GAY MARRIAGEEvery time I hear some sanctimonious fuck spit out, "Marriage is between a man and a woman, in God's eyes," I think of the Max von Sydow line in "Hannah and Her Sisters:"
"If Jesus Christ came back and saw what people have been doing in his name, he would never stop throwing up."
This is one of many issues that make me weep for humanity. When an entire minority is still disenfranchised in terms of civil rights and adequate political representation, I weep. The fact that so many otherwise intelligent, educated people still believe who someone sleeps with should determine his human rights, still believe that their God considers homosexuality an aberration worthy of eternal damnation to that imaginary construct they call "Hell," I weep. I rage, too.
Pragmatism seems to demand that liberal politicians tread carefully on this land mine-filled territory. I suppose understand that. Certainly no one politician thinks s/he can afford to speak the truth and survive, politically. Witness the outrage over "don't ask, don't tell," that misguided and cowardly step in the right direction.
But...
The time has come for a man or woman of conscience to stand before the cameras and tell the truth: that homosexuality, regardless of it being a biological imperative or a "lifestyle choice," is not a crime against man or god. That all men and women, irrespective of their sexual partners, are created equal and have equal rights under every law. That the dark ages are long gone and so should be every vestige of the fear, hatred and judgment of "different."
The time has come for the collective liberal leadership of this backassward fucking country to tell it to grow the fuck up. Tell Mrs. Kravitz to get her nose out of other people's (literal) fucking business, and stop trying to monior what her neighbours are doing with their genitals. As long as those genitals belong to consenting adults, it ain't none of your motherfucking business where they're going, Gladys. And maybe if you spent a little more time blowing the spousal unit instead of peering out those crappy chintz curtains, you wouldn't feel the need to keep up with the Joneses's joneses.
Perhaps we might discover that the vast majority of people, when introduced to The Truth by articulate, passionate leaders of conscience and courage, will open up their eyes, ears, minds and hearts to that Truth. Just perhaps, mind you.
I am not a Christian or Jew or Muslim. While I occasionally have a conception of a Higher Power that I choose to call god -- simply because it's a lot fucking shorter than "Spirit of the Universe" or even "Higher Power" -- I practice no religion. Further, I do not hold any part of the Bible or the Koran to be the word of god.
One of the basic fucking tenets of the separation of Church and State is that at no time should the government of the United States of America be countenanced as a theocracy. Our laws, while oftentimes influenced by religious beliefs, are not dictated by the Bible (Old or New testament) or any religious text.
The definition of marriage in a religious context is not the definition of marriage in a legal context -- period. I cite the words of the civil marriage ceremony: "By the power vested in me by the (Commonwealth of Massachusetts)..." NOT: "By the power vested in me by God..."
Separation of Church and State, while difficult to maintain at times, is crucial to the continuing evolution of a nation. As a person who does not recognize the validity of the Bible or any other religious text as being the word of god, I DEMAND that the government I support with my taxes and by whose laws I abide leave the religious beliefs of its members out of the equation when making those laws. I do not demand equality or even consideration from any religion; I consider myself and every other person not affiliated with a religion to be outside the sphere of those religions.
When the laws by which I am supposed to abide are dictated by those who would encroach upon my rights as a human being through their own religious beliefs, I must and will protest. I will fight. I am not a Christian, I am not a Jew, I am not a Muslim. I am a human being, and I WILL fight for my fellow human beings.
To Marilyn Musgrave and the frighteningly large number of politicians and religious leaders who would dictate to the rest of the world that their religious beliefs be enshrined in the Constitution and supported by draconian laws of exclusion and persecution of those who do not share their religious beliefs: You are engaged in malfeasance according to the very same God in whom you profess to believe.
And to every politician of conscience, regardless of religion: Stick to the Constitution.
Amendment XIV* Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Blacks, Gays, Jews, Native Americans, Christians, Muslims, Japanese-Americans, Hispanics, Korean-Americans, Irish, Chinese-Americans, Italians, Vietnamese-Americans... oh, and Women
Have I left anyone out?
Because I know the aforementioned groups have all been, at one time or another (or all times) left out. Disenfranchised. Dismissed. Oppressed. Repressed. Persecuted. Enslaved. Brutalized.
Of course, one needn't summon empathy for (let alone, come to the aid of) another segment of the world's population that has suffered or is suffering what one's own segment has suffered. No, no -- This is different, after all. This group is completely different. These circumstances musn't be compared to ours.
