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.
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.
Parenting, for those don’t know first hand, has many heartbreaking moments built in. Some of them are the same for almost all families, and some of them are different.
As an African American parent, I experience it as the moment I know is coming and that I dread, when both my sons will find out what it’s like to be held suspect because of their race. (For, though much has changed, much has remained the same.)
As a gay dad, I experience it in those moment when we have to explain to our son that some people don’t like his family, because his family is different. Particularly when we had to explain (because we’re always honest with our sons, in an age-appropriate manner) that “according to the rules” Daddy and Papa aren’t really married.
It’s not something we ever really discussed with him until recently, when we went to Annapolis for Equality Maryland’s Lobby Day. Our job was relatively easy, as our delegates are very supportive, and our state senator is a gay dad, but we felt it was important to take part.
When we explained to Parker why we were going, the hubby put it this way. “We’re going to see the people who make the rules, and ask them to change the rules so that Daddy and Papa can get married, because Daddy and Papa love each other very much.”
And when Parker asked if we were married I answered, “Daddy and Papa are married in our hearts, because we love each other very much, but someday we hope we can get married in front of everyone else too.”
A couple of days later, Parker turned to me and asked, “Did they change the rules yet so you can get married?”
I had to tell him no, but we were still married in our hearts, and someday soon the rules will change so that we can get married in front of everyone else. As much as it hurt me to have to say that, Parker seemed to understand, and wasn’t that bothered by it. (Why should he be? He’s happy and safe at home, and he’s got Daddy and Papa to love and care for him?) But it became even more important to me that our son know that his parents are married to each other, and what that means to us and for him.
Even as we were having the conversation with Parker, the hubby and I exchanged looks that wordlessly expressed our concern. Would he worry about something happening to our family? Would he worry about being taken away from us? Would he feel less secure?
Fortunately, I think the love and honestly we’ve tried to raise him with have gone a long way towards preventing that. But what if we’d lived in a state where one day we were legally married, and the next day w weren’t because that was taken away from us.
The day after the election, the San Francisco lawyer and his husband, Paul Herman, a stay-at-home dad, had had to face the fact that Proposition 8 could mean that their marriage would be invalidated. They’d also had to go to parent conferences and tell the teachers that their five-year-old daughter, Liza, might be struggling in school because she was scared that her family might fall apart.
Liza, who has a twin sister, Katie, had peppered Swanson and Herman with questions once she’d realized that marriages uniting “a boy and a boy” were no longer allowed.
“They can’t take yours away, right?” she’d asked her parents. “They can’t take yours away when you have children, can they?”
“That’s when we realized she was afraid something would happen to us,” Swanson told me by phone on Wednesday. “We said, ‘They can’t take us away from you. We will be here for you forever.’”
“It’s difficult to explain to a five-year-old why it is people don’t want your parents to be married,” he continued. “They’re young enough that there was a chance they could have grown up thinking all their lives that their family was equal and accepted. Now they’re not going to have that chance. They’ll have to spend at least part of their lives knowing that their family is something that people don’t feel is acceptable.”
The Yes on 8 campaign made a great deal of political hay telling outright lies about what legal same-sex marriage could mean for children in schools, etc., and scaring people into thinking the purpose of proposition 8 was to “protect the children.” When the truth is they did a great deal of harm to a great many children. Dana points out that the 52,000 children being raised by 26,100 same-sex couples in California, or the 125,000 children being raised by LGB Californians (including single parents) were in the bullseye of the Yes on 8 campaign along with their families.
Would it have made a difference for parents to think about their children’s friends and classmates waking up on Nov. 5, feeling like their families were torn apart by the state? Having their self-confidence shaken when they were told their families were second-class? Hearing the hateful rhetoric from the right? Questioning the values that our country stands for? Would it have made a difference if parents knew that regardless of the curriculum, their children would learn about same-sex parents and relationships because they shared classrooms and playgrounds with the children of LGBT parents?
Yes, parenthood comes with many moments of heartbreak built in. But some of us get extras moments of heartbreak installed.
Meanwhile, five civil rights groups asked California’s highest court Friday to annul the ban on the grounds that Proposition 8 threatens the legal standing of all minority groups, not just gays.
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund, the Asian Pacific American Legal Center and two other groups petitioned the state Supreme Court to prevent the change from taking effect.
The petition is the fourth seeking to have the measure invalidated. But it’s the first to argue that the court should step in because the gay marriage ban, which overturned the Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay unions, sets a precedent that could be used to undermine the rights of racial minorities.
Eva Paterson, president of the San Francisco-based Equal Justice Society, said the election raises the specter of voters deciding to bar illegal immigrants from public schools, disenfranchising black voters or otherwise using the ballot box to promote segregation.
“The court ruled that to discriminate in the area of same-sex marriage was unconstitutional and violated our guaranteed equality,” Paterson said. “Why should a slim majority of Californians be able to put discrimination back into the California Constitution?”
