Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights reports:
And we can add Alaska to the list - as one headline put it, now Putin can see gay marriages from his house!
Yesterday afternoon, U. S. District Judge Timothy Burgess (appointed by Bush in 2005) struck down Alaska's marriage ban as being an unconstitutional deprivation of due process and equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment - as most other courts have done. Full text of the ruling here. Governor Sean Parnell vowed to appeal the decision, but since Alaska is covered by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which last week gave marriage equality to Idaho and Nevada - the governor is just talking out his ass.
Alaska is thus the 30th state where gays can marry. Hoo-wee, boys, now we're getting somewhere! Photos of the celebration at Mad Mindy's bar in Anchorage last night here.
Reports are that Vital Statistics offices will be issuing licenses from 8 a.m. today; however, Alaska has a three-day waiting period, so the first weddings won't likely happen until Thursday.
No word yet on how this is affecting Sarah Palin's heterosexual marriage.
Also, if you're up for it - yesterday, Prop 8 attorney Ted Olson and professional bigot Tony Perkins debated the issue on Fox News Sunday - as if there's anything left to debate. Olson made some brilliant points, while Perkins had only the same tired old crap and lies to sputter.
And an article I missed last Monday - which seems such a long time ago now; ELEVEN states have gained marriage equality since then - on the cool, cagey way the Supreme Court may have granted marriage equality to the whole country without having to make a dramatic ruling. Read Amy Davidson's take in the New Yorker.
Attorney Ted Olson - who with David Boies was lead counsel on the Prop 8 case heard by the Supreme Court last year - chats with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at a technology conference in Reston, Virginia, last December. Justice Ginsburg's observations on the history, societal role, and workings of the Court are fascinating, but you really ought to listen at least from 9:00 to 12:00 to learn about the new opera being written, Scalia/Ginsburg. Seriously, it's a real thing.
A copy of the talk with clearer video can be seen here at the C-SPAN website.
Not content to rest on their laurels after the Supreme Court win in June, Olson and Boies are challenging Virginia's sweeping laws against all same-sex unions, not just marriage. The Advocatereports:
Ted Olson and David Boies, the bipartisan legal team who successfully argued Hollingsworth v. Perry, the Prop. 8 case, at the Supreme Court, have signed on to a pending federal case that aims to strike down Virginia's constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, the American Foundation for Equal Rights announced today.
The Virginia case, Bostic v. Rainey, was filed in the U.S. District Court for Virginia's Eastern District on behalf of two couples who contend that the Virginia Marriage Amendment, which prohibits gay and lesbian couples in Virginia from marrying, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. One of the couples, Timothy Bostic and Tony London, were denied a marriage license in July, while the secondary plaintiffs, Carol Schall and Mary Townley, married in California in 2008, have a 15-year-old daughter, and are asking Virginia to legally recognize their relationship.
The couples speak for themselves in these clips from AFER:
And Matt Baume reports on AFER's involvement in the case:
Above and below: signs carried by demonstrators in front of the U. S. Supreme Court building this morning as the justices listened to oral arguments on Hollingsworth v. Perry.
The U.S. Supreme Court raised the prospect that it will decline to say whether the Constitution gives gays the right to marry in an argument that revealed a chasm among the justices on one of the country’s most divisive issues. A decision to back out of the case would let gay marriage resume in California, without directly affecting the rest of the country. Justice Anthony Kennedy, potentially the court’s swing vote, twice asked whether the most prudent course for the court would be not to rule. He said the case was taking the court into “uncharted waters.”
As always, Justice Kennedy is almost certainly going to be the swing vote: none of the other conservative Justices appeared anywhere close to a ruling that would declare Prop 8 unconstitutional. Kennedy’s questions on the merits were pointed and probed both sides. At one point, Kennedy pointed out that the sociological evidence about families headed by same-sex couples and whether there are any effects on children is new and not conclusive. But in the very same sentence, he mentioned that there is a specific legal injury present in the case suffered by the almost 40,000 children living in California with same-sex parents.
Via Towleroad: Last Friday, in an interview at NYU Law School, Rachel Maddow spoke at length with David Boies and Ted Olson, attorneys for our side in the Prop 8 case (Perry v. Brown) now pending review by the Supreme Court. It's 55 minutes, but a fascinating discussion of the fundamental principles of equality at stake in this and other marriage cases about to be considered by the high court.
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.
