Politics ain't Beanbag

"Politics ain't beanbag." -- Finley Peter Dunne, Chicago newspaperman, 1898

I enjoyed the rough and tumble of Chicago politics, the kind of politics where size matters, the dead vote, you don't get your garbage picked up if you vote wrong too often, and precinct captains have been known to vote opponent's bedridden mothers against them. Enjoyed it isn't quite the right word -- I reveled in it.

Wisconsin, squeaky clean German socialist roots that it has, doesn't work that way. I was barely threatened during the anti-marriage amendment campaign, people get steamed up about campaign ethics violations that wouldn't even be noticed in Chicago, and nobody bothers to worry about what percentage of votes is being stolen during the count, because they aren't. In Chicago, we used to work had to keep the other side down to ten percent.

Not so, though, in Massachusetts. Massachusetts has been playing Chicago-style politics lately.

Romney hides the bucks ...

Or at least, in the case of Mitt Romney, trying to play.

Romney is threatening to tie up pay raises for the legislature if it fails to vote on a Massachusetts anti-marriage amendment in Tuesday's ConCon. The threat is empty, because Romney is in his last days in office, and incoming Governor Deval Patrick is expected to approve the raises next week, whatever Romney does or doesn't do.

Childish, perhaps. And an empty gesture, to be sure.

But empty gesture or not, Romney needs a bit of raw-meat fag-baiting press because he was exposed as something of a fraud over the Christmas holidays, when it came to light that Romney had purported to be a stalwart defender of gay and lesbian rights when he needed gay and lesbian votes, but changed his tune when it came time to court the Republican religious right in his bid for the presidency.

Social conservatives are, oddly enough in light of their own difficulties with prevarication, having a bit of difficulty understanding how Romney could talk out of both sides of his mouth.

Romney chalks it all up to a conversion, of sorts, a change of heart and mind -- nothing at all to do with raw ambition or the need to avoid getting an honest job now that he is out of office.

Mineau goes for the jugular ...

Meanwhile, Ken Mineau of the Massachusetts Family Institute, said that the MF Institute might seek professional sanctions against legislators who are lawyers: “Lawyers take an oath to uphold the Constitution. Any legislator who’s a lawyer should be very attentive to the [Supreme Judicial Court’s] ruling.”

Constance Vecchione, bar counsel for the Board of Bar Overseers, told the Boston Globe that the Board would consider claims of violations of professional conduct brought to its attention.

I have no idea how the Board would dispose of the issue -- it seems unlikely to me that the Board would consider a lawyer's actions as a legislator grounds for professional misconduct -- but I think that the threat is interesting. It is exactly the kind of improbable intimidation tactic that a Chicago poll would pull to influence a tough vote.

Sue and be sued ...

In mid-December, VoteOnMarriage, an umbrella organization made up of the Roman Catholic Church and various evangelical groups, filed a federal lawsuit against all 109 legislators who voted on November 10 to postpone a decision on the amendment.

The suit demands $5 million in damages and an order from the court that the vote to recess the joint meeting of the House and Senate can be seen as a vote in favor of the amendment.

The lawsuit would not seem to have much chance, because legislators are almost always held immune from damages resulting from legislative actions.

Last week, a number of the legislators fired a salvo back, a countersuit to VoteOnMarriage demanding that the lawsuit, which is described as "frivolous" and "without merit", be dropped. If VoteOnMarriage refuses, the countersuit is automatically filed with the court.

The countersuing legislators, in my opinion, missed an opportunity for mischief. The $5 million in damages sought by VoteOnMarriage is the amount VoteOnMarriage spent getting the 170,000 petition signatures, or $29.41 per signature. In a word, that's awfully high. In Chicago, a vote can usually be had for $5 or $10, and I'd like to know why VoteOnMarriage spent so much per signature -- skimming, perhaps?

Maybe most of the money went to the organizations that obtained the signatures. No doubt. Given the widespread fraud allegations about the signature process, it appears that Massachusetts learned something from Chicago, in any event.

To paraphrase Chicago Alderman Paddy Bauler's famous 1955 statement, it would appear that "The religious right ain’t ready for reform."

Tomorrow, tomorrow ...

Tuesday is that last day of ConCon, and we'll find out what the legislature does, in any event. Anyone want to bet that there'll be a vote?

Curiouser and curiouser

"It is odd that a public figure, who issued an edict against civil union and then forbade any public discussion or dissent, threatening severe consequences to anyone who dared speak out against him, receives a religious free speech award. Under their criteria, I suppose one should consider recognizing former South African President Botha for speaking fearlessly in support of apartheid despite intense pressure from the civil rights communities of the world. As stated in 'Alice in Wonderland': Things just get curiouser and curiouser." -- Attorney Eric Farnsworth, who purchased an advertisement in the Madison newspapers signed by Catholics opposing Wisconsin's anti-marriage anmendment.

Madison Bishop Robert Morlino was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award earlier this month by the Congress of Racial Equality. The award was given to Morlino in recognition of Morlino's "support of free speech" amid controversy over the state's same-sex marriage amendment.

In a statement, CORE said that it honored Morlino "for resisting groups seeking to deprive him of his fundamental right - as an American and as a Catholic leader -- to express support for a state constitutional amendment to protect marriage as a man and a woman."

CORE national spokesman Niger Innis went on to say that "we are very proud of the dignity and intestinal fortitude of Bishop Morlino and hope he serves as an inspiration for brother dioceses across the country."

On the gay and lesbian struggle for equal treatment under the law, Innis had this to say: "When you say to society at large that you have to accept, not only accept our lifestyle, but promote it and put it on the same plane and equate it with traditional marriage, that's where we draw the line and we say 'no.' That's not something that is a civil right. That is not something that is a human right."

I wonder what Bayard Rustin, who had been imprisoned under the sodomy laws of the era, would have to say about CORE's "got mine, f--k you" view of civil rights.

I'll bet he wouldn't be laughing.

A Ford, not a Lincoln

Jerry Ford, was, by all accounts, a thoroughly conventional man, neither stupid nor brilliant, a man who expressed no grand plans to save humanity from itself and made no pretensions to be other than what he was -- as he put it, "a Ford, not a Lincoln".

Ford was exactly what our country needed in the aftermath of Richard Nixon, a twisted half-shell of a man, whose scheming, paranoid manipulations of the American political system brought us to constitutional crisis.

Ford pardoned Nixon, against the advice of his advisers, and brought a firestorm down on himself. Ford did not regret the pardon, and he was right. With a stroke, Ford removed Nixon from public life and public view, and allowed the country move on.

Ford had no "enemies list", and he seems to have conjured up no "enemies", for that matter. He did not engage in "wedge politics". He was, at his core, like Dwight Eisenhower, a decent man. You could count on his decency, and that made a difference in the post-Nixon years. You didn't have to wake up each morning asking whether the President had done something horrible overnight.

I was thinking about Ford's essential decency this morning. His decency was, above all else, what marked his presidency.

It was ironic to read that President Bush praised Ford saying “With his quiet integrity, common sense, and kind instincts, President Ford helped heal our land and restore public confidence in the presidency.” The contrast between the two men is stark and inescapeable. Can you imagine anyone, twenty or twenty-five years from now, speaking about the "quiet integrity, common sense and kind instincts" of President Bush and his administration?

I don't know who is going to be our next President.

But I think that we should be looking, in the aftermath of the wreckage brought upon our country and the world by the immorality and indecency of the current administration and the self-proclaimed "men of faith" who drive it's agenda from within and without, for a President who is, above all else, essentially decent.

Just Say No!

Whether anyone likes it or not, premarital sex is almost as common as masturbation.

"Trends in Premarital Sex in the United States, 1954–2003” a study by Lawrence B. Finer published in the January/February 2007 issue of Public Health Reports, indicates that roughly 95% of American have premarital sex.

This is hardly news, but the implications for the right-wing's insistence on abstinence-only sex education are obvious.

Almost everyone has premarital sex, including, presumably, most of those who rant and rave about the importance of not having premarital sex. Not enough people are using birth control, either to prevent pregnancy or protect themselves from disease. Roughly a third of our children are born out of wedlock. The vast majority of abortions result from unwanted pregnancies among unmarried women. STD's run rampant.

