One would think this is self-evident — that if we take the "Bible-way" argument to its logical (idiotic) conclusion it wouldn't be pretty. And it wouldn't be as funny as this parody.
Category Archives: Homophobia
Oh and by the way…
https://youtube.com/watch?v=03PnU27cWDs
…catchy little tune, huh?
Dissent
Lest the news of Proposition 8 be the ultimate buzz kill for today (which it sort of is), it's worth reading the opinion from California Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno, who was the only judge dissenting in today's 6-1 decision upholding Proposition 8. Moreno, who was actually rumored to be on Obama's shortlist for the open Supreme Court vacancy that this morning went to Sonia Sotomayor, had this to say:
In my view, the aim of Proposition 8 and all similar initiative measures that seek to alter the California Constitution to deny a fundamental right to a group that has historically been subject to discrimination on the basis of a suspect classification, violates the essence of the equal protection clause of the California Constitution and fundamentally alters its scope and meaning. Such a change cannot be accomplished through the initiative process by a simple amendment to our Constitution enacted by a bare majority of the voters; it must be accomplished, if at all, by a constitutional revision to modify the equal protection clause to protect some, rather than all, similarly situated persons. I would therefore hold that Proposition 8 is not a lawful amendment of the California Constitution.
It's nice to know that at least one Judge has his wits about him.
Proposition 8 contradicts California's equal protection clause.
News Flash: Gay Priest! …oh…nevermind.
It comes as no big surprise to hear of the memoirs of Archbishop Rembert Weakland, former Catholic prelate of Milwaukee, and his admission therein that he is a gay man. Imagine that?! A gay priest.
What a shock.
Meanwhile, down Miami way, Father Cutie (pronounced "cue-tee-ay" no matter how
cute he is) allows as how he's fallen in love with a woman, and "doesn't want to become the poster boy for anti-celibacy." Don't worry cutey. You won't.
We return once again, to the anti-sex of yesteryear…somewhere around the 16th century, when the Roman Catholic Church was worried about what was going to happen to all that real estate. Suddenly scriptural support for the celibacy of the priesthood was discovered….how conveeeeeeeeeeenient. Presto! No real estate problems. All the deeds stay with the church.
What is it that makes celibacy so desirable in a priest or a nun? Why is a lack of human, physical intimacy a recommend for spiritual superiority?
Once again the Roman Catholic Church's wisdom in the area of sexuality and human intimacy is reminiscent of the Roman Catholic Church's wisdom in the area of astronomy.
Which is to say: zero.
Bea Arthur – We Loved You.
I was sad to read that Bea Arthur passed this weekend. Over the years I've heard rumors that she was a Lesbian, and it isn't hard to believe. But I don't know it for a fact. It would fit, though, with my remembrance of this strong, smart, brave woman. I had personal history with her.
In 1976 I moved to Los Angeles from San Francisco, where I had just been "the naked guy" in Clint Eastwood's The Enforcer. I had no lines, but because I was required to be naked in the scene, I was given my Screen Actors Guild card, the holy grail for a budding actor. Much to my chagrin, you won't find me in the credits, but I'm the naked guy on the bed in the scene when the bad guy, whose being chased by Dirty Harry, falls through the skylight and crashes into the midst of a porn movie being shot. My mother was so proud. All I see when I watch it now is that I once had a beautiful head of hair.
But I digress…I moved to Los Angeles (as crew with A Chorus Line, another story), and, as is my wont, got involved with SAG union activities. I was serving on the SAG Morals & Ethics Committee in 1977 when Anita Bryant announced that she was bringing her pitiful, small-minded ignorance, intolerance and fear to California in the form of support for State Senator John Briggs' Proposition 6, the Prop 8 of the day, that would have forbid Gay people…or any of their supporters…from holding teaching jobs in California. Nice, huh?
I decided that the Screen Actors Guild needed to be the first industry union to come out against Prop 6, and that the only way to accomplish that was to get some big star power to appear before the Morals & Ethics Committee and demand it.
Enter Bea Arthur. Ms. Arthur had just made a splash in Norman 
Lear's Maude, and would receive the first of two career Emmy's (the other for Golden Girls) that year for her groundbreaking work as the title character. On television, there just wasn't a bigger star. And if the only role she'd ever played was Vera Charles opposite Angela Lansbury in Mame, she would forever be a star in my firmament, (and opposite Lucille Ball in the film even if Lucille Ball was miserably miscast).