I. From Towleroad, Ted Olson, speaking in New York last week:
II. From Box Turtle Bulletin, reporting on some of the many amicus curiae briefs that have been filed in the Prop 8 case, Perry v. Schwarzengger, now under appeal to the Ninth Circuit federal court of appeals:
172 - Howard University School of Law Civil Rights Clinic – Howard is among the oldest and most revered of the traditionally black universities. They spoke from a history of civil rights and made comparisons that the gay community on its own dare not claim. Read this brief. The conclusion is truly touching:
In the final analysis, there is nothing new in the arguments against same-sex couples having the freedom to marry. However much opponents of marriage for same-sex couples may insist “this time it is different,” there remains an appalling familiarity to the refrain that allowing same-sex couples the same human dignity as everyone else will threaten social order, degrade individuals, and harm children. We suffered through the same awful dirge when slave owners sought to preserve the ban against slave marriage and segregationists opposed interracial marriage. Then, as now, some claimed with all sincerity and unwavering conviction that, if African-Americans were accorded full human dignity, our society, our morality, and our faith would come to grief and lay in ruins.
But the certainty and monotony with which some will always sound the death knell for society, morality, and faith, just because two adults choose to marry cannot obscure the reality that we heard virtually the same arguments for almost three hundred years to justify preventing two black people from marrying and then a black man from marrying a white woman. Nor, when all is said and done, can these jeremiads about how marriage equality for same-sex couples will lead to our final slouching toward Gomorrah obscure the reality recognized long ago by the great African-American gay writer, James Baldwin, that it is “an inexorable law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one’s own.”
I. Ted Olson eloquently sums up the whole case for marriage equality in this short interview. Andrew Sullivan says, "I've been making these points for many many years. I cannot express how affirming it is to hear such a distinguished conservative jurist defend the civil rights of gay citizens - especially such a fundamental, core right as civil marriage."
Sullivan also writes a longer post today on this topic. Excerpt:
The church - even in its current High Ratzinger phase - opts for inclusion over exclusion. It allows the infertile to marry. It does not remove the Sacrament of Matrimony from those who do not produce kids. It even annuls countless marriages, many of which have been consummated, in enormously large numbers. It marries those past child-bearing age. It treasures adopted kids, even though they violate Ross's parent-procreating "microcosm of civilization" ideal. And that's only the Catholic church. The Protestant churches freely allow divorce and contraception - breaking both the monogamy and the procreative elements of Ross's ideal (which is to say all of it). So in the religious sphere, the Church breaks its own ideal with regularity, and the other churches have long since given almost all of it up. And yet the Catholic church still insists that its ideal be enforced as an act of civil exclusion in the secular sphere, even on people who are atheists.
On what conceivable grounds, if you pardon the expression? Look at how diverse current civil marriages are in the US. The range and diversity runs from Amish families with dozens of kids to yuppie bi-coastal childless couples on career paths; there are open marriages and arranged marriages; there is Rick Santorum and Britney Spears - between all of whom the civil law makes no distinction. The experience of gay couples therefore falls easily within the actual living definition of civil marriage as it is today, and as it has been now for decades. To exclude gays and gays alone is therefore not the upholding of an ideal (Britney Spears and Larry King are fine - but a lesbian couple who have lived together for decades are verboten) so much as making a lone exception to inclusion on the grounds of sexual orientation. It is in effect to assert not the ideal of Catholic Matrimony, but the ideal of heterosexual superiority. It creates one class of people, regardless of their actions, and renders them superior to another.
II. David Boies wipes the floor with Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, co-founded by the infamous George Rekers of rentboy fame:
Have to say, it's gratifying but really surrealistic to this old shitkicker to see these straight men defending gay rights so passionately - something that simply Does.Not.Happen down here in Jesusland.
III. On a completely different line of thought, Andrew Brown writes in the Guardian about wedding-day extravagance and pretentiousness:
The modern wedding, with its stupendous cost (£20,000 on average) and duration, is really a celebration of the participants. They really are unique and precious snowflakes, just as they have suspected all along. In fact, they are each and both of them just the unique and precious people they would like to be. Everyone pretends that for the day the couple really are starring in their own film: following the conventions of modern films, that means nothing really bad can happen to them.
Feeling unique and treasured and valued for yourself is exactly the point of being in love, and it's very nice. But it's not realistic. In particular, it's a disastrous attitude to bring to a wedding. There will be times when you appear – and are – not in the least bit treasured or valued, and when you'll be unlucky to be thought unique: everyone going through a divorce is convinced for a while they were married to the absolutely worst spouse in history.