Abstinence-only sex education keeps teenagers ignorant. It keeps them ignorant about birth control and it keeps them ignorant about using condoms to protect themselves from STD's.

I'll grant you that social conservatives have a track record of being much more interested in preserving "morals" than in preventing unwanted pregnancies or abortions, but enough is enough. In the age of HIV/AIDS, ignorance kills.

I have a thought about abstinence-only sex education: "Just say No!"

Barney's Holiday Extravaganza

Oddly, the "Keep Christ in Christmas" crowed hasn't kicked up a ruckus yet about the 2006 White House Christmas card. The card reads:

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. Psalm 119:105

May the light of the season shine bright in your heart now and in the new year.

2006

George Bush Laura Bush

Last year, the President's Christmas card was a verse from Psalm 28 and the Religious Right went bat-monkey nuts about it.

This year, not a word. Weird.

Do you suppose that folks like William Donohue and Don Wildmon have just given up, or do you suppose they just decided that it is a lot easier to bully a WalMart employee than the President of the United States?

Oh, speaking of keeping Christ in Christmas, "Barney's Holiday Extravaganza" is pretty good this year. After you've absorbed the screenplay, click on the Barney Cam link in the right sidebar of the White House webpage to see it live.

I don't think much of President Bush, but I'm a great fan of Barney the Poof Dog.

Liar, Liar

Time magazine published a rebuttal to James Dobson's opinion column, "Two Mommies is One Too Many", in which Dobson misrepresented the work of two prominent social scientists, New York University educational psychologist Carol Gilligan, and Dr. Kyle Pruett of the Yale school of medicine.

The rebuttal, "Two Mommies or Two Daddies Will Do Just Fine, Thank You", reviews Dobson's misuse use of reputable studies, among other things, and bluntly puts it on the line:

"It is true that there is 30 years of research about families headed by lesbian and gay parents. However, Dobson claims that the resulting data shows that "children do best on every measure of well-being when raised by their married mother and father." To say that Dobson is misinformed here would be inaccurate. He is simply lying."

Indeed he is.

After Dobson's column appeared in Time, both social scientists he quoted went on record with letters to Dobson, calling Dobson to heel and setting the facts about their research straight.

Not that Dobson has shown any evidence that he cares about the facts -- all he cares about is whether or not someone is straight, I guess.

But that's the problem, isn't it?

Because Dobson cares more about denying the reality of gay and lesbian life than he cares about the facts, he lies about the facts.

I grew up in a time before the terms "gay" and "straight" were used to describe sexual orientation. When I grew up, "straight" meant "honest, upright, truthful".

In that sense, I'm a lot straighter than Dobson is.

Hell, in that sense, your dog-humping dog is a lot straighter than Dobson is.

Fair Wisconsin

We lost the amendment fight this fall, 59% to 41% statewide, and 57% to 43% in Sauk County.

But the amendment fight brought gays and lesbians and our straight allies out of the woodwork in force, both in Sauk County and in the state as a whole. And that is all to the good, in terms of the future.

Fair Wisconsin, the umbrella organization that led the right against the amendment, announced last week that it plans to leverage the GLBT's new, stronger base to take the fight for gay and lesbian equality to the legislature in coming years, focusing on lobbying and educational efforts.

Fair Wisconsin's Josh Freker put it this way: "Before there was talk of an amendment, Action Wisconsin had a few hundred members. Now we have over 12,000 donors and 50,000 people on our e-mail list. We're so much stronger coming out of the campaign than we were prior to it. We have this tremendous base to continue to engage and mobilize to work on issues affecting gay and lesbian individuals and families."

Fair Wisconsin's first effort will be to back efforts to provide domestic partner benefits to University of Wisconsin employees.

It will be a fight, of course, because it will be the initial test of what Wisconsin's anti-marriage amendment's second sentence, which bans "legal status ... substantially similar to marriage", actually means.

The Family Research Institute of Wisconsin has put the state on notice that it is likely to strongly oppose any efforts to grant domestic partner benefits to University of Wisconsin employees. In an interview Friday, Julaine Appling said "We as an organization would oppose the use of any taxpayer money to benefit sexual relationships outside of marriage. Sexual relationships outside of marriage are not good for anyone so why would we as a state want to foster them?"

Appling already seems to be moving toward a bait and switch, although she is doing it in a more sophisticated way than amendment backers in Michigan and other states did after the 2004 round of amendments.

During the fight over the amendment, Appling claimed again and again that domestic partner benefits would not be affected; now she is saying that she argued during the campaign that domestic partner benefits based on living arrangements would pass muster, as long as the individuals were not sexually involved - a domestic situation involving a grandmother, for instance, who wanted to cover her grandson under her health insurance policy.

Appling's triangulation would be laughable if it weren't so predictable. No sooner is the ink dry ... as they now say in Michigan.

Freker said Fair Wisconsin is also determined to repeal the gay marriage and civil unions ban: "We are very invested in the long-term effort to get rid of this amendment. Everything we do in the short term will be done to feed into that."

That's good, and I'm glad Fair Wisconsin is bouncing back so quickly. Gays and lesbians in Michigan are still struggling, two years after the 2004 election, to reform and fight on.

Bearing False Witness

Both scientists cited by James Dobson in his recent Time magazine column decrying Mary Cheney's pregnancy are have written Dobson blunt letters calling him on the carpet for mispresenting their research and are demanding that he cease and desist using their findings.

New York University educational psychologist Carol Gilligan, PhD, wrote this letter to Dobson:

Dear Dr. Dobson:

I am writing to ask that you cease and desist from quoting my research in the future. I was mortified to learn that you had distorted my work this week in a guest column you wrote in Time Magazine. Not only did you take my research out of context, you did so without my knowledge to support discriminatory goals that I do not agree with. What you wrote was not truthful and I ask that you refrain from ever quoting me again and that you apologize for twisting my work.

From what I understand, this is not the first time you have manipulated research in pursuit of your goals. This practice is not in the best interest of scientific inquiry, nor does bearing false witness serve your purpose of furthering morality and strengthening the family.

Finally, there is nothing in my research that would lead you to draw the stated conclusions you did in the Time article. My work in no way suggests same-gender families are harmful to children or can't raise these children to be as healthy and well adjusted as those brought up in traditional households.

I trust that this will be the last time my work is cited by Focus on the Family.

Sincerely,

Carol Gilligan, PhD
New York University, Professor

Dr. Kyle Pruett of the Yale school of medicine was equally blunt concerning Dobson's use of his work in the column:

Dr. Dobson, I was startled and disappointed to see my work referenced in the current Time Magazine piece in which you opined that social science, such as mine, supports your convictions opposing lesbian and gay parenthood. I write now to insist that you not quote from my research in your media campaigns, personal or corporate, without previously securing my permission.

You cherry-picked a phrase to shore up highly (in my view) discriminatory purposes. This practice is condemned in real science, common though it may be in pseudo-science circles.

There is nothing in my longitudinal research or any of my writings to support such conclusions. On page 134 of the book you cite in your piece, I wrote, "What we do know is that there is no reason for concern about the development or psychological competence of children living with gay fathers. It is love that binds relationships, not sex."

Kyle Pruett, M.D.
Yale School of Medicine

I'm sorry for the two social scientists, but neither should be surprised.

Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council and other anti-gay organizations on the Christian right regularly mischaracterize scientific studies and pass off discredited pseudo-science as reputable science.

When it comes to gays and lesbians, it seems, the Eighth Commandment has never been the Christian right's strong point.

But I wonder how Dobson's column got past Time's fact-checker. Time might want to look at that ...

Update: Another Day, Another Scholar

Professor Angela Phillips, author of “The Trouble With Boys,” became the third prominent social scientist to call James Dobson on the carpet for mispresenting her work:

Dear James Dobson:

It has come to my attention that my book “The Trouble with Boys” has been seriously mis-represented in writings by James Dobson.

Having read his newsletter; “How Boys Learn to Become Men” on the Focus on the Family web site I was incensed to find that I have been quoted as a source for suggesting that:

“The high incidence of homosexuality occurring in Western nations is related, at least in part, to the absence of positive male influence when boys are moving through the first crisis of child development.”

