The Maine Situation – No on 1

Back in May, the Maine legislature legalized same-sex marriage in their state. Predictably, the right-wing hate machine has revved its engines to undo social progress, and has put Proposition 1 — essentially identical to California’s Prop 8 — on the November ballot.

Greta Christina has a blog post on the subject that I can’t say better, but the two important points are:

• Every state that legalizes same-sex marriage and does not fall into total social anarchy as a result makes it that much harder for anti-equality forces to spread their lies, because they’re more and more likely to be seen for what they are.

• Proposition 1′s failure will make the first time that a majority vote by the people of the United States upheld marriage equality. Until now it’s been rulings by the courts or decisions by the legislatures, and the opposition has been all too happy to crow about it violating the will of the people. When the will of the people openly supports same-sex unions, even in only one state to start with, they won’t be able to pull that one out anymore. A single clap can start an avalanche.

We in California had our chance to be the first domino to fall and we blew it. We weren’t prepared for the full force of bigotry that the Yes on 8 crowd brought to bear. So now Maine is ground zero. I’m confident that equality will eventually win out, as it always has before. But a win in Maine will bring about a national win much, much faster.

Greta’s post mentions several ways to get involved. I am personally starting to plan a Volunteer Vacation to Maine and spend a week canvassing for the No on 1 campaign. I sat on my hands with Prop 8 and I share the responsibility for its passage as a result. This time can, and must, be different.

Obviously most people have real jobs and can’t afford to take a week off to get political. But you can still be involved. If you can, please donate to the campaign. The Yes on 8 campaign was fueled by massive influxes of cash from big donors, prominently including the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City. The Yes on 1 campaign has hired many of the same campaign managers as Yes on 8, and there’s no reason to think it won’t have many of the same supporters and donors. We in California saw the lies and fearmongering they slapped on billboards and TV commercials, and the No on 8 campaign simply didn’t have the resources to wage the battle effectively. Every little bit will go a long way toward fighting the smears that are going to be inevitable.

However you intend to get involved, get involved early. Voting for the Maine election actually opens in October, so if you wait until right before the election date, most of the votes will already be cast and it will be too late. We’ve made our mistakes, now we have the opportunity to show we’ve learned from them.

Gay marriage NOT legalized in California

The Supreme Court has ruled to uphold Proposition Hate in California as a valid constitutional amendment.

As much as I hate the decision, I actually think the Supreme Court did the right thing here. It’s not their fault the laws are what they are, it’s only their job to make sure they’re followed. Despite the fact that it worked against my civil rights, I’m glad that they upheld the law as it’s written — that’s the better precedent to set, and puts the lie to all the right-wingers who would just looooooove to bang the drums about “activist judges.” In the long run, I think this actually helped us. If we don’t like constitutionally-valid laws, it’s our job to change them, not theirs.

Our problem last November was we thought Prop 8 failing would be a given in California, that we’d just sail through without having to get active. Let this be a lesson to us when the overturn initiative goes on the ballot.

This is only a setback. Disappointing, but not insurmountable. But no one is going to do the work for us.

Maine legalizes same-sex marriage

At this rate, California might suddenly be the last to do so. 

(Just kidding. We all know Alabama will only be dragged kicking and screaming into rational humanity.)

(via CNN)

And now Vermont

The Vermont legislature has overridden a gubernatorial veto and become the fourth state in the union to officially legalize gay marriage. 

In the wake of last week’s Iowa decision, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com, who accurately and almost precisely predicted the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency (but, granted, failed to accurately predict the winner of the World Series) did an examination of the state-by-state demographic shifts. Using this data he made a prediction, as to when he believed the tipping point would come that more people would accept than oppose gay marriage, and therefore the latest date he believed each state would vote against a ban like Prop 8. 

The first state on his list? Vermont. 

New Hampshire, I guess you’re up next.

Iowa Legalizes Gay Marriage

California, you see this? Fucking Iowa is more progressive than we are.

Okay, that’s not entirely fair. Their state supreme court overturned a gay marriage ban, which is after all exactly what happened in Cali last May.

Still, a Prop 8 equivalent can’t pop up in Iowa until 2012 at the earliest. By that time, the gays will have been entering into committed relationships for more than three years without the state devolving into animal-raping child molesting polygamous anarchy. The arguments of the right-wing slime-peddlers won’t hold any water then, and the referendum has a good chance of being defeated. A validation by voters, in any state, that they want to allow same sex marriage will have a domino effect on the rest of the nation. 

And Cali folks, that should have been us last November.

Prop 8 passed because too many of us assumed that it didn’t have a chance in the 21st century, in one of the most liberal states in the union. I hope the lesson has been learned that hate and fear still dominate regardless of the date on the calendar. We need to know better next time, and be ready to get active in the fight for equality, both here in California, and everywhere else that people are finally working to put decency over dogma.

