Special Treatment Or Inequal Treatment?

http://thecollegeconservative.com/2012/07/13/gay-rights-above-all-else

http://thecollegeconservative.com/2012/06/24/commonsense-questions-about-the-registry-of-homophobic-acts/

With things like affirmative action still looming over our head in some form or fashion, it’s not unusual for people to think that minorities are getting special treatment by the government. This is especially pertinent and topical with GLBT people. Stories seem to indicate that there is a push in some segments of GLBT activism to force acceptance of homosexuals in political culture. These may be isolated in nature, but that sort of mindset is troubling to me, since I can see both sides of this argument. On the one hand, you have people steeped in traditions that oppose it or just have a lack of experience with GLBT people that inhibits understanding them as people with the same wants, needs and traits that straight people have. But then there are those that have been persecuted, isolated, ostracized and scapegoated as GLBT people by the majority and feel like they have to fight for their rights that much more forcefully in return. That sort of vengeful posturing might have some justification in the sense of being aggressive, but it can also send the wrong message about the community as a whole, both gay activists and straight supporters. There is a middle ground that should be publicized more. Combative language doesn’t make things seem more justified on the side that has more supporters but no defense for why they behave in such a headstrong manner. It’s not damaging to be enthusiastic about social justice and other associated goods in the world, but the methods we seek to attain them through should align with the values that are sought to be realized. Equality and tolerance demands equal treatment and congenial behavior towards even those we strongly disagree with.

Accusations continue to fly in this proverbial culture war that the GLBT community is being treated unusually well in America as of recently, “getting away” with things other people, like pedophiles, couldn’t ever do even in today’s more liberal climate. But GLBT people are not getting special treatment unless the government officializes a homophobic registry or otherwise passes legislation that would give them undue favor and protections. Simply having the option through a privately funded group is certainly iffy, but it doesn’t make disagreeing with homosexuals illegal and any hate crime legislation already has qualifications in place about imminent fear being how it can be prosecuted. A qualification between the culture being concerned about GLBT rights and the government being concerned is important, since the former is more grassroots in nature and the government’s organization and power being put behind something is a bit more direct, especially with the legal ramifications.

Some employees at colleges have been fired (technically they resigned, more likely) because of their refusal to counsel people who were struggling with homosexuality in a way that disagreed with their religious beliefs. The problem with this line of objection is that the college in question where this incident occurred was public, so one could argue this is a public accommodation issue in that you can’t claim your religious objections are grounds to deny service to someone or refuse to do your job consistently, such as employees of adoption agencies refusing to take requests from gay couples. There are times when firing someone merely because they disagree with a company about gay rights is questionable, but the company may very well have the right to do so if they are privatized. Gay rights should be a priority, but we should be civil to each other in advancing this cause. We shouldn’t treat the intolerant with further intolerance, but only their beliefs, which are not absolutely identical with them as a person, who deserves respect regardless of what heinous beliefs they hold.

When speaking about rights, we have to understand first and foremost that they are protected by the government, but not forced through legislation without justification. GLBT rights are not something we should determine through popular opinion if it stands to reason that the traits of GLBT are not malleable and essential to their person. Religion is protected due to the cultural and societal significance it possesses, even though it is quite easily adjusted with changes in convictions and new evidence and consideration. But sexual orientation and gender identity, while somewhat malleable, are not so changeable as to be regarded as a matter of caprice. We don’t just choose to be attracted to a certain sex, both or none, nor do we entirely choose our identities in terms of what society judges as masculine and feminine. Guarding them does not have to imply special treatment by any means, but it doesn’t mean we protect any so called right to be a bigot, especially if it involves treating those you disagree with harshly, unfairly or even as social outcasts when they don’t deserve it. Of course we have a right to disagree with people, but equality under the law should also mean we are treated equally as much as possible by the government, which means that disagreements are acceptable within reason. There should not be such divisiveness and negativity based on things we disagree with, since tolerance can be exercised without people contradicting their religious beliefs that see certain things as immoral or wrong. It’s better to treat people equally and not give special treatment that is unwarranted than to try to justify inequality in any sense when it can be done in an equitable manner. Protections extended to groups that are considered special cases, such as GLBT, races, etc, have limitations, but are not unjustified when the likelihood exists that they could be targeted because of their being part of that group by bigotry and prejudice. As tolerant and open as America is, it behooves us to protect citizens from hate crimes in order to truly be a free and just country. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

You Can't Boycott The Gay Away

http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/06/27/507005/abc-news-invents-fictional-anti-gay-oreo-boycott/?mobile=nc

The recent string of gay pride support from companies like Oreo, Pop Tarts, Chevrolet and the like has inspired anti-gay individuals to suggest boycotting the companies. And in response, supporters of gay rights have taken this suggestion to its most absurd and amusing conclusion: those people should boycott all companies that support gay rights in order to be consistent, which includes Facebook where they first started these protests. The question arises, of course, as to whether political involvement by companies is ever appropriate. It goes without question that limitations on political support and funding from companies are justified. But merely taking a general political position such as supporting marriage equality or the like is distinct in the same way that churches can hold such positions, but not directly support or oppose political candidates, as I spoke about in “Where Religion and PoliticsShould Not Cross”  This sort of qualification of the degree to which a corporation, like a church, can be involved in politics, which should fundamentally be done by the public, composed of individual private citizens, enables the political process to be as fair and objective as it can with so many voices coming together about the big problems, such as the economy and human rights. To outright prohibit that interaction of private groups in public affairs stifles what should be a free market of ideas. But there should be reasonable restrictions based on considerations of the relevance of those private groups to politics. Both church and corporation can have involvement, but economic prohibitions should apply as consistently as those on houses of worship And the involvement doesn’t mean that there is any attempt to force the issue on the buyers, but merely that the company’s ideals are in line with GLBT rights. One can still shop there without aligning politically with those beliefs. Economics and politics can be fundamentally separate in practice even if they can be lumped together in principle.

Any individual can personally disagree with something, but boycotting a company because they don’t share your views, especially on gay rights and such, is not only ridiculous in that the corporation is not forcing gay rights on you, but it’s also not going to change them unless you get a large enough group. Not that the group would be terribly large or have a huge affect on sales anyway. On the contrary, the evidence is pointing towards more and more people supporting gay rights.  And if you really want to boycott all companies that support gay rights, with a bit of research, you’d find there are more companies that support GLBT than those who are more “traditional”, such as Chik Fil-et. And boycotting them as a supporter of gay rights isn’t solving the problem either, since they’re inevitably losing business anyway. A better solution is merely to not be a customer without formally boycotting them. At times, this sort of practice is more beneficial than making a large political statement, though as civil rights in the past were threatened, boycotting those establishments who were the most egregious in violating those rights sent the right message. Simply supporting “traditional” marriage is not the same as treating GLBT employees unfairly, which would be grounds for boycotting justly. While corporations shouldn’t really get into politics, especially when it comes to funding candidates and the like, stating that you stand for basic civil rights for minorities like GLBT is not bad as long as it doesn’t become intrusive. A policy of neutrality is prudent, but at the same time, it can be a business venture, but also reflective that corporations are not just focused on profits, but people as well, so it can work for both aspects.