I certainly agree that boys suffer from a lack of positive men in their lives but I am at pains to point out that positive men are often as much lacking in two parent households as they are in lone mother (or two mother) households. I do not suggest that lack of positive male role models leads to homosexuality (or indeed that it would be problematic if it did). My concern is that boys without positive men around them are more likely to be violent, angry and lacking in self control. I have never heard that these are characteristics that are associated with homosexuality.

Dobson goes on to say: “One of the primary objectives of parents is to help boys identify their gender assignments and understand what it means to be a man.

My concern is that boys are currently learning, either from their fathers, or in the absence of fathers, from the women who rear them, and the men they encounter, that the most important thing about being a man is being: “not gay”, “not gentle” and not “girlie”. While adult men are afraid to demonstrate that it’s okay to be gentle and caring how are boys to learn anything positive about what it means to be a man?

I would be grateful if you could publish this letter prominently on your website.

I look forward to a swift acknowledgement.

Yours sincerely

Angela Phillips
Author of The Trouble with Boys

Dobson might have been better off it he hadn't reneged on his commitment to counsel Pastor Ted Haggard. In reviewing the Eighth Commandment with Haggard, Dobson might have gained an, uh, deeper understanding of the Commandment as it applies to him.

On the Christian Right

Eight Virginia churches are voting today on whether to remove themselves from the jurisdiction of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia and put themselves under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola.

Archibishop Akinola supports legislation in Nigeria that would make it illegal for gay men and lesbians to form organizations, read gay literature or eat together in a restaurant.

The fact that Americans would even consider putting themselves under the moral authority of such a man speaks volumes about the moral bankruptcy of the Christian right, and what is in store for the United States if conservative Christians gain ascendancy.

Blood on the Ground

I remember the day I confronted the "Are you a homosexual?" question during the induction process into the Army. Like all gay veterans from the pre-DADT era, I answered "No" and I served.

All of us who served in those days answered "No" -- hedging, rationalizing or outright lying to serve what we considered a higher purpose, serving our country in the Armed Forces, We served illegally and unthanked, but we served. I don't regret it.

I was reminded of that day last night, reading a column by Brian Solomon in yesterday's Capital Times:

"Less than a week [after the amendment passed], a good friend and co-commissioner on Madison's Equal Opportunities Commission, Dan Ross, resigned in protest. In order to join this citizen commission, he had affirmed that he would uphold the constitution of the state of Wisconsin. Being as it now considered him a second-class citizen, one could certainly understand his refusal to support something that discriminated against him. In an instant, Madison had lost a strong voice and a compassionate advocate for equality.

I considered the same act, as I'm sure did many other members of the EOC, along with volunteer members of countless other committees across the state. I barely remembered signing the pledge, so I purged the memory and stayed on board.

On December 1, I entered the City Clerk's Office to declare my candidacy for the Madison City Council in District 10. I filled out the requisite paperwork and suddenly, there it was again: "I agree to uphold the constitution of the state of Wisconsin." I shivered with disgust and sat helpless, unsure what to do. I called the clerk staff and asked her if I could put a disclaimer on the page, indicating my support for all sections of our constitution except those that blatantly discriminate against many of my dearest friends.

She nodded, understanding, and then told me the obvious: "No."

Running for office is going to be a lot of work. Representing District 10, if I am elected, will be a lot of work. But the only hesitation I felt, as I filled out my papers and declared my candidacy, was about whether I could, in good conscience, agree to uphold something that was so wrong.

I signed, vowing to continue the fight. The U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment quite explicitly guarantees equal protection for all Americans. It is inevitable that one day, in the near future, our amendment will be struck down as unconstitutional and our Wisconsin Constitution can be repaired. And then Dan, countless others, and I can again, with pride and without hesitation, affirm to uphold that for which it stands."

I wouldn't sign the pledge. I couldn't, in conscience.

It is not just that I am gay and that the anti-marriage amendment relegates me to second-class citizenship. It goes beyond my personal disgust with the amendment.

I simply cannot, any longer, promise to support the constitution of our state, because the constitution now contains, for the first time in our state's history, a provision that expressly, explicitly mandates unequal treatment under the law for its citizens.

That is where I draw the line.

It is one thing to have discriminatory laws. I could take an oath to support the constitution of the state despite that fact, because there is a huge difference between an unjust law and an unjust constitution. An unjust law violates the social compact reflected in a just constitution, but an unjust constitution violates the social compact itself.

And, for that reason, I wouldn't serve in the Armed Forces today if the FMA were part of the United States constitution. I would not, because I could not in conscience, put blood on the ground to support and defend a constitution that is inherently unjust.

A Dull Thud

David Buckel, of Lambda Legal, expressed my feelings about New Jersey's new civil unions law almost perfectly: “This law hit with a dull thud.”

The speed with which the New Jersey legislature embraced "separate but equal" -- ten days from start to finish, with no serious discussion about marriage at all, from what I can tell -- was almost unseemly.

The bill was pushed through not because it was right or even sensible in the long run, but because civil unions could make it through the legislature without a hard fight, and marriage equality could not.

Ten days. No serious discussion.

The social conservatives -- the Christian right -- made a lot of noise during "debate", but it seems to have been a ritual -- formulatic rather than serious. The social conservatives knew that they were beaten before they began, and were willing to be beaten, so long as civil union, not marriage, legislation was the end result.

Ten days. No serious discussion.

The bill's proponents know that civil unions were a coward's solution, and are uneasy. Wilfredo Caraballo (Democrat - Newark), a sponsor of the bill, said "We simply do not have the votes today. Give us two to five years. In a year and a half or two years we'll see that the world hasn't collapsed, heterosexuals are still getting married and God hasn't thrown fire and brimstone on us." Senate President Richard Codey (Democrat - Essex) said: "This is, by no means, the end. But it is a major step forward."

Ten days. No serious discussion.

Even New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, who opposed same-sex marriage and favored civil unions, seemed a bit stunned by the alacrity with which the legislature pushed the legislation through: "We're going to do a study, as we do on all legislation, to make sure what we're getting is what we intended to get. We don't want to make a mistake that ends up harming individuals because we did something too quickly."

That's all to the good, I suppose. Legislation put together in ten days, without serious debate or consideration, is almost always flawed in ways that nobody expects, and it makes sense to at least try to get it right. So good for Governor Corzine.

But Governor Corzinne's study will not address the real issue, the reason why even the bill's backers feel a bit, uh, sticky in the aftermath.

Civil unions were politically possible precisely because civil unions deny marriage equality to gays and lesbians. That is the heart of the matter -- the reason why the bill made it through in ten days and the reason why the law hit with a dull thud.

Coming out of a year-long battle to defeat Wisconsin's anti-marriage amendment, I am acutely aware that civil unions are better than nothing, and provide sorely needed benefits to gay and lesbian couples raising children.

But I am also acutely aware that civil unions legitimize discrimination.

Our society celebrates and subsidizes marriage, but a majority in our society claim that marriage equality for gays and lesbians is a danger to marriage itself. It is not that we ignore gay and lesbian relationships -- almost everyone now knows a gay and lesbian couple -- in our culture. We actively stigmatize them.

Discrimination against gay and lesbian "marriages in all but name" is injustice, injustice at an instinctual, gut level. We know it, even if we put a gloss -- the happy face of civil unions -- on the stigma.

A decade ago, this was not an issue.

The injustice existed, but we could not see it. Gay and lesbian relationships were carefully hidden, so straight people did not know about them, or did not see them for what they were if they did know about them. Two unmarried women "lived as sisters". Two old bachelors shared a house for "convenience". And so on.

Today, it is an issue.

Gay and lesbian couples are out in the open now, demanding equal treatment under the law, and all CAN see. The injustice toward gay and lesbians couples is stark, evident right in front of our faces. We have eyes to see, and we do see.

Straights are uncomfortable with that, because they have been put on the spot. Straights now have a choice -- eliminate the injustice or continue the injustice.

The stark choice, coupled with our culture's continuing stigma against homosexuals, combine to fuel the "great compromise", civil unions, in New Jersey and elsewhere. Civil unions serve both societal purposes -- granting the appearance of equality while preserving actual inequality. The whole point of civil unions are that civil unions are NOT marriages.

And that makes us queasy, or should.

We are queasy because we know that civil unions and marriage are NOT equal -- "marriage in all but name" under whatever name is not equal to "marriage" -- and we sense that civil unions -- "separate but equal" -- no more create justice than segregated schools -- another form of "separate but equal" -- created justice in earlier times.

