Category Archives: news

Weekend update – 6/13/2015 (ironic bigotry edition)

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BelieveOutLoud.Com
BelieveOutLoud.Com (Click to embiggen)
Yesterday’s Friday Links included the story of Nick and Sarah Jensen, two Australians whose “sincerely-held religious belief in the sanctity of marriage” is so strong, that they have publicly vowed to divorce if Australia legalizes equal marriage for gays and lesbians. There have been a lot of reactions. Queerty reports that locals of have reacted (on the website of the local newspaper which published the Jensen’s op-ed piece) such things as, “This is seriously the dumbest thing I’ve read in quite some time,” and “Talk about ignorant white trash attempting to guilt others,” and “You are brave to write an article and publish something like this…. This still doesn’t change the fact that you are deluded bigots.”

But the best reaction has been this: Straight couple told their gay marriage ‘protest divorce’ is actually illegal. Australian family law requires that a couple prove their marriage is irretrievably broken before granting a divorce. They must live completely apart for a full year before the divorce is granted, and must both swear that they do not intend to cohabitate in the future. Which is what they have also sworn they will do.

Of course, I actually prefer this headline: Same Sex Couple Threaten Not To Give A Shit If Other Couple Divorces.

11329771-172144855243_xlargeWhile this argument makes no logical sense, it’s hardly the first time the bigots have made this kind of argument. Rachel Maddow, following up on the story of Rev. Franklin Graham publicly moving his ministry’s money from one bank that advocates for equal rights to gays to another bank that advocates for equal rights for gays. Rachel explains why the fuzzy logic isn’t just a laughing matter: Anti-gay laws lose argument, win votes anyway.

The logic isn’t just fuzzy, it’s completely bonkers. The reason it’s bonkers is because it all boils down to obstinate emotional distaste. Emotional reactions are inherently non-rational. And In these cases the obstinancy is as much a product of both the type of emotion (“ewwww, icky!”) as it is about how deeply ingrained the notion is to their sense of self. It’s like the woman a year-and-a-half ago who wrote the op-ed claiming that gay marriage ruined her marriage. Except the story she told was how she and her husband had married young, then her very closeted husband had come out of the closet, they separated, and finally divorced.

There were lots of big logical flaws in her story. Their marriage was doomed before they started, but not because of gay marriage. Their marriage was doomed because of the insidious and  relentless societal homophobia that had driven her husband from the time he was a young boy to hide who he truly was and pretend to be straight. Gay marriage had not come to her state when he came out. In fact, her state had passed (by an incredibly wide margin) a ban on gay marriage about the time that it happened. Here belief that he had confirmed to her definition of a good, upstanding “christian” man when they married until he was transformed by the acceptance of gays by society was complete hogwash. Closeted people put forward a desperate façade that is doubly-tragic because for most of the time the closeted person is deceiving themselves at least as profoundly as they are deceiving other people.

Her story also, it turned out, contained a lot of factual lies. She claimed that her husband and his boyfriend had sole custody of their two small children, and that all of her rights had been trumped in court by the judge insisting that the gay couple’s civil rights overrode her religious beliefs. When the paper that published the op-ed got around the fact-checking it (but only after other people, including the ex-husband, wrote in to complain) it was found that she had primary custody of the children, and her ex had regular visiting rights. Records indicated that she had refused to let the father see the children after he started living with his boyfriend, and that the court had told her she couldn’t deny him visitation rights.

Frankly, it was a surprise that the court allowed him to keep the visitation rights under those circumstances, because usually judges in such conservative states go the other way—insisting that the gay parent only visit the children without their new partner, and are only allowed to have the children stay with them if the new partner is not present. Which is why that part of the editorial was transparently false to most everyone who read it.

Did she exaggerate because she thought it would make her case more sympathetic? Perhaps. I think it’s more of a bit of self-deception. In order to cling to her non-rational notions of how the world in general and her life in particular should be, she has to perceive any recognition of her ex as anything other than an evil monstrous sinful being as a complete defeat of her rights.

