| Amy Hunt -- 04/02/2004 22:46 |
|
Governor Romney said state officials were "taking measures to do everything humanly possible to protect ourselves in our transit system" after the FBI and Homeland Security warned U.S. cities of Madrid-like backpack bombings on trains and buses this summer. Note to Mitt: Good use of your time. Much better than, say, fighting the grave threat of gay couples trying to make each other legit. I know your religious Right fans get hysterical and call us the equivalent of terrorists (Gary Bauer went so far as to say Vermont civil unions were "worse than terrorism"), but c'mon, you're a smart guy. Please keep your eye on the big stuff. We actually need you. |
| Amy Hunt -- 04/02/2004 08:35 |
|
THE HERALD. Did a Fall River foster mom who happens to be lesbian sexually assault the teenager in her care? I have no idea; there are dark and twisted souls everywhere in this world. There are also people wrongly accused, charged, even convicted of crimes all the time. So this morning, as I pick up the paper, I could not possibly have any idea what happened in Fall River. Most importantly, the anti-gay marriage Massachusetts Family Institute has no idea. Their attempt to use this story to some advantage as we look toward May 17th is, I guess, not surprising. (In press comments, MFI head Ron Crews said "It appears that children in homosexual relationships are not as safe" and, for good measure, added "Homosexual relationships are less safe.'') At this point the anti-gay camp will do or say just about anything. They are in a state of full-fledged gay panic, and they'd like to spread it around. And I guess it's too much for them to respect a little idea called "innocent until proven guilty" when they disregard the separation of church and state (which they refer to as "the so-called separation of church and state"). When they advocate for throwing minority rights up for a popular vote among the majority (which is what the Shia majority in Iraq would like us to allow them to do, but we won't). When they deny that all citizens here are all born free and equal, with rights that flow from the Constitution, and not from the approval of our neighbors. Get thee to a 4th grade civics class. LET'S RUN WITH IT. Yesterday, a Queens women and mother of two was shot in the back by her husband during yet another domestic dispute for them. The woman is paralyzed from the waist down. The couple's seven-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter were home at the time. Let's not let heterosexual men have marriage licenses and certainly not guns. See what happens? http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?B Last week, a 74-year-old New Hampshire women was arraigned in the kicking-punching-dragging death of her elderly sister, who had become a "burden" to her since moving into her home a year ago. Let's not let elderly sisters live together. See what happens? http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_ This past weekend, a New Orleans man accepted a plea bargain which included a promise to stay away from his daughter. He had been showing her Internet porn and raping her since she was seven. Let's not let heterosexual men have broadband. See what happens? http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/index.ssf? In 1997, senior citizen Woody Allen and his girlfriend's 27-year-old adopted daughter Soon Yi-Previn got a marriage license after a six-year romance. Mom Mia Farrow found out about her fella and her little girl years before, when she saw naked pics in Woody's apartment. Not illegal. Certainly icky. Let's not let heterosexual women have foster or adoptive children either. See what happens? http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,2 There are people who do things the rest of us find unimaginable. And as long they're heterosexual with a few bucks on them, they can get a civil marriage license. That's the issue here. And it's the only issue. |
| Amy Hunt -- 04/01/2004 09:11 |
|
SODOMITE MARRIAGE. In 1989, Satan-worshiper Richard Ramirez was convicted of thirteen murders, five attempted murders, six rapes, three lewd acts on children, two kidnappings, and four counts of forced sodomy. From death row at San Quentin, his desire for a marriage license was honored; he wed outside gal pal Doreen Lioy, with whom he is not allowed any sexual contact, sodomite or anything else. HOME SWEET HOME. Yesterday, less than a handful of Black Caucus legislators in Georgia put an anti-gay marriage Constitutional amendment over the top, ignoring Coretta Scott King and Georgia Rep. John Lewis, who tried to make them understand that they were approaching a civil rights movement. Some time ago, Ron Crews, head of the Massachusetts Family Institute, helped give Georgia its first so-called "Defense of Marriage Act." As a lawmaker there, he also tried to get creationism taught in public schools alongside the fact of evolution. After Crews' meager win here -- the prospect of constitutionalized civil unions, which many on the anti-gay Right believe are a bigger loss for them than gay marriage -- he's probably a little homesick. The link below will take you to a National Review piece by anti-gay activist Maggie Gallagher, President of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy. She argues that no amendment would have been better for their cause than the amendment they pushed forward here in Massachusetts because it creates a "substantive governing, constitutional principle" out of affirming and protecting gay relationships. http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/g |