That's the problem in New Jersey, and that's our problem as a nation.

In time, our society will come out of the half light of injustice, out of pretending that "marriage in all but name" IS marriage. In time, justice will come for gays and lesbians.

But in the meantime, as reaction to the New Jersey legislation demonstrates, civil unions illuminate injustice. Civil unions rip the mask off.

So be it.

Wisconsin State Representative Marries

The Wisconsin State Journal reported this morning that Representative Mark Pocan (Democrat - Madison) and Philip Frank were married on November 24 in Toronto.

Pocan said: "We were engaged last Christmas but didn't talk about it a lot because of the referendum. The referendum had nothing to do with marriage and everything to do with getting certain voters to turn out at the polls. We didn't talk about it because we didn't want to affect the political maneuvering."

Julaine Appling of the Family Research Institute of Wisconsin, who made a point of identifying herself as "unmarried, childless and straight" in the Wisconsin Dells panel discussion on the anti-marriage amendment this fall, was not amused: "(Pocan's) look-alike or faux marriage in Canada is meaningless here in this state. I'm not going to condemn or condone it, but what he has is a meaningless piece of paper. That's the reality. He hasn't really escaped Wisconsin law. We have a cordial relationship, but am I going to send him a congratulations card saying 'Best wishes on your wedding?' No, because I don't recognize it. Neither does the state of Wisconsin."

Frank, on the other hand, has a question for Appling and the Christian right who pushed the amendment: "I'd be curious to find out how many marriages we've destroyed over the past few weeks. I'm pretty sure that's what they said this would do."

Faux marriage, indeed. Congratulations, guys. And best wishes, too. Julaine's a Grinch.

Oy Vey, Soy Gay

The right wing is so weird I sometimes don't know what to think.

Witness James Rutz, chairman of Megashift Ministries and founder-chairman of Open Church Ministries, who wrote the following in an opinion column in the online World Net Daily yesterday:

"Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because "I can't remember a time when I wasn't homosexual." No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can't remember a time when excess estrogen wasn't influencing them."

Shit, and I always thought it was the flourides. Silly me.

In one cataclysmic moment ...

... millions around the world disappear. Or so touts a new computer game, Left Behind: Eternal Forces.

The game is based on the "Left Behind" books, a popular Evangelical fiction series.

New York, September 11

Amazon posted this description of the game: Product Description: Wage a war of apocalyptic proportions in Left Behind: Eternal Forces ... Conduct physical and spiritual warfare, recover ancient scriptures and command your forces through intense battles ... Join the ultimate fight of Good against Evil, commanding Tribulation Forces or the Global Community Peacekeepers ... Wage a war of apocalyptic proportions and decide the fate of the world! Robust single player experience across dozens of New York City maps - Fighting in Chinatown, SoHo, Uptown and more! ..."

Liberal Christians and other do-gooders are up in arms about it, decrying what they consider unacceptable violence and mayhem conducted "in His name". The fundies are staunchly defending the game -- witness Plugged In, a publication of Focus on the Family, which called it "“the kind of game that Mom and Dad can actually play with Junior and use to raise some interesting questions along the way."”

I'm not particularly interested in the controversy.

Teenage boys are teenage boys, after all, even scrubbed and shiny Christian teenage boys, and all teenage boys like video violence almost as much as that other, uh, activity.

Even Jesus was probably a violent little twinkie-jerk at video game age. Of course, they didn't have video games then, so nothing is recorded in the Gospel, but he had all the signs. He was certainly snotty enough to his folks as a young teen, if the Temple story is based in fact, so he was probably ran to type in other ways, too.

Anyway, I'm in no position to complain, even if Jesus was the best little boy in the world.

My boys and their friends once altered Doom so that Barney was getting splattered all over the place, much to the horror of my pre-teen nieces, who adored Barney at that age. I thought it was funny -- "I love you, you love me ... SPLAT!" In fact, I still do, but silly purple dinosaurs need to be blown away, in my humble opinion.

But do have one concern about the game.

Actual Screen Shot: Manhattan

I'll admit I'm sensitive, being a faggot and all, but 9-11 sticks in my memory, and the screen shots of New York burning down bother me.

The screen shots are just too close a reminder to the reality shots, and bring to mind video games that might be used to train teenage jihadists for their holy war on America.

So I wish that FocFam's home town of Colorado Springs, instead of Manhattan, had been used as the locus of the Anti-Christ:

Mockup Screen Shot: Colorado Springs

Colorado Springs may not have SoHo, but it probably has a Chinese restaurant or two and the screen shots would be just about as dramatic, albeit without the Statue of Liberty.

Besides, if you are looking for the Antichrist ... what better place to keep an eye out than Colorado Springs?

Well, Sam's not Olusegun Obasanjo

In Nigeria, legislation being considered that would make it a criminal offense to associate with known homosexuals. The bill would make make any meeting between two or more people where one is gay a crime punishable up to five years in prison.

The legislation adds to the growing isolation of gays and lesbians in Nigeria.

Current Nigerian law is bad enough.

Sodomy is a criminal offense, punishable by death in Muslim areas of the country, or life imprisonment in Christian areas of teh country.

Earlier this year Nigeria made it illegal for same-sex couples to go abroad to marry. When they return they could be imprisoned for five years. Even attending a gay wedding could result in imprisonment.

In Washington, where Senator Sam Brownback has been blocking confirmation of Janet T. Neff, a judge on the Michigan Court of Appeals and a Bush nominee for the federal district court seat, on the grounds that she went to her lesbian neighbor's commitment ceremony, there has been a breakthrough of sorts.

Brownback said Friday he would lift his hold on a federal judicial nominee if Judge Neff agrees to step aside from any case dealing with same-sex unions. Brownback said he remains concerned that the incident colors her legal view on the constitutionality of allowing same-sex marriages. Judge Neff insists that she can tell the difference between attending a neighbor's wedding and deciding a constitutional issue, even if Brownback can't.

President Bush, who has been known to be friendly with at least one lesbian couple, and might even send a baby present to the couple next year, has been silent.

It is all a bit, uh, Nigerian.

The good news, though, is that notwithstanding appearances to the contrary, Senator Brownback, who is considering entering the Republican race for President, is more enlightened than Nigeria's president, Olusegun Obasanjo. Brownback, unlike Obasanjo, would not make association with gays and lesbians a criminal offense.

It makes me proud to be an American, it does.

"Married,Heterosexual Couples"

Focus on the Family's James Dobson upped the ante in Time Magazine this week, laying the groundwork for a full-scale assault on gay and lesbian adoption and birth-parenting, as well as single-parenthood and adoption and birth-parenting by unmarried straight couples.

Dobson worked his way through the "every child needs a father and a mother" reasoning, and then concluded: "In raising these issues, Focus on the Family does not desire to harm or insult women such as Cheney and Poe. Rather, our conviction is that birth and adoption are the purview of married heterosexual couples. Traditional marriage is God's design for the family and is rooted in biblical truth. When that divine plan is implemented, children have the best opportunity to thrive. That's why public policy as it relates to families must be based not solely on the desires of adults but rather on the needs of children and what is best for society at large."

Straights had better listen up -- "birth and adoption are the purview of married heterosexual couples".

If you don't think that Dobson and the Christian right mean every word of that statement -- "married", "heterosexual", "couples" -- then you are fooling yourself.

The Christian right is dangerous, and they are getting bolder and bolder. Ignore them at your peril.

Forward in Alabama, uh, Wisconsin

Progressive?

Progressive: Synonyms: advanced, open-minded, broad-minded, tolerant, unbiased, dynamic, enlightened, forward-looking, modern, up-to-date;
Antonyms: conservative, close-minded, dogmatic, narrow-minded, rigid, small-minded.

Representative Mark Gundrum (Republican, New Berlin), one of the authors of the Wisconsin anti-marriage amendment, was asked the other day about the number of faculty members who are now looking to leave the University of Wisconsin -- for example, Robert Carpick, who will leave UW-Madison at the end of this semester, taking with him $3.4 million in grants.

Gundrum thinks that the coming exodus is a good thing, apparently: "Maybe the faculty that replace them won’t be as much of liberal activists. But other than that, I can’t imagine. I’m sure they’ll hire replacements that are very qualified.”