That’s part of what’s happening with the couple in Australia. They are so squicked out by the very notion that gay people exist, let alone that people might actually treat their loving relationships as socially acceptable, that it feels like an attack on them. Even though letting people you don’t know marry has absolutely no effect on you and your relationship. Evangelical nutcases like Franklin Graham are so squicked out by the idea that a business would think that two women adopting an orphan might be something to celebrate, that it must somehow taint his money and therefore him to be associated with it. Never mind that the bank he moved to is at least as gay friendly as the one he left. Never mind that he announced his plan first on Facebook, which is one of the large corporations that joined the amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to rule in favor of marriage equality. And so on, and so on…

They’re too busy being disgusted and outraged to think at all, let alone (you should pardon the expression) think straight.

Putting the genie back in the bottle

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BlueNationReview.Com
BlueNationReview.Com
All the wingnuts are coming out with either apocalyptic predictions (Roy Moore: SCOTUS Gay Marriage Ruling Could ‘Destroy the Country’) or revolutionary exhortations (Glenn Beck Announces Plan To Organize Christians In Civil Disobedience Against SCOTUS Ruling On Same-Sex Marriage) if the Supreme Court recognizes that marriage equality is a constitutional right. Then, of course, there are those who pledge to pass a constitutional amendment to reverse the decision (Scott Walker backs amendment for same-sex marriage bans).

Just a year ago, many conservative pundits were pointing out that the number of states that had adopted marriage equality, and where a majority of the citizens of said states supported it, meant that there weren’t enough states left to ratify a constitutional amendment. Then we have polls released just this week that not only show that a majority of americans support marriage equality, but that a whopping 63% believe that marriage equality is a constitutional right and that the court should rule it so!

I have to point out that back in 1971, four years after a unanimous Supreme Court had struck down bans on interracial marriage, that a majority of americans disagreed with that decision. But no one even tried to pass a federal constitutional amendment to allow states to begin banning interracial marriage again. I don’t believe that anyone could make a credible run at an amendment to ban gay marriage now when a majority of americans support gay marriage.

I should point out, that while 63 percent said they thought the constitution protects the right, a “mere” 57% said they fully support it. Which means that about 6% are personally opposed to queers marrying each other, but also believe it should be legal. That isn’t a contradiction. Lots of us disapprove of things that we also don’t think should be illegal for other people to do if they really want.

The most interesting statistic on that, as always, is the demographic number. We’re used to, in these polls, seeing that young people are more supportive of gay rights than older people. So it is no surprise that roughly 73% of those under the age of 50 are in favor of marriage equality. But the surprise is that just over 52% of people aged 50 and older are also in favor. It’s almost evenly split, but for a long time it was a clear majority of older people who disapproved. Of course, some of that shift has been a simple matter of aging. People who were in their late 40s when polls were taken a few years ago, and were therefore at least slight more likely to be in favor of marriage equality, are now in the older cohort, and they’re brought their beliefs with them. But aging alone doesn’t account for the change. So in the last few years, some of those older people who previously opposed it or answered that they weren’t sure have changed their minds.

It’s that last piece, I know, that some of the haters hang onto. They remain convinced that somehow, if they just keep screaming about how horrible and icky gay people are, that they can start getting people to change their minds the other way.

I don’t think so. I continue to believe that our two best weapon are visibility and familiarity. The more people who know actual gay people—and specifically, the more they see their own relatives and the relatives of their friends not just be out, but stand in line for marriage licenses and have their weddings and so forth without the world coming crashing down—the more supportive they become.

The cliché is that you can’t put the genie back in the bottle. I agree that the marriage equality genie is out and isn’t going back. More importantly, none of us queers are going to allow ourselves to be chased back into the closet.

Weekend Update – 6/6/2015

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BettyBowers.Com (Click to embiggen)
BettyBowers.Com (Click to embiggen)
I missed this before Friday. InTouch magazine posted a fact-check/refutation of seven of the claims the Duggars made in the interview: DUGGAR INTERVIEW: 7 CRUCIAL FACTS THEY DIDN’T TELL YOU — THE COVER-UP CONTINUES. Contrary to one of their biggest claims, they did not cooperate with policy. They hid their son and refused to bring him in for scheduled interviews. Much more at the link. On the other hand, Dan Savage interviewed a therapist who works with juvenile sex offenders to find out how parents who find out their child has sexually abused another child ought to handle the situation: What Should the Duggars Have Done?

