Show Me the Way: Gay in Tennessee

A moving, enlightening documentary by Emmy Award winner Kate Kunath, released in 2019.  From the YouTube description:

The battle for LGBTQ rights hasn't only been fought on the streets of coastal cities; it has also taken place on the dirt roads, campuses, and in the homes of rural America. In this new short documentary‚ released 50 years after the Stonewall riots, which brought LGBTQ rights into the national consciousness‚ gay men living in central Tennessee, and their families, share stories of struggle and self-acceptance. We meet the retiree who spent his entire professional life in the closet, his devoted partner of 20 years, a pastor determined to overcome his own prejudices, and the pastor's gay son, newly in love and just starting to come into his own.

The location is Centerville, Tennessee, about 60 miles southwest of Nashville; Nashville is the home of Vanderbilt University, a large, prestigious private college.

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Sixth Circuit Upholds Marriage Bans

Two judges of three on a panel of the Sixth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals in Cincinnati yesterday agreed to uphold marriage bans in the four states comprising their circuit: Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton wrote the opinion, which says in part:

What remains is a debate about whether to allow the democratic processes begun in the States to continue in the four States of the Sixth Circuit or to end them now by requiring all States in the Circuit to extend the definition of marriage to encompass gay couples. Process and structure matter greatly in American government. Indeed, they may be the most reliable, liberty-assuring guarantees of our system of government, requiring us to take seriously the route the United States Constitution contemplates for making such a fundamental change to such a fundamental social institution.

Of all the ways to resolve this question, one option is not available: a poll of the three judges on this panel, or for that matter all federal judges, about whether gay marriage is a good idea. Our judicial commissions did not come with such a sweeping grant of authority, one that would allow just three of us—just two of us in truth—to make such a vital policy call for the thirty-two million citizens who live within the four States of the Sixth Circuit: Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. What we have authority to decide instead is a legal question: Does the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibit a State from defining marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman?

Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey dissented strongly, saying:

These plaintiffs are not political zealots trying to push reform on their fellow citizens; they are committed same-sex couples, many of them heading up de facto families, who want to achieve equal status -- de jure status, if you will -- with their married neighbors, friends, and coworkers, to be accepted as contributing members of their social and religious communities, and to be welcomed as fully legitimate parents at their children's schools. They seek to do this by virtue of exercising a civil right that most of us take for granted - the right to marry.

For although my colleagues in the majority pay lip service to marriage as an institution conceived for the purpose of providing a stable family unit "within which children may flourish," they ignore the destabilizing effect of its absence in the homes of tens of thousands of same-sex parents throughout the four states of the Sixth Circuit.

Instead of recognizing the plaintiffs as persons, suffering actual harm as a result of being denied the right to marry where they reside or the right to have their valid marriages recognized there, my colleagues view the plaintiffs as social activists who have somehow stumbled into federal court.

Full text of the ruling and dissent here. The ACLU has already announced that they will immediately appeal to the Supreme Court, which you may recall declined to make any ruling last month because at that time all the federal appeals courts had upheld same-sex marriage as a fundamental civil right; now the Supremes will have to deal with the question directly, it seems to me.

Freedom to Marry reports:

The decision flies in the face of a nearly unanimous string of 49 rulings issued since June 2013 in favor of the freedom to marry for same-sex couples. Just three lower court rulings in the past year and a half have upheld marriage discrimination.

Click here to see pics and read the stories of several of the plaintiff couples affected by the Sixth Circuit's decision.

Wikipedia makes this observation:

Decisions issued by the Sixth Circuit were reversed by the United States Supreme Court 24 out of the 25 times they were reviewed in the five annual terms starting in October 2008 and ending in June 2013 — a higher frequency than any other federal appellate court during that time period.

Federal Court OK's Marriage in Florida

The ruling is stayed, pending appeal.  Freedom to Marry reports:

Today, August 21, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Hinkle ruled in favor of the freedom to marry in Florida, the first federal judge to strike down Florida's ban on marriage for same-sex couples. His ruling follows four previous state court rulings in favor of marriage for same-sex couples in Florida earlier this summer. . . .

Some excerpts from the ruling:

•The founders of this nation said in the preamble to the United States Constitution that a goal was to secure the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity. Liberty has come more slowly for some than for others. It was 1967, nearly two centuries after the Constitution was adopted, before the Supreme Court struck down state laws prohibiting interracial marriage, thus protecting the liberty of individuals whose chosen life partner was of a different race. Now, nearly 50 years later, the arguments supporting the ban on interracial marriage seem an obvious pretext for racism; it must be hard for those who were not then of age to understand just how sincerely those views were held. When observers look back 50 years from now, the arguments supporting Florida’s ban on same-sex marriage, though just as sincerely held, will again seem an obvious pretext for discrimination. Observers who are not now of age will wonder just how those views could have been held.

