Trump's Legacy: The Knives Are Out

And they're going for same-sex couples:

On Monday, Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill asked the Supreme Court to strip same-sex couples of their equal parenting rights. He did so at the request of the court, which is considering taking up his case. Hill implored the new conservative majority to rule that states may deny married same-sex couples the right to be recognized as parents of their own children. The case gives SCOTUS an opportunity to start chipping away at Obergefell v. Hodges by allowing states to withhold marital privileges from same-sex spouses. If the majority wants to begin eroding Obergefell, they will probably start here.

This, of course, has been the right's strategy since Roe v. Wade -- chip away, and keep chipping.

It looks as though the Court, or at least some of the justices, are interested in taking up the case, which does indicate an intent to begin demolishing Obergefell -- the central issue here has already been decided -- twice:

What’s strange about this case, Box v. Henderson, is that it poses a question the Supreme Court has already answered—twice. The plaintiffs are eight married lesbian couples in Indiana who used a sperm donor to conceive. When a married opposite-sex couple uses a sperm donor, Indiana recognizes the birth mother’s husband as the child’s parent. When a married same-sex couple does the same thing, however, the state refuses to list the birth mother’s wife as the child’s parent. In both instances, the second parent has no biological connection to the child; Indiana’s decision to extend parental rights to the nonbiological husbands of birth mothers, but not the wives of birth mothers, is sheer discrimination.

It's always possible that Roberts and Gorsuch will stand by stare decisis and vote with the liberal wing -- after all, as the article points out, Indiana's argument is garbage, relying exclusively on a "biological parent" argument that simple doesn't stand up to even mild scrutiny. Do read the whole article -- it's a solid grounding in this issue and a pointer toward what the right will be attempting now that they've got a bunch of fascists in the courts. With thanks to commenter solitasolano at Joe.My.God.

The Pope Puts His Foot in It

I'm doing a little catching up on this one (it's been one of those weeks). You may have run across a story on the Pope's comments on legalizing civil unions for same-sex couples:

Pope Francis is calling for same-sex couples to be “legally” protected by civil union laws.

“Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family,” the Pope says in a new documentary, Catholic News Agency reports. “They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it.”

Later, Pope Francis defended his remarks in the film, saying, “What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered.”

As you might imagine, the reaction has been less than positive among the "faithful".

Franklin Graham's response (not that anyone asked him to respond) is noteworthy for its lack of -- well, call it Christian compassoin:

Graham sees the Catholic Church’s new regard for supporting LGBTQ people in law – not religion – as so dangerous to the Christian faith he says it would mean Jesus died for nothing.

“For Pope Francis to attempt to normalize homosexuality is to say that Holy Scriptures are false, that our sins really don’t matter, and that we can continue living in them,” Graham told his nine million Facebook followers. “If that were true, then Jesus Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection wouldn’t have been needed. The cross would have been for nothing.”

Apparently, in Graham's eyes the whole point of Jesus' life was to deny gays and lesbians the right to live with dignity and self-respect -- to be treated like normal human beings.

The response from the Catholic hierarchy is no less scathing. Here's Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano:

Bergoglio is a candidate for ‘pontiff’ of a new religion, with new commandments, new morals, and new liturgies. He distances himself from the Catholic religion and from Christ, and consequently from the Hierarchy and the faithful, disavowing them and leaving them at the mercy of the globalist dictatorship. Those who do not adapt to this new code will therefore be ostracized by society and by this new ‘church’ as a foreign body.

Vigano doesn't seem to have twigged to the fact that the "faithful" are already being ostracized. (And as Joe notes in his comment, Vigano uses the Pope's birth name, not "Pope Francis" or any of the honorifics normally used to refer to the pontiff.

This one's choice. From Bishop Thomas Tobin:

“The Holy Father’s apparent support for the recognition of civil unions for same-sex couples needs to be clarified.

“The Pope’s statement clearly contradicts what has been the long-standing teaching of the Church about same-sex unions.

“The Church cannot support the acceptance of objectively immoral relationships. Individuals with same-sex attraction are beloved children of God and must have their personal human rights and civil rights recognized and protected by law.

“However, the legalization of their civil unions, which seek to simulate holy matrimony, is not admissible.”

The part about "objectively immoral" relationships is, as far as I'm concerned, a real howler. Given that the basic moral dictum is "take care of each other", all these arbitrary rules cherry-picked from the tribal taboos of Bronze Age Middle-Eastern nomads can hardly claim to be any sort of standard for moral behavior. (In that vein, Tobin is credibly accused of ignoring child sexual abuse complaints when he was auxiliary bishop of Pittsburgh.)

