The Republic of T.

In the wake of the news that Florida’s gay adoption ban was ruled unconstitutional, I made this observation about the right and adoption.

I can tell you, though, after marriage the right will come after our families next. What some people don’t know is that there’s an undercurrent of anti-adoption sentiment in the movement against marriage equality.

It comes right out of their bizarre reductionism in “defense” of heterosexual marriage.

It may be a little bit of a stretch to say that opponents of marriage equality are also anti-adoption, but it’s not too far-fetched when you consider their arguments, which have gotten more extreme following the California ruling. It starts with the “marriage is for making babies” argument that formed the bases of earlier court decisions. From there it’s a short jump to defining “real marriage” based on a penis going into a vagina. It’s a slightly longer jump, but not much, to determining the right to marry based on the ability to produce unadulterated gametes, with which to make a baby.

Well, it turns gays aren’t the only ones the right would ban from adopting. They have some heterosexuals in their sights as well.

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I saw this ad on the DC Metro this week, and wanted to blog about it, but hadn’t had time until now.

And just in time for Xmas. Has anyone alerted Bill O’Reilly yet?

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Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for November 27th from 12:01 to 12:33:

• ‘Milk’ Does the Man Proud — In These Times – Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in a major U.S. city, was a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. But because of fear, he didn’t come out of the closet until he was in his 40s. His public life as a gay leader lasted only five years, when he and Mayor George Moscone were gunned down inside City Hall on Nov. 27, 1978.

  Now, 30 years after his death, Milk’s life is on the big screen. In the first time a major Hollywood film has portrayed a gay historic figure as the central hero, Milk, starring Sean Penn in the title role, hits theaters nationwide on Dec. 5.

• Why Gay Marriage Is an Asian American Matter : AsianWeek – When the San Francisco Chronicle ran a Nov. 7 article exploring why Asians were the only ethnic minority to produce a majority of voters against Proposition 8 and its ban of same-sex marriage, a reader commented on the Chronicle’s website: “Why in the world would the Asian American community ally itself with the gays? The Asian American community [has] virtually nothing in common with the gays except maybe being minorities.”

  This comment would be cute in its naiveté if we weren’t at such a critical juncture in American history. This kind of dangerously insular thinking has no place in a nation on the brink of tremendous political and social change, ignited by the election of President-elect Barack Obama.

• Gay News Blog: Why churches fear gay marriage – For author Richard Rodriguez, no one is talking about the real issues behind Proposition 8.

  While conservative churches are busy trying to whip up another round of culture wars over same-sex marriage, Rodriquez says the real reason for their panic lies elsewhere: the breakdown of the traditional heterosexual family and the shifting role of women in society and the church itself. As the American family fractures and the majority of women choose to live without men, churches are losing their grip on power and scapegoating gays and lesbians for their failures.

• The Gay White Male « The Grumblings of A Grumpy Young Man – Hell if I had it my way, I’d be more inclined to give full rights and institute a national holiday for all gays, all gays except gay white men. Now there’s an Idea, white men have had it there way for far too long. They, more than any other group are responsible for much of the bigotry and hatred this country has experience. They have instituted bigoted laws against every minority group in this country, and since “gayness” is inborn, it’s safe to assume that a number of the white men running the country were gay. The gay white male, some say a devil incarnate, I say born to be bad, able to hide in the closet until the time was right. Able to lay-in-wait and do nothing while vicious laws were passed and rights denied to so many in this county. The only demographic in this country to subjugate, legislate and deny rights to their own mothers, the very wombs that brought them into existence. -What, homosexuality didn’t exist then? Oh, and interracial marriage, don’t get me started, suddenly they care about their women? Please. The hypocrisy and arrogance is truly amazing.
• Patricia Nell Warren: Newt Gingrich and “Gay Fascists” – Good grief, Newt Gingrich is "teaching" history again. On the Bill O'Reilly show the other day, Gingrich came up with his biggest lie about history yet. He said, "I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us…it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion."

