Pat Gozemba“Religion is far more of a choice than homosexuality,” quipped Jon Stewart to Governor Mike Huckabee on the December 9th Daily Show. Let’s remember that line. It stopped the erstwhile evangelical presidential candidate, Huckabee of Arkansas, cold.
And while I’m on Arkansas, let’s remember Arkansas is the state where voters just supported a ban on allowing unmarried (read LGBT) couples from adopting children or even becoming foster parents. Huckabee supported that ban and he continues to call homosexuality a choice. And his logic goes: if it’s a choice, it can be un-chosen.
Appropriately, Stewart asked the governor, “At what age did you choose not to be gay?” The governor had no answer. Stewart chided him, “You’re not being asked to marry a guy.” Huckabee’s response, a big old “aw shucks” smile.
Pushing his new book, “Do the Right Thing” (couldn’t Huckabee do the right thing himself and think up a new title instead of stealing Spike Lee’s), the very righteous governor trotted out the old canards against marriage equality. He recited the litany: anatomically gay couples are unfit to procreate, 5,000 years of recorded human history (back to the Old Testament) says marriage is between a man and a woman, and now 30 states have voted that marriage is one man and one woman. (Stewart pointed out that in 30 states more folks voted for McCain than Huckabee).
Stewart knows his stuff. He came back at the Old Testament’s moral authority by noting its support of polygamy and slavery. He pointed out that marriage wasn’t a sacrament until the Twelfth Century and that for a long time it was nothing more than a property arrangement. He wondered if Huckabee had thought about the prohibition of people of different races marrying. Huckabee just smiled, preparing to recite his next inane objection to marriage equality: the definition of marriage.
How could society change the definition of marriage, Huckabee wondered incredulously? Stewart had just pointed out that throughout history, the definition has changed many times. Non-sequiturs are standard operating procedure for the religious right. “They’re asking people to redefine the word,” Huckabee blustered. “They have a lot of work to do to convince . . . the American people.”
At his point, Stewart rose to eloquence on the self-righteous posturing about the semantic absolutism of the definition of marriage. “It’s a travesty that people have forced someone who is gay to have to make their case that they deserve the same basic rights as someone else. It seems like semantics is cold comfort . . ..”
In essence, Huckabee wants us to know: You’re a same-sex couple. You don’t fit the definition. Sorry, that’s the definition and the definition cannot change. Stewart’s forthrightness in arguing the case of marriage equality to an evangelical absolutist is an excellent primer for all of us who still have to argue for our civil right to marriage. And besides, he does it with such good humor. Take a look:
(Tip of the hat to Cathy Burack for sending the link to Stewart on YouTube)
Patricia A. Gozemba
For those who doubt the efficacy of nation-wide rallies like last Saturday’s about Prop 8, I have two words: Wanda Sykes. It was worth dragging thousands of us out from Honolulu to Portland, Maine to have Wanda Sykes show up at a Las Vegas rally and come out to the world.
Married for just 10 days before the Prop 8 vote torpedoed marriage equality in California, Sykes and her wife are in marriage limbo along with 17, 999 other couples. Hopefully Sykes’s public reflection on being in the closet will resonate with those in the LGBT community, still not ready to come out.
When Sykes told the crowd, “You know, I don’t really talk about my sexual orientation. I didn’t feel like I had to. I was just living my life, not necessarily in the closet, but I was living my life. Everybody that knows me personally, they know I’m gay. But that’s the way people should be able to live their lives. Now, I gotta get in their face.”
Yeah, Wanda, we all have to come out. We can assume that people who voted for Prop 8 didn’t know that you were gay. Maybe that would have shifted opinions. I can imagine a great 30 second ad with you and your wife. California could have used some gay people in their ads for sure. The elegant logic in “Wanda Sykes on Gay Marriage,” is a winner. “If you don’t believe in same-sex marriage, then don’t marry someone of the same-sex.”
