House Picks Paul Clement to Champion DOMA

News for the Week Ended April 20, 2011
BY ANN ROSTOW


House Picks Paul Clement to Champion DOMA

We finally got some actual answers to the critical questions surrounding the federal challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act. You know, of course, that the President and the Justice Department decided to stop defending the insidious ban on federal recognition of same-sex marriage. Thank you again, President and Justice Department. We profoundly appreciate your decision, particularly since we are in the middle of six, or maybe even twelve federal “Gay People v. United States” type court cases.

With the United States vacating the defendants’ chair, the House of Representatives picked up the sword to defend DOMA, but for two months we’ve received no details. Who is acting on behalf of the House? Which lawsuits will they litigate? Will they intervene as actual defendants, or simply write briefs as friends of the court? And finally, how will they argue? Will they rely on antigay stereotypes, or will they try to thread legal needles and defend the statute without ripping our community to shreds?

Here’s what we learned on Monday. The House “Bipartisan Legal Advisory Commission” (BLAG) has hired the international corporate law firm King & Spalding, and has signed a contract to pay the firm’s lawyers an average of $520 an hour up to a maximum of $500,000 through April of 2013 if necessary. The contract covers work on any and all DOMA litigation, but does not specify exactly which cases will be defended. Also, the half million dollar cap can be lifted if more money is needed. Considering the work ahead, we’ll be hitting the DOMA debt ceiling in no time.

Leading the charge will be GW Bush’s former Solicitor General, Paul Clement, who will presumably handle any oral arguments. On Monday, Clement and company filed a motion in a New York federal court, asking permission to intervene in the ACLU’s case on behalf of lesbian widow, Edith Windsor, who is forced by DOMA to pay estate taxes on her own property.

In an entertaining sideshow, gay allies in Congress and elsewhere are now making hay about the cost of the DOMA defense, which to be honest, is nothing. Even if the final figure triples and triples again, this is not a significant “taxpayer expense.” Nonetheless, Speaker Boehner is trying to get the Justice Department to pay the bill, reasoning that since they were the ones who would usually defend a federal law in court, they must have saved some money by abandoning the fight. Attorney General Eric Holder, in turn, said the salaried lawyers under his roof have plenty of work and have not set aside special DOMA funds.

So here’s what we don’t know, going forward.

We don’t know what Paul Clement is going to do about the other DOMA cases.

In addition to the Windsor case, there are two cases now pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit; The Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) case on behalf of same-sex couples married in Massachusetts, and the State of Massachusetts’ states rights case against the United States.

Then there’s another GLAD case in lower federal court in Connecticut, filed on behalf of same-sex couples from New England, but not from Massachusetts.

Then there’s the case of California-based federal lawyer Karen Golinski, asking for spousal benefits in a federal court in San Francisco.

Over the bay in Oakland, married gay federal workers are seeking long-term care benefits in another federal DOMA case. That’s six off the top of my head, and I’ve read articles that say up to twelve cases are pending in federal court. I plan to research these other cases later. Note that the Prop 8 case does not involve the U.S. government, since it was filed against the state of California. And another federal gay couples case, now in the Ninth Circuit, pits Arizona state workers against the Dry Heat State.

Anyway, there are a lot of cases out there in various stages. All of them involve different facts and to some extent, different legal issues. Paul Clement isn’t going to be able to send boilerplate briefs all over the country although there should be some overlap. But for example, the states rights case in the First Circuit would seem to require a unique set of arguments. This is a ton of work.

Nor will Clement be able to defend DOMA in just one or maybe two cases. If the mission is to defend DOMA, you have to defend it everywhere, in every case, in every federal court. Our side has a whole array of legal groups and partner firms, working more or less in concert across the country. Their side has Paul Clement and his colleagues.

Finally, we don’t yet know which arguments Clement will use to attack our marriages. In his motion to intervene in the Windsor case, he did not include any kind of actual legal pleading on the merits. Such pleadings are usually included in a motion to intervene, but they’re not required.