But I digress, again…It was just about this time of the year that I sat down and wrote a letter to Ms. Arthur, outlining my idea. I mailed the letter and didn't think anything more about it. It was a shot in the dark.
Weeks later, May 16th was my birthday, and I was getting ready to go out on the town with friends. Literally, just as we were heading out the front door, the phone rang (cell phones were still a Dick Tracy fantasy…I could still decide whether or not I was going to stop and answer). I picked up, said hello, and heard the unmistakable, gravelly contralto of Bea Arthur,
"Is Bo Young there?"
"Speaking," I said, my heart pounding out of my chest, my wide eyes popping out of their sockets as I pantomimed to my friends at the door, who were wondering what was going on.
"Well hello," she growled on, "I just wanted to let you know that I received your letter and I wanted you to know I'll do whatever you want me to do."
To which I responded, with breathless gratitude, "Oh god bless you Ms. Arthur!"
To which she responded, "What's this 'god bless you' shit?…I didn't sneeze."
The surprise was finding out, later, just how shy a woman this powerhouse actor was. When I met with her she insisted that I write something for her to say when she came before the committee because she was sure she would become tongue-tied and not be effective. Maude. Not effective. Right. She did everything I asked, just as promised, to perfection. Reading my lines to the committee, which immediately came through with the required vote, which then went on to the larger Steering Committee of the Screen Actors Guild, which was the first industry union to oppose the Briggs Initiative. As a result I was brought into the campaign as "assistant state press secretary" to Sally Fisk.
Later, I had cause to call Ms. Arthur again, to see if she would appear at a fundraiser we were holding for No On Six. Unbeknownst to me, she had undergone a face lift just weeks before, and as a result her face was still puffy and black and blue.
She still had bandages on her face, albeit small ones…and she appeared at our fundraiser.
She said it was more important than what she looked like.
That's the kind of person Bea Arthur was.
We Mourn Again: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick 1950 – 2009
Is that a lovely face or what?…
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick was an American theorist in the fields of gender studies, queer theory (queer studies) and critical theory, which mainly means she was concerned with how many queer angels were dancing on the heads of academic pins. Influenced by Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, feminism, psychoanalysis and deconstruction, her work reflected an abiding interest in a wide range of issues and topics including something called queer "performativity"…whatever the hell that is…and performance; experimental critical writing; the works of Marcel Proust; artists' books; Buddhism and pedagogy. Academic polemic gobble-de-gook aside…she was a friend to the LGBTQ community.
Surprising to some, she was married for 40 years to her husband, Hal Sedgwick, a CUNY professor of visual perception (optometry), but apparently only saw him on weekends. She would also prefer it to be reported in that manner, i.e. she was married to a man, as opposed to assigning her the "straight" or "hetero/homo" categorizations (a too conveniently neat division rejected by Sedgwick.)
Sedgwick wasn’t a household name, unless you count the brouhaha over her 1989 essay Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl, which featured in many of the ritualistic first-kill-all-the-professors stories from our long culture war.
Sedgwick’s books, including “Between Men” and “Epistemology of the Closet,” were on the shelves of most of the graduate students and comp-lit survivors, Gay and non-Gay, queer and non-queer, back in the 1990s. She virtually invented the field, or at least brought it to new heights. My personal favorite was an essay entitled How To Bring Your Kids Up Gay: The War on Effeminate Boys. If that was all she ever wrote she'd be worthy of laurels, from the aeries of the academe and the mundane streets alike.
Sedgwick’s radical challenge to heteronormative ways of reading and living may seem quaint (if that’s the word) in a time when people are celebrating same-sex weddings in Iowa and the White House Easter egg hunt conspicuously includes Gay and Lesbian families. Perhaps the misty future evoked in Pace University professor of English and women's studies, Karla Jay’s review of “Tendencies” — one where Sedgwick would be photographed shaving fellow queer-studies scholar Terry Castle on the cover of Time magazine, à la Cindy Crawford and K. D. Lang — isn’t quite here.
