Mitt Romney apparently has leaned anything from the Richard Grenell debacle.  While attempting to do damage control, Romney dug his hole deeper by referring to being gay as a "sexual preference."  That term along with "lifesyle choice" are the favorite terms of the Christofascist because the clear inference is that they involve choice.  Orientation, on the other hand is immutable and not changing - exactly what makes discrimination based on sexual orientation in the same league as racial discrimination.  The target of the discrimination cannot change the trait despised by the one engaging in discrimination.  Think Progress looks at Romney's additional self inflicted wound. Here are highlights:

Mitt Romney spoke out about the resignation of ex-foreign policy adviser Richard Grenell during an appearance on Fox News this morning. In doing so, the former Massachusetts governor failed to condemn the homophobia that helped convince the openly-gay foreign policy expert to leave the campaign less than two weeks after he first joined it.

Romney’s remarks represent the campaign’s failure to actively take on the social conservative wing of the Republican party on equality issues. Rather than publicly defend Grenell from groups who labeled him a “homosexual activist,” the candidate instead chose to muzzle his foreign policy spokesperson, asking him to remain silent on a recent conference call.

As one Republican told the New York Times, “It’s not that the campaign cared whether Ric Grenell was gay. They believed this was a nonissue. But they didn’t want to confront the religious right.” Romney’s response to Grenell’s resignation demonstrates that he himself also fears alienating these extreme elements.

Andrew Sullivan calls out Romney as is appropriate:

Sexual "preference" is about whether you are attracted to blondes or brunettes, twinks or bears, older or younger, etc. Being gay is a sexual and emotional orientation. It is not a choice. It is a fact. Like your craven cowardice in the face of raw bigotry.

Having the Courage to Speak Out and Act Even When It's Unpopular

I have written a number of times about the phenomenon of basically good people failing to act when morality and decency argue for action and speaking out against injustice and prejudice. Too often it is easier - and safer - to do and say nothing. The fact that inaction may even be popular doesn't make it right. The bigotry that needs to be confronted may be racial bigotry such as what Atticus Finch confronted in To Kill A Mockingbird, anti-Semitic bigotry, anti-gay religious based bigotry and hate so widely disseminated by self-congratulatory "godly Christians, or the fear and prejudice of a strange and frightening disease. The truly brave and morally strong will act regardless of the potential negative personal consequences that may be entailed. A post at America Blog Gay looks at one such amazing individual: Elizabeth Taylor. Here are some post highlights:
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In 1986 and again in 1988, hundreds of thousands of Californians signed petitions to place initiatives on the ballot that would have mandated the quarantine of AIDS patients. Such was the homophobic hysteria surrounding AIDS when Elizabeth Taylor began planning her first AIDS fundraiser. Taylor remembered the reactions:
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People … slammed doors in my face and hung up on me . . . [P]eople would say, 'No, I'm not getting mixed up in that!' And, 'You have to get out of this, Elizabeth. It's going to ruin your career.' These reactions only seemed to strengthen Taylor’s resolve. Indeed, the vitriolic homophobia surrounding AIDS motivated her to become involved in the first place. She was quoted as saying:
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"Worse than the virus there was the terrible discrimination and prejudice it left in its wake. Suddenly it made gay people stop being human beings and start becoming the enemy. I knew somebody had to do something. For God's sake, our president didn't even utter the word for years into the epidemic."
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And
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"If it weren't for homosexuals there would be no culture. We can trace that back thousands of years. So many of the great musicians, the great painters were homosexual. Without their input it would be an entirely different, flat world. To see their heritage, what they had given the world, be desecrated with people saying, 'Oh, AIDS is probably what they deserve' or 'it's probably God's way of weeding the dreadful people out,' made me so irate."
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Taylor made AIDS her life’s cause. At a time when the disease was called "the gay plague" and others were afraid to even touch people with HIV, Taylor employed her star power to help humanize those living with the disease. She made headlines throughout the world when she was photographed shaking hands with HIV/AIDS patients in a Thai hospital. She helped found the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amFAR) in 1985, and later, in 1991, the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation (ETAF).
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An impassioned lobbyist, Taylor was not afraid of taking a swipe at leaders for their inaction. At an international AIDS conference, she criticized the first president Bush, remarking, “I don't think [he] is doing anything at all about AIDS. In fact I'm not even sure if he knows how to spell AIDS.” She testified before Congress in 1986 in support of the Ryan White Act, and then again in 1990, when it finally passed. She also spoke at the United Nations, imploring its members to join in the fight against the disease.
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The Christianists may mock Taylor for her many marriages, but in my view it is she, not the self-anointed pious ones, who understood the real Gospel message and acted when others would not. She was one brave woman.

