WWTD (What Would Tzara Do)?

I'm a big fan of Dada activism. So are the folks at the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance. Following the state of Washington's high court ruling [PDF] last summer that it was fair to limit marriage to heterosexuals because marriage serves the purposes of procreation, the group has decided to call the state's bluff. They are proposing legislation requiring married heterosexual couples to procreate within three years--or have their marriage forcibly dissolved. In principle, I like this approach, and I seem to have good company. But I don't think I would actually sign a petition supporting it. Gay groups trying to earn respectability have balked because they don't want to "be seen as taking anyone else's rights away." My problem is that there's too much Dada in the law already, particularly when it comes to sexuality, so I think the joke would be lost. (Is requiring the would-be bride and groom to promise that they "are capable of having children with one another" that different from requiring them to promise that neither is a transsexual, as one county in Ohio does?) I think proposing the measure is a winner, but unless I created a funny alias, I wouldn't be signing any petitions.

P.S. Tristan Tzara, author of the "Dada Manifesto," was a huge misogynist and homophobe, so the question is actually a puzzler.

Flow Chart: Gay? --> No

Supporters of Michigan's amendment refusing to recognize same sex marriage "for any purpose" claimed in their campaign that they did not intend or expect the amendment to revoke benefits.

THEY HAD THEIR FINGERS CROSSED!

A Michigan appeals court ruled yesterday that the wording means that employers cannot provide benefits for same-sex domestic partners. The suit was filed by the ACLU after the state attorney general issued a legal opinion that public employers could no longer offer benefits to same-sex couples shortly after the amendment was passed.

Call me naive, but shouldn't the attorney general have called the amendment's supporters' bluff when they lied about the content of the measure put before voters? Is there no provision anywhere in our legal system demanding that the voters know exactly what they're voting on when they vote on it?

Now take the statements made by the executive director of the Michigan Family Forum, (wait for it) Brad Snavely. "No one knew for sure what the language would mean," said Snavely. But, now that a court has determined that the language denies gays benefits, he hopes judges in other states will follow suit.

Let's recap what Snavely is sniveling about. Queers cannot marry because it's a sin. Straights can. If straights choose not to marry (which is also a sin), they still get benefits. Queers cannot, under any circumstances, get benefits.

Part of me is tempted to say that the situation has gotten so absurd, that surely the ACLU will win on appeal, and may even have other broadly worded amendments deemed unconstitutional (or is that impossible, since they've been voted in to the constitution?). But I said that in my last blog post. And I recently watched a truly amazing (seriously) movie about Anne Frank, which drove home the point that millions of Jews in Europe didn't leave when they had the chance because they thought surely things would get better.

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

That book pretty much describes my day today. (Let's just say it started with my dog eating an enormous and particularly unhealthy-looking human turd in the park as I watched in horror, unable to catch her.) When I got home I found this article in my inbox, via Google Alerts. It reports that a recent, fairly credible poll found that 51 percent of Americans favor a law banning gay marriage. So not only have I had a brutally crap day today, but these randomly selected Americans would like to tell me that they hope I never find love and happiness. In fact, they'd like to see legislation preventing me from finding love and happiness.

But then it struck me: That's what this is all about. The whole idea of banning gay marriage is to make gay people feel that they don't deserve happiness. And whoever is polling on gay marriage right now is on their side. Hasn't gay marriage been polled enough? Wasn't there just a spate of polling in November? Is there any new legislation to prompt new polling?

Nope. Gay marriage is quite definitively illegal (in many cases by both law and constitutional amendment) in all but one state, where the wheels are already in motion to make it illegal again.

The Grey and the Gay

The New York Times has also picked up the story about Grey’s Anatomy actor Isaiah Washington calling his cast-mate, T.R. Knight, a "faggot" on the set and again (indirectly) at the Golden Globe awards. The story is on the most emailed list.

Do Americans just love a clebrity smack-down or are they actually concerned about the use of epithets? I have a hard time believing the latter given that, even in San Francisco, I hear "faggot" used as an epithet at least once a week. (See update below.) Perhaps the story has gotten big because the entertainment industry wants to make a show of its tolerance. The number of gay actors in Los Angeles is so high that if networks develop a reputation for crapping on them, they won’t be able to stay in business.

