Apology not accepted

So, let me get this straight (no pun intended). We aren’t allowed to serve openly in the military. We aren’t allowed to get married almost anywhere.  And, in the few places where we are allowed to marry each other, there are people constantly at work to change things back to the discriminating way they were. Is that correct? That’s messed up.

New Hampshire state Rep. Nancy Elliott has been apologizing for the comments she made about gay sex a few weeks ago. She made these offensive remarks during a conference looking into repealing the law that made gay-marriage legal in the state. Well guess what, Nancy? I don’t forgive you! You’re still trying to take away my rights, whether you apologize for what you said or not.

I can’t imagine what possessed her to share the thought that had obviously just sprung into her head the exact moment she decided to share it. The comment she made was, “We’re talking about taking the penis of one man and putting it in the rectum of another man and wiggling it around in excrement.”

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Judging the Prop 8 judge

U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker is gay. Which means that the Proposition 8 case will be decided by someone it directly impacts.

The question of the month is: Is this fair?

A ferocious debate about this is raging in the press and the blogosphere. On one side is the National Organization for Marriage, the conservative, anti-gay marriage organization that has been fighting for Prop 8 all along.

NOM sent out a letter that read: Walker has “been an amazingly biased and one-sided force throughout this trial, far more akin to an activist than a neutral referee.”

This is ridiculous. A really biased (for us) judge would have immediately issued a stay on Prop 8, allowing gay weddings to continue while the case was decided.

NOM would have called Walker an “activist judge” if he ruled against Proposition 8, no matter what his sexual orientation. And odds are that we will win this case in Walker’s court – simply because the anti-marriage folks presented a very weak (to non-existent) case.

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What children need

One of the more appealing-sounding arguments in the social conservative arsenal is that children need a mother and a father. This is often trotted out as an argument against same-sex marriage. But is it? I could even agree with this claim.

It seems likely that children benefit from having two nurturing and attentive parents of opposite sexes. But this argument, such as it is, is based on an idealized two-parent family on the model of the 1950s television sitcom “Father Knows Best.” But for many people, changing social and economic circumstances have made that model difficult, if not impossible. Single women bear and rear children, parents divorce. Increasingly both parents work, leaving little time for child-rearing. In recognition of these realities, almost every state allows single-parent adoption. The argument is that having one parent is better than having no parents at all. And nothing prevents two men or two women with a child from living together and rearing a child together.

As gay advocates often point out, children benefit from having two legally married parents who assume legal and financial responsibility for child care and support. But the social conservative argument does cut against several current social phenomena. It sounds more than anything like an argument against single mothers having and rearing children. And what about parents with a deceased partner?

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Don’t ask, I’m still telling

Obama said it in his State of The Union address: Let gay Americans serve their country. Do away with the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

The camera then got a shot of the men in official military uniform who all did not clap at the idea the president had proposed. Maybe they were just being polite, maybe they didn’t clap because they hated the idea of gays being “out” in the military. Nevertheless the fact remains that the DADT policy has been oppressing gay people for as long as it has been employed.

Why can’t we be out? Better to be honest than to lie to people. I’ve had a lot of conversations with individuals who had never really gotten to know a gay man before meeting me, and all of them were enlightened by the end of our meeting, leaving with an opened mind and some new insight into a world they had formerly known nothing about.

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