And the scandal surrounding former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert paying millions in extortion money is beginning to turn up names: Exclusive: Alleged Dennis Hastert Sex Abuse Victim Is Named By Family. This is not the victim Hastert was paying off because this victim died of complication of AIDS many years ago, but if the allegations of the family are true, it confirms our worst fears: when Hastert was a High School wrestling coach he was having sexual relationships with his students. Again, I ask is there any reason that we don’t just all assume that whenever a politician, pastor, or other sort of public figure is rabidly anti-gay that they are also a deeply twisted closet cases?

And all sorts of interesting things are bubbling around since Vanity Fair put Caitlyn Jenner on the cover: For Social Conservatives, Acceptance of Caitlyn Jenner Is the Apocalypse. Though the writing has been on the wall regarding societal acceptance of marriage equality for some time (NOM has a plan; and some snowballs plan to summer in hell, too), the wingnuts have been pivoting to trans issues as a means to drum up fear and much-needed donations to their think tanks, et al. The way that Caitlyn’s transition has been embraced by a significant fraction of the population is making their heads explode (Their rhetoric has turned macabre and concerning). I think a lot of them really do believe the insane hyperbole they are spewing, but many of them know it is not the end of the world, and are much more worried about preserving their cash flow. Otherwise they might have to actual work for a living, right? Then there’s things like this: Man learns amazing lesson in irony after mocking Caitlyn Jenner’s ‘bravery’ in viral Facebook post.

And here’s a nice follow-up on a story I posted a link to earlier: Larry Wilmore Lets Gay Student Give Banned Valedictorian Speech On-Air (VIDEO). Watch the clip for context and a fun intro. They only show part of the speech on the show, but the entire speech is available on the web: EVAN YOUNG’S COMPLETE GRADUATION SPEECH.

Blurring patriotism into…

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Click to embiggen (quotes.lifehack.org)
Click to embiggen (quotes.lifehack.org)

We had some of my husband’s relatives in town over Memorial Day weekend, and as we were driving somewhere on Memorial Day itself, I mentioned how my Grandmother had insisted on calling it “Decoration Day” her entire life. That she had, in fact, died literally in the middle of putting silk flowers on the grave of my Great-aunt Maud on the Friday before Memorial Day, because to her the holiday had always been about putting flowers on the graves of all of your family members who had passed away, and having a family gathering to celebrate the lives of our loved ones no longer with us. To which my sister-in-law said, “That’s how I grew up celebrating it, too! Sometimes with a picnic at the cemetery.”

It was later that I saw a cartoon that talked about how every even vaguely-patriot holiday seems to be inexorably transformed into Veteran’s Day: so Memorial Day is now Veteran’s Day May, Independence Day is now Veteran’s Day July, Labor Day is sometimes Veteran’s Day September, and the actual Veteran’s Day is now merely Veteran’s Day November.

If Flag Day joins that list I’m going to start slapping people.

I saw that a lot of news sites had posted articles like this one: Why you shouldn’t confuse Memorial Day and Veterans Day. Of course, I thought that maybe the cartoon was going a bit far when it suggested people were confusing Labor Day with Veterans day, until I saw this story: Get it straight: The difference between Veterans Day and Memorial Day which mentions seeing “thank the troops” events being scheduled on Labor Day.

This lunacy must stop. I know that my own wish to keep the original (and it does predate the declaration of the first memorial day for troops issued by General Logan in 1868 by decades) meaning of the May holiday as a day to commemorate the lives of all of our loved ones who have died is probably a lost battle. But this re-defining of patriotism as supporting the troops (which has itself already very unpatriotically been re-defined as supporting the notion of sending troops to die to further political aims rather than to actually defend the nation), and therefore coopting all other commemorations of our nation’s history and principles into yet another chance to thank the troops, isn’t just annoying, it’s dangerous.