Such was the message transmitted by the 50 odd African-American religious leaders gathered in Washington, D.C. on the 50th anniversary of the Brown Versus the Board of Education decision that began in earnest the battle for the civil rights of African-Americans.
Denouncing the comparison between the struggle for African-American rights and gay rights, the most prominent rationale proposed by these so-called "men of god?" "Homosexuality is an abomination."
Correct me if I am wrong, but at one time in this country, "miscegenation" was also considered (by a majority of the public, no less) to be "an abomination."
Reverend Joseph Fuiten: "All of Western civilization has been a part of this idea going back to Plato and the Greeks and the Romans. Now, we have activist judges and renegade politicians who want to overthrow Western civilization, federal and state laws, and change the definition of marriage."
Pardon me? Okay, let's just bypass the obvious argument about Plato and the Greeks and all those little boys. Too, let us bypass the argument against Western "civilization" and the Catholic Church and all those little boys. I'll even let slide the fact that most of the positive changes in Western Civilization and in federal and state laws were made by "activist judges and renegade politicians."
Let's concentrate on the fact that The Reverend and his peers in the African American religious community are using the same damned arguments against gay marriage that were used against civil rights. I don't know how anyone can argue that this isn't comparable. Gay people want equal protection and rights as promised them under the law. Blacks wanted equal rights and protections as promised them under the law. Gay rights opponents claim that the law is being warped to give special rights to gays. Civil rights opponents... well, you get the picture. Even the religious arguments are the same.
And if it weren't for activist goddamned judges, Reverend, Loving v. Virginia wouldn't have turned out quite the same way, and you and I might be having this conversation in a VERY different circumstance.
Oh, toss it -- I'll leave the rational arguments to those better qualified. This is a rant, goddamnit.
If anything makes me crazier than ignorance driven persecution, it is ignorance driven persecution perpetrated by a group of people who ought to know better.
Humans are one fucked up species. We use our religions, our pocketbooks and our vicious rhetoric to attack anything we perceive as a threat to our status quo, irrespective of logic -- let alone compassion. Change is a scary, scary thing. We just hate it when we're asked to change our views, let alone our lives. And it appears we are willing to do just about anything to avoid dealing with it.
That includes engaging in behaviours that put our very own lives in misery when they were practiced against us. Hatred born of fear rules the day; deliberate blindness to our own fear based hatred enables it to go unchecked -- by us, at least. We are dragged, kicking and screaming, into change that in retrospect was long overdue. Fifty years later, high school children have absolutely no concept of how revolutionary Brown v. Board of Education was; they look upon the facts of life fifty years ago with the same sort of bemused astonishment that we feel when we watch a period film and realize that birthmarks were for centuries considered to be a sign of demonic possession.
In fifty years, the only people against gay marriage will be those relegated to the marginalized closets of homophobia where they belong; I'm sure they will have some racist company in there. Hatred never dies completely -- it goes on life support underground, awaiting its chance to emerge and be fed.
For what is their actual argument, after all? If they would make legal unions between gay people illegal, and deny those gay people equal protection under the law, would they not, by extension, make homosexuality itself illegal? If it is, as they claim, "an abomination," then they must, ipso facto, demand the illegality of homosexuality. You cannot call something an abomination in one breath and in the next admit you are willing to overlook it if the state refuses to sanction its legitimacy. You must demand a return to sodomy laws.
Which makes you no better than those who would have liked to return to the days of slavery. No better, I say. Possibly worse -- at least they had ignorance on their side, the easier to forgive when they saw the light, if they ever did. You who would hide your hatred in the pages of your religious texts, knowing full well the volumes of data that prove a homosexual can no more change his sexuality than you can the colour of your skin -- you are in the wrong.
And I would submit that the God you profess to worship would tell you the same. (These texts you laud as the word of god are, to many others, merely your interpretation of the word of your god, in whom many of us believe not a whit. But leave that aside for the moment.)
If you insist upon using those texts to rationalize your arguments of hatred, I will happily take up that challenge. Nowhere in the New Testament of the Bible does your purported saviour, Jesus Christ, denounce homosexuality. He makes a good argument for homosexual marriage, in fact, in denouncing extra-marital sex.
He also says a few things about judging your neighbour and loving your neighbour. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."
He makes a pretty good argument for separating church and state, too -- "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's."
But most important: "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thy say to thy brother, "Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?" Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."
If your brother does, indeed, have a mote in his eye, I submit that you are too blind to judge it accurately, since the beam in your own spans continents and centuries.