Too Gay For The USA?

The caption of this post is the headline of an article that looks at the slow launch and to date depressing revenues of the movie I Love You Phillip Morris, starring Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor. True to form - and probably supporting the article's premise - the movie is not showing anywhere locally. If it shows anywhere, it will likely be at The Naro Theater in Norfolk's Ghent neighborhood which is the region's closest thing to a gayborhood. Where the movie is doing well is in European markets where males in particular don't seem so afflicted with insecurity about their own sexuality. The article goes on to posit that the characters in Phillip Morris aren't agonizing about their sexuality and don't end up dead or outcasts also cuts against the norm of how Hollywood films treat gay protaganists in what few large release gay themed films we have seen in the past. It's unfortunate, but I believe the article is a damning testament to how f*cked American society remains when it comes to LGBT acceptance. Here are highlights from AskMen:
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I Love You Phillip Morris, the new film starring Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor, has so far grossed over $18 million -- almost entirely in foreign markets. In fact, as of last week, its domestic ticket sales wouldn't pay the salary of a school superintendent. That's because, although the film has been finished for almost two years, it was just released in the United States last Friday and has so far been shown on a total of six screens.
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Though the industry reaction wasn't overtly bigoted -- Hollywood is a town of making-nice and air-kissing after all -- there was a telling deafness to the project. "It was almost a lack of reaction. More a retreat," says Lazar.
Distributors may well have been thrown by a film as genre-bending and tonally-varied as Phillip Morris, which is at once a slapstick comedy, a con-man thriller, a prison-break drama and a love story, but the gay content seems to have been a major factor in their skittishness.
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There have been big American movies starring gay characters in recent years, notably Brokeback Mountain and Milk, and one would think these Oscar-winning hits would have whetted the industry's appetite for gay subject matter, or at least settled its uneasy stomach. But in truth, when Hollywood embraces films with gay themes, it does so in fairly specific and predictable ways, and the offbeat, morally neutral Phillip Morris simply didn't fit the mold.
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So what, in particular, does Hollywood not like about Philip Morris?... In each case, being gay creates personal or social problems for the characters and is the main font of dramatic tension in the film. It's hardly a coincidence that the protagonists of major gay-themed films generally wind up dead, slain either by disease or by bigoted assassins representing the status quo. . . . As such, their deaths make a broader social point and an easily digestible moral lesson for the viewing public. They're martyrs to time and place, figures both tragic and heroic.
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Carrey's flamboyant fraudster is none of the above. Where Hollywood's gay favorites are noble or conflicted, Russell is selfish and exuberant. He's neither a political crusader nor a tortured soul, and I Love You Phillip Morris offers none of the easy balms of martyrdom or an Underdog-vs.-the-Machine narrative.
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Andrew Lazar thinks it's precisely this lack of agonizing and self-flagellation that's made the film popular with GLAAD and other gay and lesbian groups. "Once he gets to his authentic self there's never any looking back," says Lazar. "It's: 'This is it. I'm gay and this is who I'm going to be.'" It sounds so simple, yet marketing departments were afraid of the movie, says Lazar, which he describes as "an unapologetic gay love story" with an audacious sense of humor.
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More audacious than the humor is the fact that the film treats homosexuality as neither an obstacle nor a plight, resulting for once in a film with gay characters that's not about the personal or social travails of being gay. Like anyone, Steven and Phillip have their problems, but being gay isn't one of them.

