Ah, good news!
The Washington, D.C., City Council voted Tuesday to legalize gay marriage in the nation’s capital, handing supporters a victory after a string of recent defeats in Maine, New York and New Jersey.
Mayor Adrian Fenty has promised to sign the bill, which passed 11-2, and gay couples could begin marrying as early as March. Congress, which has final say over Washington’s laws, could reject it, but Democratic leaders have suggested they are reluctant to do so.
& for those who like to group all Catholics into one huge monolith, I will put money on Senator Savino being Catholic.
(h/t to Megan for this one)
New York is supposed to be hip & progressive, people! I mean, honestly: this is pathetic.
This is a chart that shows the support for same-sex marriage by age group — which, in a nutshell, means we’ve got a waiting game on our hands if nothing else. There’s a nice analysis of the chart where I found it, too.
Other charts about same sex marriage issues can be found here.
The judge who denied the interracial couple their marriage just resigned. That’s something, at least. Now we just need 52% of Maine to resign.
We’re still waiting on Maine and Washington as I get ready for bed. Washington state will expand the rights of domestic partners, but it looks like Maine will reject their same sex marriage law.
I am sick to death of people being able to vote on my marriage, my citizenship, my humanity.
I want the right to bring every heterosexual couple to the steps of the courthouse in Maine and have the rest of us vote on whether they should or can be married.
This is bullshit. It’s embarassing as an American that we are so far behind most of Europe on civil rights. We used to take the lead – with suffrage, with child labor, with all sorts of shit. And now… it’s just embarassing.
I want freedom from their religion, their stupidity, & their prejudice.
I have been on both sides of this issues – having been a legally married heterosexual, and in some ways, still being that – and it makes me fucking sick that people who don’t know me get to decide if I get to be married, and whether my legal marriage will be recognized or not.
I’m just fucking fed up.
I’m tired of spending Election Days worrying about my friends, their spouses, their families, their kids.
When do we get to vote on whether heterosexual marriage is acceptable? When do we get to apply some arbitrary and hypocrital set of moral standards to everyone else’s relationships?
We’re with some friends today who are getting married, and with other friends, friends of friends, family of friends. It’s lovely to be around all these people celebrating the love & commitment of two fantastic people.
There are two poems that will be part of their ceremony below the break.
I received a missive from Fair Wisconsin Thursday morning about the lawsuit three board members of Wisconsin Family Action filed to challenge the constitutionality of the recently enacted domestic partnership protections.
Here’s the wording that blew my mind:
Fair Wisconsin is currently reviewing this lawsuit with our legal counsel, and we are prepared to defend domestic partnerships. We are hopeful that the State Supreme Court will recognize that domestic partnerships are not substantially similar to marriage, and will arrive at a fair and just decision that upholds these crucial protections for caring, committed couples.
Please read the boldfaced bit over. Basically, you want marriage protections for same-sex couples, but the bigots in your state are against that & have put an amendment into your state constitution saying that not only can same-sex marriage never be legal, but that no other law in the state can give those same people any benefits/legal standing that *looks anything like* marriage. As a result, same-sex people are hoping the State Supreme Court doesn’t view the partner benefits as anything like marriage — which, ironically for all the same sex couples – they are not. Not even close, actually, but it’s still like something out of Kafka.
Suddenly I don’t feel so welcome in Wisconsin, and while I know, in my heart, that it was ignorance and a lot of legwork by bigots that lead to these state constitutions, it shames me as an American that more people have not stood up & said ENOUGH. (I really do believe that most people want me & Rachel to be able to share each other’s health insurance, and mostly I do. )
I saw this clip about Singaporean import Dr. Thio Li-ann on Queerty, and it reminded me that a PM who recently stood up to get the homosexuality laws off the books in Singapore was not reappointed. Some in Singapore feel his not being reappointed had everything to do with his support for LGBT rights, although his support for women’s rights – AWARE is a feminist group – certainly contributed.
Interestingly, he’s also currently involved in a petition to get the residual marriage rape laws taken off the books in Singapore.
Here’s a remarkable article about how the SCLC – a civil rights organization – just called up its LA chapter’s president for protesting Prop 8. That’s right – the org took a neutral position on the matter, which is bad enough, but now they’re thinking of chastising a chapter head who didn’t remain neutral. I say: good for him.
Obviously this NYT article about sex & marriage is written from an incredibly heterocentric perspective, and it’s primarily talking about marriages where the sex started good & disappeared over time, and, in my opinion, it’s unnecessarily pessimistic.
The answer to this question “Are couples in sexless marriages less happy than couples having sex?” is especially reductive. We can’t tell if happy couples are happy because they’re having sex, or if they’re having sex because they’re happy, or even if the two things have anything to do with each other. & I’m suspicious of any self-reporting when it comes to sex, since so many people say they’re having a lot more than they are.
