Rich Mintz  

Just wanted to speak up yet again (as I have on Twitter) on behalf of New York State Senators Jim Alesi and Roy McDonald, the Republicans who have come out in favor of marriage equality in New York State.

Say what you will about political motives, these two are the only Senate Republicans (so far) who won’t be looked back on with shame in 25 years. (And what’s wrong with politics as a motivating factor?) On marriage equality, unlike many other issues, there’s a right side and a wrong side.

Interracial marriage was illegal across much of the United States during my lifetime (though thankfully not in California, where I lived). That prohibition and the arguments made to protect it seem as ridiculous now as the ravings of the anti-gay lobby will sound in 25 years (indeed, sound now to most people under 50).

But all the culture panic in the world won’t stop the right thing from happening. We already know how this story will end, in a country founded on equality and on freedom of worship, in a state with 300 years of history as a multicultural refuge; we just don’t know exactly when. I’m betting on “soon.”

I don’t know what possesses someone like Brooklyn’s State Senator Marty Golden to undertake to curtail the civil rights of hundreds or thousands of New Yorkers, by introducing a bill to enjoin the state from treating a certain class of legally married New Yorkers as married under the law.

It’s not like he said “gosh, you know, I have mixed feelings about marriage equality, so I’m going to arrange to be out of town when we vote on this or that.”  It’s not even like he said “you know, I don’t like gay people, so I’m going to lobby my colleagues to vote in this way or that.”  No. He spent staff time and state money to conceive of, draft, and introduce a bill whose sole purpose is to use the power of the state to take de facto protections away from people who currently have them.  He took an affirmative action whose only purpose and only outcome is to hurt actual families — not theoretical members of a theoretical class, but actual New York families.  (Hey, Marty, try getting out of the house sometime. There are gay people in Bay Ridge now and everything.)

This isn’t about saving money, or clarifying the law; it’s about hurting people to score political points. Don’t stand for it! Call Marty’s office at 718-238-6044 and let him know he’s made a mistake.  More here and here.

I’m annoyed to see professional NYC gay Allen Roskoff attempting to pick holes in the increasingly visible and viable pro-marriage-equality coalition in New York State.  With a coalition of politicians, dozens of celebrities, and now a bunch of rich white people on board, marriage equality is cruising toward real feasibility for the first time.  As an actual gay person in New York who would like to marry someone here (I mean an actual identified someone, not a theoretical one) and can’t, I have as much stake in this issue as Roskoff, and I for one am thrilled to see people like Mike Bloomberg and Andrew Cuomo (and Bill Clinton, a Kentuckian, etc. etc.) come down, out loud, on the right side of history.

This is politics.  It’s hard, and everyone is caught between competing priorities and obligations.  Why dig for reasons to be angry at people?  Accept your victories, and be gracious to those who lend their voices to your cause.  (Incidentally, thanks, Lynne Cheney and Laura Bush.)  Would a stronger pro-marriage-equality stance from Bill Clinton have been better earlier? Sure, but that doesn’t negate his current activities — in fact, I think I appreciate them more.)

The New Yorkers for Marriage Equality campaign, helmed by the able Brian Ellner (seconded from HRC), is racking up public support and mainstream credibility much faster than anything Empire State Pride Agenda ever did on its own. A year ago ESPA was pressured (by Roskoff, as it happened) to drop Ellner from the running for its own executive director position — apparently Ellner didn’t hate Mike Bloomberg enough, or something.  ESPA made a mistake (again: what is the purpose of loyalty oaths that make our coalition smaller?), but it all worked out in the end, as Ellner was quickly picked up by HRC and is now at the front of a strong and effective visibility campaign.  (Also note: the donations I used to give to ESPA are now going to HRC.)

My advice to Roskoff: Get out of the way and let success happen. Or, better yet, turn your anger at people who are actually impeding the cause.  Who cares what Andrew Cuomo or Bill Clinton feels in his heart? What I care about is what they say and what they do.  With demographics inexorably pulling the public in the direction we want to go, this is the moment to welcome and encourage the broadening of the coalition, not to fear it.

The judge in the Log Cabin Republicans’ “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” suit in California ruled for the plaintiffs tonight, concluding that the policy of dismissing gay and lesbian members of the military is unconstitutional on both First and Fifth Amendment grounds. She says she will issue a permanent injunction against its enforcement within a week. Not clear yet whether DOJ will appeal.

Associated Press story here; opinion itself is here. The opinion is worth leafing through; among other things, the judge finds that the Government’s claims about unit cohesion are directly contradicted by the evidence, including evidence that the Government has delayed the discharge of gay and lesbian servicemembers until after their combat tours are over.

Stuff like this is obvious to gay people, in the same way that mixed-race couples in 1940 found it obvious that prohibitions against their marriage are inherently unconstitutional. But it’s a relief to see the culture as a whole acknowledging it. As Martin Luther King said, the arc of history bends toward justice — I believe that that is true fundamentally, and not just contingently or locally, among a human race that is wired for communitarian living — and we’ve seen a lot of positive social change for gay people in just a few short years.

No, it’s not what you think … or is it? (Hat tip: Colin Stewart.)