The economic and entrepreneurial aspect focuses on the likelihood of expanding your demographics. It isn’t just the GLBT community that you’re appealing to, but those who support GLBT rights, which is fast becoming more and more acceptable to one degree or another. It makes perfect sense to state in commercials that you support gay rights. It isn’t necessarily breaching any unspoken ideas about whether companies should speak about these sorts of things. It’d be one thing for companies to start funneling in exorbitant amounts of money to radical gay rights groups (if there are any) in the same way if Chik Fil-et was funneling money to particularly mean anti-gay groups. But merely saying they offer their name in the quest for further advancing GLBT civil liberties isn’t excessive by any means. Just as other companies would have a right to make an advert saying they support the traditional family, it wouldn’t bother me. It just means they’re really hoping that the social conservatives are going to buy their stuff in lieu of many social liberals choosing not to. Either way, there’s a business risk, but that’s what you do in such situations; you gamble.

But companies are not just about advancing in the business world, but also existing in a world of people with feelings, with basic needs and a responsibility on the part of a corporation to not be greedy, but merely covetous of profit and efficiency. The notion of virtuous egotism seems contradictory with a common ethic in American culture rooted from Christianity, which is about selflessness and essentially sacrificing your ego for the advancement of a greater good. While this can be beneficial in a particular setting, it is not absolutely forbidden to be interested in one’s own good alongside being concerned for the welfare of others. One should not coddle or provide excessively for those in need, for this makes them complacent and not motivated to work for their own profits. With companies, this is a matter of moderation. Individuals can become greedy within a company, but that should be restricted as well with principles of self control and not seeking out money at the cost of those under you. The idea that they can be replaced or outsourced is not only callous, but can be considered fairly un-American in the sense of not granting jobs to those who are willing to take them in the very country your company exists. To not give those jobs to the skilled and those who even want to creates a sense of hopelessness and even could encourage the unmotivated to seek more government welfare to provide for them in lieu of gainful employment. In that sense, providing jobs and even being charitable are not signs of any sort of weakness or flawed economic logic, but simply a way everyone can benefit in some sense, though not equally, but within the means of each individual and group associated with them. Families, communities, companies, the interactions are sometimes unrecognized, but are as important as the predictions made for each quarter.

While the controversy of gay rights may eventually become a thing of the past and accepted by a majority of the world’s population, or at least the U.S.’s, corporations have their own responsibilities to consider in relation to minorities even as they progress to greater acceptance and tolerance in society. To help those less fortunate in charitable ways is a method that has been used for a fair amount of U.S. history, at least since the post Depression era. Advancing the cause of social justice by offering one’s influence and voice within the public sphere is another way. Just saying you support gays and will not turn them away is encouraging a tolerant and progressive America without giving special treatment. Keeping political involvement as a corporation to a minimum; that is, sticking to issues instead of candidates and in general instead of partisan terms, can allow a business to be encouraging of the political process, but also be considerate of the public citizens who are the true source of change in the country, not those with the greatest profits. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Both Biology and Psychology Matter

http://thecollegeconservative.com/2012/05/25/anatomy-matters-period/

Even today, some of the biggest barriers we have to break down are those strict dichotomies between sexes and genders. The idea of males doing feminine things or vice versa still makes us uncomfortable, even if we have no problem understanding varying sexual orientations, since those are understood in our minds as inborn and immutable. But there is still a strong tendency to believe that our genders are conditioned and even determined by our assigned sex. If we have male or female genitals, we commonly, almost automatically, identify with masculine or feminine gender stereotypes and behaviors. But this isn’t so rigidly true, even if many people tend to follow this pattern, which is referred to in gender studies as “cisgender”. Anatomy and biology do not absolutely determine one’s gender identity or psychological makeup in terms of gender roles or enjoyment of perceived masculine or feminine activities that conflict with their assigned sex and associated gender. Our perception of ourselves as male/masculine, female/feminine, transgender, etc is a combination of many factors, which I’ll give at least a cursory investigation into, though I’m certainly not well versed in the vast amount of studies that exist in this likely growing discipline.

It’s important to continue advancing the distinction and nuance of the terms “gender” and “sex”. Gender used to be considered identical to sex in common parlance, even on surveys, but this was before psychologists began to distinguish between our biological sex and genitalia, such as the penis, testes, vagina and ovaries for obvious differences between the sexes, and our psychological state and perception, which reflects socially constructed ideas about what constitutes masculine and feminine behavior and tendencies. Intersexed people or those with what are called ambiguous genitalia are potentially more prone to having confusion about their sex, not to mention their gender. The problem people with otherwise normal genitalia have is the conflation of our biological sex with our psychological gender and otherwise using gender in the mistaken sense of sexual characteristics instead of what can be shared in some sense by both males and females. Males can do feminine things occasionally and even identify with the feminine gender from a young age and vice versa for females in regards to masculine things. This does not mean these people are insane or destructive, but merely that they have a disordered relationship between what people identify them as in terms of what I would call sexual gender, those physical traits that we distinguish as male and female; and psychological gender, those ideas that group us into what are commonly a binary of male/masculine and female/feminine, though there is always room for inclusion of third gender understandings, not entirely female or male, but almost androgynous. It doesn’t have to inspire fear or such negative emotions in us, but merely open up our perspective to the diversity the human condition has in terms of our ideas about what constitutes men and women, as well as what is feminine or masculine, or even if these binaries make complete sense in today’s changing world.

There are a lot of terms to throw around related to the study of gender as a whole, but for the purposes of discussion, I think it’s best to simplify this to a few key ideas: gender identity, gender role and transgender. Gender identity is one’s personal concept of gender, both psychological and biological. There is a wide spectrum of genders in society, some including not only a third gender, but genderless and androgynous ones, among others. One’s gender identity is something that is conditioned in part by society’s expectations of oneself, but also chemical and physiological traits that one is born with unknowingly or without a desire to change. A man may have a higher pitched voice than normal and vice versa for a woman’s voice. These create a variability with how one is approached. A higher pitched voice for a mature male is not considered masculine and a deep voice for a woman is similarly so. With this in mind, these individuals may begin to consider whether they are strictly male or female as a whole. This doesn’t even cover the entire topic that could be devoted to intersex and sexually ambiguous individuals who have gender confusion primarily because of how genetics worked before they were born in one form or another. This topic applies to those people who had a sex assigned to them at birth, but feel that does not adequately describe them or fully encompass what they are as a person who is both a body and a mind in or out of synch with each other.

Gender roles are related to gender identity in that the former are at least partly informed and motivated by the latter. Whatever one’s personal sense of being a man, woman or other gender is, this effects what kind of behavior you will do, which may or may not fit with social norms of what is considered masculine or feminine, since a common, though not strictly so across the world, structure is a binary one where the two genders have some overlap, but some actions and habits are not considered feminine at all, such as having a career and choosing to not have children for a woman in this day and age. A man or woman crossdressing is still considered something abnormal and even aberrant, but it isn’t so cut and dry. It doesn’t even mean the man or woman in question is homosexual, but that they understand and express their gender in this way. They certainly don’t intend to hurt people; this may explain why many times they hide this practice from family and friends, for fear of conflict rejection, and ostracism. But this sort of behavior is hardly so damaging that we should treat those who do it as lesser people.

