My Commonplace Book

I've run across two excellent columns on the Larry Craig scandal that are very much worth reading.

The first is by Jim McGreevey, the governor of New Jersey who was outed when his affair with a male aide was discovered. He has written a heartfelt op-ed in the Washington Post describing why so many older gays feel unable to come out, and revealing why so many closeted gay politicians take anti-gay positions.

The other is a column by Sandip Roy on AlterNet discussing the differences between the situation of David Vitter, who paid for extramarital sex with a prostitute yet didn't lose his committee positions let alone his Senate seat, and that of Larry Craig, who is being hounded out of the Senate for merely suggesting consensual sex with a peer.

On the surface it would appear that Vitter's offense against morals is much more grave -- but because the prostitute was a woman, the Republican leadership closed ranks and brushed it all away.

Craig didn't actually have sex with anyone, and wasn't going to pay for it, yet he became a pariah simply because the person he wanted to make it with was another man.

When a politician makes a pass at a woman in an elevator, it's not even news. Arnold Schwarzenegger has admitted to coming on to women and everyone just laughs it off. That's all Larry Craig did -- but because the person he came on to was another man, rather than a woman, he's going to lose everything.

The same thing happened to McGreevey. If the aide had been a woman, he'd still be governor of New Jersey. I said that at the time, and it's true of Craig as well.

Those two columns together shed a new light on the issue. Larry Craig is still a hypocrite and a liar, but so are many -- even most -- politicians. Just because he solicited homosexual sex is not a reason to destroy his life.

Oh, woe, is me. What has the world come to that Shirley Phelps-Roper of Westboro "God hates fags" Baptist Church and I should agree on something?

Phelps-Roper was arrested on Wednesday for encouraging her 10-year-old son, Jonah, to kick, stomp and jump on a US flag during a protest. She was booked at the Sarpy County, Nebraska, jail on charges of flag mutilation, disturbing the peace and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, all misdemeanors. She was released after posting $150 bail.

Nebraska's flag law says: "A person commits the offense of mutilating a flag if such person intentionally casts contempt or ridicule upon a flag by mutilating, defacing, defiling, burning, or trampling upon such flag."

Phelps-Roper, who is an attorney, acknowledged that she allowed her 10-year-old son, Jonah, to stand on the flag, saying she believes she has the right to use the flag as a symbol, and that Nebraska's law is outdated.

"Those rogue cops cooked up this scheme," she said, "and now the question is whether the person who sits in the office of the prosecutor has character. If they pursue this, our next stop will be federal court in Nebraska to challenge that unconstitutional statute."

The problem I have is that, in this case, she's right.

In 1989, the Supreme Court struck down laws in 48 of the 50 states prohibiting desecrating of the US flag. Congress promptly responded by passing the Flag Protection Act, and the high court just as promptly reaffirmed the 1989 decision and declared the new law unconstitutional. Justice William J. Brennan stated in the Court's opinion that "Punishing desecration of the flag dilutes the very freedom that makes this emblem so revered, and worth revering."

I never dreamed that I'd find myself in the peculiar position of supporting anything the hate-filled Phelps clan says or does. It's a very uncomfortable feeling. I wish the Omaha police had exercised better judgment and ignored the situation. I know it must have been hard for the cops to watch the hateful demonstration, but all they did was contribute to the Phelps's efforts to gain publicity, something they've become terribly good at by leveraging their tactic of protesting at funerals.

I agree with an editorial in the Montrose, WY, Daily Press that said:

Regardless what one thinks of Roper’s politics and tactics, this is a trumped up allegation. It is clearly interference with her rights of free expression and it’s equally clear the cops were looking for a reason, any reason, to shut her down.

But their tactics have given her ilk a new forum and more publicity. They’ve also given Roper cause for a legitimate complaint. That was poor judgment indeed.

So now I have to either hope Phelps-Roper wins and watch her milk it for all it's worth, or hope that an unconstitutional law is upheld. I wish they had just left her alone.

