The Washington Post has wrapped up its 13-part “Who Killed Chandra Levy” series, and I’ve been following it; unable to resist a combination of local interest and the kind of crime story that has always fascinated me. (I think in another life I’d like to be a crime writer of some sort. I channeled some of that into the LGBT Hate Crimes Project, I think.)
But as I followed along I never forgot about some of the cases I wrote about in the previous post. In the process of researching that post, I came across many more cases that I didn’t include because the length of the post made me decide to limit it to the cases of those women mentioned in the comments of a WaPo blog post about the Levy series. Since the series on the Levy case is wrapping up, I wanted to take the opportunity to post about a few more cases that have gotten less attention than the Levy case.
Gov. Martin O’Malley signed two bills to bring some of the rights married couples have to unmarried couples — including gay couples — along with measures related to health and support for Maryland veterans.
O’Malley, who supports creating a civil unions law that has yet to find enough support in the Maryland General Assembly, said he believed the bills help address “inequities and unfairness” against committed couples who are not married, including gay couples.
“Without the ability to have the legal protections that say, a civil unions statute would give, then these other bills, will, I suspect, continue to come through the legislature and continue to be approved by the legislature …” O’Malley said.
One of the bills allows unmarried couples more rights to make about a dozen medical decisions for each other, if they meet certain criteria to show they are a committed couple. For example, they would have to show joint checking accounts or joint property ownership to qualify.
The other bill exempts domestic partners from paying property transfer taxes when one person dies.
California gets marriage, and we get … well, … slightly more than we had before.
What he said. In solidarity with the Day of Silence, I’m not posting anything else today.
If you’ve come here looking for something to read, I invite you to spend some time reading the stories collected in the LGBT Hate Crimes Project. (Which I’ve decided needs to be taken up again.)
If a woman consents to having sex with a man but then during intercourse says no, and the man continues, is it rape?
n Maryland–as well as in North Carolina–when a woman says yes, she can’t take it back once sex has begun–or, at least, she can’t call the act rape.
That was the recent ruling by Maryland’s Court of Special Appeals in a case that may soon make its way to the state’s highest court and that has captured the attention of feminists and legal experts across the country. Advocates for victims’ rights insist it’s not just a matter of allowing a woman to have a change of heart. If the law doesn’t recognize a woman’s right to say no during sex, they say, there is no recourse for a woman who begins to feel pain or who learns her partner isn’t wearing a condom or has HIV. Those who are wary of these measures say they’re not arguing against having a man stop immediately when a woman no longer wants to have sex, but with how to define immediately.
Sometimes it seems like being gay and having a husband means having to talk abou the kind of things that other people take for granted, even while doing something as mundane as rolling over a 401(k) It definitely means having to think about and talk about things that I bet a good number of married heterosexual couples don’t think about. In many cases, they don’t have to. Just being married protects them.
It’s something we faced when we finalized Parker’s adoption, and took the occasion to update our wills, as well as completing advance directives and medical powers of attorney. And it’s something we’ll have to think about again, as we update our wills and other documents when we finalize Dylan’s adoption. It was yesterday, after the social worker (who’d came over for one of the required home study visits before Dylan’s adoption is finalized), and after we had dinner that the hubby told me about the latest development in Maryland.
I didn’t mean to go off, really. But I had just had enough. It was one of those moments when you mutter to yourself, “That’s all I can stand. I can’t stand no more.”
We were out grocery shopping yesterday. It’s not unusual for one group or another to have a table set up outside the grocery store. Sometimes it’s the Girl Scouts, selling cookies. Sometimes it’s people raising money for charity. Sometimes It’s people protesting property taxes in Montgomery County (Usually people who don’t have children in public schools, because they’re retired or just don’t have kids. So it doesn’t matter to them that we have some of the best schools in the area, and even in the country.)
Someone was setting up a table when we went in, but I didn’t look to see what it was. We were too busy getting the kids situated and getting into the store. But on the way out I saw this guy sitting at the table, with a sign asking for signatures to repeal a law that would “allow men in women’s restrooms.”