Being transgender is a variable identity, since it exists on a sort of spectrum, ranging from simple dissonance of one’s assigned sex and one’s gender ideation as a whole to even rejecting the binary entirely, identifying with both sexes and genders. Some might call it special treatment if you allow transgendered individuals to use the opposite sex bathrooms, since it gives them privileges without them deserving it, or some variation of a claim that they are abusing the system. It is not unjust or unfair to permit someone who identifies as the opposite sex to use the opposite sex bathrooms even if unisex ones are available. The concerns of rape are unfounded if we interpret that the people who have severe gender identity disorder are not taking advantage of the permission, but simply trying to integrate into society as a person of the opposite sex, sometimes because they are required to do so for a year in order to be approved for a sex reassignment surgery. Crossdressers are not afforded the same privileges, however. Being transgender in the sense of wanting to change one’s sex to match one’s overall sense of self as a person is not on the same level as dressing as the opposite sex for reasons that don’t reflect the same level of need for accommodation. It’s not even remotely unfair to say a crossdresser who is not trying to live as the opposite sex and gender cannot go into the opposite sex bathrooms as if it is normal. Unless you are crossdressing for that previously stated purpose of sexual integration, then it is not the same category of consideration legally.

Of course there will be distinctions in one form or another about what is manly or womanly and those who stand out may be ridiculed or singled out. But we shouldn’t be ashamed of these people, but proud of their diversity and uniqueness in a world where people are far too often uncertain or pressured into their gender identity and roles and treat those who differ with some measure of contempt or disinterest. We certainly shouldn’t be negative towards a group of people who have a great deal to offer in terms of culture and psychology, since they do not take their anatomy as the only means by which they see themselves as a person, but they look inside. We shouldn’t condemn those who are different, especially if they aren’t hurting anyone but those that are insecure themselves because they aren’t willing to admit their own uniqueness. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

It Gets Better With Both Time and Action

http://thecollegeconservative.com/2012/05/01/it-gets-better-unless-you-disagree-with-dan-savage-2/

Dan Savage is fairly well known in the popular GLBT culture and community. He’s a very controversial figure to boot, going so far as to coin a term related to anal sex with the surname of former Senator and Presidential candidate Rick Santorum. He’s also put together more condonable advocacy for gay teens in the form of the “It Gets Better” project and writes a column syndicated in many newspapers for sex advice called “Savage Love”. His advocacy on gay rights stems in part from being raised traditional Catholic, which has an especially strong opposition to homosexuality in practice. Allegedly, Savage is a bit skeptical about monogamy, which has brought some issues from other gay rights activists, likely because it reinforces the stereotype of gay people being promiscuous. He’s also been noted for supporting the use of offensive words in a positive light through his column, such as faggot, in a similar way that queer and gay have been in the last 50 years or so. Nonetheless some activists find this objectionable, which seems a bit backwards to me in that he’s not taking it offensively if it’s already recognized that he’s gay and it’s used as an identifier.  Recently at a high school speech he made, many Christian students walked out as he called for people to ignore the “bullsh*t” in the bible regarding gay people. He also made a statement about those that left, calling them “pansy-assed” for not being able to take criticism when they could easily be called bullies themselves for calling homosexuality a sin and being insulting to their fellow classmates that might be gay. This isn’t the first time Savage has made verbal attacks at people, but this one cuts closer to home in that he’s directly involving himself with anti-gay proponents and engaging them on a level that many, myself included, might consider a bit immature. Fundamentally, the man seems fairly civil, but he does have a temper that flares up from time to time, which he has a problem with controlling. But his general intent is still reasonable in that it directly brings Christians, one of the main advocates of anti gay bigotry and discrimination, to the forefront, and makes them recognize that they are being hypocrites if they can’t take even a bit of abuse and direct criticism from the minority they persecute in one form or another. 

Not all Christians bully GLBT people, but when they stand by and do nothing about it, they are making themselves partly as guilty and responsible for not trying to change how GLBT individuals and groups are treated by believers in Jesus. Gay Straight Alliances in high schools are discriminated against and gay students are verbally and physically bullied and little seems to be done about it, to the point some of them commit suicide, which is what Dan Savage is trying to avoid with his project. Christians aren’t expected to necessarily agree with homosexual marriage or homosexual acts, but treating even homosexual attraction as a disease or dysfunction is not helping gay teens and young adults understand what love is. If you have a child or a family member who thinks they might be gay, listen to them. Don’t dismiss their confusion as a phase or rebellion, but take it seriously and try to figure out why they feel this way. Is it recent or has it been a pattern for a while? Perhaps the child isn’t gay, but bisexual, but perhaps they are gay. If this is the case, you have to be prepared to accept it in one way or another. But don’t ever push them away to try to save yourself the insecurity of coming to terms with someone you love happening to be attracted to people of the same sex. Raising a child is never easy and coping with your own problems is a good step to do before you start considering children. Otherwise, you risk putting more stress and problems upon your offspring as you raise them with your own warped sense of right and wrong. It’s far better to accept your child for what they are if there is no evidence they can change that quality. Behavior that can be molded and shaped in some form or fashion is different. Being male/female, gay/straight/bisexual, transgender, etc are not things you should fault your child for or make them feel distressed about. If it’s a problem to you, then it is not something to take out on your child, but work it out yourself.

While supporters of GLBT rights and equality shouldn’t insult people, beliefs and traditions are not subject to the same limitations. If people cannot take criticism of their belief systems for the heinous things they bring forth or try to do something about it, then they shouldn’t engage in debates with people about something that is still fairly polarizing politically and religiously. There is a fine line to walk between insulting individuals or groups in terms of their personal identity that are immutable qualities and insulting things that are quite mutable, such as political or religious beliefs, especially if those convictions defame a person based on immutable characteristics, such as sexual orientation, skin color, sex, etc. It’s one thing to insult beliefs and bigotry as horrible and reprehensible things, but to call those who hold them such a thing goes too far in not treating those whom you want to be equitable and compassionate to others with that same equity and compassion. If you’re insulted by such people that oppose gay marriage, kill them with kindness, I say. Even a bit of humor can make things less tense than they’d be if you try to talk reasonably with people that don’t think reasonably in a situation where their social norms are being threatened by an imagined enemy of progress. 

Dan Savage’s methods aren’t perfect, but they aren’t absolutely useless in being confrontational to people that think every supporter of gay rights is going to roll over and take abuse like a saint. Some people will get angry, some people will be emotional, but those feelings should be tempered with peace and self control. I can be incensed at the hatred and ignorance people spew towards those they either claim to love or don’t know from the person sitting next to them on the train, but I shouldn’t stoop to the level of those I oppose unless I can back it up with a sincere intent to help people. Sometimes people should be left to their own devices, but direct action can make change if the situation is ripe for it, if someone is willing to consider that they might be wrong or that their position can be softened a bit. Treat people with a mixture of yin and yang, mind and heart, deliberation and intuition. Gay people do not deserve to be treated like sub humans, but they don’t need attention brought to their differences all the time either. If they are regarded as equals, then people’s positions on them may change from what they perceive as those who feel entitled. It’s a give and take method, but you can’t keep taking without giving something back. Hatred should be returned with not only passive love, but active love, tough love. And that’s what Dan Savage does. Until next time, Namaste and aloha. 

