Same-sex lovers in New York won’t be able to weasel out of making a commitment, or at least one excuse is gone.
Congratulations, felicitations and best wishes to all New Yorkers. This is civil rights for some, and likely to be an economic boost for the whole state, especially those in the floral and photo industries.
The window of opportunity for Rhode Island is closing. We’ll look back some day and ask why we passed on a chance to do right and do well at the same time.
Yesterday was busy, with a rally for Planned Parenthood in the morning and hearings at the State House last night.
I was sleep-deprived already, having driven 360 miles round trip to go to a wake, and I had to work too.
I’d love to review some of the arguments against marriage equality when I get a chance, but one outrageous claim stands out.
Several speakers, including clergy, said that marriage has always been one man and one woman. Some went so far as to say that this was not only the case for Judaism and Christianity, but for humanity since the dawn of time.
Have they never read their Bible?
Well, I have, and will expand on this point after I get home from work.
Senator Harold Metts had his Bible in hand, and unabashedly preached his Christian faith, saying several times that it was not his opinion, but God’s word. I think Rhode Island lost an inspired minister when Metts went into politics, and gained a politician who gives the impression that his office is a means to his religious ends. I don’t know how much he is willing to recognize the rights of constituents who do not share his beliefs.
Rev. Bernard Healy said that the reason for marriage is children. This was the testimony of several other speakers. I wish the Church had used its influence on the late governor when he repeatedly cut programs for poor children, but they have their priorities.
I don’t know what Roger Williams would say about all this. He left Massachusetts because they had a state religion that punished heretics. Now Mass is wicked blue and RI has an organized religious base that politicians defy at their own risk. Mass, I notice, has not suffered the apocalypse predicted for RI if we let same-sex couples marry. In fact, the divorce rate there is low. Maybe protecting marriage is more connected to employment, education, opportunity and justice than to depriving qualified couples who want legal recognition for a commitment they already live up to. Maybe heterosexual couples value marriage more when they see how this right, or lack of it, affects their gay friends and neighbors.
It’s time for marriage equality.
I checked out the local news, and ProJo just has the best video, though it only covers the rally.
Here is from last summer, a man speaking in tongues. I post this for old time’s sake, though I won’t be dropping by Apponaug Pentecostal anytime soon. Speaking in tongues completely absolves you of having to make any sense at all. I used to do it myself, so I can say that it’s a learned thing that’s easy to do if you are encouraged by the people around you. I think when I was that age I also used to hum and whistle at the same time, which I thought was pretty neat.
If people want to speak in tongues, that’s fine. It’s not that uncommon, I’ve heard it done by Catholics, Pentecostals and Baptists. But if we’re talking about making laws that affect non-believers and believers alike, we have a right to expect rationality.
Today, let us be mindful of the many things we often take for granted. I’m asking all of you here, for whom this applies–to just consider for a moment– your material comforts, your health care, education– all the rights, privileges and protections under the laws you enjoy by simple virtue of the fact that you live in a great state–within an even greater country. I would ask that you give thanks for being married to someone you love and for having that union and family legally sanctioned everywhere by the powers that be. If all this applies to you, the only question I have is–“Wouldn’t you wish that everyone be equally blessed?”
My answer is yes–because there isn’t anything good and fine in my life that I wouldn’t want everybody to have. So I am here today, happy to lend support in favor of marriage equality. I came of age down South in the sixties. And for better and for worse, that experience imprinted me with an indelible awareness of boundaries. Racism, like all forms of bigotry, has a way of doing that–to its victims and benefactors alike, by purposely creating an unequal and unjust caste system of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. I share with gay people– firsthand experience –of what it means and how it feels– to be on the outside looking in.
One thing I believe that sets America favorably apart in the eyes of the world–is the spirit of our laws, which over time not only champions the individual and recognizes our diversity, but does not overlook and wisely safeguards the legal and civil rights of minorities too. One’s sexual orientation, like the color of one’s skin, is not something over which any of us has a choice. I don’t believe it’s fair or reasonable to exclude anyone on this basis. I am also disheartened whenever I see otherwise bright, well meaning people– misusing religion and science to justify bigotry and the denial of rights to others–which is, after all, the real issue here.
