Traditional Marriage Values

Interesting sign (via Dan Savage)

-Andy

Marriage in Maine is getting some good ads.

I don't think much else needs to be said about this video.



-Andy

How Many Will Vote for This?

I ran across another interesting site in the last few days.

There is a group in California that is trying to get another marriage proposition on their ballot for 2010.

These guys are so worried about the institution of marriage that they want to ban divorce! How many staunch supporters of the institution of marriage suddenly be less interested when they have to vote on an aspect of marriage that could actually affect them?

More here!

I heart all of you at rescuemarriage.org!

Another Reason Marriage is Important

First, apologies for my absence recently. It has been super busy and I haven't had much time to post.

However, I ran across an article about Arizona that underscores why marriage is so important. Apparently, at some point in the past, Arizona has included benefits for the domestic partners and spouses of its employees.

Now, they've run up against a budget shortfall. Married employees continue to enjoy spousal benefits, but Arizona has given the shaft to its gay employees by revoking partner benefits...

You can read more about that here: Lambda Legal press release on Arizona Legislature

For those of you reading this who might think that calling it something else is just as good, or that gays lining up to getting our rights one at a time should be good enough, I will point you back to that link. What we take separately, or one at a time, can be taken from us separately, or one at a time, without it affecting the larger population. We remain vulnerable as long as our equality under the law continues to be ignored.

-Andy

Write to Congress!!

So one of the things you can do to help Alex and me is to write to your representatives in Congress. The more letters they get, the more likely they'll actually get the issue of gay immigration on their radar.

I'll make it easier for you. If you will agree to figure out who represents you in the House and the Senate, I'll give you a template to make it as easy as possible for you.

If you want to go a step further, then join Out 4 Immigration's letter writing campaign.

At that link, you will also get a template for writing to your representatives as well. If you live in New York, you might want to change it slightly.

-Andy

DavidMixner.com: Observations from Turkey Hollow on the LGBT Civil Rights Movement: Part Two: Learning from History.

I've become a fan of David Mixner's over the last several weeks as I've read more of his blog. He is currently in the middle of a series of articles that discuss the gay civil rights movement as a whole, comparing it to previous civil rights struggles, and talking about ways that gays can follow those strategies, and ways they can create their own strategies. A particularly powerful passage in Part 3 of the series resonates strongly for me, especially because Alex and I don't have decades to wait, at least not from within the US:

We can't line up our issues like planes over Chicago's O'Hare airport, calmly allowing the easy smaller planes to land first and then saving for last the bigger more complex jumbo jets. That strategy could take decades. Can any of you imagine the civil rights leaders cheering President Kennedy if he told them in 1962 at a White House reception to trust him and they would be happy in eight years? As a group, they would have walked out, appalled at the suggestion that their freedom had to be stretched out nearly a decade in some nice plan. They simply would have not tolerated it.

You can read the full article at David Mixner's blog.

-Andy

If only

So I saw this video today in the Towleroad blog at Towleroad.com. This is a video that it would have been great for me to see when I was 19 or 20. It would have saved me a whole bunch of time, I think. In any case, I thought it was still powerful, and think it would be a good exercise for anyone you know that might have a problem with gay people. At least, if you can get those people to honestly participate in the exercise.

-Andy

This is cute

Help Save Bryce

And in ex-gay news, that continues to fascinate me. Read this link about a guy who apparently has disappeared after making a frantic call to his boyfriend that his parents were going to send him to an ex-gay program in Florida. It is shocking how callous parents can still be when they realize that their child is gay.

-Andy

Marriage Equality

A new article has been published in the Wall Street Journal by David Boies.

He has joined Ted Olson in a quest to overturn California's Proposition 8 based on US Constitutional law, stating in short that the laws banning same sex marriage deny gays equal protection and due process.

What's interesting about these two attorneys is that one of them was the lead attorney for Bush and one was the lead attorney for Gore during the recount mess that happened before Bush's first term as President.

It's an interesting case, and I'll follow it here.

-Andy