There -- all better now?I wanted to concentrate on some good news today, because, let's face it, the news is generally about the downside of the religious right and its minions.
Of course, yesterday marked the Day of Silence, and aside from the commentaries published yesterday about that and the various counter-demonstrations fomented by the anti-gay forces, here's more, under the category "Ken Hutcherson and Other Crazy People," first Towleroad, and also from Box Turtle Bulletin.
Now, onward and upward:
From Gaypolitics.com, an interesting note on one man's reaction to Sally Kern:
Bob Lemon — lawyer, former political candidate and the father of a gay son — recently placed an ad in the Daily Oklahoman condemning the comments made by state Rep. Sally Kern.
I am disappointed when I learn of anti-gay speech by public officials. There is no doubt that such speech leads to hate crimes and creates an environment of fear in the LGBT community. These officials do not set good examples.
…
When my wife Mary Lou and I learned in 1993 that we were parents of a gay child, we decided to get acquainted with as many gays as possible, attend their events and join gay organizations, trying to learn all we could about homosexuality and what anti-gay people mant when they talked about the “gay agenda.” We never got the same answer twice from anti-gays, nor could they ever give us any logical reason for their animosity against gays.
…
I am also disappointed that anti-gays use the Christian faith to support their arguments. What did Jesus say against gays? Nothing. The Christian faith, as I understand it, teaches that we should love, honor and respect one another. It also teaches kindness and tolerance, and teaches against prejudice, hatred bigotry and violence.
Mr. Lemon should run against Kern.
John Corvino, the latest victim of the pope's insistence on mindless obedience (and a real cutie -- he can speak at my school anytime. I'll even go back to school.) has a thought-provoking piece at the Independent Gay Forum. At least, it should provoke some thought in the people who cancelled his appearance at Aquinas College; for the rest of us, it's a no-brainer:
In short, I welcomed the inclusion of a Catholic response because it was entirely consistent with my aims as an educator. It would manifest Aquinas’s identity not just as a CATHOLIC College, but as a Catholic COLLEGE—a place where serious discussion of controversial issues could take place. It was a win-win-win proposal: good for me, good for the administration, and (most important) good for the Aquinas students, who presumably attend college in part to learn about diverse perspectives and how to evaluate them. Shutting down the event robbed us all of a valuable teaching moment.
After the cancellation, President Balog was quoted in the Grand Rapids Press as stating, "We want to explore the issue from an academic perspective, not from the perspective of an antagonistic attack to core Catholic values.”
This is a gross mischaracterization of my approach, as anyone with even a passing knowledge of my scholarly research or my public advocacy would recognize. It pains me to see such distortion coming from a Catholic college president.
It pains me as an academic, but it also pains me as a former Catholic. I sometimes joke that I’m not a fallen Catholic, because I didn’t fall—I leapt. But the truth is that I still have deep affection and respect for the Catholic faith. Affection, because of relationships with countless priests, nuns, and lay theologians who nurtured me in lasting ways. Respect, because of the Church’s intellectual and moral tradition, which takes “big questions” seriously and strives to integrate faith and reason.
And that's the core issue: the idea that a college is a place of indoctrination, that no deviation from dogma is allowed, and that free examination of issues is discouraged. We seem to find that happening at so-called "Christian" schools, and whatever else I may think about Christianity (and my feelings are mixed: I probably sound fairly negative because most of what I'm responding to is the negative characteristics of a subset -- and I suspect is a small subset -- of "Christians."), it does have a tradition of independent thinking.
(One thing Corvino does not do is differentiate between the Church and the hierarchy, which to my mind are two very different things: the Church is an institution worthy of respect, while the hierarchy -- well, not so much.)
We have different expectations now than we did a generation ago. This note from Timothy Kincaid echoes a story I've seen a couple of places:
But a new study from the Rockway Institute Anthony R. D’Augelli, H. Jonathon Rendina and Katerina O. Sinclair of Pennsylvania State University and Arnold Grossman of New York University suggest that not only do gay youth want to be part of a couple, they expect to be.
In what is believed to be the first study of its kind, social scientists have found that many lesbian and gay youth have expectations of spending their adult life in a long-term relationship raising children. More than 90 percent of females and more than 80 percent of males expect to be partnered in a monogamous relationship after age 30. Two thirds of females and more than half of males expressed likelihood that they would raise children in the future.
As gay youth become more aware that they have the opportunity and the right to live their lives openly and with someone they love, the more they grow up expecting to do just that.
Bless 'em. Even I, at an age that can no longer be designated as "youth," think seriously about getting married. I just need to find a suitable husband.
Seriously, folks: think about this for a minute. In spite of all the lies spread by the Dobson Gang, it turns out that gay kids want to grow up and get married and raise families, just like their straight counterparts. For a commentary on that, here's Jim Burroway on the real threat of same-sex marriage.
I guess that's a new item on the Gay Agenda, between shopping and taking over the world.
Speaking of marriage (and you knew I was going to), it seems that Norwegians are way ahead of us. Via Box Turtle Bulletin:
According to Aftenposten, the citizens of Norway support the government’s plan to bring about marriage equality.
Left-wing voters of the Socialist Left (SV) and Red parties were particularly supportive, with over 90 percent saying they favored the new Act, which gives equal rights to gay and heterosexual married couples.
The Act gets solid majority backing from Labour and Liberal Party voters as well, just over 50 percent support from Conservative Party voters, and 50 percent of populist Progress Party voters say no.
Christian Democrat Party voters stand out with about 90 percent opposition to the new law proposal.
Welcome to the Third World, America.
About that T-shirt: Some local news that's gotten a fair amount of play on the Web. From the Chicago Sun-Times, a bit of added detail:
Neuqua sophomore Alex Nuxoll had twice filed for an injunction that would suspend the school's policy preventing him from wearing the T-shirt.
And twice courts had denied that request.
But on Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the lower courts' rulings against Nuxoll, saying the district court must order Neuqua to suspend its ban on the shirt while the civil rights lawsuit filed by Nuxoll and Neuqua grad Heidi Zamecnik proceeds.
In issuing this reversal, though, the court basically upheld the validity of the Naperville school's rule forbidding derogatory comments, oral or written, that refer to race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation or disability.
"High school students are not adults, schools are not public meeting halls, children are in school to be taught by adults rather than to practice attacking each other with wounding words, and school authorities have a protective relationship and responsibility to all the students," says the court's opinion, written by Judge Richard Posner.
Most of what I've seen online has just noted the decision, with appropriate expressions of outrage, and that the opinion was written by Posner, who is regarded as a "conservative" jurist. I remember Posner as a well-grounded, realistic judge who is rather more level-headed than the more recent "conservatives" with which the courts have been packed. Thanks to Towleroad, a little light has been thrown on this particular "outrage." (Sorry, boys and girls, but Posner's reasoning makes perfect sense to me. The T-shirt is not inciteful, the case is in progress, and Posner's opinion does consider the ban in general to be legitimate. Civics 101: this is what courts do -- they consider specific cases against the airy generalities of the law.)
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