The Republic of T.

iv

You know my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled by the iron feet of oppression … If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. And if we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer that never came down to Earth. If we are wrong, justice is a lie, love has no meaning.

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

Obama and other Democrats have not said as much to LGBT activists. In fact, their actions could be interpreted to say “Please, don’t make me do it now.” As my own exchange with Pelosi suggests, Democrats seem to be taking the “rising tide” approach. Fixing the economy can help same-sex households in the same way it can hep the rest of the country. Universal health care — if it includes the kind of public plan Obama ran on — helps same-sex couples and their families by divorcing health insurance from both employment status and marital status.

Health care reform could certainly remove obstacles to health insurance for gay couples.

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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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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.

I also caught Keith’s post “Why Are Whites So Homophobic?”, in which he states:

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.

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Part of the problem with my morning routine is that by the time I get around to checking the news, it  isn’t news any more. That is, it’s already been blogged by everybody and their brother. But in case you haven’t heard, the Connecticut Supreme Court overturned the state’s marriage ban.

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.

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I can count on one hand the times that an Oscar win caused me to jump up and down in the middle of my living room, out of excitement. And there are even fewer that have brought a tear to my eye. Tonight was one of them, when Freeheld won for Best Documentary Short Subject. (I only hope the reason the server was down when I wrote this is because so many people were visiting it as a result of the Oscar win.

When I first read the story of Laurel Hester, and her dual battles against cancer and discrimination, I blogged it, and blogged it, and blogged it, because I wanted to do whatever I could to make sure her story was told. So did so many others. I only hope this win will mean that more people will hear this story, and more people will ask themselves whether stories like this one ought to happen. And if the answer is no, I hope they ask themselves what they’re going to do about it.

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Some families. Some of the time. If you wonder why I questioned Nancy Pelosi on whether the Democrats’ agenda item to “strengthen families” meant our families too, I invite you to read the story of Brett Conrad and Patrick Atkins. If I weren’t already in the middle of one Wikipedia project, I’d start documenting stories like this one on Wikipedia as well. I still might, because these stories need to be easier for people to find too.

Brett Conrad spent more than half his life as Patrick Atkins’ partner. For 25 years, the men shared bank accounts, apartments and eventually a home in Fishers.

But when Atkins, 47, fell seriously ill in 2005, Conrad faced what many gay Hoosiers consider a travesty: no law guaranteeing them the same rights as married couples to participate in care decisions for their ill partners.

Conrad, 47, spent much of the past two years trying to win guardianship of Atkins from Atkins’ parents, Thomas and Jeanne of Carmel. Jeanne Atkins is quoted in court documents as saying she believes homosexuality is a sin and that she disapproves of the men’s relationship. The parents have barred Conrad from visiting their now-disabled son in their home where he lives.

In June, Conrad won visitation rights from the Indiana Court of Appeals, but the court upheld an earlier Hamilton County ruling that left control of Atkins’ care to his parents.

It gets better. Conrad has to live with the reality that the man he loves is left to the tender loving care of a mother who says stuff like this.

Technorati Tags: 2008 election, civil unions, current events, family, gay marriage, gay rights, marriage, politics, same-sex marriage

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Until yesterday, I hadn’t blogged about marriage much lately. Maybe its our impending nuptials that have me thinking about it. Anyway, when I read stories about what happens to our families without the protections of legal marriage, I can’t help writing about it. I couldn’t help writing about Bobi and Sandi Cote-Whitaker.

And I can’t help writing about little Aidan Scott. He’s two years old, and have two parents at home who love him and who are deeply committed to each other, one of whom stays home to care for him. Aidan is autistic, and for that reason one of his parents stays home to care for him while the other works to support the family and supply much needed health benefits. For now. Depending on how a court ruling turns out, Aidan may not be able to get medical help because his parents are a lesbian couple.

Technorati Tags: courts, current events, family, gay rights, health, homophobia, marriage, parenting, michigan

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Every once in a while the whole notion of being married, or not being married, becomes a lot more real than it is most of the time. After seven years together, like a lot of other same-sex couples, the hubby and I can go about our daily lives without thinking much about the fact that we’re not, and cannot be, married to one another and thus our family doesn’t have the security that the protections of marriage offer. But there are moments when that reality comes into sharp focus.

