Two days ago, I wrote that Slate’s editors should be ashamed of having published Mark Regnerus’s propagandistic tripe about his “study” comparing how children fare under intact families versus how they fare when their biological parents have a rocky time because one discovers or accepts that he or she is lesbian or gay.
I know, we're all used to hearing "war on women" mean the fight to defund and limit women's reproductive health. But this chart just astonished me. Take a second to compare (all) American deaths in combat with women's deaths at the hands of men who putatively loved them. Now, which war, again, is being funded with billions of dollars and covered every day with high-profile news coverage and media punditry?
Last week, I was a guest at the LGBT Connect day at Netroots Nation, meeting all kindsa people I've mostly encountered online. You know how these kinds of conferences go: glasses are hoisted, gossip is swapped, and you learn the story behind the story.
When is a new study “research,” and when is it propaganda? That’s the question to ask when looking at Mark Regnerus’s “study,” released this past weekend, on children who had a parent who had an affair with someone of the same sex. Regnerus compares children who grew up in an intact household from birth to adulthood with children who started in a heterosexual marriage but who had a parent who crossed over to the gay side. And yet Regnerus is touting it as a study on the real-life experiences of children who grew up with lesbian or gay parents. Here’s what he says in Slate, of all places, which I usually respect:
I’m married in Massachusetts. I’m not married in the United States. That paradox is untenable, the First Circuit Court of Appeals declared in May as it unanimously struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act—the portion of the 1996 law stating that, for federal purposes, marriage is between a man and a woman. Most legal observers believe the Supreme Court will agree, and the feds will have to recognize my marriage. That would leave me almost fully married, but not quite: Thirty-eight states still ban recognition of same-sex marriages. So what’s the path to marriage equality nationwide?
In the Washington Post Magazine this weekend, Sally Quinn—wife of former legendary Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, former religion columnist and social lioness—wrote a jaw-dropping piece about How Washington Has Changed For The Worse. As a friend said, "Every time you think this column can't get more deranged, there's another paragraph." Here's a summary: Crude people like the Kardashians and the Gingriches are getting attention, instead of my husband and me. That's appalling. We important people used to be in charge of getting things done here in Washington.
Lily Ledbetter—complete with sensible blond bob and an Alabama drawl—is the kind of lady who would tell a you to stop wearing peek-a-boo blouses to work and making cookies for the office because both make you look unserious. The poster girl for the 77 cents to a dollar that American women make in the workplace compared to their male counterparts, Ledbetter's not one to be trifled with. The personification of the Obama campaign’s somber economic appeal to female voters, she’s also the kind of lady who calls Mitt Romney out for not taking a stand on equal pay issues.
Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution—How a Despised Minority Pushed Back, Beat Death, Found Love, and Changed America for Everyone By Linda Hirshman, Harper Collins, 464 pages, $27.99
Fifty years ago, being gay put you beyond the social pale. You could be savagely beaten, kicked out of public spaces and private clubs, arrested, fired, expelled from your family, and scorned as a pariah. Today, lesbians and gay men are all but equal, with full marriage rights in view—supported by President Barack Obama in action and words. How did we win so much so fast?
How boring are marriage equality wins now? So boring that yesterday's DOMA defeat isn't even on The New York Times home page this morning, as I write this.
Here’s some absurdly good news. As Garrett Epps told us, the Ninth Circuit yesterday decided to stand by its panel’s decision in the Prop 8 case and kick it upstairs to the Supremes. Maybe SCOTUS will refuse to take the case; that would be fabulous news, turning California immediately into a marriage-equality state without causing me any anxiety about someone up there writing a decision that leaves a bad precedent. But the good news is that the First Circuit’s nice, narrow ruling striking down DOMA’s section 3 will probably get there first.
One of the most important functions of a dissenting opinion is to throw red meat to op-ed writers. Justice Antonin Scalia is a master of the form. Witness his dissent in Lawrence v. Texas, warning that, if same-sex sodomy laws are voided, government may soon force the unwilling to accept gays and lesbians “as boarders in their home.” Justice John Paul Stevens also perfected the zinger; he capped his dissent in Citizens United by saying, “While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.”
But ladies, we’re still losing ground. Today, your Senators discuss whether you deserve a more robust law protecting your right to equal pay for equal work. Why do we need one? Well, consider this article in Women’s E-News in which Caryl Rivers and Rosalind Barnett analyze the fact that as white men increasingly move into what once were considered women’s occupations—nurses, teachers, social workers, dental hygienists, and the like—they get paid more and get promoted faster.
You all have got to be tired by now of me celebrating good news for LGBT rights, bouncing around in my Tigger-y fashion, showing yet another way that we're winning. But I can't help it. As we've discussed, I grew up in the Pleistocene era, when you still had to look over your shoulder leaving a gay bar. Now I'm married to another woman, at least in the eyes of Massachusetts. It's crazy to live through so much social change in just a few decades. (A friend of mine says: "E.J., you sound like one of those older black folks who talk about how miraculous it is to no longer live under Jim Crow." Well, it's true! Being me is no longer a felony!)
One of the most striking examples of the progress made by supporters of gay and lesbian rights can be seen with respect to the odious Defense of Marriage Act. The bill, which denied federal marriage benefits to same-sex couples and allowed states not to recognize same-sex marriages valid in other states, had been signed by the second-most recent Democratic president after passing both the House and Senate by veto-proof margins. A little more than a decade later, President Obama—even before his recent announcement declaring support for marriage equality—had refused to defend the constitutionality of DOMA in court.
Oh, gosh, it's so confusing. I'm married when I visit my stepson's school. I'm not married when I file federal taxes. I'm married when I fill out forms at the doctor's office. I'm not married when I'm visiting my brother in Texas. Or am I?