I have 5 sisters and 3 brothers. Many summers ago when I was a boy, we were out playing when our Dad unexpectedly showed up. He asked, “Who wants ice cream?” Of course we all said we did. So Dad was off to the store. Upon his return, we eagerly crowded about him as he led us inside to the kitchen table. As he reached into the bag, he told us there were only 2 half-gallons left in the whole store. We were dumbfounded when we realized Dad had only brought back 1 carton. Reading our faces, he simply smiled and told us that, “On a hot day like this, I figured somebody else might want some too.” I remember feeling a little chagrined, then I smiled, thinking to myself about somebody out there we didn’t even know, who like us, was benefitting from Dad’s thoughtful gesture and from the importance he placed on sharing. And isn’t that what inclusion is all about?
It’s always the right time– to stop behaving as if compassion, fairness, and equality are finite natural resources, to be doled out bit by bit and then– only to those of a select status. Our state’s motto is HOPE. I choose to believe– that this expectation is meant to apply equally to every soul living within its boundaries.
Inspiring sermon today from the Reverend James Ismael Ford, posted on his blog, Monkey Mind Online …
Out of the horror that took place in Tucson on Saturday the 8th of January, amidst the fear and blood, there were several notable acts of heroism. I think of Dorwan Stoddard the seventy-six year old retired construction worker who as soon as he realized what was happening, threw his wife to the ground and his body over hers. She survived. He didn’t. I picture that event and cannot get out of my head. I am glad I can’t.
And who is now unaware of Daniel Hernandez, a twenty-year old junior at the University of Arizona, in his fifth day as an unpaid intern for Representative Giffords, and his actions in those awful moments? He wasn’t standing very close when the boy put a bullet through the representative’s head and then began spraying shots into the crowd. By his own account maybe forty feet away, Daniel simply started running toward the shooting. He ran toward the shooting. Another set of images I cannot get out of my head and am glad I cannot. Pictures naturally took shape in my mind of those firemen and policemen racing into the Twin Towers. Asked about this, Daniel who had limited nurse’s aid training in High School, felt, it really all happened too fast to say he thought, felt he could put that training to good use.
He had already assisted a couple of people when he found the congresswoman lying on the ground. He propped her up on his chest to stop her from choking on her own blood. At first he tried to staunch her wounds with his hands. Then took smocks someone brought out from the Safeway and created makeshift bandages that more or less did the job. Staying with the representative, holding her up, holding off the bleeding, at the same time he advised others how to help those they were tending. Medical authorities say it is almost certain that Daniel’s actions saved Gabrielle Giffords’ life.
Hernandez is gay, he is an example of the best of America. He deserves the right to legally marry and enjoy all the rights and responsibilties that marriage brings.
There’s much more to say, you can read the rest here.
Today’s Huffington Post reports that Pope Benedict has laid down some standards for priests counseling engaged couples…
VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI told priests Saturday to do a better job counseling would-be spouses to ensure their marriages last and said no one has an absolute right to a wedding.
Benedict made the comments in his annual speech to the Roman Rota, the Vatican tribunal that decides marriage annulments. An annulment is the process by which the church effectively declares that a marriage never took place.
Benedict acknowledged that the problems that would allow for a marriage to be annulled cannot always be identified beforehand. But he said better pre-marriage counseling, which the Catholic Church requires of the faithful, could help avoid a “vicious circle” of invalid marriages.
This is the Church doing its job. The Catholic Church, or any religious group, can and should make it clear which life events it will celebrate, and who it will accept into its membership.
Also, the Pope is telling priests to offer the best pre-marital counseling, with a goal of preventing marriages that are likely to bring grief and breakup. This is religion helping people to live better lives.
Most people who seek pre-marital counseling from a priest didn’t just wander in the door. They want a Catholic wedding. They could just go to a Justice of the Peace, and make it legal, but they want the blessing of the priest, and for that they have to follow the rules of the Church.
We don’t demand that non-Catholics follow the rules of the Church. The Church has a moral stand that divorced people can’t re-marry, but we don’t expect the State to conform to that. Saints be praised.
