Victory in Iowa May Have Saved Marriage

Week In Review
November 9, 2011
BY ANN ROSTOW



Victory in Iowa May Have Saved Marriage

Great news everyone. The Iowa state senate remains in Democratic hands, ergo, marriage equality is safe in the Caucus State for the near term. Liz Mathis won the special election for an empty seat that could have tied the state senate and led to an antigay marriage amendment down the road. Yay!

But speaking of marriage equality and Iowa, two married women are now fighting the state for the simple right to have both their names entered on their daughter’s birth certificate.

I know we’ve covered a number of birth certificate cases in the past, but this one is different. It’s not the usual matter of trying to get a revised certificate for an adopted child, something that’s done routinely for straight adoptive parents. This is a married couple having a child. I think we can assume that the non-birth mother did not make a genetic contribution to the baby’s makeup, but so what? Husbands get added to the birth certificate automatically, even in situations where the man is infertile, and no one questions the assumption that a married couple are the legal parents of their own child regardless of how he or she was conceived.

In Iowa, obviously, same-sex marriage is legal and the high court has mandated equal treatment for gay and straight couples. So why leave the second Mom’s name off the child’s first and most significant legal document? Lambda Legal argued the case on behalf of Melissa and Heather Gartner last Monday.
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The Gay Place

I dutifully watched Glee last night to see the big sex scene. Tastefully done in my opinion. I’m a little over Glee frankly. Too much singing. Weird plot lines. And I don’t like the smarmy teacher who runs the club, or his wimpy girlfriend. My favorite character is the butchy, but straight, female football coach. And Jane Lynch of course.

To be honest, after swearing that I would watch Glee, I forgot all about it. Mel and I went out to dinner instead and stopped by Austin’s signature gay bar for a nightcap. There, we found about ten guys sitting on stools watching a bank of TV sets all showing Glee with the sound on, nursing exotic cocktails and singing along with West Side Story.

Did you watch it? There was a scene in which the boys acquired fake IDs and went dancing at a dimly lit gay bar. I couldn’t help but look around at my own gay bar where instead of dancing and cruising, we were all watching a sit com. Ah reality.

Sing with me: “Make of our hearts, one heart…”
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Respect!

So, I suppose the big news this week is that the Senate Judiciary Committee is going to take on the Respect For Marriage Act on Thursday. RESMA, as I have decided to call it, would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, and is expected to advance to an uncertain fate on the Senate floor at some point.

Over in the House, as you know, John Boehner and his GOP colleagues are busy defending DOMA in court, so we know for a fact that RESMA has zero chance of emerging from this, or any other GOP-led, Congress. Still, it’s always nice to see our issues get a brief turn in the legislative spotlight on Capitol Hill.

That said, I have little interest in symbolic developments. How many times has my inbox been filled with breathless announcements about the Employment Nondiscrimination Act coming up for a hearing or a mark up or whatever? A zillion times. I counted. Whatever happened to ENDA anyway? I haven’t heard a peep lately, which I guess is good. As I’ve written before, I hate ENDA and think our activists should drop the useless anachronism and try instead to add sexual orientation to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
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Stroke Away the Straight

Moving on, I’ve just been reading about a straight man from Wales who had a traumatic brain accident and woke up gay. It’s true! I thought it was a joke, but apparently it’s not. Chris Birch, 26, was an 18-stone rugby player who worked for a bank and was about to get married when he tried, and failed, to show off to his “mates” with a back flip. If memory serves, a stone is 14 pounds, so you can do the math.

Upon recovery from his mangled acrobatics, Birch decided he hated his old life. He dumped his fiancé, quit the bank, trained to be a hairdresser, lost eight stone, and hooked up with a 19-year-old boyfriend.

Doctors can’t say whether Birch was gay to begin with or whether the accident triggered a shift, but well, the brain is a mysterious thing. His injury is described as a “stroke,” although it’s also clear that he broke his neck during the missed flip. I suppose the broken neck cut circulation to his brain or something.

Hmmm. I thought gayness was hormonal, didn’t you?

I found the gay stroke victim while I was searching for details on a ruling out of New Jersey on Lambda’s latest marriage lawsuit. Happily for most readers, I could not locate the text of the judge’s opinion, but the bottom line is that she refused to dismiss the suit, allowing Lambda to continue its challenge to the Garden State’s pathetic civil union law. Lambda is trying to prove that civil unions are not equal to marriage. As such, they do not satisfy the New Jersey Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling that mandated equality for same-sex couples.
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More Gay Penguins

I’m hungry and thirsty and not interested in bullying or drivers licenses or nondiscrimination laws that may or may not be instituted in Topeka. Checking my news list, it seems I could also discuss gay penguins about to be cruelly separated by mean zookeepers. Or, I can tell you that the IRS has decided to allow a deduction for sex reassignment treatment.

