Wallabies rugby star Dave Pocock, who is boycotting marriage until there is equal love in Australia
It is not realistic to ask male-female couples to do this, but I find it very touching when such couples do make a stand like this. It’s a big sacrifice, and when it comes from a famous rugby player like Dave Pocock it makes a doubly strong point.
Loree and Kevin Rudd
WTF? I did not expect to read about Kevin Rudd and the global gay gestapo this morning.
This is one of those situations of “who cares what a relative of a famous person or a famous person says.” They don’t have an extraordinary insight, they just have a name.
Well, seeing as I am happy to take all the good stuff from our liberal friendly celebrities … I have to support the downside of this fame game too. Like the sister of the recent Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, saying Australia is being held hostage by the “gay gestapo” when it comes to marriage equality. Go back in your box!
Insensitive. Wrong. Lacking in insight. Offensive to all Gestapo victims. We could go on. And we could also say that Brother Rudd is playing it smart by shutting up, which is something Sister Rudd would have been well advised to do.
But someone has to condemn this crazy lady, and I am certainly going to be one of those people. And it will be a good day when she leaves the Australian Labor Party which is growing more enlightened and will one day cut these sorts of people loose and officially adopt equality as its national policy.
Uruguay’s Colectivo Ovejas Negras is giving New York a run for its money on marriage equality. Otherwise known as the Black Sheep Collective has launched a TV-ad campaign featuring 34 local stars to back up the equality bill now before the national Parliament.
“The bill — written by Uruguay’s first transgendered lawyer — will soon be discussed by Parliament, and we’re optimistic,” said the collective’s Álvaro Queiruga.
David Frum
Very interesting and gratifying piece here on CNN by David Frum, a man more often associated with inventing Republican catch-cries like the “axis of evil.”
My favorite line, where he tells conservatives to go find another cause for family instability in the U.S.
“Whatever is driving this negative trend, it seems more than implausible to connect it to same-sex marriage. How would it even work that a 15-year-old girl in Van Nuys, California, becomes more likely to have a baby because two men in Des Moines, Iowa, can marry?”
Sean Avery, an ice hockey star, is not a person I knew about until this spot for New Yorkers for Marriage Equality. But his common sense and possibly brave decision to speak about the equality he expects for himself, and supports for others, makes me wonder where the other sports stars are in this debate. Cristiano Ronaldo is a notable other example.
I don’t think sports stars are special people – but they do have large followings and a way of connecting with more macho and less political crowds that we needs as supporters of equality.
How about Ian Thorpe doing an ad for Australian Marriage Equality? Just saying …
It’s been a long time since I said that to a woman who isn’t my mother …
But seriously, I saw this on The Gay Wedding Experience (thanks Brian) and just had to steal and share it.
My boyfriend thinks it’s lame. I think it is not only funny, but that the self-deprecating “as I like to call it” reference really shows up the people who want to marginalise our concerns and wish to have what everyone else has.
Liz Feldman is known from her After Ellen vlog entitled “This Just Out,” has four Emmy’s for her work on the Ellen DeGeneres Show
Elizabeth Taylor (apparently she hated Liz), was a woman of depth on-screen and off. Here is her early and brilliant speech in favour of gay marriage at the 2000 GLAAD awards in California, with thanks to Rex Wockner for reminding us of this vision. Taylor fought for equality long before it was sexy, and we’ll remember her long after we finally achieve it.
“All of my life I’ve spent a lot of time with gay men — Montgomery Clift, Jimmy Dean, Rock Hudson — who are my colleagues, coworkers, confidantes, my closest friends, but I never thought of who they slept with! They were just the people I loved. I could never understand why they couldn’t be afforded the same rights and protections as all of the rest of us. There is no gay agenda, it’s a human agenda.
“All of us should be treated the same, and GLAAD knows that. Why shouldn’t gay people be allowed to marry? Those against gay marriages say marriage should only be between a man and a woman. God, I, of all people know that [the remainder of the sentence was inaudible due to an audience outburst]. I feel that any home where there is love constitutes a family and all families should have the same legal rights, including the right to marry and have or adopt children!
“Why shouldn’t gay people be able to live as open and freely as everybody else? What it comes down to, ultimately, is love. How can anything bad come out of love? The bad stuff comes out of mistrust, misunderstanding and, God knows, from hate and from ignorance … the bad things never came out of loving acts, loving gestures or loving relationships. That’s why I’m here tonight — to celebrate you and your families. And to tell you to hang in there and to say, once and for all of us, long live love.” Continue reading →
OK, so I was asleep when Pat Robertson, the American evangelist and Bill O’Reilly the FOX TV guy came out with their views that legalising gay marriage and prosecuting hate crime is the step before encouraging sex with ducks. But I am glad that these comediennes (Garfunkel and Oates) have brought me up to speed. Enjoy.
Photo credit: Mary Ellen Mark for the New Yorker
Fascinating New Yorker article here, one I’ve been meaning to blog about since returning from holiday. About how Hollywood high-flyer and Oscar winner Haggis abandoned the organisation he now calls a cult, over their refusal to disown Proposition 8 and treat his gay daughters as equals.