As I write this, there’s a stack of papers next to my keyboard. In preparation for the R Families Cruise, and our on-ship nuptials, I’ve got various readings, vows, and versions of the ceremony to read either during lunch or my commute home. And, after printing all of that up, I sat down to read Dana’s about a routine call to ask about car insurance that gave me bit of a flashback to my own experience in dealing with retirement accounts.

Technorati Tags: current events, family, gay rights, homophobia, marriage, politics, civil unions

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It’s probably not great form to follow one blogging meta post with another but, like Kos (probably one of the few things we have in common), I love meta. I can get lost in it sometimes, and forget that not everyone else finds it as interesting as I do. But in this case, I think some people might be interested. Plus it makes a good follow up to the previous post, in terms of contact.

But it does mean dipping a toe back into the waters of the debate around blogs and diversity. And even though I’ve written about blogging while brown before, I was a little reluctant to do so again. The last time I “went there,” the water turned out to be hotter than I expected. It only got hotter, and several people ended up getting a little scalded. In the end I wanted nothing more than to get out of the debate. But some debates you can’t escape, particularly when the have their roots in a larger one. Turns out, I didn’t so much dip a toe into that water as I was born into it, and just wandered into the middle of a “hot spot.”

A few posts I’ve noticed recently, though, enticed me to wander back into those waters. Either I don’t know any better or I just can’t help it.

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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.

I also caught Keith’s post “Why Are Whites So Homophobic?”, in which he states:

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.

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I’ve never readSuze Orman’s books, and I’ve only seen part of one of her television appearances. I got as far as writing down my “money fears,” as she called them, but no further. Talking finances alternately confuses me, frustrates me, and — on occasion — depresses me. But I listened to Orman and watched her enough to get a “vibe” from her; one that made me wonder if she had secrets that weren’t just financial.

Turns out, my “gaydar” doesn’t just work with men. Albeit somewhat reluctantly, Orman came out recently about her seven year relationship with another woman, and some “money fears” of her own.

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Against the backdrop of the Edwards blogger saga and its aftermath, a couple of interesting and — to my mind, anyway — related events also played out, but got significantly less play. That’s probably due in part to the involvement of the same media that, Chris and Matt have pointed out, flogged the Edwards blogger story in to a froth that was only just wiped off the some pages by Anna Nicole Smith.

But it’s probably also due to the reality that there are some groups you can malign and get away with it, or at least rest assured that in doing so you won’t hear much noise about it.

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The facts of this story are appalling enough all by themselves, without going where I’m about to go with it. So, before I go there, I’ll just let them speak for themselves. Suffice it to say, if you’re gay and having heart failure in West Virginia, you may not get CPR if the chief of police has anything to say about it. At least, that’s what happened to Claude Green.

Claude Green was driving his truck in Welch on June 21, 2005, with Billy Snead as a passenger, when he suddenly suffered heart failure. Snead was able to guide the truck to a stop and administer CPR, reviving Green who gasped for breath. While Snead continued to minister to Green, Chief Bowman arrived at the scene and physically pulled Snead away from Green, exclaiming that Green was HIV-positive.

Bowman called 911 for an ambulance and blocked Snead from attempting to resume attending to Green. When the ambulance arrived, Bowman told the emergency workers that Green was HIV-positive, which they recorded, but it appears that they attempted CPR while driving him to the hospital. Bowman also went to the hospital and informed the emergency staff there that Green was HIV-positive. Green died shortly after reaching the hospital from heart disease.

Green was not HIV-positive.

According to the complaint filed by Helen Green, Bowman assumed that Green was HIV-positive because he knew Green had a sexual relationship with another man.

Helen Green filed wrongful death claims on behalf of her son’s estate against the city and Bowman, asserting violation of his right to due process and equal protection of the law in violation of the 14th Amendment, and also wrongful denial of services in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act and the West Virginia Human Rights Act. She also asserted a claim under West Virginia’s Wrongful Death Act.

So, when you think about it, Claude Green died of ignorance, because he was gay or at least was known to have had a sexual relationship with at least one man. From that the police chief extrapolated that Green was (a) gay and therefore (b) must have AIDS, and (c) HIV can be easily transmitted while performing CPR. Green’s mother file a wrongful death suit on her son’s behalf, and the latest ruling in the case will now allow her suit to go forward.

