Friday Gay Blogging

In the News:

Oh, Lord! We're about to start with ENDA again:

Apparently bored with only dealing with the Clintonites who are pissed that he endorsed Obama, Sen. Ted Kennedy has found a new way to divide progressives' opinions of his political stances. How? Well, the longtime gay rights champion has announced plans to push the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in the Senate. But that's not the divisive part. The alienating element is that Tedward, like fellow liberal Mass. lawmaker Barney Frank, is supporting the version of ENDA that leaves the transgender community behind.

Mmm -- someone's agenda is hanging out, and it's not Kennedy's. I've been through this, you know what I think, so I'm not going to get into it again. But I thought you should know.

And an Alan Rogers update:

A Wikipedia article about Maj. Alan Rogers, a gay soldier who was killed in January in Iraq, was apparently edited by someone in the Pentagon, who removed any mention that Rogers was gay.

The user on Monday redacted details about Rogers that appeared on the online encyclopedia site. Information that was deleted included Rogers’ sexual orientation; the soldier’s participation in American Veterans for Equal Rights, a group that works to change military policy toward gays; and the fact that Rogers’ death helped bring the U.S. military’s casualty toll in Iraq to 4,000.

Rob Pilaud, a patent agent and a friend of Rogers who attended the soldier’s funeral, restored the information to the Wikipedia article the next day. Pilaud was among Rogers’ friends who created the Wikipedia page.

The anonymous poster also provided the following comment in the “discussion” section about the article:

“Alan’s life was not about his sexual orientation but rather about the body of work he performed ministering to others and helping the defense of the country,” the poster wrote. “Quit trying to press an agenda that Alan wouldn’t have wanted made public just to suit your own ends.”

The IP address attached to the deletion of the details and the posted comments is 141.116.168.135. The address belongs to a computer from the office of the Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence (G-2) at the Pentagon. The office is headed by Lt. Gen. John Kimmons, who was present at Rogers’ funeral and presented the flag from Rogers’ coffin to his cousin, Cathy Long.

The Army’s public affairs office did not return a call seeking comment.

As far as the "agenda" comment goes, Rogers was out to everyone but the Army. If anyone has an agenda here, it's the people who are endorcing DADT.

A couple of marriage notes, both from Bilerico Project.

Don Sherfick has this comment on a post by Jeremy Bishop on DOMA (linked in Sherfick's post, so go read it already), and makes a point that I've made repeatedly about the clause in DOMA that relieves states from the obligation to recognize marriages performed in other states under "full faith and credit," which is the main scary thing that the Christianists use in support of a constitutional amendment.

Here's why: Despite the fact that alarmed right-wingers pushed DOMA was because of fears that under the Full Faith and Credit Clause (FFC) of the U.S. Constitution, same-sex marriages valid in one state would have to be considered valid in all, most legal scholars disagreed with this interpretation of that clause. Fairly well-established precedent prior to DOMA had established that the FFC applied to "judgments" rendered in one state that others had to accept, and not to marital status itself. If a particular state found an out-of-state union to be "against strong public policy", it did not have to recognize it. (One might be tempted to object that since the Loving vs. Virginia decision no states can ban interracial marriages, but this decision was based upon the Equal Protection Clause, not the FFC).

Full faith and credit was never a valid argument for a federal amendment to begin with, just hot air of the sort that generally can be expected from the anti-gay right. Sherfick's post is quite well-informed and intelligent, and I recomment you read the whole thing.

The other post is from Waymon Hudson, about the sad lack of reality inherent in domestic partnerships and civil unions.

Then came the question: "Marital status?"

Then came the smack.

I replied without even batting an eye, "Domestic Partner."

The woman on the phone paused and said to me, "Single, married, or divorced?"

I again calmly answered, "I am registered domestic partners in both my county and my place of employment."

The woman again paused, sighed, and repeated in an annoyed tone: "Single, married, or divorced?"

