Box Turtle Bulletin

The Daily Agenda for Friday, November 4

TODAY’S AGENDA (OURS):
Campus Pride College Fair and Prep Day: New York, NY. Campus Pride’s College Fair is an opportunity for LGBT students and their families to discuss educational opportunities with participating LGBT-affirming colleges and universities. The fair features expert advice about LGBT-friendly colleges, scholarship resources and even effective tips for campus visits. The last one on the calendar for this year takes place today at at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center on 208 W 13th Street in New York, and goes from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. More information can be found here.

Screening of “This Is What Love In Action Looks Like”: Memphis, TN. In June 2005, sixteen-year-old Zach Stark announced on his MySpace blog that his parents were sending him away to an ex-gay youth program. He also posted the program’s rules that he would be forced to live under while participating in the program. Thanks to Zach’s blog posts, Memphis-based Love In Action, an Exodus-affiliated program, became the focus of worldwide controversy and daily protests. “Love In Action” was investigated by the state of Tennessee for child abuse and for operating a separate unlicensed drug and alcohol treatment program. Love In Action eventually settled with the state and shut down their youth program. Morgan Fox’s documentary, This Is What Love in Action Looks Like, chronicles those events and features interviews with Zach, then-LIA director John Smid, other former ex-gay leaders and former LIA clients. Since stepping down as LIA director, Smid has offered a general apology and confirmed that in his more than two decades as a leader in the ex-gay movement, he never met a man who had gone from gay to straight. More needs to be done, but it’s a good first step. Morgan Fox’s documentary will be shown tonight at the Indie Memphis Film Festival beginning at 7:00 p.m at the Playhouse On the Square. Morgan Fox is scheduled to attend.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: San Luis Obispo, CA.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Buenos Aries, Argentina and Palm Springs, CA.

Also This Weekend: REELING LGBT Film Festival, Chicago, IL; Invincible Truth, Hong Kong, China.

TODAY’S AGENDA (THEIRS):
NARTH’s Annual Convention Begins: Phoenix, AZ. The National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) bills itself as a scientific organization dedicating to the non-scientific pursuit of “curing” homosexuality. NARTH claims that because they are a scientific organization, that they don’t engage in advocacy. But that claim doesn’t stack up. Just look at the convention program. Anti-gay firebrand Michael Brown will speak during a plenary on “A Call to Courage,” and Family Watch International’s Sharon Slater will speak in a workshop titled innocuously  “UN/International.” What that title doesn’t betray is that Slater has been very active throughout Africa advocating against relaxing laws against homosexuality and she refused to condemn Uganda’s proposed lifetime imprisonment for gays. (She did oppose the death penalty, as if there was a difference between that an a lifetime in a Ugandan prison.) Another item on the schedule is Christopher Doyle’s presentation of an “Acception (sic) film (bullying).” Ironic, given that in 2006 a member of NARTH’s scientific advisory board endorsed bullying as a way of “reestablishing necessary boundaries” for gender-variant children. Julie Hamilton, President of NARTH, kicks everything off this morning at 8:30 a.m. at the Phoenix Airport Marriott at 1101 N 44th St. NARTH will also sponsor an all-day “Information and Resource Conference” on Saturday for Arizona residents, also at the Airport Marriott, for $35.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
California’s Prop 64 To Quarantine People With AIDS Defeated: 1986. Lyndon LaRouche’s name is all but forgotten today, but in the early 1980s the paranoid perennial Presidential candidate was regarded more as a joke than as a serious political thinker, even though he took himself very seriously. LaRouche typically ran as a self-styled Democrat (much to the consternation of real Democrats) while putting forth elaborate conspiracy theories and bizarre economic platforms. During his 1984 campaign, he managed to purchase 14 television spots in which he called Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale a Soviet KGB agent, and charged that Henry Kissinger and the Queen of England were in charge of worldwide drug cartels. He lost, of course, but didn’t go away.

