103. FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHTS

From the Archives

(June 2005) A group of progressive religious leaders who object to the way Christianists use the Bible to promote inequality formed The Religious Coalition for Marriage Equality and read their declaration aloud at a recent event where some of us queer artists performed or just plain made a ruckus.

We gave these mostly straight religious leaders a standing ovation after they read the following statement:

The most fundamental human right, after the necessities of food, clothing and shelter, is the right to affection and the supportive love of other human beings. We become most fully human when we love another person. We can grow in our capacity to be human—to be loving—in a family unit. This right to love and form a family is so fundamental that our United States Constitution takes it for granted in its dedication to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” Our state constitution likewise affirms the “inalienable rights" of human beings to "life, liberty, the enjoyment of the fruits of their own labor, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Throughout history, tyrants have known that by denying the right of oppressed peoples to form and nurture families, they can kill the spirit of those peoples. From the shameful history of slavery in America, the injustice of forbidding people to marry is evident as a denial of a basic human right. The American laws forbidding interracial marriage, now struck down, were clearly discriminatory. Denial of the status of marriage to those who would freely accept its responsibilities creates legal and economic inequities and social injustice. We feel called to protest and oppose this injustice.

As religious people, clergy and lay leaders, we are mandated by faith to stand for justice in our common civic life. We oppose the use of sacred texts and religious traditions to deny legal equity to same-gender couples. As concerned citizens we affirm the liberty of adults of the same gender to love and marry. We insist that no one, especially the state, is allowed to coerce people into marriage or bar two consenting adults, whether of the same or differing genders, from forming the family unit that lets them be more fully loving, thus more fully human. We respect the fact that debate and discussion continue in many of our religious communities as to the scriptural, theological and liturgical issues involved. However, we draw on our many faith traditions to arrive at a common conviction. We are resolved that the State should not interfere with same-gender couples who choose to marry and share fully and equally in the rights, responsibilities, and commitments of civil marriage.

We affirm freedom of conscience in this matter. We recognize that the state may not require religious groups to officiate at, or bless, same-gender marriages. Likewise, a denial of state civil recognition dishonors the religious convictions of those communities and clergy who officiate at, and bless, same-gender marriages. The state may not favor the convictions of one religious group over another by denying individuals their fundamental right to marry and to have those marriages recognized by civil law.

As faith leaders, we commit ourselves to public action, visibility, education, and mutual support in the service of the right and freedom to marry.

So here’s data from the HRC website:

RIGHTS AND PROTECTIONS DENIED SAME-SEX PARTNERS

Because same-sex couples are denied the right to marry, same-sex couples and their families are denied access to the more than 1,138 federal rights, protections and responsibilities automatically granted to married heterosexual couples. Among those are:

• The right to make decisions on a partner's behalf in a medical emergency. Specifically, the states generally provide that spouses automatically assume this right in an emergency. If an individual is unmarried, the legal “next of kin” automatically assumes this right. This means, for example, that a gay man with a life partner of many years may be forced to accept the financial and medical decisions of a sibling or parent with whom he may have a distant or even hostile relationship [or be denied the right to see or care for her long-term partner, as happened in a local case].

• The right to take up to 12 weeks of leave from work to care for a seriously ill partner or parent of a partner. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 permits individuals to take such leave to care for ill spouses, children and parents but not a partner or a partner’s parents.

• The right to petition for same-sex partners to immigrate.

• The right to assume parenting rights and responsibilities when children are brought into a family through birth, adoption, surrogacy or other means. For example, in most states, there is no law providing a noncustodial, nonbiological or nonadoptive parent’s right to visit a child—or responsibility to provide financial support for that child—in the event of a breakup.

• The right to share equitably all jointly held property and debt in the event of a breakup, since there are no laws that cover the dissolution of domestic partnerships.

• Family-related Social security benefits, income and estate tax benefits, disability benefits, family-related military and veterans benefits and other important benefits.

• The right to inherit property from a partner in the absence of a will [or to inherit retirement accounts without paying up to 75% if it in taxes, since the laws don’t recognize you as a legitimate spouse]

• The right to purchase continued health coverage for a domestic partner after the loss of a job.

Such inequities impose added costs on these families, such as increased health insurance premiums, higher tax burdens and the absence of pension benefits or Social Security benefits in the event of a partner’s death.

