Daily Archives: June 19, 2015
7 Things List: June 19, 2015
7 Things List: June 19, 2015
Our entertainment and events highlights this week include Pride in the Windy City, the sweet sound of out singer Olly Alexander from Years & Years, and that star-studded video from her majesty — Madonna.
Advocate.com Editors
www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/2015/06/19/7-things-list-june-19-2015
The Anticipation Builds
The Anticipation Builds
As the day draws near for the Supreme Court to issue its decision in the marriage equality cases, the urge to decipher any clue as to what the Court will decide heightens. A few weeks ago, the New York Times reported that as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently pronounced two gay men married “by the powers vested in her by the Constitution” at a swank D.C. wedding, she did it “[w]ith a sly look and special emphasis on the word ‘Constitution.'” The newspaper also reported that the wedding guests’ wildly enthusiastic response seemed to have “delighted” the Justice. The New York Times’ speculation that Ginsburg’s intonation and reaction may be a “hint” of what the Supreme Court will decide set the news world abuzz.
The things the Justices said during the Supreme Court’s late April oral argument in the marriage equality cases have also been ripe for speculation. Several of the Justices upon whom we are relying asked questions or made statements that most observers have interpreted as favorable to marriage equality. For instance, Justice Kagan seemed to indicate that she believed the current cases were “exactly what” the Supreme Court’s landmark decision, Loving v. Virginia, that struck down all state bans on interracial couples marrying, was about. In Loving, the Court held that such marriage exclusions violate Americans’ fundamental right to marry and the guarantees of equality that the U.S. Constitution provides. Justice Kagan described how Loving showed that “liberty and … equality are intertwined ….”
Justice Breyer also observed that “marriage is about as basic a right as there is” and that the Constitution prohibits a state from “depriv[ing] a person of … basic liberty, without due process of law ….” He questioned opponents’ counsel as to same-sex couples’ argument that they have “no possibility to participate in that fundamental liberty” in states without the freedom to marry. Breyer further stated that opponents’ argument that upholding tradition justified states’ same-sex marriage exclusions was “the same way we talk[ed] about racial segregation” during the era of Loving. Justice Sotomayor seemed to agree, apparently rejecting opponents’ argument that LGBT Americans somehow seek a Constitutional right to “gay” marriage and understanding that same-sex couples simply assert their fundamental right to marry that the Constitution guarantees everyone else.
Justice Ginsburg said favorable things as well. She recognized how the evolution of marriage under the law from “a relationship of a dominant male to a subordinate female” to an “egalitarian” institution made it something that same-sex couples would seek to participate in. She also seemed to reject opponents’ argument that same-sex couples’ marrying would somehow harm heterosexuals’ marriages, noting that the freedom to marry for same-sex couples would not “tak[e] away anything from heterosexual couples.” Justice Kagan appeared skeptical of similar arguments from opponents, noting that some people find it “hard to see how permitting same-sex marriage discourages people from being bonded with their biological children.” Justice Breyer asked opponents’ attorney for “empirical” evidence of such a connection, none of which was availing. Soon thereafter, Justice Kagan told opponents’ counsel that he found his reasoning “inexplicable.”
Much attention focuses on Justice Kennedy, who is considered the “swing” vote on the Court in many cases and has written all three of the Court’s landmark LGBT rights cases. Kennedy said relatively little during the argument but asked questions and made statements that observers have interpreted as favorable to both sides. LGBT supporters were disturbed when early on he gave voice to the argument that a purported “definition” of marriage had been “with us for millennia” and that “it’s very difficult for the court to say ‘Oh well, we know better.'” Justice Breyer also wanted an answer to questions about the issue.
However, Justice Kennedy also stated that he thought “the whole purpose of marriage” was to bestow dignity on the couple and that same-sex couples seek the same “ennoblement” that other married couples have. In questioning opponents’ counsel, Kennedy recognized same-sex couples’ argument that they seek marriage “in order to show that we, too, have a dignity that can be fulfilled.” Kennedy also noted that approximately the same amount of time has elapsed between the Supreme Court’s landmark LGBT rights decision in Lawrence and the current cases as had elapsed between Brown v. Board of Education and Loving, two of the Court’s landmark race discrimination cases.
