And continuing the celebratory Friday theme: on behalf of Jewish women raised on the Upper West Side -- I'd like to say mazel tov to our nation's newest Supreme Court justice, the 112th -- and the fourth woman to don the robes of the nation's highest court.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention, while lamenting that this ad didn't come out before Prop 8 passed, you can donate now and help get it on the air in California, if your pocket book is so inclined. Now, on with the original blog post...
Alex Koppelman at Salon.com's War Room blog has a perfectly devastating post on a new ad in support of gay marriage in California. His point, in short, where was this ad before Proposition 8 passed?
California's Supreme Court, by a vote of 6-1 has upheld the gay marriage ban, otherwise known as Proposition 8, that passed in a referendum last year. More strictly speaking, they held that the ban did restrict the designation of marriage "while not otherwise affecting the fundamental constitutional rights of same-sex couples." Thus it is constitutional, which is an eloquent sort of yak caca, but it was a predicted ruling.
The silver lining, if there is one, is that the court ruled not to invalidate the approximately 18,000 marriages performed in the state prior to Proposition 8's passage. This from the same court that did invalidate the marriages performed by San Francisco in 2004. Progress marches onward, or more accurately, it stumbles in an ignorant stupor towards the light of tomorrow's sobriety.
I bring all of this up, because while it is in so many ways a travesty against the civil liberties of the gay community, it does not sway me from my more hopeful post of last week. Therein, I argued that I was wrong to blast the gay community for overreaching in 2004 when it pushed gay marriage in the Bay Area and Massachusetts.
I think, despite this setback, that my general optimism remains correct. So much progress has been made, and while vast swaths of the population still vehemently oppose gay marriage, most of them aren't willing to openly oppose basic equal rights for gays. The time seems nearer than it ever has when gays and lesbians will be able to afford the same legal rights and protections of married heterosexual couples.
As for California, well... at least they're trying.
Joanna Blotner is a former Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center. She currently works as Religion & Faith Program Coordinator for the Human Rights Campaign. All views expressed are her own.
Emotionally processing the results of this year's election has been a very confusing, exhausting and heart-wrenching process for me. On the one hand, I am overjoyed that our nation sent a stronger majority of LGBT-friendly legislators back to Congress. On the other hand, I am nothing short of disgusted that two more state constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage passed in Arizona and Florida; that voters in Arkansas have barred single parents and gay couples from adopting children in need of loving homes; and that California voters decided to revoke equal marriage rights granted constitutional by the state Supreme Court. As MSNBC's Keith Olbermann said in his special comment on Proposition 8, it is one thing to further deny civil rights that have never been granted, but it is another thing entirely to "take away the legal right which [someone] already had" - Olbermann's comments are by far the most powerful and beautiful I've heard yet.
Before you vote on Proposition 8, you need to read this. I used to be like you--for Gay marriage. And I thought that the proposition, which aims to overturn the supreme court ruling which recognized gay marriage, was dumb, distracting, and, obvi, discriminating, disenfranchising, homophobic, embarrassing for the country etc.
But that was before I saw the sign, and--to quote the Ace of Base anthem--it opened up my eyes. (Ace of Base is just soooo right on sometimes.) The sign was more physical than most epiphanies. It was literally a sign--a sign being held at an anti-gay marriage rally. And it said "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steven."*
I immediately began to question myself, what I knew and what I thought I knew.
1) The first thing I questioned was why nobody had suggested taking the "n" of of the "Steven," rendering it "Steve." It's not that the motto "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steven" isn't catchy and powerful. But wouldn't a rhyming "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" sign be even more effective?
2) So my next question was towards myself: Had I been making uneducated assumptions about homophobia. I had always assumed that homophobia was a fairly straight forward phenomenon. The final "N" showed me that homophobia was much more textured and mutlifaceted than I had wanted to admit. There is your run of the mill dumb homophobia, whose members would have, for example, redone the sign or at least crossed out the N. And then there's really, really dumb homophobia, in which obvious poetry rules are ignored or, more likely, missed.
3) Then I wondered if I was, once again, underestimating homophobia. Was the N not mistake, but part of a deliberate poetic plan in which exact rhyme was eschewed and Emily Dikensonian near rhyme was embraced? Was this idiocy? Or the emergence of a homophobic experimental poetry sub culture?
4) Who was the dumb one now? That would be me. For making an ass out of u m e and homophobia.
So if you want to vote yes on artistic expression and yes on the renaissance of homophobic poetry, which has been called** "homo-phoetry," and no on civil rights, you'll vote Yes on Proposition 8!
You'll also want to make sure you vote for McCain-Palin, especially since Palin announced desire to amend the constitution and ban gay marriage. (In all fairness, the Governess is not that familiar with the Constitution, so she may not know what this all means.) Palin explains that she is "not going to be out there judging individuals, sitting in a seat of judgment telling what they can and can't do, should and should not do." She'll just non judgementally criminalize their way of life.
*I swear I saw this sign. I didn't have any camera on me, but this is for real. I mean, it would be a really bizarre thing and not quite over the top enough to make up.
** by "has been called" I mean "has been called by the author."