It has been a strange couple of weeks. Just last week, I saw something that I never thought I’d see in my lifetime, and felt like I was witnessing it for all my ancestors who didn’t live to see a hope fulfilled. But — with a “twoness of being” that DuBois probably didn’t imagine when he coined the term — it was a deeply conflicted moment.
As a Black man, in that moment I felt like more of an American than I ever had before, like a barrier to full citizenship and belonging had been raised. As a gay man with a husband and a family, however, I ended up feeling like less of an American than I ever had before; divorced from the celebrating and even the historic significance of the moment by a barrier to citizenship and belonging that fell more firmly into place even as another one was lifted.
My response to the events of the past week have been informed by that “twoness of being,” and a conflict that demands I prioritize one part of my identity over another. It’s nothing new to Black gay Americans, and we often come down on different sides of that struggle. Lines are drawn, and suddenly I have to be careful of what I say. While I can’t say which side anyone else should come down on, some of the rhetoric of the past week — particularly around race and marriage — is troubling.
Ed. Note: I plan on writing something about black voters, the passage of proposition 8 in California, and the discussion that has ensued about whether the former failed in part because of the latter. In the meantime, I thought I’d republish some old content that might be relevant to the discussion.
(Originally posted on March 19, 2007.)
More homophobic than whom? More homophobic than whites? More homophobic than the general population? Or all of the above?
One of the things I wanted to blog about last week, but didn’t get a chance to was this Alternet post featuring video from the National Black Justice Foundation’s 2nd Annual Black Church Summit, in which Michael Eric Dyson addresses the question that’s been on my mind a lot in as I’ve been reading stuff online lately: “Why are black people so homophobic?”
Pam supplied the video as part of her excellent coverage of the summit. I was invited to cover the summit, but due to family responsibilities was unable to make it. So, I particularly appreciated Pam’s coverage, and will return later to some things she addressed.
Every time a Tim Hardaway or an Isaiah Washington or an unknown black preacher makes an anti-gay comment, reporters call me up and ask why are black people so homophobic. But when high-profile white people make homophobic remarks, nobody ever asks why are white people so homophobic. They should, because the answers to the two questions are related. African Americans are homophobic because white Americans are homophobic. We all live in the same homophobic society, and in this case the prejudice starts from the president on down.
I understand where Keith is coming from, but for a while now I’ve not been willing to defend African Americans anymore against charges of being more homophobic than other groups. I know it’s controversial to say that black people are more homophobic than other people, but my personal experience has been that most black people are more homophobic than are most white people I’ve encountered, and defnitely more homophobic as a group than is the general population. I still haven’t seen or experience much that’s convinced me otherwise.
Connecticut’s Supreme Court ruled Friday that same-sex couples have the right to marry, making that state the third behind Massachusetts and California to legalize such unions.
The divided court ruled 4-3 that gay and lesbian couples cannot be denied the freedom to marry under the state constitution, and Connecticut’s civil unions law does not provide those couples with the same rights as heterosexual couples.
“I can’t believe it. We’re thrilled, we’re absolutely overjoyed. We’re finally going to be able, after 33 years, to get married,” said Janet Peck of Colchester, who was a plaintiff with her partner, Carole Conklin.
Justices overturned a lower court ruling and found in favor of the plaintiffs, who said the state’s marriage law discriminates against them because it applies only to heterosexual couples, therefore denying gay couples the financial, social and emotional benefits of marriage.
I haven’t had time to read the entire decision, but here’s what I’d call the “money quote” from the decision.
On my next-to-last day in Memphis, before flying home, I finally made my pilgrimage. No, not to Graceland. I never really had any desire to go there. Besides, I knew that when I got home, most of the people who knew me and knew about my trip wouldn’t ask if I went to Graceland. At least not first. If I was going to visit anywhere in Memphis, there was one place I had to visit first. So when I co-worker told me that several people were planning to visit the National Civil Rights Museum — which includes and incorporates the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated — I knew that was where I was going to go, if I went anywhere else in Memphis.
I remember walking through the exhibit, and finally making my way to the King Room, looking through the glass that protected and preserved it, and then walking through an adjacent room and stepping out onto the balcony next to where King was shot. I remember looking across the street and seeing the window of the boarding house where James Earl Ray made the fatal shot. I remember walking through a tunnel, across the street to that house, and looking into the room from which he made the shot. And I remember walking past James Earl Ray’s car when we finally left the museum.
I stepped out into the sunlight, at last, with the rest of the group —all of us blinking our eyes, trying to get used to the light, grateful for the awkward silence, yet feeling the need to fill it with something profound or moving, but coming up short. The thought I kept to myself was how strange it was that in Memphis people ended up visiting a monument to someone’s death, both named — at birth or at birth as a celebrity — “King.” I didn’t think about then, what comes to mind now: how many deaths will receive no monument in Memphis, or be remembered even a year later.
One of the things that surprised me after starting the LGBT Hate Crimes Project is the amount of email I get. Much of it is from people who knew, or were related to the victim. Sometimes I’ve heard from family members who didn’t know the outcome of their loved one’s cases. Sometimes it’s from people who want to let me know about cases that they think should be on the site.