A Conservative Approach to Gay Marriage

http://www.newsweek.com/id/229957/page/1

I started my blog too late to lament the issues regarding the passing of Prop 8 in California in opposition to the legalization of gay marriage in that same state, but with a 3 month old article from Newsweek, I rediscovered what I thought was a well written and thorough argument for justifying the acceptance of gay marriage in a conservative political worldview. Of course, many conservatives would denounce the writer and have done so based on their own way of thinking that promotes what I view as less than fair minded and reasoned consideration of the Other in relation to what is allegedly a Judeo Christian mindset, where as I recall the Other is not to be excluded or marginalized, but welcomed and cared for to the benefit of a larger community. Admittedly this call is not always viewed in the same way, but when you start denying a certain minority group the same rights that you give the majority, it becomes alienating to those same people and they feel they must distinguish themselves in progressively more extreme ways.

The first point the writer puts forth is probably one many conservatives may not consider at first. If marriage is indeed a conservative value and supplants what is commonly a larger value of family and community, then the fact that gay and lesbian individuals want to get the status and appellation of marriage to their relationship would seem to suggest that conservative values are still demonstrably popular in this country. There are those that denounce the institution of marriage, but even in relation to my last post on how the institution of marriage has aged awkwardly, I would agree it has value as a form of social cohesion and uniting people to be concerned about things apart from a narrow group interest. No institution is perfect, and there will always be some room for improvement in order to make the principle of equality actualized in the practice of the institution itself.

In marriage’s case, one step towards further affirming what is in the Declaration of Independence, that all men [and humans by association] are created equal, would be to extend the institution of marriage to those that happen to be gay and lesbian. To try to argue otherwise about equality strikes me as what I observed with Mike Huckabee. Just because gays are not in the American “ideal” of families having kids, raising them to be straight and perpetuate the meme of marriage implying a connection to childrearing (when it doesn’t) does not mean they should be treated as less and given discriminatory terms to describe what their relationship is. Marriage in terms of etymology doesn’t even imply that it is strictly a male/female coupling, though it does seem to suggest that originally it was little more than an exchange of property and a giving of something to another. Equality doesn’t imply one has to agree with the practice of homosexuality or condone it or even see it as morally permissible according to alleged divine laws, but it does suggest that you should treat those people with the same respect you give to those within your own group. Even though they are strangers in your land, I recall in the Biblical narrative that the ancient Israelites were strangers in Egypt and then were made strangers in their promised land of Canaan. Therefore, the admonition to treat strangers with hospitality rings very true in regards to the alleged Judeo Christian origins of marriage (even though they may be much older than that). To ascribe less than equal treatment in relation to marriage seems to me unfair and to any fair analysis of the Constitution as against its principles of a group of otherwise different people uniting together for the purpose of creating a free and equal society where people are not treating unjustly because of things that are beyond their control or are intrinsically part of their identity in most cases (religion and sexual orientation both involving some amount of choice, though both can be a matter of compulsion as much as volition).

With marriage being both a civil bond on the one hand of secular considerations and a sacred unity on the other hand in religious considerations, this does create something of a difficulty. But this only comes about if you make the argument that all religious rites and services must be equally recognized in a civil or state context. No one recognizes a priest as a priest in regards to the state; they are only officiated and made so by the religious organizations themselves. And even if one chooses to have a marriage ceremony in your church, this should be no reason for the church in question to hold the final authority for what marriage is considered or whether the marriage itself is legal and binding under the civil and secular law, in principle considered apart from religious advocacy. Marriage’s traditional association with religious sacrament does not imply it should only be considered in that context. On the contrary, it should be considered as an all encompassing institution that crosses barriers that exist between people: religion, race, ethnicity, and even sexual orientation. It doesn’t affect my desire to get married if two gay men or women want to get married. Heck, it wouldn’t affect me if one man and 3 women wanted to get married. The principle I desire is equality and moderation of such a widespread institution, not whether it is convenient for the majority that doesn’t want a minority infringing on their supposed rights to solidarity in their age old tradition of man/woman only marriage.

The arguments against gay marriage are noted by the author to be quite mistaken. The argument from tradition doesn’t work by the same reason that the argument from authority doesn’t work. Just because it is a longstanding tradition to lynch African Americans, Jews, homosexuals and the like does not make it right or even justified to keep around. Tradition is a persistence of a cultural practice and only exists as long as there is a majority that agrees it is correct. In short, it is contingent upon popularity and when its popularity fades, so does its applicability. Not that popular opinion is universally applied except in a moderated fashion within the representative democracy system we use in voting. The majority does not get unquestioned dominance over the minority it was victorious over. In fact, in a sporting fashion, the victor is gracious and does not oppress the loser in any sense, and in fact congratulates them for their strong effort in competition.
The other two arguments can be lumped together under the suggestion that if gays get married it will negatively affect straight marriage and the associated values it has, such as family and procreation. Even from my own opinion alone, I see no reason to imply people are so superficial that they will stop getting married or be less motivated to have children just because two people of the same sex get together in the state of marriage (which I must emphasize does NOT imply having children or even having sex for that matter). I know I’d still love my future partner even if I knew gays and lesbians would also have the right to love their partners and share property along with the other associations that come with marriage as an act of sacrifice and unity in the same instance. Just because other people can own a car doesn’t reduce the value you place on your own, does it? Nor does other people being free and able to get the same job as you with the right credentials and experience reduce your enjoyment and merit you find in that same job. We’re told to share things as equally as possible as children and then when we grow up we start becoming attached to such abstract concepts as “traditional marriage” and the “sanctity of family” that we forget that marriage and family are evolving “traditions”. Do people really and sincerely think that a family has to be just a mommy and daddy and associated children? It can be two women or men that are sisters/brothers or lifelong friends, it can be grandparents, it can be uncles or aunts, and it can be the state foster child system even. With the idea of family being so diverse in even its very essence, let alone the accidental manifestations that can occur with tragic events like losing your parents in a plane crash or parents being incapable of raising you, it’s hard to suggest two males or females that love each other and want to raise a child cannot be considered a family just because they happen to have sex a different way or may very well not feel the need to have sex in some cases (as mentioned before). Not to mention I see no reason why I would be deterred from wanting children just because two people that cannot procreate happen to be married. Maybe it’s just the reasonable part of me realizing that marriage is a primarily unifying event and institution, not a free sex and/or children card. Sex can be done responsibly by cohabitating mature adults and children can be raised by otherwise unheard of people. Either of these instances does not reduce the importance of sex as a procreative act or a unifying act between people committed in marriage nor does it suggest children should not be adopted by couples that are either unwilling to have children or unable to in some cases. Differences do not make things incorrect; it is willful misuse to the detriment of others that creates things that are wrong and otherwise evil. Until next time, Namaste and Aloha.

