Oh Oh Oh… It’s Madness

GLBT Fortnight in Review, March 19, 2014

BY ANN ROSTOW

Oh Oh Oh… It’s Madness!

 

Don’t tell my editors, please, but I’m way behind on my column because I had to fill out my billion dollar March Madness bracket. All these decisions to make. Is Wichita State for real? Can Harvard make another run? Will Joel Embiid return in time for Kansas to beat New Mexico in the second round? And what do I do with my own struggling home team, the University of Texas, who everyone is picking to lose in an upset to Arizona State.

 

My answers: yes and no; not this year; Kansas will win with or without him; and yes, Texas will beat Arizona State, but that’s as far as we go this year.

 

Years ago, before I married into a family of college hoops fanatics, I used to dread this time of year when the sports channels were overrun with boring games between no-name schools. One time, however, I was watching Gonzaga play just after I had written a story about some bad anti-gay thing that happened at Gonzaga. Amazingly, I was fired up about the game, rooting hard for Gonzaga’s foe and I had a brainstorm.

 

The following year I vowed to rank all 64 teams based on a gay factor. Was the team from a pro-gay state? Did the college have an antidiscrimination policy? Did gay groups on campus say the place was friendly, or not? After convincing my editors (at the Texas Triangle) to promote the big gay bracket issue, I dove into the project only to realize that it was insanely labor intensive. I wound up working for hours and hours and hours, and in keeping with my natural penchant for sloth over slog, I vowed never to do it again.

 

Happily, given my conversion to college basketball, I no longer have a need for gimmicks. But I still root against Gonzaga on principle. They’re not even at the dance this year. Hah! As for my bracket, I had no choice but to get it done by today because as you may know, Warren Buffett is giving a billion dollars to anyone who correctly predicts the entire contest. That could be me! I think the odds are unbeatable. You’re more likely to hit four holes in one in a single round of golf, or be struck by lightning on the one-year anniversary of the day you were bitten by a shark. But still. Anything can happen right?

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There’s Something About Marriage

 

It’s hard to admit, but I have also been avoiding this week’s column due to a certain marriage equality fatigue. Since marriage equality is the subject I have pursued relentlessly for nearly two decades, my sense of ennui is significant in some way. We have come so far that even a compulsive analyst of the fight for marriage can no longer wade through federal court briefs, or even track exactly how many cases are pending in federal courts. I think I read this week that five cases were just filed in Indiana alone. In another article, I read that three cases were filed in the Hoosier State. You know what? I’m not checking this out! It’s too much. I can’t give you the attention to detail that you deserve.

 

In Tennessee, a judge has issued an immediate order to recognize three marriages, just the plaintiffs in one case, but still. In Virginia, where Olson and Boies just won a marriage case at the district level, Lambda and the ACLU have been allowed to intervene in the appeal before the Fourth Circuit. The big gay guns have their own Virginia case and the Team of Rivals had opposed their motion to intervene to no avail. Now, the Fourth Circuit has announced a fast schedule that competes with the Tenth Circuit cases of Utah and Oklahoma. Basically, we will see appellate court arguments on marriage in early April at the Tenth Circuit, and early May at the Fourth Circuit. One or both of those appellate rulings will likely reach the High Court.

 

There are also two major headlines out of the Ninth Circuit. First, we just learned that the huge huge huge ruling in the gay juror case will not be appealed. Not to the full Ninth Circuit, and not to the Supreme Court. That means that sexual orientation discrimination remains presumptively unconstitutional throughout the western United States. This is now binding law, period. Thank you, Abbot Labs, for keeping your powder dry, perhaps with us in mind.

  

Second, the strange Nevada marriage case now on appeal to the Ninth Circuit has been shelved again, for no clear reason. This case, Sevcik v Sandoval, is the oldest federal marriage case on our community docket. For a time, it was combined with a case against Hawaii, but when the Island State legalized marriage, their case dropped off. The case against Nevada (which we lost in lower court) was put on hold while the Supreme Court considered the Prop 8 and Windsor cases. Then last summer, it resumed its sluggish progress.

