Democrats: Gay Is Good for America

As a gay America, one thing that was striking about the Democrat Party convention was the end of the reluctance of the party to openly admit that LGBT Americans exist.  Even more, the repeated references to LGBT rights even suggests that addressing our existence and rights is good politics.  Unlike the GOP which is controlled by hate and fear driven Christofascists, the Democrats seem to understand that society is changing and that the younger generations are fully on board for LGBT equality.  A piece in Slate looks at this phenomenon.  Here are excerpts:

More than a dozen speakers mentioned LGBT equality on the first two nights of the Democratic convention, including Michelle Obama, who positioned marriage equality as a new ingredient of American greatness: “If proud Americans can be who they are and boldly stand at the altar with who they love, then surely, surely we can give everyone in this country a fair chance at that great American Dream.” Openly gay speakers are getting primetime billing. A record-setting 8 percent of delegates are LGBT. The party’s unprecedented embrace of gay equality comes a week after Joe Biden thanked gay rights advocates in Provincetown for “freeing the soul of the American people.” The gay rights movement, said the vice president, was advancing the “civil rights of every straight American.” For gay people’s “courage,” he said, “We owe you.”

There you have it: For the first time ever, Democrats at their most public, high-profile moment are treating gay rights as a political winner. They’re moving along with public opinion: In the latest Harris Interactive poll, 52 percent of likely voters favored same-sex marriage, including 70 percent of Democrats and 55 percent of independents.

Instead, equality is increasingly—and correctly—cast as a means of improving not only the lot of minorities, but the country for us all. New York magazine recently reported the trend of a growing number of straight couples quoting gay marriage court decisions in their own wedding ceremonies. Expanding access appears to be rejuvenating rather than destroying the institution. As Slate reported earlier this year, statistics bear this out. The marriage rate in Massachusetts, the first state to allow gay couples to wed, actually went up in the years same-sex marriage became legal, even adjusting for the initial 16 percent increase caused by pent-up demand by gay couples waiting to wed. What’s more, in each of the five states that legalized same-sex marriage starting in 2004, divorce rates dropped even while the average rate across the country rose. These figures give the lie to breathless warnings that same-sex marriage will harm marriage.

Equal rights fosters openness, which has positive fallout of its own. There are no doubt fewer sham marriages than there were in the 1950s. Gay-straight friendships are more authentic without a lifelong secret blocking discussion about love and intimacy. Straight men are likely more forgiving of their own nonconformist impulses—perhaps including passing same-sex desires. Parents have fewer estranged relations with sons and daughters whose deepest secrets and fears they once could never know, and whose struggles with depression and loneliness they sought in vain to understand.

The principle that minority equality helps the majority was one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s most important insights during the black civil rights movement. “The stirring lesson of this age,” King declared, “is that mass nonviolent direct action is not a peculiar device for Negro agitation,” but a “method for defending freedom and democracy, and for enlarging these values for the benefit of the whole society.”

There's much more to the piece and it is worth a full read.

The Continued Christianist Myth of "God's Creation" of the Institution of Marriage

You have to hand one thing to the Christianists and their political whores in the Republican Party - they are some of the most consistent liars one might ever meet.  Nothing, including the truth and actual real history are never allowed to get in the way of the lies they spin to support their anti-gay marriage agenda.  Time and time again, both in North Carolina before Tuesday's horrific vote and now in the wake of Barack Obama's embrace of marriage equality yesterday, they spout the myth that "God created marriage as one man and one woman."  It's a complete lie, of course, but then again, these people think the Commandment against lying and bearing false witness doesn't apply to them.  So much for actually honoring the Bible and the Ten Commandments.  Several pieces I came across today, not to mention two old newspaper clips that my LGBT blogger compatriot Jeremy Hooper posted at Good As You underscore the grossness of  lies being disseminated by the Christianists and their pandering prostitutes in the GOP.  The first newspaper clip is at the top of this post.  The date of the article is July 29, 1937 - and note the emphasis on marriage being a CIVIL law institution first and foremost.   

Even more damning is a piece in the New York Book Review Blog that tarces the history of marriage in the first 1200 years of the Christian church.  The truth is that through the end of the Roman Empire, Roman civil law controlled marriage.  Even after the Empire fell, it was another nearly 750 years before the Church adopted a uniform marriage policy.  That's right, for the majority of Christianity's history marriage was not even a Church sacrament.  Here are some excerpts:

Why do some people who would recognize gay civil unions oppose gay marriage? Certain religious groups want to deny gays the sacredeness of what they take to be a sacrament. But marriage is no sacrament. Some of my fellow Catholics even think that “true marriage” was instituted by Christ. It wasn’t. Marriage is prescribed in Eden by YHWH (Yahweh) at Genesis 2.24: man and wife shall “become one flesh.” When Jesus is asked about marriage, he simply quotes that passage from Genesis (Mark 10.8). He nowhere claims to be laying a new foundation for a “Christian marriage” to replace the Yahwist institution. 