  Wow. And to think that the real fascists were neither gay nor secular. ln fact, the real fascists supported — and were shamelessly supported by — ultra-traditional Christian religion. I'm talking mainly about Spain's Franco, Germany's Hitler and Italy's Mussolini, who were the most powerful and destructive figures among European fascist rulers of the 20th century.

• Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Florida Court Overturns Ban on Gay Adoption – Do better than what? Better is a relative term and it requires that a comparison be made. Do children do better, on average, with a mother and a father than they do with a single mother or a single father? Of course they do. But surely they do better with a single mother or father, regardless of their sexual orientation, than they do in an orphanage or bouncing from foster home to foster home.

  But even if this wasn't true, it shouldn't make any difference in our policy choices. It's also true that children are statistically better off with affluent parents rather than poor parents, with white parents rather than black parents, and with educated parents rather than uneducated parents. But that obviously does not mean that the government can prohibit poor, black or uneducated parents from adopting children.

  This decision IS about what is best for the children. The plaintiff in this case has raised these two foster kids for 4 years, since one was 4 years old and the other a newborn. How could any sane person seriously argue that those children should be taken away from the only family they have ever really known? The only possible reason is bigotry. Nothing else makes sense.

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for November 27th from 10:00 to 11:59:

• Bruce Wilson: The Religious Right’s War on Christmas Began Centuries Ago – The "war on Christmas" traces back, historically, to Calvinist bans on the celebration of Christmas which began in Geneva and then migrated, with the spread of Calvinist theological views, to Scotland, where Christmas was banned in 1583, a ban that remained in force four almoast four hundred years and was only lifted in the 1950's. As Amy McNeese writes, in an article, first published in the Church of Scotland magazine Life & Work,that may be one of the best treatments of the War on Christmas.
• Box Turtle Bulletin » “The Chilling Effect”: Did GOP Politics Stifle AIDS Prevention Research? – In October 2003, several Republican members of House and Senate committee which oversee the National Institutes of Health asked NIH director Elias Zerhouni to explain the “medical benefits” of ten NIV grants, including the five targeted by the Rep. Toomey. But the next day, the committee staffer responsible for forwarding the list of grants to Zerhouni’s office sent the wring list. He send a longer list of more than 250 grants.

  We learned later that this longer list was composed by the Traditional Values Coalition. Republicans apologized for the accidental distribution of this list, but the damage was done. Zerhouni saw the shot across his bow and ordered a review of each of the NIH grants in the longer list. The review found that each of the studies were scientifically legitimate, and in January 2004, Zerhouni wrote to Congress saying, “the constant battle against illness and disease…cannot be limited to biological factors but has to include behavioral and social factors as well”

  All of these grants retained their funding, but this episode touched off a very serious concern. Would this attempt at a witch hunt stifle sexuality research that could have potentially important implications for HIV prevention programs?

• Citizen Crain: ENDA vs civil unions – Whereas now we have about 48% percent of the population who support marriage for us and 50% who oppose it. But of the 50% who oppose, 30% are homophobic and oppose most gay rights, whereas 20% are only hung up on the word marriage. That makes a very convincing majority that would support recognition of our relationships as civil unions — right now. This 68% support corresponds with the 66% support Chris cites. That's about the same percentage of support HRC claims for a non inclusive ENDA, in its questionable best case scenario poll. Of note is that the House of Representatives passed the non inclusve ENDA with only a 56% support level — which is probably a more realistic number for support of the non inclusvie ENDA. For the trans inclusive ENDA, the percentage falls to below 50%. They could not get a majority of the House to pass a T inclusive ENDA last year.

  So here is the problem with our current strategy. Our national organizations such as HRC and our political leaders such as Cong. Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin have made it clear that the next time the only version of ENDA will be the T inclusive ENDA (the one that has less than 50% support). Furthermore, I've been told that Hate Crimes and a T inclusive ENDA will be the first two bills we bring up. And to make matters worse, many leaders are telling me that these will be the ONLY two gay bills brought up before the 2010 midterm elections. Duh?

• Issue Number 1021 | What We Learned From an Obama Win | Advocate.com – The first is that the antigay culture war is winding down. The public has weighed the Karl Rove narrative (culture-war politics strengthens America by defending our values) against the Barack Obama narrative (culture-war politics weakens America by undermining our unity) and has come down on Obama’s side — certainly for now but possibly for much longer.