That’s the end of the story, until the next step in the legal process. The judge had determined that Claude Green’s estate has a valid claim and that Helen Green has legal standing to file a wrongful death claim on behalf of her son’s estate. I guess because she’s his mother, and nearest surviving relative. But I couldn’t help thinking when I read the story, how might it have turned out if Claude Green had left behind a male partner?

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Mary Cheney’s pregnancy is old, old news by now. I haven’t waded into the discussion because I needed time to gather my thoughts, and because I figured by now no one would be talking about it. After all, James Dobson’s Time magazine column in response to Mary’s pregnancy has already been denounced by the researchers whose work he poached and misrepresented for his purposes. (True to form, Dobson’s followers have dismissed the researchers’ objections. And if evangelicals’ knowledge of the bible is any indication, it’s par for the course from people who are more used to just believing what they’re told than they are to employing critical thought. So, they probably won’t read the researchers’ work anyway.)

Then there’s the president, who can’t make up his mind what he thinks. Or at least can’t answer a simple question about whether the fact that he thinks Mary will make a fine mother ought to have any relation to how he addresses policies that will affect Mary’s family and the rest of us. That’s really just puts him in the same category as the Cheneys and a lot of other Republicans who love, accept, and privately support their gay and lesbian friends and family members, but have also accepted the anti-gay policies of people like James Dobson as part of the bargain for maintaining political power. But more about that in a bit.

Then I came across this post on Queercents, addressing some of the issues Mary’s new family may face, and finally realized I had one or two things to say after all. Besides, what better time of year for a post about a pregnant woman named Mary who’s “had no relations with man”?

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So, it looks like New Jersey is going to do just what I said it would do after the state’s Supreme Court rendered its decision on marriage. The legislature’s vote for civil unions as a means of granting same-sex couples the rights and protections of marriage is a step forward in the sense that it means gay families in New Jersey will have more protections than they had before, but it leaves something to be desired.

The vote in the General Assembly was 56-19. The Senate vote was 23-12. Gov. Jon S. Corzine has said he would sign a civil unions bill into law.

Steven Goldstein, director of Equality New Jersey, told Bloomberg that the vote was a mixed blessing for the state’s gays and lesbians because there was no guarantee non-government entities would honor the decision.

“Nobody knows what civil unions are in the real world. That’s the problem,” Goldstein told Bloomberg. “We want marriage equality, not a law that discriminates.”

The move follows an order by the New Jersey Supreme Court, which directed the state to provide same-sex couples with marriage rights or their equivalent.

Employing civil rights terminology, gay and lesbian advocates blasted the decision and said that providing the benefits of marriage without calling it marriage was tantamount to the “separate but equal” treatment of a discriminated group.

… “By passing a law that marks same-sex couples as inferior, the government has paved the way for others to discriminate against them,” said David Buckel, marriage project director at Lambda Legal and lead attorney on the Lewis v. Harris marriage lawsuit that led to the court’s decision.

It’s not surprising, because the New Jersey legislature is well practiced in the art of compromise, as evidenced by the states domestic partnership, statute, which permitted cities and municipalities to establish domestic partnership policies for city employees, but didn’t require them to. The statute was no help to Laurel Hester, who had to mount a fight for domestic partnership even as she was losing a fight against cancer. And it was only afterwards that the Legislature got around to putting some teeth in the domestic partnership statute.

If you ask me, I think civil unions may be a tiny step forward, but they don’t solve anything. In fact, they raise more questions than they answer.

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I mentioned previously that I’d been reading Jim Wallis’ God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It, which I got my hands on via BookMooch. I’d been a bit critical of Wallis around the time that Obama was going on about Democrats courting evangelicals, because he and the rest of the “partial progressives” among the evangelicals who may be gaining influence with Democrats seem to ease up on their progressivism when it comes to gay issues.

But Wallis, in the aftermath of the Goodridge decision, affirmed that the “[Gay Americans'] civil and human rights must be honored, respected, and defended for a society to be healthy.” Impressive, coming from an evangelical Christian. So, I decided that at some point I wanted to read Wallis’ book to see just where I agreed with him, but also to see more about what he had to say about same-sex marriage and gay & lesbian civil rights. I ended up surprised in some ways, and not so surprised in others.

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Revisiting the New Jersey Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage ruling from yesterday, I find myself returning to a few key phrases from the ruling, particularly those that deal with the what the decision referred to as “the economic and financial inequities that are borne by same-sex domestic partners are also borne by their children,” because it’s one that I don’t think gets a lot of consideration when people start talking about same-sex marriage.

