Same-sex families are growing rapidly, can no longer be ignored

Not too many people are aware of this, but the idea of same-sex families is the proverbial "third rail" for those who fight against marriage equality.

The very existence of these families does more to negate their arguments about "marriage being about the procreation and protection of children" than anything ever said by the lgbt community and our allies.

Therefore, it's not accidental when organizations like the National Organization for Marriage either ignore these families or trivialize them as "untested social experiments."

However, a recent article in The New York Times is serving NOM and other members of the religious right notice to the fact that they cannot continue to push aside same-sex families. From the article, we learn that not only are same-sex families growing in Southern states, but these families are comprised of people of color:

 . . . child rearing among same-sex couples is more common in the South than in any other region of the country, according to Gary Gates, a demographer at the University of California, Los Angeles. Gay couples in Southern states like Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas are more likely to be raising children than their counterparts on the West Coast, in New York and in New England.

The pattern, identified by Mr. Gates, is also notable because the families in this region defy the stereotype of a mainstream gay America that is white, affluent, urban and living in the Northeast or on the West Coast.

“We’re starting to see that the gay community is very diverse,” said Bob Witeck, chief executive of Witeck-Combs Communications, which helped market the census to gay people. “We’re not all rich white guys.”

Black or Latino gay couples are twice as likely as whites to be raising children, according to Mr. Gates, who used data from a Census Bureau sampling known as the American Community Survey. They are also more likely than their white counterparts to be struggling economically.

Experts offer theories for the pattern. A large number of gay couples, possibly a majority, entered into their current relationship after first having children with partners in heterosexual relationships, Mr. Gates said. That seemed to be the case for many blacks and Latinos in Jacksonville, for whom church disapproval weighed heavily.

“People grew up in church, so a lot of us lived in shame,” said Darlene Maffett, 43, a Jacksonville resident, who had two children in eight years of marriage before coming out in 2002. “What did we do? We wandered around lost. We married men, and then couldn’t understand why every night we had a headache.”

The bottom line is steadily becoming this - in the argument over marriage equality, same-sex couples and the children they are raising cannot be pushed aside or trivialized as "untested social experiments." Whether those against marriage equality and same-sex household like it or not,  there isn't a talking point in existence which will make these families disappear.


Related post:

NOM needs to stop peddling in fantasy and face reality about same-sex families

Is Pawlenty counting on a homophobic backlash to put him in the Oval Office?

Perhaps I am being too paranoid but it's obvious to me that former Gov. Minnesota Tim Pawlenty is counting on history while making his presidential bid.

Remember, it was the backlash against the civil rights movement (some unfairly grouped it with the excesses of the 60s) which led to Nixon's Southern Stategy and subsequently his election as President in 1968.

With the recent victories of the lgbt community over those who would deny us our equality (i.e. the repealing of DADT, overturning the law against gay adoption in Florida, overturning of the Prop 8 vote), some may think that a backlash against us is inevitable.

How else can one explain Pawlenty's recent moves? Last week while on the tour of his book, Pawlenty talked with Bryan Fischer of the American Family Assocation. Fischer has been called out numerous times for his vicious anti-gay comments, including claiming that lgbts formed the building blocks of the Nazi Party.

However, Pawlenty didn't address Fischer's homophobia because he was too busy cozying up to him, even to the point of promising to reinstate DADT should he be elected as president.

Today, Pawlenty took his wooing of the anti-gay forces a bit further. According to People for the American Way's Right Wing Watch:

Pawlenty will continue to court anti-gay leaders by meeting with Iowa’s Bob Vander Plaats and his organization, The Family Leader. Vander Plaats told the Des Moines Register that his group will be “hosting Governor Pawlenty in Iowa” in early February to discuss “pro-family issues, all the way from life and marriage to economic policy and energy policy.”


After losing the race for the Republican nomination for governor, Vander Plaats became a leader of Iowa’s Religious Right after he coordinated a successful campaign to block the retention of three Iowa Supreme Court justices who supported the Court’s unanimous ruling to legalize same-sex marriage. Vander Plaats, who a former aide said is “obsessed with the gay marriage issue,” has since called for the removal of the entire Supreme Court because of the Court's decision in favor of marriage equality. The Family Leader is the parent organization of Marriage Matters, the Iowa Family PAC, and the Iowa Family Policy Center, an organization that attacks “the public health crisis of same-sex activity” and tells church groups that they can “protect your children” from “homosexual activists.”

It's too early right now to see if Pawlenty's efforts will yield any fruition, but it is safe to say that for the 2012 Presidential election, he considers the lgbt community to be food on the menu.