  Harder for us to adjust to will be this: The civil rights mind-set, with its focus on antidiscrimination laws and court-ordered remedies, has outlived its usefulness. There are still discrimination problems, of course—for example, when schools turn a blind eye to harassment. By and large, however, the public no longer regards gays as an oppressed minority, and by and large we aren’t one.

  The old civil rights model, with its roots in an era when homosexuals were politically friendless pariahs, focuses on such matters as protection from bigoted employers and hate crimes. In truth, for most gay Americans the civic responsibility agenda, with its focus on service to family (marriage), children (mentoring and adoption), and country (the military), is more relevant and important. With a comparatively sympathetic administration and Congress taking office in Washington, the time has come to pivot away from the culturally defensive pariah agenda — the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, for instance — and toward the culturally transformative family agenda.

• Box Turtle Bulletin » Today In History: Candlelights At City Hall – Harvey Milk finally succeeded in becoming the first openly gay non-incumbent candidate to win a political office for two reasons. One, he refused to hide who he was; and two, he made it his mission to build alliances with groups that other gay activists thought were impossible to reach.
• How Sarah Palin Created a Whole New Generation of Vegetarians | | AlterNet – Posing for photographers with her felled caribou, her child inches from its bleeding mouth, Sarah Life-Is-Precious Palin is not confused about where meat comes from. So the turkey being slaughtered in full view of the camera as she conducted an interview at Triple D Farms in Wasilla this week probably doesn't faze her.

  But most Americans don't want to see the transformations their turkey went through to get to their Thanksgiving dinner table.

  How it lived, how it was shipped, who hung the struggling bird upside down on the conveyer to transport it to the awaiting blade, etc. — are not thoughts that improve the taste of the cranberry sauce.

  Nor will the economy get so bad people will have to take jobs as "live hangers" like Sam, not his real name, last year.

• What the Bible Tells Us About Sarah Palin | Reproductive Justice and Gender | AlterNet – Palin, while lauded as a draw for conservative evangelical voters, actually fits uneasily into the theological worldview of the Christian Right. To be sure, Palin's politics are a close, if not exact match for social conservatives. She is strongly against a woman's right to choose abortion, even in cases of rape and incest. She is against same-sex marriage and for an expansive reading of the Second Amendment. She is a perfect candidate — so long as evangelicals are able to look past her gender.

  But supporting Palin's vice-presidential bid — and her possible ambitions for 2012 — requires evangelical voters to overlook the "complementarian" conception of the roles of men and women that holds sway among Southern Baptists and other evangelicals. Based on their reading of Scripture, they believe that men and women have distinctly different roles assigned to them by God. Women, in this perspective, are divinely mandated to serve as wives, mothers and keepers of the home. They are not allowed to serve as pastors, and they are obliged to submit to their husband in their own homes and in public.

• Enough of ‘Barbituate’ Left Cynicism, Obama Is a Victory over White Supremacy | | AlterNet – At some point, the left will have to relinquish its love affair with marginalization. We'll have to stop behaving like those people who have a favorite band they love, and even damn near worship, until that day when the band actually begins to sell a lot of records and gain a measure of popularity, at which point they now suck and have obviously sold out: the idea being that if people like you, you must not be doing anything important, and that obscurity is the true measure of integrity. Deconstructing the psychological issues at the root of such a pose is well above my pay grade, but I'm sure would prove fascinating.
• Booman Tribune ~ America the Hateful – The last time a Democrat held the Presidency, we saw the rise of the Militia movement and acts of mass murder and mayhem by right wing terrorists. And that was during a time of relative peace and prosperity with a moderate centrist President from Arkansas. Who was as white and down home as they come. Over the next four years I think we can expect increasing acts of racially motivated and/or anti-government violence from white, right wing extremists. I hope I'm wrong. I hope I'm a lousy prophet. But I also hope the Secret Service and the FBI are putting resources into preparing for the worst case scenario.

I’m going a bit light on blogging over the holiday, since we’re spending Thanksgiving with my family in Georgia, and introducing Dylan to the rest of the family.