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A lawsuit was filed in 2004 by nine same-sex couples seeking the right to marry in Maryland. In January 2006, a judge ruled that Maryland's 1973 law defining marriage as being between one man and one woman is discriminatory and "cannot withstand constitutional challenge."

The biggest religious fanatic and homophobe in the state legislature, Delegate Don Dwyer, immediately started frothing at the mouth, even going so far as trying to have the judge who made the decision removed from the bench. He then began pushing to amend the state constitution in case the law was overturned. (Frighteningly, two other members of the House Judiciary Committee actually voted in favor of Dwyer's proposal to impeach the judge, but the other 20 did not. Incidents like that, and like this one, make me wonder how on earth ignorant people like that manage to get elected and re-elected to the legislature in a generally progressive state like Maryland.)

The circuit court judge stayed her decision pending an appeal, which was heard on December 4. The ruling has not been issued yet, but I'm very hopeful because the court has a reputation for issuing decisions that most would consider moderate to liberal.

But Dwyer knows that reputation too, so he's moving at full steam to try to get his constitutional amendment passed lest the appeals court agree that marriage is a civil right. Equality Maryland recently put out a notice that said

Don Dwyer (R-Anne Arundel County) is at it again.  He told The Capital, "If the high court overturns Maryland's marriage law and the legislature does not want to address the issue, it will be all-out war and I'll be the general."

Amendments that would put discrimination into the Maryland Constitution have been introduced and are set for committee hearings on March 1 and March 15.  Maryland families cannot afford to be denied the protections of civil marriage equality.

Please link to this post and encourage anyone you know in Maryland to contact their representatives in Annapolis, either directly or through Equality Maryland's form, which takes only a minute to fill out.

A member of my PFLAG chapter testified at the hearing, and sent out her notes of what was said by both sides, as well as her own very eloquent and moving testimony.

( Personal testimony )

( Notes about testimony )

THIS is Why We Need a GSA

Gay-straight alliances are taking hold in middle schools, where homophobia and anti-gay harassment may be the most rampant.

For several weeks last spring, fliers announcing Sennett Middle School 's Gay-Straight Alliance were torn from the hallways, revealing a hidden message to the culprits about why the club was important in the first place. Safe spaces can be hard to come by when you're a middle school student, especially if you're lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. For the past 10 years, GSAs have helped high school students fight anti-gay harassment. Experts say middle school is where GSAs might be needed most -- and their numbers are starting to grow. ...

Complete article at the link.

Statement from the Rev. William G. Sinkford on Washington Court Ruling on Same-Sex Marriage:

(July 26, 2006 - Boston, MA) I am deeply disappointed by today's ruling by the Supreme Court of Washington upholding the constitutionality of that state's discriminatory "Defense of Marriage" statute. Today's ruling further delays the time when the legal protections enjoyed by heterosexual couples in Washington will be made available to all committed couples.

Like so many people of conscience, Unitarian Universalists are saddened by the recent setbacks in the struggle for marriage equality. Today we are even more keenly aware that our society has a long way to go before we fully honor every person's inherent worth and dignity. Our hearts go out to the thousands of same-sex couples in Washington who have been denied an opportunity to secure legal protections for their families.

Although this is a sad day, I want to thank the three dissenting judges for their courageous opinions, and to honor all of the couples and families in Washington State who have witnessed for justice through their living examples. We know from hard experience that the road to justice is long, and despite these recent setbacks to the cause of marriage equality, Unitarian Universalists are committed to continued engagement with this issue until the day when full legal and civic equality is a reality for all loving couples.

I finally saw Brokeback Mountain last night at the monthly Welcoming Congregation Committee movie.

It was a good movie, but I thought it dragged too much. Several times when a scene went on and on I thought, "Okay, we've got the idea, let's move on," which broke into my suspension of disbelief. Actually, I found suspension of disbelief unusually hard to sustain in this movie in general. I don't know if it came from having already read the Annie Proulx short story on which it was based and mentally comparing them, or the slowness of the movie, or my difficulty understanding Heath Ledger's clenched-jaw mumbling, or the nagging knowledge that the beautiful scenes were filmed in Canada, not on location in Wyoming, and wondering what Wyoming really looked like.