Supreme Court tells Harry Jackson to bug off and other Tuesday midday news briefs

SCOTUS Rejects Appeal from Same-Sex Marriage Opponents in D.C. - I sincerely hope that anti-gay pastor Harry Jackson is getting good money from whoever is causing him to make himself look like a fool.

Globes had 'offensive agenda', says group that finds glee in denying gay kids are all right - Oh look. The Golden Globe Award reveals the lgbt plan for world domination and indoctrination. And I still haven't received the memo as of yet.

'Christian' owners of B&B in U.K. acted unlawfully when they denied room to gay couple - Homophobic discrimination gets a kick in the face, British style.

Anti-gay-marriage bill advances - Ugh, I say. UGH!!

Charles Barkley Speaks Out for LGBT Civil Rights: 'God Bless The Gay People. They Are Great People.' - Way to go, Mr. Barkley!

SC Equality publishes monumental study of state's lgbt community, gets bizarre flack for it

South Carolina Equality, a group dealing with lgbt education and advocacy in SC, has come out with a monumental survey of over 1,000 of the state's lgbt community.

According to Q-Notes:

The survey exposes several needs and challenges currently facing the state’s estimated 117,000 LGBT citizens, advocates say, particularly among LGBT youth in the state’s public schools.

Nearly half (48 percent) of respondents indicated they’d experienced bullying, harassment or discrimination in South Carolina’s public education.

Christine Johnson, head of SC Equality said that she has already begun conversations with state lawmakers in order to get the ball rolling on anti-bullying legislation.

However, according to South Carolina Republican strategist Wesley Donehue, this may be a difficult fight. Donehue said the following in a piece at ProcessStory.com:

There are many Republicans in the General Assembly who will flat out try to kill any bill providing more gay rights. They aren’t the problem for the SC (Equality). Their problem will be the many forward-thinking Republicans who are sympathetic to their cause, but won’t go for putting more laws on the books and creating a special protected class.

Donehue's comments no doubt leaves many (myself included) bewildered, particularly in light of a legislative battle which took place last year over a bill regarding teen dating violence.

In 2009, a bill was pushed through the SC House of Representatives that required schools to create teen dating violence prevention policies.

The bill was a good idea, but it got tainted when a state representative, Greg Delleney, pushed an amendment through requiring the bill to pertain to only heterosexual relationships, ergo excluding lgbt relationships

Delleney said he did this because he was afraid that without this requirement, schools would have to teach children about same-sex relationships.

The bill was killed early last year.

So while Donehue may have been accurate in claiming that SC Equality will have a difficult fight ahead in getting proper legislative responses to its survey, his reasoning seems to be a bit off.

Being considered as a constituency worthy of protection is not the same thing as being put on a pedestal above other constituencies.

The spooky thing will be to see which members of the SC Legislature actually share Donehue's warped point of view.

Homophobia will never erase the contributions of Bayard Rustin to the civil rights movement

On the eve of my 40th birthday, I have just learned that maybe I am too old to be staying out until 3 a.m.

According to fellow blogger Jeremy Hooper of Goodasyou, the religious right group the Illinois Family Institute is using this MLK day to divide the lgbt and black community. They and "40 African-American and religious leaders" will gather to complain about the recent passage of a bill for civil unions. According to them:

The recent passage of the "civil unions" bill has been trumpeted by some lawmakers as an achievement to civil rights. It is not.

Some lawmakers have suggested that King's interest would have included homosexuality. David Smith, Executive Director of the Illinois Family Institute, says, "Skin color is not analogous to behavior. To equate homosexuality to race is offensive and perverts the noble cause of a great man and an important movement in our history." 

Peter LaBarbera is very excited about it. Of course LaBarbera, the IFI, and those leaders will conveniently ignores how those associated with the African-American civil rights movement actually supports lgbt equality - Hooper provides many excellent quotes from Coretta Scott King, including:

"I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice... But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King, Jr., said, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere' ... I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream to make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people." -March 31, 1998

“Like Martin, I don’t believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others", she would tell black civil rights leaders angered by gays and lesbians comparing their struggle to their own. She would quote her husband and say, “I have worked too long and hard against segregated public accommodations to end up segregating my moral concern. Justice is indivisible." -June 23, 1994

"Gay and lesbian people have families, and their families should have legal protection, whether by marriage or civil union. A constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages is a form of gay bashing and it would do nothing at all to protect traditional marriages."- March 24, 2004

And of course these folks will conveniently forget about Bayard Rustin, the gay black man who played a crucial role in the civil rights movement. In fact in the world they want to create, the contributions of Mr. Rustin to the civil rights movements never existed or will never be talked about.