The early church had no specific rite for marriage. This was left up to the secular authorities of the Roman Empire, since marriage is a legal concern for the legitimacy of heirs. When the Empire became Christian under Constantine, Christian emperors continued the imperial control of marriage, as the Code of Justinian makes clear. When the Empire faltered in the West, church courts took up the role of legal adjudicator of valid marriages. But there was still no special religious meaning to the institution. As the best scholar of sacramental history, Joseph Martos, puts it: “Before the eleventh century there was no such thing as a Christian wedding ceremony in the Latin church, and throughout the Middle Ages there was no single church ritual for solemnizing marriage between Christians.” 

Only in the twelfth century was a claim made for some supernatural favor (grace) bestowed on marriage as a sacrament. By the next century marriage had been added to the biblically sacred number of seven sacraments.  .   .   .   .   And bad effects followed. This sacralizing of the natural reality led to a demoting of Yahwist marriage, the only kind Jesus recognized, as inferior to “true marriage” in a church.
Those who do not want to let gay partners have the sacredness of sacramental marriage are relying on a Scholastic fiction of the thirteenth century to play with people’s lives, as the church has done ever since the time of Aquinas. The myth of the sacrament should not let people deprive gays of the right to natural marriage, whether blessed by Yahweh or not. They surely do not need—since no one does—the blessing of Saint Thomas.  

 Also of interest is a November 11, 1915 newspaper article set out below that looks at the "evolution of marriage" via Good As You. What noteworthy is that part of the evolution is the trend from polygamous marriage - the standard in the Old Testament - and the movement from women being the property of their husbands toward equal partners.  Not surprisingly, the author, Cyrus Towsend Brady, an ordained Episcopal priest who died in 1920 was none too happy with the "evolution of marriage."  The bottom line is that marriage was never "created by God" and has always been about property rights and control of women.  Not that the truth matters to the Christianists or their GOP minions.

Click on the image to enlarge.

Late last year I wrote about the true Biblical model for marriage and found that -contrary to what self-enriching whore Maggie Gallagher and the folks at the National Organization for marriage or KKK loving Tony Perkins at Family Research Council bleat about marriage between one man and one woman - the true models depicted in the Bible rarely in fact support the Christianists' claims. Instead, the majority of the Bible's model's for marriage are something quite different unless one selectively ignores the many passages that show Gallagher and Perkins to be liars. The image above (which I found via Joe.By.God) illustrates what the Bible really says about the models for marriage. Isn't it strange how those who claim to worship the Bible as the literal "word of God" ignore so many inconvenient passages?

As I have noted many, many times before, if one is going to claim that the Bible is inerrant and the literal word of God, one doesn't get to pick and choose which passages to uphold and which ones to ignore. It's an all or nothing proposition - at least if one is intellectually and morally consistent. Which we all know is not true of Christianists. Their hallmarks are lying, disseminating hate and, of course rank hypocrisy.