Since Clement represents the House Republicans, it will be difficult (I think) for him to fall back on antigay strategies. If he condemns gay parents or suggests that gay men and women are unfit to form families, the outrage will be intense, not just from us, but from our allies.

We do know that Clement will have to argue that sexual orientation should not be considered a suspect class worthy of constitutional protection on the level of, say, race or religion. He can make this argument in an innocuous way, by pointing out that no federal court has hitherto awarded such status to gays or lesbians. But that’s not a powerful rationale. In addition, he will probably have to insist that sexual orientation is a lifestyle choice and that gays have a great deal of political power and don’t need protection.

It was exactly this conundrum that led Obama and Holder to drop their defense of DOMA last February, so it will be interesting to see how Clement handles the hot potato.

Basically, there’s no way to make the legal case for DOMA without descending into antigay muck. Unlike a legislative fight filled with vague talk of mom and dad and religious scripture, a legal case involves specific individuals and (in theory) logical reasoning.

For example, in the Windsor case (where the judge ordered Congress to intervene by a specific date) House Republicans will not just be spouting off about “traditional marriage,” they’ll be insisting that an elderly New York woman who lived with her partner for 40 years and married her wife in Canada should be treated as a legal stranger to her own estate, forced to pay over $300,000 in taxes that would never be levied on a heterosexual widow.

Makes you wonder, have they thought this through?
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Half The Toothpaste Is Out Of The Tube

I usually don’t cover polls, because poll headlines, like “51 percent of Americans Support Same-Sex Marriage” are meaningless unless you know the exact question asked, the number of respondents, and the way the poll was conducted. Ask a hundred people at the pride parade and you’ll get one answer. Call a thousand land lines and you’ll get another.

But when poll analyst extraordinaire Nate Silver writes an assessment of the latest marriage surveys, that’s news.

Silver, who crunches numbers on a wide range of social and political matters, reports that the ongoing increase in support for same-sex marriage has risen from about one to two points a year, to four points a year in each of the last two years. Four credible polls in the last eight months show a slim majority now in favor of same-sex marriage, a slim minority opposed, and only a small percentage undecided. The trend lines of marriage polling over the last two decades show a steady and solid improvement that seems to lead inexorably to a popular consensus in favor of marriage equality.

This is great, of course. But one thing polls don’t show is the intensity of the response. And this is why marriage remains a political third rail even as we add to our support. The fact is that the hard line conservatives who oppose same-sex marriage hate us with such a passion that they can overwhelm the people who sort of like us but don’t really care. We have passion on our side too. But we’re five percent of the population, and the violently antigay crowd is maybe 20 or 25 percent. I’m not sure.

Until our allies pump up the volume and more people on their side decide it’s not worth the fuss, we’ll still have trouble getting a Presidential nominee to come out in favor of marriage equality. To me, by the way, that will be the signal that the popular sentiment has really shifted--- when the Democratic party nominee comes in favor of equality, period. Not civil unions and not “the rights of marriage” blah blah blah. But marriage equality

That day may or may not have arrived. But the erosion of opposition to same-sex marriage is still significant. It’s pretty clear that Republicans don’t want to be associated with the subject, or with the toxic cloud that now surrounds the defenders of tradition.

It was fine to be against marriage equality when a 70 percent majority stood by your side and when most of those people were just regular folks who thought this is the way it’s always been.

But now, the people who ardently fight against marriage equality are no longer the regular folks. They’re the crazy gay bashers and they’re out there all by themselves, screaming into the wind about sickness and Jesus. So, um, no wonder the GOP is trying to keep a low profile and no wonder the defense of DOMA promises to be a circus.

The other noteworthy aspect of the poll story is the ongoing collapse of the middle ground as people realize that either they have to be for equality or against it. The idea that civil unions could ever be a permanent compromise is less and less credible. And although some embrace it as a stepping stone or an incremental move towards progress, it doesn’t seem as if many fence sitters now see it as a long term institution.
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I Object!

Well, I see I’ve managed to ramble on about marriage and polls and such for nearly the entire column. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! However, in view of this extended coverage, I will skip the story about whether or not the Ninth Circuit will release the court tapes from the Prop 8 trial. Okay with you? Good.

