Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyJanuary 23rd, 2012
Happy New Year! The Chinese New Year marks the end of the winter season and the start of spring according to the traditional calendar. Today’s holiday also marks the start of a fifteen-day festival which ends with the Lantern Festival. For today’s festivitites, fireworks are the order of the day, although there is concern this year that the pyrotechnics may cause Beijing’s notorious air pollution levels to skyrocket.
Depending on how the years are numbered where you are, today marks the start of the year 4710, 4709 or 4649. That’s not important though, as the Chinese calendar is traditionally cyclical rather than continuously numbered. And this year marks the year of the Dragon, in particular, the Yang Water Dragon, which only occurs once every sixty years. In Chinese Astrology, the year’s Earthly Branch (represented by one of twelve animals) is combined with one of ten cycling Heavenly Stems (represented by Yin and Yang in combination with five elements) to complete the picture. The Dragon, being a mythical creature, represents the spectacular and bigger-than-life. While that can mean successes, it can also mean spectacular failures. But because this year is the year of the Water Dragon, it is believed to be a year of especially good luck, because water nourishes the dragon’s fixed element of wood. Whatever. Dragon or no, it promises to be a very interesting year, and, no offense, but I don’t think you needed Chinese astrology to tell you that.
Today is also New Year’s Day for Korea (Seollal) and in Viet Nam (Tết).
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Washington State Lawmakers to Consider Marriage Bill: Olympia, WA. House and Senate Committees today will hold hearings on a bill to provide marriage equality in the state of Washington. The Senate Committee on Government Operations will hold hearings this morning at 10:00 a.m., with the House Committee on Judiciary expected to take up that chamber’s bill at 2:30 p.m. Anti-gay forces, including members of the local Tea Party will hold a noontime rally in opposition to the bills, and predict that their rally will draw as many as 10,000 people. Joseph Backholm of Washington Family Policy Institute said that the goal of the rally was to “convince them to be more afraid of us than of the other side.” NOM’s Brian Brown has promised, “If the legislature forces through same-sex marriage, they need to know that marriage will be on the ballot in November and the people of Washington will hold them accountable.” NOM has threatened to spend $250,000 on primary challenges against pro-equality GOP legislators.
The marriage bills are expected to clear the respective committees in both Houses, with a vote coming possibly next week. Marriage equality, which enjoys bipartisan support in the state legislature, is expected to pass in the House. But supporters say that it is still a vote shy in the Democratic-controlled Senate, with six Senators still uncommitted.
If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).
And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?
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TampaZeke
January 23rd, 2012
The Water element also tempers and controls the Fire element in the Ko Cycle which, in today’s world, could be a very good thing.
Ben in Oakland
January 23rd, 2012
I spent a few hours yesterday composing a long email to the recalcitrants. I will post it later when I get to my desktop. Im also sending the same letters via snail mail.
Go thou and do likewise.
Ben In Oakland
January 23rd, 2012
Here’s what I sent.
Dear Senator Fain,
My name is Ben Janken. I am not one of your constituents, though I did live in Washington as a boy, back when Bellevue was mostly forests and salmon streams. I apologize for the length of this letter, but there is a lot I want to say. I hope you will read it.
I am a gay man, happily and legally married to another man in California. We have been a couple for nearly 10 years. We have many friends that have been together anywhere from 10 to 45 years, and know of others who have been together for 60 years, longer than all seven of Gingrich’s and Limbaugh’s marriages combined. Yet they are legal strangers to each other.
I am writing to you to ask you to support the marriage equality bill in your state. I know that many of your constituents do not support it. However, your yes vote is exactly the right thing to do, both for two positive reasons, and for one negative reason.
One positive reason is this: your duty as both a legislator and an American citizen who has vowed to uphold the Constitution, its commitment to equality before the law, and our country’s promise to treat people fairly. Even if a majority of your constituents oppose it, there is still this: people are elected to office to do three things, as far as I can tell. The first one is to be a servant of the people that have elected him, and a servant of those who did not. The second thing is to be a leader of the people of those that elected him, and a leader of those who did not.
The third thing is to determine when to be a leader, when to be a follower, and why. I believe that the failure to do all of these things, and not just in the discussion over the rights of gay people in the marriage equality debate, is the current failure of our political discourse in America, and why we have the seemingly intractable problems we do.
The second positive reason is this: the people who are most influential, and most opposed to marriage equality for gay people, are ironically the people whose interest and self-interest are the least germane to the question. Indeed, they have been opposed to every measure that seeks to ameliorate the centuries of vicious prejudice we gay people have faced, and for no other reasons than they don’t approve, or think their God doesn’t approve.
They have made completely outrageous claims about THEIR religious freedom, attacks on marriage, attacks on families, and destruction of our country. Yet, these people are not affected at all, except in their own minds. That particular “interÂestâ€, expressed as concerns over their “traditionÂal marriages” (but not heterosexual divorce, adultery, and illegitimacy), “the children†(but not OUR children), their religious beliefs (but not OUR religious beliefs), their personal aversions, morality, whatever– is nothing more than how they feel about what somebody else is doing, something that is simply none of their business, and has no effect on their lives.
Not one.
Ironically again, while their feelings have carried the most weight, those of we who have the most at stake, those who are most affected– gay and lesbian Americans, our children, our families, and our churches – have carried the least.