In 1986, at the height of the hysterical anti-gay backlash that had sprung up in the midst of the growing AIDS epidemic, LaRouche founded his Prevent AIDS Now Initiative Committee (PANIC), which gathered enough signatures to place Proposition 64 onto the ballot. Prop 64, if passed, would have placed AIDS onto California’s list of communicable diseases under the state’s public health law, which would have effectively forced anyone who was HIV-positive out of their jobs and schools and into a quarantine. The LaRouchites said that such measures were required because AIDS was “worse than the Black Death” that devastated 14th-century Europe and Asia, and was “more deadly to mankind than a full-scale thermonuclear war.” They also claimed that AIDS had been created by the Soviets — or maybe the International Monetary Fund or maybe the World Bank — to kill “excess eaters” in Africa, and asserted that it could be spread like the common cold through casual contact or through mosquito bites. “A person with AIDS running around is like a person with a machine gun shooting up a neighborhood,” he told a San Francisco radio program. Health officials denounced LaRouche’s harebrained theories, but LaRouche held his ground. His Biological Holocaust Task Force charged that “AIDS is the first known epidemic which could potentially wipe out the entire human race” and that his detractors were “guilty of one of the most evil cover-ups in medical history.”

Flyer for a LaRouche-sponsored conference in Atlanta, 1992. (Click to enlarge.)

Despite support from Congressman William E. Dannemeyer, Prop 64 lost in a landslide, 71% to 29%. LaRouche brought it back again in 1988 as Prop 69, when it lost by an even wider margin. He also made that AIDS quarantine the centerpiece of his 1988 presidential campaign, but Prop 64 would prove to be his high water mark, such as it was. In October 1986, federal and state agents raided his heavily guarded compound in Loudon County, Virginia and offices in Massachusetts. A federal grand jury indicted LaRouche and several of his associates with credit card fraud and obstruction of justice. In 1988, he was convicted of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, 11 counts of actual mail fraud and a count of conspiring to defraud the IRS, all part of a wider effort to obtain credit card loans in his name and those of his supporters that he had no intention of repaying. LaRouche, true to form, blamed the raid on Raisa Gorbachev, the Soviet Union’s First Lady. He served six years in prison, running again for President from prison in 1992. At one time, he shared his cell with televangelist Jim Bakker, who recalled, “to say LaRouche was a little paranoid would be like saying that the Titanic had a little leak.” He still hasn’t gone away. More recently, he posted an image of President Barack Obama as Hitler that began appearing at Tea Party and Town Hall meetings in 2009, and he helped to popularize the fiction that Obama’s health care reform included so-called “death panels.”

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?

A bus, a kiss, and an all too familiar scenario

Sometimes you read a story that sounds familiar. Not the names necessarily, but the context, the attitudes, the social atmosphere.

Christopher Buchanan, 22, and his boyfriend Derrell Hughes boarded a 146 southbound bus in Lakeview on Oct. 22, after leaving an afternoon program at the Broadway Youth Center, Buchanan said.

“I was holding his hand and kissing and whatnot,” Buchanan told Windy City Times.

As the bus approached downtown, he said, a middle-aged White woman approached the bus driver to complain about the two.

The driver allegedly got up and told Buchanan and Hughes that someone had complained about them and that they needed to get off his bus.

“He was really in my face,” said Buchanan. “He said ‘you bitches need to get off the bus…I can’t stand fags.'”

I don’t know what whatnot the two were up to. But I know this, if the driver’s objection was based on Christoper and Derrell being “bitches” and “fags”, then a simple apology is not enough.

NOM Exploits Supporters with Casual, Offhand Lie

The National Organization “for” Marriage recently issued another one of its regular pleas for money, and this one contains — surprise! — a lie.  In an article about Illinois adoption agencies, NOM president Brian Brown writes:

Now that government is refusing to work with Christian adoption agencies…

This is a lie.

• I called Illinois’ Department of Children & Family Services (312-814-6847).  They still work with Christian adoption agencies.

• I called St. Mary’s Services, an Episcopalian adoption agency (847-870-8181).  The state government still works with them.

