Straight Dude. Gay News. Episode 10: Louis J. Marinelli Reveals the Truth About NOM

The illusion that makes up NOM’s base of support, by Louis J. Marinelli

Straight Dude. Gay News. Episode 7: Confusion Over Same-Sex Marriage Laws

Original text of SB5

SB5 as passed

Ohioans protest SB 5 to save unions, domestic partner benefits

FYI: Senate Bill 5 DOES NOT redefine marriage in Ohio

Ohio’s Radical Anti-Union Bill Also Has A Hidden Provision To Deny Equal Rights To Same-Sex Couples

Ohio Antilabor Bill Goes Antigay

The Rachel Maddow Show, March 3

Wikipedia article: Same-sex marriage law in the United States by state

Straight Dude. Gay News. Episode 6: Maryland Marriage Equality

Sources:

Baltimore Sun: Gay marriage legislation filed in General Assembly

Text of SB116

WBAL TV: Some Christians Give OK To Same-Sex Marriage Bill

Equality Maryland: Marriage Equality - One Step Closer!

Baltimore Sun: Gay marriage has the votes to pass state Senate

Baltimore Sun: Gay marriage has the votes to clear Md. Senate

I recognize that smell.

The Pennsylvania Senate is discussing John Eichelberger’s SB 707, which would amend the PA constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman. The Judiciary Committee may vote on it as soon as tomorrow.

For more information see Thomas C. Waters's blog entry, which tipped me to the situation. See also Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents, whose blog swarm I'm joining with this entry. People like them know the situation in Pennsylvania much better than I. So I'm not going to tell you about it. But I will tell you a story.

January 27th was the last day of evidence in California's Proposition 8 trial. On January 29th Ron Prentice published a summary of the trial on the United Families International Blog. Here's the part that stuck in my head.

The controlling legal issue is not whether homosexual marriage is good or bad, but rather whether the people have the right to decide what is best.

Really?

Now that's interesting.

Because I thought that the controlling legal issue was the protection of the institution of marriage.

Let me check.

Yup. I was wasn't crazy. Ron Prentice is the Chairman of Protect Marriage dot com. Protect Marriage. Hmmmmm. I can't help but think that when he registered the domain name he thought that the core mission of his group was to, oh, protect marriage.

Make no mistake. When the Proposition 8 trial began it was all about protecting marriage. Just take a look at the Proposition 8 Trial Tracker and you'll see that. If Prentice's defense had had one iota of success in showing that same-sex marriages would harm anything at all, you can bet he'd be singing the same tune that was filling the air in early January. But he isn't. The tune has changed. Why?

I grew up on a dairy farm. My uncle sold the property when I was five, but we only moved a quarter of a mile down the road. So I spent my first decades walking the pastures and corn fields and ravines around that farm. I grew up accustomed to bad smells.

One day when I was in my early teens I was walking alone through the fields when I smelled something particularly bad. It was immediately apparent that something big had died. I followed the increasingly nauseating stench down into a ravine and, sure enough, there was the dead cow that I'd smelled hundreds of yards away.

Ron Prentice's words stink to high heaven. And just like the stench that hit me while walking through corn fields all those years ago, it doesn't take much effort to track the smell back to its source. In this case the big bloated cow carcass is Ron Prentice's desperation. He started by saying that he was protecting marriage, and the absurdity of that assertion has been illuminated. So now he's switching tactics. He'll say whatever he can to veil his hateful actions in a sham of logic.

When you look at the situation in Pennsylvania, don't be confused about What This Is Really About. The people who want to write discrimination into the state constitution want you to believe that it's about anything but discrimination. So they construct a What This Is Really About du Jour. What This Is Really About is plastic. What This Is Really About changes with the wind. Don't listen. Smell what's on that wind.

Follow your nose.

We Few, We Happy Few...

UPDATE: The vote was postponed but it's still important to call your senator and make your voice heard!