Self-Enrichers at NOM Promote Bogus Biblical Version of Marriage

As regular readers know, I view Maggie Gallagher and similar self-enriching hate merchants at the National Organization for Marriage ("NOM") as lower than the sleaziest prostitutes or as my New Orleans belle grandmother might have said, lower than white trash which in her opinion was as low as one could go. Maggie and company continue to rake in generous six figure incomes promoting anti-gay hate while their latest promotion is lauding a billboard campaign in Putnam County, Tennessee which purports to promote "biblical view of marriage between man and woman." The problem, of course, is that a close perusal of the Bible reveals that there is little to support the proposition of marriage as a God ordained sacrament between one man and one woman. Rather, polygamy is the God ordained pattern for marriage according to the Bible, especially the Old Testament. Biblical Polygamy has a complete run down of the male Biblical leaders who believed in anything but one man and one woman. In short, once agin, when Maggie Gallagher's lips are moving, odds are that she's lying. First, here is some of the batshitery from NOM's blog:
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A grassroots effort to promote the biblical view of "Marriage God's Way" has materialized into the form of two billboards in Putnam County.
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The billboards, produced by Roland Advertising of Cookeville, Tenn., depict a young man and woman along with the words: "Man + Woman = Marriage God's Way" in reference to Genesis 2:24 from the Bible. The first, located on Tennessee State Highway 111 south of Interstate 40, went up in September. A second billboard went up on I-40, westbound before Exit 290, in October.
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"There are two basic ways of looking at marriage. Either humans invented marriage or God created it. If marriage is a human arrangement, then a society may alter it at will or do away with it altogether. But if marriage is a divine institution, then only God has the right to say what it is and who has the moral right to be in it."
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While Genesis 2:24 can be torturously construed to reference one man and one woman, a review of the many, many more Bible passages indicates that either (1) David, Solomon and many other of "God's chosen" apparently did not get the message, (2) marriage was ordained by God to involve multiple wives, or (3) marriage as a joining of one man and only one woman is a human construct. Indeed, based on the Old Testament, the Mormons got it right when it comes to multiple wives. And, if the Bible is inerrant as the the majority of the gay haters claim, then they are stuck with this baggage that is unchangeable according to their own propaganda. Here's a brief run down of the chosen ones of the Old Testament:
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Abraham: Faithful friend of God and father of the Hebrew nation. "Father of the faithful." 3 Wives - Sarah, Hagar and Keturah. Genesis 16:1; Genesis 25:1
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David: King of Israel. "After God's own heart." At least 18 wives - Michal, Abigail, Ahinoam of Jezreel, Eglah, Maacah, Abital, Haggith, and Bathsheba, and "10 women/concubines." 2 Samuel
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Solomon: 1,000 wives - Sidontans, Tyrians, Ammonites and Edomites.
"And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines: and his wives turned away his heart." 1 Kings 11:3
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Gideon: A judge of Israel. Drumah, Shechem. "And Gideon had threescore and ten sons of his body begotten: for he had many wives." Judges 8:30
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Esau: 3 Wives - Judith, Bashemath and Mahalath, "And Esau was forty years old when he took to wife Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Bashemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite:" Genesis 26:34. "Then went Esau unto Ishmael, and took unto the wives which he had Mahalath the daughter of Ishmael Abraham's son, the sister of Nebajoth, to be his wife." Genesis 28:9
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Moses: Penned the Pentateuch, Torah, Genesis through Deuteronomy (which includes authoring the passages of Genesis chapters 2 through 3, Genesis 2:24, Exodus 21:10, Deuteronomy 21:15, etc.). 2 Wives, Zipporah and the Ethiopian Woman. "And Moses was content to dwell with the man: and he gave Moses Zipporah his daughter." Exodus 2:21. (See also Exodus 18:1-6.) "And Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married: for he had married an Ethiopian woman." Numbers 12:1
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Jacob: Father of the twelve patriarchs of the tribes of Israel. "The prince of God." 4 Wives - Leah, Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah
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There are more examples, but you get the drift. I'd like to hear Miss Maggie try to disingenuously explain all this away. Of course, she can't and won't even try, probably complaining about how "mean" gays are. The truth, of course, is that "marriage" is not God ordained, but rather a human invention.