But I’d rather have a nice lunch, a la francaise, sitting outside at a table under an umbrella in Trouville. I’d have mussels, a baguette and a bottle of Muscadet sur lies. With a tarte tatin and a Calva for dessert. I’d sit and watch the Channel traffic, leaving behind all the trials and tribulations of the GLBT community. After lunch, I’d wander down the street and play some blackjack. Then, I’d take a nap.

I do have frozen mussels and a bottle of sauvignon blanc. I could have that with some sandwich bread, look at my back yard for awhile and then play internet poker. But it’s not quite what I had in mind.

The gay penguins, by the way, are part of an endangered sub-species and are being encouraged to procreate at the Toronto Zoo. It’s sad, but I suppose all of us would suck it up and do our duty if the survival of the human race were at stake. Plus, the good news is that Pedro and Buddy will be reunited once their critical assignments are complete.

As for the bullying story, it seems that the Michigan state legislature is intent on passing a law that will discourage school harassment, unless the harasser is acting out of a sincerely held religious belief.

Thanks but no thanks, says the GLBT community in the Mitten State. For God’s sake! It’s better to have no law at all than a statute that specifically exonerates faith-based bullying. I recently wrote a brilliant essay on the subject of religious exceptions to civil rights laws, but I can’t remember if I already rehashed those observations in this column, and if so, I don’t want to repeat myself.

Let’s just say that there’s no legitimate “religious belief” that justifies gay bashing, period. And we’re sick of bending over backwards to accommodate the notion that Christianity mandates homophobia. It doesn’t.
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Below Average Joe

Did you hear the “news” the other day that investors made more money in the first two years of Obama’s administration than they did in all eight years under George Bush?

This factoid makes perfect sense considering the markets tanked at the end of the Bush years and regained most of their losses over the next two years. I mean in essence, investors made 5 gazillion dollars, lost four gazillion dollars and then made three gazillion dollars. Broken down along the lines of who was in office, they made one gazillion under Bush and three gazillion under Obama’s first two years.

But no one pointed this out! Instead, the analysis was all about whether Obama’s policies were more aligned with Wall Street than those of Bush. I’m not just talking about one or two anchors or pundits. I’m talking about every one of them. Who pays these TV experts? Why do we watch them?

Oh, you don’t watch them? Never mind.

It’s true that I have a bad addiction to cable news, and as such, I’ve been listening to people shake their heads sadly over the resignation of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, who did next to nothing after hearing that one of his coaches, Jerry Sandusky, was observed having sex with a ten-year-old in the shower.

Say what? I heard the story a few days ago, but I had no idea that the “incident” was not some vague suspicious-looking hanky panky. No. This man was having actual sex in the shower with a ten-year-old. And someone saw him, specifically a graduate assistant, who when I first heard the story, sounded like a responsible person who didn’t hesitate to report the bad behavior to an authority.

But hello? This is like “observing” a murder or an assault, and telling someone about it the following day. Who wouldn’t intervene in the rape of a child? And who would wait a day and consult with family before deciding to report this event to higher ups?

As for Paterno, he claims that he wasn’t told about the “graphic nature” of the attack, so what exactly did the graduate assistant tell him? And even if the description of the event was sugarcoated in the reporting, how do you basically ignore it? This great football coaching legend doesn’t deserve a sentimental goodbye. He’s despicable, as is the graduate assistant.
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As Maine Goes

Here’s some good news. Equality Maine used Election Day to gather enough signatures to put them over the top for a marriage vote next year. The activists picked up 35,000 names, bringing their total to 100,000, more than enough to qualify a marriage equality ballot measure for 2012.

I hope it’s good news. Maine repealed a marriage equality law by about four points in 2009. Now, surveys say the state has a slight majority in favor of equality, but you and I know what happens to small pro-gay majorities when people actually arrive at the ballot box. That said, Maine voters are known for independent thought, and this wouldn’t be the first time that they reversed themselves after an antigay vote.

I’m not covering the man who had to quit his gig to produce the Oscars after telling an interviewer that “rehearsals are for fags.” I forget his name, but you know what? How stupid do you have to be to use the “f” or “n” word in public these days? Plus, how stupid do you have to be to condemn rehearsing when you’re a Hollywood producer? His name is Brett Ratner, and I guess Eddie Murphy has quit as host in sympathy.

Speaking of stupid, did you hear that Sarkozi and Obama were caught dissing Netanyahu on an open mike? “I can’t stand him,” the French president told Obama. “Well, I have to deal with him every day,” Obama replied dryly. It’s no surprise that these guys dislike the intransigent Israeli leader. But have they not learned to beware of hot mikes?

And don’t they sound sort of like High School mean girls? What next? “Angela could lose a few pounds.” “Did you see her back fat in that dress last night? Oh my God!”
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Ann’s column appears every week at sfbaytimes.com. She can be reached at arostow@aol.com