Why Marriage Matters

A lovely video from Freedom to Marry featuring two Alabama moms, Jessica and Chi, who want the protections of marriage for themselves and their daughter:

45 Years Together: An Arizona Love Story

Via Joe.My.God., Lambda Legal presents this clip about a couple denied the dignity of marriage even in death:

Fred McQuire and George Martinez, both veterans, were married in July 2014 after 45 years together, but their marriage is not respected in Arizona. In recent years, both Fred and George battled life-threatening illnesses. George passed away on August 28, 2014 following a battle with pancreatic cancer.

Read more about the couple and the court case here.


Update, 9/12/14, 9 p.m.:  Today, U.S. District Court judge John Sedwick ordered Arizona to issue a death certificate for George which shows him as married, with Fred the surviving spouse.  Unfortunately, it seems that Fred will not be able to draw Social Security or veteran's benefits on George, because they were married for such a short time.  But the court recognized that Arizona's marriage laws violate the constitutional rights of the couple.  Full text of the ruling here.

Why Marriage Matters: In Sickness and in Health

This you must read. Even if it makes you weep. Just do it.


From the Orlando Sun-Sentinel via Joe.My.God.




Fittingly, today is Maundy Thursday.

Divine Servant by Max Greiner.
Click to enlarge.

Dallas Men Plan Wedding after 53 Years Together

Newlyweds Jack Evans and George Harris

As conservative and homophobic as Texas is and has been, the fact of the matter is that we gays are all over the Lone Star state, everywhere you go from big cities to suburbs to tiny hamlets in the middle of nowhere, ranches, farms, bars, churches, schools, stores, and everywhere in between.

From Dallas comes this remarkable story of a couple who have been going strong since 1961;  and today, Jack Evans and George Harris are finally getting the church wedding they've always wanted.  It won't be legal in Texas until the Supreme Court says so, but after 53 years together, they can't wait any longer.



Jack and George are the founders of The Dallas Way, a group devoted to collecting and preserving the historical record of the LGBT community in North Texas. Here, the couple participate in "Outrageous Oral," an ongoing oral history project:




Another video of Jack and George telling their fascinating stories:




Their story is a tribute to the enduring power of love. All good wishes to the happy couple.


Update: Dallas station WFAA reports on the wedding, with video:



The Dallas Morning News reported the story too, highlighting the challenge to Methodist doctrine that "homosexuality is incompatible with Scripture." Nevertheless, hundreds of guests attended, along with a dozen Methodist ministers from around the state.

What you Yankee boys and other furriners need to understand is that here in Texas, the Methodist Church is the natural choice for the better-educated and semi-liberal folks; compared to the Southern Baptists, the Methodists are almost like freethinkers. So this gay wedding - even though it couldn't be held on Methodist property - is really a sign of significant change.

Jersey Boys Can Marry on Monday

And so can Jersey Girls, following today's denial of a stay on same-sex marriages by the New Jersey Supreme Court, as NJ.com reports:

Same-sex marriages can begin Monday in New Jersey on a provisional basis, the state Supreme Court ruled today. The court will not make a final ruling on same-sex marriage rights until next year. But in the meantime, it upheld an order by a trial judge allowing civil marriages for gay couples to start Monday.

"The public interest does not favor a stay," the Supreme Court ruled in a 7-0 decision by Chief Justice Stuart Rabner today. "State officials shall therefore permit same-sex couples, who are otherwise eligible, to enter into civil marriage beginning on October 21, 2013."

Although the Supreme Court could change its stance later, for now, the decision is a victory for thousands of gay couples in New Jersey, who will be able to marry in-state for the first time starting next week. And it’s a setback for Gov. Chris Christie, an opponent of same-sex marriage who says only "one man and one woman" should be able to wed. At a campaign event at a restaurant in Dover, Christie ignored a reporter's request for comment about the ruling.