Mike Huckabee on GLBT

http://www.aolnews.com/story/huckabee-likens-gay-marriage-to-incest/984268?cid=10



Well, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard Mike Huckabee referring to gay marriage as equivalent to incest or polygamy, but now I have an article to tear apart piece by piece with every quote noted. And apparently he’s a potential candidate in people’s eyes for the GOP in 2012, out of 193%, I might add. (Yeah, apparently Fox News has special math skills)





But let’s focus on his rhetoric for why gay couples shouldn’t adopt and why we shouldn’t give fair and equal treatment on the great “tradition” of marriage. He replies to why gay couples shouldn’t adopt that “children aren’t puppies”. Well, I’m glad he knows the difference, but I fail to see what the point of such an obvious distinction is. He’s making more equivocations by the second; now all gay couples are like kids who want a pet and don’t realize the responsibilities. I can’t speak for any gay couples, but I seriously doubt they’re so immature that they’d just want a kid to fit in, though some might think that’s a reason these days. Though his quote might also indicate he thinks that gay couples would treat a child like a pet, which is equally silly. But I guess he’s mostly afraid they might “turn” the kid to *gasp* homosexuality. As if that’s more than a drop in the water in the long run.

He then proceeds to suggest that not every group’s interests should be accommodated. Initially this is something I might agree with until he qualifies this by saying that we should only accommodate groups that are in what he calls “the ideal”. Now I can’t imagine what he means by that, but I’d have to guess Protestant straight middle/upper class conservatives. But why would he want that? That sounds suspiciously elitist in that he just wants representation of only the groups that he thinks are worthy of it. But couples that just want to adopt kids but happen to be two men or two women in a committed relationship are not in his “ideal”. He only wants majorities, not any pesky minority he’d have to support. The bigger problem here is that he assumes accommodating someone equates to agreeing with them. I can accommodate the practice of praying before Congress meets and the Christian majority’s very existence (in the form of churches getting tax exempt status for instance) to an extent, but that does not mean I agree with them or am in line with them on many policy issues. Similarly, Huckabee doesn’t have to agree with gay marriage, but if he supports any conservative values, such as the limits on the government to not legislate morality for the country, then he will have to swallow his pride and accept that gays eventually will adopt, if only because less and less people are intolerant of them. Incest and polygamy are on a road I won’t discuss here, since my primary focus is on the man’s bigotry towards what is demonstrably a harmless group with few ill effects on society.

He asks an obviously rhetorical question about gay marriage in the vein of "Why do you get to choose that two men are OK but one man and three women aren't OK?" Well, first off, something being OK doesn’t mean it has to be the majority practice. Not everyone practices missionary position only, and just because there are people that are so sheltered they only perform one sex position doesn’t mean that they’re not OK; they’re just different. And likewise with gay and lesbian couples: they have sex in different ways (and like some straight couples, don’t even view sex as necessary to their relationship) but that doesn’t suggest they’re not ok; again, they’re just different.

He then shifts the burden of proof on gay marriage activists to prove gay marriage is successful, while apparently just begging the question from the start that it doesn’t matter, since they’re not the same as straight marriage. "I don't have to prove that marriage is a man and a woman in a relationship for life," he said. "They have to prove that two men can have an equally definable relationship called marriage, and somehow that that can mean the same thing.” There’s just 2 problems here: 1) Yes you do have to prove marriage is only a man and a woman in a relationship for life, because you make a positive claim requiring proof and clearly marriage wasn’t always the case even in so called Biblical times (the woman was for all intents and purposes property in the time of Abraham for instance) and 2) They could prove it if you stopped purposely sabotaging any attempt they have by automatically judging any deviance as failure from the start. Just because a gay couple is not as popular with people doesn’t mean it can’t work in both principle and practice. Continuing to perpetuate the idea that any abnormality justifies exclusion is only further alienating people that can’t always change what makes them abnormal in people’s eyes (including what sex they are aroused by). Sometimes people just have to look past the surface.

He notes that the country should not "legitimize immorality," although frankly legalizing rape or murder is hardly something any self respecting legislator would do. Gay marriage is hardly agreed to be immoral, thus it is not something that can be presumed to be such. If you interpret a sacred text to say otherwise about gay marriage or homosexual behavior, it does not give you the right to say the country should follow your group, even if it’s in the majority. Otherwise I’d probably be scared for my life since they’d have legislated some policy that suggests I’m less than human because I don’t have any belief in God or have abandoned my church and as an apostate deserve death or exile.

I don’t even need to quote him saying homosexuality is aberrant, unnatural and sinful since that already presumes too many things from the start about how psychology, biology and ethics work. The last thing he says that I’ll quote is suggesting that the government should isolate AIDS patients from the general public to quarantine "carriers of this plague." So then why don’t we just put away everyone that’s HIV positive too if you really don’t like AIDS and believe it’s some sort of “gay disease”? But he’d find out it’s not a gay only disease even if he got his wish to ostracize AIDS patients from the public. Not to mention AIDS isn’t even remotely like the plague. The plague was transmitted through fleas and is bacterial, while AIDS is transmitted through mainly bodily fluid contact and is viral. Please do a little research on immunology before you start suggesting that AIDS is going to kill the world, Huckabee, when it isn’t.

As frustrating as this is, it is something of a relief to find that fewer people seem to agree with Huckabee’s ideas in practice, even if they agree that homosexuality is somehow “bad” or “wrong”. The notion of seeing GLBT people as irreparably damaged or so deviant that they can’t be considered as equals of other individuals in society disgusts me. The fact that I spent time probably every day of the week with GLBT individuals in college made me realize that there is very little different about us in terms of humanity. To bring up the Aristotelian distinction, it is only in accident that we are different, not in essence. We both suffer loss, we both feel happiness and we both seek purpose, all part of the human nature. But I (to my knowledge) only get off on the opposite sex, and they either get off on the same sex or both sexes. And that difference doesn’t bother me, because of one obvious reason: it doesn’t affect my sexuality as to what theirs is. They want tolerance and understanding, not bigotry or willful ignorance, which is little different than stupidity. So if you have a Gay Straight Alliance or some similar group at your high school, college or in your community, go to a meeting. Just talk with them, no preconceptions, just talk with them as a fellow person. Maybe you’ll see things you didn’t think were there before. Until next time, Namaste and Aloha.

Give a Damn About GLBT

http://tv.yahoo.com/blog/true-blood-star-anna-paquin-uses-surprising-medium-to-reveal-sexual-orientation--1126

As hard as it is to keep up with every idol’s sexual orientation, or lack thereof, the revelation about Anna Paquin being bisexual is not what surprised me in the videos for the website http://giveadamn.org, promoting sexual and gender equality. Lady Gaga saying she was straight was what stunned me, though I admit my so called “gaydar” is terrible. In the advertisements in the link at the start, the equality is advocated for LGBT people who are discriminated against in the workplace, in public, even threatened with violence against them just for something that is innately part of them, like their race or their fingerprints (though admittedly some would say that both are fluid today with plastic surgery or the technology to remove fingerprints from your digits). Not to mention the persistent debate regarding the degree to which environment affects the development of sexual orientation and such in relation to how much is genetically predisposed in physiological and chemical processes. But regardless of where you stand, it seems reasonable and fair to care about people’s sexual orientation, even if it’s not to the same degree as others. No one’s asking for people to be interested in every facet of your sexual nature or praise you for being straight, gay or otherwise. But knowing that a person happens to be attracted to the same sex, opposite sex, both, or none does help with improving human relationships. If you know these things, you’re less likely to make a person uncomfortable with an advance that is undesired and likewise with people knowing that they shouldn’t make unwarranted advances on you.