There are other resonses, of course. What's most noteworthy of the lot is that their reference is to Catholic dogma and not to the teaching of Christ -- who had nothing at all to say about homosexuality or same-sex relationships.

The Hysteria Mounts

The Supreme Court's ruling in Bostock has really hit the anti-gay hate groups and hate-group wannabes hard. They're just beside themselves. This, from the ever hateful Tony Perkins, is perhaps more revealing than he intended:

To most Americans, the sellout of Neil Gorsuch, who not only voted with the liberal members on the Harris case but authored the majority opinion, will be the lingering horror. If even he can’t bring himself to agree that the word “sex” means male and female — not the Left’s wild reinterpretations of “sexual orientation” or “gender identity,” who will?

To label Justice Gorsuch a "sellout" just fairly screams "We didn't put you on the Court to rule on the basis of reality!" I like the bit about the ruling being a "lingering horror", too. They're really pulling out the stops.

And The Federalist is even more over the top:

Joy Pullmann, executive editor at The Federalist, wrote that the ruling would result in the “further degradation of Americans’ natural rights to free speech, to free association, and to worshipping God as their consciences require.” The headline on Pullmann’s article claims that Monday’s ruling “Firebombs” the U.S. Constitution. She writes:

This decision is a disgrace to these bedrocks of Western civilization, our nation built upon them, the voters who vote for them, and to these men’s honor. President Trump ran promising judges who wouldn’t murder America, and Gorsuch just gave him and everyone who voted for him a giant middle finger. The court’s newfound weakness will also be exploited and explored by leftist legal agitators whose goal is the destruction of the American system.

Now, Ms. Pullman, we all know who's out to destroy the American system, and it's not Neil Gorsuch or his colleagues on the Court -- it's your hero's puppet master, who's sitting in the Kremlin laughing himself silly.

Even James Dobson has come out of his crypt to rant (yes, apparently he's still alive):

Not only was this decision an affront against God, but it was also a historical attack against the founding framework that governs our nation.

Our judiciary is constitutionally charged with interpreting the law, not making law. In its 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court acted as a super-legislature and failed to carry out its primary duty to the American people. And we will all pay the price.

Oh, and about the judiciary interpreting the law: that's exactly what they did.

And from our "president":

“They’ve ruled and we live with the decision,” Trump said, defeated and somewhat sad. “We live with the decision of the Supreme Court.”

I guess someone told him he can't fire Gorsuch. And note the enthusiasm. (My own take is that he doesn't care one way or the other about LGBT rights -- he just needs to keep the evangelicals feeding at the trough.)

And in spite of the right, time marches on, and society marches with it.

Today's Must-Read: Color Me Flabbergasted (Updated)

Well, OK, maybe not flabbergasted, but certainly surprised. It's all over the place, but here's the most concise and complete single story I've found:

In the cascade of bad news that has marked 2020, it’s almost impossible to believe that something good could happen, and yet here we are: On Monday morning, the Supreme Court ruled that gay and trans workers are protected by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits firing someone on the basis of sex. The decision encompasses a number of cases, but the most prominent was that of Aimee Stephens, a trans woman from Michigan who was fired by her longtime employer, Harris Funeral Homes, because she had transitioned from living as a man to living as a woman. Sadly, Stephens did not live to see this victory — she died from kidney failure in May — but she will go down in history as the person who secured this critical right for trans people to do their jobs free of discrimination.

I wasn't really all that surprised by the ruling -- well, OK, a little bit -- but more by the 6-3 split.l If I'd thought about it, I probably would have expected Roberts to join the liberal wing of the Court -- legacy and all that -- but Gorsuch did surprise me.

The really delicious part is that the "religious" right was hoping this case would provide the wedge to start rolling back gay and trans equality -- and everyone else's rights as well:

But this victory is not just a victory for trans people. This decision, surprisingly penned by Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, is a potentially major setback for the religious right’s push to gut federal laws that protect all Americans from discrimination on the basis of race or sex. The right has been looking for a way to weaken the Civil Rights Act for decades now, and for the moment that mission has been thwarted.

Especially those of women:

Alliance Defending Freedom, the Christian right group that was representing Harris Funeral Home, is still pretending it was doing this to protect women.

“Redefining ‘sex’ to mean ‘gender identity’ will create chaos and enormous unfairness for women and girls in athletics, women’s shelters, and many other contexts,” the group tweeted after the decision came down. “Civil rights laws that use the word ‘sex’ were put in place to protect equal opportunities for women.”

BS, to put is succinctly. You know as well as I do that ADF and its backers want women back in the kitchen with a kid hanging on each hip.

