TresSugar

Flashback: What If You Had to Ask Permission to Get Married?

TresSugar — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 02:00:00 -0700

Sometimes empathy is the most powerful way of moving civil rights forward, which is why this PSA from 2005 is so effective. It depicts what it must feel like for gay people who are barred from legally marrying by showing a man walking from house to house asking strangers if can have his girlfriend's hand in marriage. Wow. (As of today, five states - New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Iowa - have made gay marriage legal.)

Say What? Republican Has Two Mommies

TresSugar — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:00:00 -0700

"When you grow up with Lesbian mothers, you can't get your ears pierced to rebel. I became a Republican."

- Jesse Levey, a 29-year-old management consultant and Republican activist who believes in family values, small government, and the right of lesbians, like his mothers, to marry. He's part of the Gayby Boom generation, the children of gay couples who were part of the modern gay rights movement, which is said to have started around 40 years ago.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Save or Scrap?

TresSugar — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:00:00 -0700

Victor Fehrenbach, an F-15 fighter pilot in the US Air Force, has been serving his country with honor for 18 years. In that time, he's flown 88 combat missions, logged 1,500 fighter hours, and received nine air medals. He's gotten word, though, that his record doesn't matter as much as the fact that he is gay.

Under the Pentagon's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, he will be fired two years before he could receive a full Air Force pension, which he discussed recently on The Rachel Maddow Show. Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which allows gay people to serve in the military as long as they don't disclose their sexual orientation and which forbids their supervisors from asking if they are gay, was enacted in 1993 and approved by Bill Clinton, who saw it as a compromise between his campaign promise to let all people serve in the military regardless of sexual orientation and what was a ban on gays in the military.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell is based on the premise that being gay "would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of moral, good order, discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability." Many argue that it's time for President Obama and Congress to review - and get rid of - Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Do you think it's a good policy based on sound reasoning, or is it antiquated and discriminatory?

What If You Were Barred From a Loved One's Deathbed?

TresSugar — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:30:00 -0700

That's exactly what happened to Janice Langbehn and her children when her partner of 18 years, Lisa Pond, suddenly collapsed from an aneurysm during a family vacation and was rushed to a Miami hospital. Langbehn and her adopted children with Pond waited for hours before being informed of her condition, and when it became clear it was serious, they were barred from seeing her.

Langbehn claimed that a hospital social worker told her she was in an "anti-gay city and state" and would need health proxies - living wills, advanced directives and power-of-attorney documents - in order to see Pond. She had the papers faxed to the hospital, but when all was said and done, Langbehn and her kids saw Pond as she was unconscious and being administered her last rites by a priest.

This tragic case is now the subject of a federal lawsuit in Florida and in a sense affects all people whose primary loved ones are not their legal spouses - like close friends and unmarried straight couples. Why should an anonymous hospital administrator get to tell you who your "real" family is if you've made clear in writing who that is?

I don't know about you, but when I imagine someone barring me from seeing someone I love who is in their loneliest, scariest hour, I think they'd have to call in police reinforcements. In a more just world, that wouldn't have to happen.

Source

Cynthia Nixon Announces Engagement

TresSugar — Mon, 18 May 2009 15:30:00 -0700

Cynthia Nixon announced her engagement to girlfriend of five years, Christine Marinoni, at a rally in support of same-sex marriage in New York City yesterday. "It's time already," she said, expressing a wish to marry Christine in New York if/when it becomes legal there.

Source

Don't Ask, Do Investigate: Stewart Blasts Army For Firing Gays

TresSugar — Fri, 15 May 2009 09:30:39 -0700

I always thought the Army's don't-ask-don't-tell policy was really a turn-your-head policy. But no! It's more: let's investigate any rumors of gayness infiltrating the ranks. Lt. Dan Choi - West Point grad and Arabic translator who's served in Iraq - is the target of such an investigation. Allah knows Arabic translators aren't valuable in the Army!

Watch Jon Stewart hilariously take on the fallacy of the Army's logic with John Oliver on last night's episode of The Daily Show.

Gender, Law, and Marriage: We've Got a Ways to Go

TresSugar — Tue, 12 May 2009 16:00:00 -0700

"How do we define legal gender? By chromosomes? By genitalia? By spirit? By whether one asks directions when lost?"

A fascinating essay written by a transgendered woman underscores the complexity of gender identities in the US along with analysis of how the arbitrariness of marriage laws ignores that reality.