Some same-sex and transgender families consult attorneys to draw up legal documents such as powers of attorney, co-parenting agreements and wills, that will at least permit them to declare who they wish to make health care and financial decisions for them if they become incapacitated; how they wish to share parenting responsibilities or, in the event of a breakup, custody of a child; and what they want to happen to their property when they die. However, these are not a substitute for legal protection under law and cannot provide the broad range of benefits and protections provided by law.

79. WILLFUL IGNORANCE

From the Archives

(April 2005) SC voters will soon decide whether their state constitution should be amended to ban same-sex marriages. I grew up in the deep south, completed undergrad studies there, and can already tell you that their answer will be yes.

Sadly, I also know that many of the southerners in my extended family would vote to legalize this selective bigotry.

And speaking of the humid Carolinas, someone just emailed me to say that notorious homophobe Fred Phelps and his clan plan to protest a high school production of The Laramie Project near Duke University. This play is about the afteraffects of the savage death of Matthew Shepard, the twenty-one-year-old gay man who had recently moved to Laramie from nearby Chapel Hill, NC.

Phelps is the asshole who held up “God Hates Fags” signs at Shepard’s funeral and shouted to his mourning parents that their son was in Hell where he belongs.

(Cruel. And to do so in the name of Jesus! These homophobes have no decency and it is so deeply offensive that they couch their hatred in Jesus’s name.)

Phelps et al. show up in DC too, where their seething hatred is a sight to behold.

How will Dukies react to this show of hate? I'd like to think that kids in the art department will make paper-maché Jesuses with their arms around a gay couple and holding big “Hate Is Not A Family Value” signs. Or maybe Jesus can wear Reeses shirts and their placard can read “Look. They put their hatred on my Jesus” or something.

What rocks did these hate-filled people crawl out from under?

76. PUBLISHED BIGOTRY

From the Archives

(April 2005) Law professor Gerard V. Bradley:

Putting same-sex relationships on a par with marriages harms the family by radically severing the biological tie between the married couple and the kids they are raising. Once same-sex marriage is accepted, children are no essential part of what marriage means.
... No two men—and no two women—form a mated pair.—From his 2003 article against marriage equality

Law professor Lynn D. Wardle:

The very concept and reality of the relationship between man and woman that we call marriage fundamentally differs from the nature of the relationship between two persons of the same sex.—Wardle, 1996 B.Y.U. L. Rev., at 38

71. MESSY, MESSY, MESSY!

From the Archives

(April 13, 2005) I am tempted to poll my pals and see how many of them get my title reference, and maybe I’ll even offer them a Blenheim’s hot gingerale if they say it with the right accent.

So happy birthday Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney, and Eudora Welty—three excellent writers born on the same day.

The following two quotes are from today’s Writer’s Almanac. Since I’m a writer who worked briefly in advertising and took many advertising classes, I understand Ms. Welty’s reaction completely (see below). Odd thing is, I was actually good at creating those headlines and highly manipulative ads, but am so anti-consumer / disgusted by conspicuous consumption that, the few times I created them, I felt so dirty, so like a traitor to the human race, that I began caling myself Poetry Killer (and promptly found another job).

Ms Welty:

It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass.

And after she tried working in advertising:

It was too much like sticking pins into people to make them buy things they didn't need or really want.

So she became a writer.

•

Today a Senate subcommittee holds the first hearing this year on marriage between same-sex couples. Wonder how many witnesses are going to use the Bible as a weapon to justify denying equal rights to their fellow citizens in a democracy?

•

Meanwhile, a woman reportly reported to me that she covets my creativity, so she decided to start eating with her left hand and see what developed. It's been a few weeks and she can now report that she succeeded in becoming more messy, but not more creative.

66. ALL THE POPE’S PAWNS

From the Archives

(April 2005) Tonight I am brain-dead and am once again lying on the sofa watching television. Am just about sick of hearing about the death of a homophobic, sexist, anti-choice pope whom even NPR is praising as practically a god too.

Nevertheless, it’s cool that the National Geographic channel aired “Inside the Vatican” a little while ago.

There’s no doubt about it, it’s a beautiful structure. The baroque statues are exquisite. And, if you forget for a moment about them being paid for with money coerced out of poor people who were told they had to buy their way into Heaven, then you might even be able to appreciate the opulence without choking on the irony of it all.

Gotta say though, my Southern Baptist church was sure bland in comparison—but then that was part of the point of the schism, wasn’t it?

I wonder how differently I would experience faith—or at least the mystery of faith—if I had grown up attending services in a Catholic sanctuary with soaring lines and flying buttresses and incense and mystique and priests in velvet robes, if the services were in Latin, were mysterious instead of frightening.

