Overruled!



Map of U. S. sodomy laws on the eve of Lawrence v. Texas;
states shown in dark red still had such laws in effect until that time.

A short film from Lambda Legal explaining the background and significance of the landmark Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas.  This is the first time I've ever seen an interview with the late John Lawrence, one of the two men arrested and convicted of the crime of "deviant sexual intercourse" by the state of Texas in 1998.

Sound Familiar?

OMG!  If we let those people marry, it will destroy the whole institution of marriage - not to mention the whole country - and bring the world to a screeching halt!  It just ain't Christian, I tell ya.  We have to stop this terrible thing before it destroys us all - and think of the poor little babies too . . . and yada yada yada.

Since Judge Walker posted his ruling last week, there's been a lot of good stuff on marriage equality coming out, and here's another bit I just found, from a commenter on the Guardian's article about the ruling:

“[If interracial couples have a right to marry], all our marriage acts forbidding intermarriage between persons within certain degrees of consanguinity are void.”

(Source: Perez v. Lippold, 198 P.2d at 40 (Shenk, J., dissenting, quoting from a prior court case)

“The underlying factors that constitute justification for laws against miscegenation closely parallel those which sustain the validity of prohibitions against incest and incestuous marriages.”

(Source: Perez v. Lippold, 198 P.2d at 46 (Shenk, J., dissenting, quoting from a prior court case)

“[T]he State's prohibition of interracial marriage . . . stands on the same footing as the prohibition of polygamous marriage, or incestuous marriage, or the prescription of minimum ages at which people may marry, and the prevention of the marriage of people who are mentally incompetent.”

(Source: Excerpted United States Supreme Court oral argument transcripts from Loving v. Virginia, from Peter Irons and Stephanie Guitton, eds., May it Please the Court (1993) at 282-283, quoting Virginia Assistant Attorney General R. D. McIlwaine, arguing for Virginia's ban on interracial marriage)

“Each [party seeking to marry a member of a different race] has the right and the privilege of marrying within his or her own group.”

(Source: Perez v. Lippold, 198 P.2d at 46 (Shenk, J., dissenting, quoting from a prior court case)

“When people of [different races] marry, they cannot possibly have any progeny, . . . and such a fact sufficiently justifies those laws which forbid their marriages.”

(Source: A judge in a Missouri case, quoted in Eric Zorn, Chicago Tribune, May 19,1996)

Allowing interracial marriages “necessarily involves the degradation” of conventional marriage, an institution that “deserves admiration rather than execration.”

(Source: A U.S. representative from Georgia quoted in Eric Zorn, Chicago Tribune, May 19, 1996)

“[S]uch laws [banning interracial marriage] have been in effect in this country since before our national independence and in this state since our first legislative session. They have never been declared unconstitutional by any court in the land although frequently they have been under attack. It is difficult to see why such laws, valid when enacted and constitutionally enforceable in this state for nearly one hundred years and elsewhere for a much longer period of time, are now unconstitutional under the same constitution.”

(Source: Perez v. Lippold, 198 P.2d at 35 (Shenk, J. dissenting))

 Note - Perez v. Lippold, aka Perez v. Sharp, is the landmark 1948 decision by the California Supreme Court allowing interracial marriages in that state.

Loving v. Virginia is the 1967 ruling by the U. S. Supreme Court striking down Virginia's miscegenation law, and ending all such bans on interracial marriage throughout the nation.

It's important to understand that both of these cases determined that the laws in question violated the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the 14th Amendment - which is exactly what Judge Walker found to be wrong with Prop 8 in the Perry case.


All these points of comparison and more are found in an excellent handout produced by Vermont Freedom to Marry: download the entire 2-page pdf document here.

Send a copy to your nearest and dearest while you're at it.  Probly won't change anybody's mind - but at least now you can quote them chapter and verse, if that's what they like to do to you.


P.S. - From the New York Times, November 12, 2000:

Alabama voters quietly removed one piece of arcana from their Jim Crow-era constitution: a 1901 state law banning marriage between a Negro and Caucasian. The Supreme Court struck down such laws in 1967, but until last week, when voters passed a ballot initiative to purge that law from the books, it held on as the last such state law in the nation. The margin by which the measure passed was itself a statement. A clear majority, 60 percent, voted to remove the miscegenation statute from the state constitution, but 40 percent of Alabamans -- nearly 526,000 people -- voted to keep it.

Also, FYI:  That Texas sodomy statute that the Supremes struck down in 2003?  It's still on the books here in God's Country.  Old times here are not forgotten, oh hell no.


Check out this parody of a Prop 8 ad, from the 2008 election in California:

Iran Still Killing Gays

On July 19, 2005, two teenage Iranian boys, Mahmoud Asgari

and Ayaz Marhoni, were hanged in public for their

alleged involvement in sodomy and rape.