Justice Kennedy’s references to the importance of the dignity that marriage confers are heartening. Dignity was central to Justice Kennedy’s opinion in United States v. Windsor, striking down section 3 of DOMA. He emphasized that the State of New York’s decision to end the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage reflected the state’s decision to “protect” same-sex couples “in personhood and dignity.” Justice Kennedy wrote that “essence” of DOMA was “interference with the equal dignity of same-sex marriages” and that the “injury and indignity” that DOMA inflicted on married same-sex couples was “a deprivation of an essential part of the liberty protected” by the Constitution. He stated that DOMA “tells those couples, and all the world, that their otherwise valid marriages are unworthy of federal recognition,” thereby “plac[ing] same-sex couples in an unstable position of being in a second-tier marriage.”
Justice Kennedy asked questions that appeared favorable to both sides during oral argument in the marriage cases two years ago, but the ultimate result of Windsor was unambiguous, and some of the language stronger than most observers anticipated. No one can predict the outcome of any Supreme Court case with surety based on oral argument or other comments Justices might otherwise make. The actual motivations for Justices’ questions are unknowable in advance. Justices may want to probe an argument fully by making statements and asking difficult questions to both sides. Further, Justices may be poised to ask particular questions, but before they speak their colleague might ask the very same thing, or the time allotted to the argument may expire.
Anticipation will continue to build as we approach the end of June, when the Justices will likely render their decision. We know that if justice prevails, marriage equality will be the law of the land and the U.S. Supreme Court will recognize that LGBT Americans deserve full equal protection under the law in our lives.
John Lewis and Stuart Gaffney, together for nearly three decades, were plaintiffs in the California case for equal marriage rights decided by the California Supreme Court in 2008. They are leaders in the nationwide grassroots organization Marriage Equality USA.
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Achieving Health Equity for LGBT Arkansans
Achieving Health Equity for LGBT Arkansans
HRC Arkansas made history on June 11 after hosting the first statewide conference to address LGBT inclusive healthcare.
HRC.org
www.hrc.org/blog/entry/achieving-health-equity-for-lgbt-arkansans?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed
Steve Grand’s Parents Learned He Was Gay By Reading An AOL Chat
Steve Grand’s Parents Learned He Was Gay By Reading An AOL Chat
They found out from an AOL Instant Message Chat I was having with a friend when I was 13. They confronted me about it shortly after. Like a lot of parents in their position, especially at the time, they didn’t know what to do. So they sent me to a Christian therapist to help figure out what to do. There was a lot of ex-gay literature going around back then and I think it gave them false hope that I could actually become straight. We’ve all come such a long way. I don’t like to dwell on what happened so long ago. They definitely regret the way they handled it, and so do I, but we all have to move on in life at some point.”
— Singer Steve Grand, who’s previously discussed undergoing gay conversion therapy in a new interview with aTeen magazine
Jeremy Kinser
The Smallest Country in the World Just Legalized Gay Marriage
The Smallest Country in the World Just Legalized Gay Marriage
In a small but symbolic victory for marriage equality worldwide, the Pitcairn Islands have passed a new law that explicitly legalizes gay marriage. The island nation is a British colony in the southern Pacific Ocean and it is the world’s least populous national jurisdiction.
The new law, Same Sex Marriage and Civil Partnership Ordinance 2015, explicitly allows for same-sex marriages among the island nation’s 56 inhabitants.
Read the new law in detail, full text embedded below:
Courtesy of Equality Case Files
The post The Smallest Country in the World Just Legalized Gay Marriage appeared first on Towleroad.
Jake Folsom
The Smallest Country in the World Just Legalized Gay Marriage
Tab Hunter Tells All
Tab Hunter Tells All
The great screen heartthrob of the 1950s sets the record straight by coming out as gay in Tab Hunter Confidential.
Adam Sandel
www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/2015/06/18/tab-hunter-tells-all
Same Sex Wedding Tips for All Couples
Same Sex Wedding Tips for All Couples
*This post first appeared on InsideWeddings.com.
Marriage equality is flourishing across the United States, yielding more same-sex weddings than ever before. But unlike “traditional” straight couples, same-sex couples have no templates or roadmaps to fall back on when planning their nuptials. Here I share a few ideas – some from my own experience – for navigating the unknown terrain of same-sex weddings, all of which will help any couple (gay or straight) who want to celebrate individuality over tradition.
Your Wedding Challenges are Opportunities
With no GPS to lead the way, you and your fiancé are forced to ask yourselves three important questions:
1. What are we doing?
2. Why are we doing it?
3. How do we make it happen?
Same-sex couples have always been forced to be awake at the wheel of their relationships and marriages. I feel it’s because they have had to fight for recognition in the face of adversity. So – along with straight couples who deviate from the norm – think of your wedding-planning challenges as opportunities to create meaningful celebrations on your own terms.
