Tag Archives: gay

In the hole, still digging

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Tom Tomorrow sums up the anti-marriage arguments.
Tom Tomorrow sums up the anti-marriage arguments.
So, one of the leading groups fighting to stop marriage equality, the so-called National Organization for Marriage, finally filed their taxes for last year (but only after being sued and publicly shamed). They seriously didn’t want to. They filed two extensions, missed the deadline of the second extension, and even then, the filing has all donors redacted.

Now that they have filed it, we know why. They ended the year in the red. Most people are reporting that they are a million dollars in the hole, but it’s worse than that. Their actual form shows them $2,731,302 dollars in the negative. Some news sites are using the $1,000,000 figure because the organization took a loan of about 1.6-million dollars from its so-called “education” arm. Which may prompt more legal action, since that might not be legal. Because the educational arm raises money as a tax-deductible religious organization, and those funds can’t legally be spent on political activities. NOM spent a rather huge amount of money failing to stop Marriage Equality referendums in Maine, Maryland, and Washington state last year. Not to mention paying its leaders generous salaries. Its president, Brian Brown, was paid his full $230,000 salary, while supposedly-retired president, Maggie Gallagher, was paid $160,000.

The money, and specifically how almost no one is donating to them any longer, is only half the the mystery here. The other half is, what do they think they can accomplish now?

Continue reading In the hole, still digging →

16 and counting…

love, , , , , ,

Cartoon showing the equality doesn't unbalance anything.
Freedom to marry doesn’t hurt anyone.
So, the Hawaii legislature has passed marriage equality, setting the Aloha state to be the 16th that will allow all citizens, gay and straight, say “I do” to love and commitment.

It has been an extraordinary year. Think about it, just 18 months ago, the citizens of North Carolina, a state that already had a law banning marriage between same-sex couple, approved an amendment to their state constitution prohibiting the state from performing or recognizing either same-sex marriages or civil unions. Then, 12 months ago, on election night, the voters in Maine, Maryland, and Washington state all approved measures in favor of same-sex marriage (and the voters of Minnesota rejected an attempt to amend their constitution to prevent the marriages). That brought the number of states recognizing marriage equality to ten. And it was as if the floodgates had opened…

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Dumbest arguments against anti-discrimination laws, part 2

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Political cartoon about a distinction without a difference.
I’ve always loved this D.C. Simpson cartoon.
Continuing from yesterday, there are some really ridiculous arguments people assert against anti-discrimination laws. The ones that annoy me the most are those put forward by people who claim that they don’t believe in discrimination, and support fair and equal treatment for everyone, it’s just that…

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Dumbest arguments against anti-discrimination laws, part 1

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Quit squirming cartoon.
“Quit squirming!”
So the U.S. Senate appears on the brink of passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act which would bar businesses from taking into consideration sexual orientation when making decisions of who to hire, who to fire, and who to promote. And all the usual arguments are being trotted out as the usual suspects go into a frenzy. I’m not going to pick the overt haters’ arguments apart here, but what I really get tired of are the people who insist that they aren’t in favor of discriminating against anyone, for goodness sake. And then they say, “However…”

Continue reading Dumbest arguments against anti-discrimination laws, part 1 →

That’s not what persecuted means, part 2

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Image of a newspaper story.
Families in Russia faced actual religious persecution.
Besides the incident I wrote about yesterday, the various anti-gay groups, a whole lot of the speakers at the so-called Values Voters Summit, have been getting more paranoid in their claims. They refer to things like the legal recognition of marriage equality as religious persecution. They refer to the enforcement of anti-discrimination laws that have been on the books for many years before the marriage equality movement as religious persecution, but only when it is used to combat discrimination against gays and lesbians. They refer to anti-bullying programs in schools as religious persecution.

None of that is religious persecution.

You know what is religious persecution? Having your grandfather and later your father arrested for leading a Bible study. Having the police show up at your school when you are nine years old and they take you into custody, put you in an interrogation room, and question you for hours about your parents’ religious beliefs, while your little sister is held in another room, and they tell you can see her again if you will just admit that your parents are preaching illegally.

I knew a woman whose childhood included those things. She was attending Seattle Pacific University and we had a class together. She was about ten years older than the rest of the students, wanting to finally get a degree, because she had spent her high school years (years) taking refuge in a U.S. Embassy in the Soviet Union.

Continue reading That’s not what persecuted means, part 2 →

Everyone looks great in purple!

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And everyone can be someone:
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And everyone can help:
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No one likes a bully (except just about everyone)

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Kid holding I am a Bully sign.
Father forces son to hold pink ‘I am a bully’ sign on Texas highway.
In most action movies there’s a scene that everyone in the theatre cheers. One of the bad guys—one who has been portrayed earlier on the movie as being particularly cruel, heartless, otherwise repulsive—meets an especially grisly death, usually at the hands of the hero.

Of course we cheer, you say. He wasn’t just the bad guy, he was an extremely bad bad guy! No matter how egregious or overly cruel his final moments were, he had it coming! We’re just cheering the concept of justice.

I get it, truly I do. And I have certainly cheered many such scenes, myself.

However…

Continue reading No one likes a bully (except just about everyone) →

Come out, come out, wherever you are!

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Image of Glinda the Good from the Wizard of Oz.
Glinda says, “Come out, come out, where ever you are!”
Today is National Coming Out Day. If Ray were still alive, it would also be the day we’d be celebrating the twentieth anniversary of our commitment ceremony (he promised to stay with me for the rest of his life, and he did).

Since I am still occasionally surprised to learn that someone I know or work with hasn’t figured out that I’m gay: my husband (Michael) and I are both men, and we’re very much in love with each other and happy together.

Picture taken by Chelsea Kellogg, reporter for the Stranger.
Michael and I.
But while I’m (re-)stating what I think ought to be obvious, I would like to announce that I am a card-carrying liberal gay man who thinks:

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14 beats 11

historical trivia, history, , , ,

A taxidermied raccoon
Raccoon eating Cracker Jacks.
Legal argie bargie can be fun. But sometimes, it’s just sad.

During the American Revolutionary War (1775-83), the government of the state of Georgia had purchased a large amount of goods on credit from a merchant who lived in South Carolina by the name of Captain Robert Farquhar. At the end of the war, Georgia refused to pay the amount owed Captain Farquhar on the grounds that Farquhar had been a British Loyalist—not on the grounds that the supplies they received had been defective in any way, or that he had otherwise failed to deliver what he promised. It seemed to be nothing more than spite…

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Stripes and stars

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Rainbow flag with a blue field and stars in the corner.
A star-spangled rainbow flag.
Symbols are important.

My coming out process had been slow and incremental. I spent most of my teens wrestling with the idea, trying to convince myself that I wasn’t gay. For a long time I tried to be either bisexual or resign myself to a life a celibacy. I don’t want to get into the psycho-social reasons that some of us gay people cling to a bisexual identity for a while (and the disservice that does to actual bi people). Julie and I became active in a very out lesbian & gay chorus while we were still married to each other. By then a lot of people knew that I wasn’t heterosexual. But a lot of people didn’t. Most of my friends who knew seemed to be all right with it, but no one in my family knew.

I had wanted to come out to the family (and some old friends who were still in the dark at the time) earlier, but had been talked out of it. After Julie and I legally separated and I was finally able to admit aloud that I was definitely not bi, I felt a need to make a definitive statement.

Continue reading Stripes and stars →