Michael Drewniak, Christie's spokesman, later issued a brief statement. "The Supreme Court has made its determination," Drewniak said. "While the Governor firmly believes that this determination should be made by all the people of the State of New Jersey, he has instructed the Department of Health to cooperate with all municipalities in effectuating the order of the Superior Court under the applicable law."

And the way the New Jersey Supremes worded their opinion today, it sure sounds to me like they will rule decisively in favor of marriage equality when they rule on the mertis of the case in February. The text of today's ruling is here. See also the New Yorker article, "Gay Marriage Comes to New Jersey."





What I Say: Your Head Trucker is struck by this comment from a New Jersey couple who plan to marry at 12:01 a.m. on Monday:

David Gibson and Rich Kiamco, who live on the city’s West Side, were married in New York on Sept. 30, 2011, and they plan to do it all again in the wee small hours of Monday morning. . . .

Asked why it matters so much for them to be legally married in New Jersey as well as New York, Kiamco was blunt.

“New Jersey said, ‘Screw you, you don’t deserve equal rights and protections,’” he said. “They treated us as second-class citizens . . . well, we want that piece of paper.”

Now your Head Trucker very well recalls a time in the late 1960's and early 1970's when it became, like, totally cool to say, "Oh, we don't need a piece of paper to prove that we love each other."

And your Head Trucker has always, from that day to this, thought that was pure bullshit - mindless parroting of a doctrinaire idea dreamed up by some stupid, pot-headed boys and girls (especially the boys) who just wanted to get it on and to hell with the consequences or with the parents' opinions.

But many a young woman who glibly repeated that empty line has since found out the bitter truth of Goldsmith's verse:

When lovely woman stoops to folly,
She finds too late that men betray.

And many a young man has learnt a bitter lesson also. A number of years ago, I was talking with a young fellow at work, who was griping that his ex-girlfriend wouldn't let him see his kid, even though he was making child-support payments under court order. I remarked that, well, that's why marriage was invented, to give you some rights over your own children.

The young man, amazed, blurted out: "You mean I was supposed to marry her? I just fucked her, that's all."

Contrast this utterly brainless, puerile, self-centered attitude, conditioned by the incessant repetitions of it in popular culture, with the earnest, clear-headed couples quoted above and in the video clip. They see - they know - what an enormous difference that little "piece of paper" means to their lives, and their happiness.

And I hope all my readers do too. It's time to stop repeating the asinine, narcissistic doctrine of the hippie era, which is as fucking stupid as the Tea Partiers who claim we don't need no stinking government. And then scream about don't touch my Social Security or Medicare.

We do need government, and we do need marriage. And you do need a piece of paper - not to "prove your love," because listen, friend, nobody gives a flying fuck who you loooove. Nobody gives a crap who you screw or how many.  If that's all you want out of life - go for it.  Get all you can grab.  Be my guest.  Marriage is not, and never will be mandatory or even advisable for everyone.

But if you want more than an endless succession of tricks and one-night stands, you do need it to protect your love - and the one you love, and yourself - which is a whole different thing.


Or do you agree with the Honorable Linda Oliver, Mayor of West Union, South Carolina:

Bridegroom

I've blogged about this video before, and now it's completed (filmed by Linda Bloodworth Thomason, creator of Designing Women, among other things) and opening today at theaters in New York and Los Angeles.  You can also get it via Amazon or Barnes and Noble at the official website. Read the updated background story at Americablog.

The story, of course, reminds your Head Trucker powerfully of what happened when my darling Cody died eight years ago.

Why Marriage Matters: Nathaniel Frank

Crowds cheer the first same-sex couples to marry in Washington state
at the courthouse in Seattle, December 9, 2012.

Two very percipient quotes from scholar Nathaniel Frank, author of the 2009 book Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America - the first from Slate, "How Do Americans Really Feel About Gays?":

The whole point of a wedding, from a cultural perspective, is for a couple to invite their community to recognize and help enforce—indeed to approve of—their union as a positive thing worth supporting. There has always been something a bit disingenuous about gay rights activists insisting that they deserve marital recognition from their society because their relationships are nobody’s business but their own. Marriage is all about making your relationship other people’s business.