---

If you want to bring yourself up to speed on the state of the gay marriage battle, CNN Political Ticker has a very concise summary. The New York Daily News has a somewhat expanded overview, and NJ.com has an article about the supporters and opponents of the bill who showed up in Trenton yesterday. All of them remind us that the battle moves to Washington, D.C. next month.

Last week the New York State Senate voted 38-24 against S4401, the gay marriage bill. As I wrote here, I don't consider this vote a loss. I do consider it a call to action. And action is just what we're getting in New Jersey right now.

Over the weekend gay marriage supporters reacted to the news from New York with a fresh surge of activity and opponents realized that they had to take the battle a little more seriously.

Yesterday the bill cleared the New Jersey Senate Judiciary Committee. The full Senate vote is set for this Thursday.

I have a modest proposal.

Let's make those marriage equality opponents take it really seriously.

Let's win.

And.

Even if we don't win, that's not the point. We're progressives, so let's make progress. Let's make every call, every letter, every conversation count. The vote last week in New York was 38-24. 39% of the senators voted for the bill. How about we push those numbers as far as we can? And push. And keep pushing. And push some more. And after we've pushed as much as we possibly can, we put our hands on our knees and wheeze for a bit and then we stand up again and we push.

Here's one way folks in New Jersey can do that right now.

1. Show up in person at your senator's office.

2. Call your senator.

3. Write a letter to your senator.

4. Send an e-mail to your senator.

Most people don't have time for #1, so that leaves 2-4.  You may be surprised to hear me recommend #2 next: phone calls. I know I was surprised when I heard that senators pay more attention to phone calls than to letters. Don't buy that? Read this article about why New York Senator Joseph Addabbo, who was funded by LGBT groups, decided to vote "No" on gay marriage last week.

So get on the phone, New Jersey and Washington D.C.! Hate tends to get people off their asses and yelling into the receiver more easily than compassion, so you'd better believe that monsters like this are burning up the lines. Don't let them speak for you. Make yourselves heard.

List of links from this article:

CNN Political Ticker: concise summary of the state of gay marriage

Daily News article providing good overview, mentions D.C.

NJ.com article about supporters and opponents who showed up in Trenton, also mentions D.C.

"Loss", My Ass! (My article about why the NY vote was not a loss)

NJ Senator Lookup

NY Sen. Joseph Addabbo, Who Was Funded By LGBT Groups, Explains His "No" Vote on Marriage

NJ.com anti-gay-marriage screed 

"Loss" My Ass!

OK, first of all: we did not lose anything yesterday. We failed to gain something. There's a sodding great difference, isn't there?

New York State has never allowed same-sex marriage. Yesterday the New York State Senate voted on a bill intended to change that aspect of the law. The bill did not pass, so the law did not change.

Everyone focuses on the supposedly devastating 38-24 vote. The New York Times, just minutes after the results came through, published an article saying that "the vote... destroys the optimism of gay rights advocates". BULLSHIT! My optimism was not destroyed. Those numbers simply prompted me to grab a calculator and quickly figure out that 39% of New York State Senators voted for the bill. 39%! Forget for a moment that, in the current political environment, we were guaranteed an upper ceiling of 51%, the percentage of Democratic senators. Even without taking that into consideration, the enormity of those numbers is staggering. Just ten or twenty years ago the very notion of same-sex marriage was unthinkable. Yesterday 39% of New York State senators voted for it. My god, people, if that's not progress then I'm... one of those hyperbolic animals.

How the hell can progressives see that kind of progress and not wake up with a smile on their faces, feeling invigorated and ready to push that 39% to 40% and to keep pushing until we get the progress that we want? I'll tell you how. It's easy if you have an overweening sense of entitlement.

People have worked and bled and died for the progress of the last few decades. Unfortunately that progress seems to have given this generation a pathological teleology. The world should be the way we want it to be, so if the requisite changes don't happen it… breaks us. We can't accept that the world hasn't already conspired to be the way we think it should be.