We’re currently in the middle of a war on “terror” which is being used by government officials of both parties to trample all over our civil rights and the Constitution itself. The vast transfer of completely inappropriate military hardware to police departments is a direct result of this ill-conceived and poorly-defined war. A war which is not being waged against an actual threat, but merely the idea of possible threats. And the escalating violence by police against the citizens they are supposed to protect is enabled and excused because of a myth we’ve been sold that these are people risking their lives to protect us, therefore we must support the cops, because not doing so would be the same as not supporting the troops, and we already know that all patriots always support the troops.

And let’s not forget the actual men and women in uniform who were sent to Iraq because of lies (which Bush administration officials are finally admitting they were intentional lies), far too many of whom have come home wounded, maimed, and otherwise in need of care which our congresscritters seem unwilling to pay for. I’m still one of those weirdos who thinks that the first step in supporting the troops is not to vote for politicians who authorized military action when it isn’t needed, and not to vote for those who don’t adequately fund veterans’ hospitals, et cetera.

We don’t have the funds to pay returning veterans a living wage or get them proper medical care, but we do have money to pay for things like this: US Defense Department paid 14 NFL teams $5.4M to honor soldiers. The NFL didn’t give free tickets to those soldiers, airmen, sailors, and marines. Each of those tickets was paid for by your tax dollars! And the tickets are a fraction of the amount paid to the league. But the money is well spent, according to the folks who approved the contracts, because it’s a great recruiting tool.

So we are paying a very successful business millions of tax dollars to pretend to be patriotic in order to distract us from asking questions about why those troops are being sent into harm’s way and to lure more people into volunteering to be sent into harm’s way. You can’t get more capitalist or cynical than that!

Let’s stop blurring the lines between the holidays. Let’s stop blurring the lines between supporting the troops and supporting the politicians and industries that profit from exploiting the troops. Let’s stop blurring patriotism into cynicism—while we still can!

Weekend update – 5/30/2015

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www.inquistr.com (click to embiggen)
http://www.inquistr.com (click to embiggen)
I wrote (and linked to others who wrote) about why we shouldn’t give in to the schadenfreude urge in relation to the child sex abuse scandal swamping the cultish Duggar family of TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting fame, and Brooke Arnold makes a powerful argument coinciding with that: I could’ve been a Duggar wife: I grew up in the same church, and the abuse scandal doesn’t shock me. The children of the cultish perversion of Christianity the Duggars practice, particularly the girl children, are raised in an environment guaranteed to create these tragedies. And should we be surprised that the man credited with founding this movement is guilty of both a sexual harassment and sexual assault?

And now there’s the indictment of former Republican speaker of the house, Dennis Hastert for paying out millions of dollars in hush money to a man who Hastert had some sort of sexual relationship (sexual misconduct) with back when Hastert was a high school wrestling coach? As I asked earlier, and the author of that story asks now, “When do we get to acknowledge that sexual hypocrisy is in fact a constant theme of conservative politics — that every single time a Republican or ‘family values’ representative speaks to the bigoted mythology of homophobia or transphobia, they are closeting skeletons like a Duggar?” (In case we’ve forgotten how often this happens, Queerty has rounded up a subset of 16 Antigay Leaders Exposed as Gay or Bi.)

The levels of hypocrisy are truly staggering: Are You Gay? Burn In Hell! Molest A Child? You’re Forgiven! And Dennis Hastert’s secret gay ‘misconduct’ is even worse given his terrible voting record on gay rights. And let’s not forget that when Hastert was Speaker he tried to cover up the fact that Congressman Mark Foley had had sexual interactions with male members of the Congressional page program (high school age students).

Bisexual Flag
Bisexual Flag
On the other hand, June is almost here, and the President has issued a proclamation for Pride Month. People are reacting as if it isn’t a big deal, but as Gabe Ortiz (an immigration rights and gay rights activist) pointed out: George W. Bush refused to issue any such proclamations for 8 years even though they had been issued annually almost pro forma for many years before.