 

In late January, the Ninth Circuit’s aforementioned gay juror ruling reset the legal standards in evaluating antigay bias cases. Shortly thereafter, the state of Nevada admitted it could no longer defend its marriage ban, and it looked as if the Ninth Circuit would move forward towards a big victory for equality. Earlier this month, the court even set up a schedule for April arguments before postponing them “indefinitely” the other day.  A procedural problem? Anyone out there know for sure?

 

Oh, but there’s so much more. A case or two just filed in Florida, a divorce case for two lesbians moving up in Alabama, and a decision expected any day now in the Prop 8-style marriage trial in Michigan. Meanwhile, briefs are flying in both directions all over the country in the run up to a summer of explosive legal headlines.

 

Keep in mind that all of these lawsuits are either sitting at a federal appellate court, or on their way to one. Unlike the state marriage suits we know and love, these rulings will use the force of federal law like a sledgehammer to smash the constitutional amendments that have barred our unions in over half the states. (Or not, of course, but I think most will.) At any rate, the Supreme Court will not be able to duck the central question of marriage equality once these appellate rulings hit their docket, a historic moment which will come sooner rather than later at this rate.

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I Heart SCOTUS

 

Speaking of the Supreme Court, the justices have decided not to review the “I Heart Boobies” case out of the Third Circuit, a confrontation between a Pennsylvania school district and a bunch of middle school girls who wore the saucy slogan on pink bracelets ostensibly to raise awareness of breast cancer. The school took it all too seriously, banning the bracelets as the sort of provocative disruption that districts are allowed to mitigate without offending the constitutional rights of students. The Third Circuit disagreed, basically ruling that the bracelets weren’t that big of a deal.

 

We were watching this case due to our communal interest in gay T-Shirts and other student statements. We all know that kids do not leave their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate, but those rights are nonetheless diminished to some extent once the students give themselves up to school authority for the day. Just a few years ago, for example, the High Court ruled that a student could be disciplined for carrying a druggie poster (“Bong Hits for Jesus”) to an off campus event. So, can a school make you take off your “Day of Silence” shirt? More interestingly, can the principal ban antigay hate speech? What about a shirt with a quote from Leviticus? It remains murky, but we err on the side of the student as did the High Court last week.

 

In other gay-related SCOTUS news, the justices are about to hear the Hobby Lobby case that asks to what extent a corporation can skirt the law through a claim of religious freedom. Many observers have now noticed the link between Hobby Lobby (whose owners don’t want to offer insurance that covers contraception) and the sort of antigay business owner who might not want to serve gay customers.

 

But you heard the comparison here first, months ago when the High Court agreed to take the case. At issue are several questions, one being the constitutional rights of corporations versus individuals. Without diving fully back into the swamp of religious freedom where we have wallowed so often in the past, let me just note that once again, while everyone loves to discuss religious freedom, few are questioning whether and why hostility and prejudice towards gay men and women even qualifies as a legitimate tenet of religious faith in the first place. At any rate, arguments are scheduled for next week so it will be all over the press.

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The End of Days for Fred?

 

So, we heard this week that our old pal Fred Phelps is in poor health, and living in some kind of medical facility. His estranged son Nathan says it’s a hospice and that the 84-year old man is close to death.  Nathan also wrote that Phelps has been kicked out of the Westboro Baptist Church, which is hard to believe considering said “church” is nothing more than a collection of Phelps family members living on a compound in one of Topeka’s residential neighborhoods.

 

Aha! Further research indicates that there was indeed a power struggle within the Phelps family this summer and that Fred lost. Also, in case some of you are hoping to go picket this lunatic’s funeral, his daughter announced that he won’t have one. Really? I bet they do something for the old buzzard.