Well, maybe. But I doubt, somehow, that the social conservatives that Gundrum has in mind are likely to enlighten the minds of college students all that much. But you never know, I guess. Creation science is wild flight of imagination, if nothing else, so creative writing students might benefit from learning about it.

But losing first-rate faculty because of the anti-marriage amendment and not giving a tinker's damn is hardly in line with either Wisconsin's motto ("Forward!") or Wisconsin's prideful but only half-true self-image as a progressive state.

Fightin' Bob and Tail Gunner Joe

Wisconsin has always been odd, that way -- while Wisconsin is generally considered a "blue" state, it has a "red" underbelly.

In rural areas of the state, like Sauk County. Republican orthodoxy hangs over the political landscape like a leaden cloud. Democrats tend to be more circumspect about their political orientation than most local gays and lesbians are about their sexual orientation.

Republicanism in rural Wisconsin isn't ideological, as it is in the red-meat suburbs of large cities, so much as something you are born to, like being Lutheran.

People vote Democrat -- Democrats consistently carry my rural county for national and statewide office, by a small margin, for example -- but most people would no more admit to being Democrat than knowingly sing too loudly in church. For many people, voting Democrat is, like braying at hymntime, mildly embarassing, something you might do but don't talk about in public.

But notwithstanding Wisconsin's unimaginative and stolid political respectability, both far-left liberalism and far-right conservatism have a political history.



Wisconsin is the political home of both "Fightin' Bob" LaFollette and "Tail Gunner Joe" McCarthy. Wisconsin was the first state in the nation to pass a law expressly banning discrimination against gays and lesbians, but it is also the state with the highest pro-amendment vote north of the Mason-Dixon line.

And so on and so on. Wisconsin is a study in light and dark flashes against a background of stolid leadenness, something like Lake Wobegon in a thunderstorm or pockets of red hot pepper in floating around in a chicken and dumpling stew.

In short, Wisconsin is a state where both I -- born into the Wisconsin progressive tradition and from a progressive family -- and Julaine Appling -- a product of Bob Jones Univeristy who hasn't fallen far from the tree in the 40-odd years since she's moved here from Georgia -- can lay claim to an authentic Wisconsin political ancestry.

We seem to be a political period where both strains of Wisconsin politics are at the forefront, and it is a bit disorienting.

Whither the FRI-W?

Whatever is going on, it is just a bit over a month, now, after the election.

The Family Research Institute of Wisconsin's website hasn't been updated since the election, which isn't all that surprising. The FRI-W was always something of a one-pony circus, despite the group's claims to being concerned about straight folks' marriages and families as well as keeping us queers at bay.

In the heady days right after the election, the FRI-W's Julaine Appling announced an ambitious goal of ridding Wisconsin of no-fault divorce, which was an interesting idea, but she's been mum about that intiative since then. I guess too many born-agains like no-fault divorce -- born-agains have the highest divorce rate in the country -- and the FRI-W couldn't figure out how to package a crusade against no-fault divorce as being sufficiently anti-gay to arouse any enthusiasm from the right-wing Christians who are the FRI-W's constituency.

Julaine made half-hearted runs at abortion (a dead issue for years) and gambling (another non-starter, given the number of born-agains who inhabit Wisconsin's casinos) in her recent radio transcripts. It doesn't look like either will gain any traction. Face it -- it is not nearly as much fun to look at your own problems as to faggot-bash in the name of Christian "love".

But the FRI-W needs something to keep the money flowing, or Julaine will need to find an honest job. That would be frightening for her, I imagine, given the wage scales in real-world Wisconsin. But I've no doubt that Julaine is up to the task, so I imagine that the FRI-W website will be updated in time, and then we'll know the next Christian crusade we'll have to fend off.

The one thing we can be dead certain about is that the next crusade won't focus on right-wing Christians or anything right-wing Christians do (but shouldn't) or don't do (but should). The religious right has always been outward-facing, that way.

Sorting it out ...

Meanwhile, the rest of us are sorting things out.

This month's Wisconsin Bar Journal, a magazine published for Wisconsin lawyers, features Estate Planning for Unmarried Couples: Life Partners, Legal Strangers, a look at the legal arrangments needed by unmarried couples in Wisconsin. The article does not purport to be exhaustive, but it is detailed enough to alert Wisconsin lawyers to the numerous land mines facing unmarried couples who need to plan for the future.

Planning for unmarried couples was complicated before the amendment passed, and the amendment complicated the legal situation. Madison attorney Sandy Holtzman, who has expertise in the field, noted that Wisconsin lawyers do not know yet if the amendment will alter any of the legal protections currently available to same-sex couples, and Leslie Shear, director of the Family Law Project at the Frank J. Remington Center at UW-Madison Law School, observed "As you put together these various legal documents, you're starting to create a status that is substantially similar to marriage. To me, it's somewhat ironic that the more you'd do to protect your family, the more open to a challenge you might be."

The City of Madison continues to provide health care benefits to the domestic partners of municipal employees, depite the amendment, while it braces for lawsuits challenging the city's policies. George Twigg, spokesman for Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, said: "Nothing has changed as far as we're concerned and we're sort of guessing as to the legal status of all these things right now." According to Twigg, the city has only received e-mailed complaints about the city's health care status, but no formal complaints have been issued.

The Regents of the University of Wisconsin voted last Thursday to ask for domestic partner benefits for university faculty members. The request is part of the University's funding request for 2007-2009. The Univeristy system cannot offer domestic partner benefits unless a state law banning the state government and state agencies from offering domestic partner benefits is amended or repealed. UW's President Kevin Reilly pleaded with the governor and state Legislature to amend state statutes to provide for domestic partner benefits.

Putting your money where your mouth has been ...

On the legislative front, State Senator Jon Erpenbach (Democrat, Middleton) has announced that he will try to add Wisconsin's anti-discrimination legislation — legislation that is already state law, and has been since 1982 — to the Wisconsin Constitution in the form of an amendment. Erpenbach indicated that his focus is on clarifying the second sentence of the anti-marriage amendment, which bans bans any “legal status identical to or substantially similar to that of marriage,” arguably including domestic partner benefits and private arrangements between unmarried couples. Noting that the word “discrimination,” currently doesn’t exist in the state's Constitution, Erpenbach said: “I want to take the current state law, which defines discrimination and sexual orientation and put it in our Constitution.” Erpenbach said he is still consulting with state lawyers on the proper approach and has not yet searched out support in the state Legislature.

Erpenbach has a point -- to the extent that the state's existing anti-discrimination laws conflict with the anti-marriage amendment, the state's anti-discrimination laws are inoperative. But the proposed amendment is bound to create a ruckus, because it will force Wisconsin's Republican legislators to come out in favor of, or against, elevating the state's anti-discrimination laws to constitutional status. It will be fascinating to see how the Republicans respond -- during the debate on the amendment, the Republicans poo-poohed the idea that the anti-marriage amendment might affect the anti-discrimination law, but now they will be asked to put their votes where their mouths have been.

The only Republican legislator to respond to Erpenbach's proposal so far is Gundrum, who said that federal non-discrimination laws make state efforts to ensure equality unnecessary. I wonder if he knows that his fellow Republicans in Congress have steadfastly refused to pass ENDA. I can't imagine that he doesn't.

Two consecutive legislative sessions would have to approve a proposed amendment to appear on the voter's ballot, which would then require the support of a majority of Wisconsin voters to pass.

I wonder if Erpenbach's proposal will spark a counter-movement from the Christian right, as seems to be happening in Washington state. In Washington, the legislature added "sexual orientation" to the state's anti-discrimination law earlier this year, and the Christian right is thundering away for a voter referendum to overturn Washington state's inclusion of gays and lesbians in its human rights law. An earlier attempt to do so failed, but the Christian right is Pit Bull tenacious about fighting back the queer-tolerant menance, and it looks like the folks in Washington are in for a long battle, as was the case in Maine.

I don't suppose it will happen in Wisconsin, but I wouldn't bet the farm, as we say around this area. The Family Research Institute of Wisconsin is looking for a cause, and this might just fit the bill.

I'll be curious, too, to see how our Catholic bishops in Wisconsin react. The Catholic Church has a track record of trumpeting the Catechism (CCC 2358 "They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.") while finding a reason that the form of discrimination pushed by the Catholic Church in a particular instance is just discrimination.

