After years, we finally succumbed and put ads up (the upper right hand side of the page). Here’s the thing. They should be contextual – but either way, politically. We had a “Nation for Marriage” ad that was up against New Hampshire Governor Lynch, chiding him for – among other things – signing the gay marriage bill in his state. Ads cost money. And if it’s one thing I’d love to do, it’s draining money from bigots and haters.

So if you see an ad – particularly one for a Republican, against a Democrat or Progressive, or especially against gay marriage or other progressive causes – CLICK IT. It costs them money. Every click times thousands of ads will drain their coffers.

Reposted from sister blog BuryingTheLead.com

I cannot believe just how horrific some stories of abuse can turn out to be, especially for the elderly.  All too often, cases of our elders being taken for granted and scammed are in the news, and the actual act of elder abuse is rampant.  Try doubling elder abuse with that of gay elders, and you get the following story.

A gay elderly couple that had been together for quite a while named Clay and Howard lived in Sonoma County, California.  Now you think of Sonoma, and think – this place is just North of San Francisco, and it is known as the wine country.  It has to be progressive.  Well not for Clay and Howard.  You see, Howard (age 88) fell down outside his and Clay’s (age 77) home.  Unable to care for him, Howard was put in a nursing home.  But things took a dramatic turn for the worse.  Clay was forbidden by the County to see Howard.  Clay himself was put in his own nursing home.  The County and the facility declared that Clay and Howard were just “roommates”, and thus Clay had no legal right to either see Howard, nor make any decisions about his care.

This is an excerpt from the article that is most horrific – though I plead with everyone to read the entire thing over at NCLRights.org:

What happened next is even more chilling: without authority, without determining the value of Clay and Harold’s possessions accumulated over the course of their 20 years together or making any effort to determine which items belonged to whom, the county took everything Harold and Clay owned and auctioned off all of their belongings. Adding further insult to grave injury, the county removed Clay from his home and confined him to a nursing home against his will. The county workers then terminated Clay and Harold’s lease and surrendered the home they had shared for many years to the landlord.

This is beyond chilling and horrific.  This is some of the most disgusting treatment of gay elders that I have ever read about.  And I ask you this one question:  Would this have happened to a man and a woman who were married?  No, not at all.  So why would we allow this to occur to a gay couple?

Marriage is about love, and gay and lesbian couples have and express love just like their straight counterparts.  But it is also about protection and civil rights provided by law.  This is why marriage is so very important – gay and straight.

You know, when you read the Declaration of Independence put forth by the Founding Fathers, you have to notice one fact.  There are no footnotes or asterisks that direct the reader to some subsection saying that “well, we didn’t mean it applies to this group or that”.  The most famous line is, of course, this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Yes boys and girls, that is exactly how it’s written.  It’s not:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal (see note 1), that they are endowed by their Creator (see note 2) with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Note 1: This may not apply to those Catholics; we just don’t get their religion.  Oh, and not the homos.  No offense, but ewww…  And not those Italians that come over here.  You know, looking all swarthy and all.  And don’t get us started on those crazy Indians!  We’ve got some smallpox blankets to take care of them!

Note 2: When we say “Creator”, we mean the good, PROTESTANT God.  We don’t mean a Catholic God, or some heathen race God like Ganesha or Mohammed or Zeus or Odin.  Nope, the only Creator we mean is our good, Protestant God.

So what does this mean?  It means that A) we are ALL meant to be able to pursue Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness and B) every person has the right to their own beliefs about their Creator.  It means that black people have the right to marry white people.  It means that people should be allowed to be hermits in a cave, or be the life of a party in downtown Manhattan.  It means that people are allowed to pursue Mormonism.  It means that people are allowed to howl at the moon, if that is their want for worship.  And it means that men should have the right to marry other men, and women should have the right to marry other women.  You see, it all comes down to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  I have been with my partner for over seventeen years.  But someone took away our rights of the pursuit of Happiness in a popularity contest back in 2004.

We should be granting rights, not taking them away.  Because honestly, no one person is better than another.  No one person’s rights should be granted when another person’s rights are taken away.  We are all equal.  We should all BE equal.  That is the way that our Founding Fathers wanted.

Okay, so I wasn’t born until late 1967, and I don’t remember this myself.  But the feelings are the same.  Watch NOM’s latest commercial (you can find it here) talking about “activist judges” and “forcing gay marriage on Iowa”.  Then take a step back and think about 1967 and interracial marriage.

You know, back in the 1960s, not every state allowed interracial marriage.  That’s why the case of Loving v. Virginia is so important.  The Supreme Court ruled that the ban was Unconstitutional.  And no, it wasn’t a popular subject; if you were to “put it to a vote”, it probably would not have passed.

Just because a popular vote comes from the people does NOT mean that it is fair or just.  But NOM doesn’t understand that.  They only understand uglyness, ignorance, and intolerance.

Read some of the arguments against interracial marriage.  Replace the race words with gay or lesbian.  They hold the same meaning; using religion to create intolerance, hate, and to oppress a minority.

This weekend, as I was working in my yard and came upon an idea.  And low and behold, it came into being.  What was it?

You see, I was thinking that those that support the civil rights of GLBT Americans need to get those haters that fight against gay marriage to come out against marriages performed by the Justice of the Peace, or by City Hall.  Yes, the “civil” part of “civil marriage”.  Pretty damn good idea, if I say so myself.

Well cut to tonight, as I’m about to do some blogging on the subject, when I come across this great link on AmericaBlog’s new gay blog.  Seems that indeed, there is a group of men that truly believe IF a man and a woman go to City Hall and get married, they are basically doing nothing more than “shacking up”, and their marriage is not a true one.  While the man in the video says that’s not what the issue is he and his organization (which is male only, because they don’t bring the women along since the language used by people might be “dirty”) were dealing with right then, it IS an issue that they support.