Bonus “Today on Craigslist” from this weekend’s Glenn Beck rally, via Wonkette (note: subject matter not safe for work): well, I won’t post this one, but if you Google “wonkette tea party craigslist honor” you’ll probably find it…

I’ll have more to say about Prop 8 (decision here) soon, but in the meantime, take a look at this image, one of a series of photos of Shelly and Ellen shot at the Philip Burton Federal Building in San Francisco yesterday that’s hit the wire services today. (Remember Phil Burton? He’d be celebrating too.)

Ellen (at right) is my cousin, and if you need evidence that marriage matters to gay people, don’t read the blogs or ask a psychologist or a law professor, just ask actual gay people like these. (Click photo to expand.)

(Photo: Same-sex couple Shelly Bailes (L) and Ellen Pontac celebrate the ruling to overturn the ban on gay marriage outside of the Philip Burton Federal building August 4, 2010 in San Francisco, California. By Justin Sullivan/Getty Images. Used without permission; taken from The Daily Dish.)

The arc of the universe bent a little truer today, as U.S. District Court Judge Joseph L. Tauro ruled in two cases touching on the constitutionality of the ill-named Defense of Marriage Act. The Gill case concerned plaintiffs in same-sex marriages who were suing for federal benefits on grounds of, among other things, equal protection; in the Massachusetts case, the Commonwealth sued HHS for an abrogation of rights.

In both cases, he found for the plaintiffs, and in what language! The decisions, with Chris Geidner’s commentary, are here.

I just finished reading Gill, and I can’t remember being so buoyed by a federal court decision since Lawrence v. Texas.. The defendants’ arguments were absolutely demolished; they were pulverized, in language about as blunt and absolute as I can ever remember reading in a court decision (perhaps save the Orly Taitz ruling). Judge Tauro went through every asserted justification for the law (and some that were not asserted) and just knocked them down, concluding that the only possible motivation for the law was “animus” (well, duh — as he quoted, the animus was on display right there on the floor of the House), and that in such a case, the law runs directly counter to elementary Constitutional protections.

This is all just common sense to gay people, but to hear it bluntly and matter-of-factly affirmed by a federal judge, in the impersonal language of a court opinion, is thrilling. Read the decision. It’ll make your day!

I didn’t really celebrate NYC Pride this year — I was on a train coming back from Baltimore — but I did have the experience of being on the Newark PATH platform on Sunday afternoon as people massed for the trip into the city. And what a festive, jostling mass it was.

In a train like that, you’re reminded of just how wide the definition of the word “gay” has to stretch in order to encompass all of us. At least once a year, people turn out and claim the label who might not fall into the neat Chelsea (or Astoria) or Park Slope (or Red Hook) categories that come first to mind. Even in our homogenized, corporatized, cupcakes-and-Carrie-Bradshaw New York, there’s some diversity left.

Thank God for diversity — not the politically correct one-child-of-every-hue-on-the-cover variety, but the actual festive, jostling reality of America, gay and ungay and everything in between. We would be less than we are if any of the pieces were missing.

And thank God for the generations that came before mine, who marched angrily and proudly in drag and leather chaps (and swept me along with them at the tail end of things, to stand up to LA police on horseback and to CHP officers in Sacramento on the Capitol steps in 1991 to yell “Shame!” at Pete Wilson) so that my boyfriend and I could spend Gay Pride 2010 walking along the Hudson River in lower Manhattan not really thinking about gay rights at all. It’s not over — it never is — but wow. The social changes I’ve seen in the past thirty years go beyond what I ever would have imagined in 1980.

Here comes FarmVille for iPhone.

Could you beat a Muppet in a staring contest? I doubt it.

Daniel Kroop launches Los Angeles and First, a blog about Los Angeles politics — specifically the City Council — that promises to be a good read, if the first week is any indication.

Am I really the only person in America who finds the “gay panic” subtext in this Pretzel M&Ms ad a little bothersome?

Aerolineas, the Argentinian airline, updates its brand identity.

A visibility and safety initiative, from Mexico, on behalf of gay, transgendered, and other vulnerable people: Aguas Con Tu Ligue, which roughly translated means “watch out for your hookup,” i.e., beware of the man you just picked up. Be careful about whom you let into your house. Or, in extremis, “Tu ligue de hoy puede ser tu asesino,” i.e., “the guy you pick up today might turn out to be your murderer.” Blunt stuff, but routine assaults on gay people — sometimes physical crime, sometimes extortion, sometimes just disruption and harassment — are a bigger social issue in Mexico than here in New York. (Not that we don’t have them here too.) The case examples on the site are blunt.

I admire the courage and forthrightness behind the initiative; the philosophy behind it is that visibility helps increase safety in the short term and lead to social change in the long term, which you can hardly argue with.

As a side note, I just learned the word “aguas,” which (in Mexico only) means “look out.” Literally, it apparently originally meant “look out, I am about to throw toilet water [or, probably more literally, urine] out the window onto your head,” but nowadays it is conventional to follow it with a description of what the hearer is supposed to look out for, e.g., “¡Aguas! ¡Viene un carro!” The things you learn…