At any rate, read the whole thing, and while you're at it, check out the Salon article linked in the first paragraph above.

There's a lot of follow up, especially at Joe.My.God. Highlights are here (Tony Perkins -- not the sexy actor, the bigoted grifter); here (Joe Biden, on the plus side); h ere (Alliance Defending Freedom, the losers); and here (Heritage Foundation, bravely facing the eleventh century). There are more -- just scroll down until you find one you like.

Update: Needless to say, Franklin Graham has weighed in, with the expected wailing and rending of garments over "religious freedom":

I believe this decision erodes religious freedoms across this country. People of sincere faith who stand on God’s Word as their foundation for life should never be forced by the government to compromise their religious beliefs.

And so on and so forth.

As a matter of fact, the Court quite specifically did not address the issue. The demurrer is on page 36 of the opinion (which a PDF file that I can't copy and paste).

Graham's comments are worth reading, just as an example in the double-talk at which the "religious" right excels.

This is Probably a Must-Read

An interesting article on the future of LGBT rights -- and perhaps civil rights in general -- under the Trump Court;

There’s no denying it: efforts to protect LGBT+ persons through the federal courts suffered a substantial—perhaps devastating—setback when Justice Anthony M. Kennedy retired on June 27, 2018. The author of Romer v. Evans (1996), Lawrence v. Texas (2003), United States v. Windsor (2013), and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), Kennedy had long played a key role in the U.S. Supreme Court’s invalidation of laws that discriminate against gay men and lesbians. His most recent decisions in that vein (Windsor and Obergefell) were written for a five-justice majority, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito in dissent. Kennedy’s retirement augured the emergence of a solid conservative majority, now including Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, whose members are very likely opposed to meaningful constitutional protection for LGBT+ persons as a class. As we assess the implications of that development, here are some key questions to consider.

It's a little dense, but worth reading. Especially striking was this section:

Will the Court Undermine Antidiscrimination Laws in the Name of the First Amendment?

A holding that Title VII prohibits discrimination against LGBT people would mean a lot less if the Court subsequently held that the First Amendment immunizes anybody who describes acts of discrimination as expression or religious practice. However, in recent years, the right-leaning justices have taken worrisome steps toward imposing novel constitutional limits on antidiscrimination law.

I can't help but wonder, though, whether the Court giving carte blanche to religiously inspired bigots might also be held as establishment of religion.

We'll see how it all turns out. I'm not optimistic, unless the House grows a spine and starts impeachment proceedings against, say, "I like beer" Kavanaugh, who probably lied during his confirmation hearings.

Stonewall: The Real Story

A very interesting video by a number of historians, some of whom were actually at Stonewall, that serves to debunk a lot of the myths and attempts at appropriation:

Today's Must-Read: Where It All Really Started

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, and a lot of people think that was the beginning of the gay rights movement. It wasn't:

On July 4, 1965 — four years before Stonewall—39 activists from D.C., New York, and Philadelphia marched on the place where the Declaration of Independence had been signed roughly two centuries earlier. They wanted to remind the nation that their rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” had been denied. Dressed in formal attire — the men in coats and ties, and many of the women in skirts and dresses — they carried signs that read equal treatment before the law and homosexual bill of rights.

For the next four years, the organizer of that protest, Craig Rodwell, along with his comrades, Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen, marched in Philadelphia. Their demonstrations became became known as “the Annual Reminders.” But in the summer of 1967, Rodwell also decided to do something that was, in its own quiet way, more radical than marching. He wanted to open a bookstore.

It's a fascinating article, but I want to point out one thing: the gay rights movement actually started in the 1950s, with the founding of the Mattachine Society by Harry Hay, but it wasn't what you'd call "activist". Rodwell might well be the first to openly demonstrate against the prevailing repression of gays; Stonewall was a catalyst that pushed awareness of the state of affairs and gave us a rallying cry.

Read it.

Via BarkBarkWoofWoof.

Coda:

Today's Must-Read: Yes, It Matters

A thoughtful essay by Lucas Grindley in The Atlantic about Pete Buttigieg's run for the presidency and why it's important:

Pete Buttigieg plays harmonica, guitar, and piano! He speaks Norwegian! Whoa, he actually speaks eight languages! I heard he even wrestled a bear live on CNN. None of the gee-whiz stories solidifying into the Buttigieg canon make any difference to me in deciding which of the Democratic candidates will get my vote. But as a gay man, I do care that Buttigieg is gay.

In my lifetime, it has been illegal for me to serve in the military, illegal for me to marry, illegal for me to adopt children, and even illegal for me to have sex. Society barred me from the first three; until 2003, the fourth meant risk of a fine or a prison sentence in some states. This discrimination did not just happen in a history book—it happened to me, and it happened to Buttigieg, too.

