Family Pride’s Blog

We’ve been speculating for some time about which state will be the next Massachusetts and recognize same-sex marriage. Of course, civil unions continue to crop up here and there, and Massachusetts’ same-sex marriages are recognized in Rhode Island and now New Mexico. Nonetheless, Massachusetts is still the only state that offers full marriage equality to its citizens.

So who is next? Vermont, back in 2000, became the first state to offer civil unions. Now, it appears that they are exploring same-sex marriage. Today, The Burlington Free Press is reporting:

Legislative leaders announced this morning that they have formed a commission to study how Vermonters feel about gay marriage.

House Speaker Gaye Symington and Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin said the commission will hold six meetings across the state and report back to the Legislature by the end of the April 2008.

“It is time to ask whether it is in Vermont’s interest to continue to maintain a separate legal status for same-sex couples,” Symington said.

Though marriage equality may be on the horizon for Vermonters, it’s certainly a distant horizon. With an April 2008 report date, it won’t be happening anytime soon. In the meantime, we’re doing more than keeping our fingers crossed. We’ll continue to work on the ground changing hearts and minds, building support for equality and making safer environments for our families.

There’s been a lot of talk about civil unions lately. In fact, civil unions have become very popular among democratic presidential candidates. Civil unions enable candidates (like John Edwards in the last debate) to say I things like gays should have rights but I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. Candidates have found civil unions to be a safer middle ground.

I realize that the climb to full equality is a process. But civil unions just don’t cut it for me. Greta Christina sums it up perfectly in her blog, stating:

There are legal reasons why they’re not equal — marriage is recognized in every state and indeed every country, while civil unions aren’t; so the rights and responsibilities don’t necessarily travel with you when you leave the state that granted them. There are emotional reasons — marriage is an institution/ ritual/ relationship that has existed for thousands of years, one that has tremendous resonance in our culture in a way that civil unions simply don’t. And there are moral reasons — as history has born out, separate but equal is pretty much by definition not equal.

Above all, marriage is the only currency of commitment that this country understands. I immediately think to hospital visitation rights. Would you trust a nurse or hospital administrator to interpret the rights that a civil union bestows? What about employers? According to Garden State equality, the equality organization for the state of New Jersey (where civil unions are the law), 1 out of 7 civil unioned couples is being denied partner benefits by employers.

The fact is, civil unions are unequal in every sense. I would like to think that history has taught us that separate is never equal.

But we’re making strides. Same-sex couples from Rhode Island who are married in Massachusetts are being recognized, and now New Mexico has followed suit. Yes, it’s a long climb to equality, but civil unions are not a rung in that ladder.

I came across an interesting Washington Post op-ed published on July 5th regarding marriage equality and the hysteria that it seems to cause. It’s true; opponents warn of slippery slopes, crumbling intuitions and the inevitable erosion of society’s very fabric. The more ridiculous of marriage equality opponents caution that women will be marrying monkeys and men will be eloping with emus. But of course, none of that actually happens. As the Washington Post article points out, let’s look to Massachusetts to dispel these myths.

Marriage equality was legalized in Massachusetts back in 2004. And no, “the sky isn’t falling.” In fact, life goes on as normal for most folks. The difference is this: the inalienable rights of thousands of LGBTQ couples are now recognized legally.

Despite dire predictions, the institution of marriage didn’t crumble under the weight of homosexuals seeking the rights and responsibility that come with it. The sky didn’t fall in Massachusetts. Nor has it buckled in the District of Columbia and the five states that offer civil unions or domestic partnerships to gay couples. Washington state’s domestic partnership law goes into effect next month. Oregon’s domestic partnership law and New Hampshire’s civil unions take effect in January 2008. Acceptance of gay marriage is by no means widespread. Marriage is restricted to one man and one woman by constitutional amendment in 26 states and by state law in 19 others. But the tide is slowly changing. Opinion polls show growing acceptance of gay rights.

Indeed, slowly but surely, the opinion polls are changing. Heart by heart and mind by mind, we are ensuring that this movement will be victorious.

Progressive movements always win. We can look back at women’s suffrage, civil rights, disability rights, etc., and a common thread emerges. Progress always wins. Because these movements are rooted in power and truth, there is no force strong enough to hold them back.

We may be out numbered and grossly out funded, but because equality is in inalienable truth rooted in our existence as a human being, we are unstoppable.

We are pleased to bring you this guest blog by Jim Johnson. Jim blogs at Straight, Not Narrow, where he advocates for GLBT equality in politics and the church.

