Why Is God Injected Into The Gay Rights Equation?

I've been hearing so much about the mess that is prop 8 (in California). This proposition to ban gay marriage remains controversial, and I feel disappointed that people are conflating legal rights with religious beliefs.

After all, we're not all Christians right? What about the Californian atheists, Buddhists, and so on? Why is it prop 8 is considered legal when it is born out of beliefs specific to a kind of religion? They're not trying to force churches to marry them, people, they are trying to gain the right to be recognized as monogamous married couples! Who wants a "domestic partnership?" It doesn't carry the same social message that "marriage" does.

It's not about God, it's about rights and recognition! Ayayay!



I know it's a bit annoying to see the kid being fed his lines and such, but you get the picture. What they say is very enlightening.[side note: yes they have my last name, that's how I found the video on youtube because, well, I like to google my name now and again]. Yeah, moving on...

A friend of mine shared this interesting piece about protests against the newly implemented proposition 8 in California, which bans gay marriage.

"Scott Eckern, artistic director for the California Musical Theatre, resigned Wednesday as a growing number of artists threatened to boycott the organization because of his $1,000 donation to the campaign to ban gay marriage in California.

[...]Los Angeles-based and Tony Award-winning composer Marc Shaiman ("Hairspray") wrote a blog saying he would never allow any of his shows to again be licensed or performed by California Musical Theatre while Eckern was employed there."

The way I see it is that just as Mr. Eckern has the right to express support for policies he believes in, others have the right to withhold their support of Mr. Eckern--specifically because he supported a change in California's constitution that they do not agree with, and a change in the constitution affects everybody.

For example, Marc Shaiman refused to have any of his shows be performed at the California Musical Theater while Eckern was still employed. Those shows are his. He has the right to prevent Eckern from making money off Shaiman's work. Why would Shaiman want to continue contributing to the earnings of Eckern who has directly donated money to a political cause that Shaiman is firmly opposed to?

Shaiman has the right to cut the flow of capital from his work to Eckern, and I think it is just for Shaiman to deny Eckern profit from his work when Eckern is trying to deny gays their legal rights based on his religious beliefs.

In sum, Mr. Eckern, in donating the thousand, made a political statement. A political statement is meant to be heard. He made it clear that he did not support gay marriage rights, and many people decided to take a stand against him.

Finally, why does God and Gay have to be mutually exclusive? It's ridiculous to believe they don't mix, when they do.

What Do Gays And Undocumented Do For "Us"?

Image from Governing.com


I've been hearing a lot about how good gay marriages will be for California's economy. I am not comfortable with this simplification of the issue. It's like heterosexuals have found a way to justify gay marriage in pure economic terms. After all, how much harm can homosexuality do to California's heterosexual culture if it does so much good to California's economy?

Michael LIndenberger from Time reports,

A report released by the Williams Institute at UCLA law school says fully half of the state's 102,000 gay couples could wed in the next three years. UCLA law professor Brad Sears told TIME that the number is in keeping with experience in Massachusetts, where gay marriage is also legal, and Vermont, which permits civil unions. Another 67,000 or so are expected to arrive from other states, says Sears, the report's co-author. Those couples and their guests will spend some $680 million in tourism dollars, a welcome boost to a state whose hard-hit economy could use all the help it can get.

Justin Ewers at U.S. News & World Report also mentions the UCLA study, which predicts,

approximately half of the 103,000 same-sex couples living in the state will get married in the next three years. Nearly 70,000 same-sex couples from other states, they predict, will come here to marry...the combination of marriage license fees, increased state and local tax revenues, and the attendant boost in tourism spending by wedding guests is likely to create and sustain over 2,100 jobs in California...Even Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has thrown his support behind the court's decision, has said same-sex marriage will be good for the state's economy. "You know, I'm wishing everyone good luck with their marriages, and I hope that California's economy is booming because everyone is going to come here and get married," he told a gathering in San Francisco on May 21.

This kind of talk reminds me of the cost-benefit discussions of undocumented immigration. Like those claims that undocumented immigrants don't pay taxes, strain our health are and public education, and abuse our welfare system--these are all misleading and largely untrue, but they strongly support our country's anti-immigrant sentiment. They are based on the idea that undocumented immigrants bring us a little labor and lots of family.