As I've written before, guys, no matter how disappointed we are with the progress of gay rights in the United States at the moment, it's important to maintain perspective, and be glad of the rights we've already got.  In Britain and the American colonies, men were hanged for sodomy.  We think of that time as practically ancient history now - but homosex remains a capital crime in large parts of Africa and Asia today.

Loving another man is still very much a capital crime in Iran, and Gay City News reports that Iran is set to execute 12 men for sodomy:

Ten young Iranian men, including eight teenagers, are currently awaiting execution for sodomy, and two more are being re-tried on the same capital charge. And, in an exclusive interview with Gay City News, an Iranian student gay rights activist confirmed for the first time the existence of queer organizing on multiple university campuses throughout Iran.

The information about the ten youths currently under sentence of death for sodomy (lavaat in Persian) was released on November 25 in a joint appeal by the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), the Iranian Queer Organization (IRQO), and COC of the Netherlands, the world’s oldest LGBT rights group, founded in 1946. The three organizations called on Western countries “with significant diplomatic and economic ties to Iran, including Germany, France, Canada, as well as the European Union, to pursue diplomatic efforts to cease these executions.”

It is extremely difficult to obtain information about death penalty cases involving homosexuality under today’s repressive theocratic regime in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where the press is heavily censored and journalists, regime critics, and human rights advocates are routinely persecuted and arrested and where the subject of same-sex relations is officially considered a political and religious taboo. Defendants in sodomy cases are denied open trials. Last month, Human Rights Watch, basing its finding on an Iranian newspaper report, told of the execution of two men for sodomy. . . .

God help those twelve Iranians, and all our brothers and sisters whose very lives are endangered by homophobic laws in Iran, Uganda, and elsewhere.

Pope Says Save the Trees, Stop the Gays!

The news never changes. The gays are the most nasty, wicked, awful people imaginable, and they are destroying society, the family, the country, the whole damn planet.

Jeezus, what would the straight bigots do without us to blame for all their misdoings? I'm so tired of this.

Britain's Daily Telegraph reports the latest words of wisdom from His Holiness, aka B-16:

In his address to the Curia, the Vatican's central administration, he described behaviour beyond traditional heterosexual relations as "a destruction of God's work" and said that the Roman Catholic Church had a duty to "protect man from the destruction of himself".

It is not "outmoded metaphysics" to urge respect for the "nature of the human being as man and woman," he added.

"The tropical forests do deserve our protection. But man, as a creature, does not deserve any less."

The Catholic Church teaches that while homosexuality is not sinful, homosexual acts are. It opposes gay marriage and, in October, a leading Vatican official described homosexuality as "a deviation, an irregularity, a wound".

The Pope said humanity needed to "listen to the language of creation" to understand the intended roles of man and woman.

He also defended the Church's right to "speak of human nature as man and woman, and ask that this order of creation be respected".

Last week, as the Vancouver Sun reported, the Vatican also refused to support a United Nations declaration, sponsored by France and the Netherlands, calling upon all governments to decriminalize homosexuality:

Archbishop Celestino Migliore said the Vatican opposed the resolution because it would "add new categories of those protected from discrimination" and could lead to reverse discrimination against traditional heterosexual marriage.

"If adopted, they would create new and implacable discriminations," Migliore said. "For example, states which do not recognise same-sex unions as 'matrimony' will be pilloried and made an object of pressure," Migliore said.

A strongly worded editorial in Italy's mainstream La Stampa newspaper said the Vatican's reasoning was "grotesque".

Pointing out that homosexuality was still punishable by death in some Islamic countries, the editorial said what the Vatican really feared was a "chain reaction in favour of legally recognised homosexual unions in countries, like Italy, where there is currently no legislation". . . .

Vatican spokesman Rev Federico Lombardi said "no one wants the death penalty or jail or fines for homosexuals" but defended Migliore's comments, adding that the Vatican was in the majority on the issue.

"It's not for nothing that fewer than 50 member states of the United Nations have adhered to the proposal in question while more than 150 have not adhered. The Holy See is not alone," Lombardi said.

An editorial in Rome's left-leaning La Repubblica newspaper said the Vatican's position "leaves one dumbstruck". Margherita Boniver, a leading member of the Italy's leftist Democratic Party, called it "alarmingly anachronistic". . . .

The Catholic Church teaches that while homosexuality is not sinful, homosexual acts are. But in October, a leading Vatican official called homosexuality "a deviation, an irregularity and a wound".

The United States, land of the free and home of the brave, also refused to sign the declaration, as the Associated Press reports:

Alone among major Western nations, the United States has refused to sign a declaration presented Thursday at the United Nations calling for worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality.

