It’s passed the House of Commons by a huge majority. Now on to the House of Lords. Of course, philosopher Roger Scruton was on the wrong side of this one, with the argument that “gay marriage is homophobic”.
Note: this post has been updated in light of the excellent point made in the first comment!
The Campaign for Southern Equality will be visiting seven states in the southern US as part of their WE DO campaign, which
involves LGBT couples in the Southern communities where they live requesting – and being denied – marriage licenses in order to call for full equality under federal law and to resist unjust state laws….
These WE DO actions serve to make the impact of discriminatory laws visible to the general public; they illustrate what it looks like when LGBT people are treated as second-class citizens under the law. Sometimes these actions include non-violent acts of civil disobedience in the form of individuals refusing to leave the public office where the denial of a license has occured. The purpose of civil disobedience is to resist unjust state laws and to express a belief that LGBT people are fully human and should be treated as equal citizens under our nation’s laws.
To date, 38 couples in 10 cities across North and South Carolina have sought marriage licenses as part of the WE DO campaign.
They’ve put together a great video:
Thanks, JF!
Sociological Images has posted some interesting postcards that were campaigning against women’s suffrage.
I find it fascinating that the implicit argument in these images is something like, “We can’t give women the same rights and privileges that we have, because then they might try to do to us what we have been doing to them, and that is just INHUMANE.”
I know the last bit doesn’t follow unless you have an essentialized view of gender where somehow it is natural and proper for women to wash clothes and babysit, but it is improper and dehumanizing for men to do it.
I just find it funny, especially with the postcard of the three women sitting around a table play cards, smoking and complaining about their lazy husbands. There is an admission here of, “Yes, we men sit on our asses while our wives do all the work, but that is our RIGHT as men and husbands. When THEY do it, it’s NOT FAIR and UNNATURAL.”
It’s amusing (in a sad way) to realize that the whole “equality for everyone!” slogan is so easily amended by the exception: “well, not for those people whose natural place is somewhere lower on the hierarchy.” Or nowadays, it’s more “Equality for everyone–except for those who haven’t really earned it.”
Says the one of the strategists who helped put the marriage amendment on the Minnesota ballot this year; the proposed amendment would amend the state constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman.
Brodkorb was former Deputy Chairman of the State Republican Party and top Senate staffer, and says GOP Senators knew a driving force behind the gay marriage amendment wasn’t morality. It was political reality.
Top GOP leaders thought they couldn’t beat incumbent Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar, and Republicans would stay home.
“The belief was, the United States senate race
was not going to be close, and that Republicans needed and social conservatives needed a reason to get to the polls in November,” he said.
Check out this pastor’s anti-gay speech, and please please keep listening to the end.
There’s also a description of the speech at the link.
The court ruled that the Defense [sic] of Marriage Act didn’t survive requisite scrutiny, as the classification of same-sex spouses is not substantially related to an important government interest. You can read the decision here, and HuffPo coverage here.
Matthew Vines on the role of scriptural interpretation in this debate.
And within the traditional interpretation of Scripture, falling in love is one of the worst things that could happen to a gay person. Because you will necessarily be heartbroken, you will have to run away, and that will happen every single time that you come to care about someone else too much. So while you watch your friends fall in love, get married, and start families, you will always be left out. You will never share in those joys yourself – of a spouse and of children of your own. You will always be alone. . . But the necessary consequence of the traditional teaching on homosexuality is that, even though gay people have suitable partners, they must reject them, and they must live alone for their whole lives, without a spouse or a family of their own. We are now declaring good the very first thing in Scripture that God declared not good: for the man to be forced to be alone. And the fruit that this teaching has borne has been deeply wounding and destructive.
Full transcript here. For those who are interested, I think the view he puts forth on the Sodom and Gomorrah story in Genesis 19 is bolstered by the fact that any other sort of interpretation is made difficult by a very similar passage in Judges 19.
Amidst all the remembrances of Sally Ride’s accomplishments, one thing that was missed was the shoddy way her partner has been treated.
Unfortunately, Ride’s domestic partner of 27 years Tam O’Shaughnessy, under federal law, will not receive the survivor annuity, death benefits, or Social Security payments that are given to family members of heterosexual astronauts.
There’s a petition you can sign here. Obviously, the petition is too limited— it focuses just on Ride’s partner. But presumably the hope is that calling attention to this case will change the law, thus helping others as well.
(Thanks Jender-Mom!)
You have till Thursday to take part in the public consultation on the proposed changes to laws governing civil partnerships and marriages in the UK. It takes about five minutes to fill out the form. No doubt there will be, ahem, interested organisations mobilising their membership, so let’s mobilise ourselves in response.
There is an interview with Dennis Morris in today’s Guardian. Perhaps more famous for his music photography, Morris also documented the lives of black people in Britain during the sixties and seventies. These photos are collected in his book Growing Up Black.
Aged 16, Morris told a careers adviser that he wanted to be a photographer. “The guy just looked at me like I was mad,” he says. “Then he said: ‘Be realistic. There’s no such thing as a black photographer’”…
I ask him about the extraordinarily evocative series of photographs entitled simply “Wedding, Town Hall, Mare Street, Hackney, 1971″. “Man, that was a big thing, a real big thing. I knew a few black guys who had married white women, but this was the first time I saw a wedding between a white man and a black woman. I was a photographer for hire then and got jobs word of mouth because I was cheap and dependable. I remember a certain tension in the church, mainly coming off the in-laws. You can feel that tension in the photographs. It was moving, though. I felt they were very brave people, the bride and groom. Pioneers.”
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