I’m no longer a Catholic, so it’s as an outsider that I say that the custom of ‘annulment’ seems less respectful of marriage than legal divorce. To me, claiming that vows made in good faith and a marriage attempted never existed is to deny that we are fallible, and sometimes make promises we can’t keep. It also denies that most marriages that break up had some good times, and some ex-spouses are loving and unselfish as parents.
It’s got to be painful when after the trauma of divorce an ex-spouse receives a Church summons for annulment. It’s a protection for them that the State recognizes a legal marriage contract apart from any actions by the Church. The Diocese of Providence requires that couples obtain a legal divorce before they will consider an annulment petition, in line with standard Church practice. The legal marriage cannot be legally disolved by the Church, and the religious vows cannot be undone by the State.
My good friend, after a painful divorce, asked her Rabbi for a Jewish ceremony for healing and to put to rest the vows that could not be kept.
The State recognizes and validates a union. Religion meets spiritual needs. Both have their place.
If we accepted that the Catholic Church should influence divorce law, because a majority of Rhode Islanders are Catholic, we might please the majority– who might see this as defending marriage. But it would be a mess for the rest of us.
The Pope is absolutely right to focus on good premarital counseling as a way to protect marriage in his Church, and the Church should bless only those unions it considers valid.
They should let the State be the State, legal protection for all citizens regardless of religion. They should let same-sex couples, divorced, inter-religious, non-Catholic– go to City Hall. Or to a church that will welcome and affirm their union.
An important legal victory for marriage equality– from today’s Washington Post…
The Supreme Court has declined to revive a lawsuit intending to allow a voter referendum on the District’s same-sex marriage law.
Local courts have said the District’s Board of Elections and Ethics was justified in denying attempts by opponents of same-sex marriage to put the issue to a vote. Without comment, the justices said they would not review the latest decision upholding the board’s decision by the D.C. Court of Appeals.
Religious and conservative legal groups had sued to put the issue of same-sex marriage to a ballot.
Putting the rights of a minority to majority vote is not democracy. Democracy is more than majority rule– the will of the majority is tempered by rights that belong to each citizen regardless of social status.
Today, interracial marriage is a personal decision, not a political controversy. But if the Supreme Court had not decided in 1967 to abolish laws forbidding it, where would we be? Would we be watching a vicious battle state to state that only demagogues would win? Reading history– the kind we would like to forget– gives a stomach-turning dose of the hysterical accusations of ‘miscegenation’ and the imminent fall of the ‘white race’.
The Supreme Court spared DC a divisive and distracting battle that would only have brought out the worst in American politics…
The D.C. appeals court majority said that the board “correctly determined that the proposed initiative would have the effect of authorizing” discrimination.
And the court said the council “was not obliged to allow initiatives that would have the effect of authorizing discrimination prohibited by the Human Rights Act to be put to voters, and then to repeal them, or to wait for them to be challenged as having been improper subjects of initiative, should they be approved by voters.”
Again, demagogues and extremists would have been the winners if this issue had been dragged out.
Forty-three years after the Supreme Court declared interracial marriages equal, marriage endures and most people, as always, choose to marry within their own race. A glance at the New York Times wedding page on any random Sunday shows happy couples, the vast majority same race, opposite sex. And that’s in wicked New York.
Rhode Island is getting ready to consider a marriage equality bill. There are groups locally, and nationally, like NOM, that will be disappointed if we don’t have an acrimonious fight. If we recognize the unions of committed couples, and let them take legal responsibility for each other in the contract of marriage– my prediction is that nothing much will change for most of us. A minority will gain legal equality, and the rest of us will focus on our own families.
Marriage Equality Rhode Island
Just a quick post before I go to the gym.
It was almost Spring this morning but by 4pm a fierce icy wind was blowing, chilling the long line of people waiting to get into the State House.
I don’t know how many attended, but the center and the two staircases were full. I couldn’t see over the crowd, and had to go to the third floor to find a space at the railing to look down at the speakers. Unfortunately, it was hard to hear up there looking down at the tops of people’s heads.
