Beth's Contradictory Brain

I think this is good news.

There's a very interesting case going on in Oklahoma concerning adoptions by gay couples.

More on that Tenth Circuit adoption decision:

Thus, on its face, the statute requires the state to recognize foreign adoptions by unmarried opposite-sex couples, even though such a couple could not adopt in Oklahoma itself. But foreign adoptions by unmarried – or married – same-sex couples are not recognized.

Go read the whole thing.

Two good reads

I don't even know how to summarize this post over on the Volokh Conspiracy. It deals with gay rights, religious accomodation under the law, and civil rights. Just go read it.

Then read this one: "Is there Enough Libertarian and Conservative Support for Gay Rights for it to Matter?"

Pride

Joe has a fantastic post about Gay Pride.

Because even if Pride doesn't change many minds in the outside world, it's our PARTY, darlings. It's our Christmas, our New Year's, our Carnival. It's the one day of the year that all the crazy contingents of the gay world actually come face to face on the street. And blow each other air kisses. And wish each other "Happy Pride!". Saying "Happy Pride!" is really just a shorter, easier way of saying "Congratulations on not being driven completely batshit insane! Way to go for not taking a rifle into a tower and taking out half the town! Well done, being YOURSELF!"

All you suburban, lawn mowing, corpo-droid homos out there, hiding behind your picket fences, the ones wringing your hands and worrying that Pride ruins YOUR personal rep, listen up. Do you think that straight Americans worry that Mardi Gras damages international perception of American culture? America, land of the free, home of "Show Us Your Tits!"? They don't, and neither should we. Our Pride celebrations are just our own unique version of Mardi Gras, only instead of throwing beads, we throw shade. No one has to ask US to show our tits. We've already got 'em out there, baby. And some of them are real.

That's just part of it, go read the whole thing.

Nerdstar and I went to Pride weekend events in Austin a long, long time ago when she was new to this whole gay thing. Austin in the summer is just too hot to wander around all the tents and booths feeling like it was all just one big commercial - although for what I'm not sure. And not being a liberal democrat just made it all the more of a time waster.

That said, he has some great points about all of it.

Interesting

I'm not sure where I'd come down on this argument - not that it's really an argument. Not to mention, are there different arguments to be made for gays vs. lesbians?

I've never really considered any of the more well known gay people to be a role model for me. No, not Rosey, not Ellen, not Melissa. But, I am aware that there are people who do consider them to be role models.

As for the more "radical" gays in the history of gays, I think there were some very, very brave perverts (used in the best possible way) that did a lot for the gay community. But in the past twenty years or so, I'm not sure that the agenda of the supposed gay leadership has really been that affective. The same might could be said of the Log Cabin Republicans.

I still mostly think that it's your run of the mill gays and lesbians, living their lives "out" in the midst of the "straight world" that makes the biggest difference in how gays are perceived.

A three-fer

I guess I haven't written about being gay here in the midwest, and concerning Nerdstar's job in particular.

As for being gay in the midwest, it's no big deal. Yes, the people here are the straightest I've ever been around. (That's a different post for a different day.) But, for the most part I don't really care what they think if I happen to hold Nerdstar's hand walking through a store or the casino. And 99% of the time I'm not worried about one of them pulling out a gun or deciding to harrass us or beat us up.

What's been a little more tricky is Nerdstar's coworkers. Although she is on active duty and working with military people, there are a lot civilians at her job as well, including the boss men. So it's not your typical active duty life.

Nerdstar is better than I at keeping her private life private. While I didn't come blazing out of the closet at my last job, I kept it to the Nerdstar is my roommate line, and had pics of the pets and Zach and Nerdstar in my cubicle. I'll never lie if asked, I won't hide my life, but I am better at understanding work is work and not everyone needs to know everything about me.

Where it gets hard and is when you actually become friends with a co-worker. I'm not sure Nerdstar thought it all through when one of her co-workers started organizing dinners and hanging out and such. At that point, you have two choices if you're in a gay relationship and can't be completely out. You go and hang out or whatever as if you're any other single person, leaving your g/f at home. Or you avoid all outside work social stuff. Neither is any fun. Well, ok the third option is the "roommate" option.

The problem with that one is that most people aren't blind or stupid. And when you've been together as long as Nerdstar and I have been, and when we both moved up here at about the same time, and so on... well, any conversation that's not about the weather and current events leads to questions that reveal your life.

Another problem is that it just becomes the elephant in the room between you and the people you actually become friends with. You don't know for certain they know, but they don't feel like they can ask, and it's a stupid dance.

Would this be an issue of Nerdstar wasn't on active duty? Not to the extent that it is. Sure, even a non-military job can fire you, but it's much harder.

The hardest part of the whole thing is the constant feeling that our seven year relationship is someone less valid, less real, less important because it has to remain unacknowledged.

As always I feel I'm just rambling. Hopefully Nerdstar will write her thoughts about this soon.

More

More fun debates, this time about gay students and schools informing the parents instead of the child informing the parents of said gayness. Mostly by people who have no idea how hard it is to come out to anyone, much less your parents.

I'm pretty sure it's much easier to be out at school than at home, although being out at school can be a nightmare. But as painful as rejection by some peers may be (and these days there will probably be at least a few supportive peers) I don't think there's anything more painful than being rejected by your parents for being gay.

I was out in high school because I just wasn't smart enough, savy enough, to hide that I was falling in love with one of my girl friends. Did my parents figure it out, yeah, did we ever talk about it - hell no. Back in '86 my parents were great at don't ask don't tell.