But I couldn’t resist this shocking bit about a display of  ‘live homosexual acts’ that shocked students at a Kentucky college recently.

On Friday, members of the Murray State Alliance performed live homosexual acts on campus in the Free Speech Zone. Many students were shocked, but not necessarily as the name the event implies.

Students performed acts such as reading, studying and hanging out to raise awareness about the lifestyle of gay members of the Murray State campus.

Chris Morehead, junior from Paducah, Ky., checked out Friday’s event after hearing about it through a Facebook message. He said the event was sort of ironic because the name of the event is shocking, but the activities are normal.

Too funny. I remember one Saturday night in college, that I spent with a couple of friends from the gay student group. We basically ended up sitting around at one student’s house, playing Monopoly, and one my friends said with a touch of sarcasm. “Gee, if only our parents could see this wild, hedonistic “gay lifestyle” we’re living. Just partying our way from one orgasm to another.

The game broke up into peals of laughter for about 10 minutes before we calmed down.

[Via Box Turtle Bulletin.]

There’s a literary reference that comes to mind when I consider “Drop Dead” conservatism. (My English Lit. degree occasionally comes in handy.) It’s a Shakespearean reference, actually, to a character from one of his lesser known plays. Timon of Athens made an impression on me in high school, when we read it in my senior English class. The title character was a man so embittered with humanity that in the he basically crawls into a hole in the ground and pulls the earth, writes his own epitaph, and dies.

That’s the kind of anger and nihilism — “total and absolute destructiveness, esp. toward the world at large and including oneself” — that “Drop Dead” conservatism brings to mind. But there’s a historical reference — involving another opening in the earth — that’s necessary to complete the picture of “Drop Dead” conservatism.

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I’ve been in meeting most of the afternoon, so I haven’t had a chance to read anything, let alone post anything. But it was nice that the first thing I read when I get back to my desk was that Florida’s anti-gay adoption law has been overturned.

Today a Florida circuit court today struck down a state law that bars lesbians and gay men from adopting (see yesterday’s blog post for more about the case). The court granted adoptions to our client Martin Gill, a North Miami resident who, along with his partner, has been raising two foster children since 2004.

The court ruled that the ban violated the equal protection guarantees of the state constitution because it singles out gay people and children raised by gay people for different treatment for no rational reason. The court also found that the ban denies children the right to permanency provided by federal and state law under the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997.

The court’s decision comes after a four-day trial in October where the court heard from experts on children’s health and development and the justifications offered by the state for the ban. In reaching its decision, the court rejected the false assumptions and stereotypes about gay people that the state offered to justify the ban, holding that many “reports and studies find that there are no differences in the parenting of homosexuals or the adjustment of their children. These conclusions have been accepted, adopted and ratified by the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatry Association, the American Pediatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Child Welfare League of America and the National Association of Social Workers. As a result, based on the robust nature of the evidence available in the field, this Court is satisfied that the issue is so far beyond dispute that it would be irrational to hold otherwise; the best interests of children are not preserved by prohibiting homosexual adoption.”

There’s also a video about the family involved in the suit, talking about how the ban affected their sons.

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It’s their world. The rest of us just live in it.

Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for November 21st through November 25th:

