Maryland vote for marriage equality especially sweet for this black gay man

I'm not from Maryland but Friday's vote advancing marriage equality coming from the House of Delegates there was a sweet victory for me because of what happened last year.

Last year, they didn't even call a vote, particularly because some African-American delegates attacked not only the notion of marriage equality, but lgbtq equality in general:

Delegate Emmett Burns: The Fight For Marriage Equality Is Not Akin To The 1960's Civil Rights Movement Because "Those Who Are Gay Can Disguise Their Propensity": 

If same-sex marriage is to be equated with the movement that I know, then, if you will, show me your Birmingham, Alabama where high-pressure water hoses were turned on us so powerful that it knocked the bark off trees just because we wanted our right. If you want to compare same-sex marriage with civil rights as I know it, show me those who had their homes invaded by the Ku Klux Klan at night and burned down their homes and businesses and churches and lit firey crosses on your lawns because of same-sex marriage.
[...]
I am a black man, an African American. I cannot choose my color, nor do I wish to do so. Those who are gay can disguise their propensity. [emphasis added]

While these comments were vicious on their own, I wasn't naive to not know who encouraged those delegates to say these things - the National Organization for Marriage.

Playing the black and gay community against one another is a tactic the organization has mastered in many places from Maryland to New York to North Carolina. Taking the guise of the character Iago in the play Othello, NOM does a venomous whispering game in the ears of black leaders, claiming that gays are trying to piggyback on the struggles of African-Americans.

Last year, I remember how NOM bragged about these statements made by those delegates, like an arsonist who sets a fire and then dances in the middle of his chaos. I also remember how angry and hurt I felt. Not particularly as a gay man, but as a black gay man. The games NOM played in Maryland last year makes it difficult for lgbtqs of color to come out to our own community. But does NOM care? Of course not.

The vote to pass marriage equality by the same Maryland body who rejected it last year was blessed proof that evil only triumphs for a season but good has a way of coming back.

Unfortunately, Maryland still has a long way to go to fully pass marriage equality and I am sure that NOM will play that game it did last year to impeded the progress.

So in anticipation, I am reposting what I wrote after last year's defeat in hopes that someone - anyone - particularly African-Americans living in Maryland will read this and not allow themselves to be played by an organization who doesn't give a damn about them:

From one black man to the black community - stop the homophobic madness!

March 14, 2011

During last week’s legislative session in Maryland when lawmakers were pondering the idea of gay marriage, a few black lawmakers took the time to not only criticize gay marriage but also the notion of lgbt equality in general.

We’ve all heard the hurtful sayings before - “you can’t compare gay rights to black civil rights because you can hide being gay,” “gays and lesbians were never oppressed in the same manner in which blacks were oppressed,” etc., etc.

It would be an awful generalization to say that all in the African-American community have these beliefs. In Maryland many African-Americans, including Baltimore Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo, publicly supported marriage equality.

However, statements voiced by some Maryland lawmakers unfortunately stand out and not in a good way. In answer to these comments, I could go on about the many lives either crippled and lost at the hands of gay bashers like that of Matthew Shepard, or the wholesale genocide of lgbts by the Nazis in German, or the suicides of lgbt youth such as Tyler Clementi, or the present day usage of junk science by religious right groups to demonize the lgbt community.

But why bother. I’ve reached the point where I hate having to do it.

It’s sad how no one ever talks about how this tug of war between the African-American and lgbt community over equality can negatively affect us lgbts of color. For me personally, it’s an awful psychological rending, a forced dividing of myself into two halves which have no business separating in the first place.

And as a gay man, I especially hate it. I hate the idea of us lgbts having to put the history of our oppression on some sort of display. I hate the notion that lgbts are put on a witness stand where we have to list how many times we have been beaten, disrespected, or denied our basic humanity in order to somehow prove our “worthiness.”

It always leaves me wondering are the scars of the lgbt community deep enough? Is our humiliation painful enough? Have we shed enough blood to suit those who would judge on us on those things?