More compellingly, the Times is running an article on GLBT opposition to Harold Ford’s nomination for chair of the Democratic Leadership Council. Ford lost his bid for Tennessee’s Senate seat largely because he was just as conservative as his Republican opponent (that and he’s black). Ford was one of just 34 votes for a national constitutional amendment barring gays from that precious institution of marriage.

As Democrats try to portray Ford as one of them, conservatives are frantically trying to defend Mitt Romney from charges that he is a closet gay-lover (these charges come despite the fact that after Romney had exhausted all legal options for halting gay marriage as governor, he filed suit as an individual.) Both dust-ups suggest that gay rights advocates will have a voice in the 2008 election, rather than being just an easy smear target as they have been in the last three elections.

Update:
Statistics on use of epithets
GLSEN, a group focused on creating GLBT-friendly educational policies, reports that in 2005 three-quarters of all GLBT high school students often heard derogatory remarks such as "faggot" or "dyke," and nearly nine out of ten frequently heard "that's so gay" to mean "that's so stupid." Meanwhile, only nine states and the District of Columbia have comprehensive anti-bullying laws that include sexual orientation and only three include gender identity.

You'll Never Think of "Gay Adoption" the Same Way Again

Gay people aren't allowed to marry each other to ensure hospital visitation, life-or-death decision making or inheritance rights. And, in several states, gay people aren't allowed to adopt children, because that would be wrong. But, at least in Maine, gay people are allowed to adopt each other to ensure that their partner inherits from them.

Now the heir to an IBM fortune, Olive Watson, is trying to un-adopt her ex-partner Patricia Spado so the partner won't have access to a grandchild's share of her ex's parents' inheritance.

It just gets more fucked up. Watson is claiming that the adoption was never valid because the two were in a sexual relationship. Which is why they undertook the adoption. There is nothing as repulsive as a gay person using the homophobia of the law to their benefit when it suits them. (Sure, the money-grabbing ex is no saint either, but could you resist a stab at the IBM fortune if it came your way?)

Watson's lawyer is also claiming that allowing her ex-partner to inherit would set a dangerous precedent: Gays, prevented from marrying, would flock to Maine to adopt each other instead. Right, because we're all a bunch of sick fucks—except Watson, who adopted her lover and is just now getting around to crying "Ew!"

Last paragraph of the New England News story: "Advocates for same-sex marriage told the newspaper that gay and lesbian couples aren't likely to pursue adoption in any state because the arrangements do not always work as intended." You can say that again.

Just in case the story isn't freaky enough, the editors paired it with a picture of a woman holding a little Chinese girl. That is obviously the best way to mark someone as a lesbian without her, say, looking like a lesbian. Never mind that it's been illegal for queers to adopt Chinese babies for some time.

How Does It Feel, Hets?

The Family Foundation, the group which led the charge against (the possibility of) gay marriage in Virginia, is now setting its sights on curtailing abortion and heterosexual divorce. Give 'em an inch and they take a mile, those religious fanatics. The group wants to require consent from both parties for divorce. It also wants to force abortion clinics in the state to show clients an ultrasound of the fetus before conducting the procedure. Maybe I'm just naïve, but I don't think any woman or girl feels good about terminating her pregnancy; showing her an ultrasound just seems cruel. (And if we do that, shouldn't we also require medical and cosmetic researchers to watch videos of adorable animal behavior before proceeding with their research?)

Much as I don't identify as a Democrat, you gotta admit it's better to have them in power than the alternative. Take a look at the bills addressing gay rights already under consideration. My favorite is ending employment discrimination.

On the other hand, John Edwards came across as a typical sell-out Democrat in a campaign stop yesterday, trying to sound tolerant while also being pretty explicitly homophobic. How else can he explain finding it a "challenge to him personally" to wrap his mind around gays getting married?

Could Gay Marriage Withstand a Popular Vote in Mass.?

The Christian Science Monitor has an in-depth article about the current state of gay marriage in Massachusetts. The most recent polling indicates that 62 percent of Massachussans oppose amending the constitution. But there's an odd thing about polling related to discrimination: People lie. They are embarassed to tell a pollster that they will vote to quash the rights of minorities, but in the privacy of the polling booth the temptation to do so can be great. In the days just before the November election, an Arizona pollster told me that only 30 percent of those surveyed supported the Arizona anti-gay marriage amendment. The amendment did fail--becoming the first ever to do so--but only by a few percentage points. Popular support at 62 percent is not enough to be free of this phenomenon.