Okay, Wanda, now that you’re out, I want more. You were right “our community was attacked” by the vote on Prop 8. Your logic, “We shouldn’t have to be out here demanding something that we should automatically have as citizens of this country.” Wanda, tell the world. Feel free to get in the face of those who don’t believe that you are as good as they are. It will make a difference. Everyone’s coming out does.
Last week, America voted for hope, not fear. For peace, not war. For love, not hatred. The election of Barack Obama represents what is best in the American spirit—fairness, equality, respect for hardworking people, a belief in a better tomorrow. It has been a long time coming. As Obama has said again and again over the last 21 months, America is a nation defined by its continued desire to form “a more perfect union.”
Unfortunately, for the LGBT community, voters who went to the polls in record numbers on Tuesday, voted their fears on the issues that matter to us most—respect for our families. We lost votes on marriage equality in three states: California, Florida and Arizona. And in Arkansas, voters banned unmarried couples from serving as foster or adoptive parents. This measure, clearly aimed at gay families, is perhaps the most damaging of this year’s initiatives in that it so blatantly carries the message that gay people are harmful to children.
A look at the election maps for California shows how the LGBT community blew it on Proposition 8.
First of all, we ran TV ads that did not include LGBT people and our families. Jonathan Rauch called us “invisible.” No loving families smiling at each other on their wedding day, at the breakfast table getting their day started, or at their kid’s soccer game. Instead we had straight people from parents to politicians talking about us. Isn’t that what went on before we all came out and spoke for ourselves?
Secondly we forgot to use simple addition in calculating how many African-Americans and Latinos would come out to vote for Barack Obama in his historic candidacy. With all of these folks at the polls, we really needed to prepare them with our view of how important marriage is. Instead of doing this, we allowed bigoted fundamentalist preachers in the Catholic, evangelical, and Mormon churches to psyche these folks up to vote “Yes on Prop 8.”
How did Prop 8 succeed in Los Angeles and San Diego counties? Dismal. These counties are predominantly people of color. They came out to break a hold on another privilege denied all of us, having an African-American President by voting overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. People who ought to “get it” about being denied civil rights voted to take away ours. They and people of color throughout the state did not vote to uphold our civil right to marriage. They never made the connection between our civil right and their civil right to marriage. We lost big-time in communities of color.
Did anyone on our “No on Prop 8”side, during the campaign, effectively remind people of color that until the California Supreme Court ruled in 1948 in Perez v Sharp that their marriage rights were limited? They could not marry a white person. The same court that granted people of color that civil right of marriage granted us our right to marriage. Did any of the “No on 8″ folks believe that deep organizing in communities of color was crucial? Did we believe that homogenized “No on 8″ ads would appeal to voters of all communities?
There is no question that the time of the campaign was short. But the lack of work that we have done in an ongoing way in communities of color came back to haunt us. We learned again the mistake of taking communities of color for granted.
Here’s what my friend and heterosexual ally Karen Rudolph, who coincidentally is married to a man of color, had to say about this:
“I think that we didn’t get LA and San Diego because of the larger African American and Latino populations. The next time around we have to focus on them. We need African American performers speaking in ads on Black radio stations. We need television ads with Black grandmothers saying how they want their grandchildren’s father to have the right to marry his partner. We need ads on TeleMundo in Spanish and Spanish language robo calls. This intellectual stuff in the English language didn’t reach those communities.”
Rudolph went on to say, “I think that we need to let people know that gay marriage doesn’t turn kids gay, that no one is recruiting, that no teacher is forcing children to approve of gay relationships. We need to let them know that no church will be forced to approve of the morality of gay marriage and no one will be forced to have gay weddings in their churches. If we don’t confront those slanders head on, we allow ourselves to be swift-boated.”
In 48 hours, a California minority group may lose an important civil right at the ballot box. Almost sounds Machiavellian. Certainly it sounds un-American. In an election that by all indications looks as if it will be historic in elevating the first African American to the presidency, mean-spirited and biased California voters can still show that all prejudice is not dead by voting Yes on Proposition 8 to eliminate gay marriage. Or a majority of California voters, led by their better angels, can uphold the California Supreme Court decision approving gay marriage and sweep aside homophobia along with racism.