The second is from Huffington Post, "Why Other People's Marriages Are Our Business":

I first pondered this question on the evening of a friend's wedding when she told me what her marriage meant to her. "It's a way of enlisting my friends, family and community," she told me, "in supporting what will surely be a difficult set of commitments over time." Suddenly I realized the purpose of all the ritual and ceremony, the reason for the gifts and tears and witnesses: marriage is not just a private bond, but a public identity, whose meaning is shaped by the assumptions and practices of all those who claim and recognize its status. Being married helps us keep our commitments to our spouses and our communities by creating a shared identity with very public expectations. It doesn't always work. But every day thousands of people choose to embrace this identity because of the support it helps afford them. This is why gays need access to the very same institution of marriage--not civil unions--that straights enjoy: so they can join not just each other, but the wider community of committed people whose marriage is recognized, understood and championed by people across the world. And this is why separate is inherently unequal.

Some dismiss these ideas as lofty rhetoric either because marriage so often falls short of expectations or because their own beliefs are even loftier: they insist they don't need others' approval, and that marriage is only important because it grants legal benefits. "We don't need the state or anyone else," they say, "to affirm how much we love each other, or to help us keep our vows." At best, this has always seemed an adolescent view of marriage. Anyone who has ever had a wedding, who has mentioned her husband or wife in passing, or who has dreamed of one day getting married, knows this isn't true. And anyone who thinks clearly about the intersection of psychology and public policy should too. There is something about knowing that your community--and even the laws of the body politic--recognize and affirm commitments you've made, that can help you stand by them. It's a bit of Freudian internalization, in which the pesky knowledge that something's been publicly uttered somehow makes it both more true and more serious. It then becomes tougher to shirk off. It's the reason that we should care when someone tramples their public vows, including public figures like Ensign and Sanford. We should all raise an eyebrow. It's what Jonathan Rauch calls "stigma as social policy."

Read more gay-related articles by Frank here.

Why Marriage Matters: Tim and Tony, Mary and Carol

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 Advocate reports:

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:

Why Marriage Can't Wait

It could happen to you:




The good news is, yesterday the U.S. Department of Labor announced that henceforth it will consider same-sex married couples, no matter where they live, as spouses under the provisions of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) - which concerns private pension plans and health insurance coverage:

"This decision represents a historic step toward equality for all American families, and I have directed the department's agency heads to ensure that they are implementing the decision in a way that provides maximum protection for workers and their families," said Secretary of Labor Thomas E. Perez. "The department plans to issue additional guidance in the coming months as we continue to consult with the Department of Justice and other federal agencies to implement the decision."

"By providing greater clarity on how the Supreme Court's decision affects one of the laws we enforce, we are contributing to greater equality and greater protection for America's working families," said Assistant Secretary for Employee Benefits Security Phyllis C. Borzi.

EBSA protects the retirement, health and other workplace-related benefits of America's workers, retirees and their families. The agency oversees approximately 701,000 private sector retirement plans, 2.3 million health plans and other plans that provide benefits to more than 141 million Americans.

Why Marriage Matters

Roger Gorley and Allen Mansell

Roger Gorley, a gay man in Kansas City, Missouri, was arrested, handcuffed, and dragged away from his partner's hospital bed on Tuesday after the partner's family said they didn't want him there:



This can happen to you. Family wishes always trump visiting friends - and if you aren't married, at best you are just friends in the eyes of the law - at worst, mere strangers, even if you've lived together for years. And as you see here, even legal documents like power of attorney can be ignored at the whim of a functionary.

Nobody gives a fuck if you are lovers, or domestic partners, or "civil-unioned" - hell, they don't even know what that means. They barely know what marriage means, as witness the airheaded, dipshit blonde Fox newsreader referring to the two men as not legally being "man and wife."