Otherwise, I’m interested in her longitudinal research. I just hope she includes more than heterosexual relationships in her work.
This brief but mostly accurate article about Philly-area politics and same sex marriage summarizes the issues of how we define man and woman.
The only problem, of course, is that we do define man and woman legally, and judges can do so when it comes to marriage and divorce. Just because there are more than two sexes when it comes to biological or cultural gender doesn’t mean judges can’t legally define only two. Trans people especially have had their sex defined for them – and usually not in the way they wanted.
So while her argument is valid, and imho, true, it isn’t any kind of protection against having our genders defined legally in ways we don’t like.
Conservatives Warn Quick Sex Change Only Barrier Between Gays, Marriage
I can’t decide what I think of this. What do you all think? It’s *nearly* funny, but not quite, & I can’t figure out if that’s because there’s something mean coming across.
If you haven’t yet read this letter from the father of a gender variant 10 year old to the KRXQ talk show hosts who encouraged violence against kids like his son, do. Here’s an excerpt:
No, my kid is making me tell you to tolerate all gender expression.
Women in crew cuts who are straight. Men in dresses and makeup who are straight and married to straight women. The same people, in terms of gender expression, who are gay. Everyone.
You don’t have to love them. You don’t have to wear a dress yourself. You don’t have to have a gay marriage, or marry a butch woman. None of this will be mandated in the world which I’m trying to make by talking with you. You, a person I desperately want to ignore.
As Betty said after reading it: “I have such hope for the 21st Century.”
You will too. Go read it and the other letters on this new blog.
Oh, New Yorkers, are we not embarassed enough YET?! Honestly. The New England states are kicking our collective ass.
Today’s the day! I’m blogging, as I have in years past. for LGBT families – who have, thankfully, seen some gains this year! I know plenty of my queerio friends are tired & frustrated with the whole push for same-sex marriage, and trans activists are frustrated as well, because they want the attention on non-discrimination legislation, but as a married person, who is now same-sex, it makes me kind of ill to realize that the state I’m currently living in is actually struggling only to recognize domestic partnerships (for f***k’s sake). My home state can’t work it out either, which is downright embarrassing as a NYer. It’s a mistake, in my opinion, to divorce marriage from the economic issues that are at stake: even something like health insurance is vitally important, & very expensive if one spouse can’t be covered by the other’s health insurance.
So from my very small family to yours: keep working on same sex marriage. You don’t have to ignore other issues – like the gender identity & expression version of ENDA – but goddamn if I’m going to be a 2nd class citizen, & neither should anyone else.
Here’s some other trans family bloggers:
Join us next year!
Fairfax High School elected a male student Prom Queen.
Tom Ackerman, a gay man, has vowed to call his friends’ wives their girlfriends, because he’s decided his religious views don’t allow him to recognize opposite-sex marriage.
The New Scientist tells you everything you ever wanted to know about female ejaculation (& maybe a few things you didn’t want to know).
A woman named Brenda Lee got dragged bodily off of Air Force One when she tried to give President Obama a letter asking him to stand up for heterosexual marriage.
Publishers Weekly reports from the BEA that US Publishers have vowed to fight digitized piracy.
Fivethirtyeight.com has done a breakdown of the possible same sex marriage vote for the NY Senate. Basically, there are probably 20 definites, & then a bunch of solid Nos, & then a bunch of undecideds. If your rep is on this list, CALL HIM OR HER RIGHT AWAY.
Even if these people aren’t your reps, you should call them & tell them to vote YES & stop embarassing the good residents of NYS by being so ass-backwards, already.
UNDECIDED, LEANING YES (1)
55. James Alesi, R-Upstate (East Rochester) link
UNDECIDED OR UNKNOWN (11)
1. Kenneth LaValle, R-Long Island (Port Jefferson) link
2. John J. Flanagan, R-Long Island (East Northport) link
3. Brian X. Foley, D-Long Island (Blue Point) link
4. Owen H. Johnson, R-Long Island (West Babylon) link
8. Charles Fuschillo, R-Long Island (Merrick) link
13. Hiram Monserrate, D-NYC (Jackson Heights) link
15. Joseph Addabbo, Jr., D-NYC (Ozone Park) link
19. John Sampson, D-NYC (Brooklyn) link
27. Carl Kruger, D-NYC (Brooklyn) link
36. Ruth Hassell-Thompson, D-Westchester (Williamsbridge) link
40. Vincent Leibell, R-Westchester (Patterson) link
UNDECIDED, LEANING NO (5)
6. Kemp Hannon, R-Long Island (Garden City) link
24. Andrew Lanza, R-NYC (Staten Island) link
45. Betty Little, R-Upstate (Queensbury) (conflicting reports suggest opposition and that she’s ‘within reach’)
49. David Valesky, D-Upstate (Oneida) (officially undecided; constituent e-mail hints at opposition)
57. Catharine Young, R-Upstate (Olean) link