Don’t get me wrong. I am all for understanding the aesthetic differences between the African-American struggle and lgbt struggle for equality. But there comes a time when we must recognize the folly of this constant struggle over whether the two are similar.

And that time is now.

It distresses me to no end that on the subject of lgbt equality, some African-Americans are taking on the guise of those who oppress them.

Those who oppressed (and continue to oppress) African-Americans have the belief that somehow blacks are inferior and will never measure up. Therefore they figure that black people are not deserving of certain basic rights. What’s more awful is how they use the Bible to justify their discrimination.

Now, it seems that some African-Americans have told members of the lgbt community that their suffering is inferior and will never measure up. And therefore, the lgbt community are not deserving of certain basic rights. And guess what? They too use the Bible to justify their discrimination .

It’s a nasty, stupid game. And those who choose to play it should know better.

Being oppressed is not a status symbol. Being oppressed is not a mark of achievement. It should never be used as a pedestal to somehow judge whether or not a group of people are “worthy” of being treated like basic human beings.

Not that it will make a difference in the minds of the people who choose to play this game, but some of those same lgbt scars belong to African Americans. Some of that lgbt pain and humiliation comes from African-American hearts. And some of that lgbt blood shed at the hands of homophobic monsters come from African-American bodies.

And that is the saddest thing about the entire mess. When some African-American leaders rag against lgbt equality, they fool themselves into thinking that they are speaking against hedonistic upper class white gay men sipping fancy cocktails in a ritzy bars.

But that notion is so far from the truth.

African-American leaders who speak against lgbt equality are stabbing their own people in the back - the young black lesbian kicked out of her home for “acting like a man,” the effeminate black gay boy constantly picked on by bullies, the older African-Americans lgbts left adrift and rendered invisible by their own black community, and all of the other assorted black lgbt brothers, sisters, cousins, nephews, nieces, and close friends not given the courtesy of simple public acknowledgement.

And while these self-righteous black leaders may claim that they don’t mean treat their own people in this manner, their pathetic mea culpa don’t mean a drop of water in the bucket to those like myself who have to deal with such things on a constant basis.

Through their barrage of hurtful comments, these black leaders foster a rejection of African-American lgbts like myself, thereby telling us that we are not a genuine part of the black community.

And that hurts.

Whether folks want to admit it or not, the African-American community is linked to the lgbt community, and not just by those who us who belong to both groups. Our oppression is sometimes similar and the folks behind it are sometimes the same entities.

The majority white-led and populated religious right groups who exploit this tug of war between the African-American and lgbt communities are quick to be the so-called protectors of the civil right movement's legacy but render themselves conveniently invisible when issues like socio-economic inequalities in minority health and education pop up.

And that's not by accident.

However, we don’t recognize this because we forget to treat each other with dignity and respect. And because some of us become victims of inaccurate assumptions - be they religious, racial, or otherwise - which deceives us into thinking that the scars we bear due to hate are badges of honor and exclusivity instead of reminders of what we must never become.

Some African-Americans need to be forewarned. Ultimately this battle over lgbt equality will become less about gay rights and more about the soul of the black America.

At the very least, it poses a basic question - have over 400 years of oppression taught black America nothing about dehumanization, being exploited, and having to “prove” worthiness?

Marriage Equality: Victory in Maryland, Veto in New Jersey

It's been a wild day for marriage equality.

Just as he promised to do, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie vetoed the marriage equality bill passed by the New Jersey legislature:

The veto came a day after the state Assembly passed the bill. The state Senate had passed it on Monday. Christie, a Republican who opposes same-sex marriage, had vowed "very swift action" once the measure reached his desk.

In returning the bill to the Legislature, Christie reaffirmed his view that voters should decide whether to change the definition of marriage in New Jersey. His veto also proposed creating an ombudsman to oversee compliance with the state's civil union law, which same-sex couples have said is flawed and promotes discrimination.

