Dolphin’s Dock

The American Family Association is calling for the impeachment of federal judge Vaughn Walker, after he found California’s anti-gay marriage amendment, Prop 8, to be unconstitutional. Their reason is because Judge Walker is gay and therefore should have recused himself from the case. We’ll leave alone the foolish notion that gay judges shouldn’t be allowed to hear cases involving any sort of gay rights issues ever (other than to note that the AFA has also implied that being gay should automatically disqualify someone from being a judge in the first place), for much the same reason that we would ignore the suggestion that no black judge should ever hear a case that in anyway involved civil rights.

The more interesting aspect is that, in their (unsuccessful) rush to discredit the results of the hearing, they are contradicting everything they’ve said up until the case was decided. The point of view they have held up to this point is that gay marriage isn’t about gay people at all, but about protecting straight marriages. After all, (they say) they don’t “hate” gay people, they just don’t want to see straight marriage fail (which would magically happen if gay marriage were legal of course). But if the case is NOT about gay rights, then where is their opposition to a gay judge coming from? If what’s at stake is straight marriage, shouldn’t it be straight married judges who they demand recusal from? In fact, Judge Walker isn’t married yet they demand his recusal on the basis of his orientation alone, so doesn’t it follow that by their own logic, not only should it be straight married judges, but indeed straight judges in general. Accepting the (false) premises that judges should never hear cases that may one day affect their lives, and that gay marriage cases are all about protecting straight marriage; I’m having trouble figuring out how the AFA thinks anybody except a gay judge could hear this particular case.

You know how opponents of same-sex marriage like to cite religious freedom as a reason to opposing equality. The argument follows the (il)logic that marriage is the domain of “the church” (it’s not) and therefore the government shouldn’t be legalizing something “the church” disapproves of. Yet the Texas GOP is advocating in their party platform making it a felony to perform a same-sex wedding ceremony.

So to recap: Opening up to all citizens, a civil institution that is also frequently celebrated and recognized by religious bodies, but only at their own discretion is an unacceptable intrusion on religious freedom, but severely criminalizing the performance of a non-harmful and often exclusively religious ceremony is worthy of writing into the party platform? Huh?

The election of Governor Bob McDonnell and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli have made Virginia a pretty hostile place to be gay. Which is a feat for a state that was not exactly pro-gay to begin with. Gov. McDonnell kicked it off by removing discrimination protection in employment for state agencies, and AG Cuccinelli has taken things a step further by informing state colleges and universities that they are violating state law if the enact such policies on their own. The ACLU of VA is already challenging him on it (on grounds that I find terribly interesting because if they are right, they’d be invalidating both Cuccinelli and McDonnell’s actions and possibly effectively establishing a federal anti-discrimination policy for sexual orientation in the public sector), but I find Cuccinelli’s move to be extraordinarily disturbing.

Unlike McDonnell who simply regressed to no particular policy at all regarding sexual orientation, Cuccinelli is contending that NOT discriminating is a violation of state law. I’m intentionally ignoring here the distinction between written policy and observed but not written policy, but I’m doing to to make the point of why Cuccinelli’s action is so much more disturbing than McDonnell’s. I’m not suggesting that Cuccinelli’s letter could be enforced in this manner (if it’s enforceable at all which is questionable), but bear with me while I follow it to it’s theoretical end. One cannot legally prohibit NOT discriminating without simultaneously legally mandating discrimination. They are two sides of the same coin. If I can’t choose NOT to discriminate, then the only choice I have left is TO discriminate. If we ignore the distinction between written and simply followed policy, we’re left with a letter from the Attorney General that effectively makes it illegal for a state school to hire a gay person.

As I mentioned, obviously a school might choose not to discriminate despite the absence of a written policy, but I think prohibiting them from writing down the policies is a pretty clear shot at eliminating the policies altogether. The whole notion of setting up the law to explicitly prohibit the employment of certain groups of people strikes me as not simply “conservative” but a not so small step in the direction of social experimentation on the scale of eugenics.