Was it Tycho who proposed constructing buildings in the shape of their purpose, which led architects to build churches in the shape of a cross? Yeah, I think so, but it’s been a while since I took all those architectural design courses.

Anyway, footage of the bishops’ ordination was a sight to behold. Those white men were actually wearing crowns—the pope’s was gold—and even the guards wore amazingly intricate outfits.

Pomp and circumstance and Mercedes-Benzes were everywhere.

The processional and music were also high fancy and the bishop candidates actually prostrated themselves on the (marble) floor.

Does the US even have any rituals like these?

I gotta say though, jeez, I don’t know how recently they shot this show, but the pope already looked dead. They rolled him out on a cart and removed his crown for him and then the poor man just slumped over on his little holy go-cart for the entire service and, as near as I could tell, the only time he even moved otherwise was when the bishops knelt before him and he placed his hands on their heads to bless them.

What a sad way to exist, particularly when you’re on display.

•

Meanwhile, Kansan citizens vote tomorrow on whether or not to amend their state constitution to discriminate against same-sex couples. The state’s so-called marriage protection amendment is one of the most far-reaching amendments, one that would deny all unmarried couples any of the benefits and protections of marriage.

29. QUOTE OF THE DAY

From the Archives

(March 2005) Today, San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer wrote that California’s ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional.

It appears that no rational purpose exists for limiting marriage in this state to opposite-sex partners,” he said and that “the state’s protracted denial of equal protection cannot be justified simply because such constitutional violation has become traditional.

No doubt, his ruling will be appealed ... or maybe CA voters will approve a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in November and remove the issue from the control of the courts and lawmakers, as 13 other states have done. Still, there’s one more voice out there stating the obvious....

3. WAS JESUS AN LGBTQ-FRIENDLY CAPRICORN?

From the Archives

(March 2005) People are funny today and I suspect it’s because this vacillation between gorgeous spring weather and cold-ass winter days is getting to us all.

First, an editor whispered to me in the local java joint “Ever seen the same student here twice? Me either. I think they’re all really aliens.”

Then, as I was waiting to pay for my coffee, someone behind me said “Excuse me” and someone else replied, “Excuse you? I can’t even explain you.”

And all this before noon!

I’ve also been making carpooling arrangements for an upcoming statewide LGBTQ leadership planning session.

One thing I learned at the last session is that local progressive religious leaders have formed a religious coalition for marriage equality. The MCC pastor who was describing their work said that the coalition came about because local leaders understand that effective movements in the south require religious, political, and legal components.

This group currently includes 250+ pastors and other church leaders, many of whom are straight and all of whom believe that “the most fundamental human right, after the necessities of food, clothing and shelter, is the right to affection and the supportive love of other human beings.”

They oppose “the use of sacred texts and religious traditions to deny legal equity to same-gender couples.” They also strategically place straight white preachers in their media spots.

I grew up way down south in the land of cotton and still have trouble fathoming the fact that many southern metropolitan areas now feature at least a few LGBTQ-friendly Baptist churches. I mean, just ponder that reality for a minute.

The Southern Baptist church I was raised in was so rabid that conservative Christianists can still give me eye tics when they begin talking about their god. In fact, I’ve told more than one such person that I am allergic to their god but the fact of the matter is that I’m allergic to their narrow monochromatic version of god and I get really annoyed when they presume to have the right to tell me what I am supposed to believe.

My father is an enigma to me in many, many ways, but one blessing is that he was a free-thinker in a community that was nearly devoid of philosophical variation and I was the child born with my father’s philosophical bent.

He spent much of his free time reading philosophy and talking about it with me so, even as a child, I believed that the Christians got it all wrong.

God is a verb, not a noun, in my book and she always has been.

Discovering personification only cemented this view in my mind. Jesus is an idea, an ideal, a whispered message reminding us of the importance of recognizing and maintaining a common vibe, a world community, connection. No more high or low, babycakes; we’re all in this stew together—including us LGBTQ folks who frighten the straight-and-narrow Christianists so.

Jesus’s message, to me, is about nurturing these connections and respecting each other and tearing down those artificial walls that divide our common family. This makes much more sense to me than some white-bearded old patriarch sitting up on a cloud somewhere just waiting to punish people for masturbating.

LISTENING TO: Lucernarium: Paravi lucernam Christo meo, performed by Chants De L’Eglises Milanaise
READING: Rodale’s Successful Organic Gardening (springs a’coming!) and re-reading Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Muriel Rukeyser’s Meaning of Poetry