•Just one proffered justification for banning same-sex marriage warrants a further note. The defendants say the critical feature of marriage is the capacity to procreate. Same-sex couples, like opposite-sex couples and single individuals, can adopt, but same-sex couples cannot procreate. Neither can many opposite-sex couples. And many opposite-sex couples do not wish to procreate. Florida has never conditioned marriage on the desire or capacity to procreate.

•The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized the fundamental right to marry. The Court applied the right to interracial marriage in 1967 despite state laws that were widespread and of long standing. Just last year the Court struck down a federal statute that prohibited federal recognition of same-sex marriages lawfully entered in other jurisdictions. The Florida provisions that prohibit the recognition of same-sex marriages lawfully entered elsewhere, like the federal provision, are unconstitutional. So is the Florida ban on entering same-sex marriages.

The ruling is in Brenner v. Scott; full text here.  Or see Freedom to Marry's website for an updated (though hideously ugly) map of where marriage laws and rulings now stand.

Here's a great video of two of the plaintiffs in the case, Steve Schlairet and Ozzie Russ, who live in Chipley, a small town way to hell out in the backwoods middle of the Florida Panhandle:




In other news:
After a 10-hour public hearing that lasted into the wee hours, the Fayetteville, Arkansas, city council yesterday passed an LGBT rights ordinance 6-2. Joe.My.God. has a great clip of Mayor Lioneld Jordan's passionate defense of equality, inclusion, and diversity here: it's worth your time to hear a straight white Southern man speaking up for the gays.

And next door in Tennessee, Mayor Karl Dean of Nashville has also come out for marriage equality.

Flag Desecration?

The good citizens of Mufreesboro, Tennessee, or some of them at least, are all het up over the display of a rainbow-striped flag at Middle Tennessee State University there. WTVF in Nashville reports:

NewsChannel5.com | Nashville News, Weather


Jesus mercy - we're still having this kind of argument in 2013.

I'd be willing to bet any amount of money, however, that those same upstanding patriots who are all hot and bothered over the rainbow would swear that the following is not a desecration of the American flag:

Demonstrators at the so-called Tax Day Revolt in Washington, D.C., in 2010, carrying 13-star American flags with a  prominent "II" in the middle of the circle, signifying a call for a "Second American Revolution" to overthrow the government of the United States - using the sacred right to own as many damn guns as you please, and as big as you please, enshrined in the Second Amendment.

Update, 10/8: The rainbow flag was stolen from the MTSU library display on Sunday, but campus cops tracked down the thief - a student - and returned the flag to the MT Lambda group on Tuesday.

Queering the South for Equal Marriage

There's a movement now afoot to raise awareness and promote marriage equality all over the Southland by sending couples to apply for marriage licenses in places where there's just no possibility of getting them - yet. Take a look at these two boys applying to get hitched at the courthouse in Morristown, Tennesseee, population 29,000, way to hell and gone up in the Smoky Mountains. And have a kleenex handy.



My stars, fellas, I remember a time when it would have been worth your life, just about, to pull something like that in a small-town Southern courthouse. But wasn't the clerk lovely about it? Not everybody would be, even now, but the times they are a-changing even in the land of cotton. An overview of what's happening across Dixie:



Read more about the We Do campaign and find out how you can help at the Campaign for Southern Equality. Or check out more videos like these at their YouTube channel.

Meanwhile, Matt Baume of AFER updates us on marriage progress in the rest of the nation this week:

It's OK to Be Takei

George Takei reveals a snap-snap-snap! side of himself that he never showed on Star Trek in this PSA slamming Tennessee lawmakers and their efforts to pass a don't-say-gay bill:


Tennessee Lawmakers: We Need To Chat from Allegiance - A New Musical on Vimeo.

Via The Advocate.

Dolly Apologizes for T-Shirt Incident

Last month, a lesbian mom visiting Dollywood Splash Country with her spouse and family was asked to turn her t-shirt inside out by a park employee; the wording on the shirt said, "Marriage is so gay."

Now Miss Parton has issued this apology to the couple:

"I am truly sorry for the hurt or embarrassment regarding the gay and lesbian t-shirt incident at Dollywood's Splash Country recently. Everyone knows of my personal support of the gay and lesbian community. Dollywood is a family park and all families are welcome." Dolly adds that the policies on clothing or signs with profanity or controversial messages are in place to protect the person wearing the shirt and keep disturbances at the park to a minimum. Dolly concludes saying, "I am looking further into the incident and hope and believe it was more policy than insensitivity. I am very sorry it happened at all."