Sorry to get your hopes up. This isn’t the post I’d most like to be writing under that title, but I found it amusing all the same. Yesterday, TheBoyfriend™ and I went to submit our official loan application (for our already pre-approved loan). One of the forms we had to sign (I’m seriously considering getting a signature stamp made…) was a form that really was meaningless except in the instance of a random IRS audit, at which point it would serve as proof that we had gotten credit jointly.

The funny part was the label on the line I signed on. It was labeled “Spouse.” So there you have it, I’ve signed my name as TheBoyfriend™’s spouse, and I kinda liked it.

Last Independence Day (and other than the date I don’t know what brings this story to mind), a friend of ours brought her two kids (I don’t know their exact ages but I think the younger one is like 9ish and the older about 11 or 12) over our place to watch the fireworks because you can see the fireworks from the city stadium from our backyard. During the course of the evening, Harry Potter came up (probably a commercial for one of the movies came on our something, but I don’t really recall), and I casually asked if she’d heard the (at that time) news that J.K. Rowlings had announced that the character Dumbledore was gay. She mouthed “They [her children] don’t know what gay is” to me before loudly stating for her children’s benefit, “Yep, Dumbledore is happy as a lark.” To her credit, she wasn’t upset with me for using the “g word” in front of her kids or anything like that, she just didn’t want to explain to them what it meant.

I would never give unsolicited parenting advice or otherwise interfere with a parent raising their child the way they see fit (outside of an abusive situation), but I’d sure love to have sat down and had a talk with her about it. Even if gay marriage, adoption, DADT, etc weren’t such major news items, I’d still find it incredibly naive to assume that an 11 year old doesn’t know what “gay” is. I’m not suggesting that a child knows the ins and outs of gay relationships (or frankly straight romantic relationships) or is all that aware of the political issues surrounding them, but when “that’s so gay” is a common way of responding to something undesirable, you can be sure that by age 11, they are familiar with the word.

It’s actually what they don’t know that strikes me as the reason to talk to them about it. Whether you (as a parent) choose to acknowledge it or not, your kids are going to receive messages about homosexuality; from their peers, the news, and other adults. I don’t think it’s inaccurate to suggest that alot of those messages are going to be very vague and negative. If “gay” is the worse thing a person (or thing or incident) can be called, then how is that going to effect the child’s perception of gay people when they learn what “gay” actually is, or even scarier, if they hit puberty and start realizing that the label may well apply to them!

So here’s my advice to parents out there: your children ARE being taught about homosexuality; if you’d like to have any input into what they’re learning and the attitudes they are exposed to, you’d better make sure one of the voices they are hearing from is yours. I’m not saying you need to go into the details of gay sex or anything, but what’s wrong with noting that those two guys whose house we went to to watch the fireworks love each other the same way mommy and daddy do?

With all the squawking about what kind of marriage is acceptable to God these days, it’s nice to have Betty Bowers, America’s Best Christian , to spell out for us exactly what kind of marriages God likes.

Ok fine, RNC Chair, Micheal Steele’s assertion that gay marriage will cost small business owners in the form of spousal benefits does blatantly ignore the billions that will be pumped into the economy by the addition of gay weddings. Fair enough, and I do certainly appreciate just how much of an ally to the gay community Olbermann has been lately. But if it’s even valid to argue the economics of human rights, Steele’s argument misses the mark in a big way and bothering to argue the other side only serves to validate the faulty framework Steele set up in the first place.

I haven’t comment on the whole Miss California thing becuase frankly I find the whole thing boring. Frankly, I found her answer to the question relatively uncontroversial, other than perhaps the whole describing mixed-sex marriage as “opposite marriage” but then who expects the type of girls who want to be beauty queens to be brilliant thinkers (not that there aren’t exceptions to the rule). But what I am getting tired of, is reading all the conservatives fawning over how big of a victim she is in the whole ordeal.

Maine is now the 5th state to extend marriage equality to all of its citizens (6th if you count California). That’s 10% of all states and, I’ve been saying that I think 10% is a major turning point. I think marriage equality has gathered enough momentum now that it’s gonna be hard to slow, much less stop.

A few prominent members from John McCain’s family and campaign are stepping forward to try and persuade the Republican Party that hating gays is no longer a winning strategy.