Those anti-gays who are dishonest (or, let’s charitably say, confused) will compare the gold standard of heterosexual relationships, marriage, to the least committed of casual dating arrangements for gay people and declare that gay relationships are inferior. But little effort is made to define the terms or what qualifies as entry into the category being compared.

In society, we see a distinction between dating and being married. We don’t hold a new boyfriend to the standard we expect from a husband. And even if a man and a woman have been together for three or four years, until they marry we continue to look at such relationships as potential or temporary.

Until vows are said, commitments are not assumed. Once that step – and a significant step it is – has been taken, then family, faith, the community, society, and the law step in to collectively define this relationship as a couple, as two becoming one.

But for our community, we have in most states been denied the opportunity to take the step of marriage. We could not “tie the knot” that binds two into one. We had no couples to present for comparison because we were denied the ability to create such couples.

But change is coming. There are now a handful of states (four, soon to be five) in which the family, faith, the community, society and the law can agree that two men or two women have become a single entity, married.

And although this may be denied by majorities of voters in most of the nation, there are also those same-sex couples that are finding ways to get some of these to come to agreement. Perhaps they will get family and community to recognize their union. Or perhaps their faith and a portion of society – even in our losses, such as Maine, we see that there is a significant portion of society that will recognize such unions. And in some places where the law will not see a union of souls, it will at least acknowledge an administrative equivalency.

And analysis of census data shows that there is now a growing collection of same-sex couples that have found ways of becoming in their hearts, and in the hearts of those most important to them, married. (A/P)

The data from the annual American Community Survey showed that nearly 150,000 same-sex couples in the U.S., or more than one in four, referred to one another as “husband” or “wife,” although UCLA researchers estimate that no more than 32,000 of the couples were legally married.

So we now have a pool of married gays (and “married” gays) to offer up in comparison to married straights. We no longer have to weigh the value of church endorsed, white gowned, pomp and circumstanced heterosexual married bliss against a two month old “open” relationship between two boys who met at a bar.

And how do we compare?

Analysis of commonalities and differences is only in its infancy. We’ve only had for but a few years a measure for comparison. And until very recently, the census taking apparatus which might provided some answers has been banned from even discussing the matter.

But some researchers, such as Gary Gates at UCLA, have been finding ways to tweak the data to yield limited findings. And with the Obama Administration’s willingness to allow access to the data, some information is now coming to light.

And, perhaps not surprisingly, married gays aren’t so very different from married straights.

The [same-sex] couples had an average age of 52 and household incomes of $91,558, while 31 percent were raising children. That compares with an average age of 50, household income of $95,075 and 43 percent raising children for married heterosexual couples.

“It’s intrinsically interesting that same-sex couples who use the term spouses look like opposite-sex married couples even with a characteristic like children,” said Gary Gates, the UCLA demographer who conducted the analysis. “Most proponents of traditional marriage will say that when you allow these couples to marry, you are going to change the fundamental nature of marriage by decoupling it from procreation. Clearly, in the minds of same-sex couples who are marrying or think of themselves as married, you are not decoupling child-rearing from marriage.”

These are but early and surface findings.

And as time goes on, the distinction between “dating” and “partners” and “married” will become less hazy as employers and family court judges and Aunt Matilda will find greater need to know just who is committed and who is not. Ultimately the social need for distinction will outweigh the religion-based objection to recognition and our families, employers, churches, communities, and society will not only allow but demand to know which same-sex couples are in it for the long haul.

And time may reveal that there are strong distinctions between heterosexual and homosexual couples. Indeed, how could there not be; each subculture in our society adds its unique perspective to the marital dynamic.

And yet, I suspect that when terms are more firmly defined and a better comparison is made, we will continue to find that we are amazingly similar to our brothers and sisters, our friends and neighbors, and even to those who are convinced that we are peculiar and perverse.

The primary contributor to anal cancer is infection with the HPV virus, the same virus that contributes to cervical cancer in women, causes genital warts, and is linked to some rare oral cancers in straight men. HPV is very common and most sexually active adults will be infected at some point in their life.

But some day that may no longer be true.

As we told you in June, a vaccine for the virus – which the CDC has been urging to be provided to all girls – is also effective in preventing infection in boys. And now the FDA has approved the vaccine for such use. (NYTimes)

The vaccine was approved last week by the Food and Drug Administration for use in boys and men ages 9 to 26. Wednesday’s action, by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is intended to guide national policy on use of the vaccine; its recommendations are typically adopted by professional medical associations and set the standards of practice for physicians.