Polyamory Symbol
Polyamory Symbol
A few points stick out for me: “For countless young people, it is not enough to simply say it gets better; we must take action too.” and “All people deserve to live with dignity and respect, free from fear and violence, and protected against discrimination, regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation. During Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month, we celebrate the proud legacy LGBT individuals have woven into the fabric of our Nation, we honor those who have fought to perfect our Union, and we continue our work to build a society where every child grows up knowing that their country supports them, is proud of them, and has a place for them exactly as they are.” Obama reflects on progress in Pride proclamation

Genderqueer flag
Genderqueer flag
Although some people think the acronym is already long, I wish the President had used the LGBTQ version, because I like to think that the Q (for queer) includes our polyamorous, agender, genderfluid, asexual, genderqueer, pansexual, genderqueer, and allied siblings. Because we’re all part of that crazy, happy, wonderfully fabulous tribe!

Ludovic Bertron from New York City, USA (Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license)
Ludovic Bertron from New York City, USA (Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license)
The world would have a lot fewer tragedies like Hastert’s inappropriate touching problem, Foley’s congressional page scandal, and the Duggar child molestation disaster if society as a whole accepted and affirmed all queer people.

Weekend Update: 5/23/2015

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These tweets by Gabe Ortiz express my sentiments nicely. (Click to embiggen)
These tweets by Gabe Ortiz express my sentiments nicely.
Yes, I posted at least two links yesterday to stories about Josh Duggar, one of the sons of the ultra-rightwing family that are the “stars” of TLC’s 19 and Counting and his admission to the charges of molesting younger children when he was a teenager. Please note that most of my ire is at his parents, who covered it up for at least a year. And I say at least because they eventually asked a friend who was a state trooper to talk to Josh about his problem, and said friend didn’t do anything official with the news. The fact that the same trooper is now currently serving prison time for child molesting himself is a weird twist I may come back to.

The closest they came to not covering it up is three years later, when Josh was still a teen, and allegations from the victim that wasn’t one of his sisters came to light. By then, the statute of limitations had run out, and while authorities looked into the matter, there was nothing they could do. At that time, the family claimed that they had earlier sent Josh off to some kind of rehab. More recently, they have admitted that all they did was send him to live with a family friend for three months. There was no counseling or therapy involved. So, the parents and at least one state patrol officer knew about the problem, but didn’t report it. When other people learned about the problem, the parents lied about what steps they had taken to handle it.

Then there is the fact that grown-up Josh has been working for the Family Research Council where his official duties boiled down to saying awful, untrue things about gay and trans people, campaigning to take away our civil rights, and raising money to continue to keep us as second class citizens. So some people are experiencing a little bit of schadenfreude: Judge Not Lest Ye Be Judged, Josh Duggar!

Alvin McEwen over at Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters cautions us not to rejoice about this comeuppance, and he’s right to do so. Just as Mark Joseph Stern is right when he says, Of Course We Should Condemn Josh Duggar. We Should Also Pity Him.

I want to point out that I’m not rejoicing.

What I am doing is saying “I told you so.” Not that I predicted that Josh was a serial child molester, but I have said many times that the kind of counter-factual, sex-negative fanaticism practiced at least a little bit by most conservative “christians” (and is practiced in spades by the Duggar Cult) makes this sort of thing inevitable. The human sex drive is not an insignificant force, and you can’t dismiss it. If you refuse to teach children how to handle it when their hormones start flowing, foster an atmosphere where they are afraid to ask questions about it when they start feeling it, and otherwise teach them falsehoods about how it all works you wind up creating situations like that of Josh and his victims.

In other words, it isn’t ironic that this has happened, it is inevitable.

Having been raised in an evangelical fundamentalist church myself, I understand how powerful redemptive narratives are in that subculture. That’s why you get people in that community excusing it in ways that sound sociopathic to the rest of us: ‘Boys are curious’: Meet the Duggar defenders using religion to excuse fondling your sleeping sisters.

And then there is the disturbing lack of any mention about the harm to the victims. Josh was sent off to live with a family friend (did I mention that this family friend, like the state trooper, is also now in prison for molesting minors?), was covered up for, and prayed for. But were his victims offered counseling? Or were they told to praise the lord that it wasn’t worse? The Problem With the Duggar Sexual Assault Cover-Up Nobody’s Talking About.

