All posts tagged gay marriage

Marriage is a Fundamental Right in a Free Society

Today, I am hosting a guest writer for whom I have great respect.

He is a retired Navy Captain, a Vietnam vet, a student of American history, an engineer who spent thirty years building warships, and a fiscal conservative who believes in limited government and a strong military. Based on this, you might entertain certain preconceived notions about his other beliefs. You would likely be wrong. He is a man of great integrity who has always taught me that education, tolerance and compassion are the keys to maintaining our American way of life. See for yourself. Here’s an enlightening essay from my dad:

 Social philosopher F. A. Hayek said “A free society is a pluralistic society without a common hierarchy of particular ends.” It should matter not to each of us whether our neighbor is a Buddhist, Islamic, Christian, atheist, agnostic, or free-thinker. It should matter not if a couple is of the same sex. What matters is that s/he not infringe on the free choice of others. In order to achieve that free society we have established laws to protect our fundamental rights as established in our Constitution and the 14th Amendment.

Unfortunately some States, North Carolina being the most recent, have passed laws banning same sex marriage. That may be due to ignorance, bigotry, a lack of education, a religious belief or some combination of them. It matters not. What matters is that they have elected to impose something as a rule of law that is counter to our fundamental right of free association.

Tolerance is a virtue. It is also a necessity in a free society. Our freedom means that we must tolerate what others believe whether we agree with them or not. We need not agree on every aspect of our lives in order to live peacefully with one another; however we should accept the actions of others so long as they are peaceful.

Compare this to socialism or fascism. Those systems require a single hierarchy of ends; the collective decides which ends will be pursued and which not. One’s particular ends must be subordinated to the priorities of the State or collective. The result is not the peaceful disagreement and tolerance of good order, but rather fighting over the reins of power in order to achieve one’s ends at the expense of others. Instead of a society where everyone wins, we have a society where the State wins and many of us loose.

Our society should be one where we may pursue anything that is peaceful; it should be limited only by our ambition and our respect for the rights of others. States that pass laws banning same sex marriages are infringing on a fundamental human right. They are continuing us on a trend where our social environment is becoming less free and more controlled by the State.

10 Comments
by Fork in My Eye on May 14, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in gay family values
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Posted by Fork in My Eye on May 14, 2012

http://forkinmyeye.com/2012/05/14/marriage-is-a-fundamental-right-in-a-free-society/

I Used to Be a Tomboy: 10 Common Misconceptions about Gay People

I have always been amazed at how remarkably interested perfect strangers seem to be in my sex life. That’s the problem with being gay. Not only do people choose to believe all sorts of pretty ridiculous things about you, they’re constantly trying to tell you what those things are.

And they go out of their way to do it. They drive by gay bars in pick-up trucks, chuck beer bottles at anyone walking in from the parking lot, shout various epithets, and speed off. They stand on sidewalks on college campuses clutching a Bible and shouting at passers-by about Sodom and Gomorrah. They stand for hours in the hot sun outside gay pride events toting hand-lettered signs expressing their interpretation of God’s particular tastes (i.e. “God hates queers”).  All of this because a few of us prefer partners of the same gender. When you think about it, you have to wonder what all the fuss is about.

So with the vote on Amendment One (which would make gay marriage in the state of North Carolina illegal twice over) fast approaching, I thought I would dispel a few of the misconceptions about gay folks like me.

1 – Being gay is a choice.  Gay people are demonized in churches and legislative houses. They are disowned by their families, fired from jobs, snubbed by neighbors, dishonored by the military, and generally victimized by bullies and haters of all kinds. There is often such a high cost for being openly gay that some people will stay closeted for their entire lives rather than pay it. Yet, still, there are people who insist that gay men and lesbians choose to be gay.

So let me ask all of you, would you choose it? The only choice a gay man or lesbian really has is whether to be true to our feelings and live as we are or to conform to society’s expectations, stuff what we feel, and live a lie regardless of the personal cost.

2 – Lesbians want to be men. When I was five years old, I wanted very much to be a Cub Scout like my big brothers. I was told only boys could be Cub Scouts. I was crushed. When I was old enough to join the girl scouts and be a Brownie, I happily signed up. But the Brownies weren’t like the Cub Scouts. They didn’t get those cool yellow kerchiefs and blue shirts and caps. They wore brown dresses and beanies. I was mortified.