 

I noticed while looking into Fred’s status that some in our community are torn about celebrating a man’s death. But you know what? It’s not a zero sum game where you have to either celebrate or maintain some respect. This is a brutal, hateful and mentally deranged individual, who inadvertently advanced gay rights by personifying religious bigotry at its worst. His dying days will bring me a grim satisfaction, and his death will simply mark the end of the weird phenomenon that was Fred Phelps. I hope his “funeral,” or whatever ritual ensues, is a lonely affair. No protestors, no news media, no attention, no care whatsoever.

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Vox Unpopuli

 

I have a few hundred words left. Just enough for the two lesbians murdered in Texas by an antigay dad, or maybe a recap of who did or did not march in the St. Patrick’s Day Parades, and which beer companies decided to boycott to show gay support (Guinness and Sam Adams, maybe others).

 

Instead, how about contrarian gay writer, Brendon Ambrosino, a man who has stood out from the crowds on each side of the gay debate by deliberately taking the road no one else travels?

 

There’s a reason no one travels these roads. Most gay journalists don’t think being gay is fundamentally a choice, don’t have much sympathy for far right leaders like Jerry Falwell, and don’t believe that gay activists are bullies when they confront discrimination or bigotry. Ambrosino, whose columns inspire sputtering fury from the rest of the gay writing cohort, has just been hired as a gay voice for Vox, a new online venture run by clueless Ezra Klein, who admitted he wasn’t really up to date on Ambrosino’s body of work, but said he liked writers who didn’t say the same thing as everyone else.

 

You know, everyone likes a fresh viewpoint. But although many aspects of gay civil rights are up for debate, that debate is marked by some bright lines that can’t be crossed by any serious writer. And yet… they can be crossed by someone like Brendon Albrosino! They can be crossed by someone who wants to be noticed on that lonely road to nowhere and who doesn’t have the mental agility to explore the nuanced complexities along the side streets that intersect our common path. There are a lot of people on those side streets and they’re not going to be noticed by conventional editors who are fundamentally unversed in the gay rights movement. Not unless they’re really good, which Brandon Albrosino is not. Ergo, he’s a contrarian--- which is almost always a euphemism for a simplistic publicity seeker posing as a thinker.

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arostow@aol.com

Christian Agonistes

GLBT Fortnight in Review, March 5, 2014

BY ANN ROSTOW

 

Christian Agonistes

 

Last week, as you no doubt witnessed, Arizona governor Jan Brewer vetoed the law that would have allowed business owners to refuse gay clients based on religious freedom. Jan Brewer is not exactly liberal. But from the moment the bill passed the legislature and landed on her desk, she found herself in the middle of a firestorm of near universal condemnation. I’m guessing the scariest moment was when the NFL indicated they might pull the Super Bowl rather than do business in a state that protects overt discrimination by statute.

 

Quite frankly, I was surprised. The week before the Arizona veto, we saw the conservative head of the Kansas senate kill a similar measure, explaining it went too far even for her GOP majority. That was nice, but I still assumed that these bills were going to run through the rest of Red America’s state legislatures like sharp knives through rare filet mignon. I assumed that the antigay right had settled on an official counterattack to our marriage victories in federal court: cast themselves as the victims of religious oppression and pass a succession of antigay state laws in response.

 

Now it seems as if the tactic has been defeated before it can get underway. Yes, some of these bills are still pending. Mississippi has something going. And maybe Missouri. But other legislatures dropped their efforts once they saw the threat to Arizona’s image and economy. And, like me, the antigay right has been caught off guard.

 

Commentators like George Will, Rich Lowry and Ross Douthat are now urging the gay community to show a little fair play. It’s not neighborly to insist on service from a well-meaning Christian, Will suggested.

 

If a gay couple is turned away at the door, wrote Lowry, “the market has a ready solution: There are other bakers, photographers and florists. The wedding business is not exactly bristling with hostility to gay people. If one baker won’t make a cake for gay weddings, the baker across town can hang a shingle welcoming all couples for all types of weddings.