I was also going to write about the gatekeepers at YouTube and Facebook, who both removed gay content because, I suppose, someone had clicked on the button that indicates they found it offensive.

YouTube deleted an excellent, compelling video, posted by GLBT Apple employees as part of the “It Gets Better” project. The video urged teens to tough it out, and remember that they’re not alone. After a few hours, the site put the video back up and apologized.

Likewise, Facebook removed a photo of two men kissing, for reasons unclear. The photo was reposted, also with an apology, but not before quite a few people had posted their own gay kissing shots to make a point.

Clearly, the censors at YouTube and Facebook have a lot on their plates, and rightly so. We don’t want animal snuff films or racist tirades befouling our cyberspace. But still! I imagine that most of the things flagged down by puritanical or homophobic users fall into the category of objectionable objections. How did these images fall through the cracks and get deleted by an actual employee?

Finally, there’s a lot of news out of the states, but it looks like we’re out of space! (Cue: loud noise of moaning crowd.) Delaware sent a civil union bill to the governor. Yay! Arizona and Virginia are attacking gay adoptive parents. Hiss. Hawaii passed a trans workplace bill. Yay! And there’s much talk about a push for marriage equality in New York this summer. I’m not sure how Governor Cuomo plans to strong arm the GOP leaders in the legislature, but I wish everyone luck.

Full Fifth Circuit Says Louisiana Can Ignore Gay Fathers

News for the Week Ended April 13, 2011
BY ANN ROSTOW


Full Fifth Circuit Says Louisiana Can Ignore Gay Fathers

My jaw is on the floor after reading one of the most egregiously antigay federal appellate opinions of the last decade.

That’s significant because these last ten years have seen a steady, and rapid, improvement in judicial consideration of gay rights cases, mainly due to a realization that gay litigants are regular human beings like everyone else---and also due to the layers of pro-gay precedent laid down by the U.S. Supreme Court and other federal tribunals.

Now comes the full bench of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, a conservative court according to conventional wisdom, but still! In an 11-5 decision released Tuesday, the court basically ignored the text and spirit of the Full Faith and Credit Clause, ruling that the Louisiana state registrar had every right to withhold a corrected birth certificate from the adopted son of two gay men from out of state.

Oh, there was no direct antigay language in the opinion. Instead, the majority tied itself in knots trying to insist that the refusal to issue a birth certificate did not in any way indicate that the state of Louisiana was refusing to give full faith and credit to the out of state adoption.

Of course Louisiana “recognized” the adoption! It’s just that the registrar didn’t want to put both fathers’ names on this little certificate thingy because Louisiana prefers adoptions by married families or singles. But, hey! It’s not as if the registrar undid the adoption. In fact, the registrar even offered to put one of the father’s names on the birth certificate! Heads or tails?

Tell that to the father who’s name would not appear on his son’s birth certificate. Tell that to the bureaucrats and passport officers and school authorities and everyone else who will be relying on this paperwork over the next 80 years or so, assuming the five-year-old has a long life.

As for the Full Faith and Credit Clause, Article IV of the Constitution which requires that states respect the public acts, records and judgments of sister states, the court ruled that individuals can’t sue state actors in federal court under the Clause. Their only option is to sue in state court for the withheld recognition, and then appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court if they lose.

That’s simply not the case! And no amount of citations to pre-war (and even 19th century) precedent will make it true. To be clear, Louisiana law requires the state to issue a revised birth certificate, listing the names of the legal parents of a child born in the state and later adopted. There’s no gay exception. There’s no public policy exception. It is mandatory.

Now what? Lambda Legal Defense is presumably considering an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. If they appeal, I bet the High Court would accept the case.

First, because the Fifth Circuit decision is in direct opposition to an Oklahoma case, where the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit struck the Sooner law against issuing revised certificates to the adopted progeny of gay parents. As you know, the High Court exists in part to resolve disputes among the federal appellate courts.

Second, because at least four members of the Supreme Court will probably want to clarify the jurisdictional scope of the Full Faith and Credit Clause.