So there, mister and misses heterosexual married couple that got married in front of a Justice of the Peace or by a clerk at City Hall.  YOUR marriage is not good enough.  And when this group continues to help ban gay marriage, they’ll come after yours!

People are up in arms over the big DOMA flap, and rightly so.  Yes, there are the apologists, but it really appears that we have numbers on our side; the side that says the President and his DOJ is wrong for citing incest and child marriage in trying to fight against gay marriage.

Many people are trying to figure out what to do.  Yes, we have to vote with our pocketbooks; no more money for the DNC until a true apology comes.  Yes, the President made many of us feel somewhat better when he granted some limited rights to some LGBT government employees.  Even I was willing to give him a little bit of a break – until I re-read the brief and get angry again.  Still – what to do?

Dan Savage has come up with the BEST plan ever, and it won’t involve a million people on the Washington Mall this coming October.  No, actually it involves just 730 people per year.  You see, Savage’s idea is that every day, a GLBT couple goes to the White House and asks to talk to the President about DOMA.  Every day they are told they cannot meet with the President.  And every day they refuse to leave and are arrested and forcibly removed from the premises.  It would not take all that long to get someone’s attention with that kind of tactic!  The White House Press Corps would see couples arrested day in and day out – different couples every day, some everyday folks, some celebrities – and start hounding Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on DOMA.  And start hounding the President on DOMA.

That’s how you get things done.

That’s basically the question that I read into a post over at AmericaBlog.com.  Specifically, John Aravosis wrote:

Joe and I got an email the other day from a well-connected gay friend, and he said he was hearing rumors that the Obama administration, in an effort to woo back the gays, was thinking of possibly announcing the following this month:

1. Something on Hate Crimes.
2. Federal benefits for partners of gay federal employees.
3. A gay ambassador.

First of all, I would really like to tell the DOJ to drink a nice big cup of STFU.  I mean, trying to buy our silence and let the calls of incest, child rape, and child marriage stand? Not only is the White House insulting, it seems to be actively working at making sure the reprehensable DOJ brief stands, without any apology or explanation.

For some reason, this reminds me of the very first episode of The West Wing when religious leaders storm the White House and, besides demanding the firing of a staffer, come out with “What do we get? School prayer, pornography, condoms. What’s it going to be?”.  Except in this case, it’s the Obama Administration offering to hand us a trinket, and the GLBT community tell him to get his fat ass out of our White House.

Here’s the original clip; it’s powerful.

The West Wing – Religious Smackdown

Which of course would be klassy!  And what brings this on?  Well you all know how the Iowa Supreme Court found that “separate but equal” is unjust, and ruled that gays and lesbians deserve the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts?  Well, the religious fundamentalists have found a way to celebrate.

How, you may ask?  By threatening to kill gay Democratic State Senator Matt McCoy.  Okay, so it doesn’t say that it is a religious fundamentalist that is responsible, especially since it is an ongoing investigation.  But do you think it would be someone who was PRO-gay marriage that would threaten him?

Keep it klassy, wingnuts…

As promised, Vermont’s Republican  Governor Jim Douglas vetoed civil marriage equality for all Vermont residents.  But this morning, the Vermont House and Senate have both voted to override the veto.  This means Vermont is the fourth state to guarantee equal protection to gays and lesbians.  No longer are gays and lesbians second-class citizens in Vermont.  Vermont becomes the fourth state, behind Massachusettes, Connecticut, and Iowa to legalize marriage.

As I posted previously, those biggoted “Christians” will say whatever they can to stop equality from going forth.  Religion has been used to justify killing, jihads, the repression of women, and the like over the years, and it will be turned to in the future, to justify discrimination and repression.  It’s sad.  Religion is such a beautiful thing, but people like Don Wildmon and his ilk lie (which, of course, is against a commandment he is supposed to be teaching!) to the public, scaring them into subservience.  As I heard one of his ilk say, “I don’t like what Obama’s doing”.  When I asked what specific they objected to, they said, “I don’t know.  I just know I don’t like it.”

So it’s wonderful to see truth and justice win out twice in one week.  But it makes me think of the injustice done throughout other states, like my beloved Oregon, like one BlueOregon.com contributor posted recently on their site.  It made me go and find the actual text of the current Oregon Constitution.  In it, the very first statement is:

Section 1. Natural rights inherent in people. We declare that all men, when they form a social compact are equal in right: that all power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their peace, safety, and happiness; and they have at all times a right to alter, reform, or abolish the government in such manner as they may think proper.

That first statement is powerful.  “We declare that all men, when they form a social compact are equal in right…” That, to me, says that every single Oregonian has the same rights as every other Oregonian.  But the people of Oregon actually undid that, specifically for gays and lesbians when this was added to the Constitution:

Section 5a. Policy regarding marriage. It is the policy of Oregon, and its political subdivisions, that only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or legally recognized as a marriage. [Created through initiative petition filed March 2, 2004, and adopted by the people Nov. 2, 2004]

It is truly sad.  A document that is there to insure the rights and responsibilities of all people, and the singling out of a specific group for discrimination.  How right would it be if that article read this way instead?

Section 5a. Policy regarding marriage. It is the policy of Oregon, and its political subdivisions, that only a marriage between one WHITE man and one WHITE woman shall be valid or legally recognized as a marriage. [Created through initiative petition filed March 2, 2004, and adopted by the people Nov. 2, 2004]

People would be up in arms, would they not?  Because that is discrimination against people of color, saying that only “white folks” can get married.  How very true.  So the very basis of Section 5a of the Oregon Constitution is shameful, and should be removed.  And according to Nate Silver over at FiveThirtyEight.com, that could easily happen today, in Oregon, in 2009.