The sound byte for gay marriage supporters in Massachusetts has been that the civil rights of a minority should not be put to a popular vote. After all, as Equal Marriage puts it, "This is the basic guarantee of our constitutional democracy."

Massasuckthis

As for the Mass. legislature's vote: FUUUUUUUCK.

The vote is, however, only the first of two needed to put an anti-gay marriage amendment on the ballot.

Breaking News, Breaking Balls

Alaska: Giving same-sex partners access to insurance and other benefits would save the state about a million dollars a year.

I remain baffled by the Massachusetts high court decision calling on legislators to vote on a citizen petition to put an anti-gay marriage amendment on the ballot, but CNN offers this bit of explanation:

The high court in its ruling rebuked lawmakers for [tabling the petition], saying drafters of the provision that allows citizen petitions "did not intend a simple majority of the joint session to have the power effectively to block progress of an initiative."

I suppose I'll have to take their word for it, but don't constitutions generally specify when a two-thirds majority is required?

The same decision that exhorted lawmakers to vote also rebuffed the attempt by the gay-bashing group Massachusetts Family Institute to sue lawmakers personally. The Advocate reports that the group's president has now turned to threatening legislators personally. "Lawyers take an oath to uphold the constitution," he said. "Any legislator who’s a lawyer should be very attentive to the ruling."

Battle to Write Discrimination into the Constitution Heats Up in Alaska

The governor of Alaska vetoed a bill that would block the state from giving partner benefits to its gay and lesbian employees. Good news, right? Not really. The legislature was reacting to a court decision [PDF] that denying same-sex partners benefits violates the constitution's basic premise that "all persons are equal and entitled to equal rights." Governor Palin went out of her way to say that she agreed with the blatantly unconstitutional legislation, but said she still couldn't sign it because it was blatantly unconstitutional. Instead, she would like to amend the constitution to state not only that marriage is the union between one man and one woman (as it has since 1998) but also that none of the legal benefits or protections offered to married couples can go to those who cannot legally marry. In other words, Palin would essentially like to put an asterisk after "persons" in the constitution, which would define them at the bottom of the page as heterosexual people. Is that the next wave in constitutional amendments, or will there be an end to this blatantly unconstitutional madness, which also wastes the time and money that, as I understand it, Republicans favor?

The bill's sponsor, by the way, was Rep. John Coghill, R-North Pole. I hope he freezes to death. Or falls into the Artic as a result of global warming.

The Loophole

Gay marriage is almost universally opposed by Republicans and Democrats alike. But transsexualism has somehow slipped through the cracks. It's not OK for a butch dyke to marry hir partner, but said butch dyke is awarded a marriage license if s/he takes testosterone and cuts off hir boobs. It seems odd that the same state governments that trip over themselves to ban gay marriage in as many ways as they possibly can (22 states ban it by both statute and constitutional amendment) allow people to change their gender on official documents, tacitly accepting the idea that gender doesn't always match sex.

At least one county in Ohio has sniffed out the loophole and closed it. You must solemnly swear not to be a transsexual to get a marriage license in Clark County, whose county seat is Springfield.

The Springfield News-Sun reporter thinks the policy is a real hoot, because people obviously know if their partner is transsexual. Not only is that not necessarily true, but the reporter assumes that no one would knowingly want to marry a trans person. Maybe that's for the best.

Christmas Coverage: Mary's Miraculous Pregnancy

I love Mary Cheney. That’s right, the Republican activist, corporate vice president of AOL, and daughter of the vice president known as "Vice" and "Dick."

Her pregnancy has finally forced some mainstream coverage of gay families.

William Saletan has a fantastic piece in Slate today, debunking Mary's conservative former friends' criticism of the family she hasn't even had yet. (The Washington Post also features a package on sperm-donor families today, including one that uses Mary Cheney as a jumping-off point. Apparently the package includes another version of Saletan's Slate article, but I can't find it.)

Saletan gives an overview of the scientific literature on gay parenting. He says that even though many studies have set out in bias to find evidence against gay parenting, none has ever succeeded. In fact, the strongest evidence suggests that kids of gay or lesbian parents are probably better off (horror of horrors, they are more likely to have experimented with same-sex relationships—but few actually turn out to be gay).

