Great website from the Human Rights Campaign here: nomexposed.org
Conservatives
14
Mar 11
BLACK CHURCH NEEDS TO DO SOME RESEARCH
The stories I found most destructive about this week’s “snatching defeat from the laws of victory” news on marriage equality in the US state of Maryland, were the ones from black Democrats nakedly doing the bidding of church interests. Here’s Del. Cheryl Glenn, an African-American Democrat from Baltimore: “The black churches have never asked us for anything, and they are asking us now, ‘Don’t do this.’” Honestly, the way they just traded their votes in after a few phones calls gives a bad name to even the worst ‘special interests’ and lobbyists.
If I was an African American legislator, or a legislator worried about families in particular, it is not same sex marriage I would be worried about. Try these other facts on for size about the disintegration of African American family structures … and notice how none of it is related to gays and lesbians.
The Pew Research Center’s November 2010 report on marriage and family found:
- In 1960, the black marriage rate was 61 percent. By 2008, only 32 percent of blacks married.
-72 percent of black women giving birth were unmarried
- 52 percent of black children were being raised in single-parent homes, 38 percent with two-parents/partners and fully 10 percent with no parents.
As Colbert King (the African American commentator) rightly points out in the Washington Post, you can also mention the “depressing data on the high rate of black teen pregnancies, the large number of black children ordered into foster care because of neglect and abuse, the absence of fathers or the disproportionate number of black men behind bars.”
I am not trying to pin the blame on family breakdown on anyone in particular – but I am sure not buying the line that our community is a threat to family. Sometimes it seems like we are the only people who want to build one!
10
Mar 11
IT’S LIKE SEX WITH DUCKS
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.
3
Dec 10
HUNGARY MOVES TO BAN GAY MARRIAGE
It is predictable given the scary, winking at fascism, government in Hungary at the moment … but Hungary’s efforts to constitutionally ban gay marriage still feel like a time warp.
This is precisely the sort of thing that EU membership is supposed to effectively ban. And it is also precisely the sort of active discrimination that allowed Judge Vaughn Walker in California to rule Proposition 8 unconstitutional.
So how did this happen? Two years ago, under a social democratic government it was a different story. Then the government actually contemplated full marriage equality. In the end they stepped back and offered only a limited, yet still formal, relationship recognition, much like the French PACS system. (For example recognised rights include: hospital visitation, access to medical information, right to make decision about the deceased partners’ funeral, widow’s pension, immigration rights).
According to polls there is 60% support for these rights, while only 30-35% support full equality. The only attempt to introduce a marriage equality law was defeated in 2002 without debate.
The new right-wing Government led by Viktor Orban swept into power this year with huge majorities. By commanding more than two-thirds of the votes in Parliament they are effectively able to change the constitution at will. So they is exactly what they have done: strip the constitutional court of most of its powers to rule on tax and state budget issues; order the media to censor converage of certain topics like sex and alcohol, and appoint important officials for exceptionally long nine0year terms.
Now it is the turn of women and the gays, with anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage articles forseen to be added to the Constitution.
This could turn out to be very embarrassing for the European Union – their rotating presidency is passing to the Hungarians in four weeks time. Watch out for some fights.
29
Nov 10
MALAYSIA’S FIRST “IT GETS BETTER” VIDEO
This is so, so important and courageous. In a country where even a former Deputy Prime Minister has been jailed in the last decade for sodomy, there needs to be messages like this so there can be hope. So that one day there can be a possibility of a normal and happy life for all the gay and lesbian people in Malaysia now denied it.
Here is Gabrielle – outed in the media, attempting suicide, friends with people who are victims of ‘corrective rape’… but ultimately a story of a family who changed their mind and a brave women who struggled on to something better.
This story is exactly why need marriage equality; the lack of role models, the lack of people to talk to is devastating.
24
Nov 10
HOW TO TALK ABOUT MARRIAGE
Freedom to Marry deserve a lot of credit here for their clever effort to get suporters in the United States (or anywhere for that matter) to do the basic but hard thing of talking about marriage equality to their extended families.
I really believe this is one of the fundamental ingredients of making change happen. It’s also something I have struggled with myself. It’s hard for everyone!
CHECK OUT THE TIPS, THE VIDEOS AND MOST OF ALL: HAVE COURAGE!
18
Nov 10
MARRIAGE DEREGULATION, NOT EQUALITY
This piece by Nick Sowden is a rather innovative homocon take on the fight for marriage rights – not a bad thing if it gets more right-leaning folk on side. And at 22, it is good to see a young right-winger willing to make these arguments.
10
Oct 10
REALLY? RWANDA’S BIG ISSUE IS GAY MARRIAGE?
I don’t know about you, but if my country had just suffered genocide, I wouldn’t put gay marriage at the top of my list of problems to worry about.
So I got a piece of advice for people in Rwanda, especially, the soon-to-be Anglican Archbishop: buck up and focus on avoiding another genocide.
The most disgusting past comment of Onesphore Rwaje, the Archbishop-elect, is homosexuality is “moral Genocide.”
No – the only genocide is the one where a ethno-cultural is massacred. And I don’t remember any gays ever advocating or implementing that.
24
Sep 10
REPUBLICANS RAISE OVER $1m FOR GAY MARRIAGE
Ken Mehlman, a former Bush II mastermind
OK, so technically not all the money came from Republicans, but three republicans did chair this major fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights (the group behind the Prop 8 case victory last month).
Those involved haven’t always been friends of equality, but I would say that this million dollar gift goes quite some way to proving that they have indeed ‘changed their spots.’ I suppose it’s also nice to see that if there are going to be massive bank bonuses again, that at least some of them go to a useful cause.
3
Sep 10
THE TROUBLE WITH NEIGHBOURS …
A lovely anecdote here from a subruban mother about how she took up the issue of marriage equality with her neighbours.