Why should my and my husband’s lives be governed and disadvantaged because of someone else’s religious beliefs, someone else’s prejudices, someone else’s fears and ignorance? Why should law, society, presidential candidates, and state legislatures support that? That’s not the American way, and we have laws at every level of government that prohibit it—for other people. Why is this question different, except that it is an expression of an ancient and enduring prejudice, given at very best a micro-thin veneer of respectability as “sincere religious belief?â€
I also promised you a “negative†reason why you should vote yes for marriage equality. If you want the issue put to a public vote, there is one sure way to do that—vote YES. As the Domestic Partner Bill showed, Washington law says that if enough signatures can be gathered in opposition, the measure will be placed on the next ballot for a citizen veto. This is virtually assured if marriage rights are extended to same sex couples.
Below my signature, I am going to place an article that I submitted to every newspaper in the state at the height of the Prop. 8 hysteria. Five of them published it. I hope you will take the time to read it.
Sometimes you just have to stand up for what is right, Mr. Fain– consequencÂes be damned. Sincerely yours,
To begin with, I am no one in particular. I’m just a happy, middle class, middle aged, middle-of-the-road gay man who hopes my marriage will survive the election. It seems to me that missing in all of the arguments about Prop. 8 are both a clear view of gay people, and a simple understanding about what marriage means to us. I would like to provide that perspective, in the form of a…
LETTER TO CALIFORNIA VOTERS CONCERNING MY MARRIAGE
Two months ago, I married the man I love and share my life with to the acclaim and pleasure of our families and friends. Paul and I have known each other for seven years, and have been married in all but name for the past six. Both of us are contributing, tax-paying, law-abiding, and productive members of our community. We live active, healthy, and positive lives. We are well thought of by family, friends, and colleagues, and live in peace with our neighbors. Despite all this, some people think that the fact that we are both men is the only thing of importance, and that this invalidates our love, our commitment, and especially, our claim to equality before the law. Some will even go so far as to claim we’re a threat to family, children, and faith.
We’re not a threat to anyone or anything. Nor is our marriage. We’re just Ben and Paul. And we want to stay married.
Let me tell you a little more about us. Gay people and straight people, taken as a whole, are pretty much alike. This includes matters like romance, family, marriage, and religion. And why shouldn’t we be alike? We’re your relatives and friends, your colleagues and neighbors. We’re you.
Our love is as deep and abiding and committed as any couple you can name. We married because we love each other, and share our lives and fortunes together– just like you. We were excited about our wedding, our rings, and sharing our joy with our loved ones– just like you. We have promised to be there for each other in sickness and in health, for better and for worse, and to be a married couple for the rest of our lives– just like you.
Because of the strength of these promises and our life together, our marriage contributes to society in exactly the same way that yours does. We don’t have children, but there are at least 70,000 children with gay and lesbian parents in California alone. If strong marriages build strong families, and marriage and family are the foundations of society, don’t our marriages, families, and children matter as much as yours? Why would you tell gay people to take their building blocks and stay home?
Our wedding and our promises mean as much to us, and to our friends and families, as yours do to you. Perhaps more. You see, you probably have never had to question whether you could marry the person you love best in all the world. It’s your right, after all. But it isn’t ours. Prop. 8 supporters claim that we gay people, via domestic partner laws, already have all of the rights afforded you by marriage. Maybe, except this one: the rightness, the validity, the very existence of your marriage will NEVER, EVER be debated, much less voted upon, by complete strangers. But you can vote on our rights and our marriages. Just as you can vote on the continued existence of those domestic partner laws, or on any statutory protection of our lives and families. Just as you can vote on laws that say that separate but equal is good enough.
Just like Prop. 8.
What if you had to ask 16 million people for permission to marry your beloved? How would you feel if the love and commitment you bear your beloved is, at best, diminished and devalued as unimportant? Or at worst, denigrated as sick, sinful, and dangerous, and such a threat to family and society that a constitutional amendment must be passed to protect them? Would you like it if someone had the power to make your marriage disappear? Would you like listening to the most vicious, outrageous lies being told about you by complete strangers? How would you feel if you were told that separate-but-equal was good enough for you?
We Americans tried that before, and it doesn’t work.
Are we not human enough, not citizens enough, to grant us the right to marry? Paul and I want for us, our friends, and our families exactly what you get from our government: the same dignity, the same respect, and the same equality before the law that you demand for yourselves. That’s all of it. Our lives and our families are every bit as valuable as yours. You don’t have to approve of or accept gay people, or to be a part of our lives; we have plenty of people who do. We are not attacking your marriages, your families, your faith, or your civil rights, or preventing them from being legally protected. Can you say the same about yourselves?
We want to take nothing from you. We want only the same rights and protections that you have. Nothing more.
And nothing less.
Timothy Kincaid
January 23rd, 2012
Forces it through what? Through the legislature, perhaps? I’m not saying Brian Brown is an imbecile, but…
TampaZeke
January 23rd, 2012
Brian Brown is an imbecile!
There, SOMEBODY had to say it!
Ben In Oakland
January 23rd, 2012
Why do you want to slander imbeciles?
StraightGrandmother
January 23rd, 2012
psst Ben in Oakland I can use you over here
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/the_new_outlaws_how_same_sex_marriage_suffocates_freedom
Remember when that Psychiatrist who is a member of NARTH misrepresented research and I caught him? Well I am finding that the website who published his article has about one anti gay article per week. Comments are moderated but as long as you write respectfully they do not seem to censure comments (it can take several hours for them to appear), I am exhausted over last weeks anti gay article and need to take a break.
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/complementary_beings
iDavid
January 23rd, 2012
It looks like WA just sealed the deal to get gay marriage.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/2012/01/23/washington-gay-marriage_n_1224397.html
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