 . . . "I have been just as adamant that same-sex couples in a civil union deserve the very same rights and benefits enjoyed by married couples – as well as the strict enforcement of those rights and benefits," said Christie's statement. "Discrimination should not be tolerated and any complaint alleging a violation of a citizen's right should be investigated and, if appropriate, remedied. To that end, I include in my conditional veto the creation of a strong Ombudsman for Civil Unions to carry on New Jersey's strong tradition of tolerance and fairness."

Oh blah, blah, blah. New Jersey legislators have two years to overturn Christie's veto and from what I hear they are primed and ready.

Meanwhile, in Maryland after a contentious debate, the Maryland House of Delegates passed that state's marriage equality bill:

After two days of contentious debate and the consideration of several amendments, the Maryland House of Delegates has passed marriage equality legislation with a vote of 71-67. One of the amendments passed delayed the date of enactment from October to January. Another created a non-severability clause, such that if the religious protections are overturned by the courts, the entire law would have to be deemed invalid. The measure still has to advance through the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee and full Senate, and even then, it is likely to be challenged by a referendum.

It's like I said yesterday. The momentum is clearly on our side and no matter what happens next, we won't stop. All the money in the world, nor horror stories or lies will stop us from getting security for ourselves and our loved ones.

We got a taste of success and we want more. We will get more, no matter how long it takes.

'Is Dick Cheney lobbying for marriage equality?' and other Friday midday news briefs

Dick Cheney is lobbying for marriage in Maryland? - Holy @!^! Is Emperor Palpatine on our side on this one?

Media Research Center Intensifies Campaign Against Glee - For pete's sake! I keep telling people that Glee does not figure in the gay plan for world take over. It's the Smurfs. I mean think about it - a village without over 100 men and only three women.

HOUSTON: Wingnut Radio Host Michael Berry Found On Gay Bar Security Videos - This is RICH! Draw your own conclusions, folks.

Photog to NOM's WA site: We don't support or enjoy your work - NOM gets rebuke from owner of photos it uses.

Prop 8 Defenders Call For 'National Day to Pray for Marriage' - Yet NONE of these folks testified during the trial.

Happy same-sex families make the religious right ill

Glenn T. Stanton of the right-wing Focus on the Family is maligning same-sex families again. According to Religious Right Watch, during an episode of the radio show Truth that Transforms with John Rabe, he called into question the idea that same-sex families are healthy and attacked research proving this point:

Rabe: Glenn, it’s always very interesting to me because we Christians are portrayed as being often anti-science and anti-progress and so forth yet when you talk about the issue of marriage and family it’s interesting how the other side very quickly becomes the sentimentalists in the group, suddenly all the empirical data, all the scientific stuff, is completely ignored and you hear statements about ‘people who just love each other should be able to marry and define that for themselves.’ From an empirical perspective there’s not even any argument about how beneficial a traditional man-woman marriage and family is as opposed to other models, is there?

Stanton: You said it exactly right. It’s remarkable how those folks on the other side being the ‘reasonable ones,’ the ones who unlike us don’t believe in sentimentality and myth and things like that, they become very, very unscientific.

Stanton should really be careful as to how he claims to know science. It got him figuratively spanked in 2008 by the American Anthropological Association.

How sad that he hasn't learned his lesson. But as William Shakespeare said in the play King Lear:

To wilful men, the injuries that they themselves procure must be their schoolmasters

Right Wing Watch took the time to systematically dismantle Stanton's claim:

The American Psychological Association’s review of mainstream scientific literature has debunked claims that children of same-sex couples would have more mental and emotional problems. In addition, studies consistently find that children raised by same-sex parents are just as well-adjusted those raised in households with opposite-sex parents.

A University of Amsterdam study [pdf] on the “quality of life (QoL) of adolescents in planned lesbian families” found that their quality of life is no different from their peers.

Researchers from the University of Virginia similarly found that “adolescents with same-sex parents did not differ significantly from a matched group of adolescents living with opposite-sex parents”

Now when faced with these studies, religious right spokespeople and phony experts will quickly find fault with them:

 "The sample size is too small,"
"the researchers were biased,"
 "there were methodological flaws."

And there lies the rub. When studies show that same-sex parenting isn't necessarily a bad thing, the religious right will bash these studies because they can't refute this work with studies of their own.