The "Good People" Who Enable Anti-Gay Bigotry

There's a saying that bad things happen when good people do nothing to stop them. It's surely a true analysis in the context of anti-gay prejudice and bigotry. All too often our allies accept us but are totally unwilling to speak out and loudly condemn those who demonize us and even threaten us with physical violence. Being a gay accepting Christian or church denomination is a good thing. But something better would be a gay accepting Christian or entire denomination that is willing to go to the media and repeatedly call out the hate merchants and Christianists who wrap themselves in religion while providing justification for bigotry and the dehumanization of others. Too often our religious allies remain quiet out of apparent fear of offending some of the bigots that remain within their own flocks. But this sin of omission isn't limited to churches and their members, It extends across the public and most particularly to our elected officials starting at the very top in the White House. Weak kneed statements of support are in no wise equal to active condemnation of prejudice or real actions on pro-equality legislation. David Mixner has a good post on this issue. Here are some highlights:
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This holiday I was walking on West 47th Street just off Times Square when two guys came walking toward me. My guess is that they were in their late 20's but maybe a little older. They were well-dressed and seemed clean-cut and, frankly, harmless. As they approached me, they spat at me and said, "This is for you 'the King of the Faggots'." Whoa, I was totally taken back in time and I came to a halt at the force of the words.
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These guys felt they had permission to express their disgust and hate openly. That permission not only comes from the heated debate over the struggle for our freedom. Clearly there are those organized hate groups that actually encourage these actions. But we also can look to religious leaders who remain silent, the Pope who is on a LGBT witch hunt and yes, even our President who constantly says marriage is between a man and a woman implying that any other definition is just not normal and maybe even disgusting.
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The derogatory term had power. It hurt. It was degrading. The hate was scary. For a quick second, I felt dirty and very vulnerable. Don't get me wrong, it did not weaken my resolve to be a free man. In fact it is serving as a fuel so we can end such blatant hate in America. So to all those, gay or straight, who think it is cute to use the word "faggot" or "fag' either in joking or even self proclaimed empowerment......stop it.
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Every time a politician makes excuses for inaction or, like John McSenile, seeks to block equality, they are empowering hate and bigotry. The same holds true for every religious leader that allows hate groups like Family Research Council or corrupt hypocrites like Pope Benedict XVI to be the face of Christianity.

Legal Loopholes Rob Children of Gays of Rights and Protections.

The Irish Times has a story on an Irish report into the experiences of children of gay parents reveals the closeness of such families, but also the anguish caused by legal loopholes that rob them of basic rights. While the report looks at situations in Ireland, the parallels with the USA and anti-gay states such as Virginia in particular are many fold. Sadly, Christianists have no qualms about injecting homophobia into the civil laws and punishing children merely because they have same sex parents - yet another illustration that Christianity is not a positive in the lives of many people. Indeed, it is yet another example of extremist religious belief constituting an active evil (and why each time I read such stories, I slip further away from wanting to be associated with Christians whatsoever). Here are some story highlights:
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Tomorrow marks the launch of a groundbreaking report from the organisation Marriage Equality called Voices of Children . The report documents for the first time the experiences of children growing up in Ireland with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) parents. The often complex social and legal issues raised in the report will be discussed at a one-day conference being held as part of the launch.
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Like the other young people interviewed for the report – there were 12 participants, all of them the children of lesbian couples, in what is a modest qualitative research study – Barry believes it is important that awareness is raised about their legally precarious status.
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The recently published Civil Partnership Act does not give children of civil partners the same rights as those of married people. Nor does it recognise the relationship between a child and its non-biological civil-partnered parent. The children of gay parents are left in limbo with regard to a range of issues such as the protection of the family home, maintenance, succession rights, divorce, guardianship and custody.
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Does having gay parents mean they are more likely to be gay? This question makes Christine Irwin-Murphy (22) from Darndale in Dublin laugh out loud. “I just find that question hilarious; it always makes me laugh,” she says. “Sexuality is not predetermined by what your parents are. It’s who you are and who you find attractive or, more importantly, who you don’t find attractive.
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Having an unconventional family arrangement made school life difficult for many of the children in the group, except where they attended a more progressive school or had teachers who were “nice” enough to respect their families. The report contains several examples of everyday homophobia, especially concerning the policy in some schools not to let sick children go home with their non-biological parent.
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Another example was one group member’s memory of being discriminated against by her friend’s homophobic parent with the apparent approval of the school principal. “That friend’s parents found out that I had a gay mother, and went into school and told the principal that she didn’t want her child playing with that other child. And the principal actually accepted that,” she said.
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Young people in LGBT families are excluded from adoption and Civil Partnership legislation, despite warnings from the Ombudsman for Children that this could give rise to violations of international human rights. For campaigners, the upcoming referendum on children’s rights is an opportunity to address these very real concerns.