I know part of it was that all the actors were too pretty, particularly Ennis and Jack. Proulx described them as "high-school drop-out country boys with no prospects, brought up to hard work and privation, both rough-mannered, rough-spoken, inured to the stoic life," and as poor ranchhands and rodeoers they shouldn't have had perfect teeth, perfect unscarred faces, perfect healthy mesomorph bodies.

And in fact, Proulx's description of them wasn't pretty. "Jack seemed fair enough, with his curly hair and quick laugh, but for a small man he carried some weight in the haunch and his smile disclosed buckteeth, not pronounced enough to let him eat popcorn out of the neck of a jug, but noticeable. ... Ennis, high-arched nose and narrow face, was scruffy and a little cave-chested, balanced a small torso on long, caliper legs, and possessed a muscular and supple body made for the horse and for fighting."

It was especially distracting that neither of them aged over the course of 20 years. Jack filled out a bit around the waist and grew a mustache, but that was it, and Ennis didn't change at all. With the expertise possible with skilled makeup techniques, any actor can look any age, but Ennis went from 19 to 39 looking like he was about 24 the whole time.

But none of that stopped me from enjoying the film. The scenery was breathtakingly gorgeous, wherever it was; the dialog, when I could understand it, sounded genuine; and Jack and Ennis's hopeless love for one another was very real. I thought it was wonderful that the sex was downplayed as much as it was -- it was a story of star-crossed lovers, with little gratuitous sex except a few bare boobs thrown in apparently to secure the R rating or to keep the men in the audience awake (another distraction, since the nudity wasn't necessary to get the point across and the camera's lingering gaze on the breasts seemed beside the point).

We had an interesting discussion after the film, and then we cleaned up and went home. This morning I searched out a bunch of the Brokeback parodies, which I hadn't bothered looking at before because I wouldn't have gotten them.

It was a haunting movie. I reread the story a little while ago, and was surprised to find how faithful to it the movie was. I'm still pondering what it was like for a gay person in the 60's, even in liberal New York City where I only knew of one, a friend of a friend. He was essentially in the closet but my friend told us with a wink-wink-nudge-nudge that he was "a fairy." In those days that was the least pejorative appellation for a homosexual man. How much worse it must have been in the macho Marlboro Man culture of the cowboys.

My lesbianism is an act of Christian charity.  All those women out there praying for a man, and I'm giving them my share.
                        —Rita Mae Brown (b. 1944), American writer and social activitist

Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?
                          —Ernest Gaines (b. 1933), American author

Somehow I missed the The Rocky Horror Picture Show craze in the 70s -- maybe it was the distraction of some turmoil in my life when it first came out, or maybe I was just a bit too old. But I finally to to see it Friday night! However it wasn't in a theater, no one was dressed up, there were no props to throw, and only one person in the small audience remembered any of the lines to yell out. So afterward I had a dilemma -- I didn't know if I was still a virgin or not.

One Friday night a month the Welcoming Congregation Committee at my UU church shows a film with  a gay theme or gay character(s), with refreshments and a discussion afterward. I haven't been able to go very often, but never having seen Rocky Horror I seized the opportunity to remove at least one strand of my massive cultural illiteracy.

After the show LH showed us some of the other features on the DVD. We watched a little of the movie with audience participation audio, but the volume levels were very badly done, with the yelling too loud and the film dialogue too low, and the audience didn't seem experienced, so all you heard was a lot of incoherent yelling. One version was filmed from the back of a theater so you could actually see the audience participation and the cast onstage, and that was fun to watch (though you had to know the film, because not much of that could be seen).

Even though I'd never seen the movie, woofiegrrl had been very involved with it when she was in college, so I'd heard a lot about it. I considered bringing props, but I only knew a few of them, and didn't want to throw anything messy around the church's conference room. But I have one of those tiny but bright white LED flashlights on my keyring (given to me by eudyptes a couple of Christmases ago), and I just happened to be digging for something in my purse when Brad and Janet sang "There's a light." I grabbed the flashlight, held it high above my head pointed straight up, and pushed the button ... and everyone in the room who had ever seen the movie totally cracked up! L had to call out a brief explanation for the bewildered virgins in the room who had no idea why the rest of us were laughing so hard.

