Maine defeats marriage

My aunts in Maine aren’t going to be considered married there anytime soon, now that state voters passed a referendum repealing their marriage law. This is particularly upsetting for me since I vividly recall phoning them to let them know the governor had signed the marriage bill into law, and they were so happy. But a petition blocked it before it went into effect, so the state never recognized their marriage, and it looks like it won’t for a while yet.

It’s extremely frustrating to see people’s basic rights put up to a popular vote. People complain about the LGBT community pushing too hard, but if you go back a few decades you’ll see civil rights victories that seemed impossible. We’re only “pushing” for what’s rightfully ours, and I’m confident we’ll get there eventually. It’s just going to keep being a bumpy road for a while.

In somewhat more encouraging news, it appears a referendum to affirm “everything but marriage” domestic partnerships is ahead in Washington. We should know today.

Kalamazoo keeps LGBT protections; Maine still too close to call

First LGBT news of election night: Kalamazoo residents voted by a large margin to keep the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance!

UPDATE 11:40 p.m. : Looks like Maine’s still too close to call, according to the Bangor Daily News. In sad news for New Jersey marriage equality advocates, incumbent Gov. Jon S. Corzine lost to Republican Chris Christie, who is an outspoken foe of the gay community.

The upcoming battle

The New York Times has a nice piece on the upcoming marriage battle in the courts over Prop 8. Among the many they spoke with is Kenji Yoshino, a Yale law professor I wrote about a while back and for whom I have tremendous respect.

Some highlights:

The suit was, gay rights advocates said then, the wrong claim in the wrong court in the wrong state at the wrong time…

Those objections are waning. The ship has sailed, said Kenji Yoshino, a law professor atNew York University, and gay rights advocates “need to focus on getting it to the right destination.” He added that Judge Walker’s refusal to dismiss the case “was a major victory for Olson and Boies.” …

Judge Walker has scheduled a trial in the case for January. He wants to hear about the history and purpose of marriage and the consequences of allowing same-sex couples to marry. And he has hinted that he may allow the proceedings to be televised.

“We should buckle our seatbelts,” Professor Yoshino said. “A comprehensive vetting of the empirical issues by a judicial tribunal is welcome and long overdue. Walker’s trial bids fair to be a trial in an almost scientific sense of the word.”

Matthew Shepard Act passes in the Senate!

I’m crazy busy tonight, but I just had to take a second to tell everyone that the Senate passed the Matthew Shepard Act, which once signed will extend federal hate crimes protection to LGBT people! Obama has pledged to sign it.

From CNN:

The Senate passed groundbreaking legislation Thursday that would make it a federal crime to assault an individual because of his or her sexual orientation or gender identity.

The expanded federal hate crimes law now goes to President Obama’s desk. Obama has pledged to sign the measure, which was added to a $680 billion defense authorization bill.

Interesting legal updates

I’ve been inordinately busy as of late, but there are a few quick legal tidbits I wanted to share.

First off is the Texas Family Court judge who ruled two men married in Massachusetts could get divorced in Texas because that state’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. Quite the surprise, though I can’t say I’m hopeful about the decision’s future in appeals. Check out the whole story from The New York Times.

I also wanted to mention the hearings going on in Congress for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2009. Prominent Yale Law School professor William N. Eskridge Jr. testified recently that the University of Virgina Law School denied him tenure because he is gay back in 1985, according to Above the Law. Follow that link for an overview, or go really in-depth with his written full testimony (.doc file), and by all means check out The Bilerico Project for tips on how to show your support for the bill in just a few minutes.

Lastly, I’d like to remind anyone who’s interested that my friend Barbara is still collecting donations for the AIDS Walk in Los Angeles. Check out my previous post for a run-down of the good you’ll do and how she’ll thank you!

AIDS Walk LA 2009

My friend Barbara has generously pledged to raise $1,000 for the AIDS Walk in Los Angeles this year. A very talented artist, she’s offering a choice of one of three original works for anyone willing to donate $25 to her very worthy cause. I’ll let her take it after my quick plea: Donate to this most worthy cause! I know I am.

Barbara says:

Basically, we’re walking to raise money for AIDS research/prevention/all-that-good-stuff. The foundation is pretty awesome actually, this is its 25th year at work. We’re walking on October 18th. Good stuff.

Now. I foolishly signed up to be a Star Walker. This means I have pledged to raise $1000. That’s a thousand dollars, by October 18th. And I actually want all my donations in by the 15th, to account for money transfer. That is cutting it pretty close.

But let’s do the math. The minimum online donation amount is $25, and it’s much easier to donate online, and to not lose the money. Suppose y’all donated $25 each. That’s five coffees, or two movie tickets, maybe one or two really good dinners, or a birthday gift for yours truly (the big day IS a week after the AIDS Walk!). It’s a small sacrifice to make for a good cause, and to help out your ol’ pal Barbara. If forty of you–only forty, that’s slightly more than the size of one classroom of gradeschool kids nowadays–I’ll hit my goal without a hitch.

