Dan Choi: Not Guilty, Not Ashamed, Not Finished

From Newsweek's interview with Dan Choi on his arrest with Capt. Jim Pietrangelo after handcuffing themselves to the White House gates last week:

Why not now? Within the gay community so many leaders want acceptance from polite society. I think there's been a betrayal of what is down inside of us in order to achieve what looks popular, what look enviable. The movement seems to be centered around how to become an elite. There is a deep schism [in the gay-rights movement], everyone knows this. But this shouldn't be about which group has better branding. There is a tremor right now in every gay and transgender youth that these groups are not grasping. I would say to them—you do not represent us if all you are looking for is a ladder into elite society.

When I get messages from people who want to be a part of this I ask back: what are you willing to sacrifice? We are tired of being stereotyped as privileged, bourgeois elites. Is someone willing to give up their career, their relationships with powerful people, their Rolodex, or their parents' love to stand up for who they are? I'm giving up my military rank, my unit—which to me is a family—my veterans' benefits, my health care, so what are you willing to sacrifice?

They say freedom is not free, but it doesn't have to cost anything either. Jesus up on the cross did not have a party with all his major donors to raise money for his cause, his cross was free. Ghandi did not need three-course dinners and a cocktail party to get his message out. These are people who sacrificed their lives. For them it was hemlock, a cross, the bullet that shot Harvey Milk . . . it was not the size of their distribution list, but their message that endured. . . .

When I was handcuffed to the gate someone else asked me what's next. I'm standing there with hands lifted skyward and I just told him, "This is." I have fully committed my life and all the sacrifices necessary to manifest equality and America's promises. Like I said at court, "I'm not guilty, I'm not ashamed, and I'm not finished."

A trial date is set for April 26.  They will also likely face courts-martial by the military.  Below, the two men after being released on bail last Saturday at the D. C. Courthouse:

Same-sex Weddings Begin in D. C.

Same-sex couples began marrying today in the nation's capital, under the new equal-marriage law that took effect last week.  Place your cursor over the photo to view the caption.  Congrats to all the newlyweds.

Gays Line Up for Marriage in D.C.

Gay and lesbian couples didn't let cold, drizzly weather stop them from lining up at the Washington, D.C., marriage bureau this morning to get the first same-sex marriage licenses in the nation's capital, after Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts blocked a last-minute stay requested by marriage opponents.

Cool slideshow pics here.  The mood in the courthouse was described as "giddy," as local businesses handed out cupcakes and flowers to the happy couples.   Because of the District's three-day waiting period, the first weddings won't occur until next Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the usual opponents showed up to remind us all how much God Almighty hates us and is cranking up the flames of Hell to oven-roast all us dirty queers, yada yada yada.  But you expected that, right?

Meanwhile, not only has Catholic Charities in D.C. shut down their adoption program there, beginning today they will no longer cover any new employee's spouse with insurance benefits.  Or any newly married employee's spouse.  All to keep from dealing with the nasty gays.

Catholic Charities receives $22 million a year from the city and has about 850 employees, of whom about a hundred have spousal insurance coverage.

Obama Got Game

From Mediaite:

President Barack Obama attended a college basketball game between Duke and George-town today, and found time to sit down with the CBS Broadcast announcing team Verne Lundquist and Clark Kellogg.

After showing a clip of the left-handed Obama playing basketball, Lundquist asked the president if he "has any problems going to (his) right."

Obama replied "I went to the Republican House caucus just yesterday to prove I could go to my right once in awhile, but there's no doubt I have a stronger left hand."  Zing!


Honk to Pam's House Blend

Haiti versus Katrina

 



Alex Eichler in the Atlantic pulls together the conflicting views of the disaster, and American response to it, and shows that it may be a false comparison.

Cindy Supports Us

It's a busy week here, but I had to stop and take time to show you guys this unexpected supporter of marriage equality:  Cindy McCain, wife of Senator John McCain.

I hereby unthink all my sneering, rich-bitch thoughts about her.  It just goes to show, boys - you can't tell a book by its cover.  The Advocate has the story here.

How About a Story We Can Believe In?