Contrary to popular myth, "marriage" and "civil unions" are not the same; changing the term drastically changes the meaning as well. As mentioned above, marriage is approximately 1,500 reciprocal rights, privileges and obligations, 1,000 from the feds and about 500 from the state. A civil union, on the other hand, is a term coined by the Vermont legislature to avoid granting the "m" word to gay and lesbian couples. Because federal law does not recognize civil unions, a civil union provides only the 500 state conferred rights, privileges and obligations associated with marriage with none of the 1,000+ federal benefits.
But that is not the only difference. In addition to being denied federal benefits, rights and responsibilities, civil unions lack portability - so couples do not have the security of relationship recognition when traveling to other states. So although civil unions may provide a couple some protections at home, when they go on vacation, travel on business or otherwise leave the state, the couple will likely once again be relegated to the status of legal strangers.
Domestic partnership laws provide even fewer protections than civil unions and can vary dramatically depending on the jurisdiction that enacts the law. In some jurisdictions, domestic partner registries do not confer any rights or responsibilities at all and are simply a registration. In other jurisdictions, domestic partners are given a few protections, such as the right to hospital visitation. (The most generous local domestic partnership laws only provide about 10-15 rights). Currently, only three states, Hawaii, New Jersey and California, provide more comprehensive rights and responsibilities under their domestic partnership registration systems. At the local level, most domestic partnership laws provide benefits for public employees and little or nothing else.
So, to return to the initial question, why not just settle for civil unions or domestic partnerships? 1,500 (M) vs. 500 (CU) vs. 10-15 (DP). But what's in a name, right? As the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts recently pointed out, "The history of our nation has demonstrated that separate is seldom, if ever, equal."
Now, then. Leaving aside the fact that the federal government does not explicitly recognize civil unions and therefore none of the 1000 or so federal rights accorded married persons will ever be accorded to "civilly united" persons...
The Musgrave amendment (only the first of many such egregious motherfucking attempts to deny gay people their equal fucking civil rights ) stated that:
"Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."
That proposed amendment would have done far more than simply deny same-sex couples marriage equality. According to Evan Wolfson, a leading legal expert on marriage and executive director of Freedom to Marry, an organization which supports marriage rights for same sex couples, the White House and "the Christian right" are "being deliberately deceptive." According to Wolfson, the "vague and sweeping language" of the proposed amendment's second sentence "is intended to deny any other measure of protection, including civil unions and domestic partnerships."
If the Musgrave amendment had passed, the issue before us would no longer be whether same-sex couples should receive 1,500 or 500 or 10-15 rights. If passed, the amendment would mean that same sex couples would be denied ALL of the federal AND state rights, privileges and obligations of marriage. Families headed by same-sex couples would be officially denied equal treatment and constitutionally branded as second class citizens.
And... voila. Now not only does the federal government not RECOGNIZE civil unions, but the MUSGRAVE Amendment has just invalidated all the rights accorded the "civilly united."
Now tell me again how there's no goddamned difference.
THE PROHIBITION OF NARCOTICSAgainst it, categorically. I happen to believe that the alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical industries have a huge interest in keeping marijuana illegal. And the DEA, well, where on earth would they be if all narcotics traffic were suddenly decriminalized? For that matter, it might just screw up several cartels and their covert partners here in the United States of America, eh?
Imagine the steep drop in arrests, convictions, prison terms and prison inmates, were all drug laws to be suspended immediately. Imagine the number of prisoners currently rotting in jail for possession of a fucking ounce of marijuana who would be let loose on our pristine streets.
Can't have that, now, can we?
Prison is a huge motherfucking industry in this country. Drug offenses keep them nice and packed to the gills with fresh tax dollars, y'see.
Oh, and did I mention - every single federal and state prisoner gets counted in each state's census, and is therefore part of what decides how many electoral votes and representatives in the House each state gets? Hmmm. They don't get to vote - but just look at all those so-called "Red States" building more and more prisons.
Food for thought.
I'll let Bill Hicks say the rest, at least on the subject of marijuana:
...if I was going to have a drug be legal, it would not be alcohol, you know why? There's better drugs and better drugs for you. That's a fact, so you can stop your internal dialogue. "Wait a minute, Bill, alcohol is an accepted form of social interaction which for thousands of years has been the norm under which human beings have congregated in the form of social events and..." -- Shut the fuck up. Your denial is beneath you, and thanks to the use of hallucinogenic drugs, I see through you. Pot is a better drug than alcohol. ... I have never heard one reason that rang true why marijuana is against the law. That rang true, now, I'm not talking about the reasons the government tells us, because I hope you know this, I think you do, all governments are lying cocksuckers. I hope you know that. Good.
