The Right to Love: An American Family

This video was produced in 2012, but somehow I totally missed it back then, and just happened to come across it last week.  Be sure to watch the 2022 update as well. 

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America Is Beautiful

Yesterday, Coca-Cola aired this ad for the Super Bowl (what is that, anyway - some kind of game show?). Pretty cool ad, it features a gay couple and their kids, among many other representatives of our great American salad bowl.



Coke also made a short behind-the-scenes film about the ad:



I say, three cheers for Coke! I never thought I would live to see a soft-drink company, especially this one headquartered in Atlanta, come out for gay rights. Wow.

Betty Crocker Loves All Families

Betty's crew went to Pride celebrations all around the country this year and made this video to show their support for equal marriage.  Sweet.




I have to say, though, there's something disturbing about the leather dads. Who wears fetish gear for a day in the park with the kid? Of course, there was probably a Pride parade happening too, but . . . it just doesn't seem right to me, on several levels. Granted, I could be wrong, but I'm just afraid the little boy is going to be a very unhappy young man when he grows up.

Of course, there are totally hetero biker couples who wear all kinds of outrageous stuff and dress their tykes in it too, as soon as they can toddle around. Not usually with great outcomes down the road, though.

"I'm Their Mother . . . and Their Father"

Perhaps today it's appropriate to give a little shout out to all the gay parents who are doing such a great job raising kids - many of whom would never have had father or mother otherwise.  A quick peek at one amazing family in Arizona:



Read more about how this family grew - and grew - and grew - in this article from their hometown newspaper: 2 Gay Dads, 12 Happy Kids.

How Do You Solve a Problem like Maggie?

Jane Lynch as Maggie Gallagher in the courtroom drama 8, which
aired live from Los Angeles last weekend; catch the whole video here.

Gay marriage will destroy the family and make straight couples not get married: so goes the logic of homophobes like Maggie Gallagher and all the rest. Marriage, they say, is only for the purpose of conceiving and raising children: conveniently ignoring the fact that all kinds of straight people can and do get married when they either can't reproduce or refuse to, and nobody thinks a damn thing about it.

But how can you make people who aren't rabid fanatics see the truth, as opposed to the lies about marriage equality? An excerpt from Slate magazine's article, "When the Facts Don't Matter":

Research commissioned by the Third Way, a moderate think tank in Washington, illustrates how this might look. A team of research psychologists conducted in-depth interviews with members of the “moveable middle,” or those considered open to supporting gay equality but not yet fully there. They used psychological tools to identify their subjects’ emotional states and concerns around issues of gay equality. What their research revealed were subconscious anxieties around what they perceive to be a world spinning out of control, a feeling exacerbated by a sense that new understandings of old institutions are being forced upon them. Some may oppose same-sex marriage in an effort to seize control and bolster values they see as besieged. . . .

Equality Maryland, the state’s major LGBT equality group, recently helped secure the freedom to marry with a message that gay people, like straight people, seek to “make a public promise of love and responsibility for each other and ask our friends and family to hold us accountable.” The values that would be more likely to appeal to liberals who already endorse same-sex marriage—those of individual rights and entitlements—were not the message. In her forthcoming book, Supreme Court lawyer Linda Hirshman argues that a rhetoric of moral values, which itself strikes many as conservative, was the gay movement’s “surprise weapon” in beginning to win the freedom to marry. Telling the stories of heroic caretaking throughout the AIDS crisis and of committed relationships through thick and thin, advocates stopped relying on feeble appeals to tolerance, and showed naysayers that gay people shared their moral values and deserved equal treatment.

This doesn't mean that liberal equality advocates must turn more conservative in order to advocate to the middle. What it means is recognizing the common ground that already exists, in the form of what I’d call “sub-values” (responsibility, fairness, respect for tradition, sanctity) within the larger values debate around homosexuality.

This was convincing to Ted Olsen, former solicitor general under President George W. Bush, who explained that he joined a constitutional challenge to California’s gay marriage ban to protect conservative values: “We believe that a conservative value is stable relationships and stable community and loving individuals coming together and forming a basis that is a building block of our society, which includes marriage.” Along the same lines, after discovering in their research that some moderates were offended by seeing same-sex couples throwing weddings in jeans or during parades, Third Way recommended that gay and lesbian couples find a way to signal they took marriage seriously, appreciating the sanctity of such a solemn commitment.