But meanwhile, this case is amazing. And it serves as a depressing reminder --- to me at least – that for all our progress, we still have a long way to go.

You’ll be pleased to know that I skipped an entire discussion about the Equal Protection claim that was also rejected by the court, even though the issue was set aside by both the trial court and the three-judge panel. Normally, a reviewing court does not meddle in claims that have not been addressed by the lower courts, but hey. This is Louisiana, and this is the Fifth Circuit (which also governs my home state of Texas).

Anyway, keep on eye on this case, because it may be the next major gay rights claim to hit the High Court.
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Pause For the President

I’m about to turn on the TV and watch Obama wrestle with the deficit, which has somehow emerged as the Number One Priority of the United States, even as the economy struggles to recover, joblessness remains above 9 percent and three wars continue in various stages.

Fine! Cut the deficit. But stop with the crazy talk about how America is broke. We’re not.

And stop with the inane analogy to the average family cutting costs around the kitchen table. The average family lives with long-term debt, mortgages and loans of all sorts. They don’t plan to pay off the house in ten years. And the average family doesn’t take a voluntary pay cut, which America has done thanks to the Bush tax cuts. And no, America’s millionaires are not “creating jobs” with their tax savings. They’re setting up trust funds for their kids. And finally, when the average family does sit down at the kitchen table, they cut restaurant dinners, not the kids’ textbooks or annual medical checkups.

I’m back.

That was a remarkable speech. I almost cried. That’s all I’ll say, since I hear the siren song of GLBT news calling me back.
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Congress For Dummies

You may recall that the House Armed Services Committee recently held two hearings on the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, a subject that frankly, has started to exhaust me.

So I saw an audio link to some Q and A from a Republican House member Austin Scott of Georgia to Vice Admiral William Gortney and I reluctantly clicked.

Apparently, Congressman Scott was under the impression that gay men and women were usually discharged for violating the military code, in other words for having illicit sexcapades. Admiral Gortney patiently explained that no, gay servicemembers rarely violate the code. They are simply discharged for being gay. Scott seemed perplexed and confused by this new information.

Can you believe that? A member of the House Armed Services Committee, conducting a hearing on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, with not the slightest clue about how the law operates or how it’s been enforced?

By the way, those hearings did nothing to stall the schedule for repealing the military ban, since all the military mucky mucks said the training for repeal was going fine and there were no anticipated problems.

And while we’re on the subject of Congress, there’s a hearing on the legal defense of the Defense of Marriage Act set for Friday in the House Judiciary’s subcommittee on the Constitution. Presumably, this conclave will examine exactly how and when Congress will attempt to intervene in some or all of the DOMA challenges now advancing in the federal courts.

So far, they seem to have done next to nothing, which is fine by me. With the Justice Department backing away from the marriage cases, Congress is theoretically supposed to fill the breach in two cases now pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, as well as a case in federal court in New York and another in Connecticut. There’s also a federal DOMA challenge in Oakland, and there’s about to be one in San Francisco.

I would love to be a fly on the wall in that subcommittee room.

Think about it. The bill for defending one case, or even two, could be explained away as a necessity to protect Congressional integrity—or something. I don’t know. But the cost and continued publicity of fighting six or seven or a dozen cases? John Boehner and the House republicans are trying to present themselves as hard charging deficit hawks. The last thing they need is to be seen leading an ongoing, and expensive, attack on gay couples in courts around the country.

And you know, this isn’t an abstract political posture. In the New York case, for example, Mr. Boehner and company will be arguing that a little old lady should pay estate taxes of over $300,000 on the house she owned for decades due to the death of her longtime partner and legal wife. That will look really good.

True, the “cost” of litigation will be miniscule compared to the budget deficit. But the media and the pundits enjoy blathering about “millions” being spent on this or that, as if “millions” had the slightest impact on the national deficit. So I hope down the road we’ll be hearing about the “hundreds of thousands” wasted on this exercise.
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Former Foe Now Fights For Marriage

I was happy to read that the guy who dreamed up that traditional marriage bus tour has had a change of heart and now recognizes that same-sex couples should have the right to marry.

