Homodox

Never Let 'em See Your Ass (Or Was that Never Let 'em See You Ache?)

Flint, Michigan now has a law against baggy pants. The day they enforce it against fat-assed white plumbers and not teens of color, I'll be surprised.

Whose Stuff Is It Anyway?

Today, Harvard University will officially give back the Danilov Bells that have been at Lowell House since 1930 when the monastery in Moscow was closed.  My husband is there as a member of the Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral.  [It reminds me of a favorite line from the musical, The Life, in which a prostitute says: Uh, oh, here's comes the Jesus people.  It's only Tuesday.  What do they have to be praying about on a Tuesday?"]

I find the movement to return national treasures to their respective homes interesting.  There has been much written about the movement and much litigation as well.  Where do we draw the line about who owns what NOW.  We all know that more of the Parthenon is in London rather than Athens.  The Spanish government regularly sues over centuries-old shipwrecks from its former empire.  Many former art objects from the U.S. are being returned to Europe, but I like the museum director who noted, when speaking of Italy's insistence on their return, that he would gladly comply if the Italians returned the four bronze horse statues on San Marco in Venice to Turkey, whence they came in 1215.

So, does the current government of Egypt own all Egyptian artifacts even those artifacts that were removed by the Roman Empire?  Or just those removed by Napoleon?  Does Harvard have to return the Gutenberg Bible to Germany, although Germany didn't exist when the Bible was printed?  Does the Library of Congress need to return its Shakespeare folios to Great Britain?  It's an interesting quandary.

Gay People Can Be Greedy Sucks Too

As always, I've been for equal rights.  After all, gay people are just people.  And since can be greedy and insidious characters so can gay people. Case in Point. There must be a million reasons for continuing this case none of which have to do with good character.

SCOTUS Is Totally Pro-Choice

I think the Heller opinion is a good one.  If there are two main areas of the culture wars between conservatives and liberals it would be abortion and gun ownership.  Now each group has won one and lost one, so everyone is both happy and sad.  That makes me happy.  We live in a diverse country with divergent opinions, so if everyone is a bit unsatisfied, that's probably means we're doing just fine.

The decisions are both pro-choice.  Heller means I can own a gun if I choose.  It doesn't force me to own a gun.  Likewise,  the court continues to uphold Roe v. Wade, allowing women a choice on the issue of abortion.  Luckily as a man, I won't ever have to make that agonizing choice.  And likewise, no one is forced to have an abortion, it is merely an option.

The court has upheld the fact that people have the right to choose how to live their lives.  That's a good thing.

Kennedy v. Louisiana

McCain issued a statement on Kennedy v. Louisiana:

“As a father, I believe there is no more sacred responsibility in American society than that of protecting the innocence of our children. I have spent over twenty-five years in Congress fighting for stronger criminal sentences for those who exploit and harm our children. Today’s Supreme Court ruling is an assault on law enforcement’s efforts to punish these heinous felons for the most despicable crime. That there is a judge anywhere in America who does not believe that the rape of a child represents the most heinous of crimes, which is deserving of the most serious of punishments, is profoundly disturbing.

Why do politicians always treat the choice on the death penalty as if it's execution or a Club Med vacation?  This type of crime deserves life in prison.  These people lose the privilege of living in free society.  However, we don't need to kill them.

Dobson Comes Out as Pro-Gay

At least that's the logical conclusion I come to.  According to this AP story:

Dobson took aim at examples Obama cited in asking which Biblical passages should guide public policy — chapters like Leviticus, which Obama said suggests slavery is OK and eating shellfish is an abomination, or Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, "a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application."

"Folks haven't been reading their Bibles," Obama said.

Dobson and Minnery accused Obama of wrongly equating Old Testament texts and dietary codes that no longer apply to Jesus' teachings in the New Testament.

So, Old Testament texts do not apply to Jesus' teachings in the New Testament. So Leviticus 18:22 can be thrown out and since Jesus NEVER taught anything about being gay, it must be OK. Thanks James!

Sexism v. Racism on the Forbes 100 Celebrity List

Forbes has its latest list of the Celebrity 100 out.  I was noticing something as I read down the list.  In light of Barack Obama's nomination, 4 out of the top 10 celebrities on this list were black (Oprah Winfrey, Tiger Woods, Beyonce Knowles, and Jay-Z).  That's 40% in a country where African-Americans make up only 12-13% of the population.

Going on down the list: 8 out the top 20 (again 40%) adding Will Smith, Lebron James, Michael Jordan, and Kobe Bryant.  10 out of the top 30 (lowering the total to 33%) and 14 out of the top 50 (#50 being the Spice Girls which is 20% black).   That still 28%.  The bottom fifty only has 5 additions so all told 19 of the top 100 or 19% is African-American.