In all, 66 of the U.N.'s 192 member countries signed the nonbinding declaration — which backers called a historic step to push the General Assembly to deal more forthrightly with any-gay discrimination. More than 70 U.N. members outlaw homosexuality, and in several of them homosexual acts can be punished by execution.

Co-sponsored by France and the Netherlands, the declaration was signed by all 27 European Union members, as well as Japan, Australia, Mexico and three dozen other countries. There was broad opposition from Muslim nations, and the United States refused to sign, indicating that some parts of the declaration raised legal questions that needed further review. . . .

According to some of the declaration's backers, U.S. officials expressed concern in private talks that some parts of the declaration might be problematic in committing the federal government on matters that fall under state jurisdiction. In numerous states, landlords and private employers are allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation; on the federal level, gays are not allowed to serve openly in the military.

Carolyn Vadino, a spokeswoman for the U.S. mission to the U.N., stressed that the United States — despite its unwillingness to sign — condemned any human rights violations related to sexual orientation.

Gay rights activists nonetheless were angered by the U.S. position. "It's an appalling stance — to not join with other countries that are standing up and calling for decriminalization of homosexuality," said Paula Ettelbrick, executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. She expressed hope that the U.S. position might change after President-elect Barack Obama takes office in January.

Also denouncing the U.S. stance was Richard Grenell, who until two months ago had been the chief spokesman for the U.S. mission to the U.N. "It is ridiculous to suggest that there are legal reasons why we can't support this resolution — common sense says we should be the leader in making sure other governments are granting more freedoms for their people, not less," said Grenell, who described himself as a gay Republican. "The U.S. lack of support on this issue only dims our once bright beacon of hope and freedom for those who are persecuted and oppressed."

More than 50 countries opposed to the declaration, including members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, issued a joint statement Thursday criticizing the initiative as an unwarranted attempt to give special prominence to gays and lesbians. The statement suggested that protecting sexual orientation could lead to "the social normalization and possibly the legalization of deplorable acts" such as pedophilia and incest.

But the bright side of all this is that gay rights is no longer an unmentionable topic at the UN, as Reuters reports:

Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen told reporters it was a "very special day at the U.N."

"For the first time in history a large group of member states speaks out in the General Assembly against discrimination based on sexual orientation," he said. "With today's statement, this is no longer a taboo within the U.N."

Historical note: Half of the nations that criminalize gay sex do so based on laws inherited from the British Empire. Human Rights Watch has produced an extensive report on the legal history of sodomy laws in Britain and its former colonies (PDF, 66 pages), well worth reading if you have a penchant for history.

Update: A big ol' honk to Joe.My.God. for the definitive summary of Der Pope's remarks:

Every time you take it up the ass, we lose another acre of the Amazon.

Warning labels are so gay

Queer playwright Christopher Marlowe, a contemporary of Shakespeare's, said it best four hundred years ago: "All them that love not Tobacco and Boys be fooles."

But alas, some in the Church of England are still way, way, way behind the times, and dangerously so, as the Daily Telegraph reports:

The Rev Dr Peter Mullen, who is rector of St Michael’s Cornhill and St Sepulchre without Newgate in the City, said in an internet blog that homosexuality was "clearly unnatural, a perversion and corruption of natural instincts and affections, and because it is a cause of fatal disease".

He wrote: "Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals to have their backsides tattooed with the slogan SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH and their chins with FELLATIO KILLS".

The Bishop of London, the Rt Rev Richard Chartres, said the posting, which has since been taken down, was "highly offensive". The Rev Mullen, 66, was told on Friday that he could face disciplinary action.

Peter Tatchell of gay rights group OutRage! said he should resign.

The rector, who has written for The Daily Telegraph, insisted that he meant no harm: "I wrote some satirical things on my blog and anybody with an ounce of sense of humour or any understanding of the tradition of English satire would immediately assume that they’re light-hearted jokes."

Yeah right, you hateful old creep. Go bugger yourself, as our Brit friends would say.

Me, I'm with Marlowe all the way. Cigarettes and sodomy, amen to all that!

Overruled! The Movie

"We were inside of a private residence" . . . "The next thing I knew, the police were in the house. . . . They said, 'We're taking you downtown.' . . . I wasn't allowed to put clothes on. I was handcuffed and dragged down the stairs."

Lambda Legal, a group worthy of your support btw, has been a leader in many LGBT court cases around the country, including the California Supreme Court decision this year establishing equal marriage in that state. Now they've produced a 19-minute documentary for use in schools, explaining the background and ramifications of the historic Lawrence v. Texas ruling in 2003, by which the United States Supreme Court struck down all remaining sodomy laws in the country.