| Amy Hunt -- 03/31/2004 07:04 |
|
EVERY LEGAL MEANS. For months, Governor Mitt Romney has taken pains to say that, as he works on his list of marriage resistance maneuvers, he will not break the law. At every press conference where he discusses delaying, disrupting, or denying the Goodridge decision, and in every statement from his office, he uses some form of this line: "Whatever I do will be within the bounds of the law." He has not yet said "I shall use every legal means at my command..." which is how Virginia Governor Thomas Stanley and Senator Harry Byrd responded to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education desegregation decision. But scratch the surface a bit and it really is just a question of tone. When black schools were determined inadequate, whites bought new land and raised temporary tar-paper shacks rather than share their schools, hoping that improvements would be an acceptable substitute for equality. Local officials tried to pass laws in advance of a decision in Brown v. Board of Education that would render it meaningless. After the ruling came down, white leaders shut schools down. They refused to appropriate money to integrated schools on the theory that a court may be able to order integration, but could not force local authorities to fund anything. The Brown decision said that education must be available to all citizens on equal terms, "where the state has undertaken to provide it." Segregationists saw a legal loophole and tried to take public schools private. Eventually they formed local Pupil Placement Boards that decided which students went to which schools (and you can guess who ended up where). And they had a field day with a line from the Brown II decision ordering them to desegregate "with all deliberate speed." How speedy, exactly, is that? Anti-gay activists are hoping that Governor Romney issues an executive order forbidding clerks from giving marriage licenses to same-sex couples on May 17th; he and his lawyers are digging into an arcane provision in the Massachusetts Constitution that gives him jurisdiction over "causes of marriage." Others are working to file a Bill of Address, calling the SJC justices who delivered the Goodridge ruling "oppressors," which is grounds for their removal. And the beat goes on. DANGER: CONFUSED GAYS. Is this the best Mitt Romney can do? By his own admission, the most "compelling" reason to block marriage licenses on May 17th is the possibility of "confusion" for same-sex couples if their neighbors vote against them in secret in November of 2006. Note to Mitt: Talk to your friends at the Massachusetts Family Institute who routinely urge their supporters (one of whom is you) to pray for the gays, who are inherently, preternaturally "confused." These people spend a lot of time thinking about Homosexuals (too much time if you ask me, or just about any psychiatrist) and they believe they can explain the mystery of my heart and my relationship with my partner: I'm not gay, I'm just befuddled. Nicer than "perverted." I'll take it. Anyway, please don't spend a lot of time worrying about us, Governor, we'll be fine -- but thanks for caring. RECOMMENDED. Robert Drew's documentary "Crisis" is an extraordinary, up-close look at the struggle between Attorney General Bobby Kennedy and Alabama Governor George Wallace, who personally barred the door to the all-white University of Alabama. Drew had unprecedented access and recorded a stunning blow-by-blow. As for this struggle here in Massachusetts, the documentary filmmakers are already here. History will be sketched out very quickly. This is the internet age. Look at you, reading a hastily written blog instead of a real newspaper column, or a book. Our own attorney general Tom Reilly has been more than a little disappointing on this issue. But it looks like, despite his personal feelings, he's moving toward his place in history -- and it's the right one. Also recommended: If you read one op-ed today, read Derrick Jackson's. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editor EMAIL. Got a nice one on the Caucus website. A woman wanted to say her church didn't show the nasty anti-gay propaganda video during Mass last weekend, like others did at the request of the Archdiocese. She wanted us to remember there are some good eggs out there. There certainly are. More every day. Thank you. |
| Amy Hunt -- 03/30/2004 09:09 |
|
