Canadian artist Steve Walker died unexpectedly at his home in Costa Rica last month, according to an announcement on the web site of the P-town Lyman-Eyer Gallery, which has had a long association with the artist. It's a great loss to the world of art and to the gay community.
I've blogged about Steve's work a few times here on the Blue Truck. You can surf through his web site to see more examples, or check out this lovely montage of his work, made by Steve himself, which I can't embed but which is well worth looking at.
Legislation legalizing gay marriage is on its way to the governor after passing the state House by a 55-43 vote.
Gov. Chris Gregoire, who supports the measure and watched as lawmakers voted, has five days to sign it after the bill arrives. She hasn't set a date yet.
There was never any doubt the legislation would be approved in the House. More than 50 lawmakers announced support for the bill before it came up for a vote.
The biggest hurdle was the state Senate, which has conservative Democrats opposed to the measure. Even there, it passed last week with a 28-21 vote.
However, antigay activists have promised to gather enough signatures to force the issue to be placed on a ballot this November, so the implementation of the law may be delayed pending the outcome of the referendum.
Washington state enacted a broad domestic-partnership law in 2007. When same-sex marriages are performed there, Washington will be the seventh state (plus the District of Columbia) currently allowing such unions.
Bonus: In an emotional speech during yesterday's House debate, Republican state representative Maureen Walsh explains why she voted in favor of marriage equality, one of only two Republicans to do so.
Ellen talks about yesterday's Prop 8 ruling, and slams the so-called One Million Moms who are calling for a boycott of JC Penney for hiring her as their spokeswoman:
On the other side of the coin, more and more rightwing conservatives and religious extremists are muttering about "civil disobedience" and revolting against the government. Here's born-again Christianist and convicted Watergate felon Chuck Colson, mouthing about the Manhattan Declaration, which among other things states, "No one has a civil right to have a non-marital relationship treated as a marriage."
And here's devout Catholic, serial adulterer, and open-marriage advocate Newt Gigrich making a threat against the Supreme Court on his campaign website:
The Constitution of the United States begins with 'We the People'; it does not begin with 'We the Judges'. Federal judges need to take heed of that fact. Federal judges are substituting their own political views for the constitutional right of the people to make judgments about the definition of marriage. Should the Supreme Court fail to heed the disastrous lessons of its own history and attempt to impose its will on the marriage debate in this country by affirming today’s Ninth Circuit decision, it will bear the burden of igniting a constitutional crisis of the first order.
Matt Staver, head of the rightwing Liberty Counsel legal group, is on board the same train of thought:
This is a travesty of justice and it undermines the legitimacy of the judiciary. When judges find that there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, it's absolutely absurd. . . . . I think this is the unraveling of the actual judiciary. It is the very seeds, as Thomas Jefferson said, of tyranny.
Ditto Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and just about everybody else in the GOP, ranting and raving about yesterday's ruling taking away the rights of millions of (straight and homophobic) American citizens to enact discrimination into law. I suppose if the citizens of a state voted to reintroduce slavery, all these God-fearing, patriotic Republicans would likewise demand that the people's vote be the last word on the subject, and no "activist judges" allowed to intervene there, either.
Which brings me to a question I want to ask my truckbuddies: what about your nearest and dearest? Where do they really stand right now, in the face of an incipient fascist-theocratic revolution? Do they really have your back? Or are they just tolerating you, for sentimental reasons?
Sure, Granny or dear old Aunt Sally always gives your partner a big smile and a hug around the neck when the two of you visit at Christmas, and she always serves his favorite peach cobbler.
But the rest of the year, does Granny ever open her sweet little mouth to say one good word for the gays in her Sunday-school senior class? Does Aunt Sally or Uncle Joe ever take up for the gays when somebody makes a belittling remark at the Garden Club or on the golf course?
All those people who say they love you - oh, and your, uh, friend too, of course! - do they really, actually, truly mean it?
Or are they just being nice? There is a difference. A big, fat difference.
Love is not what you say. It's what you do.