Yesterday I "listened" to people on Twitter and Facebook begin the predictable chorus of "Fuck New York". Even more disheartening were the self-satisfied microscreeds against all the "stupid hicks" who live "north of the Bronx". Never mind that, of the eight Democrats who voted "No" on the bill, only two were from upstate. That's right. Of those Democrats who had the temerity not to give us what we wanted, only 25% were dumb hicks.

Twenty years ago, few would have dared dream we'd make it this far. But here we are, and we're celebrating by... treating this as a loss? Having made massive progress, can it be that all progressives can think of to do is throw a hissy fit because we didn't get everything we wanted right now?

Progress takes time and effort. A 38-24 loss is not a defeat. It is the blowing of a horn. All who hear it should take heart, and throw themselves into the battle with renewed vigor. Else we don't deserve to call ourselves progressives.

Say it with me: "We did not lose anything. We failed to gain something."

Yesterday.

But what about tomorrow?

Times Square Rally

It's too late for me to start writing about today's disappointing but unsurprising New York State Senate defeat of the marriage equality bill, so for now I'll just post pictures from the rally that occurred in Times Square tonight in response to the decision.

Keep the Pressure on for Marriage Equality

As a media contact for the office of Christine Quinn, I got the following e-mail a little while ago. Then I clicked the link and got the phone numbers of two Senators: David J. Valesky, D-District 049 (for Oneida, where I grew up and still own property); and Suzi Oppenheimer, D-District 037 (for Larchmont, where I live). I just called each office. I was thrilled to hear that Senator Valesky is supporting the bill, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that someone will get back to me about having him on this blog. I don't know yet whether Senator Oppenheimer is supporting it, but anyway I made the call and it felt great. I will be awaiting the outcome of the vote.

December 2, 2009

Dear New Yorker,

This is it.  The Marriage Equality Act is being debated on the floor of the New York State Senate today.  (You can watch it live at http://www.nysenate.gov/blogs/2009/dec/02/watch-senate-debate-marriage-equality.) 

We've been waiting for this day for a long time, and it's my hope that a majority of our senators in Albany will make the right decision and cast their votes for marriage equality.

Right now, I'm in Albany after having met with senators on both sides of the fence - and I can report that our leaders in the Senate are working very hard to get the votes.  Governor David Paterson, Senator Tom Duane, Assemblymember Danny O'Donnell and every one of our allies in Albany deserve our appreciation for getting us this far.

We need to keep pushing, though.  Please call or write your state senator now and urge them to vote for this bill.  You can find contact info. for your state senator at http://www.nysenate.gov/senators.  

It's my hope that marriage equality will soon be looked back upon as a great accomplishment that all New Yorkers achieved together.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Christine C. Quinn

Speaker

New York City Council 

Dangerous Emotions Over Emancipation

Two hours ago I was at the New York Historical Society standing in front of an original copy of the Emancipation Proclamation, signed by Lincoln. Seth Kaller, Inc. has an article with a good image of what I saw. Here's the text.

---

By the President of the United States of America:

A Proclamation.

Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:

"That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

"That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be, in good faith, represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States."

Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days, from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit:

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth[)], and which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.

And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.

And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty three, and of the Independence of the United States of America the eighty-seventh.

By the President: ABRAHAM LINCOLN
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.

---

The placard had this to say.

This copy of the Emancipation Proclamation is one of only twenty four signed by Lincoln known to exist. It originally sold for $10 at the Great Central Sanitary Fair in Philadelphia, one of a series of fundraisers the proceeds of which went to care for sick and wounded soldiers. The Philadelphia fair at which this document was sold in June 1864 was the only event of its kind that President Lincoln actually attended. The emotional response of his audience that day persuaded his advisors it would be too dangerous for Lincoln to attend another.

Emotional response. Too dangerous. It all sounds familiar, doesn't it? What kind of emotional response would you have if President Obama decreed that homosexuals would no longer be denied the 1,138 benefits, rights and protections provided on the basis of marital status in Federal law?

This beautiful thing won't change.