But the religious right is no more willing to admit this than Grandpa Cheney is to admit that there are no WMDs in Iraq, says Saletan.

If the direct evidence doesn't bear you out, look for indirect evidence. So conservatives have developed a subtler argument: On average, children do best when raised by their two married, biological parents.

Let's take this argument a piece at a time. It's true that two parents are better than one. It's also true that married parents are better than unmarried ones. But those aren't arguments against gay parenthood. They're arguments for gay marriage.

Saletan gives a crash course in how bogus the arguments of bogus religious groups like Focus on the Family really are. (I call it a bogus religious groups because, having looked at its 1099, I learned that Focus on the Family spends 4 percent of its budget on direct service, and 96 percent on bullshit studies and selling James Dobson's products, whose profits don't disqualify it from nonprofit status because they go to him as an individual—never mind that he then "donates" them back).

-- Biological parents are better, because they are less likely to abuse. Sure, if we're talking about biological fathers versus stepfathers or boyfriends.

-- Lesbians make bad parents because so many have been raped. Come again?

-- Kids of gays will associate with gays, and gays are more likely to have STDs, criminal records and pedophilic predilections. Saletan doesn't get into this one too much, because all of the statistics, to the extent that they exist at all, refer to men. And Mary Cheney and her partner aren't, as far as anyone knows, men.

Having looked at some research by Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, I would bet that by STDs, they mean HIV: Allow a disease to go untreated in a minority population for years, and then bash the minority for being contagious. Nice. I've debunked their data on pedophilia here. If they use the same logic for criminal records, they call anyone who's had sex with a man in jail gay, and thereby prove that gays are more likely to have a criminal record. One Family Research Council study co-authored by former actor Kirk Cameron and someone who appears to be his brother, compares the charges against homosexual and heterosexual parents in custody suits. First of all, these are just assertions made in a custody case. Secondly, if you read the fine print, you'll see that the homosexual custody suits were found "systematically"—i.e., looking for the claims they later claim to have proven—while the heterosexual cases were found "randomly." It's that easy to tear these guys down.

Mary Cheney's pregnancy shows two things. These people have no shame and will bite the hand that feeds them sooner than turn the other cheek. And, even Mary Cheney, Republican activist and corporate hack, doesn't think there's anything wrong with gays and lesbians having babies.

Neanderthal Rule Prevails in New Jersey

The New Jersey supremes were supremely right in their unanimous decision in October calling for civil unions or gay marriage in the state. What does equal protection mean if not that laws apply equally to all people, regardless of who they fall in love with?

Legislators took the cowardly course yesterday, opting for civil unions. I can't get too riled up about that personally because I don't believe in marriage anyway. But I do think the people who defend the institution of marriage are starting to sound a lot like Neanderthals.

Bush called in 2004 for "an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of man and woman as husband and wife."

The day after the New Jersey decision, Bush said, "We believe marriage is a union between a man and a woman."

The same day, racist George Allen said, "I’m for marriage between a man and a woman while my opponent is against it." Actually Democrat James Webb, who won, does not, in fact, oppose heterosexual marriage; he does, however, oppose gay marriage.

The Arlington Group, a creepy coalition of congressional Republicans and Christian right organizations which has been one of the most powerful forces behind anti-gay marriage amendments, defines its mission as "Protecting the traditional institution of MARRIAGE being between 'one man and one woman.'" Perhaps they got a little self-conscious about the caveman-like repetition of "one man and one woman," and so included the quotes. Or then again maybe they have no basic understanding of punctuation.

In a creepy twist, Tennessee Republican Bob Corker, who beat Harold Ford, said "I voted...to prohibit same sex marriage because it protects...the sanctity of marriage between a man and women."

And finally, New Jersey Senator Robert W. Singer, a Republican who sponsored an amendment to yesterday's civil unions bill that would define marriage as—you guessed it—the union between a man and a woman, explained, "I believe the foundation of our state is families, marriage, one man, one woman."

The problem is, when you try to add any substance to the the caveman formula, you quickly get into trouble. Len Deo, the president of the New Jersey Family Policy Council, made that mistake yesterday, saying "People have rights, but they don’t have a right to redefine an institution that’s served us well for 2,000 years."

Which institution would that be?