The great point about completely impersonal ceremonies, whose form is the same for everyone, whether these are religious or entirely civil, is that they remind us that the problems and difficulties of marriage are universal. They come from being human. They can't be dodged just by being our wonderful selves, even all dusted with unicorn sparkle.
Of course, it's your privilege to do as you like on your "special day," whether that involves gold lamé or faded denim. But your Head Trucker has never thought much of expensive spectacle at a moment when a sober, solemn vow is the central idea - which partakes of the sacred in some sense, even if exchanged by two atheists in front of a county clerk.
Nor do I favor the hippie practice of writing your own vows - for one thing, the vast majority of folks who are not trained writers have a tin ear for language, and produce something sickly-sweet that grates on the nerves like fingernails on a blackboard. For another thing, it's embarassing to witness the uncensored little-girl fantasies on display in such vows, full of totally unrealistic notions drawn from fairy tales, pop songs, and romantic movies. As everyone who has been married - or at least as nearly so as is possible without benefit of law - knows, there is a very good reason why the Dunmow flitch has rarely ever been claimed.
Which is why your Head Trucker, if the occasion ever arose, would much prefer to use the simple, ordinary words of the traditional marriage service - which to my mind, creates a connection, a spiritual union, between the couple and all the countless other couples who have come before to this sacred moment - all pledging the same troth, or truth. To me, a lovely, sterling idea, more precious than anything money can buy.
In the Name of God, I, N., take you, N., to be my husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow.
But as all that is getting to be an entirely moot point at this late age, your Head Trucker will just shut up now and go back to tending his own garden.
IV. Male sexuality is really and truly different from female sexuality, whether we're talking heteros or homos. It has taken many years for this to really dawn on your Head Trucker, and it leads me to some interesting conclusions about what fidelity really means in practice and in the heart. But more about that another time.
For now, I'll just say that looking back, there were times when I went nuclear over things - very human things - that in retrospect were not worth the subsequent anguish on both sides. I was following a script learnt by heart from old movies and Victorian novels - both of which genres were quite consciously crafted so as not to offend the sensibilities of little old blue-haired church ladies who, when duty demanded, gritted their teeth and thought of England or whatever; but that was a false model for me in many ways.
With age comes, if not wisdom, then at least clarity, you know?
I have to include Rob Tisinai's parody from a few weeks ago, very apropos:
Also, Andrew Sullivan once again quotes Hannah Arendt:
The right to marry whoever one wishes is an elementary human right compared to which "the right to attend an integrated school, the right to sit where one pleases on a bus, the right to go into any hotel or recreation area or place of amusement, regardless of one’s skin or color or race" are minor indeed.
Even political rights, like the right to vote, and nearly all other rights enumerated in the Constitution, are secondary to the inalienable human rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence; and to this category the right to home and marriage unquestionably belongs.
It has been quite a journey for Ted Olson. He’s gone from being the conservative lawyer who helped crown W. by winning the Bush v. Gore case before the Supreme Court, to being a lesbian.
“Maureen,” he told me in his gravelly voice, “one of the biggest lesbian groups in this country told me I’m already an honorary lesbian.” . . . “We’re going to explain why allowing same-sex couples to have that same right that the rest of us have is not going to hurt heterosexual marriages. It has no point at all except some people don’t want to recognize gays and lesbians as normal, as human beings.” . . .
“I’ve got a grandson who’s a senior in college, and he can’t imagine fighting over this issue,” Boies said. “It’s like explaining to my daughter that there was a time when women didn’t have the right to vote and couldn’t own property.” . . .
I asked the lawyers if they were disappointed that the president who had once raised such hope in the gay community now seemed behind the curve. “Damned right,” Boies snapped. “I hope my Democratic president will catch up to my conservative Republican co-counsel.”
Olson added: “I’m not talking about Obama, but that’s what’s so bad about politicians. They say, ‘I must hasten to follow them, for I am their leader.’”
Obama sees himself as such a huge change that he can be cautious about other societal changes. But what he doesn’t realize is that legalizing gay marriage is like electing a black president. Before you do it, it seems inconceivable. Once it’s done, you can’t remember what all the fuss was about.
Well, I just don't know what to think about this, fellas. God knows I spent a lot of years waiting for a knight in shining armor to come riding along, before I figured out I had to be my own knight. But somehow I just never imagined he would look anything like . . . Rob Reiner?
