Here We Go Again

Hold your breath, the ongoing fight over gay marriage in California continues tomorrow, December 6 in federal appeals court..A three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco will decide whether a federal judge, Vaughn Walker, ruled correctly in August when he struck down California's Proposition 8, saying that a state effort to restrict marriage to heterosexual couples “unconstitutionally burdens the exercise of the fundamental right to marry” guaranteed to all persons. The case has national implications because if the US Constitution protects a fundamental right to gay marriage, no state would be permitted to limit marriage to only those of different genders.

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Cross your fingers, people!

The Devil Made Me Do It

So Ken Mehlman has finally come out of the closet. Yep, he's gay. Mehlman, the former Chairman of the Republican National Committee and George W. Bush's 2004 re-election campaign manager, has announced he's gay. Many Washington insiders already knew this, but Mehlman has made it official.
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Oh, Ken Mehlman, what to say to you? You headed one of the most virulent, anti-gay political campaigns in history, all the while hiding your own gay identity. Mehlman stated to The Atlantic Magazine that he secretly tried to work behind the scenes during Bush's 2004 campaign to try to quell some of the anti-gay sentiment in his own party. Who knows if this is true, we weren't in the room, but we do know that you, Ken Mehlman, stood by while people of your own orientation were demonized, ostracized, made the scapegoats for the moral destruction of America, and even, in some cases, beaten to death.
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You, Ken Mehlman, worked to elect and helped to run a political party and a White House which promoted many state-wide ballot measures that banned gay marriage, which promoted George W. Bush's 2005 State of Union Address in which he called for a federal constitution amendment to ban gay marriage, which promoted the squashing of hate crime legislation, and which prevented its representative to the United Nations to sign onto a resolution condemning the criminalization of homosexuality.
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Maybe you, Ken Mehlman, did speak quietly behind the scenes to try to improve the situation, but you also angrily defended and promoted the very people whose mission it was to discriminate against us and to deny our very existence. You are a moral coward. There is a special place in hell for people like you, Ken Mehlman, but we suspect you're already living it just by trying to sleep at night and look at yourself in the mirror.
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But now, putting aside the pitiful spectre of Ken Mehlman's self-loathing aside, his coming out puts a lot of folks, Republican operatives and gay activists alike, in a very strange, uncomfortable position. For the crazy right wing, it's another blow to the head in trying to sustain their belief that homosexuality is a perversion and inherently wrong. It gets harder and harder, pardon the pun, to maintain that position, pardon the pun, when so many of your own political party continue to come flying out of the closet. As Republicans keep coming out, one would think that even the most hard-lined gay-bashers would start to suspect that maybe they don't know what they're talking about when it comes to human sexuality, and that maybe their past beliefs about being gay are... well, you know, wrong. But we doubt it. These are the people that have putting one's head in the sand down to a science.
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More importantly, what does our community do with a newly "converted" Ken Mehlman. Mehlman has stated that he wants to work hard to help overturn Prop 8 in California and to continue to work to ensure that gay marriage is accepted nationally. He's even already started to help raise funds for the American Foundation for Equal Rights, the group which supported the legal challenge to Prop 8. Chad Griffin, a political strategist who organized opposition to Prop 8, and Dustin Lance Black, the Oscar winning screenwriter of "Milk", are openly excited about Mehlman's help. Great! Right? Not so fast. Isn't this a little like putting Lindsey Lohan in charge of happy hour at the local all-you-can-guzzle bar and grill?
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Where is our self-respect as a community? Is no one in the leadership of the Prop 8 opposition ranks going to stand up to Ken Mehlman and say, "We don't want your help."? Aren't we just like the pitifully sad John McCain, who at one time fought for campaign finance reform, but then when he desperately needed funds to win his Arizona primary yesterday, he ended up spending $20 million to do it? In other words, do we stand up against people like Ken Mehlman, but then when things get tough, cash in all our values and self respect to greedily accept their help? Even now, according to public reports on www.opensecrets.org, Mehlman is still giving campaign money to those very Republican politicians who are most decidedly anti-gay.
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Yes, we'd like to defeat Prop 8 as much as anyone, but not with Ken Mehlman's help. He needs to go away, and get some very strong psychiatric help, and slowly come back and try to mend some of the horrific damage he caused in our community. Yes, he's now a bit sorry for what he did, but he also very recently worked incredibly hard to deny our very existence and our rights of equality as American citizens. Letting him have a hand in gay politics right now is a little akin to letting the fox too near the henhouse. Or in terms that Republicans can understand, it's a little like letting the toe-tapper too near the airport bathroom stall.