Goodbye Chris Funnell, hello Dwight Duncan. I'm still sorting yesterday through; coherence, perspective may have to wait until tomorrow. But I do know something right now: Yesterday, the anti-gay camp lost far, far more than we did. They left with a stunningly small margin of victory. They were abandoned by lawmakers who they never thought they had to worry about. Yesterday, the ranks of honorable, principled people in the legislature grew and, in the weeks and months ahead, it will continue to grow. And many on the other side know that, in the largest sense, they have already lost this fight, it is only a matter of time. (To those lawmakers who have been leading the way for us and with us -- and to those who struggled honestly with their hearts through this last weekend and did the right thing yesterday -- "thank you" feels like such a meager response.) Governor Romney, most House Republicans, and Rep. Phil Travis, in order to make an attempt to block marriage licenses on May 17th and keep gay families stigmatized in some way, had no choice but to throw their support to Vermont-style civil unions, as repugnant to them as real marriage. Congratulations. You could not have achieved a tinier win: Your amendment attempts to confer equality under state law to same-sex couples, and write that attempt into the Constitution of the Commonwealth. Most importantly, the amendment the legislature passed shares a very important point of view with the opinions of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court: Civil unions are a separate, unequal, inferior, discriminatory institution set up for The Gays. That's a wall destined to come tumbling down, fast. Onward to May 17th. |
| Amy Hunt -- 03/29/2004 06:42 |
|
THE VIDEO: An anti-gay propaganda video was shown at Catholic Masses yesterday. It was distributed by the Church's political lobbying arm. The Archbishop requested it be shown. As the media story matures, it's less about the gay man who could not, after taking it all in at Mass, stay silent in his pew. The story is about the video. It tells people that if gay marriage or civil unions go forward, very small children will be urged in school, by teachers, to "explore their sexuality and question normal friendships." It tells people that little children, in school, will be taught sexual mechanics, and then get AIDS, and then die. It tells people that "civil unions discriminate against the poor and needy" by redirecting government benefits away from dying, bedridden widows and toward selfish, wealthy gays. It tells people gays will bankrupt the nation by demanding back pay for Social Security survivor benefits. It tells people that gays are not discriminated against because gays can change. It tells people that marriage between brothers and sisters, marriage among groups of people, is next. This, in Sunday Mass. It stinks to high heaven. I believe in my heart that the Church wanted it shown not to the world, but to small, tightly controlled groups of people -- like their most devout, easily frightened senior citizens at Saturday afternoon Mass -- who they have been desperately trying to inflame around this issue. Anti-gay activists must to be manufactured. It is telling that, once the media showed up at one Mass in Canton, it was not shown again in subsequent services. So, let the sunshine in. Let the fresh air blow through things. Everybody watch. Find the video at http://www.preservemarriage.org. ROUND THREE. Another Constitutional Convention. Another test of moral courage vs. accommodation, integrity vs. hypocrisy, fear vs. love, another great sorting out of leaders and lemmings. I have no choice but to believe the right thing will happen. There was not supposed to be a first Constitutional Convention that lasted two days; Speaker Finneran had planned a quick lethal injection for us. We walked into the second ConCon to news reports that it was, according to inside sources, "a done deal." It wasn't. We lived. What will happen today is anyone's guess. Conscience votes are like that. Whatever happens, we go in today believing Martin Luther King's promise: "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." |
| Amy Hunt -- 03/28/2004 18:53 |
|
THE REAL DISRUPTION. According to the press, a gay Catholic "disrupted" a Mass today in Canton after an anti-gay video was shown at the request of Archdiocese. Please watch it at http://www.preservemarriage.org. Please watch it and tell me what the real "disruption" was in the middle of Mass: Interrupting the liturgy with virulently anti-gay propaganda full of lies and hysteria and class resentment and race resentment and generational resentment? Or a person who, after taking it all in, could not stay silent. Could you watch it and say nothing? Try. Pay attention to the picture of the young lesbian couple juxtaposed with the bedridden, dying old women. She gasps for breath, hooked up to oxygen, alone, with no more government funded support because the newly married, selfish homos have run off with all the benefit money. Pay attention to the claim that those of us who have lost partners will demand unlimited back pay for Social Security survivor benefits, and bankrupt the nation. Count the lies. Count how many ways they are trying to divide us, make us fear and resent and hate one another. It is pernicious and disgusting. Watch the video. Tell me who and what really disrupted the Mass today. I did not think it was possible to be more ashamed to be Catholic, but I am. |
| Amy Hunt -- 03/26/2004 20:26 |
|