It’s not often you witness such a 180 degree turnaround, but Louis J Marinelli has not only turned around, he has written a fund raising email for the Courage Campaign in an effort to undo some of the damage he caused by his antigay activism.

Marinelli conceived of the cross-country bus tour, and presented the idea to the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), which jumped on the plan. For months, the little band of antigay activists drove around from town to town, invariably greeted by a handful of conservatives (if any) and a large crowd of gay marriage supporters, waving banners and chanting.

Marinelli also set up a traditional marriage web page, and became disturbed by the level of antigay hatred it attracted. After talking to the gay activists he met on the bus tour, and seeing first hand the venom spewing from the other side, Marinelli became convinced that civil marriage was not a Christian issue, and that the fight against gay couples was a dehumanizing mistake.

After coming out publicly last week, NOM announced that Marinelli was little more than an independent “bus driver” who had no real connection to the organization. Hmmmm.

I can’t count the number of essays and statements I’ve read from people who once opposed marriage equality to a greater or lesser degree, but who now support our right to wed. Politicians, activists, pundits, ex-presidents, and soon perhaps, a current president.

But I have never encountered a gay marriage supporter who thought about the issue and decided that when all is said and done, it’s probably best that gay couples be denied the right to marry. The fight for marriage equality may be slow, but it only moves in one direction.
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Unanimous Victory For Arkansas Parents

Five pm eastern standard time. Cocktail hour! I only have 200 words left so what harm can it do?

Indeed, cocktail in hand (actually a glass of rose), I am now prepared to tackle the Arkansas Supreme Court’s unanimous decision to strike the state ban on adoption or foster parenting by unmarried cohabiting couples. The Hog state has a long history of trying to outlaw gay adoptions, and after agency regulations to that effect were struck by successive courts (on technicalities) the voters got together to pass their own adoption ban in November of 2008.

Now, after skirting the core issues in a previous case, the state high court has finally and definitively weighed in on the subject, ruling that fundamental due process rights do not allow the state to put marital restrictions on parenting.

Adoptions and foster parents are selected on a case-by-case basis after a home study and so forth. In this case, the idea of preemptively barring a huge category of prospective households did not pass the smell test, otherwise known as strict scrutiny. Note that Arkansas’s law banned any unmarried couple, straight or gay, from applying to become adoptive or foster parents. And it did so for no reason save vague references to an ideal home. This, said the court, was a violation of privacy rights under the Due Process Clause, forcing people to pick and choose between their intimate relationships and their desire to adopt or foster.

Yay Arkansas Supreme Court! Boo Fifth Circuit.

Messing with the IRS

News for the Week Ended April 6, 2011
BY ANN ROSTOW


Messing With The IRS

There’s a grassroots effort underway to get married gay couples to file joint tax returns in violation of the Defense of Marriage Act. I have to confess, as a married lesbian, that the idea has some appeal.

On the other hand, as a tax phobe who dreads the annual bureaucracy and headache of filing taxes, the notion of deliberately screwing up my tax forms to make a political point is not attractive. Worse, I gather we’re supposed to go through a complex process as follows. First, file our taxes as single. Then, file a revised tax return as a married couple. Finally, wait six months to see how the IRS responds, and then file suit to collect any extra refund from the second set of tax returns.

To my brothers and sisters in the Struggle, I’m sorry. I just can’t handle it. The additional prospect of ending up with penalties, fees, interest, and having to spend extra bucks on professional tax assistance just adds to the horror of it all.

Finally, I’ve received my share of those scary envelopes from the IRS, informing me that I’ve made a mistake of some sort. I’m familiar with the unpleasant sensation of rifling through the mail and finding the kind of letter you just want to stuff under a pile of newspapers and forget about. But you can’t do that for long, and at last you tell yourself that not opening the damn thing will not actually change the reality of the situation. So you open it, take a deep breath, and check out the bottom line. Usually, it’s easier to pay it rather than hunt through your disorganized tax papers and make a challenge. But still. The whole process is best avoided.
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Go Kloppenburg!