Now, if you were to donate, I would want to thank you for your kind gesture. How would I thank you? One of three ways, my friends. One of three ways.

All images below are not final versions. These are my mock-ups. I’m still cutting out the stencils for the finals!

A handmade book

An AIDS Walk print

A three-print set

This is not one image. It’s a set of three individual prints, each one 6X6″ and sprayed on cardstock. The backgrounds will not be white–I am spraying onto cardstock of various backgrounds and patterns. Some are metallic, some are flat solid color, some are striped, so on so forth. Once again, this is the mock-up, not the final spray version. I just want you to have a rough idea of what you’re in for! :-) Thirty-three sets available.DONATION OPTIONS

Donations of $25 will receive one of the above three, your choice, while supplies last.

Donations of $50 will receive two of the above three, again, you choice, while supplies last.

Donations of $75 or more will receive all of the above, while supplies last.

I know these are lean times, and I’m honestly not expecting donations of $50 and $75. But hey, may as well put it out there. Just in case you decide to be the best! donor! ever!

DONATE!

To donate, follow this link to make an online payment. Remember, the minimum donation is $25. Credit/Debit cards and PayPal. Because they designed it that way?

http://aidswalklosangeles2009.kintera.org/losangelette

Once you’ve donated, email me–barbara.bownds(at)gmail.com–and let me know which thank you is the one you’d like to receive. Again, these are not gifts, and they’re not for sale. They’re strictly meant to express my gratitude for donors who are helping me to reach my goal of $1000. Obviously I’m keeping none of the profits. Everything goes to AIDS Walk LA. Include your mailing address so I can send you your thank you post-haste. Don’t worry about postage, I’ll be taking care of that.

Remember, you have until OCTOBER 15TH. The deadline is actually the 18th, but I want to have a three-day buffer to account for the transfer of funds.

The kind of thing we fear

Fair warning: Every time I hear about the following type of incident, my heart sinks, and yours should too.

New York radio/TV/etc. personality Blake Hayes posted a blog entry this morning describing a hate crime he says happened to some of his friends on 9th Avenue in New York City after a man flicked a cigarette at them, and then told them, “Keep moving, faggot.” He continues (emphases his):

We exchanged words, more and more heated, until he started to approach us, threatening violence.  Before we knew it, he had thrown one friend against a car, denting it.  The other took two punches to the face, cutting his lip before the bouncer at McCoy’s came out and stopped him.

We called the police.  They arrived — 5 cops or so, from at least 2 cars.  They talked to the guy who assaulted us.  They asked us what happened.  We recounted the story.

The cops — the NYPD — did NOTHING.  They wouldn’t even take the guy’s information so we could file a claim later, or even run the plates of the car whose body was dented from him throwing my friend into it.  “They’re NJ plates, we can’t do anything.”

This is exactly the kind of thing I worry about every time I’m out with my boyfriend. Being able to walk in peace is about as basic a right as you get, but the level of protection people in the LGBT community often actually receive is absolutely appalling, even in a state that has hate crime laws. The alleged location here makes it all the more shocking; my brother lives right off 9th Avenue and I’m always pleasantly surprised when I visit him by the number of gay couples I see. I’m afraid they may be a bit more cautious and hard to spot now, but I certainly hope not.

If Hayes’ story is true—and I have no information one way or the other, but no particular reason to doubt him—it’s just another example of the kind of shabby treatment we receive as a matter of course, but no the less horrible for it. I think the straight community largely has no idea the kind of psychological impact this has on gays, particularly the victims. It’s just another layer of the fear we feel whenever we’re out, knowing we may be attacked and find ourselves without any recourse because our rights are ignored or denied us. Can you imagine a man being attacked for holding his wife’s hand, and how they might be afraid to go out together again? Now picture numerous such attacks, and the police refusing to help.

Hayes has put a call to action on his blog asking people to call the police and complain about the lack of assistance they received. Click through for the info.

Coming out in middle school

The New York Times has a lengthy article in their magazine this weekend about the fact kids are starting to come out in middle school. I myself came out toward the end of high school in the beginning of the aughts, and I was a relative rarity as the school’s only totally out guy my senior year, but I wasn’t an aberration.

Writer Benoit Denizet-Lewis gives lot of attention to Gay-Straight Alliances in middle schools, and rightly so. My school’s GSA was only for the high school, and at the time we as a group weren’t even allowed to talk to the middle school because some in middle school administration believed that would have meant talking to the kids about sex.

That notion continues to irritate me to no end. First and foremost, falling in love isn’t just about sex. Kids see family members and others in relationships all the time. It’s not as if they don’t know any couples; chances are their parents at least used to be in one.