It was a happy, spirited gathering. There were many distinguished speakers, among them Mayor Cicciline, candidate Lincoln Chafee, Sen. Frank Ferri (who got huge applause), candidate Patrick Lynch, and Sen. Rhoda Perry. I saw lots of Unitarians, the East Greenwich congregation and my minister James Ford of First UU in Providence. Several other members of the clergy, in suits, vestments, yarmulke, were standing in front, a testimony to the existence of liberal religion.
The organizers did a great job, keeping it focused and just long enough.
Rainbow Flag, White Marble
It gives me kind of a buzz to hear all these tributes to the right to marry. Kind of revives the romance.
Looking at the size and diversity of the crowd, a strong and empowered gay community and as many straight supporters, a range of ages and races and personal style, clergy, politicians and a group of Brown University medical students– it’s clear that the time has come to respect marriage as a civil right.
I attended a hearing at the State House about a year ago on competing bills that would ban or legalize same-sex marriage. A member of the senate said that he intended to make gay marriage a ‘litmus test’. Certainly politicians have won votes by demonizing gay people, aided by religious groups that want the government to enforce their moral code.
My own marriage would have been invalid in some states prior to 1967, when Mildred and Richard Loving took their case to the Supreme Court and won for everyone the right to marry who we love regardless of race. I sometimes wonder what kind of hate and fear would have been created by politicians looking for a ‘litmus test’ if we had to fight the battle for interracial marriage state by state. It is still not comfortable for many people. But Mildred Loving, in one of her last public statements before she died, gave her support to same-sex marriage.
I also notice that interracial marriage is uncommon. The fact that it is legal did not create a rush to marry across racial lines, and it didn’t even cause same-race couples to break up.
The New York Times has a weddings and celebrations page. Most of the couples pictured are opposite sex, same race. Some weeks there are no same-sex couples at all. Not even in sinful New York. I hear that in Massachusetts heterosexuals still marry. In fact, they do a pretty good job of staying married.
But we’ve heard it all before. The legislature was going to have a hearing on a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Coincidentally the hearing was postponed. Looking at that happy, motivated and very large crowd I think I know why.
It’s time for all good people who believe in the truth of the Bible and the sacredness of marriage to stand up and stop Karl Rove from making a terrible mistake…
Karl Rove, former senior adviser to President George W. Bush, has been granted a divorce in Texas after 24 years of marriage, family spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
“Karl Rove and his wife, Darby, were granted a divorce last week,” said Perino. “The couple came to the decision mutually and amicably, and they maintain a close relationship and a strong friendship. There will be no further comment, and the family requests that its privacy be respected.”
The heck with privacy, and the heck with the godless secular Texas divorce court. If the Roves have family values now is the time to prove it.
The news report, from Politico, goes on and on about what great friends the Roves are, and how much they love their son. It brought tears to my eyes. These people are obviously crying out for an intervention. They don’t know how to run their own lives as well as the concerned Christians who are ready and willing to set them straight. They only need to believe, and surrender, and God can heal their marriage.
According to the Bible, what they are trying to do is a grave sin, and as far as God is concerned, they are married for life. It’s actually more biblical for a man to have two wives than to casually divorce the mother of his son. So Karl Rove will have to work it out somehow with his first wife and undivorce wife number two as soon as possible.
Maybe he thinks he can be like Newt Gingrich — three’s the charm.
Maybe all these people think they can clobber non-believers with the Bible while picking and choosing which parts of it they will apply to themselves. Maybe they want the freedom of a secular society while wooing the Americans who would be happier with a theocracy. Maybe they practice a modern conception of marriage but preach tradition when same-sex couples try to marry on an equal basis of rights and responsibility.
It’s sad when long-term couples break up, especially when there are children. It happens all the time. It’s sad when long-term couples are denied the right to marry in the first place.
I don’t expect Karl Rove to show a new humility, or open-mindedness. It would be more true to the pattern for him to show up at a function with a younger woman on his arm. That’s the way of the world.
Glenn Greenwald on Salon has more background on the liberal Texas divorce laws and Karl Rove’s crusade against same-sex marriage on the grounds of biblical tradition.