It goes without saying that becoming a parent changes you in countless ways. I’ve heard it described as having your heart walking around outside of your body. I’ve heard it said that you learn to love in a way you never did before, and you learn to fear in a way you didn’t before. I know that becoming a husband and a father made me a lot more emotional than I’d ever been. I can access emotions now that seemed to be permanently walled off. I knew something was up the day I found myself crying while watching an episode of Oprah.
I’ve also developed a kind of “parent radar” or at least that’s what I call it. That is, I don’t just keep up with my own kid. When we’re out at a park, playground or social event. I keep an eye out for other kids too. It’s like I automatically scan the area and figure out which kids belong with which adults. (And which adults, at a playground or a park, aren’t there with a kid, a dog, or their jogging shoes.) And out of the corner of my eye I’ll spot a kid rushing headlong in to danger. Once I saw a toddler about to get hit by a bicycle—neither the bicyclist or his mother saw him in that moment—and pulled him out of the way just in time.
Maybe it’s because I see a little of my own children in every other child I see. Maybe I see that same vulnerability, and I’d want someone to look out for them if I wasn’t there. Maybe it’s not that unusual. No one wants to see a child hurt. Or at least most people don’t. Who wouldn’t try to save a child from harm, even if it’s not their own? After all, not being a parent doesn’t mean preclude anyone from loving or caring a child. And, unfortunately, being a parent—even to children they’ve conceived and birthed—doesn’t make some people any more inclined or equipped to deliver the love and care that comes after conception and deliver. Thus, this series.
If ever I had a doubt (and I haven’t) that we moved to the right place to raise our family, I don’t anymore. It one of the things LGBT parents have to take into consideration when making the decision about where our families are going to live and our children are going to grow up: How accepting is this place? How open is it? And, depending on your political leanings, how progressive is it.
I tend to repeat myself, and there’s something from that last post that bears repeating. At least I think so, because it’s pretty good lead in to another installment of poisonous parenting.
But I do remember using the word “commitment” — the same one Dr. Height used in talking about our families — when the host asked me what I thought was the most important thing a child needed in a family. I meant more than just commitment to one another between parters or parents, but commitment to making sure a child grows up in a home where he/she knows he/she is loved, wanted, protected, respected, and accepted for who he/she is, in a place where he/she is safe and cared for.
I started writing this post right after I finished the previous one, because it occurred to me the main point made a good jumping off point for another installment in this series.
As I listened to the rest of the show, I was struck that Dr Height and I used the same word — “commitment” — in talking about our families. When the host asked me what I thought was the most important thing a child needed in a family. I meant more than just commitment to one another between parents and/or extended family, but commitment to making sure a child grows up in a home where he/she knows he/she is loved, wanted, protected, respected, and accepted for who he/she is, in a place where he/she is safe and cared for.
“…[C]ommitment to making sure a child grows up in a home where he/she knows he/she is loved, wanted, protected, respected, and accepted for who he/she is, in a place where he/she is safe and cared for.” That’s something that that’s not dependent upon what parts you have, what you do with them, or whether you can reproduce with them. No matter what the Maryland Court of Appeals says.
I’m not sure why my my commitment is worth less and less worthy of protection and support than the family next door or across the street from me. After all, we’re all committed to making sure our kids grow up in homes where they are loved, wanted, protected, respected, accepted, safe, and cared for with love. Nor I sure why some people make the cut for equal protections and equal citizenship just because they can make babies, but can’t manage to bring them up in homes where they’re wanted, loved, respected and — most of all — safe and protected.
Britney Spears — who, you’ll remember, once got married as a joke, and for 55 hours still had more rights and protections in her marriage than I do in mine — had to be court ordered to childproof her home in order to have visitation with her kids. But one almost gets the idea that really making the house safe for children might mean removing Spears from it. Or the kids.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m still fuming over the Maryland Appeals Court gay marriage ruling. When I read the decision, it was a full 20 minutes before I could speak in more than one word at a time. The rest of the family got monosyllabic answers from me for a while.
Well, all except for the baby. But even she doesn’t take my mind of of it, because I keep remembering this paragraph from the decision.