Two excerpts from the New Yorker news desk today. First, Junot Diaz:

It has always seemed to me that one of a President’s primary responsibilities is to be a storyteller. We all know the importance of narratives, of stories; they are part of the reasons our brains are so damn big. We need stories, we thrive on them, stories are how we shape our universe. Tolkien could have been talking about the power of stories when he described his One Ring: stories rule us, they find us, they bring us together, they bind us, and, yes, they can pull us apart as well. If a President is to have any success, if his policies are going to gain any kind of traction among the electorate, he first has to tell us a story. . . .

But from where I sit our President has not even told a bad story; he, in my opinion, has told no story at all. I heard him talk healthcare to death but while he was elaborating ideas his opponents were telling stories. Sure they were bad ones, full of distortions and outright lies, but at least they were talking to the American people in the correct idiom: that of narrative. The President gave us a raft of information about why healthcare would be a swell idea; the Republicans gave us death panels. Ideas are wonderful things, but unless they’re couched in a good story they can do nothing.

Philip Gourevitch:

A year ago, I stood at the back of the shivering crowd that massed on the Mall in Washington to watch Obama’s swearing in. You could barely see the Capital from where I stood, almost a mile away—but that didn’t stop the passionate frozen faces around me from lifting up to hang on every word that boomed from the speakers at the foot of the Washington Monument. They had come hoping for some of that old Obama magic—and what he gave them instead was a promise of the grim hard slog ahead. Now people are saying that he needs to take a page from Ronald Reagan’s playbook and go out selling that snap-in-the-step morning-in-America mojo again. But how about if he simply asks: Is the country better off than it was a year ago? Hell yes. And it’s in crisis. So to judge this first year, we can’t only remember the past eight years, we have to wait for the next year and the one after that and the one after that. The next year starts where the first year ended, with health-care reform—and the President has to take more forceful and unrelenting leadership on insuring that the bill is passed than ever before now that his congressional caucus is in such disarray. If he doesn’t use his power in every way to possible to win this fight, he will have lost a great deal. But, either way, you can think Obama’s doing pretty well or pretty awfully today, but you have to see that he’s just getting started.

More short pieces on Obama's first year from New Yorker staff here.

Awesome Eclipse

The annular eclipse seen yesterday in parts of Africa and Asia was 11 minutes, 8 seconds long - a record that won't be broken for another thousand years.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has the story, and a great short video of the eclipse.

So They Went to Uganda

The MSM is a little slow on the uptake in this day and time, sad to say.  Sullivan reports that the New York Times has just discovered - oh my! - the link between American Christianists and the Kill-the-Gays bill in Uganda:

For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity."

Sullivan:

The Bible is absolutely clear that the death penalty applies to homosexuals. Why are these Christianists not following God's literal truth? Or now that they have unleashed a proto-fascist pogrom against gay, bi and trans people in Africa, have they finally come to terms with the actual consequences of what they actually believe? Here's hoping it's the latter.

But if you ever wondered what the ultimate fantasies of the Christianist right are with respect to gay people, just look at what they say when they think no American is listening.

I'm too pooped tonight to write more on this topic at the moment, boys, but give both articles a read.

And send them on to your nearest and dearest who think the big preacher bubbas can do no wrong.

Update:  Check out the NYT multimedia page, with short audio clips featuring four Ugandans.  Also the editorial, "Hate Begets Hate."

And fellas, before you climb in the bed tonight, reflect on all this a minute - and then get down on your knees and thank your Maker that you live in the U. S. of A.  For all its faults, it's still a damn good place to be living. 

You could be in Uganda, you know.

Or a worse place than that, even.

Two gay teens executed in Iran, 2005.

Moving the Mountain

Andrew Sullivan on how the President is reshaping America, a step at the time:

[The healthcare reform bill] is the biggest single piece of social legislation in 40 years. The Congressional Budget Office predicts it will indeed insure 30m people.

And this is only the end of year one. In the stimulus package in the spring, Obama invested an unprecedented amount of federal money in infrastructure, with an unsung focus on non-carbon energy sources. He engineered a vast and nerve-racking banking rescue that is now under-budget by $200 billion because so many banks survived. He organised the restructuring of the US car industry. He appointed Sonia Sotomayor, a Latina Supreme Court justice, solidifying his non-white political base. If market confidence is one reason we appear to have avoided a second Great Depression, then the president deserves a modicum of credit for conjuring it. Growth is edging back into the picture. . . .