• Election Day fell short – These bans represent the tyranny of the majority, which our Founding Fathers tried hard to prevent. Democracy never intended for a simple majority of the people to take away the fundamental rights of the minority. A cornerstone of democracy is found in the belief that our Constitution, and not our contempt, should be the driving force insuring equality for all.
• t r u t h o u t | Thank You, George! – By what criteria does one recognize a great leader? By his ability to organize his succession, of course. Now who can deny that without the policy you've conducted over the last eight years, Barack Obama would never have been elected? This brilliant young man's veritable Pygmalion is you, of course. I imagine that it was hardly always easy. I'm thinking in particular about one of your master strokes: the war in Iraq. To manipulate your Secretary of State, the righteous general, Colin Powell, to the point of pushing him to lie before the UN about Saddam Hussein's suppositious weapons of mass destruction; then, once the deception was realized, forcing him to resign so that he ended up joining Barack Obama. Nice one!
• A Response to the Extreme Anti-Gay Comments by My Brother, Newt Gingrich | Rights and Liberties | AlterNet – Dear Newt, I recently had the displeasure of watching you bash the protesters of the Prop 8 marriage ban to Bill O'Reilly on FOX News. I must say, after years of watching you build your career by stirring up the fears and prejudices of the far right, I feel compelled to use the words of your idol, Ronald Reagan, "There you go, again." However, I realize that you may have been a little preoccupied lately with planning your resurrection as the savior of your party, so I thought I would fill you in on a few important developments you might have overlooked.
• LGBT People Have Much To Be Grateful for This Thanksgiving | AlterNet – Thanksgiving is a time to focus on the year's blessings. And those of us who are gay or gay-friendly have plenty to savor: Lt. Gov. David Paterson, who fondly recalls the gay couple who helped raise him, unexpectedly stepped into New York's governorship and soon declared that his state would honor same-sex marriages performed elsewhere.
• Daily Kos: Anti-Prop 8 backlash changes minds – Turning eight percent of marriage equality opponents around in a few short weeks is remarkable, and likely stems people realizing what exactly they had voted for. Remember, the proposition lost by only three points. If eight percent of the 52.1 percent who voted for it have changed their minds, that's a 4.2 percent swing in favor of equality. Or, put another way, you're looking at a 52-48 vote in favor of gay marriage. I would say that thus far, the backlash against Proposition 8 has been wildly successful.
• Paul Jenkins: The Last Time We Vote For Bigotry – This year, it was especially painful when, close to the election and to the California vote on Proposition 8 to rescind the rights of gay couples to marry, Barack Obama said he believes "marriage is between a man and a woman."
  This was nothing new, but certainly not uplifting, even as he reiterated his opposition to changing the California constitution.

  This starkly illustrated Obama's contradictory attitude towards gay rights: he says he deems gay and straight people (all people, in fact) to be equal, but he is "against" same-sex marriage. It begs the question: if these relationships are equal, why not treat them equally under the law? In many ways, it is far easier to accept hard-core Christian conservatives' position: they think gay relationships are evil, and therefore certainly not equal to straight ones, and should absolutely not be granted marriage rights. They are of course homophobic, but so are all other opponents of gay marriage, for isn't it the essence of homophobia to say that the love between a man and a woman is different than the love between two people of the same gender?

• Michael Russnow: Proposition 8 Backlash: What’s Wrong with Discriminating Against Those Who Want to Discriminate? – These people are intruding in the lives of others — people who have no effect at all on the hate mongers, except a presumed disturbance of the bigoted lifestyle they want to maintain.

  On the other hand, those who rise up against the forces who want to impose their religious and so-called moral beliefs on the public at large and thus prevent loving couples from legally sanctifying their union, are in effect mimicking Paddy Chayefsky's famous words from Network: "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore."

  They're not throwing stones at the contributors' cars or burning their houses and certainly shouldn't be. However, taking a stand against those who discriminate is moral, legitimate and the correct stance to take. Just as the blacks boycotted the Montgomery, Alabama city buses when they were only permitted to ride in the rear sections.

• The Triumph Of The Creative Class – Forbes.com – Barack Obama rode to his resounding victory on the enthusiasm of two constituencies, the young and African Americans, whose support has driven his candidacy since the spring. Yet arguably the biggest winners of the Nov. 4 vote are located at the highest levels of the nation's ascendant post-industrial business community.

I wrote about this earlier, but another story about minority reaction to passage of prop 8 came to my attention via the LGBTPOC listserve.

California’s gay marriage ban could open the door to legal discrimination against unpopular groups if the state Supreme Court allows the voter-approved measure to stand, blacks, Latinos, Asians and other minorities said.

The November 4 vote, supporting an end to legal same-sex marriage in the most populous U.S. state, has caused a nationwide furor as opponents of the measure decry what they consider a civil rights violation.

…Legal scholars say the measure, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman, breaks new ground by limiting the courts’ ability to protect minorities.

“They could take away any right from any group,” said University of Southern California Law Professor David Cruz, who filed a brief in favor of gay marriage in an earlier case.