Why Marriage Doesn't Belong to the Christianists

Palm Springs City Councilwoman Ginny Foat has a thoughtful op-ed in the Desert Sun that lays out a hard hitting case for why "marriage" does not belong to the Christianists and others who seek to make their religious beliefs superior to those of all others. Indeed, in the final analysis, "protecting marriage" has no role in the mix except for sloganeering and propaganda. Indeed, as Ms. Foat lays out, marriage has always been a contract with varying rules and varying forms over time and throughout various cultures. The "one man and one woman" form that the Christo-fascist now claim was mandated God is a relatively recent invention and portions of the Bible - in many ways a very flawed book of mythology - demonstrate that many stalwarts of God had multiple wives. Thus, the "one man and one woman" mantra of the Christianists is, like so much of the noise spewing from them, a lie. But then again, few lie as often and with as little remorse as the professional Christian set and its talking heads like Tony Perkins, Tim Wildmon, James Dobson, et al. Here are some highlights from Ginny Foat's piece that demonstrate that on marriage, the Christianists are lying again each time they claim marriage has always been between one man and one woman:
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It is rare that I open my Sunday paper and read an opinion piece with such revulsion as I did in reading the piece authored by Jay Ambrose on Judge Walker's decision overturning Proposition 8. I guess I had just had enough!
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To set the stage, I am sitting in my den, sipping my coffee and reading with my partner of 24 years whom I have been legally married to for two years. The dog's asleep as usual on the couch and the mundane chores of a Sunday afternoon are ahead.
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I have yet to see a letter or opinion piece opposed to gay marriage that equates the issue with real people, your next door neighbor, your doctor, your grocery store clerk, your council member or any of the other members of the LGBT community that you interact with every day.
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It all centers on that word “marriage” that seems to be the lightning rod for denial of equality much as it was in 1967 and the infamous case Loving v. Virginia.
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The [Virginia] judge in that case, Judge Leon Bazile, said, “Almighty God created the races black, white, yellow, malay and red and placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangements, there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not want the races to mix.”
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Before we start talking about gay marriage, let's look at the sorted history of marriage and its origins. Marriage did not start out as an edict from God. It is and has always been a legal agreement. It started out as a way to determine property rights and a tool to carry on bloodlines. It gets real complicated in biblical times as to the additional reasons such as the price for a bride, violation of virginity, in-laws' rights to pick the bride, how many livestock would be allocated etc. Marriage went from two families trying to maintain a bloodline and property to the 700 wives of King Solomon.
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As history progressed, there were the various forms of marriage, including:
Polygamy, the practice of having multiple wives, (outlawed by Abraham Lincoln in 1862 yet estimates are that there are still 100,000 marriages in the U.S.).
Polyandry, the practice of having multiple husbands.
Endogamy, a requirement that you only marry within the family tribe or within your social status group.
Erogamy, which was that you marry only outside your tribe.
Common-law marriage, which allowed for recognition of cohabitation and in some cases a written agreement between the parties.
And, finally, in Las Vegas, where heterosexual couples can get married and divorced to the same person in a matter of minutes.

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So how can anyone opine that marriage is a sacred consecration created by God of one woman and one man when that seems, in the historical sense, to be a recent occurrence?
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This brings us to Judge Walker's learned and comprehensive decision about my life. One of the most telling findings for me in the entire decision was: “Moral disapproval alone is an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians. The evidence shows conclusively that Proposition 8 enacts, without reason, a private moral view that same-sex couples are inferior to opposite-sex couples,” Walker wrote.
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I have yet to hear of one heterosexual marriage that was diminished because California briefly allowed committed, loving people of the same sex to marry.
I am not asking for your church to sanction my marriage or for you to embrace it. All any of us living in loving, committed family relationships want is to be treated equally and fairly by our government.
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Like so much else done by the "godly Christians" who daily demonize gay lives, be it in the form of DADT, employment discrimination or something else, the real agenda is about making LGBT individuals inferior for our failure to comply with Christianist religious views. "Protecting marriage" actually has nothing to do with it whatsoever.

Concerned Women Attack Chelsea Clinton for Marrying - the Horrors - A Jew

Never at a loss for words in their perverted quest to make the USA a Bible beating, Kool-Aid drinking theocracy, the bitches at Concerned Women for America have reached a new low - or at least another low, since they are in general such lying sleaze bags that they achieve many lows. Now, these godly, self-anointed bitches are attacking Chelsea Clinton for - oh the absolute horror - marrying a man of Jewish descent. Heaven forbid that people be judged based on their character or personal attributes. For the good bitches at CWFA, the only thing that matters is whether or not one is a far right Christian who hates gays, Jews, Muslims - indeed practically everyone else in the world. I know many individuals of the Jewish faith that on a daily basis act in a more Christ like manner towards others compared to the hate filled Christofascists at CWFA. (In my view, CWFA offers yet another reason not to call one's self a Christian nowadays). Here are some highlights from CWFA's screed authored by uber-bitch, Janice Crouse Shaw, taking Chelsea to task for marry someone Shaw obviously views as just a descendant of Christ killing Jews (NOTE: Shaw cites far right nutcase Al Mohler as one of her "experts"):
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When asked about the significance of her daughter, Chelsea, marrying Marc Mezvinsky, who is Jewish, and thus being married in an interfaith union, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton responded, “Over the years, so many of the barriers that prevented people from getting married, crossing lines of faith or color or ethnicity have just disappeared.” True, the barriers have disappeared, but serious difficulties remain.
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Observers have noted that both Clinton and Mezvinsky were raised in homes where religious faith was central to family life and questioned whether one or the other would convert and how they would reconcile the practice of their different faiths.
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While intermarriage indicates a “high degree of assimilation and tolerance,” it also means “the declining role of faith and religious identity in the minds of many young Americans,” according to Allan Schwartz, in the “Emotional Challenges of Interfaith Marriage.” In her classic book, The Good Marriage: How and Why Love Lasts, Judith Wallerstein reports that couples set the stage for conflict, bitterness, and misunderstanding as they make the emotional and psychological separation from their families’ religious heritage. Problems begin as early as the planning of the wedding ceremony, where different traditions are in conflict, especially when certain symbols of faith “evoke powerful emotional responses.”
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“When the level of doctrinal commitment is low, the barriers to interfaith marriage are correspondingly far less significant.” What this comes down to is that typically traditional “practices” and “activities” are simply adjusted and adapted — this is a gentle way of saying they get “watered down” to the point of irrelevance; central beliefs of committed adherents pose a larger, more difficult challenge, since they are far less amenable to compromise. As noted by Dr. Mohler, theological differences matter, and decisions that are made by a couple over the course of a lifetime — especially in raising children — affect the marriage.
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For the true Christian believer, this means a life lived in light of Christ’s singular claim that He is “the way, the truth, and the life.” Taking His claim seriously, that He is the only way to the Father (John 14:6), means that all decisions are made in light of His teaching and commands. This includes His teaching that marriage is intended by God to be a life-long covenant — not just between the couple, but sealed by God and witnessed by fellow believers in the couples’ church community. That said, real Christian marriage includes a commitment to follow Christ, both in lifestyle and in childrearing.
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Religion that is not practiced is little more than a set of myths and of no more significance than the fairy tales told to toddlers at bedtime. Faith that does not make demands on behavior is not faith at all. Inevitably, a lack of unity in faith entails multiple problems on both the little and the large issues that couples continuously encounter as they face the task of building a strong, meaningful, harmonious marriage. How could it possibly be otherwise?
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Shaw does unwittingly get one thing right but ascribes it to Chelsea rather than to CWFA as is more appropriate - as practiced by the Christianists, their version of Christianity is a distorted set of fear and hate based myths that ought to be given no more significance than the fairy tales.