But alas, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, one of the foundational non-Gay allies, won't be around to see that future. She died April 12 of breast cancer. She was 58.
Our sincere condolences to her family and friends. In an age of anti-intellectualism and religious mythopoesis run amok, we need all the rational, intelligent voices we can find.
Yank the Tax Exemption for the NY Archdiocese!
Would someone please explain to me… why the new, pinhead, Archbishop of the New York Roman Catholic Archdiocese gets to comment on specific legislation being considered in the NY State legislature? Specifically the bill introduced by the Governor for Marriage Equality.
If I am not mistaken aren't 501(c)(3) nonprofit, tax-exempt organizations specifically forbidden to lobby or act on behalf of specific legislation or candidates? Here's the relevant passage:
"An organization will be regarded as attempting to influence legislation if it contacts, or urges the public to contact, members or employees of a legislative body for the purpose of proposing, supporting, or opposing legislation, or if the organization advocates the adoption or rejection of legislation."
So if Archbishop Dolan…or any other church…follows through on this threat, shouldn't the IRS yank the New York Roman Catholic Archdiocese's tax exemption?
There are too many ways to count the ignorance (and make no mistake about it…they are ignoring reality in favor of dogma) of the Catholic Church and it's pointy-headed old men, but here are four things the Archbishop doesn't know about Marriage Equality:
1. There are few biblical verses that address homosexuality at all, and most of those are not directed at homosexuality per se. Opponents of same-sex marriage routinely cite seven verses in the Christian Bible as condemning homosexuality and calling it a sin. But when taken in context, these lessons speak not against homosexuality itself, but rather against rape, child molestation, bestiality, and other practices that hurt others and compromise a person’s relationship with God.
2. Jesus never said one word against homosexuality. In all of his teachings, Jesus uplifted actions and attitudes of justice, love, humility, mercy, and compassion. He condemned violence, oppression, cold-heartedness, and social injustice. Never once did Jesus refer to what we call homosexuality as a sin.
3. The Bible never mentions or condemns the concept we call same-sex marriage. Although opponents of same-sex marriage claim that lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender unions violate biblical principles, no verses in the Bible explicitly address gay marriage or committed same-sex relationships.
4. Those who claim a “biblical definition of marriage” as a model for today ignore various marital arrangements in the Bible that would be illegal or condemned today. The Bible is filled with stories of polygamy and husbands taking concubines. In accordance with the culture and laws of the past, women were often treated like property that could be traded or sold into marriage. Today we understand that these examples of marriage reflect the cultural practices of the time rather than a spiritual model for today.
The Gathering Storm
The response continues…
Response Ad to Hatred
A right-wing smear merchant, the "National Organization for Marriage" (!?) recently released a new fear mongering (if not over-blown and dramatic) ad against marriage equality full of lies and propaganda. This is by far the best response I've seen. The creator uses bits of the ads and snippets from the audition tapes of the actors for this commercial to reveal what a pack of lies this whole thing is. Bravo!
Julian Bond on Gay Rights
This is a little long, but well worth the investment of time:
It does not matter the rationale: religious, cultural, pseudo scientific —
no people of goodwill should oppose marriage equality, but oppose it they do. As we saw here in California last Fall. So we all have work to do in terms of education and enlightenment and at the NAACP, we pledge to do our part.
Now two years ago we celebrated the 40th anniversary of a case aptly called "Loving versus Virginia," which struck down anti-miscegenation laws and many, many years later allowed my wife and me to marry in the state that declares "Virginia is for Lovers."
Then, as now, proponents of marriage as is, wanted to amend the United States constitution. Introducing a constitutional amendment in 1911 to ban interracial marriage, Rev. Seaborn Roddenberry of my former home state of Georgia, argued:
"Intermarriage between whites and blacks is repulsive and adverse to every sentiment of pure American spirit. It is abhorrent and repugnant. It is subversive to social peace. It is destructive of moral supremacy."
Sound familiar?
Then, as now, proponents of marriage as is, invoke God's plan.
The trial judge who sentenced the Lovings said that when God created the races he placed them in separate continents. The fact that he separated the races showed that he did not intend for the races to mix.
Well God made plans for interracial marriage and he, or she, will no doubt do the same for same-sex marriage." – Julian Bond