Erpenbach's amendment will present the Catholic bishops in Wisconsin with a head-on, no excuses, test. We'll find out if they are hypocrites or not.

It all reminds me of that ancient Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times ..."

It's been a busy week ...

... everywhere but here in Lake Wobegon.

Blame Canada

A motion to reopen the issue of same-sex marriage was rejected by Canada's House of Commons Thursday afternoon, 175-123, after Stephen Harper's Conservative government went through the motions, trying to look interested.

Canada's Christian conservatives are tossing a fit about it, crying betrayal. Campaign Life Coalition spokesperson Mary Ellen Douglas, for example, claimed that the Prime Minister orchestrated the measure's defeat to put the issue to rest before an election expected before spring.

No doubt.

Following the vote, Harper said the fight against same-sex marriage is over for good: "We made a promise to have a free vote on this issue, we kept that promise, and obviously the vote was decisive and obviously we'll accept the democratic result of the people's representatives. I don't see reopening this question in the future."

Good for Harper. He can read the writing on the wall. It used to be that the difference between Canada and the United States was that Canada was headed by a Chretien and the United States was headed by a moron. Now the difference is that Canada's conservative political party has accepted reality, while the United States' conservative political party remains locked in a 1950's time warp when it comes to gays and lesbians.

Speaking of Tossing a Fit

Mary Cheney and Heather Poe are expecting, and the religious right is expectorating, although the loudest mouths of the "pro-family" movement have gone silent, seemingly unable to cough up a response -- the best Senator Brownback could come up with, for example, was a "no comment", and we haven't heard a peep out of most of the religious Republican sycophants.

It is a tough situation to be in, I guess, choosing between the big bucks that anti-gay ranting brings in and keeping access to power, all the while trying to square whatever you finally triangulate with "family values".

The low, strangled sound you hear in the background is the sound of about ten million gays and lesbians trying to suppress open laughter.

Prodi versus Prada

Italy's Senate on Thursday passed a motion calling on the government of Prime Minister Romano Prodi to bring in legislation creating civil unions for gay and lesbian couples by the end of next month.

Hum ...

Prodi's leftist coalition campaigned on a platform that including granting rights to same-sex couples, and Prodi is said to favor civil unions. The problem is that Prodi's coalition is a "big tent" that includes everyone from Communists who favor gay marriage to Catholics who oppose any rights for gay partners.

Knowing the predictable reaction from the Papa Prada, Vicar of Christ, things could get very interesting.

But I'm sure that the Italians will come up with a typically Italianate solution.

Keeping it Simple in Joi-sey

The New Jersey Assembly Judiciary Committee approved a 63-page bill granting civil unions to gay and lesbian couples, voting to send the measure to the full Assembly for a floor vote. It is likely the measure will become law before the end of the year.

Shit, chopping down forests of perfectly harmless pine trees just to avoid one word -- "marriage". No wonder New Jersey is ridiculed in the rest of the nation.

Well, whatever.

As much as I think "separate but equal" is just another way of saying "unequal", civil unions are a lot more than we're able to muster right now here in Alabama, uh, Wisconsin, so good for New Jersey.

But so much for plans to get married in Hackensack. Too bad, too. My brother, who lives in Hackensack, would have thrown Michael and me a good party, I'll bet.

Oi, Vey

Speaking of Italianate, uh, typically Jewish, solutions, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, which advises Conservative Jews on Jewish law, came up with three advisory opinions this week that are so complicated I don't even pretend to be able to understand exactly what they did from news reports.

Apparently, two opinions upheld earlier prohibitions on homosexual activity, but the third endorsed commitment ceremonies for gay and lesbian Jewish couples and the ordination of gay rabbis, while retaining the biblical ban on male sodomy.

I'll study the actual opinions before making any comment. But don't you just love it? Ask three questions and get nine answers. So unlike the Christians, who don't seem to be able to deal well with complexity.

Going Down Down Under

The South Australia parliament passed legislation Thursday granting same-sex couples most of the state rights accorded to opposite-sex married couples, bringing South Australia in line with the country's other states. The legislation covers property ownership, inheritance and hospital visitation rights.

Things are going down so fast in the Down Under that even Prime Minister John Howard, who pushed a 2004 federal law defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman through Australia's parliament, has suggested his government may look at ways of granting limited recognition to same-sex couples.

But Howard said he has no intention of repealing the ban on gay marriage.

Of course not, Priscilla ...

Advent Tidings from the CWA

Concerned Women for America, front and center in the crusade to keep gays and lesbians off the altar, takes the cake.

Janice Shaw Crouse, Director and Senior Fellow of CWAÂ’s think tank, The Beverly LaHaye Institute, reacted to Mary Cheney and Heather Poe's plans to become parents as "unconscionable", saying: "They're deliberately bringing a child into the world without a father, leaving a great gaping hole. Father absence is the biggest problem we're facing in this country [and] the root cause of all sorts of negative outcomes -- drug use, juvenile delinquency. You name it."

A creative take on the Advent season, Janice. So creative that it boggles my mind, and I'm not even named Joseph. Of course, Joseph isn't heard from after the "Jesus in the Temple" story. He does not seem to figure at all in Jesus' adult life. Maybe he died, maybe he ran off, or maybe he just wasn't much of a father. Who knows? But whatever else anyone might have to say about the Holy Family, Ward and June Cleaver they were not: "Isn’t this the carpenter, the son of Mary ...?"

But a complaint about an imagined "great gaping hole" was just the beginning of what Crouse had to say about Mary.

Crouse went on to come up with the real cropper: "It's very disappointing that a celebrity couple like this would deliberately bring into the world a child that will never have a father. They are encouraging people who don't have the advantages they have."

This from the folks who work day and night whipping up anti-gay prejudice in order to keep us from getting married?

Janice, get this straight, assuming you can get anything straight: Gay and lesbian parents don't need "advantages" to raise kids. All we need is a level playing field -- equal access to marriage and an end to constant harassment and vilification by self-righteous folks like you.

And get this straight, too, while you are at it: You and your CWA crowd are the ones working to ensure that our kids don't get "advantages", tossing every obstacle you can think of into our kids' paths ... not us.

All we want is to be able to raise our kids in wedlock, just like you straight folks can if you choose. That's all the "advantage" we need. We'll take it from there, thank you very much.

What I find so mind-blowing about the Christian right -- the "love the sinner, hate the sin" crowd -- is that the "love" part of the formula is so sick and twisted, so 1984-ish, so completely detached from -- indeed, at odds with -- charity, compassion and concern, and how quick the Christian right is to use "love" to justify punishing the innocent.

Think about it.

Any decent human being, knowing that children are put at risk by our laws, instinctively wants to find a way to change that, to protect the children. All the more so, it seems to me, when the children are innocent of any wrongdoing, other than being born.

Not so Crouse and the Christian right. The "love" they respond with is cold indifference to the children and self-righteous moralizing about the parents.

It is a "love" devoid of humanity, common decency and common sense.

If the Christian right's verison of "love" is love, then I don't want any, thank you very much.

Fan Dancing

Today, in Canada, parliament is expected to vote on a motion "that this House call on the government to introduce legislation to restore the traditional definition of marriage without affecting civil unions and while respecting existing same-sex marriages."

The vote, and every minute of the debate preceding it, will be a charade, a fan dance.

If the motion passes, which it is not expected to do, any subsequent vote on same-sex marriage itself, and every minute of the parliamentary maneuvering and debate preceding it, will also be a charade.

To understand why, you need to understand a few basics about Canada's constitutional system.

Canada's constitution does not consist of a single document, as is the case in the United States, but a series of laws -- the Constitution Act of 1867, the Constitution Act of 1982, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms -- and the so-called "unwritten constitution".

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a bill of rights which forms the first part of the Constitution Act of 1982. The Charter is intended to protect certain political and civil rights of people in Canada from the policies and actions of all levels of government.

Section 15 of the Charter guarantees that "[e]very individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability."

Canada's parliament enacted same-sex civil marriage into law last year, following court rulings in a number of provinces deeming it unconstitutional under the Charter to deny same-sex couples the right to marry.