If I hear one more right-wing zealot prattle on about “preserving the traditional family” I’m going to puke. Back in October, 2004, I learned once and for all what the word family meant, and it didn’t resemble the “traditional” model that some people believe is the anchor of our society.

My wife Bette passed away suddenly on October 11, 2004.  It was at that time, the lowest point of my life, that two gay men showed me what being family was truly about.

One of those gay men was my half-brother Michael. Our mother had worked very hard to keep us apart growing up, and it was not until her death in 1992 that we began to establish a loving adult relationship and started learning how to be brothers. Continue Reading »

The Boston Globe has great coverage of yesterday’s victory for marriage equality in Massachusetts. As many of this movement’s leaders have recognized, marriage in Massachusetts stands as a beacon of light for marriage advocates nationwide. If we had lost that fight, it would have been a demoralizing defeat. But we won. And we will continue to win–one state at a time.

And the reason we won is this: LGBTQ people in Massachusetts wrote, called and visited their legislators time and time again. They shared their very personal stories. They spoke of not being able to care for their sick partner in the hospital, of children who wanted their mommies and daddies to stay married, of pursuing the quintessential American dream: a safe, loving home and family.

Lawmakers heard them, changed their minds, and changed their votes.

Check out this article from the Globe: “Personal Stories Changed Minds”. It reminds me why I do the work I do each day for our families. I trust it will inspire you to continue being visible, sharing your stories, too.

To get hooked into Family Pride’s national speakers bureau, OUTSpoken Families, which trains individuals to tell their stories effectively to neighbors, friends, teachers, lawmakers, the media and more, visit our OUTSpoken page here.

Today, we celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in the case of Loving v. Virginia. Richard Loving (a white man) and Mildred Jeter (a black women) left their home state of Virginia to evade the state’s ban on interracial marriage. They wed in the District of Columbia in June of 1958. When they returned to Virginia, the couple was arrested and charged with violating the state’s interracial marriage ban.

Leon Bazile was the trial judge for the case, and issued the following statement:

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

The Lovings filed a series of lawsuits based on the fourteenth amendment; the case eventually made it all the way to the Supreme Court. Interestingly, many churches expressed their support for the Lovings and jumped on the bandwagon for social change (including the Catholic Church).

Exactly 40 years ago, on June 12, 1967 the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Lovings and wrote:

Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival…. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

Nonetheless, it wasn’t until 2000 when the last state (Alabama) officially lifted its ban on interracial marriage.

When reading the Supreme Court’s decision, it’s easy to see the overlap with the marriage equality movement. Today, 40 years later, we are still asking many of the same questions. If marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man, fundamental to our very existence” then why is it being denied in legislatures and court rooms across the country to our families?

To learn more about Loving v. Virginia, or to participate in today’s celebration visit the national Loving Day website. Be sure to check out the special Loving v. Virginia page on the Freedom to Marry website.

Rummaging through the Family Pride archives recently, I came across an undated “memorandum” put out by the Concerned Women for America, a radical right organization that routinely attacks LGBTQ families. The document is entitled, “Correct Terminology When Debating Homosexual Issues.” It’s good to know that as we work daily to expand protections for LGBTQ families through visibility, these people are looking for even sneakier ways to undermine our struggles and our very identities as LGBTQ people.

The document begins with the following paragraph:

Our choice of words can be influential to a reader or a listener. We are called to be savvy in our use of language in order to be effective. In Matthew 10:16, Jesus tells us to be ‘wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.’ Choose words carefully when communicating the truth in love.

The “memo” goes on to show two columns, YOU SHOULD SAY and YOU SHOULD NOT SAY. Here are some highlights:

You should say: homosexual. You should not say: ‘gay’ or lesbian.
You should say: so-called homosexual ‘marriage’. You should not say: ‘gay,’ or lesbian, or same-sex marriage. The public instinctively rejects ‘homosexuality’ and the activists know this, which is why they try to insert the less threatening words. When we call a spade a spade, we win.
You should say: homosexual lifestyle. You should not say: ‘gay’ or lesbian. Lifestyle signifies one has a choice in their behavior.
You should say: special rights. You should not say: equal rights or equal protection. Those who practice homosexual behavior already have the same rights as everyone else.

We, too, know that “our choice of words can be influential to a reader or a listener.” Interestingly enough, our choice of words is about dispelling the myths and correcting the misinformation regularly spewed by the radical right, as seen above. Ours is a struggle for greater peace and community, protections for loving families, respect and reconciliation.

This “memo” was sent to CWA members as part of a fundraising campaign, which just goes to show how money-hungry these people are. They could pack up and go home and nothing in their worlds would change. If we stopped fighting, they’d tear our families apart and send us back 50 years into the closet.