So, I stayed up until two in the morning watching the results from the Wisconsin Supreme Court election where the hardcore conservatives who are trying to drive out unions confronted the outraged progressives who are trying to save their state. The avatars for these two factions, David Prosser and JoAnne Kloppenburg, ended up neck and neck and will likely face a recount. With all districts reporting, Kloppenburg led by about 200 out of about 1.5 million votes.

And before I move on, I have a confession. After pooh-poohing the radiation fears from the Japanese nuclear disaster, I was finally brought up short by the idea of radioactive fish. Put me the group of those who will be avoiding imports of fish from Japan, although I’m not sure how you figure out which little fishy came from which country. Maybe I’ll just stick to river trout.

I’m in a mood to ramble rather than report, so let me get a couple of actual news items out of the way. Remember the civil union bill in Colorado? You can forget about it now, since it got killed in a house committee.

There’s another Congressional hearing on the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell set for Thursday before the full House Armed Services Committee. I’m still unclear on the Republican agenda, and I assume there’s little they can do to derail the repeal process. But it’s still annoying to watch them try.

Even though DADT is technically still in effect, there have been no discharges this year. Last week, the Navy dropped proceedings against a gay sailor, basically accepting the de facto change in policy.

And Equality California is again wondering whether or not to start a petition drive to put a repeal of Prop 8 on the 2012 ballot. Now that it seems the legal battle to end Prop 8 will stretch well into next year, if not beyond, we may be back to square one—or whatever square we were on two years ago. What do you think? I think it sounds exhausting, but perhaps necessary.
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Where’s the House DOMA Defense?

Speaking of legal battles, the House leadership has yet to announce the details of their new legal role in defending the Defense of Marriage Act. Weeks have gone by since a Congressional task force voted to defend the law in court in view of the Justice Department’s decision to stop arguing in favor of the federal ban on recognizing same-sex marriage, and yet we’ve heard noting more about it. Indeed, a group of gay allies in the House just sent a letter to Speaker Boehner asking for some explanations.

Will the House general counsel defend DOMA? Will they hire outside lawyers? How much will this cost? Will the House ask to intervene in the various pending DOMA cases? Or will they just file briefs as friends of the court?

Given that one of the judges in one of those pending cases has set an April 18 deadline for a House motion to intervene, one would think that some people are working on the issue, but to date we don’t know who that might be or what they might be doing. It’s interesting as well that John Boehner does not seem to welcome his new role as the leader of the culture war. Indeed, John Boehner does not seem particularly happy about his professional life in general at this point, evincing a level of discomfort that sort of speaks well of him.
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Monkey Business

Here’s a disappointing development. A few months back I bookmarked a story about gay monkeys, and when I tried to retrieve it just now, it was gone. I forget what it said, and my only clue is the bookmark title: “reat for gay monkeys.”

Oh, good news! I found it. “Special Valentine treat for gay monkeys” was the actual headline, and although it’s no longer timely, it’s still a lovely account of two spider monkeys named Elton and David, who live at the Drayton Manor Theme Park in Staffordshire. They reportedly became a couple about a year ago. Or at least, that’s when keepers noticed them hugging and fooling around. Sadly, I can’t find out what the special treat was. I’m guessing bananas.

By the way, as usual I’m watching MSNBC in the background. It turns out that Japanese fish is safe, as long as it’s not from the nuclear plant area. Plus, food safety people are checking imports for radiation just in case.

Wonder whether those government food safety people will be on the job next week? Aw. Who needs government? We’ll just police our own sushi, thank you very much. All we need is a lab and Abby from NCIS. Or maybe there’s an iPhone ap we can use.
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Queer As Mice

In other gay animal news, I was struck by a Dallas Voice article about the connection between serotonin levels and same-sex attraction in male mice. Turns out that if you take away serotonin receptors and put a bunch of male mice together, they are all over each other. Once you give them back their receptors, they’re straight as arrows.

“Do we care” asked the gay weekly? After all, we’ve been debating the nature versus nurture question for decades, with our side usually insisting that we are not “gay by choice.”