My No on 8 Video

This is a somewhat-successful first attempt at using YouTube’s “Direct Upload” feature, and it’s my appeal to California voters to vote against the discriminatory Proposition 8. The audio is out of sync and it cuts off the last sentence, but the bulk of the message is there.

I now pronounce you…

So great non-filmmaking news today: the Supreme Court of the state of California (where I live) has just overturned the standing ban on gay marriage, declaring it “unconstitutional”.

Now, I’m not looking to get married any time soon, but it’s seven flavors of bullshit to have that option refused to me. So it’s great that the state Supreme Court sees it the same way. But of course, there are the jackasses who now want to change the state constitution to restrict marriage to opposite-sex couples.

First of all, it always astonishes me that these people insist that the proponents of gay marriage are attempting to “redefine” what marriage is, when in fact they are the ones changing laws and amending constitutions in an attempt to — say it with me — redefine marriage to fit into their small-brained, bigoted worldview.

I have yet to have a single person give me a valid reason that “marriage” should be restricted to opposite-sex couples. Hint: “The Bible says” automatically invalidates your reason, because the Bible isn’t the basis of American law. But that’s a digression I’m in no particular mood for, because cooler heads have prevailed today.

In a surprising turn of events, Governor Schwarzenegger, who has repeatedly vetoed attempts to legalize gay marriage, has stated: “I respect the court’s decision and as governor, I will uphold its ruling. Also, as I have said in the past, I will not support an amendment to the constitution that would overturn this [ruling].”

Indeed, although he has not supported gay marriage, citing Proposition 22, he has supported domestic partnerships, declaring that the Supreme Court and the voters were the ones who needed to decide about gay marriage. Prop 22 is out and it sounds like he plans to stick to his word. Maybe I need to take back some of the things I’ve said about him.

Original story here.

Love-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named

So big news if you’re a Harry Potter fan (or a Harry Potter hater, I suppose): this last weekend, the magnificent J.K. Rowling gave a Q&A regarding her work, and when asked if Dumbledore ever found “true love”, she replied that Dumbledore is gay.

Ignoring the fact that “Dumbledore is gay” is not “yes” — in fact seems to be “no, because” — I’m still a little bothered by this, which is ironic. While other gay rights groups will no doubt applaud her for being willing to write such a fantastic character and not let his sexuality compromise his character (as a lesser writer might have done), my objection is that it removes some of the impact of Dumbledore’s character, or potentially does.

So Dumbledore had a love affair with Gellert Grindlewald, and that is why it took him so long to step up and defeat him in their “famous duel” (this relationship is set up on the chocolate frog card Harry gets in Book 1) — he still loved him and he didn’t want to think ill of him. Which is great, but couldn’t he have loved him even without being gay?

That’s the main thing that bothers me: whenever a male character in today’s movies, TV, and even books shows any genuine affection for another male character — even non-sexual affection — that character is a gay character. You don’t see that happen when two female characters share affection, and I think it perpetuates the stereotype that only gay people show affection — and you don’t want people to think you’re GAY, do you?

As a role model, I almost feel like this revelation diminishes Dumbledore’s compassion, if only in the sense that “oh, well of course he was so nice and emotionally-invested in his relationships. He was gay. That’s how they are.” No doubt people will start reading a Catholic priest vibe into Dumbledore’s intense interest in Harry, which would be the real goddamn shame here.

Look, I love the Harry Potter series. I really do. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was astonishing and, in my view, perfect. I wouldn’t have wanted her to do a single thing differently (well, except maybe let Neville finish off Bellatrix Lestrange instead of Mrs. Weasley — he had more invested in that relationship). And I really do think it’s wonderful that she had the courage to write a gay main character, and the talent not to make it obvious.

I just wish that being gay wasn’t a prerequisite for male compassion — although, I guess there’s always Harry and Ron’s relationship. They clearly love each other very much, and it works out well for them (maybe because they’re NOT gay?).

But then, we come to the other problem: homosexuality-as-tragedy. We have yet to have a mainstream gay character whose story does not end in tragedy. The most mainstream gay movie of the last decade was Brokeback Mountain, and that didn’t work out. Gay relationships never work out in the media. Even most gay indie films I watch, the boy doesn’t get the boy. The best he can hope for is that everyone else accepts who he is and what he wants, but he’s not going to get what he wants in the end.

This isn’t Rowling’s fault, I just wish that if Dumbledore’s greatest tragedy had to be loving too much, it didn’t have to be “in a gay way.”

All that being said, I’m probably just over-thinking it. After all, Dumbledore was the champion of love and reason, who all the good guys looked up to, trusted, and revered in one of the most popular book series ever written. And that probably can’t be a bad thing.

I’ll still re-read the series many times, and pass it on to my kids someday.