Disagreement about the moral permissibility and nature vs. nurture arguments aside, the GLBT community is a minority and as I recall, protection of minorities against the majority’s dominant hegemony in culture is a particularly American ideal. So why would one insist that a certain minority doesn’t deserve consideration or fair treatment because you believe they can “change”? Seems a similar reason why slavery going away only made people demand that blacks needed to “go back where they came from.” Once you start granting protections to a minority, people’s protests go to the level of trying to eliminate the group in one form or another. The Matthew Shepard Act’s passing was a catalyst for people to justify more extreme measures, saying that they are being denied some right to protest or being forced to tolerate the existence of something their particular deity views as an “abomination,” Except there is no provision within even the Constitution to form any kind of vigilante militia or to go on some crusade because someone happens to be protected by the government from being lynched, persecuted or assaulted (physically or mentally) by people that feel strongly about such an issue. Similar to the murder of George Tiller, there is the possibility you take both an issue such as abortion and your own beliefs regarding the ethical permissibility of that issue’s continued protection so seriously that you will override the sanctity of life you hold so dear and insist that some people have lost that attribute by their own actions. It is important to care about these issues, though the degree to which you do it is central to how the issue will change. Killing or hurting others because they disagree with you or vice versa doesn’t motivate anyone to real change. It compels people to continue to act based on fears, on paranoia, on dysfunctional thinking about the world in general. So please “give a damn” about GLBT, but don’t damn these people from the start. Give peace a chance, as John Lennon said, before he got shot. I certainly hope more death isn’t necessary to make this issue more important than it is today. Until next time, Namaste and Aloha.

James Conway and Gay Straight Segregation

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/03/26/marines.gay.housing/index.html?hpt=T2

This will be a shorter article, but I could not resist writing some commentary on this issue that has come up in relation to the changes being put in place with DADT by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Recently, the top officer in the Marines, James Conway, has advocated that new barracks be made for homosexual officers, so that straight marines won’t have to share rooms with them. This already smacks of the intent behind segregation in the 50s: that even if you kept people separate, you were giving them equal treatment and not denying one group rights that the other has. But like segregation with blacks, if you are making such a large problem out of gays and straights cohabitating, it begs the question why such ideas haven’t been enforced in other areas of life, like college campuses, particularly state funded ones. Not to mention that separating people into groups based on appearance and other aspects of life is only good in the abstract, not the concrete. Public services and basic civil rights as such should be equally given and shared by all humanity, which was the reasoning that led to segregation eventually falling away.

But if the issue is about trust, then why shouldn’t college campuses do the same thing Conway is arguing? Because college campuses appear to be more informed and understanding of the complexity of such an issue. If I had had a gay roommate for example, I wouldn’t have had a significant issue apart from what would be a similar issue if one cohabitated with a roommate of the opposite sex. Just because there is such a possibility does not mean the people in question cannot confront this issue face to face, talk about it and come to an agreement that does not favor one over the other. While my gay roommate would understand that I don’t see his sexual orientation as anything immoral, I would think it reasonable that they accept that I’m not gay myself and thus would not want any unwarranted sexual attention that would be indistinguishable from sexual harassment.

With such an institution as the military, the idea of self control is reasonably assumed to be part of training. By association, it is hardly irrational to suggest to recruits that while you may disagree with gay and lesbian people and their sexual orientation that there is no reason to deny them the same right to serve one’s country; and that there is also no reason to fear them living in the same barracks as you. The same issue was confronted no doubt when they were thinking of letting women serve in the army, though admittedly gender separate housing could be said to be more reasonable in terms of such an area as the army. But co-ed housing would hardly be completely out of the question. The army is not like college, however, so my comparisons are questionable to begin with, but the importance of such a claim from a senior officer can’t be ignored. Passing the adjustments to DADT policy won’t change people’s opinions so easily on such things as allowing gays to cohabitate with straight people. That will be another thing entirely. Until next time, Namaste and Aloha.

The Future of Don't Ask Don't Tell

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/03/25/military.gays/index.html?hpt=T2

The development on this case has been a persistent interest of mine. This is especially relevant considering that while I do not have an interest in serving in the military in any form or fashion, I do see it as a necessary function of equality that it should extend to the military as well as in other areas of life. While Defense Secretary Robert Gates is in the majority, the fact that other senior members within the military have misgivings on this suggests to me that this won’t be an easy process. But the adjustments seem like they’re moderate and not excessively inclusive in the acceptance of homosexuals in the military. The alterations to the policy are primarily on who can instigate inquiries or expulsion within the chain of command as well as what will constitute accurate and trustworthy information on said inquiries. Gates’ focus on reducing the disruption and polarization within the ranks is particularly promising, along with the note of concentrating these efforts to those on the front lines. The repeal of the DADT policy will have many hurdles to jump, but the first should be getting the idea across that there is no reason to think that just because a fellow member of your unit may have sexual feelings or attraction towards you, a member of the same sex, that they cannot exercise self control and focus on the task at hand. To think otherwise is to discriminate against those in the minority having same sex attractions in contrast to the majority that, in the case of those of the opposite sex, have the same responsibility to prudence and abstinence as those who happen to be gay or lesbian.

I can’t say there’s much more thought on my part on this, since the development is a step in the process that, unlike the present health care issue, has not made a significant jump in progress, due no doubt to everyone’s concern more about their personal insurance rather than the well being of those that are fighting in one way or another to protect the security of said people worrying about their insurance. Not that I’m saying there is anything intrinsically wrong with self interest, especially if the intent is socialist in wanting to extend your self interest sympathetically to others in a similar or greater state of need that are unable to provide for themselves in extreme situations. But in such an issue as this, GLBT or straight, we should be concerned for those serving in the military that are afraid they may be discharged for admitting such a simple thing that is only different in accident, not in essence, from a similar admittance from the majority of recruits; that is, what sex you are attracted to and/or get arousal from. If we didn’t know such a thing, it would cause more problems overall in military protocol, etc. For example, what if there was sexual tension between a male and female that distracts them from a mission or a similar situation with two males or females. It is good to know these things about your fellow recruits in the military, but it is not good to then say that they can’t serve alongside you just because they happen to be biologically constituted in such a way that they create a different conflict within the ranks than simply what inevitably occurred with allowing women in the army. It’s a bridge you have to cross, however difficult it may be to admit you have to move on. Until next time, Namaste and Aloha.

Jesus Loves The Little Children (Except If Their Parents Are Gay?)