I mean, marijuana grows everywhere, it serves a thousand different functions, all of them positive. To make marijuana against the law is like saying God made a mistake, you know what I mean? It's like God, on the seventh day, looked down on his creation and said, "There it is. My creation. Perfect and holy in all ways. Now, I can rest... Oh my me. I left fucking pot everywhere. I should never have smoked that joint on the third day. Shit. If I leave pot everywhere, that's gonna give people the impression they're supposed to use it. Shit. Now I have to create Republicans."
...And God wept. I believe is the next verse. You know what I mean? I believe that God left certain drugs growing naturally upon our planet to help speed up and facilitate our evolution.
...The war on drugs to me is absolutely phony, it's so obviously phony, ok? It's a war against our civil rights, that's all it is. They're using it to make us afraid to go out at night, afraid of each other, so that we lock ourselves in our homes and they get suspending our rights one by one. And the fight against the war against drugs .
...Why is pot against the law? It wouldn't be because anyone can grow it and therefore you can't make a profit off it would it?
...Aaah, they lie about marijuana. Tell you pot-smoking makes you unmotivated. Liiiiiiie.
When you're high, you can do everything you normally do, just as well, You just realise, it's not worth the fucking effort. There is a difference.
"Sure I can get up at dawn, go to a job I hate, that does not inspire me creatively whatsoever, for the rest of my fucking life. Or I can wake up at noon and learn how to play the sitar!"
Pretty simple when it's spelled out in black and white isn't it?
DEATH PENALTYThe death penalty must be abolished. We are one of 59 nations who retain the death penalty for ordinary crimes. With few exceptions, the nations that have abolished capital punishment or discontinued its use are secular democracies. They include every nation in Europe except Belarus, and every country in Latin America except Cuba and Guatemala. Among the other death penalty abolitionists are Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, and the Republic of South Africa. Newly democratic Russia has suspended executions, and pledged to abolish the death penalty.
Those who retain the death penalty fall into four slots.
• The first is the entire Islamic world, with the exception of Turkey, which has a secular democracy, and the former Soviet Republics of Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan.
• The second is India, the world's second most populous country, whose government is in the hands of Hindu fundamentalists.
• The third is what remains of the "communist" world: China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cuba.
• The fourth is a grab bag of authoritarian governments, including Guatemala, Belarus, Burma and Zimbabwe.
What these four have in common is one or more of the following: religious fundamentalism, authoritarian regime or despotism. Clearly the latter two have little relevance to the United States.
But the distribution of the death penalty inside the United States clearly points to the influence of religious fundamentalism, in this case of the Christian variety.
Capital punishment has been abolished in 11 states, covering the Northeast and upper Midwest, plus Alaska, Hawaii, West Virginia, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico -- all places where the religious right wing is weak. In two more states -- Illinois and Maryland -- it has been suspended.
In the remaining 37 states, the death penalty is still in effect. But nowhere is enthusiasm greater than in the southern Bible Belt, the crescent extending from Virginia to Florida to Texas to Missouri, and in Mormon Utah. Almost nine out of 10 executions occur in that region.
Underlying religious fundamentalism in all its forms is a sense of holy righteousness. There is a struggle underway between forces of "good" and "evil," with the Almighty -- whether called God or Allah -- on the side of the righteous. Those tainted as evil are dehumanized, making it easier to forfeit their right to life.
That seemed to be the atmosphere in Texas in 2002, where authorities executed Mexican citizen Javier Suarez Medina without informing him of his right under the Vienna Convention to seek legal support from his government.
ALSO:
The United States MUST sign the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child -- thereby making it an international crime to execute anyone under the age of 18.
Somalia is the only other country refusing to sign it.
We are one of 8 countries that execute juveniles (16 and up, here) -- the others are China, Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. In May 2002, Texas executed Napoleon Beazly, an African American who was a minor at the time he committed his crime. Beazly was the 10th child offender to be executed in the United States since 1995.
During the same period, only seven child offenders were executed by all other countries combined: three in Iran, two in Pakistan, one in Nigeria, and one in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The company you keep...
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Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Maryscott O'Connor. I am a 40 year old woman, married (to Adam Crocker, pictured below), a sometime professional actress, writer and now full-time mother with an 8 year old son (Terry O'Connor, pictured below with his father)...
and possessor of 2 ovaries and 1 viable uterus.