When my late partner and I set up housekeeping on the prairie in 1999, we were, technically, criminals in the eyes of the great Lone Star State. At any 4 a.m. they pleased, the local yokel troopers could have busted down the front door, marched right into our bedroom, kicked the little dog off the bed, and slammed us into a concrete cell. And we would have had no recourse whatsoever at law, none. We could have been hit with a fine and jail time and permanently marked as sexual offenders. Just for being us: two men and a little fuzzy dog living as quietly, peaceably, and responsibly as any of our good Christian neighbors.

But no longer can anyone be jailed and branded with a criminal record for life just for loving whom they please. If you aren't already familiar with this case and its monumental implications for every queer in the country, watch the whole video right here. And pass it along to your friends. It's too important to our lives and our freedoms to be forgotten.

Just Back Off

My mother always said, "Two wrongs don't make a right."

The arrogance, ignorance, and intolerance of the Republican party are manifest, revolting, and unworthy of our highest American ideals. As the last eight years have shown, the GOP is patently unfit to govern, tottering into a morally corrupt senescence; and before many more years have passed, it will, millions of us earnestly hope, be replaced by a more honest, ethical, and responsible conservatism than the ugly monstrosity it now is.

Yet having said all that, I have to say I'm getting pretty nauseated by the character assassination going on with Palin and her family. Done by the media and by bloggers and by gleeful, petty-minded posters.

I utterly despise her politics, her self-proclaimed "valley trash" ignorance of basic civics ("I'm waiting for someone to tell me, just what does the vice-president do all day?"), and her smug, smarmy contempt for the rule of law and the cornerstone of a free and democratic society, the human right to a fair trial and due process: "he's worried someone won't read them their rights."

Yeah, Sarah, even a suspected terrorist deserves his day in open court. It's called innocent until proven guilty. Because no government can be trusted to jail all the right people for all the right reasons all the time. Because a government, a regime, that holds itself above the law is an absolute monarchy, a dictatorship. Because a government that treats its enemies highhandedly today will subject its own populace to the same treatment tomorrow. Power tends to corrupt, Lord Acton said, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.

There must be no lettres de cachet, no court of Star Chamber in this country; my God--Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Franklin, Paine, would all be spinning in their graves at the very thought. Has Sarah ever read the Declaration of Independence? The Founders led a revolution against their king because, among other things,

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. . . .

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government . . . .

But I digress. Sarah doesn't get it, won't get it: Clint Eastwood in drag ("Hang 'Em High").

Nor do the vast majority of Republicans get it either, I'm afraid. The triumph of hysteria over reason.

But now fellow Democrats, it's one thing to put Palin's political views and political ignorance under the microscope, and subject her to the most intense scrutiny; she asked for it by accepting the veep slot, and that's just fine. Like Truman said, you can't stand the heat, get outta the kitchen.

But it's quite another thing to dissect, or rather, vivisect the kids, flay them alive in the public square, roast them alive over hot coals with Inquisitors fanning the flames and salivating at the sight. Makes me want to puke. They're just kids, for God's sake. I'm with Obama:

Let me be as clear as possible: I have said before and I will repeat again, I think people's families are off limits, and people's children are especially off limits.

This shouldn't be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin's performance as governor, or her potential performance as a vice president.

And so I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. You know my mother had me when she was 18, and how a family deals with issues and, you know, teenage children, that shouldn't be the topic of our politics and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that's off limits.

All this crap about the kids has no relevance to her political abilities. Or lack thereof. It's just the nastiest kind of voyeuristic political porn.

What family in America in 2008--and by definition I include the siblings, the in-laws, the cousins, the young and the old--what family today does not have in its closet a drunk-driving ticket, an unwed teen pregnancy, a wild child with a drug problem?

Let's not be so goddamn self-righteous; liberals play that stupid game just like fundies do. But it's ugly, ugly, ugly. It sucks, big time.

Suppose some hardball reporters sidled up to your friends and acquaintances with a fistful of cash and a tape recorder, hmmm? Just how would you feel, reading the headlines all about you tomorrow morning?

The kids are just as human as you and me, and they didn't ask for this. Let them work out their own lives, and deal with their messes in peace like you did and I did; God knows it's hard enough in private life.

Just back off, everybody. Stick with the real story, Palin's politics; that's more than enough to sink her and her party five fathoms deep, and the sooner the better.

Vive la France

The word from Paris is that Junior Human Rights Minister Rama Yade--how do you say hottie in French?--has announced that France will submit a proposal to the United Nations General Assembly in December, calling for the decriminalization of homosexuality worldwide.

You go, girl. As the picture shows, France is taking a very admirable, very wide stance on queer affairs in the world. Garçon, bring us another big baguette and a bottle of that lovely French bubbly!

Btw, in case you didn't know this, fellas--your queerness can get you a nice long term in the slammer in 90 countries around the world right now. And the death penalty in six.

Something to think about at the next Pride parade. And on election day.