• I called Illini Christian Ministries (217-469-7566), which offers adoption services.  The state government still works with them.

• I called Lutheran Social Services of Illinois (847-635-4600), which offers adoptions services.  The state government actually funds them.  (This may also be true of the other agencies, but I have not confirmed it.)

The government is not “refusing to work with Christian adoption agencies.”  If NOM were committed to honesty, it could have written, “Now that government is refusing to work with adoption agencies that violate anti-discrimination law…” but that’s got a pretty low martyr factor.  And NOM needs that martyr factor.

Their big project now is developing a persecution narrative.  It’s a desperate strategy.  When judges mandated same-sex marriage, NOM decried judges who legislated from the bench. When state legislature passed same-sex marriage, NOM complained about legislators legislating from the legislature (!), and called for referendum by popular vote.  Now that public opinion is turning firmly against them, they’re trying to lay groundwork for judges to legislate from the bench by declaring same-sex marriage an infringement on religious freedom.

Apparently they can’t do that without lying.

What’s even more disturbing, though, is the contempt they show their own supporters.  NOM spread this lie in a fundraising appeal.  They have no compunctions about deceiving their followers in order to extract cash from them.

And of course, it’s not just about the money.  This is another contribution to the anti-gay echo chamber.  By offering this falsehood in a casual, offhand way, their readers accept it as a simple, obvious truth.  They’ll repeat it, not realizing it’s a lie.  Good, innocent folk will repeat it after them.  NOM isn’t just exploiting people’s wallets; it’s exploiting their trust.  And soon enough, once again, a lie will become the “truth.”

I don’t know why I still find it so astonishing when our opponents hold themselves up as moral guardians while lying to the very people them claim to protect.

But, somehow, I always do.

Ugandan TV Reports On UK Threat to Withhold Aid

Uganda’s privately-owned WBS launched a YouTube channel about a year ago. In this report uploaded yesterday, WBS reports on reactions from Ugandan lawmakers to British warnings of aid cuts to countries that persecute LGBT people. As predicted by LGBT activists inside Uganda, those warnings appear to be having the opposite of their desired effect, stirring a backlash in Uganda and stiffening the resolve of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill’s backers.

[Via Joe.My.God]

Another Former Ex-Gay Leader: “Nobody Quit Being Gay”

This time, it’s Sergio Viula, founder of the Movement for Healthy Sexuality (the Portuguese acronym is MOSES), an evangelical ex-gay organization:

But how was this process of ‘abandoning the sin’? Was it like a treatment?

– That didn’t really happen, after all. It was like the so-called discipleship, which happened to be brainwashing, indeed. You have to get isolated from your former circle of friends, start attend church meetings, go through counseling sessions, pray, fast, and stuff like that. When somebody happened to get involved with another homosexual, he had to confess what he’d done. THAT’S FUCKING CRAZY! Sorry, but even nowadays I feel angry when I remember that.

Why anger?

– Nobody really quit being gay. There were relationships even within the group, between an activity and another, they would always find time for that. Can you figure out how much suffering to myself and to all of those who have already worked or been influenced by this kind of ‘ministry’? That’s enraging! And there are people repeating that stupid discourse until today.

He used to call himself ex-gay — and had even married and had two children — but says “Today I know that I was deceiving myself.” He also describes the effect being an ex-gay leader had on him:

[I]t was an act of violence against ourselves, as we had internalized the homophobia that surrounded us from early childhood, as well as against the others, because we reproduced that very homophobia which they had internalized by themselves long before. We just reinforced it even more.

UPDATE: A note from Viula

I’ve just released a translation of my book in English on slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/SergioViula/sergio-viulatranslation Check it out, please, and if you like it, spread the news. ;)

Sergio Viula

How Same Sex Marriage Leads To Incest

Step 1: Pass a law allowing gays to marry.

Step 2: Hold new elections, changing the composition of the state legislature.

Step 3: Propose a ban on same-sex marriages.