Over the last few years I've created a bunch of stations on Pandora by leapfrogging from one artist to the other: create a station based on someone I like, listen to that for a while, create a new station based on someone I like in that, lather, rinse, repeat. This process led me to another of last week's moments of synchronicity.

I'd been listening to a station that was pretty much all singer-songwriter chicks. One of the songs I'd thumbed up was Vienna Teng's "City Hall". I suspected that it was about gay marriage, but I hadn't listened closely enough to be sure. Naturally, when it came up last week I was more inclined to pay attention to the lyrics. When I did, it made me cry.

Between Thursday and today, I must sound like I cry at the drop of a Hallmark card. I don't. I doubt I cry once a year. But the thought of those people waiting ten years and then finally getting the opportunity they never expected - that did it.

Please listen to this, especially if you feel that two men, or two women, can't feel the same things for each other that a man and a woman can. In case you're wondering, as I did, Vienna Teng is not gay. She wrote this from the point of view of a friend of hers who got married in San Francisco in 2004.

If you're sure that the people in this song couldn't be all the things to each other that a husband and wife are, ask yourself why you're so sure. Have you ever talked to anyone like the women in this song?


City Hall
by Vienna Teng
me and my baby on a february holiday
'cause we got the news
yeah, we got the news
five hundred miles and we're gonna make it all the way
we've got nothing to lose
we've got nothing to lose

it's been 10 years waiting
but it's better late than the never
we've been told before
we can't wait one minute more

oh, me and my baby driving down
to a hilly seaside town in the rainfall
oh, me and my baby stand in line
you've never seen a sight so fine
as the love that's gonna shine
at city hall

me and my baby've been through
a lot of good and bad
learned to kiss the sky
made our mommas cry
I've seen a lot of friends
after giving it all they had
lay down and die
lay down and die

10 years into it
here's our window
at the vegas drive-thru chapel
it ain't too much
for 'em all to handle

oh, me and my baby driving down
to a hilly seaside town in the rainfall
oh, me and my baby stand in line
you've never seen a sight so fine
as the love that's gonna shine
at city hall

outside, they're handing out
donuts and pizza pies
for the folks in pairs in the folding chairs
my baby's lookin' so damned pretty
with those anxious eyes
rain-speckled hair
and my ring to wear

ten years waiting for this moment of fate
when we say the words and sign our names
if they take it away again someday
this beautiful thing won't change

oh, me and my baby driving down
to a hilly seaside town in the rainfall
oh, me and my baby stand in line
you've never seen a sight so fine
as the love that's gonna shine
at city hall

oh, me and my baby driving down
to a hilly seaside town in the rainfall
oh, me and my baby stand in line
you've never seen a sight so fine
as the love that's gonna shine
at city hall

Timely as Today's Headlines

I could hardly look on the internets today without seeing something that reminded me of Meet Adam and Steve. First came The Onion, with its beautiful way of sparing no egos: New Hampshire Passes Law Forcing Old People To Watch Gays Marry. I love the punchline:

Gay marriage advocates are already protesting the new statute, which they say unlawfully forces homosexuals to have gross old people at their weddings.

Then along comes Dan Savage with a column very near and dear to this blog. Dan's last reader submission was from a straight couple who plan to ask guests at their wedding to make charitable donations in lieu of gifts. They asked Dan to suggest nonprofit groups that advocate for marriage equality, and Dan responded thus.

Thanks for thinking of us, STBM, which is more than President Obama is willing to do: I would recommend that you put Lambda Legal (they’re lawyers, they sue) and Freedom To Marry (they’re advocates, they woo) on your list. Unlike most national gay organizations, Lambda Legal and Freedom to Marry do good work and get results. Thanks and congratulations!

I immediately added these to my list of churches and organizations to contact in order to get input on, and faces for, my blog. Then I reminded myself that it's early days yet, and I need to consider carefully before throwing myself behind organizations that look good. I'm not a political animal, and I don't like lobbyists or litigiousness. Hmmm... how could I make that last sentence more alliterative? Bah. Too late to think about it now. Where was I? Oh, litigiousness and thinking.