I don't have more to add, except to not that I'm somewhat older than either Buttigieg or Grindley, and grew up in an era when you didn't even talk about it.

Read it. With thanks to Mustang Bobby at BarkBarkWoofWoof.

Grrasping at Straws

Gregory T. Angelo, the head of Log Cabin Republicans, thinks that Trump is the most LGBT-friendly president ever. Seriously. You want to know why?

“This president is the first president to enter the White House who believes that marriage equality is settled law of the land,” Angelo said, referring to a “60 Minutes” interview from over a year ago in which Trump was asked about his views on same-sex marriage. He didn’t actually state his own position on the matter, but said that the issue was “settled law.”

“Barack Obama didn’t believe that when he entered the White House,” Angelo said. “Hillary Clinton only came around to that position in 2013.”

But Trump never changed his stated position from the presidential campaign, and he doesn’t actually support marriage equality. Obama and Clinton both have supported same-sex marriage for several years.

Now, Angelo isn't the brightest porch light on the block, but really -- how desperate to you have to be? Yes, he's phrasing it very carefully, but really.

Via Joe.My.God.

More Pushback

Against Trump's trans ban in the military, and against the "Christian" right's war against gays:

American voters say 68 - 27 percent, including 55 - 39 percent among voters in military households, that transgender people should be allowed to serve in the military, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today.

Republicans opposed transgender service 60 - 32 percent, but every other party, gender, education, age or racial group supports transgender service by margins of 22 percentage points or higher, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University Poll finds.

By an 89 - 8 percent margin, American voters say it should be illegal for an employer to discriminate against an employee based on sexual orientation.

More acceptance of transgender people would be "a good thing for the country," 46 percent of voters say, as 14 percent say it would be "a bad thing" and 39 percent say it would not make much difference. . . .

"They put on uniforms and face the same risks as their brothers and sisters in arms for little reward other than protecting their country," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

"Voters say a soldier is a soldier, no matter what his/her gender identity is.

"Voters say, 'Let them serve.'

Go ahead -- click through and read what voters think about the way health care is being handled. Whoa!

Via Joe.My.God.

It's About Time

HRC joins the fray:

The nation's most influential LGBT rights advocacy group announced Tuesday that it will spend $26 million and hire at least 20 additional political staffers to deploy across all 50 states ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. The goal: replicate what happened in North Carolina in Senate, House and governor's races across the nation next year and make the LGBT vote one of the most forceful voting blocs in the progressive movement.

The impetus: Like so many fired-up left-leaning groups these days, it's President Trump.

“I think folks believed that after the Supreme Court ruled on marriage, that we were headed quickly toward a place of full equality in this country,” said Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign. “And the president's attacks on our community — and so many minority communities — has served to be, in many ways, a great awakening of our democracy.”

Like many in the LGBT community, I've been more than a little ambivalent about HRC: they've been largely ineffective, and a few moves -- wanting to horn in on the Prop 8 case after spending years arguing against pursuing marriage equality, the focus on ENDA to the exclusion of everything else -- have given me a distinctly negative impression.

However:

The Human Rights Campaign isn't a newcomer to politics. The group has been around since 1980 and has field and volunteer staff across the nation. But Griffin said until now, the group had the resources to drop into a political battle only for a couple of months, then leave when it was over.

Since Trump got elected, donations to the group are flooding in (most donations are under $10), LGBT people are stepping out alongside other progressive groups to protest and, for the first time, there will be a dedicated effort to keep this community politically activated.

The Human Rights Campaign will be investing in all 50 states but will put its North Carolina model to the test specifically in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada. They're all swing states, most of which Trump won, and all have big 2018 Senate races as well as some potentially competitive governor's races.

At this point, although I'm not from Missouri, show me.

Via Towleroad.

The Roe Strategy (Update)

I've been predicting for awhile that the right will try to chip away at marriage equality the way they have at abortion rights, and sure enough: Texas has done it:

The Texas Supreme Court on Friday threw out a lower court ruling that said spouses of gay and lesbian public employees are entitled to government-subsidized same-sex marriage benefits. The state's highest civil court unanimously ordered a trial court to reconsider the case.

As part of a case challenging Houston’s benefits policy, the Supreme Court suggested a landmark ruling legalizing same-sex marriage does not fully address the right to marriage benefits. Justice Jeffrey Boyd, writing on behalf of the court in a 24-page opinion, said there’s still room for state courts to explore the “reach and ramifications” of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.