Step 4: Drop the proposed ban and go instead for a repeal of same-sex marriage, replacing it with a proposal to institute civil unions for everyone regardless of gender — and regardless of whether they are already related to each other.

So you see? NOM was right. Same-sex marriage does lead to state recognition of incest.

The Daily Agenda for Thursday, November 3

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Senate Judiciary Committee to Debate DOMA Repeal: Washington, D.C. The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold an Executive Business Meeting this morning to go over a number of items on the agenda, including Senate Bill 598, known as the Respect for Marriage Act, which would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.  The committee, chaired by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) will meet at 10:00 a.m. in Dirkson Senate Office Building, room 226, and will be webcast here. The House version of the Respect for Marriage Act has 128 co-sponsors, but because the House is under Republican control, it is extremely unlikely the House will take action on the bill.

Frank Kameny (Washington Blade/Michael Key)

Frank Kameny Memorial: Washington, D.C. Pioneering gay rights advocate Frank Kameny may have died in financial poverty, but he had no poverty of friends. Those friends and others in the community will gather for a “Lying-In-State” for Dr. Kameny in the first floor atrium of the Carnegie Library, located between 7th and 9th Streets NW at Mount Vernon Square, from 3:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. It’s not a memorial service — those plans are still underway — which means that there is no formal program, although local civic leaders are expected to make remarks and local choral groups may sing.

AIDS Walks This Weekend: San Luis Obispo, CA.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Buenos Aries, Argentina and Palm Springs, CA.

Also This Weekend: REELING LGBT Film Festival, Chicago, IL; Invincible Truth, Hong Kong, China.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Aaron McKinney Found Guilty of Matthew Shepard’s Murder: 1999. After ten hours of deliberation, a jury in Laramie, Wyoming found Aaron McKinney guilty of first-degree murder of Matthew Shepard, after having been acquitted of the high charge of premeditated first-degree murder. Testimony would begin the next day for the penalty phase to determine McKinney’s eligibility for the death penalty. The jury would ultimately reject that option and McKinney instead drew two consecutive life terms.

McKinney confessed to his role in beating Matthew Shepard with a .357 magnum and tying him to a fence outside of Laramie. After Shepard died from severe brain damage, McKinney’s attorneys spent the trial fighting for a reduced conviction to escape the death penalty. Co-defendant Russell Henderson plea bargained two life sentences without possibility of parole earlier in the year.

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?

Anita Bryant “Wants A Gay Best Friend”

Chad Hodge is writing an HBO movie about the famed anti-gay activist. He’s also the first gay person she agreed to talk to in 33 years:

“She was panicked to meet me and I was panicked to meet her,” said Hodge, who most recently was executive producer of The Playboy Club.

The two eventually warmed to each other. “We talked about everything,” Hodge said. “Religion, homosexuality, her life and every detail of her life. I mean, everything! She really opened up to me. It started very standoffish…but then it slowly took a turn and she opened up and cried to me.”

Cried?!

Hodge smiled, “Turns out she wants a gay best friend just like everyone else.”

NH anti-marriage amendment dropped

In New Hampshire, there has been a two-tiered approach to reversing marriage equality. Anti-gay activists sought to have the legislature repeal its decision and also started a process within the legislature to present the voters with an amendment to the state constitution limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples.

The second endeavor has been dropped: (Globe)

The sponsor of a constitutional amendment to prohibit gay marriage has decided not to pursue the measure next year to clear the way for a debate over repealing New Hampshire’s law legalizing the unions.

State Rep. David Bates, the Windham Republican who also is sponsor of the repeal bill, told The Associated Press on Tuesday he wants to let the Legislature consider repealing the law enacted under Democrats two years ago before debating a constitutional change — a process that would take longer to implement.

That, and the fact that polls show that New Hampshire residents don’t want to repeal the marriage law.

And as for that bill winding its way through the legislature, it appears to me to have been crafted with pleasing special interest groups in mind, not for actually becoming law. It claims to replace marriage with civil unions … kinda.