Incorporate Guests Into Your Story, Not the Other Way Around
Assemble a menagerie of faces that make you feel like you. And choose not to invite anyone who might compromise your event with what I call ‘Overtly Toxic Prejudice’: a reflexive, pernicious need to induce shame in those they do not understand. Anyone down with OTP does not have a place at your wedding.
By taking charge of your guest list, you also empower yourself to bring people into your world, on your terms. For instance, when family members slip up and call your event a “party,” just remind them how important the day is for you, how important the word “wedding” is, and how meaningful it will be for you to share it with them.
Remember, you are inviting them into your story as a couple, not contorting yourself to fit into theirs.
Personalize, Rewrite, or Create New Rituals
You get to think about which wedding rituals you like, which you do not, and which are rooted in the tradition of brides as property (which are many of them). You then get to decide which of those rituals, if any, tell your story. If none do, you can always create your own, and then celebrate them in your own way.
Here are some examples:
The Proposal. You can reenact a “traditional” proposal where one proposes to the other on bended knee. But you can also invent a refreshing proposal of your own. And you can cast yourself in the role of proposer, proposed to, or both.
For example, my husband and I invented Proposal Week: a mini-vacation during which we agreed to psyche each other out with almost-proposals at various dinners and excursions until it spontaneously happened for real. Instead of exchanging rings, we created a symbolic video featuring the people in our tribes and emailed it to them. It served as both our engagement announcement and our save the date.
Parties. Have a shower, a bachelor(ette) party, or any other pre-wedding bash if you want. Whatever you end up doing (i.e., cake decorating classes, wine tasting, bar hopping, or bungy jumping) just make sure you actually have fun and that the party symbolizes who you are, independent of your spouse-to-be.
The Wedding Party. And speaking of parties, you get to decide who you want to represent you on the big day, without the gender binary getting in the way. That means that unlike many brides and grooms in the past, you get to choose bridesmen, groomsgals, or any other attendant in your wedding ensemble without the oppressive rule of “boys on this side of the aisle, girls on that side.”
What is also trending is not settling on any specific color theme for attire; don’t feel the pressure to have everyone in the wedding party match ensembles. For example, for our New England fall wedding, my husband and I chose to wear non-matching brown suits and asked our parties to wear any fall leaf color of their choosing. It was wonderful to watch the autumnal ensemble flurry their way down the aisle.
The Ceremony. Don’t feel as though you have to abandon tradition altogether. There may be aspects of sectarian customs that inspire you. For example, my husband and I both grew up going to Christian churches, and though we are not religious now, we liked some of the aesthetics of the services. We chose classic texts that reflected stories like ours – drawn from Gilgamesh and Plato – as well as church-like music selections that felt personal, from Philip Glass and Sinead O’Connor. Our spiritual guests not only got to reflect on our love, but also had no idea the service wasn’t taken from the Bible.
The Reception. Do you need to smash cake in each other’s faces? No. So if you don’t want to, don’t. If you want a first dance, do it: fast or slow, just the two of you, or with everyone as a big group. And if you want to dance with parents, why not go ahead and dance with your same-sex counterpart?
Your Wedding is a Performance
Don’t be afraid to embrace the limelight. It’s your day, so you should enjoy it.
That being said, you’ll want to prepare for show time the way actors do for a play. Allow yourself to daydream about each stage of the wedding ahead of time. Fantasize about the attention you will receive each step of the way, and how nice it will be to take that in. The more you are prepared to enjoy the attention, the better time you’ll have and the better time your guests will have. Trust me.
Also, don’t be thrown by relatives who may cringe at the sight of you kissing your beloved at the altar, your PDA in photographs or on the dance floor, your choice of outfit, or any other way in which you choose to enjoy the spotlight. These “traditional” or conservative relatives might induce inhibiting shame in you. Don’t let them. They are not the arbiters of appropriate. They simply suffer from what I call ‘Spotlight Ambivalence’: mixed feelings about exposing truth when it challenges the norm, causing folks to object when you take center stage. It’s about them, not about you.
But you might be able to actually glean tips from these same relatives. Ask them about their weddings and conflicts they had with their relatives when planning them. You might disarm them and find connections in unexpected places.