The disillusioned are those who weren’t listening in the campaign or not watching closely in the first year. The right has failed to register his steeliness and persistence and the left has preferred to ignore his temperamental and institutional conservatism. Both sides still misread him — hence the spluttering gloom. And there is indeed something dispiriting about the relentless prose of government compared with the poetry of the campaign. But Obama is a curious blend of both: a relentless pragmatist and a soaring rhetorician.

In time, if the economy recovers, if black, young and Hispanic voters see the benefits of their new healthcare security, if troops begin to come home from Iraq in large numbers next summer, if jobs begin to return by the autumn, then the logic of his election will endure. His care to keep the tone civil, to insist on impure change rather than ideological stasis has already turned the Republicans into foam-flecked nostalgics for a simpler, whiter, easier period and has flummoxed those leftliberals who wanted revenge as much as reform. Both are part of an embittered past that Obama wants to leave behind. His clarity on this, and his refusal to take the bait of divisiveness and partisanship, is striking. That takes an enormous amount of self-confidence and self-restraint.

He has failed in one respect: the political culture is still deeply partisan, opportunistic and divided. But this, I believe, is not so much a function of his liberal pragmatism as it is a remnant of an American right in drastic need of new intellectual life and rhetorical restraint. In this respect, Obama has made the right crazier, which may be a necessary prelude to it becoming saner.

It’s worth remembering that America is a vast and cumbersome machine, designed to resist deep change. That this one man has moved the country a few key, structural degrees in one year, and that the direction is as clear and as strategic as that first embraced by Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (in the opposite direction), is under-appreciated. But the shift is real and more dramatic than current events might indicate. I wouldn’t bet on its evanescence quite yet.

What I Say:  No matter how disappointed we may be with Obama for one reason or another, just remember those eight long, long, looooooong dark years of Bush, fellas - and then smile, why don't you.

¡Maravilloso!

The first same-sex marriage in Latin America took place yesterday way down in Tierra del Fuego province, Argentina: the happy couple, Alex Freyre and Jose di Bello, were blocked from marrying in Buenos Aires but were allowed to marry by decree of the governor of the TdeF province. Activists hope that Argentina's legislature will pass a nationwide equal marriage bill in the new year. Rex Wockner has more on the story, and more pictures at his blog.

Girly Boy Can Kick Your Ass

And I bet he's never been the last to be chosen for a team, either.

Sullivan says the coming-out story of 6-foot-3, 225-pound, 35-year-old rugby legend Gareth Thomas is a big deal in his native Britain.  Thomas, who was married and at one point considered suicide, says:

It has been really tough for me, hiding who I really am, and I don't want it to be like that for the next young person who wants to play rugby, or some frightened young kid.  I don't know if my life is going to be easier because I'm out, but if it helps someone else, if it makes one young lad pick up the phone to Childline, then it will have been worth it.

The response from his teammates has been hugely supportive, he reports: "Why didn't you tell us before?"

Well, we know why, don't we guys? But one day, and soon I hope, there won't be a need for the closet anymore.

The Decade from Hell

. . . that's what Time's editors call it, from hanging chad to economic meltdown and all that came in between.  Will the next decade be better?  What do you say, guys?

As far as progress on LGBT rights, there's a lot to be happy about, despite some severe disappointments:  44 percent of the U.S. population now lives in states that outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation, and 29 percent live where gender-identity discrimination is also illegal.  Eleven states offer same-sex marriage, or a near equivalent; seven others offer at least some rights and protections for same-sex couples. 

See a quick summary of how far we've come in the last ten years, prepared by the Movement Advancement Project, A Decade of Progress on LGBT Rights; or the full 20-page Momentum Report (both PDF).

Bonus:  a clickable map that shows the estimated LGB (no T, sorry) population in your state, and a quick run down of pro- or anti-LGBT laws. 

Annise Parker Wins Houston Mayoral Race

An historic win:  the Houston Chronicle is calling today's mayoral runoff election for Annise Parker, with a lead of 52.7 percent to opponent Jim Locke's 47.3 percent out of 145,000 votes cast, with 89 percent of precincts reported at this time.

The New York Times reports:

Throughout the campaign, Ms. Parker tried to avoid making an issue of her sexual orientation and emphasized her experience in overseeing the city’s finances. But she began her career as an advocate for gay rights in the 1980s, and it was lost on no one in Houston, a city of 2.2 million people, that her election would mark a milestone for gay men and lesbians around the country.