WE WERE WAITING FOR IT. The Washington D.C. parent company of Massachusetts Family Institute -- the Family Research Council -- distributed a brochure at the State House today. It begins with a story of a man who loves his horse and therefore wants to marry his horse. There is a picture of a horse. If I can marry my female partner, goes the argument, then there is no legal basis to deny this imaginary man the right to marry Mr. Ed. The photography in this very expensively produced brochure tells a story of its own -- and the real story the authors are after, the sneaky and profoundly uncharitable one. The staged photos of the happy straight couples are all people of some color or another who, of course, know about real civil rights and real discrimination. The gays are all white. The fake male couple are practically twins (proving that homosexuality is rooted in extreme narcissism, of course). And the fake lesbian couple has been caught in the middle of yet another argument. The same-sex couples are making no eye contact with the reader, no eye contact even with each other. They are vacant. They are not even couples. They are four alone people. It is a stunning, nasty piece of creative communication. And as it tries to condemn us, it reveals those who paid for it. I'm sure they think Jesus would try to demean us into disappearing, too. Yes, that's what Jesus would do with his gay neighbors. He'd order nasty stock photos and send them around. See you all at the State House Monday. Suddenly I can't wait. Bring your flesh and blood and smiles, bring your bright, looking-at-the-camera eyes, your looking-at-each-other eyes, your love, the truth of you. Let them buy all the stock photos they want. Let them go broke doing it. |
| Amy Hunt -- 03/26/2004 08:34 |
|
AWOL. If there are any daily readers out there, you probably noted that the day got away from me on Thursday. Days are like that lately. We are down to the wire -- again. ON TO ROUND THREE. As you probably know, last weekend a jury of United Methodist clergy acquitted openly lesbian Rev. Karen Dammann in a church trial. They couldn't bring themselves to throw her out of her 10-year ministry. They couldn't bring themselves to punish her for her honesty about her 9-year relationship with her partner, Meredith Savage, with whom she is raising a son. The Church's Book of Discipline says homosexuality is "incompatible with Christian teaching," and the rules forbid the ordination of gay clergy that won't go underground and lie. On the facts, the rules, tradition, the case was a slam dunk against Rev. Dammann. But her fellow clergy could not look at her and do the deed. (Even the Church's own prosecutor was, on a personal level, pleased with the decision.) As we go into round three of the ConCon on Monday, let's remember the power of honesty, courage, and self-respect -- the power of showing up, looking your fellow human being in the eye, and asking "can you really do this to me?" Take the day off from work. Call in gay or gay-friendly. With a few notable exceptions, lawmakers are just people, your fellow human beings, with hearts, with consciences. They know it's wrong to take away our right to marry the person we love -- a right they have themselves, a right they take for granted. They know it's wrong to force us into a separate, lesser, discriminatory category called "civil unions," a place they would not willingly go themselves. They know it's wrong to throw the rights of a minority out to a majority vote. Moreover, the question that may go on the ballot about our lives and our civil rights will not say "Gee, lawmakers want to know what you all think of this..." It will say "The Legislature recommends adopting the following amendment to the Constitution..." Lawmakers need to take responsibility for that. They are responsible for their votes. In two ConCons, our fellow human beings have not been able to get the deed done. Let's make it three and then let's be done with it. See you Monday morning. Your presence has mattered and it will again. RECOMMENDED READING. Kristen Lombardi of the Boston Phoenix has done some great reporting on the marriage debate. Her latest -- on what she describes as the Catholic Church's unprecedented "harassment" of Catholic lawmakers - is right here. http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/new Also, read it right here on Boston.com, the Church has announced an unprecedented voter registration drive to punish lawmakers who don't follow the Church's orders on marriage, including the creation of second-class civil unions, which the Church also opposes. In the story, Senator Mark Montigny (D-New Bedford, and a gay marriage supporter) says he "would love to have seen that kind of activity help me pass a bill on [requiring] the church report child abuse. I think that energy should be used to lobby for human service and poverty programs." Let's remember that Catholic voters, like Catholic lawmakers, often have different opinions than their priests and bishops and aren't afraid to say so. Polls have consistently shown Catholics are among the most supportive of gay marriage. So -- see you in November. http://www.boston.com/news/local/articl |