This is something I tried to convey, with varying degrees eloquence and success in my first ever appearance on bloggingheads.tv.

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Drop Dead. That’s the best answer that some conservatives have been able to offer to a country in teeth of the worst financial crisis we’ve faced in a generation. When the Wall Street crisis loomed and the bailout was being debated: let the market fail, and risk another Great Depression, “for the sake of the altar of the free market.” Now, the economic downturn having worsened — and in ways that are more deeply felt in parts of the country far from centers of financial or political power — their response to rescuing the largest remnant of our manufacturing sector? “Drop Dead,” and devil take the hindmost.

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OK. I know I posted this picture a while back, and I know that Virginia Republicans were seriously working the “Hooters Demographic” with Palin, but I honestly don’t get it. And it has nothing to do with my being gay, believe me. I can spot, and appreciate a gorgeous, sexy woman as well as anyone. (It’s just that I’m not going to want to sleep with her, so much as take her out for lunch and maybe a little shopping.) When it comes to celebrities women like Angela Bassett, Catherine Zeta-Jones can stop me in my tracks.

But what, please somebody tell me, what is sexy about Sarah Palin?

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Here are some of the people writing about some of the stuff I wish I had time to write about, for November 19th through November 21st:

• Gay Marriage: The Culture War Has Just Begun | Psychology Today Blogs – But gay marriage is inevitable. Young people accept homosexuality in a way their parents can't. In addition, state courts have begun to recognize the logic that marriage is a fundamental right that cannot be denied to people because of their sexual orientation. In other words, gay marriage has the imprimatur of a liberation movement, which is why the recent bans led to immediate protests in California and around the country. These won't stop. And they are being supported by increasingly vocal gay spokespeople like beloved TV host Ellen DeGeneres (who was married to her lesbian lover in California).

  Thus, slowly at first, but in a rapidly accelerating process, state after state, and finally the federal government, will accept same-sex marriage. The process could take less than ten years. Yet the impediments and dislocations this will cause are formidable, almost mind-boggling.

• ACLU Blog: Because Freedom Can’t Blog Itself: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union » Don’t JUST Get Mad… Get Equal! – Already our community has shown that we aren’t going to take these defeats lying down. Seeing LGBT people and our straight allies taking to the streets to protest — in California and across the country — is inspiring. Yet, there is still more work to do. After the protests are over, we need to get back to the work of building on the progress we’ve achieved, so that the lessons of this year’s failures ensure our future success. Here are three things we can do — NEED to do — if we’re going to reverse the damage done by these initiatives:
• Obama Victory Brings “Racist Rats Out of the Woodwork” | Election 2008 | AlterNet – Far from heralding a new age of tolerance, Obama's victory in the November 4th election has highlighted the stubborn racism that lingers within some elements of American society as opponents pour their frustration into vandalism, harassment, threats and even physical attacks. Cross burnings, black figures hung from nooses, and schoolchildren chanting "Assassinate Obama" are just some of the incidents that have been documented by police from California to Maine.
• Box Turtle Bulletin » Determining God’s Wrath – There is a long tradition amongst religious zealots to read disaster as an evidence of God’s wrath. So it is not too surprising that ex-gay gadfly James Hartline had declared that the fires burning across Southern California are caused by God’s vengeance against evil homosexuals. But supposing that we could determine something from the fires raging, what could we determine that God was saying? The areas hardest hit are in Santa Barbera County, Orange County, San Bernardino County, and Riverside County.
• Thomas Kinkade’s 16 Guidelines for Making Stuff Suck: Culture and Celebrity: vanityfair.com – Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light™, extends his purview to motion pictures with this week’s release of Thomas Kinkade’s Christmas Cottage, an inspirational holiday pastiche based on one of his paintings. Produced by Lionsgate, the film stars Peter O’Toole and Marcia Gay Harden. But not even a name cast could stop it from being unceremoniously dumped to home video a year after its planned release.