In other words, undocumented immigration today is hypersexualized, feminized. Pure labor wasn't a problem when it was just the men coming to work on a seasonal basis, we happily incorporate undocumented male labor into our economy. Why not? It's pure gain for U.S. citizens; they work hard and don't demand rights because we keep them under fear through their undocumented status. But we resist children and pregnant mothers because they become our dependents. Immigrant labor brings wealth to our country, but immigrant children bring costs: they are a net loss.

On the other hand, gay marriage is being framed, in an economic sense, like the pure undocumented male labor that is good for California's economy. Gay marriage is about non-dependent adults. They work, they spend money.

It doesn't feel right reducing gay marriage to pure economic gain. I know there are people using this information as one of the pluses for heterosexuals to accept gay marriage, and I get that. But it's just weird, and how do gay people feel about this? The us/them mentality really stands out with gay marriage just as it does with immigration--what can "they" do for "us?"

I don't know, as long as gay marriage passes, its advocates should be happy. But the end result can't be the only thing that matters--it's good to at least take a good look at what measures are taken to get to that result.

Straight People Are Not Gay? It's Less Obvious Than It Sounds

We define "gay" as "not straight," but never the other way around. It seems silly to say this, but by admitting that straight people are not gay, one can easily embrace a form of double consciousness.

Double consciousness is about understanding that anyone who is "different" is different from something that has been accepted as normal. What is accepted as normal in Western society is the white, male heterosexual. I say "accepted as normal" because it is only an idea that has been accepted as true in our society--but it is not a truth. It is not normal.

This is a picture worth a hard look:


The story behind this image hit me as a great way to illuminate the burden of double consciousness. This is the car of a homosexual white female, Erin Davies, whose car was originally silver. One day she found that someone had vandalized it by spraying the homophobic slur in red paint, and rather than have it removed, she left it on. Now you can follow her on her website fagbug.com.

Her decision to sport the hate crime was met with strong opposition and strong support as she journeyed across the country to document reactions to her car. She had even re-painted the hateful words after several people have anonymously attempted to remove the bright red message. Recently, she had the entire car professionally painted with the rainbow colors and the name given to her by the original vandals.

This car makes obvious the identity of difference. You would never find someone's car vandalized with the word "straight" because the straight identity is widely accepted as natural...which leads to the logical conclusion that gay is unnatural; false even.

What is normal? There is no normal, because when you say someone is different, it goes both ways. The "gay" is different from the "straight," yes. But the "straight" is different from the "gay" too.

I cannot end without emphasizing the importance of recognizing that double consciousness involves many differences all at once. In this case, we're only looking at a homosexual, white female--who is different from the straight white male and the homosexual white male. But it gets even messier when you look at a homosexual, black female for example.

We can't get stuck on singular terms. We've gotta see that everyone is made up of endless differences--we are all intersected by differences in class, race, gender, and more.

A Mixture God, Homosexuality, and the Iraq War

Wrap yourself up in the 1st amendment and then inflict pain like a merciless god.

Members of a fundamentalist Kansas church--Westboro Baptist Church--who protest the funerals of fallen soldiers have been sued $11 million by a grieving Pennsylvania father.


Alex Dominguez reports:

Members promised to picket future funerals with placards bearing such slogans as "Thank God for dead soldiers" and "God hates fags."

They believe that U.S. deaths in the Iraq war are punishment for the nation's tolerance of homosexuality. They say they are entitled to protest at funerals under the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech and religion.

Dominguez describes that the defendants smiled as they heard the verdict because they were sure that they would win in an appeal.

The group is homophobic, vengeful, and I would even say self-hating. I often subscribe to the thought, "of all the things going on in Haiti, Guatemala, Darfur, the rest of the world, and even right around the corner...this is happening?"

Since when have homosexuals been tolerated in this country? And why aren't these people talking about the Jena 6 and undocumented immigrants and Islamofascists?

Why is this hock-a-loogie-in-your-face group going around and spoiling funerals when they could volunteer their valuable time to help hang nooses? They could even come down to the Southern Border and help build the wall of the future.

We're the most masochistic country in the world. Our government criticizes other cultures for hurting their own? Look at the condition we're in!