This debate seems animated in part by the idea that if a characteristic is congenital and unchanging, discrimination on the basis of that characteristic is somehow worse than discrimination based on something more fluid. Indeed, “immutability” is one consideration courts have used to increase the level of scrutiny for laws that target a particular group.

But the question of gay immutability is a distraction from the real issue. Should you have to change or hide your sexual orientation in order to be treated equally? Of course not. Even if a simple shot of some chemical could someday turn us all into heterosexuals, such a notion is as repellent as the idea of forcing people to change their faith in order to suit a majority view.

And what if we could change our sexual orientation as easily as we change our hair color? Would it be wrong for some people to elect such a procedure? I guess I’d say that if they’re that unhappy, who am I to tell them what to do about it? But before we can assume that breezy attitude, we must create a society where being gay is easy, accepted and respected.

By the way, isn’t serotonin a happy thingy? I’d think that you’d be more gay if you had more serotonin. We all know that being gay is inherently more fun. The piano bars, the Pride parades, the glamour, the Fight for Equality!
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Gauguin Gets Gay Bashed

So, did you hear about the 50-something woman who attacked “Two Tahitian Women,” a painting by Paul Gauguin, at the National Gallery? The woman tried to pull the $80 million painting off the wall, and then tried to punch it, screaming “This is evil!” the Associated Press reports.

She later explained: “I feel that Gauguin is evil. He has nudity and is bad for the children. He has two women in the painting and it's very homosexual. I was trying to remove it. I think it should be burned.”

She also said she was from the CIA, had a radio in her head, and was planning to kill the police. I gather that she is being held without bail pending a psych evaluation.

The painting wasn’t damaged in Friday’s incident, and it’s expected back on the wall by Tuesday. That’s assuming that the staff of the National Gallery is working next week.
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Maintaining Self Control

Let’s see what else we can discuss this afternoon. (And you should know that these random items are my attempt to finish this column without going into an enraged diatribe against the House of Representatives. If I start I won’t be able to stop.)

So anyway, there’s a fight over whether or not gay couples should have the chance to adopt in Virginia, but I’ll save that for another week.

There’s some gay bashing news, but I find that subject depressing. And I think I cruised by a story out of Australia, where a maniac murdered his possibly gay ex-roommate in a violent knife attack. The killer told his pals that he once drank blood during a cannibal ritual. I don’t remember the exact details, but if you’re interested, try googling “Brisbane cannibal.”

And I was happy to read that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that Wal-Mart was within its legal rights when it fired an employee who directed a homophobic rant at several of her colleagues. The fired worker had tried to claim that her termination was a case of religious discrimination. But the court didn’t buy it

Look. You can’t be fired just because you’re Christian. You can’t be fired because you take a personal day on Yom Kippur. But you certainly can be fired if you launch a full blown screaming verbal attack at the expense of a minority group, whether Black or gay or whatever. And you can’t say the Bible made you do it. Good for the 7th Circuit.

Here’s another interesting story to wind down our column. Archeologists in Prague have discovered a gay caveman or trans cavewoman, a male who was buried in a fashion usually reserved for females.

The skeleton was facing east, and surrounded by urns and jugs. During this period, around 2900 to 2500 BC, men were buried facing west, and their graves were stocked with weapons and food. Women were laid to rest facing east, with pots and jewelry. Experts said that since burial rites were taken seriously, the male skeleton’s grave suggested not only that he was either gay or trans, but that the community respected his (or her) identity.

Don’t tell me that society was more advanced in 2900 BC than it is now.

Oh, and let’s give credit for a pretty good joke to the decadent egomaniac who runs Italy, and who is now defending himself in court against charges that he had sex with an underage prostitute (along with dozens of other hired women).

Silvio Berlusconi announced that a national survey firm had asked Italian women if they would like to sleep with him. According to the 70-something prime minister, 30 percent said “Yes,” and 70 percent said: “What? Again?”

Don’t get me wrong. The man’s still a fool. Much like the members of the GOP majority in the House of Representatives.
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arostow@aol.com