But it probably won’t lead to universal vaccination. After all, it would be mostly appropriate to boys who may some day engage in sex with someone of the same sex, and we aren’t so foolish as to assume that public health policy will be directed by what is beneficial to future gay citizens.

The new recommendation means, in effect, that doctors and clinics may now administer the vaccine at their discretion to boys and men ages 9 to 26, but they are not expected to offer it. Parents may consider the vaccine as an option for their sons, but some health insurers may choose not to cover the shots.

Yet this is good news. And it is important that we spread the news to gay-straight alliances and gay youth groups and to parents of kids that are a bit gender-nonconforming and even those parents who put their kids’ health above their dreams of a daughter-in-law. This simple step could possibly save a life.

And in the process remove one more bullet from the arsenal of those who attack our lives and freedoms.

In the most closely watched race on the Nov. 3 ballot, Question 1, the latest survey results from Portland-based Pan Atlantic SMS Group show the effort to repeal Maine’s same-sex marriage law trailing.

Roughly 40 percent of respondents indicated they would vote to repeal versus 52 percent in support of allowing same-sex couples to marry. That is a slightly larger gap than a Pan Atlantic poll from earlier this month.

But polls don’t decide elections; voter turnout decides elections. So please do everything you can to help Mainers in their efforts to keep freedom and equality as more cherished values rather than bigotry and oppression.

The Washington Poll, which interviewed a total of 724 voters, brings very good news for supporters of same-sex domestic partnerships.

Referendum 71, where an “approved” vote upholds the state’s new expanded gay rights law, garners 57 percent ‘yes’ to 38 percent ‘no’ with 5 percent undecided. Among voters who say they’ve already mailed in ballots, R-71 was carrying by a 55-45 margin.

However, Proposition 8 taught us to be cautious in believing polling numbers. So let’s not slow down or relax in our efforts.

Q.6 Now let me ask something else. One of the questions on the ballot this November will read as follows: “Do you want to reject the new law that lets same-sex couples marry and allows individuals and religious groups to refuse to perform these marriages?” – If the election were held today, would you vote YES or NO on this question? Total

Yes strongly……………………………………………………………….37
Yes not strongly…………………………………………………………..4
No not strongly……………………………………………………………7
No strongly………………………………………………………………..43
(Don’t know/refused)…………………………………………………….9

Total yes…………………………………………………………………..41
Total no……………………………………………………………………50

Although the structure of the question is confusing, “No” is the answer which we wish to see.

And it has. Partly. The trial showed that a vaccine was about 31.2% effective. (NY Times)

“I don’t want to use a word like ‘breakthrough,’ but I don’t think there’s any doubt that this is a very important result,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is one of the trial’s backers.

“For more than 20 years now, vaccine trials have essentially been failures,” he went on. “Now it’s like we were groping down an unlit path, and a door has been opened. We can start asking some very important questions.”

This is not the vaccine that will announce the end of the era of AIDS. But it is the first vaccine that has shown any effectivity at all and it allows researchers an opportunity to build upon this start to find something that will really work.

The poll shows that 26 percent of Iowans favor April’s unanimous court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, 43 percent oppose it and 31 percent don’t care much or are not sure.

But even though a plurality opposes the decision, few others seem interested in changing the constitution to disallow marriage.

Iowans are almost evenly divided about whether they would vote for or against a constitutional amendment to end marriage for same-sex couples, according to The Des Moines Register’s new Iowa Poll.

Forty-one percent say they would vote for a ban, and 40 percent say they would vote to continue gay marriage. The rest either would not vote or say they are not sure.

But the anti-gays activists have a cause to rally around. And we can fully expect that they will seek to make marriage a central focus in gubernatorial, representative, and court campaigns. This might not, however, be a wise decision.

Sixty-three percent say candidates’ stands on other issues will be more important in making their decisions in the 2010 elections.
…
Few poll respondents who described themselves as Republicans say the court decision is the single most important issue in the 2010 elections. But more than a third of Republicans say it is among several important issues, while only about a quarter of Democrats put it in that category.

Former state Republican Chairman Mike Mahaffey said the poll shows that, as the party searches for a winning message, the economy trumps marriage among voters.