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/colorado-catholic-school-kicks-student-lesbian-mothers/story?id=10043528

http://www.coloradodaily.com/cu-boulder/ci_14682284#axzz0iykXRdZu

http://www.fatherbillsblog.com/

http://www.boulderpride.org/documents/StatementfromtheParents.pdf

I know this is quite late in response, but its importance has redoubled in recent weeks. As you can see, I’ve tried to look at this from both sides as well as I can and yet I still cannot agree with the decision on the Bishop’s side. This is for a number of reasons, the most obvious involving my own previous enrollment at a local Catholic school in my own area. Which I hardly remember, since I went to mass two days a week at the school and yet also went to a Protestant church on Sundays. And my parents will tell you of an incident (not a huge one, methinks) where after the children’s service with the minister, I crossed myself out of habit and apparently the congregation was a bit stunned. I can’t imagine why they’d be so stunned, unless they were so sheltered and willfully ignorant that they just didn’t know there was a Catholic school two towns away. There’s no excuse besides a pathetic idea of community solidarity that keeps a group of otherwise reasonable people from acting normally when a child raised Protestant and yet going to mass during the week makes the sign of the cross out of a behaviorally induced habit.

But there’s a whole other problem with Catholic interaction with non-Catholics in the community. I was accepted into this Catholic school, since according to the website they accept other faiths, but if it’s anything like the school in Boulder, it stipulates that the parents accept a few points: 1) their child will go to mass during class hours two times a week and 2) the parents will not object to the Catholic mission of the school itself. My parents didn’t have a beef, since it was a good education. The issue stands though that the church in Boulder is cherry picking what is an issue. The justification hinges on the idea that if you are raised by gay or lesbian parents then you will be “confused” and you will think that your parents are bad because the teacher says so in confirmation class or some such nonsense. But I would think they can excuse such a thing as long as the parents are not in a direct conflict with the Catholic Church itself. Being GLBT and Catholic is one thing, being GLBT and protesting the Catholic teaching would be a different thing entirely. The parents in question are incredulous, and for good reason, because their two children had been going to this school for three years and there had been no problem. But apparently once a child goes into kindergarten, then the GLBT-Catholic issue comes to the foreground. I can’t imagine why, since I don’t remember learning anything about Catholicism as a child that wasn’t erased from my mind in consistently going only to Protestant services afterwards. The sign of the cross, the taking of “Eucharist” instead of “Communion”, and maybe the funny collars that I remember seeing the priests wear were the only things that probably stuck, minus the crossing which I probably never did again unless I was at mass.

The argument from the bishop himself continues in the vein that he is defending Catholic teaching along with protecting the children. There is no reason to argue on that point if this was about parents that argued that there is nothing in Catholic teaching against GLBT, which they weren’t. In fact the parents are both baptized Catholics and one was raised in Catholic school consistently. If the school let the kids go to the preschool for three years while knowing their parents are lesbians and thinking to yourself “Hey, isn’t that against Catholic teachings?” and then deciding when they’re going to kindergarten, “Nope, we can’t have that,” then they’ve already shot themselves in the foot. I don’t see how there’s a large difference between preschool and any grade afterwards. The obvious answer though would be confirmation, which usually occurs around the age of reason, which most churches put around 7 or 8. I’m surprised they didn’t start confirmation classes around 3rd grade, which for me would’ve been around the corner. But if that’s the case, then I would think Catholic schools would only have a problem admitting children of GLBT couples around that age. Beforehand, I don’t see why it’s an issue. Even if they teach that marriage is between a man and a woman, the child can distinguish that the Catholic Church can be right in one sense and yet their parents still love them and that “God” loves them as well, even if they’re different. Wouldn’t the Church perform a dual rejection of the child and the parents, where both the child and the parents are not allowed to associate with the Church until they “change their ways,”? Instead they seem to suggest that the child can’t go to the school and yet to my knowledge they don’t have a problem with the child or their lesbian parents taking communion. If they want to apply this universally, they shouldn’t have allowed me into the school, since I would just be “confused” by the Protestant teachings that I was raised in on Sundays. They can allow that “heresy” to continue, but a gay/lesbian family is somehow worse; except it’s not. The hairsplitting of mortal or venial sins only makes one reject the theology all the more in that it tries to micromanage such a thing that’s to be taken on faith and yet can be explained rationally to the point where the wall of mystery comes up. Even if this situation changes, I doubt it will matter, since the point would stand. Catholics have the right to discriminate about whatever they can justify as against their teachings and yet also have a duty to ignore people in contradiction of the faith as well in the spirit of tolerance (not acceptance). And yet here we have them accepting the family in communion and mass and deciding that they can’t allow them into the school, even though the children have been baptized in the Church. Why alienate the child from the school when they already feel a part of the faith community? Just a Colorado Catholic thing, I suppose. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

How GLBT and Marriage Have Aged

http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/wayoflife/03/17/gays.aging.problems/index.html?hpt=T2

While I have not had much personal experience with elderly GLBT people, I had no idea there was such a discrepancy in terms of dispensing such a thing as healthcare and spousal benefits. While a domestic partnership is supposed to be different only in degree from a marriage (or a supposed civil union) to my understanding (along with common law marriage), it would seem that it does not afford many benefits or general advantages that a marriage does. If one’s spouse dies in military action for instance, there is no providence within federal standards to give pensions to the bereaved. Similarly there is disparity within Social Security and Medicaid in terms of benefits for spousal care. I could point out the various inequalities in the overall economics of benefits given to heterosexual married couples over same-sex couples that are in domestic partnerships; but my primary issue within this blog entry is to consider how the issue of gay and lesbian elders suffering problems in healthcare, nursing homes and the like connects to the problems of the system of marriage itself today, to both straight and gay couples.
The issues with being either a gay/lesbian couple that is “married” in the loosest sense of the term or being a “straight” couple cohabitating for an extended period are identical with the present state of marriage as an institution. Not only is there the dual validation with marriage through a church (though I believe this is not the actual officiating ceremony or document) and through civil process (which officiates the process through the proper papers), but there are the aforementioned differences that come through various tragedies that can affect both gay/lesbian and opposite sex couples. A spouse can die in military service, a spouse can be stricken with a sudden crippling illness, or the couple can both pass away and issues of inheritance become a labyrinthine task to proceed through. As long as you are “married” and have that official title (which according to the majority of states and countries is only granted to a couple that is a man and a woman) you are given benefits that begin to appear more like discrimination and less like acts of compassion by the state (that in a socialist worldview has a responsibility to provide for the less fortunate those things they cannot provide for themselves).