Iowa Decency

With my traveling over the weekend - after the Equality Virginia event the boyfriend and I continued up to Charlottesville to visit some of my family who live there - I missed the opportunity to fully pursue some of my book marked news sights and failed to see the New York Times editorial on the Iowa gay marriage decison until this evening. The editorial notes Iowa's history of being progressive in matters concerning civil rights and also underscores the Court's finding that religion should not be allowed to exclude civil legal rights. The editorial is in sharp contrast to a reader column posted on the Des Moines Register that tries to rehash the same religious/natural law agruments the Iowa Supreme Court rejected. Here are some higlights from the NYT editorial:

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Like the state’s earlier landmark civil rights cases — striking down slavery in 1839, for example, and segregation in 1868 and 1873 — the ruling on gay marriage by Iowa’s Supreme Court is a refreshing message of fairness and common sense from the nation’s heartland. A unanimous decision by the seven-member court on Friday approved marriage for couples of the same sex and brought the nation a step closer toward realizing its promise of equality and justice.

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The new decision says marriage is a civil contract and should not be defined by religious doctrine or views. “We are firmly convinced the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further an important governmental objective,” wrote Justice Mark Cady, a Republican appointee. “The legislature has excluded a historically disfavored class of persons from a supremely important civil institution without a constitutionally sufficient justification.”

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The immediate impact of Iowa’s ruling was to make the failure to respect gay people’s freedom to marry, by courts and legislatures in states like New York, seem all the more shameful.

In contrast, the author of the Des Moines Register piece shows a total disdain for equality under the CIVIL laws as well as a total inability to separate religious belief from the civil laws - precisely the trait that the Iowa Supreme Court rejected:

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In other words, the formation of a bodily union between two persons requires sexual complementarity between the two persons. Only a mated pair of one man and one woman can sexually complement one another; therefore, only that ordering can form a bodily union.

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As a result, an understanding of marriage in line with reason is a marriage between one man and one woman. Our state should enshrine this principle into law because, in the words of St. Thomas Aquinas, “Law is given for the purpose of directing human acts; as far as human acts conduce to virtue, so far does law make men good.”

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Many supporters of traditional marriage act out of religious conviction. This is entirely appropriate because there are reasons why many great religions, including Christianity, teach that marriage ought to be between one man and one woman.

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I would also question whether the author of the Register opinion piece has ever truly been in love. True love and "complimentarity" - in my view - are something that occurs on a soul to soul basis with the body only providing the outer shell of the soul.

Merriam-Webster Changes Definition of Marriage.

Can you imagine the foaming at the mouth that will occur when the wingnuts get wind of this? The spittle will be flying everywhere. No doubt loony Don Wildmon and American Family Association will launch a boycott of Merriam-Webster dictionaries.