And secondly, it’s not as if middle schoolers never think or talk about sex. That even happens in school settings rather frequently—in 8th grade Romeo and Juliet featured prominently in our literary curriculum, and we all ran to see the movie of the same name. If kids are old enough to learn about straight relationships, they’re mature enough to learn about gay ones too.

The NYT story also talks a lot about gay youth support groups. I attended the Main Line Youth Alliance in suburban Philadelphia through most of my senior year, and remember finding a great deal of comfort in getting to know other gay and lesbian kids. I haven’t been back since, and I just realized I’m now the age of the administrators when I was there, but I can’t say enough to thank the facilitators there and the teachers at my school who showed us LGBT students we weren’t doomed to a life of unhappiness. It’s kind of startling to think that in just a few years kids have begun coming out right when they hit their teens, but it makes perfect sense. At some level I always knew I was attracted to men, and I’m sure you remember your heart skipping a beat before you hit 18.

This trend speaks well of the progress we’ve made in the last few years, and I fully expect our society to become more open in the next decade. Of course I can’t just sit idly by, so I’m going to retire in the anticipation of doing some LGBT rights volunteer work tomorrow morning.

Farewell to summer

It may technically still be summer until Tuesday, but as my brilliant writer friend Frankie pointed out, with the way the weather is going it might as well be fall. There’s been a chill in the air, the sun is setting earlier, and I’ve been listening to Kay Hanley’s “Fall” on repeat.

That’s fine with me. Autumn is my favorite season, with its brisk air, colorful trees and of course Halloween. (And Kay Hanley is one of my favorite artists.) But perhaps prompted in part by yesterday’s gorgeous weather, I feel like summer deserves a last hurrah, so I thought I’d give a summary of our wonderful vacation in New England.

Most of our time was spent in or around my old college roommate’s apartment in Cambridge, Mass., which just might be my favorite city. There’s so much life in the downtown without all the hectic rushing of New York, and maybe it’s just the vacation buzz, but the people certainly seem more pleasant. Instead of a Starbucks every 10 feet, you find tea shops. (For someone like me who loves tea and hates coffee, that’s a welcome change.) And since I refuse to drive in either city, the traffic really only bothers my boyfriend.

But more importantly, at least for this blog, I’ve also found that we don’t feel strangers’ eyes on us all the time. In fact, as I noted in a post last year when we went on a very similar vacation, people also don’t really give us a second look, a fact my subconscious defenses notice and welcome.

If I thought Cambridge was accepting, you can imagine how welcome I felt when we went for a two-night stay in Provincetown, certainly the mostly famously fabulous town on the East Coast and easily the gayest place either of us has ever been. The main commercial strip can’t be much more than a mile or two, but I don’t think I’ve seen so many LGBT people together since we last went to New York’s Pridefest. It was so freeing to be in a community where we didn’t have to worry about anti-gay discrimination that even persistent rain couldn’t get us down.

Taken from the balcony of our room at the Provincetown Inn

Our hotel, the Provincetown Inn, was located at the very tip of the cape, and as you can see we had a room that offered a great view of the beach. Along with browsing the outrageously priced clothing shops, we had truly amazing dinners. The first was at the absolutely delicious Karoo Kafé, where I had some mind-blowing vegetarian Capetown Stew and my boyfriend had fish so fresh even I, the supreme seafood hater, liked it. Our second supper was more upscale and also quite good, the cozy and costly Edwige, where we ran into someone who came from right near my boyfriend’s hometown.

While there were scores of other young men with what I understood to be less than chaste intentions, the two of us acted a lot more like the older straight couples who apparently (and somewhat bewilderingly) decided a gay resort town was the best place to bring their kids. More power to ‘em, I say!

We resorted to the camera phone for this one

For instance, instead of staying up late partying, we got up early to go whale watching. That was fine with me, since we were treated to not one but two whales deciding to surface right next to our boat while a piratesque long ship floated just on the other side of them. Naturally, my camera battery died minutes before, but while none of my photos really do it justice, it was a great experience.

We also went to see the inimitable Maggie Cassella, a comedian who had us in stitches throughout her entire show. We had actually bumped into her in the street earlier in the day, when she asked us what we had planned for the night. When we told her we hadn’t thought that far ahead, she handed us a flyer and guaranteed us an entertaining night, and boy was she right! She immediately recognized us and referred to us frequently, calling us—the only male-male couple there that night—”(her) boys.” In proof of our everlasting bond, we are now friends on Facebook.

So while I’m still eagerly anticipating going apple-picking, drinking fresh spiced cider, and wrapping up in a warm blanket, please don’t think me anti-summer. It was full of time spent having a ball, with strangers telling us we were sweet instead of sick. I may have been too busy to post about it all until now, but they’re memories I’ll need come winter!

Try asking everyone if you can get married

A post on gay rights blog of change.org pointed me to this great marriage equality video from Ireland. Very effective, and it doesn’t even mention the fact a lot of people might say “no.”