See, the thing is, I don't want to preach to the choir. It's all well and good to get a bunch of GLBT and liberal folks following this blog, but if that's all I get then I'll consider it a big, popular failure. I want to reach people who are like I would have been if I hadn't gone to Cornell: those who are living in small towns across the country and who've never knowingly met a homosexual. And I think I can say with authority that most of those folks not only dislike big government and political power brokerage, but they feel like their voices are never heard beneath the roaring of slick-talking politicians who listen only to the other slick voices coming out of places like New York City and Albany. Right or wrong, associating myself with groups like Lambda Legal and Freedom to Marry will ensure that I lose lots of the very people I'm trying to reach with the first page load.

What do you think? I'd appreciate the advice of anyone who has worked with these groups.

Now, on to an article that I found while googling "gay [something or other] in millburn nj". I'm not sure what the something or other was, because I've been doing a lot of googling like this lately. Anyway, I found an article in maplewood.blogs.nytimes.com that was published just hours earlier. It seems that...

the Maplewood Township Committee meeting last night ... voted unanimously to pass a resolution calling on state legislators to sanction same-sex marriage. It is believed to be the first of its kind in New Jersey.

Maplewood is a town within walking distance of where I live in Millburn, and is known for being gay-friendly.

I'm psyched about the Maplewood Township Committee resolution. I'm psyched to have found out from this article about Garden State Equality, "a New Jersey advocacy organization for marriage equality based in Montclair". I'm much more psyched, though, that the article also led me to tonight's daily face. See above.

The Wedding

Gooseflesh. That’s what I thought when I looked at the shoulders of the woman two seats to my left. Despite the bright sun, the cool breeze off Spring Lake had turned her bare shoulders to gooseflesh. I thought of how appropriate that expression was – how much her skin looked like the skin of those chickens I remembered from childhood. After their decapitated bodies had taken a turn in the scalding pot, the feathers had been easy to pull out. I remembered how the texture of their bared skin had seemed both grotesque and compelling. I looked forward at the gathering bridesmaids and saw that their shoulders were also bare. Did they all have gooseflesh?

The minister was a friend of the bride’s family, so at first I was sanguine about his avuncular style. Pretty soon, though, he started to seem needlessly puerile, as though he were plying a group of children for cheap laughs. It got worse when he made a joke about how God made Adam from dirt, and how that goes to show man's status. I was embarrassed and saddened because I saw in his comment the exploitation of hurtfulness.

Since college I've noticed that arguments between men and women tend to boil down to a very simple exchange: an adolescent boy screaming "You're ugly!" and an adolescent girl screaming back "You can't get it up!" Vitriol runs between the genders like a brackish river, and men like that minister are just smart enough to stick in a water wheel and draw some power from the flow. It's much easier to convince a woman that she should willingly stay behind her man if you smile and wink and say "Men are just big and dumb and we need someone to take care of us, am I right, ladies?" It was a morally bankrupt and intellectually slipshod disgrace, made worse by his simpering obviousness. It was also just a warm-up.

I wanted to believe it was the cold medication making me hallucinate but no, these words had actually just came out of his mouth: "It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." It had never occurred to me that anyone would actually speak those words out loud. Sure, maybe you'd give in to temptation and type that saying in an e-mail because you thought it was cute, but it beggars my imagination to think that someone would actually give breath to words that idiotic.

Now I can articulate my stupefaction at the thought that anyone would truly want to win people over with a silly rhyme. As rhetorical devices go, that's a... that's not even a pointed stick. It's a stick with an awkward bend in it that's not even good for poking. But at the time I wasn't full of ironic commentary. I was angry that someone had taken what should have been a hallowed ceremony and cheapened it by turning it into a political forum. I was angry that I'd been made a part of it. I was angry at myself for being naive enough to be surprised when I heard those words that, until then, had been nothing more than a silly joke.

