10/30/2010
Video: Hey Iowa For Freedom: Rejecting state DOMA law doesn't mean ignoring it!
Here's some more proud point-missing from the Iowa For Freedom coalition. This time from a voter who believes the state Supreme Court justices "ignored" the DOMA law, even if in reality, the Varnum panel quite openly and honestly found the law to be unconstitutional:
The down and dirty fact is that social conservatives tend to think any and all laws ever made that go against LGBT people and their rights are somehow cast in indelible stone, the likes of which can only to be reconsidered by a 50%+1 vote of "the people." In this mindset, the only decision that any court can reach that's in accord with righteousness is a decision that says, for the first time in American history's clearly archived inevitability, that a minority group's civil freedoms are to be ultimately determined by a majority of (largely) faith-motivated voters. As in always. As in only.
And it's not just in states where courts roll back prior bans, either. In jurisdictions like Maine, where legislators reversed bias and implemented civil freedom, these same suspects come out of the political woodwork, this time decrying the "activist legislature" as opposed to the "activist court." So don't be fooled into thinking it's only the judiciary that's the "bad branch" in the "pro-family" community's eyes. It's *any* branch that opens its eyes to equal protection and due process. It's *any* branch that does the right thing for America and her populace.
Now In Iowa, voters have a chance to do the right thing with this retention vote. And I'm not even saying that the right thing here is to automatically cast a "yes" vote for the three justices up for retention. No, no -- the right thing is to look at the judge's full record and to cast a vote based on a fleshed out, far-reaching assessment of the individual jurist's merits, and not a monolithic vote based on vindictive spite for the one certain pro-equality opinion.
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*SEE ALSO: Our complete Iowa For Freedom Archive
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10/29/2010
Midterm Tea Break: Same drink, new brew
Video: Uhm, except I've never used my pillow to clobber a minority's civil rights!
This guy, Robert Rees, apparently hosts a radio talk show in Austin, TX:
Oh so wait: He just reversed the nouns? Ooh, how clever. Really. Quite Inspired.
But here's the thing: No gay marriage activist -- NO. GAY. ACTIVIST. -- is seeking the right to force religious figures to marry gay couples. But most anti-marriage equality activists -- MOST. EVERY. ONE. -- is seeking to use personal faith objections to stop gay and lesbian couples' *CIVIL* marriages. And not just marriages, but also right to fair employment (including military service), the right to keep all recognition of LGBT Americans from children, and the denial of basic protections in a number of other areas. Faith-based objections are not only being injected into bedrooms, but also into public accommodations, legislative chambers, some court opinions, armed forces recruitment centers, immigration offices, and a whole host of places where church separation, minority protections, and the concept of fair and decent citizenship demand more equitable treatment!
No gay person or gay couple or gay family, religious or not, is unfairly foisting his or her or their bedrooms into public life anymore than their heteroSEXUAL counterparts are. But this same comparison cannot be made between anti-LGBT people of faith and pro-LGBT people of faith (who are of course left out of Mr. Rees' religion classification altogether). When talking about civil rights, the burden of proof is on the side that wishes to use varied, personal, ever-changing (and frequently hypocritical) interpretations of morality to deny constitutional fairness, not those who are demanding the latter to be independent from the former (i.e. demanding an accurate read of American freedom).
Not a Sen.: Gillibrand's marriage support predates statewide constituency
People are always saying that Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's support for marriage equality was a convenient turnaround done after she was appointed to Hillary Clinton's vacated Senate seat in January of '09. This site even felt that way in the beginning, since civil unions were the stated goal in Gillibrand's 2006 congressional campaign. Frankly, after years of Clinton failing to come around to full marriage championing, we gay New Yorkers were just glad to finally have a U.S. Sen. on record for unqualified nuptial equality (Sen. Schumer would follow suit two months after Gillibrand's appointment), so we just kind of went with the public evolution, whenever it might have started.
But today, New York's Gay City News reminds us that the senator actually went on record a couple of months prior to the coveted appointment to fill Secretary Clinton's pantsuits, coming out for personal marriage support on a conservative-leaning radio show, while running in a conservative district, at a time when it truly could've cost the then-congressperson in the polls:
Gillibrand’s Republican opponent has time and again made the charge that she flip-flopped politically on a number of key issues when she stepped into statewide office from a more conservative upstate congressional district. Surely, Gillibrand’s views on gun control, for example, have become more progressive, but the oft-repeated assertion that her support for marriage equality was a Senate-appointment conversion aimed at complying with a requirement from Governor David Paterson is simply not true.