But if you are married, then the police and the courts have to respect that. Marriage makes the two of you each other's next of kin. Nobody can muscle in between the two of you, or shove you aside. As I've said many times here on the Blue Truck, marriage is not really about who you love or what kind of wedding you have. It's all about protecting the two of you in your persons and your property, and having the equal respect and dignity of the law on your side.

And that matters a hell of a lot, boys.


Update: John Aravosis of Americablog has talked to Roger's 26-year-old daughter, who was in the hospital room at the time and says that it was the patient's brother who ordered his partner to leave; the nurse on duty ignored the express wishes of the patient himself:

Amanda says that the nurse had her father removed because of the loud disagreement her father was having with his partner’s brother, Lee, who had arrived at the hospital room at the same time as her father.

Rather than intervene and inform the brother that Roger was in fact the designated representative of his gay partner, the nurse had Roger removed. This, in spite of Allen reportedly saying from his hospital bed that he wanted his husband to stay in the room with him.

“Allen said he wanted dad in the room,” Amanda told me. “He said ‘I want him here’” as the nurse was asking Roger to leave.

When I asked Amanda if the nurse was possibly not aware of what the fight was about, Amanda responded: “She knew what was going on.”

Read the full exclusive interview here.


Update:  Further details on the story have come out during interviews with both Roger and his husband's brother, Lee Mansell:

The History of the Right to Marry

Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights gives the history of Supreme Court jurisprudence on the right to marry.



The Supremes may decide this Friday which of the several cases regarding marriage equality they will consider this term, so stay tuned for big developments. For one thing, If they decline to hear the Prop 8 case, marriage could be legal again in California almost immediately.

Update:   Do go read Brooklyn Law School professor Ari Ezra Waldman's summary of the possible outcomes of tomorrow's Supreme Court conference regarding the DOMA cases and the Prop 8 case. He concludes with this note about timing:

The conference happens tomorrow and though we could know as early as tomorrow afternoon (sometimes, the Court notifies us of its grants immediately), it is more likely that the Court releases its grants on Monday, starting at 9:30 AM. After that, the briefing clock begins. The normal procedure -- 45 days for the party seeking reversal of the lower court decision, 30 days for the respondent to respond, and 30 days for the response to the response -- may be altered, but it will generally look something like that. This puts briefing done by the middle of March. A hearing will be scheduled for shortly thereafter. And, we should expect a decision by the very end of the term.

But, don't forget, if the Court denies a hearing on the Prop 8 case, marriages in California can begin almost immediately.

Update, Friday, November 30:

Veteran Supreme Court reporter Lyle Denniston blogs at 2:16 p.m. Texas time:

The Supreme Court, after taking most of the day to prepare new orders, took no action Friday on the ten same-sex marriage cases now on the docket. . . .

The next opportunity for the Court to issue orders will be at 9:30 a.m. Monday. Nothing has ruled out the possibility that some actions on same-sex marriage could be announced at that time, although there is no indation that that will occur. It may be that the Court needs more time to decide what it wants to do next on any of the cases.

See also this detailed, nuanced summary of possibilities by Denniston, as well as this summary "in plain English" by SCOTUSblog editor Amy Howe.

Why Marriage Matters

An update on the Edie Windsor case, which I've blogged about on the Blue Truck before - and which is now headed for the Supreme Court, along with a bunch of other DOMA cases, this fall.




And meet the Hendersons - an Air Force married couple in Iowa who talk about the distress and difficulties DOMA causes for them:

Why Marriage Matters

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports:

On the wall of their Henderson home, Brittney Leon and Terri-Ann Simonelli proudly display their certificate of domestic partnership. Under a 2009 state law, the document gives them all the rights of married couples. Or so they thought.

When Leon, 26, checked into Spring Valley Hospital on July 20 with complications in her pregnancy, she assumed that her partner Simonelli, 41, could make any necessary medical decisions if she suffered unforeseen problems. But that's not what happened, they said. An admissions officer told them the hospital policy required gay partners to secure power of attorney before making any medical decisions for each other.