The Supreme Court did rule on this issue in Obergefell v.Hodges:

This dynamic also applies to same-sex marriage. It is now clear that the challenged laws burden the liberty of same-sex couples, and it must be further acknowledged that they abridge central precepts of equality. Here the marriage laws enforced by the respondents are in essence unequal: same-sex couples are denied all the benefits afforded to opposite-sex couples and are barred from exercising a fundamental right. Especially against a long history of disapproval of their relationships, this denial to same-sex couples of the right to marry works a grave and continuing harm. The imposition of this disability on gays and lesbians serves to disrespect and subordinate them. And the Equal Protection Clause, like the Due Process Clause, prohibits this unjustified infringement of the fundamental right to marry. See, e.g., Zablocki, supra, at 383 388; Skinner, 316 U. S., at 541.

These considerations lead to the conclusion that the right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person, and under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment couples of the same-sex may not be deprived of that right and that liberty. The Court now holds that same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry. No longer may this liberty be denied to them. Bakerv. Nelson must be and now is overruled, and the State laws challenged by Petitioners in these cases are now held invalid to the extent they exclude same-sex couples from civil marriage on the same terms and conditions as opposite-sex couples.

(Emphasis added.)

I'd like to ask the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court what part of "same terms and conditions" they don't understand.

This decision will, of course, be appealed to the Supreme Court. What the marriage opponents are obviously hoping for is that by the time it reaches the Court and is granted cert, another "liberal" will have retired or died and Trump and the Republicans in the Senate will be able to insert another closet Dominionist.

This is not the first attempt to redefine "equal" in regard to married same-sex couples. The Supreme Court just threw out a decision by the Arkansas Supreme Court upholding a discriminatory state law regarding the right of non-biological parents to be named on birth certificates. (Interestingly enough, Roberts, who dissented in Obergefell, concurred in this decision.)

Footnote: Another downside of electing judges:

The decision by the Texas Supreme Court to take up the case was regarded as an unusual move because it had previously declined to take it up last year. That allowed the lower court decision to stand.

But the state’s highest civil court reversed course in January after receiving an outpouring of letters opposing the decision. They also faced pressure from Texas GOP leadership — spearheaded by Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton — who asked the court to clarify that Obergefell does not include a “command” to public employers regarding employee benefits.

Federal judges, who are appointed for life, don't care how many letters they get.

Update: Under the heading "Any Port in a Storm":

But, as Josh Blackman, a law professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston noticed, the Texas Supreme Court took what NCRM can only call the unprecedented step of admitting it took public opinion into account when deciding the case, Pidgeon v. Houston.

And not just public opinion, but postcards, letters, and emails.

Generally, interested parties can petition the court to allow them to submit an amicus brief to express their opinion on a particular case. For example, in Obergefell v. Hodges, the U.S. Supreme Court case that finally declared marriage for same-sex couples to be a civil right, nearly 150 "friend of the court" briefs were accepted.

But the Texas Supreme Court admits not only did it accept amicus briefs, it accepted public opinion – basically the opinion of anyone who wrote to the court, regardless of their ties to the case, regardless of their level of expertise. Presumably, not one of these opinions were vetted; it's entirely unknown who sent them.

The Texas Supreme Court seems to suspect it might be on shaky ground with this decision, so they're going after any justification, sketchy as it might be: As David Badash notes in the article quoted, there is a procedure to allowing non-participants in a proceeding to intervene; sending a postcard or e-mail does not fall within those requirements: that's on the order of letters to the editor or comments on a blog as far as appropriate influence on a court decision goes. As the Court held in West Virginia Bd. of Ed.v. Barnette, "fundamental rights may not be submitted to a vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections." And sending a postcard isn't anywhere near as formal a procedure as voting.

In a sane universe, this would never have been decided this way. We can hope that it will be shot down rapidly, but then, we're living in Trump's America.

Wait and See

The latest leak from Trumpistan has got the gay news sites up in arms:

A leaked copy of a draft executive order titled “Establishing a Government-Wide Initiative to Respect Religious Freedom,” obtained by The Investigative Fund and The Nation, reveals sweeping plans by the Trump administration to legalize discrimination.

The four-page draft order, a copy of which is currently circulating among federal staff and advocacy organizations, construes religious organizations so broadly that it covers “any organization, including closely held for-profit corporations,” and protects “religious freedom” in every walk of life: “when providing social services, education, or healthcare; earning a living, seeking a job, or employing others; receiving government grants or contracts; or otherwise participating in the marketplace, the public square, or interfacing with Federal, State or local governments.”