“This is how a pluralistic society would handle such disputes. Instead, in the cases mentioned above, the gay couples reported the businesses to the authorities for punishment.”

 

As for Douthat, his recent New York Times op-ed acknowledged that marriage equality was a fait accompli. And when it happens, then what, he wondered? Will gay activists settle down, enjoy their victory and learn to respect those with different opinions? Or will they push their success to the limit and rudely force the whole country to, um, sell them cakes and flowers? (I paraphrase.)

 

Sadly for Douthat, it looks as if the mean gays don’t know when to stop. The “religious freedom” bill in Arizona and others like them, he explains, are actually a “way for religious conservatives to negotiate surrender---to accept same-sex marriage’s inevitability while carving out protections for dissent.

 

“But now,” he continues with patronizing dismay, “apparently, the official line is thatyou bigots don’t get to negotiate anymore.”

 

In fact, the official line is that discrimination against gay men and women is wrong. It’s wrong in marriage, in business, in employment, in housing, wherever. It’s never been negotiable. To oppose a measure that deliberately authorizes antigay bias is not unsportsmanlike or unneighborly.

 

As for the marketplace in our pluralistic society, it will self-select for bias all by itself, without any help from state legislatures. It’s likely that most gay couples will seek out friendly businesses for their wedding services, through advertising or referrals or just through instinct. I suppose there can never be a statute against giving grudging or rude service to a customer you don’t like. So Christians will always have that option, and I assume most gay clients would respond by turning to a welcoming shingle as Lowry suggests. But they’ll do it by choice rather than force of law.

 

My question is this? What will the far right do now? Are they out of strategies? Can they do nothing more than whine about “fairness” and accuse us of running up the score when we’re up seven with three minutes left? We will see.

 

And finally, we’re not just talking about bakers and dress shops. Last year, two Oregon lesbians were kicked out of their cab at night on the side of the interstate by a driver who disapproved of them on religious grounds. A state agency has just determined that the driver violated state law in the process, and a civil rights case will go forward against him. So, Mr. Lowry? It’s one thing to move on to the bakery down the street with the rainbow sticker in the window. It’s quite another to find a taxi at one in the morning on IH-84.

 

By the way, the women had been out carousing at a “vegan strip club.” Only in Portland.

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Marry Go Round

 

Most of the news this week, as usual, revolves around our many marriage cases. We had another federal marriage victory, this time in Texas of all places. Friend of the court briefs were filed by some of our GOP allies in the Tenth Circuit. The Attorney General of Kentucky declined to defend the anti-marriage law in the Bourbon State, although the governor will find some other legal team to represent the defense. Various counties in Illinois are allowing marriages even though the state marriage equality law doesn’t go into effect until this summer.

 

Lambda and the ACLU are trying to join the appeal of our marriage victory in Virginia, since they have a parallel case on track in the Lover’s State. David Boies and Ted Olson are urging the Fourth Circuit to deny this request. Sound familiar? Yes, Olson and Boies are the same advocates who are trying to join the appeal in the Tenth Circuit.

 

And the beat goes on. If you think marriage dominates the news right now, just wait for this summer and fall when the federal appellate rulings start to drop.

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Are The Kids OK?

 

In Michigan, our fight for marriage looks a little different. Earlier, the federal judge in this case ordered a Prop 8-style trial in lieu of ruling as a matter of law and I think we’re on Day Six as I write. One of the witnesses is Mark Regenerus, author of the discredited paper on the children of gay parents. The University of Texas sociologist studied families in which one parent came out of the closet and determined that the kids from these broken homes fared poorly in comparison to intact families of heterosexual couples.

 

I can’t remember exactly how the Regenerus research was structured, but it was something like that. But what bugs me is not the bad science; it’s the very idea that marriage rights should stand or fall based on society’s view of who makes a good parent. I know I’ve hashed over this topic in the past, but it annoys me that people on both sides continue to fight over a red herring.

