10/31/2013
50th state closer to being equality's 15th (*plus D.C.)
By a 20–4 vote, the full Hawaii Senate passed marriage equality.
Hawaii Senate passes bill to legalize gay marriage [Reuters]
The bill now moves to the House, where Democrats hold a huge majority, and then to the highly supportive governor's desk.
Passage is not assured, of course. However, if practicing your "Aloha," a word used for both hello and goodbye, I'd opt for the form that's used to greet rather than the one used when things depart.
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10/30/2013
Interesting strategy: Hawaii opponents admit that Hawaiians support marriage equality
I don't think I've ever seen this before. On the "Let The People Decide on Marriage" site that the anti-equality forces in Hawaii have set up as a way to trip up the marriage equality bill, the coalition includes this talking point:
And they're right, polls do show that. Which is just another reason why the legislature and governor, both in place by the people of Hawaii, should go ahead and act on the people's wishes.
Thanks for the reminder, folks!
Maggie Gallagher: 'I believe SCOTUS is going to impose gay marriage in all fifty states within the next two years'
From her mouth to society's ears...
(*Clip should be cued. If not, pertinent point is at 25:43)
So stop giving to the National Org. For Marriage, potential donors. Your fight is all but fruitless. NOM's co-founder has pretty much admitted it.
If I focus on you, it's because I think your advocacy is a liability to your movement
Bryan Fischer once called me a "stalker." Peter LaBarbera has called me "obsessed." Jennifer Roback Morse called me "her minder," in an attempt to undercut my public pushback against her public role. Other social conservative assume that I and other opposition researchers focus on them because their work has touched a nerve.
None of them get it.
One guiding truth that informs all of my work is that if I focus on you in some sort of heightened way, it's most likely because I think your work is really damaging to your own cause and political movement. Most always that's the case. It's rarely personal, it's almost never inspired by my own consternation over something you've said, I'm almost never talking directly to you in hopes that I might change your mind, and I'm not doing any of it because I have the extra hours to expend (I have a husband, newborn baby, and very full life, thank you very much). No, no—I focus on your public dealings because I, a proud advocate on the other side of your coin, see your work as being much more helpful to my side than it is yours, and I think that highlighting your "wow, really?!" thoughts could possibly connect some dots with those who might be eavesdropping on our public exchange.
If you're someone like Fischer, I focus on your because I think your hyperbole has reached a level that would make even other ardent social conservatives cringe and that makes your employer, the American Family Association, look outside the limits of rational debate. In the case of Roback Morse, it's because I pinpointed you as the one National Organization For Marriage staffer so ready and willing to go off-message and admit the ingrained animus that buoys (if not sustains) the NOM machine, and I think that things like admitting you want gay people to stop being gay severely undermines NOM's supposed focus on "protecting marriage." With Tony Perkins, it's because he still gets way too many mainstream media passes and I'm determined to make any anchor or politician who courts the FRC prez truly acknowledge the harsh words off which he has built his national profile. And so on and so forth. The reasons are individualized, but they are all bound by the same through-line.
This topic is on my mind because I just read a post where NOM president Brian Brown did that thing where he pretended people like me are "driven batty" by people like rabidly anti-gay Virginia LT. Governor candidate E.W. Jackson. What Brian, like so many of his fellows, simply does not understand is that people like me actually thank our lucky stars that someone as open and honest about his animus stepped up into public prominence! If these kinds of harsh voices didn't exist, we might have to invent them. But since they do exist, all we have to do is sit back and note what they themselves are choosing to put on the record. We do so because we know that this over-the-top rhetoric is one reason why we, the peace movement dedicated to freedom, are triumphing over the pro-discrimination forces.
I can tell you that I'm not alone in this feeling. Most of us who do opposition research for the LGBT movement know each other pretty well. From regular emails to semi-regular beers, virtually all of us talk and swap "culture war" stories. I promise you that no one who does this work, whether at Right Wing Watch or Equality Matters or Think Progress or wherever, is honing in on this stuff because they have some sort of undue obsession with the pundits involved or are personally wounded by the verbal slings and arrows (at least any more than anti-LGBT animus wounds all of society). We do this work because we like to gain ground. We do this work because we like to win elections. We do this work because we want to someday not do this work.
And if this work focuses like a laser on your own work against us? Know it's because we think you are unwittingly helping us gain, win, and ultimately render ourselves obsolete.
Hopefully this clarifies.
Sandra Day O'Connor makes strong marriage equality move; thanks, Pres. Reagan!!
Ruth Bader Ginsburg did it. Now the Supreme Court Justice's retired counterpart is getting in the game:
Retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor Officiates Gay Wedding AT Supreme Court [J.M.G.]
And social conservatives looking for someone to blame for the fact that this person has his platform to make this statement can look to one person: Religious right icon Ronald Wilson Reagan. The 40th president of course nominated O'Connor, the first woman, to the Supreme Court.
Guess the Gipper loved "judicial activism" as much as he loved jelly beans, huh?
Head of Hawaii's anti-equality movement: Marriage equality will lead to bestiality, women marrying selves
Jim Hochberg is Hawaii's longtime foe of marriage equality and the head of the current effort against us. Here's what he's telling his neighbors:
Beastaility [sic]? Conubinage? Person-on-self marriage? Oh, the aggressive fear mongering! What a charming, charming movement.
And oh, that old nugget about bisexual people supposedly wanting two spouses. Why can't they understand that capacity for attraction is not the same thing as commitment to a spouse? I mean, any of us are potentially attracted to any number of prospective partners, regardless of gender. But those of us who want to commit to a relationship and marriage self-limit our options to our own, dedicated, loving partner/spouse. That does not change simply because a person's orientation is less interested in genitalia and more interested in the person.
If Hawaii legislators needed even more reason to move forward with the marriage bill, here it is. Hawaii's loving same-sex couples are not "slippery slopes"—they are good, decent, taxpaying citizens. Our 50th state has a great opportunity to take a much more forward-thinking placement in our national state lineup.
10/29/2013
HOLY CRAP! NOM attempts to link same-sex marriage to incestuous marriage!
The Illinois Family Institute's Laurie Higgins is one of the most extreme-tongued voices in the anti-LGBT movement. Like for reals, her rhetoric must be seen to be believed.
But it's not out of line for NOM. They just pushed one of her ideas—one connecting gay people's loving unions to ones that might exist between blood relatives:
Um, let's see...
- Consent (or lack thereof).
- Medical consensus about blood relative bonding.
- The fact that neither polygamy nor incest are sexual orientations while homosexuality/bisexuality most certainly are.
- Social determination about what does and does not build stronger communities.
- The fact that neither of these concepts (with biblical roots) hinge on marriage equality for same-sex couples but rather the idea of marriage itself, with any and all new considerations needing to be judged on their individual merits (or lack thereof).
And so on.
But good job, NOM. Making our jobs easier every day.
GLAAD: Why the anti-LGBT movement should fear greater TV representation (theirs)
Why the anti-LGBT movement should fear greater TV representation [GLAAD]