As the November 4th election looms, same-sex couples in California are rushing to town and city halls to get marriage licenses and marry. California courts have determined that couples married before (or if) their civil rights are voted away will still be legally married. Another class of Californians will be created, gays who once had the civil right to marry as opposed to those who weren’t born at the right time, or in love at the right time, or . . ..
Approximately 16,000 couples have married in four and a half months.
What a mind-boggling situation these couples are thrust into because they are part of an apparently despised minority. Some folks like Focus on the Family, the Catholic Knights of Columbus, the Mormon Church, and clusters of other right-wing ideological groups have raised millions of dollars to convince Californians that some people do not deserve full civil rights. They are urging a Yes vote on Proposition 8.
In perhaps their most despicable moment, these Yes on Proposition 8 folks just sent a targeted mailing to African American voters indicating that Barack Obama and Joe Biden are also for Yes on Proposition 8. In response to the duplicitous direct-mail piece, Obama campaign spokesman Ben Bolt released this statement: “Senator Obama has already announced that the Obama-Biden ticket opposes Proposition 8 and similar discriminatory constitutional amendments that could roll back the civil rights he and Senator Biden strongly believe should be afforded to all Americans.”
What Obama and Biden have never said is that they are for marriage equality. Of course, that’s the stickler. They’ve said that they are for civil unions. Californians had that separate but equal solution and their high court said that it was not enough—just as Connecticut’s high court said a few weeks ago. There’s a lesson here about being for full equality—unequivocally. Nonetheless in this last minute showdown the Obama campaign has said it “opposes Proposition 8.”
Meanwhile gay and lesbian couples in California are rushing to marry while they still have that civil right. Let’s hope this last ditch ad by NO on Prop 8 helps. It says all the right things but I just wish that some of the political heroes had the guts to really be for marriage equality.
The right wing blogs have picked up a story by Mass Resistance activist Brian Camenker, in which he slams us for providing Courting Equality as a gift to all Massachusetts public high school libraries. He claims that this was a tax-funded effort. This is an outright lie. This effort was funded through a generous private donation to PFLAG!
But if Courting Equality can be used against same-sex marriage, it certainly should be used to support it. Let your friends, family, colleagues know about the Courting Equality video (www.youtube.com/courtingequality). If you know anyone in California, urge them to Vote No on Proposition 8 and to share the video with as many people as they can. Also, ballot referendums are taking place in Florida, Arizona, and Connecticut. Let’s get out the vote in favor of marriage equality, and keep the momentum going. Love Wins!
Thanks to our good friends at Two Rivers Circle Productions and Aboriginal Lens, the story of LGBT people winning marriage equality is now available in a 5-minute documentary video. Using the photos from our book, the filmmakers created a video that will warm your heart—and hopefully move the hearts and minds of voters on November 4. California film producer Karen Rudolph has already been giving the video to local activists fighting Proposition 8, the California ballot question that would eliminate the right of same-sex couoples to marry in that state. Please send the video link to your friends, family, and contacts in California, Arizona, and Florida, and encourage them to share it with those who don’t yet understand the importance of this civil rights issue. The photographs of families sharing their love–and fighting for their rights can’t help but move people along. As Ellen DeGeneres explained recently to John McCain, we just want to celebrate our love the same way that everyone else does!
Shortly after the Goodridge decision affirmed marriage equality in Massachusetts on November 18, 2003, Rev. Lou Sheldon of California mustered his troops declaring, “Massachusetts is our Iwo Jima.” Well, the Rev. Sheldon and his ilk lost that battle and now Iwo Jima has come to him in California—the land of sequels. Sheldon’s Yes on Proposition 8 folks are up against a powerful No on Proposition 8 band of Love Warriors—parents.