But my mom said, give it a chance so I did, but not once did I get to make a balsa wood model racecar. My troop just sat around singing Kumbaya and playing stupid party games. I hated it. It was my first inkling that I wasn’t like the other girls. I grew up happily wearing my brothers’ hand-me-down dungarees and playing with their hand-me-down Matchbox cars. When I was 25, my mom was still telling people that I still hadn’t outgrown my tomboy stage. I’m 46 now, and I still haven’t.

Yes, that’s me about 15 years ago and yes,
that is a dinosaur footprint.

So I have to tell you. I have always coveted boys’ clothes and toys. To me, they are more comfortable and more fun. (From the first time I almost broke my ankle in high heels and nursed sore toes for a week after wearing the evil things for an evening, I knew that “girl” clothes would never be for me.) But a girl who wants to wear jeans and have a cool pocketknife is still a girl. Not once have I ever, and I think I would know, wanted a penis. So no, I have never wanted to be a man. But I did want very much to be a Cub Scout.

3 – Lesbians hate men. This one is kind of funny to me because of all my women friends, gay and straight, it is by far the straight women who trash men the most. (Sorry guys, but it’s true.)

As for me, well, I love women. And that has nothing to do with hating men. Actually, it has nothing to do with men at all – that’s kind of the point. And I think that pisses off some men. I don’t know why. Maybe they perceive lesbians as competition. (We’re not, you know. Well, except for the bisexual women. But I think true bisexuals are rare. So mostly, the women who dated me were never going to date you.) Or maybe the chest-beaters out there don’t like the idea that two women can be happy together without a man. Honestly, I think that’s it.

I can see now, that this is going to take more than one post. Stay tuned for part two of 10 Stupid Common Misconceptions about Gay People. (Don’t go away now. Tomorrow, we tackle Leviticus. Whee.)

And remember, if you live in North Carolina, the polls are open for early voting!

28 Comments
by Fork in My Eye on May 2, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in coolest beans, gay family values
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Posted by Fork in My Eye on May 2, 2012

http://forkinmyeye.com/2012/05/02/i-used-to-be-a-tomboy-10-common-misconceptions-about-gay-people/

Were the Mayans Right? Pope Warns of Dire Threat to the Future of Humanity

Thank goodness for the pope! He’s looking out for us. Recently, Pope Benedict XVI spoke to Vatican diplomats from almost 180 different countries in an effort to rally the faithful to Church doctrine and safeguard the world from a dire threat “to the future of humanity itself.”

Good for him, right? If humanity is facing disaster, I like to think it’s a good thing that the religious leader of 1.18 billion souls worldwide is speaking up about it. With power like that, he could single-handedly change the world. Imagine it. Feed the hungry, protect the children, stop wars and the wanton destruction of the natural world. With all the multitude of catastrophic problems facing the human race in 2012, it couldn’t have been easy to decide what to focus on. So I’m sure you’re wondering by now just which threat to the future of humanity the pope was talking about.

You might guess overpopulation. That’s a pretty scary one. But no. Church doctrine pretty much helped to swamp the lifeboat on that one by adhering to its ancient stance against any form or artificial birth control. How about terrorism, global warming, a deadly viral pandemic? Nope. None of those. The pontiff wasn’t talking about the stuff of nightmares. He had something more domestic in mind, something connubial, something downright festive, really. He was talking about gay marriage.

Consider this:

via People magazine

Here are Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi at their wedding. They’re happy. They’re in love. They’ve just dedicated their lives to each other. It must be the beginning of the end for all humanity.

Okay, I admit I’m having a little trouble following the Pope’s logic. If I understand it correctly, he believes (sorry, correction: He knows, because the Holy Spirit keeps him in line with divine design in matters of his office and so he is, therefore, infallible) – so he knows that by legalizing gay marriage, the state of New York, for example, has opened the door for people like Neil Patrick Harris and his boyfriend to marry as well, thus leading the world down a path toward certain catastrophe.

via People magazine

Just look at them. They’re rich, smart, fantastically devoted to their adopted children, and let’s face it, just absolutely adorable. It’s insidious. They want to provide their children with a safe, nurturing environment with two loving parents in which to grow up. How dare they?