Did she not hear me? I was explaining my legal status to her question and she was simply not acknowledging it.

I again explained that I was registered in my county and with my place of employment, which is what this company benefit was connected to. It was perfectly clear, wasn't it?

That's when the smack came again.

She said very curtly, "Look, we don't have a box for that. You can only be single, married, or divorced. Which is it?"

My response, of course, would be rather different than Hudson's, who sat in a fog of disbelief as the woman checked him off as single. But then, I'm sort of an in-your-face person.

Separate but equal went out the window in the 1950s as a rationale for . . . well, separate institutions. Jennifer Vanasco has more comments on that syndrome.

New Jersey is instructive because of the sheer number of problems the law has had in its year of existence. The State Supreme Court instructed that gays and lesbians must be treated equally, leaving it up to the legislature to determine how.

The legislature, in turn, granted gays and lesbians civil unions instead of marriage.

New Jersey has 2,329 couples in civil unions and 56 who have affirmed unions from other states; the New York Times reports that 568 couples have complained to Garden State Equality that they have not, in fact, been treated equally.

Those complaints have ranged from human resources computer systems having no category for "civil unions" to military members who are afraid to be "unioned" lest they be outing themselves under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," to companies directly violating the law because they didn't understand that unions granted the same state rights as marriage.

Bottom line: marriage or bust.

The Homily:

An article by naturalist John Burroughs from 1908 (when you still could be simply a "naturalist"), quoted by Patrick at Daily Dish, that I find fundamental to the condition of "gay" in this country. Key point:

It jars upon our sensibilities and disturbs our preconceived notions to be told that the spiritual has its root in the carnal and is as truly its product as the flower is the product of the roots and the stalk of the plant. The conception does not cheapen or degrade the spiritual, it elevates the carnal, the material. To regard the soul and body as one, or to ascribe to consciousness a physiological origin, is not detracting from its divinity, it is rather conferring divinity upon the body.

When you consider that the Christianist right is prone to look at our emphasis on the physical -- and as much as it may get up the noses of the "we're just like everybody else" crowd, gay men, in particular, are much more prone to multiple partners, especially in their younger years, than just about anyone else -- at any rate, the right wingnuts look at us and call us promiscuous, sinful, hedonistic.

Yeah, so?

Christianity has rejected the physical as a valid condition of being. Mortify the flesh, that the spirit may thrive. I'm afraid my only reaction to that is that if you mortify the flesh, you're spirit's going to pay for it. -- the two come together as part of the deal. (And, if you have no use for your own body, how can you be a careful steward of Creation? We've seen the results of the Christian approach to nature. They've begun backpedaling like crazy, now that their attitudes are about to wipe us all out. Apparently physical existence has some value after all.)

I'm reminded of Plato's metaphor of the Charioteer, trying to bring the scruffy, black, willful horse into line with the noble, white, tractable horse. It's an apt metaphor, but I think Plato took a wrong turn: if the black horse is to represent the physical side of man's nature, it is not something to be tamed, to be brought to heel, but something to be understood and respected. Eros was a god who could bring great rewards, a creative force without equal -- and also one who could become a dark and terrible force of destruction if not given his due. The Greeks, before the advent of rationalist philosophy, had a good take on the dual nature of deity. You can plug just about any god's name into where I've put "Eros" and not have to change anything else.

Any man who has ever shared a dance floor with a thousand other men can tell you what I'm getting at: it is an experience that comes from the body but takes you out of the body, until you are some place beyond community, beyond tribe, a place that can't be described, only experienced. It's no wonder that the ecstatic cults of the ancient world, the transformation rituals of the Siberian shamans, the spirit quests of North America, even some Christian sects of the Middle Ages, relied on some means of pushing the body to excessive lengths to achieve that breakthrough to the realm of the spirits.

I think to denigrate the body is to denigrate the gods, especially if one suscribes to the belief that God created Man -- after all, the body was created first, so that there would be a container, an anchor, for the soul.