  One reason might be that Kinkade, a postmodern Norman Rockwell for the evangelist set, instructed the crew to adhere to an aesthetic code that wouldn’t have flown in a first-year film class. The list of 16 “guidelines” on how to create “The Thomas Kinkade Look” on film, which was circulated to crew members in memo form, has been obtained exclusively by VF Daily.

Yesterday was the Transgender Day of Remembrance. My intention was to post something yesterday featuring some of the stories from the LGBT Hate Crimes Project, but I was swamped with work, and then got called into meeting. So, it didn’t happen.

But since I missed posting this yesterday, I thought I’d post it today.

It’s not all of the transgender stories, though. You’ll find more here.

Reading the headlines over the past week, I’m beginning to wonder if there’s a single agency in the United States government that conservatives haven’t left in worse shape than they found it. I’ve been reading about demoralized government employees, under-resourced departments, and agencies left in shambles after eight years of Republican rule.

A few days after the election I participated in a telephone survey about the outcome. The surveyor, at one point, asked me how I felt about the Bush administration and the congressional Republicans. After a couple of tries at explaining conservative failure, I finally blurted out, “People hate government, and don’t believe it can do any good, just can’t govern effectively.”

After this week, I think I’d probably amend that statement. Conservatives don’t believe government doesn’t work. They believe it shouldn’t. And when they get elected they make damn sure it can’t.

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If you’re like me, and like a lot of other people, you probably woke upon November 5th wondering what the hell happened. The country appeared to take step forward. It looked like we were making progress. Unless you were gay, and maybe wanted to get married, now or someday.

In that sense, it was kind of a letdown. And though we’ve all had a chance to blog about it ad nauseam, until now most of us haven’t had a chance to  pose questions to the leaders of the campaigns to defeat the initiatives. Until now.

Bil, at BIlerico is  hosting a liveblog today at 7 p.m. with Kate Kendal, Nadine Smith, and Barbara McCullough Jones. They’ll take your questions about Prop 8, Amendment 2, and Prop 102.

You can sign up below to get an email reminder of the liveblog.

Gay people in Massachusetts won marriage equality. Five years later, the sun still rises and and sets, the mountains haven’t crumbled, the oceans haven’t boiled, and — most shocking of all — heterosexual marriage appears to be doing just fine.

Over 11,000 same-sex marriages later, neither has happened.

Massachusetts has yet to become, as former governor Mitt Romney predicted, the “Las Vegas of same-sex marriage.” Gay marriage rates leveled off at about 1,500 a year – about 4 percent of all state marriages – in 2006 and 2007. The divorce rate in Massachusetts has remained the same – and the lowest in the country.

…What’s really changed is more subtle than cosmic, more about the everyday lives of gay couples in Massachusetts than about a national transformation. Gay and lesbian couples here said they are attracting fewer startled looks when they rent cars, less consternation when they hold hands, fewer awkward questions when they visit spouses in hospital rooms.

“When we’re out together as a couple, it really doesn’t come up; we’re never challenged anymore,” said David Wilson, one of the plaintiffs in the 2003 SJC case and the current chairman of MassEquality, a gay-rights advocacy group. “It’s now considered normal.”

And that’s what the other side is afraid of. That people might see us as human beings who laugh, love, and live our lives pretty much the same way they do.

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Wow. I’ve been busy with daily, detail-oriented, deadline-driven work until just now. So, I missed this. It probably isn’t news to anyone else, but half the day goes by before I get to catch up news, etc.

eHarmony has changed its tune on queers. Sorta.

The California-based company will begin providing same-sex matches under as part of a settlement with New Jersey’s Civil Rights Division.

Garden State resident Eric McKinley filed a complaint against the online matchmaker in 2005.

Under terms of the settlement, the company can create a new or differently named Web site for same-sex singles. The company can also post a disclaimer saying its compatibility-based matching system was developed from research of married heterosexual couples.

Neither the company nor its founder, Neil Clark Warren, admit any liability.

In addition, eHarmony will pay the division $50,000 to cover administrative costs. It will pay McKinley $5,000 and give him a free one-year membership to its new service.

A separate site, huh? How, uh, Jim Crow-esque of them. (“We’ll just put those people over here, dear customers. So you can go right on pretending they don’t exist.”)

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