And in case you don’t know why some people are feeling at least a bit amused by this comeuppance: Here are 6 of the most horrifying examples of the Duggars’ homophobia.

*sigh*

Panti Bliss celebrates with supporters of same-sex marriage at Dublin Castle. (Paul Faith/AFP/Getty Images)
Panti Bliss celebrates with supporters of same-sex marriage at Dublin Castle.
(Paul Faith/AFP/Getty Images)
But that’s enough about sad, depressing news about hateful people. Can we talk about love? Can we talk about the nation of Ireland, which has not only approved Marriage Equality in a popular vote, but a approved it by more than 60% saying “Yes” to equality? Ireland Votes To Legalize Gay Marriage, Leaders On Both Sides Of Referendum Say. And Ireland Votes Overwhelmingly To Approve Same-Sex Marriage.

I can’t stop tearing up.

Weekend Update: 5/16/2015

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A few bits of news came in after I had scheduled yesterday’s Friday Links to post, but before they actually posted:

Legendary Blues guitarist B.B. King passed away Thursday night. He was 89 years old but just a few months ago still touring and charming audiences with his velvety voice. B.B. King: A Tribute to Blues Brotherhood.

Screen Shot 2015-05-16 at 10.03.01 AMWilliam Zinsser, writer, editor, and author (and frequent updater) of the legendary On Writing Well, died this week. He was 92 years old. William Zinsser, Author of ‘On Writing Well,’ Dies at 92. He is less famous for another book he wrote, in the early days of personal computing, when a lot of professional writers were up in arms about how word processors would destroy the craft of writing and make literature robotic (seriously), Zinsser wrote Writing With a Word Processor, extolling the virtues of the tool.

At least one of the virulent anti-gay bills the Texas legislature has been cooking up as fast as they can in anticipation of a summer Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality is dead for the moment: Same-sex marriage license ban bill dies in Texas legislature. On the other hand, 93 of the 98 Texas House Republicans Sign Shameful Anti-Gay Letter Pledging to Defy Supreme Court on Marriage.

And this pair of tweets went across my timeline yesterday afternoon. If you don’t know who Vox Day is, you’re lucky. Let’s just say he’s a virulent bigot who hates just about everyone:

Anyway, I thought it was a good thought to remember: holding people responsible for their hate speech is merely that, holding them responsible.

It bothers some people that we exist, part 2

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...especially if it means make the world a brighter place. (MemeBlender.Com)
…or especially if it means make the world a brighter place. (MemeBlender.Com)
Being reminded that queer people exist at all drives some people to crazy lengths. For instance, as noted at the Crime and the Forces of Evil blog, the Sad Puppies are angry that books containing queer characters aren’t clearly marked. For those not in the know, the Sad Puppies (and an allied group, the Rabid Puppies) are a bunch of arch-conservative sci fi writers and fans who organized a bloc-voting scheme to game the selection process for the Hugo Awards and put a specific slate of anti-progressive authors, editors, and fans in every major category. Their rhetoric leading up to their success was full of blatant misogynist and homophobic language (and threats), and only slightly-less-blatant racist language. It’s worth noting that they’ve been trying this for a few years without success. It appears that their success this year is primarily due to the fact that they managed to enlist a bunch of GamerGate trolls into the process… Continue reading It bothers some people that we exist, part 2 →

Marriage legal for everyone, everywhere

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11175054_3836322863643_6839804740260912550_nThe Supreme Court is hearing arguments today on four cases involving Marriage Equality. Over the last year, the Court has declined to hear appeals of cases where a federal court struck down a ban on same-sex marriage. These four cases are ones in which the lower courts have struck down some aspect of a state ban, and an appellate court has stayed or overruled the lower court ruling. It’s not a done deal by any means, but it seems clear that a majority of the court is at least willing to let marriage equality become the law of the land. My own worry is not that the court won’t rule that gays have a right to marry, but rather that the less enthusiastic justices will force a very narrow ruling that would ultimately allow people to get fired from their jobs if they marry, businesses to refuse to sell to gay people, and so on.