The Supreme Court did not expressly rule on the specific issue last year, because the Canadian government's refusal to appeal the provincial rulings rendered the issue moot. The Supreme Court did rule in a related case, however, that marriage rights "flow from" the Charter, and Canadian legal scholars are in almost unanimous agreement that the Supreme Court would have ruled as the provincial courts ruled, requiring that Canada extend civil marriage rights to same-sex couples on the same basis as opposite-sex couples.

In short, there is no substantive question about whether the Charter requires equal treatment of gay and lesbian Canadians with respect to marriage. It does.

Now, here is where it gets interesting.

Canada's constitution contains an "out" for the government -- the so-called "notwithstanding clause".

The clause (Section 33 of the Charter) allows governments to create laws that will operate "notwithstanding" a number of Charter rights that the laws appear to violate.

The clause must be exercised by a specific declaration of parliament. A "notwithstanding" declaration lapses after five years (or a shorter time if specified in the law exercising the clause), although parliament may re-enact the clause indefinitely. The rationale behind having a five-year sunset date is tied to Canada's parliamentary elections -- five years is the maximum amount of time that a parliament can sit before an election is mandated.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose Conservative government is pushing the parliamentary vote today to fulfill campaign pledges to the Canadian religious right that a Conservative government would reopen the same-sex marriage debate with a free vote, has made it clear from the beginning that he will not invoke the "notwithstanding clause" to end same-sex marriage.

Harper claimed, in election debates, that the related Supreme Court case "left the definition of marriage up to parliament" and that the issues was not a Charter issue. As a result, Harper took the view that parliament could define marriage to limit marriage to opposite-sex couples, and that the Supreme Court would, when it tackles the direct question, overrule the provincial court decisions.

Almost nobody agrees with Harper on that score. Justice Minister Irwin Coulter observed, in December 2005, that "Harper appears to be living in a kind of legal Disneyland .... The only way that Harper could possibly override all that is to use the notwithstanding clause and to suggest otherwise is either to be ignorant of the law or to be dissembling." Even Charles McVety, head of Canada Christian College and a founder of the Defend Marriage Coalition, described Harper's views as "a hypothetical position" and depended on the fact that "You can never predict the Supreme Court."

So today's vote is, substantively, an exercise in futility. The vote will be a "free vote" (not tied to party) on both sides of the aisle, and the motion to reopen debate is expected to fail, and not by a close margin.

But whatever the outcome, it is a fan dance, a political payback to the religious right that is illusion without real hope of result.

Sound familiar? It should. Republicans in the United States have been playing the game for years.

Not in My Town

The Portage Daily Register led yesterday's paper with an article, "Not in My Town", about the problems gay and lesbian students experience in our local schools.

I imagine that local religious conservatives will toss a fit. The flat-earthers always do when the question school harassment of gays and lesbians comes up, because to their minds, encouraging kids to be half-decent to each other equates with "teaching that homosexuality is normal".

But despite increased acceptance of gays and lesbians in our society, the teen years remain brutal years for many gay and lesbian students. Name-calling, bullying and harassment are all too common in our schools, and that is something we need to keep working to change.

GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, a group that works with educators to help create a safe school environment for all students) sponsored a number of careful studies of our nation's schools in recent years.

The studies show that almost all gay and lesbian students experience verbal and physical harassment "frequently or often" in school, and that roughly one in five gay and lesbian students do not feel safe at school. As a result, gay and lesbian students are more likely to skip school than straight students, more likely to drop out of school, and less likely to attend college.

As we all know, the teen years are not easy for anyone, and there is a limited amount that teachers and school administrators can do to eliminate harassment because most of the harassment takes place under the radar. Making schools a safe environment for gay and lesbian students will not be any easier now than it was 40 years ago, when I was in school.

But it is worth our time and effort to do what we can to ensure that our schools are safe for all students, and I am encouraged to see that our local schools are addressing the issue.

Looking to South Africa

My next-door neighbors in Chicago -- shown above registering to vote on the day they became United States citizens -- emigrated to the United States from South Africa because they did not want their sons to grow up under apartheid.

I've watched South Africa's journey out of moral depravity with more than the usual interest as a result.

South Africa, like the United States, practiced legal segregation of the races for decades, and is no stranger to the moral degeneracy that is the inevitable result of denying that a group of human beings is created, fully, in the image of God. A human being who denies the humanity of another denies his own, and becomes less human as a result. It is that which my neighbors understood, and it is that which led them to seek a new life in the United States.

South Africa became the fifth country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage on Thursday, November 30, 2006.

The course of the marriage legislation is an illustration of how South Africa is climbing out of moral degeneracy, and provides food for thought for Americans, who suffer from a similar history.

South Africa recognized the rights of gays and lesbians in the constitution adopted after apartheid ended in 1994, at a time when leaders were determined to bury all kinds of legal discrimination.

The constitution, the first in the world to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, provided the basis on which the Constitutional Court required the government to change South Africa's marriage legislation to ensure full equality for gays and lesbians.

The government originally proposed allowing only civil unions for same-sex couples - creating a "separate but equal" status for gays and lesbians. As the legislation moved forward, the government amended the bill, removing language which created separate categories for same and opposite sex unions.

As amended, the legislation passed the National Assembly 230 to 41, and was signed into law last week.

South Africa has not, of course, become a gay-friendly nation, culturally. The country remains conservative on social issues, including same-sex marriage.

But South Africa, in the end, demonstrated that it had learned the lesson of apartheid, that treating citizens unequally denied the equality of all citizens, and South Africa acted, when the chips were down, to avoid creating yet another form of apartheid.

Not so, unfortunately, in the United States. The United States has not learned the lesson of its own version of apartheid. The United States -- 25 of the 50 states, so far -- is embarked on a course of using our states constitutions to deny equal treatment under the law to all citizens.

It does not surprise me, of course.

Christians on the religious right, the social conservatives who turned Republican after the Democrats turned their back on segregation, are driving the movement to "protect marriage" by denying marriage to gays and lesbians.

The religious right was born of the moral depravity of slavery, as Christian denominations split into "north" and "south", was tempered in the crucible of segregation as Christians used scripture to justify separation of the races, and fought a rear-guard battle throughout the nation to keep blacks and whites separate in schools and neighborhoods. Given the enduring nature of prejudice, it will be a while before the sons and daughters of religious right will be free.

But South Africa shows us the way, and in time, I believe that we will climb out of the moral degeneracy that enslaves us, and reclaim our moral values as a nation.

In the midst of just such a struggle ...

The Rabbinical Assembly Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Conservative Jewish movement, which comprises about a third of American Judaism, will meet in Chicago this week and consider whether to permit same-sex unions under Jewish law.

Reform Judaism took this step years ago, and Reform rabbis are permitted to conduct religious marriages for gay and lesbian Jewish couples. Conservative Judaism last visited the issue in 1992, when it issued a statement that welcomed gays and lesbians to congregations but prohibited same-sex religious unions.

Nobody knows how the decision will turn out. The committee's function is to advise rabbis on Jewish law. Individual rabbis are not bound by the Committee's statements.

In the past, the Committee has sometimes offered multiple interpretations on issues, and it may well do so on this issue. That is how Judaism works, unlike Christianity, which tends toward a my-way-or-the-highway approach to theological issues within most denominations. In Reform Judaism, for example, the equivalent advisory body issued a statement permitting rabbis to perform same-sex religious marriages, but acknowleged the differences of opinion on the issue, and did not require rabbis to officiate same-sex unions.

So nobody knows what will happen, but many of us will be watching with great interest, because in the United States, about 40% of Jews are Reform, a third Conservative and 20% Orthodox. The decision will have a major impact on Judaism in this country, although, because Judaism tends to accept multiple interpretations of the law, the decision is unlikely to rend Judaism asunder, as seems to be happening in a number of Christian denominations.

However the decision is forumlated, what is at stake is the question of how Conservative Judaism views not just homosexuality and homosexual behavior, but Torah itself.

As background to the decision, I offer a reflection from Rabbi Gerald Zelizer of Neve Shalom, a Conservative congregation in Metuchen, New Jersey, and a former president of the Rabbinical Assembly, writing in Keshet Ga'avah:

"Over the past few decades, the cultural battles over homosexuality have been waged in courtrooms, workplaces, schools and any number of other public forums. Religions, too, have become divided over the issue. You need not look very far for headlines showing splits over the acceptance of gay clergy or congregants.