I'll admit that it makes me just a tiny bit leery of what's going on; because even after all these years, I can't understand why a straight man would be on our side. I still at a deep level see them as implacably hostile to all gays, every one of them.
But - he apparently is putting his money where his mouth is. And so is Ted Olson, the mega-Republican lawyer for our side. Even the judge in this case is a Republican, and he seems kinda sorta to be leaning in our direction. Go figure. I can't keep up with all the changes in the world, you know? Is all this really possible? Cleve Jones seems to be just fine with Reiner's left-field, go-for-broke, Lone Ranger strategy.
So to them I say, go ahead and prove me wrong, boys: show me you really aren't like those nasty schoolyard creeps and bullies from long ago.
Here's Rachel's interview with Olson and Boies. These guys are major-league players at the top of their game, and they know how to play political hardball - which makes this case that much more exciting.
It's about your right to exist. To exist as a free and equal human being like every other mother's son. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - you know, all those things you thought you were buying into when you said the Pledge of Allegiance every morning in school? It's about whether you are as good as anyone else - or just a misfit, a reject in the scheme of things.
Perry v. Schwarzenegger commenced yesterday in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, and you should pay attention to it, fellas, because either way it goes, it is sure to have a huge effect on your life for many years to come.
In a nutshell: The case seeks to invalidate Prop 8 out in California on these grounds:
Violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. ["no state shall . . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws".]
Violates the Due Process Clause by impinging on fundamental liberties. ["No person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"]
Singles out gays and lesbians for a disfavored legal status, thereby creating a category of “second-class citizens.”
Discriminates on the basis of gender.
Discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation.
Theodore Olson and David Boies, the attorneys for the two California couples who are plaintiffs in this case, are determined to take the case all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court if necessary. Many gay-rights groups have criticized the case as being inopportune: a victory would, of course, require California and perhaps other states to extend marriage to same-sex couples; but a loss in the Supreme Court would set us back a long, long time, as did Bowers v. Hardwick in 1986, when the Supremes ruled 5-4 that the Constitution did not confer "a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy."
Thus, sodomy laws in thirteen states remained in effect in 24 states at that time; not until seventeen years later, in 2003, when the Court reversed itself in Lawrence v. Texas, were sodomy laws invalidated throughout the country; 13 states still had sodomy laws at that time. In fact, the law is still part of Texas statutes, though now unenforceable; the Texas Legislature has never seen fit to remove the law, which is still on the books here.
Thus, many who are well-versed in the legal aspects of civil rights and same-sex marriage fear that an unfavorable Supreme Court decision could set our cause back for many years to come. It is a truism that the Supremes rarely get too far ahead of public opinion or state laws; at the time of the famous Loving v. Virginia decision in 1967, striking down bans on interracial marriage, only about 15 states still prohibited it.
So we'll see how this all shakes out; keep your fingers crossed, fellas, it's bound to be a momentous decision either way it goes, first in the district court, then at the Supreme Court.
On a personal note: your Head Trucker was not as politically aware then as he is now, but I remember vividly the news of the Bowers decision back in June of 1986. At the time I was dating a really hot guy from Birmingham, and we were having a fun vacation in Atlanta, going to the theater and fancy restaurants. We organized our own little two-man protest against the decision by committing sodomy frequently and vocally in our room on the 17th floor of the Marriott downtown, night and day.
Didn't have any effect on the Court's decision. But hell, nobody ever had a better time protesting than we did that weekend. I tell you what.
If you want to read it - and it is very worthwhile reading - here is Ted Olson's opening argument in the case:
This case is about marriage and equality. Plaintiffs are being denied both the right to marry, and the right to equality under the law.
The Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly described the right to marriage as “one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men;” a “basic civil right;” a component of the constitutional rights to liberty, privacy, association, and intimate choice; an expression of emotional support and public commitment; the exercise of spiritual unity; and a fulfillment of one’s self.
In short, in the words of the highest court in the land, marriage is “the most important relation in life,” and “of fundamental importance for all individuals.”
As the witnesses in this case will elaborate, marriage is central to life in America. It promotes mental, physical and emotional health and the economic strength and stability of those who enter into a marital union. It is the building block of family, neighborhood and community. The California Supreme Court has declared that the right to marry is of “central importance to an individual’s opportunity to live a happy, meaningful, and satisfying life as a full member of society.”
Proposition 8 ended the dream of marriage, the most important relation in life, for the plaintiffs and hundreds of thousands of Californians.
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.