How can they? Very few of these folks on the right talking about "families" have any expertise  when it comes to researching these families. And Stanton is no different. According to his bio:

Glenn T. Stanton is the director for Family Formation Studies at Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs and a research fellow at the Institute of Marriage and Family in Ottawa. He debates and lectures extensively on the issues of gender, sexuality, marriage and parenting at universities and churches around the country. He served the George W. Bush administration for many years as a consultant on increasing fatherhood involvement in the Head Start program.

Stanton is the author of five books and a contributor to nine others, including Why Marriage Matters: Reasons to Believe in Marriage in Postmodern Society (1997), My Crazy, Imperfect Christian Family (NavPress, 2004) and Marriage on Trial: The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage and Parenting (InterVarsity Press, 2004), which was featured on C-SPAN BookTV.

His latest book, The Ring Makes All the Difference (Moody Publishers, September 2011), explains the latest research findings, as well as biblical wisdom, on why cohabitation is not a smart idea for couples and their children. Stanton's previous book, Secure Daughters, Confident Sons: How Parents Guide Their Children Into Authentic Masculinity and Femininity (Multnomah, 2011), explored how mothers and fathers raise girls and boys to be strong, healthy women and men.

You'll notice that the one thing he has never published are studies on same-sex families. I wouldn't necessarily call him an out-and-out fraud, but I will say that he has no standing to criticize any studies in regards to same-sex parenting, since he hasn't done any himself.

Stanton is clearly applying old adage of "faking it until he makes it."

But Glenn, you aren't making it. Not by a long shot.

We win in New Jersey in spite of veto threat

By a vote of 42-33 the New Jersey legislature has passed a marriage equality bill. That's the good news. The bad news is that Gov. Chris Christie has promised to swiftly veto the bill.

But it doesn't end there in terms of good news. The legislature has until the end of 2014 to overturn the veto.

In spite of the confusion, I consider today to be a huge victory. You see, I was around when the subject of marriage equality first came big on the scene in 2004. Back then, the opponents rode a tsunami of energized opposition. It was an ugly time because it reminded us lgbtqs just how some folks felt about us. There was so much ignorance about the subject.

But now, over eight years later, we are riding the tsunami. As people began to become educated about the subject of marriage equality, it became a simple fact to them that all the lgbtq community wants is safety and commitment for our loved ones. Public support is on our side, as well a few legislative bodies. These are two things that I thought I would never see as a possibility.

Gov. Christie will probably veto the bill and folks will work like hell to get the votes to overturn it and that's how it should be. It's indicative of the fight over marriage equality. It's not going to be a cakewalk, but a long slog; a battle of attrition.

And personally, that's fine by me. You see, the opposition isn't advancing like they were in 2004. We are. Sure they may hold us off in some places. They may convince a legislative body in one  area to not vote on marriage equality and they may successfully push a referendum in another. But all of their actions are merely to beat back growing momentum. And their attempts won't be successful because they are not gaining ground. They are either losing ground or fighting like hell to hold on to the ground that they already have.

Meanwhile, we are doing the gaining  and doing it quite well.

What our opponents fail to realize is that all of their attempts are mere postponements of the inevitable. You can only postpone the inevitable, but you can never stop it.

And marriage equality is an inevitability.

'More proof that Maggie Gallagher lied about NOM's support of 'ex-gay' therapy' and other Thursday midday news briefs

NOM prez in '05: Gay 'change' can 'prevent your child from embracing this destructive way of life' - More proof on Maggie Gallagher's lie about NOM and "ex-gay" therapy. Yeah, I know many of you will say "big deal. NOM always lies." But the point is the battering. We win when we constantly batter the message that NOM is an organization of liars into the heads of Americans. And that is something we should do insistently, unceasingly, and without apology.

Prominent Santorum Backer: Gay Movement Seeks To Recruit ‘Questioning’ Youth Into Homosexuality - Vander Plaats again. Ugh.