Luckily, we don't live in their world, but rather the real world where Rustin will NEVER been forgotten:



Related post:

Whether 'gay rights' or 'civil rights,' it's all about 'human rights'

Whether 'gay rights' or 'civil rights,' it's all about 'human rights'

David Badash of the blog The New Civil Rights Movement just sent out a tweet asking for folks to respond to a piece on Examiner.com (Cincinnati version). The piece is entitled The difference between gay rights and civil rights and it is written by one Ricky Johnson.

In case you haven't figured it out, it's one of those "lgbts can't compare their struggle for equality to that of the African-American civil rights struggle because you can hide your sexual orientation but not your race and the Bible says that homosexuality is a sin" pieces that always serves to mentally exhaust me for its lack of basic logic and desire to ignore the empathy that one group who has dealt with inequality should have for another group having the same problems.

Rather than go over it, I would rather show the response I wrote. It's short and to the point:

Rick, whether someone can or cannot hide their homosexuality is irrelevant. You forget that some blacks tried to pass as white. Also, please bear in mind that before you refer to the Bible, it was the Bible which was used to justify slavery and segregation. Lastly, your diatribe forgets the basic existence of black lgbts - which I am one. Really there is no difference between "gay rights" and "civil rights" because they are all human rights. And when a group of people are denied their due, whether it be on the basis of discrimination on the basis of race, religion, or sexual orientation, we all suffer.

Latest right-wing lie on Obama's speech abandons all pretense of rationality

This isn't an lgbt issue per se but a very important one in terms of how some on the right lie about not just lgbts but whomever they generally target.

In this case, it's President Obama.

Now while many on the right credited Obama for his excellent speech about the Arizona tragedy, others bent over backwards to attack the president per usual.

First, it was Michelle Malkin (the Lamia of the Right because like the so-named monster of Greek mythology, she usually targets children) claiming that the White House had something to do with the t-shirts given out at the memorial service.

When that story was debunked, Malkin gave a half-assed "okay maybe I was wrong" explanation.

But now thanks to Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit, Malkin may have something new to sink her fangs into.

Hoft, who never met a lie so outrageous that he wouldn't spread, is now claiming that the White House asked for applause during the memorial service on the Jumbotron:

This is not only just a lie. It's a stupid lie. Hoft is using the closed captions of the speech to make this claim. Media Matters says the following:

Hoft's purported instruction for applause is actually the live captioning for the event. It's the same closed captioning that's made available for television programs. 

A University of Arizona information sheet about last Wednesday's service noted that "sign language interpreters and captioning will be available at" McKale Memorial Center. Captioning is available for some large events - at McKale and elsewhere. Indeed, a release for a separate event at McKale notes that "captions will appear on the overhead Jumbotron." 

But here is the kicker, according to the blog, Little Green Footballs:

And it gets better, because the other dim bulbs of the wingnut blogosphere are now co-signing Hoft’s post. Pamela “Shrieking Harpy” Geller: “TOGETHER WE WRITHE”: OBAMA MAKING HIS BONES ON THE BONES OF THE DEAD

Doug Ross: White House: we were shocked that Tucson memorial crowd hooted and hollered throughout because our APPLAUSE signs were actually quite discrete

  . . . And now, of course, it’s at Pajamas Media.

Betcha it will probably be on Fox News next week.

And I know just how they will do it. One of the Three Witches of Fox News (think the Three Witches of Macbeth), whether it be Gretchen Carlson (the supposed dumb one), Laura Ingraham (the shrew), or Megyn Kelly (the one who takes pictures in GQ magazine looking a bit "free") will bring it up with an innocent comment such as "people are saying . . ."  or  "some controversy is now developing over . . ." knowing fully well of course that there is no controversy and the only folks who are saying anything over this are the ones spreading the lie.

THAT is how some members of the right push phony controversies, folks. It's not accidental but an intentional lie on the pretext of "innocent discussion."

Now I know we are supposed to be engaged in civil conversations with those on the right, but I'm beginning to think we'd be better off with silver, crucifixes, holy water, and stakes.

No doubt there are some who will accuse me of betraying President Obama's cry for civility by what I have just written. But I disagree.

Civility is never the enemy of calling out liars and sometimes you can successfully walk the path of calm dialogue only after calling out those whose livelihood it is to litter that path with clutter.