The draft order seeks to create wholesale exemptions for people and organizations who claim religious or moral objections to same-sex marriage, premarital sex, abortion, and trans identity, and it seeks to curtail women’s access to contraception and abortion through the Affordable Care Act.

These leaks start to have a strategic smell to them, and I'm at the point where my first reaction is "What are they trying to divert attention from?"

Yeah, I know Trump said he's leaving Obama's LGBT protections in place, and we all know what that's worth.

I have enough to think about in real life right now that, until something actually happens, I'm not going to worry about it. If and when he signs such an order -- and I don't doubt that eventually he will, while talking loudly about something else -- I will happily join a class action lawsuit, because something like this is patently unconstitutional.

Stray Thought

Actually, not so stray, considering the concern about rollbacks to gay rights, especially marriage, engendered by Trump's choice for Attorney General, an unregenerate racist and homophobe, and probable choice for the Supreme Court.

I pass, on my daily or near-daily wanderings, one: medical offices located on the ground floor of a newish building, with large street-level windows, and two: a former senior apartment building newly rehabbed and now leasing apartments. In both cases, one of the large street-level windows, both facing major traffic arteries, portray gay couples as happy clients/residents.

Now, granted, this is the North Side of Chicago and not Nowhere, Alabama, but it seems to me that there is a degree of acceptance revealed by this that gives a good indication of what the Tony Perkinses of the country are up against if they try to roll back the advances we've made in the past couple of decades. We're an integral part of the fabric of this country now.

They shouldn't get too cocky.

(This is aside from the number of gay and lesbian couples I see walking through the Zoo arm in arm or holding hands -- where there are cheeldrun! -- and no one bats an eyelash. It's at the point where, if I see two men with strollers or small children, it's hard to tell if they're a family or just two guys giving their wives a day off.)

How To Lose Friends and Alienate People

So, Black Lives Matter decided to hold Toronto's Pride Parade hostage this year, because they're so very interested in constructive dialogue. From John Aravosis at AmericaBlog:

Black Lives Matter protesters brought a whole new meaning to the phrase “Surrender Dorothy” this weekend when they shut down the Toronto LGBT Pride parade with smoke flares and a sit-in.

BLM held Toronto Pride hostage, unless their demands, which included excluding police from the parade, were immediately met.

This is choice: From Alexandra Williams of BLM Toronto:

"We are not taking any space away from any folks. When we talk about homophobia, transphobia, we go through that too ... It should be a cohesive unit, not one against the other. Anti-blackness needs to be addressed and they can be addressed at the same time, in the same spaces," she said.

"We didn't bully our way into Pride ... we made space for ourselves in a place where we have been erased," Williams added.

Her entire comment is so completely self-absorbed and clueless that I don't even know where to start. Pride Toronto included them as honored guests and they took the opportunity to to spit in the face of the gay community They didn't "make space" for themselves in the parade -- they were invited to participate as a gesture of inclusion (because, after all, that's what Pride is about), and then they took our space away.

If Ms. Williams want "anti-blackness" addressed in the gay community, maybe she can work on having "anti-gayness" addressed in the black community.

Needless to say, this little stunt was not greeted with universal approbation. BLM responded on Facebook: From Pink News:

“Ya’ll quick to forget Pride was a riot. Or that it was the bodies, organising brilliance, and hearts of Black, Latinx, & Brown people and communities that created Pride.”

Bullshit. Yes, it was a riot, and guess who the majority of the rioters were: young white gay men. And guess who it was who got AIDS activism up and running: white gay men. And who was it who formed the first gay advocacy organizations: white gay men and white gay women. (I've done several posts on this issue, mostly hinging on the release of, and reaction to, Roland Emmerich's Stonewall. If you want to refresh your memory, you can look here, here, here, and here.)

I've been through this kind of crap before, in the '70s' and '80s, when we would all gather in Lincoln Park at the end of the Pride Parade and listen to the likes of Urvashi Vaid tell us how we were going to solve everyone else's problems first. I don't have much patience with BLM or anyone else who thinks I'm going to put up with it again.

I may revisit this -- I'm really pissed off about this, quite possibly because, as someone who has supported equal rights for everyone, I feel used, and consequently, right now it's hard to be dispassionate about it.

Oops -- Happy Belated Pride Day

Yesterday was Chicago's Pride Parade, and by all reports, it was, as usual, a huge success. (And I mean "huge," and not in the Trump sense: over the past several years, Pride has drawn a million people, making it one of the largest in the world.) And, as expected, the predicted storms did not happen: in 47 years, it has never rained on Chicago's Parade. (There have been years when the morning started with downpours, but the skies always clear up by the time the Parade starts.)