If you want to find out, just try something simple like asking them to forward Ellen's video, or something like that, to their uptight, goody-goody Republican church friends, and see what their reaction is.
You'll find out quick enough, all right. Just listen to the excuses that come tumbling out of their mouths.
Over on the PBS Newshour, David Boies took the stuffings out of one of NOM's lawyers:
Finally, some of you guys may find Salon's in-depth investigation of Maggie Gallagher's sexual and marital history very, very interesting. An excerpt:
With Gallagher, it is not that the personal is political but that the personal gave birth to the political. They were umbilically linked, and they are related, but they are separate. Two anima live within her; when you are talking with her, sometimes the personal answers back, sometimes the political. The personal is uncauterized emotion; the political is pure thought, almost autistically so. The personal facts do not always impinge on the political conclusion. Gallagher’s family life is a cobbled-together, junk-strewn, happy, loving mess: absent baby-daddy, later husband (of a different religion), separation then reunion, two sons by two fathers, and an annoyed biological grandmother on Facebook. But Gallagher’s political philosophy brooks no uncertainty.
“I have no doubts who will win in the end,” Gallagher says. “One hundred years from now the globe will not be full of societies that endorse same-sex unions as marriages. What happens between now and then is going to be less certain and full of struggle. In the long struggle, I’ll bet on human nature to overwhelm ideology. The thing about same-sex marriage is it’s based on a fundamental untruth: same-sex unions are not the same as opposite sex unions. They are not marriages.” . . .
Same-sex marriage is just a big lie, she believes, like Communism. It is weak at its foundations, like the Iron Curtain. It may get built, she seems to concede — in 10 years, or 20, there may be more states that recognize same-sex marriage, more shiny, happy couples raising rosy-cheeked, well-adjusted children, children who play with dogs and go to school and fall from jungle gyms and break their arms, children often adopted after being abandoned by the heterosexuals who did not want them or could not care for them — but in time (big time, geological time, God time) the curtain will be pulled back, or it will fall. Because it has to. It cannot be otherwise. Because a son, as Maggie Gallagher will tell you, needs a dad.
Although the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they believe to be desirable, it requires that there be at least a legitimate reason for the passage of a law that treats different people differently. There was no such reason that Proposition 8 could have been enacted.
Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples. The Constitution simply does not allow for laws of this sort.
A three-judge panel of the federal Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit today struck down California's gay-marriage ban as violating the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U. S. Consitution. The court's opinion was written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt, joined by Judge Michael Daly Hawkins.
Judge N. Randy Smith dissented, saying there were "legitimate governmental interests" in restricting the definition of marriage to a union between a man and woman.
Proposition 8 backers can now ask the 9th Circuit to rehear the case with an 11-judge panel, or proceed directly to the Supreme Court. Smith's dissent could be a strong indicator there will be some support within the court to take a second look at the case.
The appeals court also rejected the argument that Walker's ruling should be scrapped because he did not disclose he was in a long-term same-sex relationship while he was handling the case. Smith joined in that part of the ruling.
As a result of the continued legal wrangling, same-sex marriages are not expected to resume in California any time soon, with further appeals likely to stretch at least into next year.
In the ruling, Reinhardt, considered one of the nation's most liberal judges, relied heavily on the U.S. Supreme Court's 1996 decision striking down a Colorado law that stripped gays and lesbians of protections against discrimination there.
The ruling, however, was focused on California's circumstances, notably the fact Proposition 8 took away the right of same-sex couples to marry that had been established in a 2008 California Supreme Court decision.
The 9th Circuit did not declare a fundamental right for same-sex couples to marry, a broader definition that could have undercut bans on gay marriage in four other western states.
The 2-1 decision by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will have limited effect outside California because it is based on voter repeal of a right a minority already enjoyed.
"The people may not employ the initiative power to single out a disfavored group for unequal treatment and strip them, without a legitimate justification, of a right as important as the right to marry," the court said.
Santa Clara University constitutional law Professor Margaret M. Russell said the ruling overturned Proposition 8 on “the narrowest grounds possible,” which makes it less likely that the U.S. Supreme Court would review it.