Most of the economic and financial issues are things that married heterosexuals don’t have to talk about, or even think about much, because it’s already given. But same-sex couples do have to talk about it, have to negotiate how to get just a few, can’t get most of those benefits, and have to pay more for the few we do get. And in many ways, same-sex couples assume many of the “burdens and obligations” of marriage referred to in the New Jersey decision are actually subsidizing for married heterosexuals the same benefits that are denied to us.

It almost makes marriage seem more like “welfare for heterosexuals” supported by the rest of us; a stipend, if you will, for being “straight.” That’s the part that doesn’t get talked about.

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Well, it’s done. The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled, in a 3 – 4 decision, that the state must equally recognize same-sex couples, but kicked it back to the legislature to decide how it’s to be done. You can read the decision here.

Only rights that are deeply rooted in the traditions, history, and conscience of the people are deemed to be fundamental. Although we cannot find that a fundamental right to same-sex marriage exists in this State, the unequal dispensation of rights and benefits to committed same-sex partners can no longer be tolerated under our State Constitution. With this State’s legislative and judicial commitment to eradicating sexual orientation discrimination as our backdrop, we now hold that denying rights and benefits to committed same-sex couples that are statutorily given to their heterosexual counterparts violates the equal protection guarantee of Article I, Paragraph 1. To comply with this constitutional mandate, the legislature must either amend the marriage statutes to include same-sex couples or create a parallel statutory structure, which will provide for, on equal terms, the rights and benefits enjoyed and burdens and obligations borne by married couples.

They actually said no to marriage, or at least that they couldn’t find a fundamental right to same-sex marriage in the state constitution. On the other hand, the equal protection clause in their constitution requires they find a way to give same-sex couples the benefits that married heterosexuals enjoy. In other words, it’s sort of what happened in Massachusetts, and so far the world hasn’t ended. So, New Jersey (and not Marilyn Musgrove) will figure out how equality is going to work in New Jersey.

It’s worth noting that the chief justice in New Jersey, Deborah Poritz (who dissented at least in part with the decision), is a Republican who was appointed by a Republican governor, Christine Todd Whitman.

As it turns out, according to John at Americablog, the ruling isn’t all that radical. It’s actually pretty close to the president’s position.

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Word came from Hotline yesterday that around 3pm today the New Jersey Supreme Court will lob a same-sex marriage grenade decision into the middle of a pre-election period that’s already had more than its share of gay-related news. And while the Hotline post declares it’s becoming an “article of faith” that these amendments don’t bring “angry conservatives” to the polls, I’m not exactly sure how it will play out. It may be that it doesn’t have to bring them to the polls in numbers, but just enough of them to deliver even a 1% margin of victory.

Chris Crain says that exploiting fears about same-sex marriage helped Republicans in swing states like Ohio in 2004. And though polls may have shifted somewhat, and margins harrowed on state anti-gay marriage amendments this year, the issue still doesn’t have to help Republicans a lot in order to help them win. It just has to help them enough. Close, after all, only counts in horseshoes and …. well. You know. But, whether or not the ruling is a flaming pink hand grenade thrown into an already tumultuous campaign season, I can’t say that it’s a bad thing that there’s a case for the New Jersey Supreme Court to rule on in the first place.

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For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been ranting about the closet and those who chose its alleged safety for the sake of preserving political power (and perhaps personal privacy), and I’ve been raving about the possibilities for change that lie beyond the closet door. Well, this week was one that uncovered the risks of opening that door as well. But not in a way that even begins to cast a closets of Capitol Hill in a sympathetic light, because of the stories of two black gay men who had neither wealth now power to protect — but perhaps even more to lose — but came out anyway.

I was writing last week’s round-up when I heard about the death of Michael Sandy, after a gay bashing left him on life support. Black gay organizations rallied in New York on Monday. Keith spoke at the rally, and posted a memorial to Michael on his blog. On the heels of Michael Sandy’s death came news that Tyrone Garner, a plaintiff in Lawrence v. Texas, remained unburied 37 days after his death due to lack of funds for his funeral. It seems, still, that simply being out and daring to take a stand doesn’t defend against death or guarantee dignity. But merely the honor of having lived your truth.

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