Anyway, they will hear arguments today, but the ruling is not likely to be announced until nearly the end of the term, in June. Still, people are rallying in Washington, D.C., and there are local rallies happening around the country today.

But here are two nice videos that sum up our side of things:

Nobody’s Memories – PFLAG Canada:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

It’s Time for the Freedom to Marry:

(If embedding doesn’t work, click here.)

Weekend Update: 4/25/2015

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Click to embiggen!
Click to embiggen!
There are a few stories I linked to yesterday (or in earlier Friday Links) that have had further developments. There are also a few stories I found after posting Friday Links that I would have included if I had seen them sooner.

First, I posted about the straight high school student who, when seeing that his best friend who happens to be gay was lamenting online about the fact that once again he’s on the planning committee for a dance, but he doesn’t have a date, got together with a couple of friends to make a big banner that said, “You’re hella gay, and I’m hella Str8, but you’re like my brother, so be my D8.” Here are some more pictures. I like this because, well, just think about how far things have come. It’s been pretty amazing that so many kids are out as queer in high schools, now. And it’s cool that most of them can go to prom without hassle from fellow students, or administrators threatening to expel them (only most, there were a few of the other kind in the news earlier in the month, alas). And it’s cool that openly lesbian, gay, and trans students have been elected Prom Kings and Queens.

Click to embiggen.
Click to embiggen.
But when a straight guy can do this, and nobody bats an eye (look at the grins on the faces of two of the kids taking pics/vids of Anthony and Jacob), where the straight guy doesn’t worry about what people will think… well, it’s even more amazing. And in a really good way.

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM), a virulent anti-gay group that has been losing, and losing, and losing and refusing to admit it, is hosting their third annual March For Marriage in Washington D.C. today. Two years ago they got 2000 people, but claimed to get 15,000 (and they photoshopped a picture of the crowd from President Obama’s inauguration into one of their pictures, posted it to the web, and tried to claim it was their rally). Last year they got far less than a thousand—and half the crowd were older ladies who spoke no English who were tricked into taking “a bus ride to see the monuments in Washington DC!” by an anti-gay New York state legislator; I’m not kidding, the ladies stood around confused until all the speeches the didn’t understand were over, then they didn’t march, the left to go look at monuments on their own! Even the most conservative news sites admitted the crowd was disappointingly small. I haven’t seen numbers, yet, but Jeremy Hooper from Good As You, posted (along with a link to their livestream) “Watch live at 11:30 ET: NOM’s hilariously out of touch (and likely final) #March4Marriage.”

I listened to one of the speakers while I was catching screen caps for the first update and writing part of this post, and it is definitely out of touch. The speaker was repeating their usual claim that activist judges have forces marriage equality on all 37 states that currently have it (completely ignoring four states where the voters approved marriage equality at the polls, and the several states who have approved it at the legislature). He doubled-down on that falsehood a minute later, repeating their lie that no marriage equality measure has been approved at the ballot box and that the vast majority of americans are opposed to “gay marriage.” They’re holding the rally on Saturday this year, instead of a weekday like before. And even more hilariously, instead of Tuesday, when the Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments on Marriage Equality. Everyone is assuming that they’re holding it today and not Tuesday because they might get a bigger crowd to show up on their side on a weekend when fewer of their base would have to take a day off work, and because it is pretty certain that the pro-equality side will have huge crowds on Tuesday. 5 Reasons NOM Will Need Much More Than A Prayer At The March For Marriage 2015.

In much, much happier news, Nation Public Radio reports Transgender Teen Wins Case To Wear Makeup In DMV Photo. When will these state officials realize that, if nothing else, it’s a violation of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection before the law to impose dress codes and so forth based on a person’s gender. In many ways, this isn’t even about the fact that she’s transgender. Insisting that because they believe she’s a guy, she can’t wear makeup for her photo? Anyway, I’ve glad Chase has won, and hope she looks better in her new driver’s license picture than most of us do.