The top ten anti-gay organizations in the United States have a combined annual budget of 1 billion dollars. Their messages of hate spread far and wide. We’ve got to stick together as a community of LGBTQ parents and allies, ready to combat their harmful lies. To learn more about how we do it, check out Family Pride’s OUTSpoken Families Speakers Bureau. It’s a one-stop-shop for LGBTQ family advocacy–from changing the hearts and minds of your neighbors to preparing yourself to speak to legislators, reporters and more.

And don’t let the Concerned Women for America get you down. We’re going to win this fight. We have to–our families actually are at stake.

Thank you to our friend Evan Wolfson at Freedom to Marry for passing along this great opinion editorial titled “The Inadequacy of Civil Unions” that ran in last Thursday’s New York Times. It’s so good that we are going to reproducing it here in full.

A potentially groundbreaking legal battle over Connecticut’s exclusion of gay people from the state’s marriage law has catapulted the debate over same-sex marriage to a new level.

Appearing last month before the state’s highest court, a lawyer representing eight same-sex couples led a spirited attack on Connecticut’s refusal to grant gay couples the freedom to marry. He also challenged the notion that civil union laws — like those enacted in Connecticut, New Jersey, Vermont, and most recently New Hampshire — are a constitutionally adequate alternative.

The plaintiffs’ argument was laced with references to Plessy v. Ferguson, the U.S. Supreme Court’s notorious 1896 decision which justified racial segregation under a deplorable standard of “separate but equal.” Although startling, the analogy is apt. In establishing civil unions two years ago, Connecticut lawmakers created a separate and inherently inferior institution that continues to deny gay couples the equality they seek and deserve.

Connecticut would seem a particularly hospitable place to advance this equality claim. In addition to requiring equal treatment for individuals in comparable circumstances, and barring sex-discrimination, Connecticut’s Constitution explicitly forbids gender-based “segregation.”

State lawyers answer that the basis for the exclusion is not gender but sexual orientation, a category not covered by existing antidiscrimination provisions. That is true, but forbidding marriages when one partner is the wrong gender still adds up to sex discrimination. The state also asserts that the civil union law grants all the rights of marriage to same-sex couples, and any difference amounts to “a difference in name alone.” A trial court judge bought that argument and dismissed the case last year, saying the plaintiffs suffered no legal harm.

Saying a civil union is the same as marriage does not make it so. Civil unions are a newly invented category, neither universally recognized nor understood. Connecticut’s claim that the two terms are alike merely underscores the bottom-line question: Why relegate a minority group to a separate category?

The court case has helped stall this issue in Connecticut’s Legislature. But if the ruling goes against the couples involved, the Legislature will have a duty to revisit the matter. A law that allows civil unions but not marriage is preferable to denying benefits and recognition to same-sex couples. But no one should confuse it with equality.

It appears that early this morning a mass email was distributed to Massachusetts citizens titled “Urgent: Help restore traditional marriage in Massachusetts”. The email, penned by the radical right American Family Association, is in response to the upcoming June 14 vote in the Massachusetts legislature which will determine whether or not marriage equality will go to a ballot. This email states:

Massachusetts is the only state in the nation which legally condones and encourages homosexual marriage. If we can join together to defeat this radical agenda, it will send a strong message to our political leadership nationwide. You need to know that powerful forces, including the governor, attorney general, and house speaker are now pressuring your state legislators to vote against it. Take action…”

The email encourages donations, phone calls to representatives and forwarding the message of hate along to friends and family.

What can we do to counter this message? If you live in Massachusetts, visit www.massequality.org for an action center complete with legislator contact info and volunteering forms. If you don’t live in Massachusetts, let’s harness the power of our social networks and activate our community to stand up for equality. MassEquality is launching an aggressive multi-media campaign to get its message out. We’ve embedded one of the videos below.

Copy and paste the URL into an email and distribute it to your contact book. Link to the video on your MySpace page. Embed the video into a blog post and let people know what’s happening in Masschusetts. Let’s stand up for equality by standing up for Massachusetts!

Freedom to Marry is doing a great series on tax time and gay couples. Certainly, tax season is a less-than-enjoyable experience for all who participate - but, tax time is especially painful for gay and lesbian couples. With just four days (gasp!) until the tax day deadline, Freedom to Marry is using this timely opportunity to discuss the blatant government-sanctioned discrimination that gay and lesbian couples face. Tax season is yet another reminder of why civil marriage is crucial for our families.

Check out their series, and pay special attention to “day two” which discusses the impact of this discrimination on children being raised by gay and lesbian couples.