As might be expected this week, most of the gay news is about wingnuts and their reaction to In Re: Some Marriages (which is the official shorthand for the California decision). Sorry -- not going there.
Birds Do It, Bees Do It. . . .
Well, OK, maybe not the bees. Via Good As You, this article from Fox News:
On this issue, Nature has spoken: Same-sex lovin' is common in hundreds of species, scientists say.
Roy and Silo, two male chinstrap penguins at New York's Central Park Zoo, were a couple for about six years, during which they nurtured a fertilized egg together (given to them by a zookeeper) and raised the young chick that hatched.
According to University of Oslo zoologist Petter Böckman, about 1,500 animal species are known to practice same-sex coupling, including bears, gorillas, flamingos, owls, salmon and many others.
If homosexuality is natural in the animal kingdom, then there is the question of why evolution hasn't eliminated this trait from the gene pool, since it doesn't lead to reproduction.
It may simply be for pleasure.
"Not every sexual act has a reproductive function," said Janet Mann, a biologist at Georgetown University who studies dolphins (homosexual behavior is very common in these marine mammals). "That's true of humans and non-humans."
That's going to drive the Christianists wild -- sex for pleasure! Quelle horror!
Federal Court Slams DADT
They're telling the military that they have to justify dismissals under DADT on an individual basis. The story's around the internet; here's a good write-up from Towleroad. And here's some commentary from Box Turtle Bulletin.
A New Mayor
Portland, Oregon becomes the largest US city to have a gay mayor. Via Towleroad.
He won by a huge margin. And he's a real cutie, too. (Don't forget that the mayors of Paris and Berlin are gay. Slowly but surely, we're catching up.)
Here's a report from The Oregonian.
The Schools:
OK -- a couple of small bits about wingnuts, but they're choice.
First, the principal of a high school in South Carolina has resigned because he can't deal with the idea of a gay-straigth alliance.
I feel the formation of a Gay/Straight Alliance Club at Irmo High school implies that students joining the club will have chosen to or will choose to engage in sexual activity with members of the same sex, opposite sex, or members of both sexes.
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, has anyone noticed how these guys are obsessed with sex? (And on that note, see this bit from Pam Spaulding.)
And the suit against Okeechobee High School has been reopened.
Compromise:
I've noticed that a number of commentators who support same-sex marriage (all, not surprisingly, on the right) have attacked the California Supreme Court's decision because the justices didn't seek to support the compromises that they have been trying to sell us as "good enough." See this essay by Jonathan Rauch at Independent Gay Forum. Chris Crain has also come out strongly on the side of "separate but equal" (here and in summary form here). My objections tend to be the same in all cases: there is a deep reluctance on the part of conservatives to take the next step, and an apparent willingness to let things "evolve" naturally. I've noted my disagreement with this attitude previously, but let me state it once again, hopefully more clearly and succinctly: in the realm of social policy and civil rights, things are not going to evolve unless someone is pushing. Someone has to take the next step, and if that step involves setting a legal precedent (as was done in Griswold, Loving, Roe, Goodridge, and Lawrence), then we are better for it.
And, just for the record, no: civil unions and domestic partnerships are not "good enough." The timorousness displayed by gay commentators on the right is, perhaps, not surprising: the main goal of traditional conservatism is not to rock the boat. The problem with that is that it's the people who yell who get listened to.
Crain's phrasing, in passages such as this one,
But these four justices robbed the public of that debate, as well as the democratic freedom of selecting which constitutionally acceptable form of legal recognition they wanted
is, as far as I'm concerned, inflammatory. Sorry -- no one was robbed. I've made the point over and over again that the legal aspects of issues are part of the debate. The ones who are seeking to close of debate on SSM are those who are pushing the constitutional amendments: if anything is going to take the topic off the table, it's that. Crain, Dan Blatt, several others are egregious in that respect. This is the sort of demagoguery one expects from the ant-gay right, but I'm appalled to see it coming from gay commentators.
Rauch ends his comments thus:
This kind of legal totalism, it seems to me, is tailor-made to rule out any kind of accommodation, even if that accommodation gives gay couples most of what we need with the promise of more to come (soon). As one of the dissents points out (PDF), it also may make legislators reluctant to even start down the road toward civil rights.
I think SSM is a better policy than civil unions (at least one of the dissenters agrees). And I think denial of marriage to gay couples is discriminatory. But to make even a well-intentioned compromise ILLEGAL strikes me as a step too far, and a good example of how culture wars escalate.
While courts necessarily deal in gray areas, they're not really allowed to fudge the question. I mean, what was the California supposed to do? Come out with a decision that said "marriage laws are discriminatory, but someone might be upset if we say so?"
Crain concludes:
That's a recipe for more divisiveness of the sort of that has plagued the abortion debate for a quarter-century, and places in grave jeopardy the very fundamental right that the majority sought to vindicate.
That's essentially the same comment as Rauch's. Unless you look at who is fueling the divisiveness, you're not going to come to the right conclusion. (I note that Crain makes this all the fault of "liberal" judges and activists by implication, when in fact the divisiveness can be laid almost completely at the door of so-called "conservatives." It wasn't us that declared the culture wars.) If you want to talk about the "evolution" of social policy and the forces that are endangering that evolution, don't look to the left.
Another commentary from Crain, with this that caught my attention:
Three justices dissented from the ruling, all Republican appointees. Writing for two of them, Justice Marvin Baxter said the majority overstepped their authority and should have left the decision of whether gays can marry to the Legislature and governor to decide.
“Nothing in our [state] Constution, [sic] express or implicit, compels the majority’s startling conclusion that the age-old undestanding of marriage - an understanding recently confirmed [by the ballot measure voters approved in 2000] - is no longer valid.”
Sorry, but the "age-old understanding of marriage" trope is so much empty noise. I refer readers to the debate between Patrick Chapman and Glenn T. Stanton at Box Turtle Bulletin on this very subject. That particular phrase, as I've pointed out before, translates as "when I was a boy."
The third dissenter, Justice Carol Corrigan, wrote separately to state her view that the California Constitution requires only that the state offer equal rights and benefits to straight and gay couples. The high courts in Vermont and New Jersey reached conclusions similar to Corrigan’s in their gay marriage decisions, and those states now recognize gay couples with “civil unions” - as do New Hampshire, Connecticut and Washington state.
What neither Corrigan nor Crain bothers to note is that in both New Jersey and Vermont, steps are underway to dispense with civil unions in favor of marriage for same-sex couples simply because civil unions are demonstrably not equal. It seems to be a pretty safe bet that New Jersey will enact marriage for same-sex couples within a year. (And watch for the fulminations from the right on "elitist, out-of-touch legislators thwarting the will of the people!") It seems to me that the reality of this somewhat undercuts Corrigan's comment.
Here's another comment on the possible fate of a referendum by Jonathan Zasloff. Some interesting speculation.
McCain vs. Degeneres:
Ellen Degeneres "debated" McCain on same-sex marriage. He doesn't show up well, she shows up magnificently. Here's a clip:
Eyecandy:
Nice.
TTFN
No comments:
Post a Comment