Several smaller cities in other regions have chosen openly gay mayors, among them Providence, R.I., Portland, Ore., and Cambridge, Mass. But Ms. Parker’s success came in a conservative state where voters have outlawed gay marriage and a city where a referendum on granting benefits to same-sex partners of city employees was soundly defeated. . . .

Ms. Parker’s sexual orientation did not become an issue in the race until after the general election produced no winner and led to a run-off between her and Mr. Locke, who is black and enjoys strong support among African-American voters. . . .

But the ugliest attacks came from a group of black pastors who spoke out against Ms. Parker for what they called her gay agenda and two separate anti-gay advocates who send out fliers in the mail calling attention to her support from gay groups and to her relationship with her longtime partner. (They have been together 19 years and have two adopted children.)

Mr. Locke denied having anything to do with the attacks, but two members of his finance committee gave $40,000 to help finance one of the mailings.

A gay mayor in Texas.  You guys who live in the blue state wonderland have no idea how incredible that sounds.  Wow.  Congrats, Annise - you done us proud, girl.

FYI:  for the benefit of all you furriners who may not know this stuff, Houston proper is the fourth-largest city in the United States, and the largest city in Texas.  Population of the metro area is 5.7 million, although the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is larger, with 6.3 million.  They are the sixth- and fourth-largest metro areas in the country, respectively.  Total population of Texas:  about 22.8 million as of 2005.

And since I mentioned Alaska in a post yesterday, I'll tell you this too:  total population, 2008:  686,293. 

Hell, we got several counties with more people in 'em than that whole big state.  And Sarah couldn't manage to handle the job up there?

Second Gay Episcopal Bishop Elected

From the Los Angeles Times:

The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles today elected the first openly gay bishop since the national church lifted a ban that sought to bar gays and lesbians from the church's highest ordained ministry. Clergy and lay leaders, meeting in Riverside for their annual convention, elected the Rev. Canon Mary D. Glasspool, 55, who has been in a committed relationship with another woman since 1988. Another gay candidate, the Rev. John L. Kirkley of San Francisco, withdrew late Friday.

Glasspool’s election to fill one of two openings for bishops of the diocese followed the selection Friday of the Rev. Canon Diane Jardine Bruce, 53, the rector of a San Clemente church. The two became the first women elected as bishops of the diocese in its 114-year history.  But it was the endorsement of Glasspool that riveted much of the convention as well as the worldwide Anglican Communion, of which the Episcopal Church is the U.S. branch. Glasspool is the first openly gay priest to be elected bishop since the ordination of the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire in 2003. . . .

Glasspool and Bruce were elected to fill two openings for the position of suffragan bishop, who assist a diocese's primary bishop. The two women must be confirmed by a majority of the national church's bishops and of diocesan standing committees, which include clergy and lay representatives.

Jefferts Schori Condemns Ugandan Antigay Bill

Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church - the American branch of the Anglican Communion - has condemned the the proposed antihomosexual bill now pending in Uganda's parliament.  Full statement here.  Excerpt:

The Episcopal Church joins many other Christians and people of faith in urging the safeguarding of human rights everywhere. We do so in the understanding that "efforts to criminalize homosexual behavior are incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ" (General Convention 2006, Resolution D005).

This has been the repeated and vehement position of Anglican bodies, including several Lambeth Conferences. The Primates' Meeting, in the midst of severe controversy over issues of homosexuality, nevertheless noted that, as Anglicans, "we assure homosexual people that they are children of God, loved and valued by him, and deserving of the best we can give of pastoral care and friendship" (Primates' Communiqué, Dromantine, 2005).

The Episcopal Church represents multiple and varied cultural contexts (the United States and 15 other nations), and as a Church we affirm that the public scapegoating of any category of persons, in any context, is anathema. We are deeply concerned about the potential impingement on basic human rights represented by the private member's bill in the Ugandan Parliament. . . .

Finally, we note that much of the current climate of fear, rejection, and antagonism toward gay and lesbian persons in African nations has been stirred by members and former members of our own Church. We note further that attempts to export the culture wars of North America to another context represent the very worst of colonial behavior. We deeply lament this reality, and repent of any way in which we have participated in this sin.

We call on all Episcopalians to seek their own conversion toward an ability to see the image of God in the face of every neighbor, of whatever race, gender, sexual orientation, theological position, or creed. God has created us in myriad diversity, and no one sort or condition of human being can fully reflect the divine. Only the whole human race begins to be an adequate mirror of the divine.