Days before her first reelection contest in November 2008, Gillibrand announced her support for the right of gay and lesbian couples to marry on a radio program hosted by New York Post Albany bureau chief Fred Dicker. Shifting from a pro-civil union posture to endorsement of gay marriage three months earlier than supposed may not seem like a big deal, but it is a crucial distinction.
Gillibrand, who won in an upset in 2006 in a traditionally Republican district, was no sure bet for reelection –– and she had no reason to anticipate that November that a Senate vacancy was about to open up.
And Dicker’s radio show was certainly no friendly venue to announce embrace of full equality.
Our Picks for the US Senate and House [GCN]
GCN is right: This is a distinction worth noting. People across the nation think of New York as being this liberal enclave where pride flags fall from the sky and everyone's doing shots with Andy Cohen and Bethenny Frankel at Nate Berkus' fabulous gay engagement party. But in reality, New York's peppered with some deep red. Then-Rep. Gillibrand was running in a very red district. And even though it was only two years ago, 11/08 was a very different marriage picture where far fewer Democrats had taken that next step in joining Feingold, Kennedy, and the handful of other prominent (D) "I dos." So yeah: This is worth consideration.
Okay, so now enough with the past. Tuesday, let's look toward the future.
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*Update: The 10/23/08 Dicker Show transcript, via NYDN. It started at a more tentative place, but the personal heart eventually came out:
*Dicker:* On gay marriage, do you have a position on that?
*Gillibrand*: I think we should have a federal protection for civil
unions so that everyone can have the benefit of a private contract to
allow someone to go to the emergency room, to the hospital …..
*Dicker:* … I Understand that but …
*Gillibrand:* But I think the state should decide what to call it. If
the state wants to call it "marriage," (then) the state can decide.
*Dicker:* As a voter in New York State, do you think the state should
legalize, as the governor would like and as Speaker Silver would like,
same sex marriage?
*Gillibrand:* Yeah, as a New Yorker, I would support that.
The Dicker Defense [NYDN]
God disowns gays, and other Knight tales
When it comes to politics, Christians must pick their spiritual battles. And today, longtime foe of the 'mos Robert Knight is choosing to fight President Obama on this contention that everyone is a child of God:
On October 14, Obama said people are born with a certain makeup, claiming all are "children of God." Furthermore, he said, people do not make choices about who they love.
"That's a mangling of scripture [which] says not everybody is a child of God," Knight responds. "We're all created in God's image, but to be a child of God means to come under God's authority and to honor God above all else and to submit to Jesus Christ."
Obama 'mangling' scripture, says commentator [ONN]
Because that's the way for conservative evangelicals to bring LGBT kids to religion: To paint God as a de facto Miss Hannigan, lamenting all of the little queer orphans who drive him to drink.
Keep up the beKnighted outreach, Mr. K!
Sanctity of Betty White's gay icon status safely protected
Thank you, friend:
"I don’t care who anybody sleeps with. If a couple has been together all that time - and there are gay relationships that are more solid than some heterosexual ones - I think it’s fine if they want to get married. I don’t know how people can get so anti-something. Mind your own business, take care of your affairs, and don’t worry about other people so much."
- Betty White in Parade Magazine.
Life's a Scream for Betty White [Parade]
(H/t: J.M.G.)
Video: Gays/Pilgrims? Well, both did find inaugural freedom in Massachusetts
In Iowa, Eric Cooper is the Libertarian party's nominee for Governor. He also might just be the one candidate who understands civil marriage equality the most:
Can doesn't mean should.
Personal whim need not translate into public policy.
Religious condemnation doesn't trump civil freedom.
Rocks are worth seeing, be they sitting on terra firma in Plymouth or sitting on Tara Firma's ring finger.
But if it's all the same to you, we much prefer a luxury honeymoon cruise to the Mayflower. You know -- scurvy and all.
Video: Iowa For [Infantilizing Supporters of Basic Fairness]
Concerned Woman For America Tamara Scott:
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*SEE ALSO: Our complete Iowa For Freedom Archive