So I guess I’m a little dense because I’m still fuzzy about the details about how this endangers humanity, especially since gay men and women are practicing the Vatican’s favorite (and only approved) form of birth control – abstinence from heterosexual sex, and in many cases, they are providing homes for orphaned children. You’d think that would be a good thing, right? Apparently, not.

So I pondered it for a while and came up with this. Let’s see what you think:

The pope made his announcement shortly after the beginning of 2012, the very year the ancient Mayan calendar reportedly predicts the end of the world. That can’t be coincidence, can it?

Mayan calendar created by a modern craftsman
Mayan calendar created by a modern
craftsman (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So the way I figure it, another U.S. state is going to pass a law legalizing gay marriage (like New York did!) or fail to illegalize it twice over (like North Carolina is trying to to). This will royally tick off the pontiff (because nothing pisses him off so much as uppity Americans who insist on thinking for themselves), and then the Bishop of Rome will have some kind of holy apoplectic fit, eventually reach supreme pontifical supercritical mass which will cause a righteous chain reaction and melt down, and thereby precipitate the end of the world and extinction of “humanity itself.”

And proving the Mayans right. Except they didn’t know to blame it on the gays.

What’s that? Yeah, it sounds a little lame to me too. So how about we tell the truth? People who have a common enemy are easier to control. It’s as simple as that. Pick a group of people who are different than the group you are trying to control, demonize your victims, convince your followers they are superior to the victims, lead them against the victims, and suddenly, you have yourself some serious mind control. It worked for Hitler.

The Pope ought to know. He was there.

11 Comments
by Fork in My Eye on April 23, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in gay family values, humor
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Posted by Fork in My Eye on April 23, 2012

http://forkinmyeye.com/2012/04/23/were-the-mayans-right-pope-warns-of-dire-threat-to-the-future-of-humanity/

When “Well-behaved” Just Won’t Do

“Well-behaved women seldom make history.”

Cover of "Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make ...
Ulrich used her famous line as the title
 for her latest book.

You’ve probably seen it on a bumper sticker or a coffee mug, but do you know who said it? Do you know why? She’s Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, an historian, Harvard professor, and Pulitzer Prize winning author who once used the phrase in a paper she wrote as a graduate student.  As an historian who has spent a lifetime writing about the role of women in American history, I think she nailed it in one simple sentence.

I’ve noticed that the older I’ve gotten, the more well-behaved I’ve become. You’d think that would be a good thing, right? Most of us do, especially once we have children and become models for behavior. But there’s a difference between courtesy and complacence.

For years now, my partner and I have told ourselves that just living honestly and openly is the best way to advocate for our family (and other “nontraditional” families). We don’t “advertise” ourselves as a lesbian couple, but we don’t hide anything either. We hope that as people get to know us, even like us, they’ll find that we’re pretty much just like everyone else. We pay our taxes, love our children, honor our parents, help out our neighbors and our friends when we can. We’re nice people. And we don’t make waves. What’s to hate?

It’s just a yard sign, but
it’s a beginning.

On May 8, the voters of North Carolina will consider a proposed amendment to the state constitution to ensure “that marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State.” There’s already a law against gay marriage in North Carolina, but it seems some of our state legislators (of the Republican persuasion) felt that it wasn’t illegal enough. They want an actual amendment.

For years now, I’ve told myself, So what? What do I care if the state or the federal government tells me I can’t marry B? We love each other. We’re raising a family together and plan to spend the rest of our lives together. What do we care if we can’t legally marry? (Actually there are some very good reasons involving health insurance and my non-existent legal rights as her partner. But this essay isn’t about that.)

It’s about our kids. By telling us that we can’t marry, the state of NC is telling our sons that their family is not legitimate. And we just can’t have that.

State Senator Daniel Soucek, the Republican who sponsored the bill for Amendment One, warns us that the amendment is necessary to defend the existing law against “activist judges” who may not agree with the “majority” of the voters and overturn the law. So voters should have the last say. All the voters. I’m sure that was his intention when he and his fellow sponsors of the bill arranged to place it on the ballot on the same day as the Republican primary.

Recently, Soucek had this to say to the Huffington Post, “It’s not just the term ‘marriage.’ It’s all of the societal communal building blocks that make up traditional marriage. We think that’s the healthiest way to raise children.” And there it is. This isn’t just about marriage. It’s about our children.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard or read similar words from people with the power to do a lot of damage. I’m tired of it. I’m tired of being referred to as perverted, immoral, mentally ill, evil, unnatural, or maybe worst of all, unfit as a parent. I’m tired of trying to “nice” the bigots and the haters into their right minds. I’m tired of being well-behaved.