They protested, even offering to go home and return with their domestic partnership document. But they said the admissions officer told them that didn't matter - Simonelli would need a power of attorney. Considering Leon's condition, Simonelli wasn't in a position to argue or spend hours running to a law office. But the admission officer's words left them devastated in a moment that they already were under extreme stress.

Leon ended up losing her baby.

"I am usually a big fighter. But I was so emotionally upset. It was a very bad day for us," said Simonelli, a hotel parking valet and website designer. "We went there thinking we had the state's backing, and then we were told we were wrong. It didn't matter that we were registered domestic partners. It should matter."

A woman who identified herself as public relations representative at Spring Valley Hospital told a Review-Journal reporter in a phone interview that the hospital policy requires gay couples have power of attorney in order to make medical decisions for each other. When asked if she was aware of Nevada's domestic partnership law, she accused the reporter of bias and hung up the telephone.

That law states: "Domestic partners have the same rights, protections and benefits, and are subject to the same responsibilities, obligations and duties under law, whether derived from statutes, administrative regulations, court rules, government policies, common law or any other provisions or sources of law, as are granted to and imposed upon spouses."

Gay marriage is prohibited in Nevada by constitutional amendment, so domestic partners are not considered legally married. But they have the same rights under law as married couples. The only difference is that employers do not have to provide health care benefits to gay couples, even if they are provided to married, heterosexual couples.

During hearings on the domestic partners bill, proposed by state Sen. David Parks, D-Las Vegas, numerous gay couples testified that the law was needed in part because they had been denied the right to make medical decisions for their partners, or to stay with them in the hospital.

There is no specific penalty for businesses that discriminate against domestic partners. They can file complaints with Nevada Equal Rights Commission, which investigates and tries to reach an agreement with the business to follow the law.

As I have written here in the Blue Truck any number of times, you are not a full citizen until you can marry. Historically, children, slaves, the insane, and prisoners were all prohibited from marrying. You are not grown up, you are not fully competent, you are not free - until you can marry.

Not crappy little domestic partnerships that aren't worth the paper they're printed on - not Jim Crow civil unions to keep you "separate but equal," which is never the case - nothing but full, complete, identical civil marriage will ever protect you, or be respected by the rest of the population.

And hey - you guys milling around over there at the back of the bar, muttering shit about how you don't see a need for all that: if you don't want to marry, then don't. Just say no. You can't handle the responsibility, you don't feel the love - then you shouldn't marry. Ever. It's not for tricking around, if that's all you want out of life.

But for the rest of us - it makes all the difference in the world.

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.

That Picket Fence

A young gay couple chooses monogamy over an open relationship:

I’m not like that. Call it jealousy, call it insecurity, I simply couldn’t process being open. Both my partner and I come from stable, loving homes with heterosexual parents that have remained committed and monogamous. They, along with greater society, have taught us that this lifestyle brings the greatest deal of personal joy and emotional fulfillment. We have fully bought into the idea and don’t think ourselves narrow-minded for doing so. You could argue we are being blinded by societal norms rather than fully experiencing what we may carnally desire. That may even be true, but: we are happy. For us sex is still all of these things: a primal fit of passion of physical desire, an intense emotional intimacy, or just a way to release an unrelenting case of morning wood. I simply cannot imagine the man I love sharing himself in any of those ways and then returning to our bed after a shower.

We want what our parents have. Give us about thirty years and you might get an invite to our future son or daughter’s (most likely heterosexual) wedding. We’ll be in the front row: the proud Dads that still want only each other.

I call it maturity and character.

Anybody can be a dog, or a 14-year-old with an everlasting boner, whacking it at every opportunity with or without a partner. Even when they're past 60. It takes no talent, no self-respect, no commitment of any kind - just a hard-on.

If you can't be any other way, well, fine. Enjoy your life.

Just don't lie about it, starting with yourself - and don't mindfuck guys who want something that can't be found on every street corner.


See also: Being a Man Means Putting Others Before Yourself.