It was fun finally seeing Rocky Horror, and I enjoyed the discussion afterward. One thing I noticed was that everyone who had seen the movie mentioned where they'd seen it the first time -- not in the context of all chiming in with locations, but they simply included it as an apparently important part of their memories of the film. Each one seemed to feel, not so much that seeing it for the first time was the best, but that the theater where they saw it for the first time was the best theater they'd seen it in. I thought that was interesting.

Oh, and now that I've perused the RHPS website, I don't have a dilemma any more: I'm still a virgin.

Gay marriage amendment killed in committee

A proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in Maryland died in a House committee today after a day of rancorous debate between Democrats and Republicans on what has become the most emotionally charged issue of the 2006 General Assembly session.

Republican proponents of the amendment said they do not plan to give up and are exploring options to get the bill up for debate by the full House of Delegates.

The amendment, which originally banned same-sex marriages and civil unions, was rejected on a unanimous vote in the Judiciary Committee after Democrats narrowly amended it so it would define marriage as a union of one man and one woman but also allow civil unions with all the rights of marriage. ...

Gay marriage is a politically inflammatory issue, made more so this year by the recent decision of a Baltimore judge to declare invalid the Maryland law stating that marriage is a union of one man and one woman. ...

Circuit Judge M. Brooke Murdock stayed the effect of her ruling until a decision is made by the Court of Appeals, and [therefore] gay marriage is still illegal and no same-sex couple in Maryland can walk into a courthouse and get a marriage license. ...

"This is going to be an issue in the 2006 election in races all across the state," the governor said. "It should be placed on the ballot."

House Majority Leader Kumar Barve, D-Montgomery, chided the governor for being inconsistent on what should be put before the voters.

"The same governor who didn't want slot machines on the ballot now wants this on the ballot," he said. ...

( Full text )

In a gesture of love that has become in Virginia, as elsewhere, a gesture of political protest, about 60 gay and heterosexual couples, some young and others who've been together 25 years or more, reaffirmed their vows of commitment yesterday in a ceremony at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington. ...

"Whether you are married in the eyes of the law or only in the eyes of your family, this ceremony is for you," the Rev. Richard Nugent told the crowd. ...

I was delighted to see this article for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the benighted state of Virginia desperately needs this kind of public activitism.

But I was also very pleased to see who organized it -- Richard was the interim minister of my UU congregation for two years before our current minister was hired, and I thought he was great. Not that he was perfect -- far from it! But nobody is, and in my view his good qualities tremendously outweighed his bad ones. I was on the Board of Trustees during his time with us, so I got to work closely with him. I still miss him -- I've never been really satisfied with our current minister. She has a lot of good qualities too, but she's very young and inexperienced (our church is her first settled ministry -- she was an intern minister in California for a year and an interim minister in the midwest for one year, and that's it -- and she has never held any other job), and she's pushing the congregation in a very Christian direction without honoring other paths, leaving the Jewish, Pagan and Buddhist UUs out in the cold.

She also doesn't have Richard's gift for seeing a need and filling it -- for example, on September 11, 2001, while the rest of us were glued to our television sets, Richard was organizing an interfaith service for that night which included clergy and members from two UU congregations, several Christian denominations, a Jewish congregation -- and a Muslim mosque. It was very healing to come together and process the day's events together. Religious leaders from a variety of faiths spoke, and there was a table with candles we could light. Hearing the Muslims deplore the attacks and talk about their grief -- one member of the mosque worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, the company that lost 658 employees, among whom he had several dear friends -- certainly short-circuited any incipient resentment of Muslims as a group among those who attended.

I can't imagine our current minister doing something like that. In fact, she doesn't address politics or world events at all, something I miss because it helped frame important events for me so I would have a better idea of how to deal with them.