And the date this year was especially significant: on June, 26, 2003, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Lawrence vs. Texas, voiding all sodomy laws; on June 26, 2013, the Court found Section 3 of DOMA unconstitutional, thanks to Edie Windsor; and on June 26, 2015, the Court found, in Obergefell v. Snyder, that same-sex couples have the same right to marry the person of their choice as anyone else.

As for me, I'm past the point where standing in 90 degree heat with a million of my closest friends for several hours to watch a parade is appealing. I went downtown and tried to work on other things, which is another story.

Today's Must Read

Very interesting article at The New Civil Rights Movement by Claude Summers on Justice Anthony Kennedy's "jurisprudence of dignity."

Justice Kennedy is author of four historic gay rights rulings from the Supreme Court, Romer v. Evans (1996), Lawrence v. Texas (2003), U.S. v. Windsor (2013), and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015). These decisions, each building upon the other, are marked by a deep concern for human dignity. More precisely, they address forthrightly the ways in which discrimination against lgbt individuals is an affront to personal dignity. Indeed, his rulings on gay rights may be said to constitute a jurisprudence of human dignity, one that has expanded and given heft to the principle of equal protection under the law.

There's more, including historical background on Kennedy and these four crucial cases, and several videos. The CBS Special Report on the decision on Obergefell especially is worth watching -- it gives a good sense of the excitement of the day. In fact, here it is:

Let the Protests Begin!

Roland Emmerich's film Stonewall had its official premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, and of course, trans activists were there.

LGBT protesters crashed the red carpet at the world premiere of Stonewall at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). They say the film downplays the key role that trans people of colour and lesbian activists played in the 1969 riots that launched the gay rights movement in the US. TIFF fans weren't happy to see them. Stonewall’s gay director, Roland Emmerich, tells Daily Xtra he wanted to make a movie for everybody. “I never quite understood this whole word of ‘whitewashing,’” he says.

I lost patience with the whole "whitewashing" and "erasing trans people" arguments when they were trotted out in reaction to a two-minute trailer. Nobody ever gets a clear idea of what a movie's actually about from a trailer. And of course, you can imagine how much sympathy I have for those "activists" who rail on about white cis-gender gay men -- as though we had nothing to do with gaining any ground in the civil rights arena.

As for Emmerich rewriting history, there are some illuminating comments at this story at Towleroad. For example, commenter FLL has a couple of actual facts:

(1) Sylvia Rivera and was not present at the Stonewall Riots. There is testimony showing that Sylvia wasn't there (please see my reply to Darien Taylor below). So why does the protester in the clip above wear a t-shirt that mentions Sylvia Rivera?

(2) In all these years, no one has ever come forward to suggest that Miss Majors was present during any of the rioting. It's obvious by listening to any interviews Miss Majors has given that she is lying.

(3) The unidentified white lesbian who was the victim of police brutality was exactly that, an unidentified white lesbian. She was not Stormé DeLarverie, who is an African-American. Stomé herself always refused to verify that she was the lesbian in question. The policeman beating the lesbian with his nightstick enraged the crowd of mostly white gay men. The unidentified white lesbian was the victim, not the "leader." The only leader which took action was the crowd itself.

I remember hearing about the riots a couple of years after the fact (news coverage wasn't what you'd call "extensive"), and remember the reports of drag queens and gay men rioting. Suddenly, by the '80s and the rise of the New Left, the whole thing was the work of trans folk. (I'm not going to belabor a possible connection there -- draw your own conclusions.) I noted here the documentary evidence that white gay men were, indeed, the majority of the protesters.

As for the film itself, I've only seen a couple of reviews (I admit to being somewhat turned off by blog posts rejoicing in the fact that critics are panning it), and what struck me about them is that they take Emmerich to task for not making the movie they think he should have made. Sorry -- as a long-time reviewer of works in different media, including film, you don't do that. I have no patience with reviews that wind up being about the reviewer rather than the work, and I'm certainly not going to pay attention to them.

I don't know if I'll manage to see it -- it is on limited release, which means my favorite cheap theater is not showing it, and it's a tight month.

I may have more on this, but not right this minute.

"Save Religious Freedom!" (Update, Update II)

That's the new version of Anita Bryant's "Save the Children!" campaign from the 1970s, and it's having the same effect on gay-inclusive civil rights legislation. The call is coming from the usual suspects -- the Catholic bishops, the "family" organizations (if you've ever checked out their websites, you discover very quickly that almost none of them have any programs of their own to help families -- in most cases, the best you're going to come up with are links to other organizations), the watchdogs to preserve "Christian" supremacy. As far as I'm concerned, these demands for "religious" exemptions to marriage laws, and now ENDA, are pretty much superfluous -- there's no way you can force a church or minister to officiate or host and same-sex wedding if it's against their doctrine -- and, as they grow broader, pernicious.