Paul Mayén: Fallingwater’s Lesser-Known Architect

Almost a year ago the boyfriend and I visited Fallingwater, one of Frank Lloyd Wright's most famous residential projects, while in southwestern Pennsylvania for the boyfriend's family reunion. As I noted in a post last August, one thing that isn't mentioned during the tour of the home is that Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., who inherited the house upon death of his parents, was gay. The tour guides only note that "he never married." Thanks to a recent comment from a reader, I was provided with some information about "the rest of the story" as Paul Harvey used to say. It turns out that in many ways Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., did "marry" - or at least to the extent most of us in the American LGBT community still find ourselves "marrying" our life partners. Kaufmann met Paul Mayén (pictured above) in the early 1950's and the two spent their lives together thereafter until Kaufmann's death more than 30 years later in 1989. What's even crazier is that the visitor center/pavilion at Fallingwater (the cafe is shown in the photo below) was designed by Kaufmann, Jr."s partner, Paul Mayén. It is sad that in this day and age, false "family values" still continue to hide gay achievements and relationships. Here is some information that provides the rest of the story:
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Frank Lloyd Wright may have designed Fallingwater in the 1930s, but it was Paul Mayén (5/1918-11/2000) who designed its gift shop. Both structures host over 130,000 architectural devotees and laymen every year. Both structures are internationally recognized for how seamlessly they blend into their environments. Both men were artists and architects and shared many of the same friends. But while Wright has achieved an almost-movie-star-like fame, Paul Mayén remains practically unknown...
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In the early 1950s, he met a fellow art student, Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., with whom he would share his life until Edgar’s death in 1989. Edgar’s father was the founder of Kaufmann’s department store in Pittsburgh; it was his father who commissioned Wright to build the now-famous vacation house for his friends and family near a waterfall in rural Pennsylvania. Wright, exceeding the original budget by almost a factor of ten, instead designed and built Fallingwater over the waterfall. In 1955, Edgar inherited the property and Paul and he visited the site together on mountain retreats until the property was entrusted to a conservation in 1963.
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In 1956, the couple assisted I.N. and Bernadine Hagan in choosing the furniture for the Hagan’s Frank Lloyd Wright house at the architect’s suggestion. In 1959, Paul designed the jacket of a book about Wright, Drawings for a Living Architecture, which was edited by Giuseppe Samonà.
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In 1975, he built a country house for them in Garrison, New York. From 1979 to 1981, he oversaw the building of the Fallingwater pavilion which houses a café, gift store, and visitor’s center. When Edgar Jr. died, Paul scattered his ashes at Fallingwater. He died in 2000 and also had his ashes scattered there.
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Sadly, even Edgar Kaufmann, Jr.'s obituary -while mentioning Mayén as Kaufmann's "longtime colleague and companion" ends with the sentence "There are no survivors."

Virginia's Judicial Lynching of Gays

No, this is not another post about Bob McDonnell's "lynching" of Judge Verbena Askew during the reappointment hearings back in 2003. Instead it's another look at the judicial lynching of gay spouses that happens likely nearly daily somewhere in Virginia where homophobic judges are allowed to ingnore the Canons of Judicial Conduct at will even thought Canon 3 provides in relevant part as follows:

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CANON 3. A JUDGE SHALL PERFORM THE DUTIES OF JUDICIAL OFFICE IMPARTIALLY AND DILIGENTLY.

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Judicial Duties in General. The judicial duties of a judge take precedence over all the judge's other activities. The judge's judicial duties include all the duties of the judge's office prescribed by law. In the performance of these duties, the following standards apply.

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Adjudicative Responsibilities.
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5. A judge shall perform judicial duties without bias or prejudice. A judge shall not, in the performance of judicial duties, by words or conduct manifest bias or prejudice, including but not limited to bias or prejudice based upon race, sex, religion, national origin, disability, age, sexual orientation or socioeconomic status, and shall not permit staff, court officials and others subject to the judge's direction and control to do so. This Section 3B(5) does not preclude proper judicial consideration when race, sex, religion, national origin, disability, age, sexual orientation or socioeconomic status, or similar factors, are issues in the proceeding.

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6. A judge shall require all persons appearing in proceedings before the judge to refrain from manifesting, by words or conduct, bias or prejudice based upon race, sex, religion, national origin, disability, age, sexual orientation or socioeconomic status, against parties, witnesses, counsel or others.
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E. Disqualification.
1. A judge shall disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned, including but not limited to instances where: a. The judge has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party or a party's lawyer, or personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts concerning the proceeding;

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These dictates have certainly been ignored in my own divorce case and in those of many others gay spouses I have heard from who came out later in life after being married. Here's one individual's comment on his experience:

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There is a lot of hoopla about gay men coming out early, and good for them, I say. Yet there are many many men who married because it was the expected thing, because it was the only thing. And they face hard hard choices.

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I opted to come out. I lost nearly everything and everyone, including wife, kids, family, friends, job, court cases. Faced with similar choices, a friend and former co-worker (who worked for the same religious-based organization I had) drowned himself. The pain is real. folks. Awfully, terribly real.

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Losing everything and suicides - does any of this mean anything to many Virginia judges? Sadly, it means nothing to I suspect a majority of Virginia's judges. Indeed, in my view, judges who punish LGBT litigants for failure to adhere to the judge's personal anti-gay religious views are the norm as opposed to the exception. Something needs to be done and judges who cannot put their anti-gay religious bias aside need to simply be removed from the bench. It's really that simple. And someone needs to see that the Canons of Judicial Conduct are actually enforced for a change.