Judge Walker - Our Hero

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, who shot to fame a few days ago when he ruled that California's Prop 8, the state's ban on gay marriage, was unconstitutional, has had more to say on the subject. First Judge Walker ruled that gay marriage ceremonies can resume on Wed., Aug. 18, unless the Prop 8 supporters can convince the 9th District Court of Appeals to issue a stay on the resumption of the blissful events. And yesterday, Judge Walker went further to say that he didn't think that the 9th District would hear an appeal because the particular supporters of Prop 8 who brought the case in front of him "would not be personally affected by the resumption of gay weddings". We're nowhere near to being legal scholars, so forgive us if we don't get this exactly correct, but it sounds as if the only reason a court will issue a "stay" on a judge's ruling is if the people who request the stay are personally affected by the lower court ruling. And the supporters of Prop 8 have not proven that they will be personally hurt or affected by the resumption of gay weddings. We'll soon see. All we can say is that the next few days are going to be very interesting.

Twisted Sister

One of main voices opposing gay marriage is that of
Maggie Gallagher, of the National Organization for Marriage, (NOM), the organization which is primarily responsible for placing Prop 8 on the California ballot in 2008. After yesterday's ruling by Judge Vaughn Walker which declared Prop 8 to be unconstitutional, Gallagher was quick to speak out. She said that nowhere in our U.S. Constitution does it give gay people the right to marry. We are tempted to remind Gallagher that the original U.S. Constitution also doesn't say anything about slavery, women's rights, rights for Native Americans, etc., etc., etc., but as we have evolved as a society, we have tried to correct previous errors in the Constitution with Amendments to the Constitution. So the bigger question is why is someone like Maggie Gallagher so hostile toward her fellow Americans, and so anti-American when it comes to correcting previous social mistakes? We have to ask, WHO STOLE HER LUNCH MONEY? In other words, Gallagher strikes us as one of those poor, unfortunate kids who didn't fit in in junior high school for some reason, and was beaten up and had her lunch money stolen on a regular basis. Then kids like her grow up and spend the rest of their lives trying to "get back" at the popular kids, those who made fun of them in junior high. These people are usually marked by anger, resentment, bitterness and a need to lash out at anyone they don't understand or with whom they don't agree. Which is a perfect description of Maggie Gallagher.
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We've been watching Miss Gallagher for many years, she was once a regular panelist on Bill Maher's original "Politically Incorrect" talk show when it first premiered on the Comedy Central Network in 1994. But unlike many people who mature and progress emotionally over the course of their adult lives, Miss Gallagher still, in 2010, seems to be that same scared, angry, frustrated woman she was in 1994. Has she not learned anything about people, or life, in 16 years?
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We all know the drill by now. Even the most virulent homophobes, once they are acquainted with a gay person, either in the workplace, or at school, or by a family member coming out to them, the result is always the same. Those homophobes always come around, eventually, and realize that gay people are not any different from anyone else. And then, at some point, there is the sad realization by those homophobes that they wasted a lot of years of their lives believing in silly myths and superstitions about gay people which were created out of fear and ignorance. And those same homophobes, now enlightened, wonder how they could have been so stupid and naive. So someone like Maggie Gallagher always makes us scratch our heads. How can someone who has worked for so many years in a national organization not ever met or worked with a gay person? Wait a minute, back that up. How does anyone who has reached the age of 49 not ever met or worked with a gay person? Well, the truth is, Gallagher has. She's met and worked with many gay people, she just doesn't know it. You'd literally have to be living in a cave not to meet any gay people in 2010, or at least live in a cave created in your own mind. But we're guessing that the few gay people that Gallagher has met, either didn't let her know they were gay, or they mocked her, laughing at her ignorance the same way those evil, popular junior high classmates probably laughed at her for her awkward rotundity. (Rotundity? Hey, look, we're Sarah Palin, we made up a new word!)
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Anyway, all we can say for someone like Miss Gallagher is we hope that one day she gets the psychological help she obviously needs. One day, maybe, with a lot of really hard work, she can release those emotional demons which are ruling her life, and erase those painful memories of the time in which the big 9th grade lesbians on the field hockey team cornered little Maggie in the hallway and taught her a couple of moves with their "sticks" which she'll never forget.

Prop 8 is Overturned!