In the latter case, I usually take them and research them, unless they’ve been covered in depth elsewhere. If, for example, they’re already covered in depth on Wikipedia I may decide not to duplicate efforts. I started this project on Wikipedia, by the way, but stopped posting entries on Wikipedia when it became clear that their notability guidelines would cause many of the cases I was writing about to get deleted, because one editor or another didn’t think they were noteworthy enough. In one case, one person asked me “What makes this different from any other crime story?”
Monday morning is usually pretty busy for me, so it seems like as good a time as any for a round-up post. I don’t get to do as much reading (or writing for that matter) as I’d like to, but when I do I always find stuff I’d like to blog about but know that I’ll never have the time. It’s a mix of blog posts and news items that that caught my eye, and usually started me thinking of something I’d like to write.
Gay couples in California will officially start getting married today. I’ve been collecting posts and articles about marriage, meaning to write a blog post, but haven’t had the time to put them all into a context and stitch them together with some kind of narrative. If I wait until I do, I never will. So, I present them here now in round-up format, with abbreviated comments where I’ve had time to think about something to say.
I’m all kinds of late on this, I know, but I was struck by this clip from Bill O’Reilly’s show, in which he and a guest can’t come up with a single reason to oppose same-sex marriage.
It’s an amazing four minutes, in which both O’Reilly and his guest come to the conclusion — from slightly different starting points — that there’s really “no reason” to oppose or prohibit same-sex marriage, once you’ve left aside religious “reasons.”
It’s pretty straightforward. You read the job description. You took the job Now, do your job.
On Wednesday, San Diego County Clerk Gregory Smith said he would consider allowing clerks to bow out of processing such marriages if they had moral or religions objections.
“I was pretty shocked about all that, candidly, and pretty outraged,” San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom told Reuters in an interview.
“This is a civil marriage that civil servants have a responsibility to provide, so for civil servants on religious grounds to start passing judgments, they, I think, are breaking the core tenet of what civil service is all about.”
“I’ve got very strong religious beliefs. So now, all of a sudden, I don’t have to do certain things, even though that’s my responsibility as mayor?”
…The mayor, who said he will wed his actress girlfriend in a ceremony in Montana this summer, suggested that clerks who refused to marry gays in California should lose their jobs.
“If that is their job and they are going to be able to pick and choose based on their morality, then all of a sudden they are not doing their jobs,” said Newsom, a Democrat thinking about running for governor to succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“If you don’t want to provide a marriage certificate and you’ve got a job that does that, then you should think twice about why you got the job in the first place and maybe you should get a new job,” he continued. “Talk about a slippery slope, Mr. County Clerk down in San Dieg
Here’s the thing, though. I’m willing to say the same thing for myself.
So much has been written out there about the California marriage ruling, and I’ve read so much of it, that I can’t possibly write a post in response to each of them. In fact, some of them I’d just agree with and not add much more. So, it being Friday and all, this seems like as good a time as any for a round-up post of some of the most interesting stuff I’ve come across as bloggers celebrate and critique (sometimes simultaneously) the California ruling.
Mark this day on your calendar: August 4, 2009. It may not all happen on that day, but it will mark 9 months since November 4, 2008: the day Barack Obama defeated John McCain in the presidential election. So, that would be "zero day" for the Obama baby boom.
Well, I'd hope so. Anyone stupid or careless enough to put an uzi inthe hands of an eight-year-old ought to be charged with something. The D.A. looking into "whether anyone committed a reckless or wanton act" by allowing the child to fire a weapon. Oh, I'd say that qualifies as reckless and wanton. If it doesn't, then nothing does.
I admit it. My first thought when I saw this was, "Honest, officer. I don't know what happened. I totally meant to hit the brakes. I guess my foot just slipped."
I'm not saying its the kind of thing that anyone should base their vote on, but I gotta admire a campaign when I find out about the candidate's economic plan on an LGBT social network, and then get a link to read or download the entire plan on Scribd. It tells me that a campaign is making a special effort to reach out to people like me, and that the campaign is up to date on the latest ways to disseminate information.
If you haven't yet, take the time to stop by Box Turtle Bulletin, where they have been doing a great series of day-by-day posts on the Matthew Shepard murder. Today's post is a particularly heartbreaking one, about the moment ten years ago when Dennis and Judy Shepard walked into their son's intensive care room and saw him for the first time since the attack. It also links to the earlier posts in the series.
Its sounds like a joke, but it's true. You know the economy has gone South when folks around in Macon (or anywhere else in the south) are going to restaurants and not ordering sweet tea.
Big news. Clay Aiken is gay. Bigger news. So is Lindsey Lohan. Or, at least, she's been dating a woman "for a really long time." I don't know what counts as "a really long time" for Lohan. But kudos to Aiken, at least, for finally coming out. The closet is no place to raise a kid.
Reading: "Top 10 Gay Friendly Places to Live: Countries Where Gays and Lesbians Have Equal Rights." We're number seven. ( http://tinyurl ... 11 hrs ago
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