There are limits on rights and freedoms -- otherwise, society doesn't work. It can't, at least not the kind of society we have here. If one group or person has unlimited rights, unlimited freedom, that's dictatorship. That's what the "Christian" right is after.

Michelangelo Signorile has a good piece up at HuffPo examining this issue in relation to ENDA. The key point:

But ENDA has a problem: a disturbing religious exemption that has been included in the bill in one form or another ever since it was first introduced in 1994 -- light years ago in terms of the speed of LGBT progress -- and by gay advocates themselves, to appease conservative, religious Democrats and Republicans. In that regard, they haven't updated ENDA for 2013. And really, the exemption should never have been in this civil rights legislation in first place, as The New York Times pointed out in an editorial this week:

The exemption would extend beyond churches and other houses of worship to any religiously affiliated institution, like hospitals and universities, and would allow those institutions to discriminate against people in jobs with no religious function, like billing clerks, cafeteria workers and medical personnel. The exemption -- which was inserted to appease some opponents who say the act threatens religious freedom -- is a departure from the approach of earlier civil rights laws.

So a Catholic school teacher who's done a great job for years could still be fired under ENDA if the school's principal discovers that she is a lesbian.

That's already happening -- and not just in red states like Arkansas -- it's also happened in Minnesota and in California. The message here is clear -- stay in the closet if you want to keep your job.

(There's a related issue here, of course -- how much of your life is your employer's business? That's a really broad one, and I'm not going to deal with it here, but keep it in mind -- it's important, if for no other reason than that it stems from the same sort of authoritarian mindset we're seeing in the "religious exemption" claims.)

One can only hope that the overreach on this will come sooner rather than later -- and there will be overreach. I'm waiting for the first lawsuit alleging that the "religious" exemptions in a gay or trans civil rights law violate someone's religious freedom. After all, what sauce for the goose. . . .

Update: Here's another discussion of the "religious" exemptions from Ari Ezra Waldman at Towleroad, with some reference to the position of our "advocacy groups" on the issue:

According to BuzzFeed's Chris Geidner, spokespersons for the Human Rights Campaign, Freedom to Work, and the ACLU all had the same basic response: Senator Portman's amendment is "unnecessary." The ACLU went a bit further in its conversations with Mr. Geidner, mentioning that the exemption in ENDA would be "unprecedented." But despite some groups, like the ACLU, raising concerns about the religious exemptions, Chris Johnson of the Washington Blade shows us that there is simply no urgency, no stomach for a fight over the religious exemptions. Our community's goal, Mr. Johnson discovers, is merely to raise the issue. The ACLU told Mr. Johnson that "it’s certainly [their] hope more and more pro-equality members of Congress and their staff will come to understand the potential harm of the current exemption."

That's it?

HRC, Freedom to Work, and ACLU leaders are engaging in the art of the possible. ENDA needs 60 votes to pass. To get sixty votes, it needs Republicans. To get a sufficient number of those Republicans, it needs to pay homage to religious liberty. To fight against that political reality is at once silly and dangerous to the organizations' future influence.

But no one is talking about what today's cavalier approach will mean for tomorrow's fights.

Needless to say, that approach seems to me, as it does to Waldman, both short-sighted and eventually harmful. What needs to be done it to characterize those religious exemptions as overly broad and infringing on the rights of others -- an attempt at religious supremacy.

Update II: Zack Ford has a pretty devastating run-down on the US Catholic Bishop's objections to ENDA. The Bishops, of course, don't believe in "unjust" discrimination, but their discrimination against LGBTs is just. Just ask them.

But Then, We Have Pat Robertson

Robertson manages to make that Australian barrister (previous post) seem sane. Fresh off the glorious triumph of the "special rings for transmitting AIDS" fiasco, he's come up with this:

Robertson said San Antonio “has gone off the rails” by adopting a non-discrimination ordinance [PDF] which includes protections for sexual orientation and gender identity, and claimed that the new law would lead to Christians being thrown in prison: “This means that if you speak out about your deeply held religious beliefs they will put you in jail or brand you some kind of a class 3 felon.”

“This whole thing is outrageous and that city council should be replaced,” Robertson charged.

Of course, the ordinance does no such thing. (And it seems everyone jumped on the anti-ordinance bandwagon.)

(Video at the link. I wonder if CBN will try to suppress this one.)

For a summary of a few of Robertson's more outrageous claims, see the story at The New Civil Rights Movement.