gay marriage

People who are saying that gay marriage is a threat to traditional marriage are really saying that gay marriage is a threat to the unearned privilege that is granted straight people, and they don't like it.

(Here is a link for the court's decision in the case that ruled California's Proposition 8 unconstitutional.)

happy national coming out day

The Human Rights Campaign: The Coming Out Project helps LGBT, as well as straight-supportive people live openly and talk about their support for equality at home, at work and in their communities each and every day.

I just caught the end of an HBO documentary, OUTRAGE: Do Ask. Do Tell. From the synopsis:

An official selection of the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival, OUTRAGE investigates the hidden lives of some of the country's most powerful policymakers - from now-retired Idaho Senator Larry Craig, to former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevy - and examines how these and other politicians have inflicted damage on millions of Americans by opposing gay rights. Equally disturbing, the film explores the mainstream media's complicity in keeping those secrets, despite the growing efforts to "out" them by gay rights organizations and bloggers.

Through a combination of archival news footage and exclusive interviews with politicians and members of the media, OUTRAGE probes the psychology of a double lifestyle, the ethics of outing closeted politicians, and the double standards that the media upholds in its coverage of the sex lives of gay public figures. As Barney Frank, perhaps the best-known openly gay member of Congress explains, "There is a right to privacy, but not a right to hypocrisy. It is very important that the people who make the law be subject to the law."

and that's a promise

I am not an American citizen. When someone asks me why, I tell them I have "lingering doubts." That's a line I have borrowed from a Seinfeld episode; it was Jerry's response when someone asked him why he wasn't an organ donor.

I am an organ donor, but it's true I have had lingering doubts when it comes to citizenship.

Proposition 8, which eliminated same-sex couples' right to marry, and the fact that California's Supreme Court voted yesterday to uphold it, changes that for me, though.

I'll become a citizen so that I can vote for equal rights in 2010, or 2012, or any year after that.

and do your part for everyone's right to marry

Listen to Regina Spector, and prepare to have your heart broken.

different world

The Swedish Lutheran Church is electing a new bishop in Stockholm. Front runner is a woman called Eva Brunne. Eva Brunne is gay, and in a registered partnership. Do the Swedes care about her sexual orientation? No. The news story makes more of an issue of the fact that the couple has a young child. 'Why couldn't a bishop have kids? That's not a big deal', says Eva Brunne.

Imagine that, in the US.