Looking beyond the fact that any inquiry into the ability or willingness of a couple actually to bear a child during marriage would violate the fundamental right to marital privacy recognized in Griswold, 381 U.S. at 484-86, 493, 85 S. Ct. at 1681, 14 L. Ed. 2d 510, the fundamental right to marriage and its ensuing benefits are conferred on opposite-sex couples not because of a distinction between whether various opposite-sex couples actually procreate, but rather because of the possibility of procreation.
And every time I think about that paragraph I’ll think about stories like this one.
“Looking beyond the fact that any inquiry into the ability or willingness of a couple actually to bear a child during marriage would violate the fundamental right to marital privacy recognized in Griswold, 381 U.S. at 484-86, 493, 85 S. Ct. at 1681, 14 L. Ed. 2d 510, the fundamental right to marriage and its ensuing benefits are conferred on opposite-sex couples not because of a distinction between whether various opposite-sex couples actually procreate, but rather because of the possibility of procreation.”
-Judge Glenn Harrell, Jr.
One week ago today, our daughter was born. One week ago today, we were waiting at the hospital and I was standing in the delivery room waiting to be born. We were there because her birthmother chose us, from 20 or so families, to be her adoptive parents. We were there because, when she chose us we said yes. We said yes to raising, loving, and caring for a child that we did not and could not conceive. I don’t know all of the reasons why our daughter’s birthmother chose us. All I know is that the biological parents who conceived her were not able to raise her. Their circumstances were less ideal than those they want her to grow up in. So, they chose us and, before she was even born, we said yes. And we will continue to say yes to loving her, caring for her, protecting her, teaching her, guiding her, and giving her every opportunity we can to help her grow into a happy, healthy, successful (however she defines success for herself) adult.
Now the Maryland Court of Appeals is telling me that because the hubby and I did not biologically produce the son and daughter we are raising that we do not deserve the protection and benefits of marriage, and that our children do not deserve the protection and benefits of having legally married parents. It takes very little time to conceive, nine months to bring to term, and many hours to deliver an infant into the world.
Parents! Anybody out there want Michael Jackson for a neighbor? He's shopping for real estate in Maryland. Granted, that's not exactly in my neighborhood, and if I'm worried about predators I'd do better to keep an eye out closer to home. But still…
I can’t remember when I became aware of the reality that there are adults who prey on children sexually. I think the first glimmer I got was one summer at camp, when an adult staff member was “asked to leave” after complaints of “inappropriate touching.” I don’t remember if anything happened to him, but I do recall no one ever speaking of it again. And, given the amount of space available in my burgeoning adolescent gay brain to process the whole thing, I’m sure I filed it away and forgot about it since I needed those brain cells for lusting after and daydreaming about my favorite camp counselor.
Later, as an adult gay man, I was aware that in some people’s minds being a gay man made me a suspect, but since I wasn’t a child predator, I didn’t give the subject much thought. Until I became a parent. Actually, from the moment I starting thinking about parenthood. Then, subject seemed to be everywhere. Now I find myself pausing to read every local news article about pedophiles and child predators, even the ones that weren’t exactly in my back yard, like the series of indecent exposures at a park in Virginia.
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.
See, stuff like this is the reason I don't use Google Ads already. I tried it for a while, but I kept getting advertisements for James Dobsons' books on my posts, and I never found an easy way to block them other than entering the URL into the Google Ads filter every time I discovered one. No thanks.
If you want just one reason to vote for Obama instead of John McCain — and you're someone who cares about reproductive freedom or the right to privacy — the words "Supreme Court" should be enough. If not, consider that George W. Bush appointed more than 300 federal judges during his term, and ask yourself how many more like these you want to see on the bench.
Watching: "Constantine's Sword (2007)", about the evangelical takeover of the United States Air Force Academy, and wondering... ( http:/ ... 1 week ago
Reading: A guy who got 10 years in a mortgage scam that sounds an awful lot like what some financial firms were doing. Difference? Nobod ... 1 week ago
If a woman consents to having sex with a man but then during intercourse says no, and the man continues, is it rape?
Posts
Entries (RSS)