In Massachusetts our ground troops of families, religious leaders, and committed citizens willing to go out and speak with their neighbors, co-workers, fellow-worshippers, and anyone with a willing ear and an open mind won the day. Families of origin, the families we have created, and our families of choice played a huge role in protecting marriage equality and the constitution of our state. That’s the message that Karen Kahn and I brought to a MarriageEqualityUSA training session a few days ago in San Francisco.
One workshop attendee, Sam Thoron, wields a powerful weapon, love, for the No on Prop 8 campaign. Both Sam and his wife Julia are actively involved in PFLAG and are extremely proud of their lesbian daughter. Their commitment to equality for all of their children is unconditional.
Sam and Julia Thoron
“All we have ever wanted for our daughter is that she be treated with the same respect and dignity as her brothers—with the same freedoms and responsibilities as every other Californian. My wife and I never treated our children differently, we never loved them any differently and now the law doesn’t treat them differently, either.”
The mothers and fathers of LGBT children speak with a very compelling voice about their hopes for their children. With his wife at his side, San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, a Republican, sent seismic waves throughout California and the nation in September 2007, when, in an about-face, he delivered a very moving endorsement of marriage equality. Why did he do it? He believed that his lesbian daughter should have the same rights as everyone else.
Right-wing conservatives immediately pledged to unseat Sanders. But in June 2008 as weddings of same-sex couples began in California, Sanders was returned to office. Another Iwo Jima won by fair minded citizens.
What the conservatives did manage to do was get Prop 8 on the ballot which amends the state constitution and “Eliminates the right of same-sex couples to marry.” Thanks to Attorney General Jerry Brown for this forthright wording of Prop 8. The Lou Sheldons of the world wanted the language wrapped in the Bible, the flag, apple pie, and motherhood. In other words, obscure but sounding good. Few will be confused by what they are voting on with Prop 8.
For millions of LGBT Americans this vote in California is an Iwo Jima. Money is pouring into the state from Catholics, Mormons, and every other stripe of religious conservatives—all those supposedly pro-family groups.
I’m hoping that Californians will listen to the eloquent and passionate voices of the Thoron and Sanders families, the real Love Warriors, and vote No on Prop 8.
Equality is a core value in Massachusetts. More than two weeks have passed since our Massachusetts borders fell to the further expansion of equality. When Governor Deval Patrick signed the repeal of the 1913 law that prohibited out-of-state same-sex couples from coming to our state to marry, our state borders became more permeable and we are glad of it. At the July 31, 2008, signing ceremony, Patrick said, “the repeal will confirm a simple truth: that is, in Massachusetts, equal means equal.” More
Karen and I were excited to be on one of our favorite shows this week, GAY USA. You can catch us on the web or on a variety of Cable and Dish Network TV sites. See info below.
Pat Gozemba and Karen Kahn, co-authors and spouses
photo by Bill Bahlman
Hosts Andy Humm and Ann Northrop are terrific and it was a real pleasure speaking with them. Below is the message that they sent out to their list-serv subscribers:
We report this week on how Massachusetts has gotten rid of its last vestige of discrimination against same-sex couples, opening the state to gay and lesbian couples from elsewhere who want to marry there.
Our guests for our last twenty minutes are Pat Gozemba and Karen Kahn, authors of “Courting Equality: A Documentary History of America’s First Legal Same-Sex Unions” with photographs by Marilyn Humphries. They will tell us their story of witnessing and writing about the birth of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts and how they decided to get married themselves after being partners for 15 years. We will also show you a montage of photos from the book, which document the victory for same-sex marriage in the context of the historic movement for LGBT rights.
The Gay USA website and podcast are available at GayUSATV
“Gay USA” is seen in Manhattan on MNN on Thursdays at 11 PM on Time-Warner 34 and RCN 84 and simulcast at www.MNN.org channel 34/84. It is distributed nationally on the Dish Network (Ch. 9415) through Free Speech TV. Go to www.FreeSpeech.org for the schedule. The show now also airs on Saturdays at 11 PM on WYBE in Philadelphia.
Gay USA is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions in behalf of “Gay USA” may be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” online by credit card at www.fracturedatlas.org/donate/GayUSA
