prioritized, even as they simultaneously tell us how important both "man and woman" are to life and marriage.

That is what gender complementarist "equality" looks like.

7th Circuit: Same-Sex Marriage Bans Unconstitutional

Bam!

As expected due to Judge Richard Posner's blistering, and quite wonderful, questioning of "marriage defense" attorneys during oral arguments, the 7th Circuit has found that Indiana and Wisconsin do not have a reasonable basis for denying same-sex couples the right to marry (PDF of opinion).

I've read the entire opinion, of which no doubt NOM and company are already issuing their reactionary cries of judicial activism gone awry.  But, it's a paragraph at the very beginning that I want to highlight today:

"The argument that the states press hardest in defense of their prohibition of same-sex marriage is that the only reason government encourages marriage is to induce heterosexuals to marry so that there will be fewer 'accidental births,' which when they occur outside of marriage often lead to abandonment of the child to the mother (unaided by the father) or to foster care. Overlooked by this argument is that many of those abandoned children are adopted by homosexual couples, and those children would be better off both emotionally and economically if their adoptive parents were married."

This observation is, for me, what has always made "marriage defenders" seem particularly cruel and oblivious to the reality.

So many "pro-family" conservatives wring their hands about the hoards of purportedly irresponsible heterosexuals, particularly men, who have children out of wedlock and yet their top policy solution is, "I know, let's make life more difficult for a subset of the parents who adopt the resulting children!"

If these people were sincere in their desire to actually help the families that exist in the real world, they would be grateful to same-sex couples and looking for ways to work with us to provide the best environments for all families, not just those families they deem to be the bestest most supreme families of all.

In their zeal to prevent same-sex couples from marriage, they also present one of the worst PR campaigns for marriage ever:

Marriage: It's for pressuring straight men into sticking around and raising the unintended children that they don't even want!

Brilliant strategy, folks!  Put these people in charge of all the things!  /sarcastic thumbs up sign

But seriously, combined with their correlative opposition to abortion, same-sex adoption and parenting, no fault divorce, and sex ed, it's almost like some social conservatives are intentionally trying to create the world's most unhappy, miserable people. Or, at least, more babies in orphanages.

Yet, their policies they refer to as "good old-fashioned common sense."  And, policies that acknowledge the other families that exist in the real world, they dismiss as political correctness gone awry, as though we exist primarily to annoy them and not because we have life aspirations of our own.  This kind of self-centeredness of privileged folks is the worst.

Also, one of the plaintiffs in the above-cited case is named Virginia Wolf.  Which is awesome and why is no one talking about that?!

Alrighty Then

In a video that's been making the rounds throughout the LGBT blogosphere, one mansplaining Christian "preacher" has posted a video on his website calling for a constitutional amendment that would make homosexuality a crime and subject prisoners to 10 years of hard labor.

Pathetic and hostile, yes.

I guess I'm just so getting inured to this shit that I approach it with dark humor, but I find it somewhat entertaining that, as is the case with so many bigots, this guy seems completely and unjustly enamored with his own "brilliance" as he lectures viewers on not only the evils of homosexuality, but about how "homosexuals" have turned things into a "zero... sum.... game," which he then proceeds to define for all of us dum dums.

I actually went to the preacher's website to gauge the legitimacy of it because, I mean, who really knows on Internet, right?  It's everything you might expect it to be from a Christian conservative bigot or one invented on Internet as a caricature.

He or "he" has posted several installments of his ramblings on a variety of hot topics that he says he's turning into a book. He opines on, for instance, the "orgies" of purported rioting and looting happening in Ferguson nowadays and, in a separate article, on the sinfulness of abortion which, in a blast from the past, references Baby Jessica.

In other news, I keep coming back to the notion of being imprisoned for being a lesbian and what "hard labor" with all of my gal pals might look like and, well, I should just stop here.





Related:
Atlantic Writer: Women's Prison Show Should Be More About Men

It's a Good Day For Marriage Equality

One of the biggest lies opponents of marriage equality tell themselves and the public is that their substantive arguments are rock solid and that people, wither willfully or ignorantly, misunderstand their arguments and therefore do nothing but unjustly call them hateful bigots.

That's why, whenever the substantive arguments of equality opponents get the smackdown in the public square and, specifically, in courts, it's always with much schadenfreude that I observe it.  I refer today, most recently, of Republican-appointed Judge Richard Posner's, of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, questioning of  the attorneys for Indiana and Wisconsin, who are defending their states' bans on same-sex marriage - via Slate, and 7th Circuit website. (See also Freedom to Marry, for more background on the case).

Many "marriage defenders" believe, especially when couched in people like prominent conservative "Robbie" George's intellectual-speak, that the purpose of marriage is responsible procreation - that is, they believe that marriage exists to (and because) heterosexual sex can result in babies and therefore heterosexuals need their own institution.