Only 4 of the top 10 are women on the list, for 40% in a world where women are 50% of the population. (There's two named above and Angelina Jolie, and J.K. Rowling).  Only 7 out of the top 25 (28%); 12 out of the top 50 (24%); 26 out of the top 75; and 40 out of the whole list for a paltry 40%.  So, let's review!

Women are half the population but only 40% in the top celebrities and African-Americans are 12% of the population, but 19% of the top celebrities.  

Maybe that's why Obama won?

A New Way To Give Head

I'm crossing Gambia off my list of vacation spots.

California Marriages

In honor of California's court decision last week, here's my essay on getting married there four years ago (written at the time. we are now approaching 19 years together and alas, my grandfather died last year at age 94 1/2).

I despise lines. I hate them at the supermarket, tollbooths, the DMV, and movies. Despite that I spent over seven hours in a line in February in order to get a marriage license and shortly thereafter get married. I have never stood on a line for that long for anything. I never camped out for rock concert tickets, sports playoff tickets, or Broadway show tickets. I didn’t wait that long to see the Pope do the 14 Stations of the Cross in 1983 in Rome. Yet, I stood in that line full of hope and exuberance in order to get married to someone I’ve lived with for over fourteen years. Why?

It wasn’t for public affirmation. If we needed that, our relationship wouldn’t have lasted this long. It wasn’t for religious reasons. It wasn’t even for romance, which would have involved plane tickets to Hawaii. I was there to assert and insist upon my civil rights. Michael and I were already domestically partnered in three different jurisdictions. We have wills, medical proxies, powers of attorney and all the legal things necessary to bind us together. However, we still fall about one thousand or so rights short of being married.

Most opponents of same-sex marriage claim that traditional marriage is being undermined and assaulted. What they fail to realize is that the revolution in marriage happened almost 100 years ago. When marriage became about love and choosing a mate for life—that was the historical change. Up to then, marriage was about economic necessity, survival, wealth, and dynastic continuity. I’m sure women today are very glad not to be their husbands’ property. So, it is a natural evolution in choosing this life partner, that the choice should not be made by parents, matchmakers, society, or the government. Neither should race nor gender play a part in hindering that choice.

Marriages, whether or not they involve children, are rewarded financially by the government in many ways. Excluding any one group from those benefits is discrimination pure and simple. We surely don’t exclude post-menopausal women from getting married, just because they cannot have children. There’s just some people for whom two people of the same sex in a loving and sexual relationship is revolting. All the other arguments come back to the fact that gay people are not seen as people with passions that come from our hearts but rather our genitals.

It comes down to our national misconception of love and sex. Those of us on that line were there out of love. If we wanted just sex, there are lines on which one can wait any weekend of the year. We wanted to make a commitment to another human being that through good times or bad, we would be there loving them and caring for them. The picture of thousands of loving same-sex couples is the ultimate anathema to the right-wingers, but we refuse to be defined solely as a sex partners. Sex is an expression of love, but the love still comes first and foremost.

My 91-year old grandfather recently broke his hip. His lady companion of more than twenty years and he are not married, because of the financial disadvantages that would entail. An irony to be sure that in some instances the government provides disincentives to even heterosexual marriages. At the hospital she suddenly had no standing whatsoever, and my mother and aunt had to do all the paperwork. It was an eye-opening event for my family in their understanding of why people need to be married in our society.

There is a show business story about the legendary producer David Merrick who was putting on the musical, I Do! I Do! starring Mary Martin and Robert Preston. Martin was making star demand after demand to Merrick’s frustration. Finally he turned to Preston and said, “And what do you want?” To which Preston calmly replied, “I want whatever Mary gets.” That is all we want—our fair share under the law. That’s why I was in that line.

He Had Me Up To The Very End

The latest issue of The Advocate has a profile on Azariah Southworth, the host of a popular Christian TV show, who recently came out.  In the self-written article, Southworth does a good job talking about God's unconditional love and he wins me over until the last paragraph. 

"The message of hate is a relic of the past, and it should no longer be revived.  I am calling on all Christians to pick up their crosses, remember Jesus' sacrifice, and love just as he had done.  For that is all he did.  This is not a call to love only LGBT people, but it is a call to love all--the homeless man on the side of the road, the prostitute with nowhere to go, the mother who drinks her days away, and the father who hits his pain away."

OK, so I just got lumped in (again) with alcoholics, prostitutes, and child abusers.  Why can't gay people be loved because (oh, I don't know), THEY'RE PEOPLE!!