“It is very much anchored in the role of Proposition 8 in California’s history,” the professor said, adding that it would have little effect outside of California.
The court will not allow same-sex marriages to begin again in California until the deadline has passed for proponents of Prop 8 to appeal today's ruling or an appeal has been denied, a process that could take months, according to the folks at Prop 8 Trial Tracker.
The famous Coronation portrait of the Queen by photographer Cecil Beaton. (Another kind of queen.) The encyclopedia I had as a child used a full page for this lovely portrait, which has been engraved on my memory ever since.
Today marks the diamond anniverary of the Queen's accession to the throne upon the death of her father, George VI, in 1952. At the moment she became Queen, aged only 25, the then-Princess Elizabeth and her husband, Prince Philip, were in Kenya on the first leg of a planned tour to Australia and New Zealand. In that pre-jet era, it took more than 24 hours for the royal couple to return to England via BOAC airliners.
Below is a documentary of the first days of the Queen's reign, including the famous footage of her first steps on her native soil as Queen, greeted by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and other members of the Cabinet.
Fast-forwarding to the modern era, here is a BBC documentary on the monarchy, filmed in 2007, which on YouTube is divided into 27 clips, covering four episodes, which you can watch in sequence beginning with this one. It's really very well done, featuring many behind-the-scenes shots of such things as the royal kitchens and stables, as well as interviews with participants and bystanders, and I recommend it to my truckbuddies.
The big celebration of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee is planned for the first week in June of this year, including a flotilla pageant on the Thames, a concert at Buckingham Palace, and culminating on June 5th with a service of thanksgiving at St. Paul's Cathedral. More details at the official Diamond Jubilee website here.
After the jump, for those of you who, like me, enjoy historical footage, a contemporary color documentary of the the beginning of the "New Elizabethan Era," as it was then called.
My late husband was a past master of the piano as well as the organ, and this lovely piece - a favorite of his - is one I have listened to many times in his memory since I lost him seven years ago today.
With somebody I used to know. Today would have been our twentieth anniversary.
Yesterday, the ex-roommate wrote me with a new video he came across that speaks to the pain of love and loss and whatever that we have each been through in the past. In some ways, our lives have paralleled each other's, so we can relate on all that heartache stuff and the craziness that follows. But I'm a little bit whole lot country, he's a little bit rock 'n' roll - you know how that goes - so the song doesn't grab me the way it does him. But I can appreciate what the young'uns are attempting to do there, and I am honestly impressed that three people can play one 12-string at the same time: quite a feat, kudos to them.
I responded with a couple of songs I used to listen to over and over at a certain time in my life that caught my feelings then. So here's all three, maybe if one of you guys needs a broken-heart song for some reason one lonely night, one of these will fill the bill.
P.S. - Boys, listen to the old man here. If ain't broke, don't fix it. If it is broke, don't spend more than two weeks, max, crying in your beer. Does you no damn good at all, and doesn't mean a thing to him. Just turn the page and Move.Fucking.ON.
And don't look back. Trust me on this, will ya guys?
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, harmony; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that I may seek not so much to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
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We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love.
and welcome to the Blue Truck, a blog for mature gay men with news and views on gay rights, history, art, humor, and whatever comes to mind. Plus a few hot men. The truck's all washed and gassed up, so hop in buddy, let's go.
CAUTION: For mature gay men only beyond this point. Some posts and links may not be suitable for children or the unco guid. You have been warned.
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My Story
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Churches say that the expression of love in a heterosexual monogamous relationship includes the physical, the touching, embracing, kissing, the genital act - the totality of our love makes each of us grow to become increasingly godlike and compassionate. If this is so for the heterosexual, what earthly reason have we to say that it is not the case with the homosexual?
It is a perversion if you say to me that a person chooses to be homosexual. You must be crazy to choose a way of life that exposes you to a kind of hatred. It's like saying you choose to be black in a race-infected society.
If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn't worship that God.