 

You know, two of the Supreme Court’s major rulings on marriage involved demonstrably bad parents. In one, the justices ruled that a state could not deny the right to marry to men who were delinquent on child support from a previous union. In another, they ruled that incarcerated felons had the right to marry, even if the marriage could not be consummated.

 

I don’t need a sociology study to tell me that children of deadbeat dads and convicts are worse off than most. And indeed, as I’ve written before, we could argue that millionaire parents or highly educated parents have better outcomes than their poorer or less schooled peers. But just what does this have to do with the right to marry? Why are we putting gay parents to a test that does not apply to any other couple? And why are we, the gay community, trying to pass the test rather than challenge its premise?

 

Just sayin’. For the twentieth time. You readers are very patient.

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Jack’s Wild

 

I’m certain I have skipped over a number of other marriage news bits, but enough is enough, do you not agree? Let’s just ramble.

 

It was nice to see Jason Collins get a contract, albeit a short term one, the other day. Too bad he signed with the Nets a few hours after I submitted a column observing that pro teams have little interest in the thirty-something gay journeyman hoopster. I hate that. And yes, it’s all about me.

 

I guess Disney has decided to sever its ties with the Boy Scouts, since the Scouts refuse to lift their ban on gay scoutmasters. Gay scouts are now okay, but adult men remain barred. Two questions. Why do the scouts keep hanging onto the notion that a gay troop leader is likely a pedophile? And second, if they really believe gay men are sexual predators, why did they go ahead and lift the ban on scouts? They don’t trust a gay man in his 20s or 30s, but a 15 or 16 year old gay kid is just fine? It doesn’t compute.

 

And did you read about the Washington lobbyist, Jack Burkman, who said he would draft legislation to ban gay players from the NFL? Burkman, who also used to work for nasty New York pol Rick Lazio, later said he meant only to ban gay men from the communal showers, and later still, he said the whole thing was a joke. Meanwhile, quite a few of his clients are distancing themselves from this K Street kreep, and his gay brother, Dr. James Burkman of Seattle, said something ironic about how gay it is for Jack to “stick his head up his ass.”

 

I was trying to find the exact quote but my computer is having a meltdown that would put a fussy toddler to shame. In the course of my frustrating excursion through cyber-chaos, I stumbled upon an ad for burial insurance, which reminds me of something. Have you seen the TV commercial where Dad has fallen off the ladder and all the kids have rushed to meet Mom in the hospital waiting room? Dad comes out looking goofy and apologetic with his arm in a sling, and the next thing you know, all the kids are convincing Mom to buy end-of-life insurance to cover funeral costs. They even volunteer to make the call together and fill out the paperwork. Cheap little bastards!

 

Seriously. It would be one thing if the kids recommended more medical insurance in case crazy old Dad takes on another one of his dangerous home improvement projects. But burial insurance isn’t something you suggest to your parents. It doesn’t benefit them. It benefits you.  

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Majority Rule!

 

Finally, let’s talk about polls. You know, of course, that approval of same-sex marriage has steadily increased over the last ten years or so. But did you realize that our poll numbers have surged in the last two years? Did you realize that the most recent survey shows almost 60 percent of Americans now support marriage equality?

 

I guess I hadn’t realized that we gained maybe ten or fifteen points in a relatively short time. But the interesting thing is that conservatives still don’t seem to know that they are now in the minority.  According to study by the Public Religion Research Institute, roughly 80 percent of marriage opponents believe that most Americans oppose marriage right along with them. No wonder they’re so surprised by the legal and political developments in the world around them.

 

Granted, things have changed quickly. Indeed, only 57 percent of strong gay marriage supporters know their views are widely shared, and only 34 percent of all Americans correctly state that a majority favors marriage equality. But I don’t think it will be a secret much longer. That is, unless you’re the sort of person who watches nothing but Fox News and reads nothing but George Will and Rich Lowry.

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arostow@aol.com