Yet, when conversation with "marriage defenders" becomes a dialogue or a line of questioning, rather than a monologue where this "truth" is dictated to us from them (or "God"), two things becomes readily apparent. The first is that, when they're not actually outright explicitly hating on LGBT people and same-sex couples, they actually don't think much about us and our needs to protect our families at all. When questioned about the needs of our families, they callously show that they haven't sincerely considered the harmful impact their advocacy has on us, or the way their staunch advocacy contributes to more explicit hatred of LGBT people, or what protections, if any, we should have if not marriage.

Two, the conversations show the irrationality and weaknesses of this purportedly "civil" "definitely not bigoted" "responsible procreation" argument, from a substantive standpoint.  I've had these conversations, like many advocates of equality have, over and over and over again.

Any bigot can engage in Internet debate and do a touchdown dance declaring hirself the "winner."  I've seen it happen a zillion times.  The writers at the single-issue bigot blog Opine Editorials, for instance, used to regularly declare themselves "the best" and "undefeated" at debate about the issue - indeed, they were so confident in their position and writing about the evils of same-sex marriage that they inexplicably shut down and deleted their entire blog awhile back.

Thus, it's refreshing, and extremely validating, that those with more power to declare intellectual and legal winners in the public sphere - such as judges - agree that "marriage defense" arguments lack rationality.

I LOVE seeing "marriage defenders" stammer, unable to adequately answer a judge's simple questions about the very crux of their position, and the exceptions they, for instance, create that allow sterile heterosexuals to marry but not same-sex couples if, after all, marriage is all about the babies. I LOVE seeing judges tell them that they must answer certain questions - no evasions allowed, no really- we'll all wait. I LOVE when so-called experts in this debate are declared by courts to not actually be experts at all - because oftentimes, they're not.

The "marriage defense" movement in the US is best characterized by hunches, lazy appeals to what they call "common sense," and a buncha people who are hyper-concerned with, first and foremost, whether or not people think they're bigots.

History will show equality advocates to be winners for these reasons, not because of some invented figment-of-their-imagination "PC gone awry" society.

Civility, Safety, and Harassment Links

Here's some stuff I've been reading lately pertaining to one of my fave topics of Internet harassment, civility, and threats:

1) Geek Feminism has a Code of Conduct.  I think it's a good idea for, especially, larger group blogs and sites to have explicit codes like this, although content may vary.  As I've written before, I've been a guest blogger in environments without explicit guidelines on comment moderation, conduct, and harassment, and my volunteer writing in those spaces is an experience I would not want to repeat.

2) Here's an interesting article about the strategies some feminist bloggers have used to resist trolls and harassers on Internet.  Particularly, I appreciated the framing of such strategies as "collective labor" to be apt, as yes, it takes actual work to make a site safe.  It doesn't just happen.

3) Over at Cyborgology, robinjames writes about being perceived online as male, due to her name, and how that might result in her receiving less harassment online than women with more "feminine"-(my scare quotes)-seeming names.

4) The other day, National Organization for [Heterosexual] Marriage (NOM) posted a braggy video on its blog purportedly showing how kind, loving, and civil opponents of marriage equality were while attending NOM's recent march in DC.  These interviews of march attendees show, according to NOM, how the Liberal Homosexualist Media unfairly portrays equality opponents as So Mean, when look right here at how nice these people are being at their "historic" (my scare quotes) march against equality:

Here's the first person interviewed, speaking in response to a "reporter's" question on why she attended the March: "I feel like it's my duty to do it. I don't want my children to ask 'Why did you not fight for me, Mom?'"

The second person interviewed explained, "God made us that way. He made a male and a female to come together as one."

That's about as a far as I got because, yeah no.  Not only are those "reasons" for opposing marriage equality nonsensical and irrational, they are also not civil.  Same-sex marriage will not hurt your bigoted non-existent future kid, lady. And, a person's neat-o religious beliefs about "males" and "females" should have no bearing on my equal rights.

But.... nice try.

Thursday Links

Here's some good stuff I've read recently - I'm passing the links along in case others are interested and haven't read these articles yet:

• "10 Simple Words Every Girl Should Learn," Soraya Chemaly: "Men interrupt women, speak over them, and discount their contributions to a discussion with surprising regularity. Here’s how women should respond: 'Stop interrupting me.' 'I just said that.' 'No explanation needed.'"

• "We Need to Talk About This," Melissa McEwan: "I want us to talk about the real costs of being a woman who does public advocacy. I want us to acknowledge how the costs of providing a safe space is that we stand on the line and absorb massive amounts of abuse. I want us to make noise about the people who create an atmosphere in which women are discouraged from participation."

• "NY state senator filling #March4Marriage buses without actually mentioning march itself," Jeremy Hooper: "In several emails, National Organization For Marriage president Brian Brown has proudly claimed that New York's most notoriously anti-gay (and cowboy hat–wearing) Democrat, state senator Ruben Diaz Sr., is bringing 100 buses to NOM's pro-discrimination march in D.C. (to be held June 19). Which could be true. Diaz is known to bus in crowds to NOM events.Only thing? Diaz isn't actually telling people that the buses are for NOM's anti-gay march. Instead, he's selling it as a way for people to get a free trip to the nation's capital so they can 'visit the monuments.'"  

Feel free to link to other articles in the comments.