What I say:  Thank you, Bishop Katharine.  Your history of standing up for the full human rights of gay people as beloved children of God is encouraging and a welcome contrast to the hateful speech and actions of some other church leaders I could name.

Now where are those other religious leaders?  Where, in the name of God, are all the good folks - politicians as well as ordinary citizens - who love to proclaim far and wide how proud, how very proud they are to be Christians ("love your neighbor as yourself") and Americans ("all men are created equal, with the unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness")? 

When will they get around to expressing outrage and indignation, condemning this American-fundamentalist-inspired attempt at a Final Solution in Uganda?  And when will our President find the time and the courage to speak out clearly and forcefully, as Bishop Katharine has?

When indeed?  What would Jesus do, eh?

Consolation Prize

 

From the Human Rights Campaign:

Yesterday Washington State officials (Governor Gregoire and Secretary of State Reed) certified the results of Referendum 71 — the measure that asked voters to approve or reject a comprehensive domestic partnership law passed by the legislature and signed by the Governor earlier in the ear. Voters approved the law in November’s elections and now same-sex couples will have critical rights and protections as of 12:01 a.m. Pacific time on Thursday.

The first voter-approved, all-but-the-name-marriage law in the nation. So you see, it does pay off to work for change at the state level, guys. Just not as quickly as we would like, as we deserve.

But we have to keep pushing, step by step, state by state, all the way down the long, sometimes heartbreaking road. You gotta have hope. You gotta have courage, you gotta have grit and the guts to keep going, sunlight or storm. When the horse throws you, get right back up in the damn saddle, cowboy up and ride on anyways.

You'll never win nothing if you're a scairdy-cat.

Wow

Michelle done us all proud at the Obamas' first state dinner Tuesday, in honor of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his wife Gursharan Kaur.

Nice to see the First Lady in something besides basic black.  Even as a gay man, I have to say fellas - she's a knockout.  Don't you agree?

BTW, a sign of the times:  among other prominent Indian-Americans invited to the dinner were lesbian activist Urvashi Vaid and her partner, comedian Kate Clinton.

What She's Really Like

One of Sullivan's readers explains why not nearly as many women like Palin as the men do:

Sarah Palin is the peppy cheerleader in high school all the boys thought was so sweet but the girls knew was really a vicious shrew. She's the new girl in the office who wears tight shirts and three-inch heels, is super-friendly to her male superiors, ignores the other women, and gets promoted sooner than her more capable and hard working peers. She's the outgoing PTA mom all of the other women are scared to cross because they will find themselves put on the worst committees. Only a woman knows how to give another woman a sweet smile and at the same time cut her down to size with an artfully crafted "compliment" without male observers having a clue about what just happened. It's like a dog whistle.

Um . . . ya know guys, I clued in on every single bit of that the very first time I saw the bitch.  

Does that make me a woman too?

Memo to Adam Lambert

You're not helping, shithead.



Look.At.Yourself.

 

Every mother's nightmare of what the horrible gays would be like if unloosed from their pen.  Thanks a lot, fucker.

You have a tremendous talent, and you're a fantastic showman.  And somewhere beneath the glitter and the mascara is a handsome man.  But all you can think to do is doll yourself up like a creep from a nighmare freak show, and be as gross as possible on nationwide television.

If you were doing a stage act in a gay nightclub, that might be different, though I wouldn't pay to watch you.  I prefer my porn straight out of the bottle and undiluted, thank you.

There's millions of people out there in big cities and small towns who also have talent but will never, ever get the breaks you've gotten.  And there's millions more people who would love to have a truly stellar example of gay talent to look up to and point to.  But little boy, you're just peeing on the carpet because you can.  I don't know who your daddy is, but he ought to set you down for a good talking - and a swift kick in the ass.

You would do well to man up and put that enormous talent to better use.  All you really need on stage is a white shirt, blue jeans, and microphone - and you could have the whole damn world at your feet every time you open your mouth and sing.  But you don't have the guts to do that.

Because the dirty little secret you think nobody knows is that you don't have enough confidence in your own talent - you think you have to use sex to sell yourself.  Buddy, you are so wrong, and I hope you find that out real quick.

Because if you want to end up as another hopelessly fucked-up, dead-early tragedy like others we could name - you're succeeding, big time.

Just an old country boy's thoughts - somebody who would like to admire you.  But doesn't.

Russ