The House Judiciary Committee voted last week to recommend replacing the law legalizing same-sex marriage with civil unions for any unmarried adults, including relatives. The committee recommended killing a bill that simply repealed the law.
…
The bill would not enact the same civil unions law that was in effect before gays were allowed to marry. That law granted gays all the rights and responsibilities of marriage except in name. The proposed civil unions law would be open to any two adults and would let anyone refuse to recognize the unions. It also would allow anyone to discriminate against such couples in employment, housing and public accommodations based on religious or moral beliefs.

My cynical side wonders if maybe the Republican leadership – which has shown reluctance to reverse the marriage law – didn’t deliberately draft this poison pill bill. It’s practically an invitation to vote no.

“Fellow legislators, while I support the age-old institution of marriage as defined by God, I simply cannot vote in favor of legalized incest”

and

“While I believe that civil unions are a better option for New Hampshire, I can’t vote for a bill that introduces a special right to discriminate.”

And should the bill pass the legislature, to override Gov. Lynch’s veto would require two-thirds of those present and voting. I’m fairly sure that a number of legislators, having voted to “protect marriage” once, will be ‘sadly unavailable due to an unexpected family emergency’ when it comes time for a veto override vote. They too have seen the polls.

The stupidest, craziest, most evil pro-life message ever

I’m not a fan of abortion. If you are a pregnant woman who wants my opinion (though why would you?), I’d advise against it.

But as a gay man I have so little at stake in the debate that my opinion is of little consequence. So, as I prefer to err on the side of freedom and in recognition that those who seek stricter abortion laws generally want to enact social sanctions on my existence, I fall into the ‘conditionally pro-choice’ category.

There are probably some restrictions on abortion that folks like me are willing to accept. But Mississippi’s proposed amendment is extreme and if they are trying to appeal to people like me, this has to be the least effective pro-life message possible. (AFA)

Ashley Sigrest claims that thirteen years ago she aborted a pregnancy that resulted from rape. Now, “after accepting Jesus as her Savior through a crisis pregnancy center”, she’s made an amazing discovery.

“My rape was nothing compared to what I did to my child,” she stated to the gallery. “What my rapist did to me does not compare to what I chose to do to my baby … out of shame, out of guilt, out of fear because of what a man did to me. Rape is no excuse for abortion.”

Rape is no excuse for abortion? Because pregnant rape victims are looking for an excuse?

The idea of forcing a rape victim to bear the child of her rapist is abhorrent. And the thought that a man could rape a woman and then have the legal right to bring claims against that woman and the resulting child sends chills down my spine. And to spin this as consistent with the demands of God is sickening.

If you nutcases on the right think that rape is just an “excuse”, then you are callous, cold, evil people and I want nothing to do with any deity you serve.

EQCA takes a smart step

I continue to believe that Equality California is a defunct organization that just hasn’t realized it yet. However, they have taken one step that I think is wise: (from a Send Us Money email)

So we are excited to share with you that, thanks to a generous leadership grant from the Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund, we have engaged veteran LGBT civil rights leader and nonprofit advisor, Joan Garry to serve as EQCA’s chief strategy and transition consultant over the next few months to conduct a focused assessment of the organization, create an interim management plan and develop a short-term strategic plan that will serve as a roadmap for a new executive director search. Joan will be joined in this effort by Dr. Julie Anderson.

I respect Joan Garry. Back when GLAAD was changing Hollywood (instead of being the Word Police), Joan’s instinct and hard work was instrumental in ensuring that gay people on film were not just demeaning stereotypes.

Perhaps she and Anderson can find a purpose and focus for Equality California. But I’m still not betting on it.

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, November 2

TODAY’S AGENDA:

AIDS Walks This Weekend: San Luis Obispo, CA.

Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Buenos Aries, Argentina and Palm Springs, CA.

Also This Weekend: REELING LGBT Film Festival, Chicago, IL; Invincible Truth, Hong Kong, China.