So I’m setting up my soap box on this blog for the next three weeks until the vote on May 8. Expect to see a lot about basic human rights, about ordinary people who happen to be gay, about family values and why the Republican version of that phrase is an oxymoron. It won’t be “nice.” It won’t be “well-behaved.” But it will be true.

31 Comments
by Fork in My Eye on April 21, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in coolest beans, gay family values
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Posted by Fork in My Eye on April 21, 2012

http://forkinmyeye.com/2012/04/21/when-well-behaved-just-wont-do/

A Nontraditional Family: Introducing Us

My partner and I are not just a couple. We’re a collaborative, interdependent social unit with a shared goal and our own special brand of symbiosis – like the clownfish and the sea anemone – if the anemone was a middle-aged, wise-cracking mom and the clownfish regularly threatened to eat her children. We’re more than halfway done raising the spawn now – the oldest is out on his own and his little brothers are teenagers and not that far behind. But as much as I feel like an old hand at this now, I know things will come up that I can’t anticipate or prepare for. An there will be days when I’d rather stick a fork in my eye than to be the one responsible for dealing with what ever happens.

Which is why I know I’m lucky to have this incredible partner, this amazing anemone who is smart and loving and kind and tougher than goat’s teeth. She has the patience of a saint and a wit like a Ginsu knife. (It can slice a tomato paper-thin and dice an idiot in seconds.) And that sense of humor has been crucial because parenthood is nothing if not an endless exercise in dramatic irony. (We went in with such high expectations but everyone knew what was going to happen.)

Kids happened. And they kept happening. We’ve been peed on, vomited on and used as living Kleenex. We’ve watched our boys get measured and weighed, stitched up and fitted for casts. We survived their fevers, nightmares, bike wrecks and hospital stays without having a complete nervous breakdown. We’ve endured rap music, sagging pants and seven years of sharing a bathroom with three boys with poor aim. We’ve weathered a thousand Disney sing-alongs, the sound tracks of a hundred Nintendo games, and toys that talked, sang, whistled, wailed, or squawked incessantly until the batteries finally, mercifully, died.

We taught one son that the cat’s tail was not a handle and another that stuffing his pockets with caterpillars probably wasn’t a good idea. We taught the oldest to drive a car and kept the ranting and cussing to a minimum. (Well, I did. Number one son refused to drive with his mother again after she braced her feet on the dashboard and screamed every time he stepped on the gas.) We encouraged (begged, bribed and cajoled) them to do their homework, to be kind to each other, to aim for the water, to eat vegetables, to use an inside voice, to please just go to bed.

Our house was decorated early on in “my kids are animals” motif, with grubby handprints everywhere and graffiti scrawled in crayon on the walls. Our living room was perpetually carpeted with Legos, matchbox cars, and Star Wars action figures. We bought furniture that was plain and uncomfortable but sturdy and Scotch-guarded. For a long time, we owned nothing made of glass, ceramic or anything easily breakable (except dishes and windows – which they broke). For years, we’ve gone without enough sleep, money, time and attention. Because we are the parents, the ones who give their time and attention, who make the money and go without sleep for the children.

This year, my wife and I would be celebrating our twelfth anniversary if it weren’t for one little detail – she’s not my wife. She’s my partner in life, love and child-rearing, but she’s not my wife because I am also a woman, and we’re not allowed to marry. And because the word “family” is so jealously guarded by right-wing fundamentalists everywhere, there are people, institutions, and governments that refuse even to recognize us as a legitimate social unit.

Even the progressives among us so often feel the need to add a qualifier to families like ours – words like “nontraditional” or “alternative.” But still I prefer just the noun, bare bones, fundamental, true. This is our family – two middle-aged moms/women/not-wives/people with two sons still at home, two goofy dogs, and one mean old cat doing our best to coexist symbiotically ever after.

4 Comments
by Fork in My Eye on January 13, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in gay family values, humor, kith & kin
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Posted by Fork in My Eye on January 13, 2012

http://forkinmyeye.com/2012/01/13/hello-world/

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