We just wrote earlier today that a ruling was expected today in the California Prop 8 case by U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker. The news is in, and Prop 8 is officially overturned! Judge Walker ruled that the voter-approved measure was in violation of the U.S. Constitution, but he wasn't allowing for gay marriages to immediately resume. Walker said he wants to decide whether his order should be suspended while the proponents of the ban pursue their appeal in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. This matter isn't over, it will next go to the 9th Circuit Court, and then almost certainly to the U.S. Supreme Court, but this ruling, coming from a U.S. Judge who was appointed by Ronald Reagan, is a huge step forward in the fight for full civil rights for gay Americans.
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We're also cheering today from the news that legendary comedian Carol Burnett has added to the roster of A-List stars who will appear on the Fox Network's hit t.v. show, "Glee", this fall. Burnett will play Sue Sylvester's mother. Oh-Em-Gee! Right? We can't wait.

Prop 8's Last Stand?

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Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker is expected to issue his ruling today on Prop 8, California's voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage. Walker's ruling will reflect his opinion on whether Prop 8 violates the U.S. Constitution by creating separate classes of people with different laws for each. Regardless of the ruling, both sides expect the case to be taken all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Hold your breath.

There's Still Hope

Today the California Supreme Court hears a case on the constitutionality of the state's recent voter-approved ban on gay marriage, (Prop 8). We'll go ahead and make a prediction that the Court will decide that the ban is unconstitutional. How much of a fight the far right wing nutjobs will still have in them to continue to try to take us back to the Middle Ages is unclear, but we do know that gay marriage is coming, sooner or later.
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Social change takes a long time, slavery existed for centuries in the U.S., women didn't get the right to vote until 1920, and we still cheer for sports teams with insulting and demeaning nicknames for Native Americans. But change does eventually take place, and gay marriage will one day be seen as "no big deal". It won't be tomorrow, but it will be soon.
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So girls, get ready to throw those bouquets, and when we say "girls", we use that term loosely.
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(supermodels Tyson Ballou and Will Chalker in a fashion show... they're not actually getting married, but we can dream, can't we?)

Top Ten Things We'd Like to See Disappear in 2009

(Is this really that scary?)
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10. Prop 8
The fact that a proposition passed to deny civil rights to a group of Americans at the exact same moment that centuries of discrimination against another group of Americans was being erased will go down in history as one of the greatest ironies in the history of our nation. And the fact that the proposition was voted for in large numbers by one of those groups of people against the other group of people is also strange and very sad, to say the least.
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How does something like Prop 8 pass in this day and age? It's pretty simple. Despite huge gains in the education of our populace over the past one hundred years, we are sadly reminded that ignorance is still a mighty and powerful force in our society. In other words, the people who voted for Prop 8 don't even see the issue as one of civil rights, because they still believe that being gay is a sin, it's evil, it's something one chooses, it's something that one can control, it's something one can turn off or on. This is one of those things that people will look back on in a few years and wonder how a majority of Americans could be so stupid, just as the way we shake our heads now at the Southern governors who stood in the schoolhouse doorways to keep Black students from integrating the public schools.
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But that's the story of social progress. It's easy to look back in history and ridicule the ignorance of the past, but for some reason, the people who are just as misguided today don't recognize their own lack of understanding of an event in real time while it's actually taking place. It always takes several years for those people to wake up and realize they were wrong. In college, my government class invited Orval Faubus, the Arkansas governor who forbade the Little Rock Nine from attending Central High School, to speak about those days. Everyone else in the class pussyfooted around the issue, until finally I just asked him why he did it. The look on his face told it all. As he looked at me, his face had a weariness to it, a deep sadness; you could tell this man had spent many long years regretting his actions of those days and regretting the shameful place in history in which his actions had landed him forever. He mumbled something about the fact that you just had to understand those days and that time, but he didn't have to say a word. His face told it all.
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And one day, the supporters of Prop 8 will feel the same way.

Yes, We Can... and We Did!

He did it. On Nov. 4, 2008, Democrat Barack Obama was elected to be the 44th President of the United States. We could go on and on, but what could we say that hasn't already been said? Let's just say that we were thrilled.

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Election Day wasn't perfect, though, the homophobe electorate in California passed Prop 8, and even worse, in Arkansas, the hillbilly contingent came out of the backwoods to vote for a proposition which makes it illegal for gay people to adopt children or even to be foster parents. We'll be discussing those issues in later posts, believe us, but for now, don't be discouraged, Rome wasn't built in a day, the dinosaurs didn't die overnight, and it's going to be take more than one election cycle to clear out the cave man-like thinking and extreme ignorance of the Republican Right. It will happen, it's just going to take time.

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So for now, just revel in Barack Obama's victory, and hold on to your hats for what promises to be one of the most exciting inaugurations in Washinton, D.C. history!