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Oregon’s Measure 9 Defeated: 1992. By a vote of 56-44%, voters in Oregon rejected Measure 9, which would have amended the state constitution to prohibit the expenditure of “monies or properties to promote, encourage or facilitate homosexuality, pedophilia, sadism or masochism.” This would have banned gay groups from using city parks or books about homosexuality in the public library. The measure was an effort of the Oregon Citizens Alliance, a conservative religious right group that was closely aligned with the Christian Coalition and was headed by Lon Mabon, with Scott Lively serving as his right hand man. The campaign for Measure 9 was particularly nasty, with the OCA releasing a graphic video depicting gays as universally debauched and corrupt, while extolling the virtues of two “ex-gays.” The campaign also saw Lively found guilty of using unreasonable force to remove a free-lance photographer from an OCA meeting which debuted the video. Typical of anything associated with Lively, the OCA refused to acknowledge the magnitude of Measure 9’s defeat, and vowed to return to the ballot box two years later. But Measure 19 in went down in flames in 1994 by a similar margin. A poll in December 1992 found that 57% of all Oregonians had an unfavorable view of the OCA, against only a 14% with a favorable view. Lively called the poll “flawed.”

Colorado’s Amendment 2 Passed: 1992. You win one, you lose one. That’s what happened in 1992. The same year in which Oregonians rejected Measure 9, voters in Colorado passed Amendment 2 to that state’s constitution which prohibited state and local governments or court from taking any action recognizing gays or lesbians as a protected class in anti-discrimination measures. The measure passed 60% to 40%. The Amendment immediately landed in court, with the State Supreme Court ruling that the measure couldn’t pass “strict scrutiny” under the Federal Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. When supporters appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, they ruled in 1995 in the landmark Romer v Evans that the measure didn’t even pass muster under a rational basis test. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, found that Amendment 2 went far beyond prohibiting “special rights” to gay people as supporters argued. It went further by actually disenfranchising gay people — and only gay people — from an important part of the political process. While everyone else could ask for redress from local governments and courts, gay people were singled out for being barred from that right of citizenship. “(Amendment 2) is at once too narrow and too broad,” he wrote. “It identifies persons by a single trait and then denies them protection across the board. The resulting disqualification of a class of persons from the right to seek specific protection from the law is unprecedented in our jurisprudence.”

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?

The purpose of marriage

Gage Raley, a good ol’ Texas Mennonite studying law in Japan has come up with his most excellent reason for denying civil marriage rights to gay folk. And it’s all based on the marital presumption of paternity.

Or so Mr. Raley informs us in a late-filed amicus brief to Perry v. Schwarzenegger. And Judge Walker’s ruling should be overturned.

Now first I’d like to congratulate Mr. Raley on a most informative essay. The history of the legal and social efforts to ensure that men support their offspring – going back as far as the first human who stood erect on her hind legs – is actually a fascinating read.

But sadly, it seems that young Gage is pursuing the wrong career. He should have chosen history so as to take advantage of his story telling skills. Because law requires logic, a tying of facts to consequences that reflect a process of thinking that can withstand and opponent’s review.

And, sadly…. well, let me just give you his premise.

Mr. Raley tells us that in the American judicial system, there is a maternal presumption of paternity whose purpose is to “provide every child with a legal father.” And, though he probably doesn’t realize it, for some dozens of pages he uses the word “father” in terms of the role he plays, providing for the survival of the child.

Interestingly, a great deal of attention is spent on the argument that a genetic father must be known in order to naturally trigger this provision (a biological imperative for the continuation of his genes). And marriage’s purpose was to tie the care of the child to the continuation of his lineage. The result being that through marriage a man knew who his children were (or, at least, thought he did).

But by page 47, Raley’s evolution of law has come to the point where legal requirements are as much in play as emotional ones. And it is there that he finally tells us what the marital presumption of paternity actually is: “presuming a woman’s husband to be the father of her children”.

Irrespective of biological reality, the legal father of a child, the one responsible for its care and needs, is presumed to be the mother’s husband at the time of the child’s birth. And that is true.