What You Take In Is More Important Than What You Put Out
Whether we’re straight or gay, we all face the exact same wedding dilemma: How to celebrate who we are and who we love, and how to take our crucial people along with us for the ride. The ensemble you assemble will nourish you – if you mentally prepare to take them in.
*This post has been adapted from Mark O’Connell, LCSW’s book, Modern Brides & Modern Grooms: A Guide to Planning Straight, Gay, and Other Nontraditional Twenty-First Century Weddings.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
One Million Moms Is Now Very Angry At Yogurt And Lesbians
One Million Moms Is Now Very Angry At Yogurt And Lesbians
Nothing raises the hackles quite like the transient, transgressive delights of Greek yogurt. And should you ever produce a commercial that conspicuously slips a container of the stuff between two slinky lesbians cavorting around in 1500-thread count bedsheets, you should immediately expect the fiery condemnation of Our Lord to come down upon you with the force of a thousand bucking steads.
Such is the fate of fine Greek yogurt purveyors Chobani, who recently released the following Sapphic advertisement to capitalize on Gay Pride Month:
Within moments, that spectral organization known as One Million Moms rose up from the gulley in which it sleeps, instantaneously firing out a nutso press release that reads in part: “Chobani should be ashamed of their latest commercial for attempting to normalize sin by featuring two women naked in bed together… This commercial not only promotes same sex relationships by including two lesbians, but also same-sex marriage because the two women wear matching wedding bands.”
Related: Disney Channel Acknowledges That Gay Parents Exist, Infuriates One Million Moms
One Million Moms — who we suspect is merely One Crabby Spinster typing away on an old Smith Corona in a disused basement — gets increasingly flummoxed as the statement rambles on: “What does selling yogurt have to do with gay sex? Nothing at all, but Chobani wants to make the association. One Million Moms continues to stand up for Biblical truth, which is very clear in Romans 1:26-27 about this particular type of sexual perversion.”
With that, One Million Moms flapped back into the clouds to replenish its energy before the next attack, leaving us with much to think about as we enjoy our own Chobani in bed.
h/t: Jezebel
Derek de Koff
SCOTUS Gay Marriage Plaintiff Jim Obergefell: ‘There’s Still So Much More to Do’ – VIDEO
SCOTUS Gay Marriage Plaintiff Jim Obergefell: ‘There’s Still So Much More to Do’ – VIDEO
The lead plaintiff in the same-sex marriage cases before the U.S. Supreme Court says he’ll continue to fight for LGBT equality even if justices rule in his favor.
Jim Obergefell (above left) married his dying partner of more than 20 years, John Arthur (above right), on the tarmac of the Baltimore airport in 2013. Obergefell later filed a lawsuit in their home state of Ohio seeking to be listed as the surviving spouse on Arthur’s death certificate.
After a federal judge ruled in Obergefell’s favor, the state appealed the decision, and the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned it. Now, Obergefell’s case is one of four challenging same-sex marriage bans in as many states before the high court, which could rule any day now.
But Obergefell — who’s been at the Supreme Court on decision days to watch the rulings come down — told New York Magazine that regardless of how the court rules, he’s remain an activist:
“With this ruling coming out, and even if the ruling is what we’re hoping for, I know I’m not done. Even though my case will have ended, and there will be marriage equality coast to coast, there’s still so much more to do for the LGBT community. I mean, across the country, even being able to marry, couples will lose their jobs, lose their homes, because they’re gay or bisexual or transgender. And that isn’t right. I have discovered my internal activist, and I have to keep fighting. It’s too important to me now to say, Okay, marriage equality is done, I’m going to go back to my normal life. This has become my normal life.”
Obergefell said he’s been amazed by the support he’s received, but is still struggling to deal with his status emotionally:
“It doesn’t seem possible. I mean, on one hand, it’s incredible to think that my name, John’s and my story, is a landmark case that will be in history books. That’s an incredible thing, on an intellectual level. It’s the emotional level where I’m still catching up to that. It just doesn’t seem possible, and it doesn’t seem at all possible that I’m the person at the center of it. Knowing that I wasn’t an activist, and knowing that it all started just because John and I loved each other.”
Watch interviews with Obergefell and Arthur before he died, as well as footage from their wedding ceremony below:
ABC US News | World News
The post SCOTUS Gay Marriage Plaintiff Jim Obergefell: ‘There’s Still So Much More to Do’ – VIDEO appeared first on Towleroad.
John Wright
SCOTUS Gay Marriage Plaintiff Jim Obergefell: ‘There’s Still So Much More to Do’ – VIDEO