I'm also glad that Richard found a church to lead. He can't move out of the area because his wife works for the State Department, so he can only accept a call to a church within commuting distance of DC. (They tried a commuter marriage for several years before their son was born, but now that's out of the question.) So he was concerned that he might have to go back to the political or nonprofit sector. I'm going to write him a note and say hi.


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I had a busy but pleasant day today.

The service at my UU church this morning was very good. The minister is doing a series based on the second half of our Principles, which is the section that lists the sources of our tradition:

The living tradition which we share draws from many sources:

• Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life;
• Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love;
• Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;
• Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves;
• Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.
• Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.

She's up to the second one, but Equality Maryland asked clergy across Maryland to do services about gay rights and marriage equality today, to stimulate interest in the upcoming Lobby Day next month. She's bisexual and very strong on gay rights, so she kept her title and tried to encompass both -- but it was really about gay rights, and she admitted as much and explained that churches all across Maryland were focusing on that topic today. Since it's a topic close to my heart, I enjoyed the sermon. The music was good, too -- the first hymn was a Spanish song about prophecy, which was very difficult to sing, even with the choir there for us to follow; but the choir piece was a marvelous anthem called "Like a Mighty Stream" and the second hymn was a lively song called "Come and Go With Me To That Land," and I greatly enjoyed listening to the former and singing the latter.

The minister is 8 months pregnant, so after the second service today there was a baby shower for her! The whole congregation was invited of course, and there was a ton of good food and two long tables piled high with presents! I gave her something I had picked up some time ago -- a 16"x24" cross-stitch of a little train going over a mountain with "I think I can..." on the left and "I know I can!" on the right. The minister and her husband were opening presents lickety split with great efficiency, but when she came to mine there was a little gasp of pleasure when she saw it, so I know she liked it! I originally bought it for a friend's little girl -- but we lost touch with each other before I had a chance to give it to her. (I still have a couple of other things that she was going to get too. Oh well.) It was in my closet for years, but I didn't want to freecycle it because it was too good -- and I was delighted to finally need a baby gift! It was perfect, too, because she got oodles of practical stuff, and my modest purchase would have been totally forgettable. This way I gave her something that stood out, that she'll have for a long time, and it didn't cost me anything since I'd already spent the money long ago!

Our tone chime practice was scheduled for the same time as the shower. We couldn't skip it because we're playing in a jazz coffeehouse that Tom, our director, is doing next Saturday night, and there won't be any other rehearsals between now and then. Tom wouldn't change the time, and I figured I'd just leave early and go to the shower. But when I saw the huge amount of yummy food that was spread out -- and it was almost 1:00 and I was hungry! -- I went downstairs and announced to Tom that I was coming late instead. He said someone else had told him the same thing, and eudyptes was there and said, "Well, I guess I'll do the same thing too." Poor Tom looked stricken, and I said, "Why don't you just come upstairs too, and we'll just start later."

"I can't," he said. "I have to be here in case someone comes."

"Put up a note!" I told him. "Just put up a note that says 'Tone chime rehearsal at 1:30 -- go up and eat!' " So he did. I got involved in conversation and at about 1:40 someone came up and got me -- oops! But we had a very good rehearsal, and it's going to be fun playing in the coffeehouse next week. I don't know how I'll do with the rest of it -- I'm not big on jazz in general. But it'll be fun to be able to say "I'm with the band"!

They warned us this would happen if gay marriage were allowed!

Oh, wait ... gay marriage isn't allowed in Wisconsin. Guess the fundies will have to come up with some other excuse.

A 64-year-old man pleaded no contest to charges of sexual gratification with an animal and disorderly conduct after telling police he had been having sex with calves for about two years at a Greenwood farm. He was sentenced to two years' probation and psychological counseling.

When the judge asked the man what he had learned from the incident, he replied, "I learned a lot about the law." Apparently he didn't learn anything about abusing animals or violating social mores.

In an interesting side note, the judge -- who was undoubtedly a lawyer, as virtually all judges are -- is named Jon Counsell!

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