Even if the child is of another race, if the husband is sterile, and if everyone in town knows that they mother is carrying on an affair, that child’s father is presumed to be her husband. Follow me? Even if it is impossible for the man to actually be the genetic father of the child, in the eyes of the law, as long as no one disputes it, he is the father.

And while there are ways to void this presumption, if the father is aware but doesn’t act in a timely manner, then he will remain that child’s father. And if they divorce, he can be legally responsible for child care. Courts have upheld such rulings.

(And this is a presumption that is not entirely unfair to men. More than a few children have been born to fathers who cannot impregnate with the full intention and even participation of men who want to be a dad.)

And it is at his grand “and thus” moment that Mr. Raley beams and presents his smoking gun: in a same-sex marriage, there’s no man to be the presumptive father of the woman’s child. A state has an interest in ensuring that its children are cared for and, it is impossible for both parties in a same-sex marriage to be the genetic parents, then the legal presumption of paternity of a child born in such a union can’t apply and no one can be held liable for that child’s care.

Oh, but what Mr. Raley didn’t notice (the elephant which was not only in the room but tap dancing while playing a trumpet) is that it was for just such a purpose that the presumption of paternity (or, from the state’s perspective, the presumption of a legally obligated provider) came to be. This presumption assigns a provider even when the neighbors scoff at the notion. It’s a legal assumption, not a literal one.

And Mr. Raley apparently is unaware that legal presumption is one of the tools that gay couples use to establish parental rights in states that allow marriage equality. It gives the child a legal parent even when biology fails to do so.

So, Mr. Raley’s argument (like most of the arguments presented to defend Proposition 8) ultimately supports same-sex marriage. But it was a nice history lesson, nonetheless.

UPDATE: 11/3/11

It seems Mr. Raley made an eensie teensie mistake. In filing the brief, he states:

Both parties have granted their consent to the filing of this amicus brief.

Well, no. Not exactly. The Plaintiffs have a quite different perspective:

Plaintiffs-Appellees have not consented to the filing of Mr. Raley’s untimely brief. Rather, Plaintiffs-Appellees informed Mr. Raley that the parties previously had consented to those amicus briefs that complied with this Court’s rules. Because Mr. Raley’s brief is filed long after the deadline established by the Court for the submission of amicus briefs, it does not comply with the Court’s rules and Plaintiffs-Appellees do not consent to its filing.

Ooooosie.

The last of the first: Axel Axgil

Eigel and Axel Axgil. photo - Rex Wockner

There are few opportunities to be first at anything. And even fewer to be first at a truly revolutionary social declaration that would ultimately come to receive sanction in nearly all of Western Europe, much of the Americas, and which is growing to become the accepted minimum of civilized nations.

But Axel Axgil and Eigel Axgil were first.

In 1989, they were the first couple in the world to receive official state-sanctioned recognition under Denmark’s new Registered Partnership Law. This honor was in recognition of the decades long campaign for rights that the two had made their life’s work. Axel is credited for being the founder of the Danish gay rights movement in 1948.

Eigel passed away in 1995 and Axel left us on Saturday. In tribute, let’s consider the words of advice he gave in 1989:

“Be open. Come out. Keep fighting. This is the only way to move anything. If everyone comes out of the closet then this will happen everywhere.”

Chik-Fil-A’s Anti-Gay Contributions

Chick-Fil-A’s charitable arm, the WinShape Foundation, has received $7.8 million in funding from Chick-FilA, Inc. WinShape, which was founded by Chick-Fil-A’s founder and chairman S. Truett Cathy, turned around and gave more than $1.7 million to several anti-gay groups in 2009, including the Marriage and Family Legacy Fund ($994,199), Fellowship Of Christian Athletes ($480,000), National Christian Foundation ($240,000), Focus On The Family ($12,500) Eagle Forum ($5,000), Exodus International ($1,000), and Family “Research” Council ($1,000). Equality Matters has the details. Remember that the next time you’re hankering to “Eat Mor Chikin.”