“I think all of the candidates are going to state that they believe the people ought to be given the right to vote on a constitutional amendment. That’s a reasonable approach,” Mahaffey said. “I also think when it comes down to it, the overriding issues are going to be what can we do to create jobs and put ourselves in a better position fiscally.”

Dr. Klar is a geneticist working at the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Maryland. One day on vacation he ended up on a gay beach. And there he noticed a peculiarity: gay men seemed to have counter-clockwise hair-whorls more frequently than could be expected. Far more frequently.

So the next year he went back and checked again. And, yep, gay men have gay hair.

He reports that “altogether in a combined sample of 272 mostly gay men observed, 29.8% exhibited counterclockwise hair-whorl orientation”. This, he says, is “vastly different from the value of 8.4% counterclockwise rotation found in the public at large, which included both males and females”.

Although Klar’s paper, Excess of Counterclockwise Scalp Hair-Whorl Rotation in Homosexual Men (pdf), was published in 2004, it didn’t seem to catch much attention in the gay community or among mainstream media. In fact, I don’t know whether psychologist Richard Lippa was entirely aware of Klar’s paper when he conducted similar research at Long Beach Pride in 2007 (his results – 23% counterclockwise).

Although none of this is new, it is important. One of the primary arguments against gay equality is that it is not biological in origin and thus is mutable. There is no gay gene! You can change! (So you don’t deserve civil rights!)

And as part of their argument, many anti-gays will create interesting hypotheses as to how physical distinctions are created without biology. Recently some NARTH affiliates sought to discredit measured brain variances by arguing that the brain is plastic and therefore such differences were the result of conditioning based on behavior.

But hair whorls, well there’s just no way to learn ‘em. They’re pure biology. And there’s just no credible way to explain them away.

Sure, if you live in Massachusetts and are married in the eyes of your state, or if you’re a single guy or gal who is living footloose and fancy free, then you know your answer. But what if you’re somewhere in between?

Suppose you live in South Dakota and you have made vows before your community blessed by your place of worship and honored by your friends and family. Are you married?

Or suppose that you live in New Jersey and entered into a civil union which has “everything but the name”. Are you married?

Or you live in California where the Supreme Court justified the implementation of Proposition 8 by stating that domestic partnerships are acceptable equality provided that there not any provisions offered differently between domestic partnerships and marriage. Is “included on the census” a difference? Are you married?

Or you married in Connecticut but live in Virginia. Traveling cross country would have you married on one day and total strangers on the next. Or if you live in Rhode Island and the state has told you that it will not grant you a divorce for your legal Massachusetts wedding. Are you married?

At some point, state law almost becomes moot in answering this census question. Because recognition based on one’s current residence may dictate whether one’s marriage is recognized, but say very little about whether one is married. At some point the real answer becomes, “Yes, in the eyes of my family, my friends, my employer, my neighbors, my community, my city government, my church and, most importantly, me and my spouse, I am married. And if my state can’t ‘recognize’ that simple fact, then it needs to clean its glasses.”

And that is just how same-sex couples are expected to answer questions about their marriage status in next year’s census count. (WaPo)

When the U.S. Census Bureau counts same-sex married couples next year, demographers expect hundreds of thousands to report they are spouses — even though legal same-sex weddings in the United States number in the tens of thousands.

The Post goes on to suggest that the primary motivation for this will be to provide a basis for advocating for gay rights. And indeed, the data will be used to show that gay people are everywhere in this nation and that even the most conservative representative in the reddest state has married gay constituents he needs to serve.

But I think the motivation will be much more primal and personal. I think couples will tick the “married” box because, well, they are. And what else could you expect them to answer?

Americans see Muslims as facing more discrimination inside the U.S. than other major religious groups. Nearly six-in-ten adults (58%) say that Muslims are subject to a lot of discrimination, far more than say the same about Jews, evangelical Christians, atheists or Mormons. In fact, of all the groups asked about, only gays and lesbians are seen as facing more discrimination than Muslims with nearly two-thirds (64%) of the public saying there is a lot of discrimination against homosexuals.

The report focuses almost entirely on Americans’ attitudes toward Islam and Muslims. But the interesting thing is how Americans view discrimination against gays and lesbians.

The poll was conducted in several groups in August 2009. The first five responses of religious groups (Muslims, Jews, Evangelical Christians, Atheists and Mormons) were from a sample size of 2,010 with a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points. The last four responses were from sample sizes of from 999 to 1,011, giving a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points. Yes and No responses do not add to 100% due to participants either saying they didn’t know or refused to answer.