This leads me to a general conclusion that it would be better for everyone involved in the institution of marriage if it was first and foremost changed so that only civil marriages were recognized in the U.S. This would only be a start to the issue, since even in a system where marriages are only legally recognized when performed by a civil servant and not a priest who is somehow considered the same (which is patently absurd), there would be arguments that push the ideology that marriage is only between a man and a woman. Without confronting this outdated notion of what marriage is, it would continue to be a system that denies benefits deserved by same sex couples that are instead given only to “traditional” couples. It is, unfortunately, still not possible to have same sex marriage in France, where the status of marriage has been altered where only civil weddings are recognized by the country in what is called laicite. It is still argued that the civil code only allows for marriages between a man and a woman to be recognized. Therefore, the primary issue is about the definition of marriage itself and preventing it from becoming a relic of archaic culture. Even if the U.S. by some stroke of fortune alters the status of marriage to exclude religious ceremonies as binding (which is highly unlikely in the state of America’s religiosity at present), one would still find the same problems cropping up as to how to define marriage. And contrary to the insistence from such groups as Focus on the Family, it has already changed drastically and will continue to do so. In so defining, we should be primarily concerned with the implementation of the law in principle and not be so legalistic to stick to exactly what the law says when it was commonly formulated in a time when there was little idea of minority civil rights or of women’s suffrage. If America is a country of liberty and justice for all, I don’t see why we should ignore that guiding principle in the Constitution and make liberty and justice apply only to the status quo. Socialist, anarchist or otherwise, I am not advocating that marriage as an institution should be eliminated. If anything, marriage should be defined in a more flexible fashion and more importantly, should reflect the will of the people that is commonly advocated and yet often ignored. Why shouldn’t the state follow the will of the governed in such an institution where the governed are the primary recipients of the benefits associated with the process itself? Or does the state know what is best for marriage itself, even though the state is hardly married to anything in the first place? Unless marriage is made a fluid term, likened to how it has become in many other countries in the world, we will no doubt fall behind, if only in terms of allowing for the pursuit of happiness for those under the Constitution.

GLBT In H.S. Prom=Educational Distractions?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_lesbian_prom_date


I didn’t go to my high school prom and if anything similar to this incident happened at my own high school, it would’ve made me that much less motivated to go. A lesbian teen asked the school to allow her to bring her girlfriend in a tuxedo to the prom in order to get around a prohibition in the rules that required the date to be the opposite sex. Though that may not have been her intention it seems a reasonable compromise to at least conform to some outdated idea of gender roles and have one partner wear male clothes to the prom. But instead of the school rejecting her request and returning her money, getting back the prom tickets and solving the problem without a big ruckus, they CANCEL THE PROM ENTIRELY. I don’t know what the administrators could be thinking when they are quoted as cancelling the prom "due to the distractions to the educational process caused by recent events." Because a lesbian couple distracts from the educational process in Mississippi more than it distracts anywhere else, it seems. We had a gay student at my high school and we’re not exactly in the most enlightened area of Tennessee ourselves and there was no issue in terms of him being at the school, let alone coming to the prom. But I seem to remember he came alone; or he may have transferred because of similar issues with prom rules that exist in our own district.


The point comes across negatively in that the administration seems to think that just because two women who are romantically involved come to a prom, albeit in gender divided clothes, it will distract from the educational process; even though the high school educational process that they no doubt speak of isn’t at a prom in the slightest. One has to wonder why they allow the “distracting lesbian” to even go to the school if she is such a problem to the prom. Though a bigger question remains as to how a prom getting cancelled or having a lesbian couple attend it would even affect educational process. The students must be that focused on whether everyone at the prom is paired up male and female that when the prom has one female/female couple they just can’t focus on their work because their latent homophobia is flaring up. Or they just think a prom is more important that getting an education in general. Not to mention the students are focusing some resentment towards the girl in question, since she supposedly “ruined their senior year”. Yeah, because a prom is what makes your senior year important: not the graduation ceremony and wearing the caps and gowns and being supportive of your fellow students for working hard. No, I suppose that whole process of getting the diploma is bollocks compared to dancing in a crowded room to bad music with hormonally challenged teens trying to get into the fairer sexes’ pants afterwards. Must be my imagination to think students favor a prom over graduating itself as the exemplar moment of their high school years.


The aftermath of this incident suggests that the ACLU is still pursuing the lawsuit against the school for violating the student’s rights. And the school’s suggestion has some merit; that is, allowing a private sponsor to hold the prom in lieu of a public school funded one.And according to the lesbian student she’d probably be excluded from that function as well, since it’s an old generation with money that doesn’t agree with GLBT in general. But one has to wonder why they even bothered to use school funding to sponsor a prom with a rule that they knew one GLBT student could violate with their same sex partner which would they cause them to inevitably cancel the prom entirely. Any student continuing to gripe to the teen in question must have too myopic a standard to consider their fellow student’s feelings about something that they didn’t want to ruin for everyone. One same sex couple at a high school dance shouldn’t rock the boat so much that the party gets cancelled. Students getting exposed to such a thing at their age is part of a larger educational process that the school alleged was being affected. There are going to be minorities in the real world that you don’t agree with, so you should get used to tolerating them even if you don’t agree with them. But this is Mississippi, so I’m not holding my breath that this is going to change anytime soon. Even if the ACLU’s lawsuit succeeds, the school may just elect to their idea of making a private prom instead. And if that occurs, the girl should just move on, in my opinion. This whole incident isn’t worth holding a grudge against inbred Podunk retards that think that two women or men having a committed “Biblical” relationship is still an abomination or some such rubbish. Move on and leave the state if necessary; real friends accept you as you are, as an individual who can change and progress in the world. Real friends don’t bitch at you for happening to love the same sex and wanting to go to the prom like other high school students.

Not Straight? In My Military? Sure, Why Not?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100223/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_military_gays;_ylt=Aj1bOZFAxjXBJQMrFTzMro.s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNoZHRpbHVwBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwMjIzL3VzX21pbGl0YXJ5X2dheXMEY2NvZGUDbW9zdHBvcHVsYXIEY3BvcwMzBHBvcwMxMARwdANob21lX2Nva2UEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yeQRzbGsDY2hpZWZzd2FybmFn

After waking up quite late and checking Yahoo News, I found a compelling story to mull over. The gist of the article is that the Chief Officers in the various subgroups of the U.S. Army are less than enthusiastic over the President's goal to repeal the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. Part of this no doubt has to do with tradition and general army deprogramming of certain interpersonal relationships (such as tolerance of explicitly different people: race, creed, sexuality, etc.) But the primary issue does seem to be practical for the motivation of the chiefs to advocate a slow process of change. With the U.S. in two wars (I thought we were in just one, but two sounds about right) the change of allowing openly gay people or gay people at all in the armed forces would apparently be difficult to implement.

Now, I understand these guys are uncomfortable about the whole idea of having GLBT people in service of the traditionally straight or nonsexual groupings within the army. And I realize they're probably in my parent's generation, who still refer to GLBT with such euphemisms as "a little funny" or "overly feminine" or the lovely one that's still around, "queer". This only makes me realize the idea of change would probably have to wait until they're all replaced or just have a moment of realization that gay people are just like everyone else and should be treated as such.




The implementation of change would no doubt cause even people that are within my own generation that serve in the army some unease. But somehow I doubt that just because there are people serving alongside you that "play for the other team" in a manner of speaking, that you can't swallow your pride, suck it up and stop whining to God about it and do the primary job you signed on for, protecting the country and the ideals it stands for. And isn't one of the primary ideals of the U.S. that oft quoted set of rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? If all the majority of straight men and women in the military can suppress their sexual desires, then what makes you think the GLBT can't do the same thing? Misinformation, superstition and other forms of self deception, that's what!