As for what school administrators should do - beats me.

Just don't make the mistake of thinking that parents should somehow magically know their kid is gay. Or that every gay kid who has the courage to tell a friend or two has the courage to tell their family.

update: they're talking about it at GayOrbit as well.

A good read

Kat writes a decent post about gays in the military. And there are some good comments as well. I haven't read the stuff over at Blackfive yet, and might or might not later.

I'm not really in the mood to write about the topic today. I guess it's both amusing and tiresome to read straight people debating the topic.

If you're new to this blog, maybe reading the military wife category will catch you up.

Maybe later today I'll write a new one on all the joys of having to mostly be in the closet with Nerdstar's current job.

Being not Choosing

Nerdstar got to come home for lunch this afternoon, always nice! While we were driving to the restaurant, I had Rush on the radio. (Yes, I listen to Rush and lots of other talk radio, mostly folks on the right, the left makes me too frustrated.) I caught maybe sixty seconds or so of his comments on Roberts doing legal work in defense of gays. Roberts isn't what I want to talk about.

Rush mentioned giving special rights for a certain behavior. (I don't have the direct quote, which would probably be more clear.)

But I got it. I got a better glimpse into why it's so hard for gays to get equal rights, marriage rights, etc. As long as the majority of people believe being gay is simply a matter of choosing certain behaviors, and not a matter of being, well, we're facing a huge uphill battle.

Bleh. It kind of ties into my thoughts lately on how tired I get of being different. I don't want to be different. (I'm not saying I don't want to be gay.) I don't want people to assume I'm straight. (Maxine's comments to a co-worker brought a huge smile to my face!) I don't want them to think I'm weird if I'm not. I don't want my relationship with Nerdstar to be treated any differently or viewed as any less legitimate than any straight one.

Just to tie on one more controversial topic. I find it fascinating that evolution has been granted valid science status, but being born gay hasn't.

I'm not a disgusting freak

I think what's frustrating me these days with the remarks of straight people about gays is partly the tone of self-righteousness they take. As if only gay people do deviant things in our bedrooms or elsewhere. If the so-called "reality" shows about marriage aren't enough to prevent casting that first stone, I don't know what the hell would be!

But I was trying to think of another group of people that has been subjected to this kind of disgust and revulsion. The usual comparison is race, and the civil rights movement and such. I think it's actually much closer to the way people with mental illnesses have been treated throughout history. If I were still in college, that'd make a great paper! The psychiatric community might have declared homosexuality isn't a mental illness, but society at large still has it's doubts about that. The only other comparison I can think of is lepers. Maybe that's a holdover from the 80s, early 90s when AIDS was a bigger scare.

The other frustrating thing is that I'm not reading these things on sites of uninformed, illiterate, religous bigoted sites. But there is a definite underlying disgust factor among straight people regarding gays.

So, for my straight readers - how prevelant is the idea that homosexuality is disgusting among people you know?

And for my gay readers - is there a realistic way to change that perception? (Do you think it's a prevelant idea among people you know?)

Gay Rant

For all of you who aren't home during the day, and forgot to set your vcr's and tivo's to record daytime tv's first lesbian kiss - well, I sucked it up and recorded it and watched it for you! Considering it was on a soap opera, and taking into account that means it'll be cheesy and melodramatic and such, it wasn't bad. At least the one lesbian is sure of herself and her sexuality.

The best lesbian scene on tv to me will always be the high school girls on Once and Again. It was so sweet and touching and honest.

But, what pissed me off about All My Children was this need networks have to put up all these dire warnings about adult content when there's going to be a lesbian (or gay I assume) kiss or plotline. I mean, come on, with all the adultry, murder, and other totally evil plotlines on daytime tv, we really need a special warning that two women are going to be fully clothed in a public place and kiss??

Which leads me to my rant about this current round of public hysteria (on both sides) prompted by Rick Santorum's comments.

I'd be MUCH more impressed with people who feel the need to defend the "institution of marriage" from all us wretched deginerates if the institution of marriage was something worth defending. If the divorce rate was less than 50%, if the rate of adultry wasn't probably even higher. If the rate of child abuse by those wonderful man/woman parents wasn't so damn high. I mean really now, can adding gay marriage and gay parents into this really make it worse?? NO So, get off your damn self righteous high horse and address reality for a minute. I'd also be impressed if these defenders of "the family" would just come clean about their true feelings and fears and prejudices. But if they can't even be honest, well, then there can't be a true public debate on the issues can there?

As Andrew Sullivan and Stanley Kurtz and others have written about, Santorum's remarks are being taken out of context. (Andrew has a fantastic and much more well stated point about all of this!)

But, what Santorum really intends is even more evil than what he's being accused of. In his statement, Santorum gives a number examples, all different, yet all cases in which he claims that the government has some legitimate interest in regulating sexuality. Sen. Santorum is obviously concerned that, if the Supreme Court rules that the state has no right to regulate sexuality in the case of sodomy, a court might someday deny the state the right to regulate even incest. Fine, he's welcome to his opinions. But as an elected representative he's going to be held accountable for those opinions.

Stanley Kurtz's article also goes on to talk about the media's part in this Santorum fiasco - it's definitely worth reading!

I think the next ten or twenty years will bring about real change regarding family and marriage. And I don't believe it will be in the direction people like Santorum want it to go. I think the laws and courts and public policy will have to move toward (and already are) protecting gays and lesbians in their relationships and parenting.