Evolution, Also Known as Clarity

Found at the Bilerico Project:  A gay man who, full of 70's anti-marriage rancor, long derided the institution is now addressing wedding invitations with his fiance, much to his astonishment:

I can barely believe I'm saying this - 2 years ago I would have labeled this line of thought reactionary and dangerous - but I have no doubt that the best way to spend the rest of my life is in a sexually exclusive, till-death-do-us-part relationship with this man who wants the same thing and wants it with me. The vow of permanence, the no-exit of it, is what makes it desirable, what makes it even possible. I wouldn't consider it otherwise. It is what allows me to relax into its arms. It is what allows me to experience it as an opening up rather than a shutting down of possibilities. I don't have to worry when we fight what it means about our future. What it means is that we better talk it out now because forever is a long time to live with resentment caused by an argument about washing the dishes.

I am 50 years old. I have been in relationships that were beautiful and intense, that lasted years, with the most wonderful men, relationships for which I have no regrets but on the contrary have deep gratitude and appreciation, but they ended, and I have no interest in endings any more. I've said that, though I love cats and miss having them around, I don't want any more cats because I watched 4 of them die and I can't do it again. I can't do it again.

I don't want a contingent relationship, I don't want a commitment that's good until one of us falls in love with someone else or feels restless or bored or trapped, or until we "grow apart." It's a marriage. If we grow apart, we'll grow the fuck back together.

I know for a fact that my change in attitude has something to do with my age. I could not have made this commitment, I could not have felt this way, wanted this, when I was 25, or 35, or 45. I know exactly what I'm putting aside for this, and I know I'm done with it.

For the record, some of us never bought that 70's free-love jazz to begin with, and felt that way and wanted all that when we were 25, and the disco era not yet quite gone away. 

I'm just sayin'.

"I Treasure the God Who Loves Me"

Well, former sitcom star, now evangelical Christian, Kirk Cameron expressed a nice little thought there.  Trouble is, why does he think his God loves him so much - and hates me and you, my truckbuddies?  Why does Cameron think God smiles with heavenly delight on his marriage - but would be moved to celestial wrath with yours or mine?  Why exactly does Cameron think he is a sinner Christ died to save - but you and I, Christ despised?

Listen to his interview with Piers Morgan and see if you can understand these things:



P.S. - Kirk, I have a clue for you: there was no Garden of Eden. Believe it or not.


Update: The Advocate reports:

The sometime actor sent an exclusive statement to ABCNews.com today to reply to his critics. “I spoke as honestly as I could, but some people believe my responses were not loving toward those in the gay community,” Cameron says. “That is not true. I can assuredly say that it’s my life’s mission to love all people. I should be able to express moral views on social issues, especially those that have been the underpinning of Western civilization for 2,000 years — without being slandered, accused of hate speech, and told from those who preach ‘tolerance’ that I need to either bend my beliefs to their moral standards or be silent when I’m in the public square.”

Cameron adds, “I believe we need to learn how to debate these things with greater love and respect. I’ve been encouraged by the support of many friends (including gay friends, incidentally).”

LGBT advocate Randy Roberts Potts, who is grandson of the late televangelist, Oral Roberts, has released a statement on Cameron’s response, saying, “Increasingly, Christians understand that loving their gay and lesbian family and friends means supporting them and advocating for protections for their families. Kirk may feel that he is defending the ‘underpinning of Western civilization’ through his words, but in reality they are harming those whom he claims to love. I hope that he will continue to study and pray on how he can demonstrate true Christian love toward gay and lesbian people.”

Oh, again with the invisible (imaginary?) "gay friends" routine . . . . Right.

Why Marriage Matters

Ron and Tom's story:



Edie and Thea's story:



Kelly and Dennis's story:




And though I can't find the video that used to be available on this, read Sam and Earl's story - a sort of real-life Brokeback Mountain, which ended with Sam losing the Oklahoma ranch they built together as well as being sued by the greedy relatives for 23 years' back rent for the years he spent living there with Earl.


And don't think all these things can't happen to you.

It did to me.