Jennifer Boyland and Deirdre Finney got married in 1988, at which point Boyland identified as male. By 2000, Boyland had begun transitioning to female. Deirdre remained married to her, which meant that, technically, they were in a same-sex marriage in a state that didn't recognize them at the time. (Maine has since became the fifth state in the US recently to recognize same-sex marriages.)

Imagine, if you will, basically being unrecognized by a government you elect and pay taxes to. To find out some of the more absurd cases, read more.

Some states don't recognize sex changes. So if Boyland moved to such a state, she would only be able to wed another woman. (Try getting your head around that for a moment.)
J’noel Gardiner in Kansas, a postoperative transsexual woman, married her husband, Marshall Gardiner, in 1998. When he died in 1999, she was denied her share of his $2.5 million estate by the Kansas Supreme Court on the grounds that her marriage was invalid.
A 1999 ruling in San Antonio (Littleton v. Prange) allowed marriages only if the parties had different chromosomes. This meant that a lesbian could marry a transgendered male-to-female or a woman with androgen insensitivity syndrome. (People with AIS are genetically male, with one X chromosome and one Y chromosome in each cell, but because their bodies are unable to respond to certain male sex hormones, they may have mostly female sex characteristics or signs of both male and female sexual development.)
Her lawyer drew up this dizzying hypothetical regarding the law's absurdity with respect to her identity: ". . . Mrs. Littleton, while in San Antonio, TX," he mused, "is a male and has a void marriage; as she travels to Houston, TX, and enters federal property, she is female and a widow; upon traveling to Kentucky she is female and a widow; but, upon entering Ohio, she is once again male and prohibited from marriage; entering Connecticut, she is again female and may marry; if her travel takes her north to Vermont, she is male and may marry a female; if instead she travels south to New Jersey, she may marry a male.”

It seems about time that citizens with gender identities that don't fit into the rigid binary male or female are recognized with respect by the law. Here's to hoping we get there soon!

Source

Matthew Shepard's Mom: Hate Crimes Bill Is Necessary

TresSugar — Sun, 03 May 2009 03:00:00 -0700

"I hear that argument all the time: special rights for special people. It's not even the point. What this does is bring us up to a level of equality in prosecution . . . Personal bias in officers and prosecution is absolutely indicative of what's going to happen sometimes. Not always, but sometimes. And we need the vehicle to be able to address it somehow. And the crimes that are committed as hate crimes? They're meant to send a message to a community, not to an individual. It's a totally different type of crime."

-Judy Shepard on The Rachel Maddow Show. She was asked how she would respond to those who think that the justice department shouldn't get involved in hate crimes or that those protected under hate-crime laws are being "privileged" over victims of violent crimes that weren't committed because of bias. Shepard also responded to North Carolina Republican representative Virginia Foxx's claim that Shepard's son Matthew wasn't killed because he was gay.

To watch the video to find out what the bill that may become a law actually does, read more.

The Matthew Shepard Act (officially, the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007, or LLEHCPA) expands the 1969 United States federal hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. The bill also:

Removes the current prerequisite that the victim be engaging in a federally protected activity, like voting or going to school
Gives federal authorities greater ability to engage in hate crimes investigations that local authorities choose not to pursue
Provides $10 million in funding for 2008 and 2009 to help state and local agencies pay for investigating and prosecuting hate crimes
Requires the FBI to track statistics on hate crimes against transgender people (statistics for the other groups are already tracked)

Source

Say What?

TresSugar — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:00:00 -0700

"The hate crimes bill that’s called the Matthew Shepard Bill is named after a very unfortunate incident that happened where a young man was killed, but we know that the young man was killed in the commitment of a robbery. It wasn’t because he was gay. The bill was named for him . . . but it’s really a hoax."

-Republican representative Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, on the approval by the House of Representatives Wednesday to include sexual orientation in the Federal Hate Crimes Bill. It's also known as the Matthew Shepard Act, for the University of Wyoming student who was tortured and murdered in Laramie, WY, in 1998 for being gay.

Source

Say What? Carrie Prejean on Same-Sex and Opposite Marriages

TresSugar — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 13:05:00 -0700

"I think it's great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land that you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage . . . I think that I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there . . ."

-Miss California at the Miss USA 2009 competition, when asked by a judge whether or not she believes every state should follow Vermont's suit as the fourth state to legalize same-sex marriage. (For the record, I will heretofore refer to heterosexual unions as "opposite marriage.") To watch a video of the fact-challenged response, read more.