Through Thick and Thin

Thanks to my truckbudy Frank for his blog post about the case of Mark and Frédéric, who are fathers of four and facing the destruction of their family by the inane immigration laws that make no provision for same-sex couples.  The couple were among the subjects of the documentary film Through Thick and Thin, made a few years ago, which the clips above and below are from.

An excerpt from Mark's blog, where he details what they are up against:

Although we are both the legal parents of four American children, and both the state and federal government recognizes our status as parents, it will not recognize our marriage because of the Defense of Marriage Act. According to the U.S. government, I am the father of our four children, and Fred is the father of the same four children, but we are legal strangers to each other. Our marriage, our nearly 22 years together, all of that amounts to nothing. Fred has no right to stay in the United States beyond the expiration date of his visa. And that day was rapidly approaching. At the same time, while France would recognize our relationship under its less-than-optimal Civil Solidarity Pact (“PACS”), and it may even permit me to reside in France legally as an immigrant on the basis of our relationship (but not our marriage), the French government refuses to recognize the adoption of our children, because under French law same-sex couples are prohibited from adopting children. We are trapped by U.S. law that refuses to see our marriage, and French law that refuses to see our children.

Mark and Frédéric are seeing U.S. immigration officials this week in yet another bid to get permission to keep their family united in this country.





It would be a good idea to let your Congresspeeps know how you feel about the Uniting American Families Act, which has been introduced in every Congress since the year 2000 but has not yet been passed, thanks to the Republicans - you know, the family values party. Immigration Equality has details on how you can help.

"Why Does That Woman Live with You?"

Andrew Sullivan, responding to a reader's description of growing up - more or less happily, it seems - with gay parents, but not having a word to explain their relationship to her friends:

Let me add something that I experienced as well. My in-laws have always been supportive and loving and tolerant. They accepted me at Christmas and other occasions and were glad their son had found a partner. But it was not until we told them that we were "engaged" that something suddenly clicked. They finally had a way to understand us and our love because they had the linguistic architecture to make sense of it. I was going to be their son-in-law! With those words. I became family - not Aaron's friend, or roommate or boyfriend or lover or what-have-you. But his husband. And thereby their family as well.

There was and is something about these words - engaged, married, husband - even though they may contain a mountain of different experiences, that made us a family. I think conservatives should favor the unification and mutual love and support of families. And that means they must by definition favor the mutual love and support of the gay people in them.

This is not about creating something new. It is about making a home for people who have been here all the time for centuries. It is about making the human family whole.

Joe Solmonese to Obama: We Are Your Equals

Joe Solmonese of the Human Rights Campaign let 'er rip this morning with a polite but scorching letter to the President; here's an excerpt:

Dear Mr. President:

I have had the privilege of meeting you on several occasions, when visiting the White House in my capacity as president of the Human Rights Campaign, a civil rights organization representing millions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people across this country. You have welcomed me to the White House to express my community’s views on health care, employment discrimination, hate violence, the need for diversity on the bench, and other pressing issues. Last week, when your administration filed a brief defending the constitutionality of the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act,”[1] I realized that although I and other LGBT leaders have introduced ourselves to you as policy makers, we clearly have not been heard, and seen, as what we also are: human beings whose lives, loves, and families are equal to yours. I know this because this brief would not have seen the light of day if someone in your administration who truly recognized our humanity and equality had weighed in with you. . . .

As an American, a civil rights advocate, and a human being, I hold this administration to a higher standard than this brief. In the course of your campaign, I became convinced—and I still want to believe—that you do, too. I have seen your administration aspire and achieve. Protecting women from employment discrimination. Insuring millions of children. Enabling stem cell research to go forward. These are powerful achievements. And they serve as evidence to me that this brief should not be good enough for you. The question is, Mr. President—do you believe that it’s good enough for us?

If we are your equals, if you recognize that our families live the same, love the same, and contribute as much as yours, then the answer must be no.

We call on you to put your principles into action and send legislation repealing DOMA to Congress.