After the ceremony I went back to the car and tried to sleep. I was sick as a dog from a sinus infection, so I had a good excuse to stay away from the reception. I kept toying with the idea of going back in there and starting up conversations in which people would ask me what I do and I would say "These days I spend a lot of time praying that, someday soon, homosexual marriage will be made legal in every state of this fine land of ours." Since I didn't want to make a scene, I thought that staying away was a good idea. Then again, I wanted to be with my fiancee at her friend's wedding reception. I fretted, failed to sleep, and eventually came up with a way to reconcile it.

To my mind, the minister had taken something precious and cheapened it unimaginably; what should have been a ceremony about love and commitment had become a whore's bauble. But that's no skin off my nose, right? Whore's baubles can be nice enough to look at from time to time. It wouldn't kill me to spend the evening in the presence of paste nestled between perfumed breasts.

So I went back in and danced with my honey and ate dinner. Then, being so sick that I was no good to anyone, I went back to the motel for about ten hours of miserable semi-delirium. My rage at having been made a part of a political statement with which I disagreed wholeheartedly became the cannon fire in my 1812 Overture of chills, sweats, and despising humankind.

There was something unavoidably familiar about my anger. My father had a robust disdain for bullshit, and my mother's side of the family had an overdeveloped disdain for outsiders. Both had more than a hint of a snarl and a sneer. And that's how I felt: disdainful, snarling and sneering. The idea of handing down hatred from one generation to the next like an heirloom is anathema to me. Yet there are parts of my father's disdain for bullshit that I heartily admire. I went round and round in my head, wondering how I could divorce myself from anger and, once that was done, do something useful with what was left.

I spent Monday helping to drive the twelve hours back from Michigan, almost completely failing to sleep, and mulling it over. I fell asleep as soon as we got home. The next morning, during that lucid state before waking, something useful came to me. As usual, it involved empathy.

When I was a kid, the word "nigger" was not that uncommon in my family. I vividly remember an incident during my teens when my uncle, sitting in the car with the rest of the family, pointed at a young boy running by and said "Look at that little nigger!" He smiled and laughed as he said it, and his need was immediately clear: the boy had to be obviously funny, with no explanation asked or given. At least I had the wherewithal to challenge him on that one: I asked “What about him?”, he said “Well look at him!”, I said “What about him??”, and he said “Never mind” and backed off. Of course he couldn’t explain the simple truth that the boy was not of our tribe, our pack, our particular little group of naked apes.

I wish I could say that that ugly word never made it past my uncle’s generation, but back in elementary school I used it on a girl in my class a few times, to her face. She was the only dark-skinned girl in town. I said it because it was easy - because it made me feel superior.

I remember listening to Eddie Murphy's breakout comedy routine on cassette during my early teens - it was the one that was later named "Delirious" when it was put on video. In it, he said the word "faggot" a lot, even employing the highly memorable epithet of “faggot-ass faggot!” I got quite a kick out of that. I don't remember whether I actually used the word out loud much, if at all, but it wouldn't surprise me if I used it as a generalized insult to other children.

What's the connection? Ease. It was easy for that minister to say "It was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." I understand this. I wish I didn't, but I do. Because I know how easy it is to say "nigger" or "faggot". All you need is sufficient ignorance to think of another human being as The Other.

I thought about all this, and about the moment during my early years at Cornell when, for the first time, I saw two girls holding hands. I could take you back to within thirty feet of where I was standing. I thought of what an important moment that was for me, and thought of the millions of people who haven’t knowingly met a homosexual. That’s when I got the idea for this blog: Put a face on The Other so that they're no longer The Other.

Each day I'll post the picture of a non-straight person and a short autobiographical passage. This is a very simplistic idea that (hopefully) most people nowadays don't need, and the truly hateful will ignore. But people who are capable of changing their minds when confronted with the evidence may look at this parade of faces on the screen and realize… they’re just people. My goal is to put a human face on what people like that minister try to turn into a punchline.