"My faith is in the midst of just such a struggle.

"My personal journey in rethinking this choice reflects one side of the debate underway in Conservative Judaism, a denomination with an ideology between the more stringent Orthodox and the more liberal Reform. Its resolution will affect the roughly 1 million American Jews who identify with our religious approach. The issue of lifting the ban on gay rabbis was first considered, but rejected, in 1992.

"I was then serving as the international president of the 1,200 Conservative rabbis in the USA and worldwide. At the time, I supported our decision: No. The Torah'’s prohibition in Leviticus - "Do not lie with a male as you would with a female; it is an abomination" -- seemed too absolute to allow any wiggle room.

"After all, I reasoned, those who violated other biblical injunctions - such as not keeping kosher or committing adultery -- also were unsuitable to be rabbis.

"My fealty both to the Bible and my denomination'’s decisions affected me personally. My cousin, a gay rabbi, openly challenged the refusal to lift the ban and had difficulty securing a synagogue. Sadly, he abandoned the pulpit. Surely, my support of the ban contributed to his exodus.

"But the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, composed of our most learned rabbis and professors, is revisiting the earlier ruling. (A decision is expected by year'’s end.) The debate goes on.

"At our Rabbinical Convention in March, the matter was passionately debated, as it is in the field. A survey taken in 2003 by Keshet (rainbow), an advocacy group at our New York Jewish Theological Seminary, found that 83% of 222 respondents at the seminary want gays and lesbians to be admitted to Conservative rabbinical and cantorial schools. Others, though, such as Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, the retiring chancellor of that flagship seminary, contend that uprooting the Torah prohibition would do violence to the underpinnings of our whole religious faith.

"I feel differently. Since the last go-round, as I have become acquainted with more pious and knowledgeable gay and lesbian Jews, I have asked myself why God would design some people with a trait -- for which there is paltry evidence that it can be reversed - and then designate individuals with that characteristic as "sinners?" Even if triggered by a gene mutation, as some argue, what is sinful about that? Too many gays I met suffered in their efforts to engage in heterosexual sex, marry heterosexuals, even bear children, only to realize that their homosexuality was immutable.

"Conservative Judaism has always taught that we must upgrade our biblical understanding with new scientific knowledge. Contrary to the biblical assumption that gayness is a sinful choice, our best knowledge today indicates that it is as determined and irrevocable as blue or brown eyes. Of course, adherents of Orthodoxy and even some in my own movement will charge: "How can one be so presumptuous as to think he can improve on the biblical word of God?" Well, Judaism has done that from its inception, especially when moral considerations required it.

"The biblical demand of "an eye for an eye" was interpreted in the Talmud as the monetary value of a wounded eye, and not an actual gouging. The Bible also orders the stoning of an unruly son, but the Talmud already qualified that as theoretical, saying, "It was never done nor will it be done."

"Abraham Heschel, a pre-eminent 20th century theologian, wrote that the Torah is not a literal stenographic recording of God'’s voice, as over a long distance telephone, but a human interaction with the divine revelation.

"Changes in secular society have also contributed to the push for a change in my denomination'’s attitudes. Of course, religion should adhere to its beliefs and not slavishly respond "me too" to all of secular culture - as with, for example, the growing sympathy with euthanasia. But in instances where secular society develops just insights, religion should not stubbornly retain its own unjust ones. Sometimes, the sensibilities of society are ahead of religion. This is the case with homosexuality.

"I have changed a lot since 1992, as have many colleagues. Gay/lesbian Jews are God's creatures, too. Some, like my cousin, are knowledgeable, observant Jews, qualified to be rabbis but prohibited because of a sexual preference not of their own making. It is time to lift the prohibition against gay rabbis by using the same blueprint that Judaism has employed to rectify other unjust religious dictums.

"Will I rush to hire an assistant or intern rabbi who is gay? No. I need some time for truths that my mind now understands to reach my gut. I need to get comfortable, for example, witnessing a rabbi and his male partner dancing at my synagogue's spring social, or seeing two lesbians hand-in-hand at the Torah while celebrating their daughter's bat mitzvah. I am confident that, eventually, religious commitment will trump sexual orientation.

"Should other faiths allow gay clergy? That is not for me to say. I know only that other faiths have the same goals of both incorporating believers and encouraging the most committed to serve as clergy. Beyond that, I can only describe my journey, in hopes others might learn from my experience."

I remember the days when Jews, Catholics and African-Americans joined together in the struggle for equality under the law and an end to segregation. Jews and Catholics, themselves victims of religious and social persecution in this country, knew then that equality under the law was meaningless unless it extended to all Americans.

Today, Catholics are in the grip of a pernicious, frightened and retrograde orthodoxy dominating the institutional Church, and many African-Americans seem to have forgotten -- or perhaps were so wrapped up in self-righteousness that they never learned -- that equality under the law is hollow unless equality is extended to all.

Both have embraced the religious descendants of their persecutors, and work to deny equal treatment under the law to gays and lesbians. Both have become oppressors.

But hope remains that Judaism will remember and will continue to stand for universal justice. In that hope I, in turn, hope.

So I will be watching with interest.

Lies = Murder

Today is World AIDS day, and the usual cast of homophobic characters from the religious right (Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth, Linda Harvey of Mission America, James Hartline, Phil Burress of Citizens for Community Values, Brian Camenker of Mass Resistance, Sandy Rios of the Culture Campaign, Michael Heath of the Christian Civic League of Maine, David Smith of the Illinois Family Institute, Stephen J. Bennett, Vic Eliason, Randy Thomasson of the Campaign for Children & Families, Diane Gramley of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, Joe Glover of the Family Policy Network, Cathie Adams of the Texas Eagle Forum, Anthony Verdugo of the Christian Family Coalition and Christopher Long of Ohio Christian Alliance) met in Chicago to form the "AIDS Truth Coalition", a group dedicated to continuing the myth that HIV/AIDS is a gay man's disease.

As Peter LaBarbera put it: “While Christians and churches mobilize to fight the HIV pandemic on far away continents, let us not neglect the major catalyst for AIDS here in the United States of America: homosexual promiscuity, tolerated and encouraged by pro-'gay', 'safer-sex' advocates. It's time to acknowledge the pink elephant in the room: fighting AIDS without talking against homosexuality is like fighting lung cancer without talking against smoking."

Meanwhile, in the United States, over 50% of the new cases of HIV/AIDS arise in the African-American community, HIV infection is increasing fastest among women between the ages of 25 and 35, and more than half of the folks with HIV/AIDS do not get regular care because government assistance programs are underfunded and inadequate.

HIV/AIDS kills. Neglect kills. Myths kill.

It is bad enough that the religious right's adversion to gays and lesbians drove the Reagan administration's eight-year silence on HIV/AIDS, killing tens of thousands of gays and lesbians through delayed research and treatment. The religious right has much to answer for on that score.

But, as bad as it was, it is now worse. HIV/AIDS has broken out of the gay community and into the general population, now. And the religious right is not telling the truth about that, but is instead spreading the myth that HIV/AIDS is a "gay disease". It is absolutely unacceptable to continue to allow the religious right's anti-gay prejudice to kill Americans through misinformation.

If straight Americans believe the garbage put out by the AIDS Truth Coalition and similar religious right organizations, HIV/AIDS will continue to grow among straight Americans, largely unchecked. We may, God forbid, even possibly get to the point where the United States begins to look like countries in Africa, with HIV/AIDS infection rates in the double digits. In South Africa, for example, less than half of the fifteen year olds in the country are expected to live to be 60 because of the prevelance of HIV/AIDS in that country, and the average life expectency in the nation has dropped from 63 in 1990 to 51 in 2006.

Twenty years ago, the motto "Silence = Death" became a rallying point in the gay and lesbian community, as the community fought the epidemic despite neglect and indifference from the US government. The community had to speak plainly about the epidemic, and it did. HIV/AIDS infection rates among gays and lesbians leveled off, and then dropped, as a result.

Today, the motto needs to be "Lies = Murder". We need truth, not lies, if straight Americans are not to find themselves in the situation gay and lesbian Americans were in ten and fifteen years ago.

Speak plainly about HIV/AIDS and speak the truth. Do not let the religious right lie about death.