Clay Cane And Janet Mock Discuss Being Black And LGBT, Homophobia, Transphobia, And More - A HIGHLY pertinent conversation.

Tennessee's 'Don't Say Gay' Bill Advances In House Despite Protests - This is the most ridiculous crap I've ever heard.

O'Reilly under fire for defending Ellen DeGeneres

I don't like Bill O'Reilly. He isn't a good journalist but rather a loudmouth bully.

But the one time he makes sense, he gets attacked by members of the religious right.

O'Reilly recent defended popular lesbian celebrity Ellen DeGeneres and the department store JC Penny from attacks by the One Million Moms, a group pushed by the American Family Association. One Million Moms is angry that JC Penny chose DeGeneres as its spokesperson and is demanding that the company reverse the decision.O'Reilly said the following:

“If you remember with the McCarthy era of the 1950s, they were trying to hunt down communist sympathizers and not let them work and put them on a blacklist… What is the difference between the McCarthy era communist blacklist in the ‘50s and the Million Moms saying, ‘Hey, J.C. Penney and all you other stores, don’t you hire any gay people. Don’t you dare.’ What is the difference? . . . The essential question is that a conservative group in this country is asking a private company to fire an American citizen based upon her lifestyle. I don’t think that’s correct.”

Uh oh. He shouldn't have said that. Through its phony news publication One News Now, the American Family Association calls itself striking back via a column by one Michael Brown.

You'll probably be hearing more about Brown in the future, but for now here is the skinny. He is a huckster, a phony, a charlatan. He saw how much press religious right figures are getting by bashing the gay community and decided to join the publicity train to get his piece of the pie.

Anyway, this is part of what he wrote about O'Reilly's comments:

Simply stated, in a media culture where out and proud lesbians like Ellen, Rachel Maddow, and Suzie Orman are as American as apple pie, O'Reilly's reference to the McCarthyism of the 1950s "that banished perceived leftwing job seekers from employment in the entertainment industry" could hardly be more irrelevant.

But that is really secondary to the larger issue -- namely the reason for the Moms' opposition to Ellen as a spokesperson for JC Penney. O'Reilly notes that "DeGeneres is an American citizen," adding that, "She has committed no crime. If she wants to promote equality for gays or gay marriage, that is her constitutional right. She should not be dismissed from anything."

Of course, that is her constitutional right; and of course, she has committed no crime -- but that is not the point. In fact, O'Reilly began his article expressing his sympathies for people who "oppose the in-your-face tactics of some homosexuals" at public events like parades in New York City. "They simply want to be left alone. They don't want to see explicit displays in public that offend their moral or religious point of view."

And that is precisely the issue here. Ellen is the poster-girl par excellence for gay and lesbian causes, and her 2008 "marriage" to Portia DeRossi was celebrated on the front cover of People Magazine. Her 1997 TV announcement that she was gay made television history, and she is an ever-present, always winsome, spokesperson for gay activism.

The gist of Brown's nonsense is that it is perfectly fine to demand that JC Penny fire Ellen because it's not that she is a lesbian, but that she is an out lesbian celebrity who is popular in the public eye.

Perhaps Brown would have wanted JC Penny to find a timid, self-hating in-the-closet lesbians who, in the middle of advertising for JC Penny, would burst into tears and talk about how she hates herself and her life.

I mean how dare DeGeneres conducts herself like she isn't ashamed. Why if that were allowed to happen, people would see lgbtqs as normal. And worse than that, young lgbtqs may feel less isolated and depressed.

And we can't have that happening.

The irony is that Brown makes O'Reilly's point. To target someone not because of any alleged harm they have done, but because who they are is McCarthy-like tactics. And it doesn't matter how you try to pretty up the targeting.  Pouring a ton of sugar on manure doesn't make it edible and disguising a campaign of hate under the guise of family values doesn't make it palpable either.


Editor's note - If you have high blood pressure, avoid the comments section of the Brown's piece. It is filled with idiots citing convenience sample studies on the "so-called dangers of lesbianism." Apparently religious right tactics regarding distorting research have been picked up by their supporters.