Category Archives: Politics and Culture

Philosopher Mary Midgley on Darwin Versus the Darwinists


Theos, a UK-based think tank studying religion and culture, conducted an extended interview with British philosopher Mary Midgley last year to commemorate the Darwin bicentennial. (2009 was the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species.) Midgley and interviewer Nick Spencer discussed science as a historical enterprise, the political uses and misuses of evolutionary theory, and the “intelligent design” debate. (Hat tip to the Books and Culture newsletter for the link.) A brief excerpt:

Spencer: It’s fascinating isn’t it how, given the number of crises of faith his work catalysed, Darwin himself didn’t have one. The decline of his Christianity was gentle and gradual and it was no real loss. He certainly lived a life remarkably similar to that of the comfortable, liberal, rural Anglican clergyman he would have been had he gone ahead with his ordination.

Midgley: Yes, he did. I think that it was probably not much of a shock to lose his faith because of the kind of faith that he had, and he had not lost faith in the society, therefore, not in the ideals of the society. The thing he was not committed to doing was comforting the dying by telling them that they were going toheaven, wasn’t it?

My father became a pacifist because he was a Chaplain in the First World War for a short time, and he had to tell men in the trenches what they were dying for, and this was a poignant experience. I’m sure that will have been a thought that occurred to Darwin, and he was unwilling to do it. He had a lot of the clerical life, but he didn’t have that bit.

He says somewhere, doesn’t he, that eternal punishment is an abominable doctrine, sothere were enough really off-putting features in Christianity at the time for him not to betoo bothered if he had to put a great deal of it aside.

Spencer: His was a very propositional faith and when some of those propositions got challenged the whole thing collapsed. He was the first person to admit there was no particular emotional commitment; he distrusted the evidential worth of experience, and as [his wife] pointed out to him, your experience and your feelings are a very important element of religious life.

Midgley: Well, of course, it’s not only important in religious life. He wrote in his autobiography that he had lost a lot of the emotional side of life generally, and what he recorded and recognised clearly was already happening then – he lost his appreciation for music, poetry, landscapes, even scenery. He was becoming more and more obsessed by the need for formal proof, and the work of putting together the details of his argument obviously was important. But of course experience is also part of the evidence, of the data. You’ve got to accept what people tell you, and what they tell you is what they’ve experienced.

People talk about ‘scientific empiricism’, but it isn’t very empirical, it seems to me, because it’s so selective among the experiences that people have. It’s not interested in what you might call strong and positive experiences. The sense that all sorts of things are happening which we don’t understand is a very important element of experience, and anyone who doesn’t take that seriously is not going to get far.

Different approaches have to work together, you see. I’ve used repeatedly the analogy of the senses – we touch things and we also see them and smell them. Now, there’s no continuity between those things, but we use the relation between them to build the full picture. We know that there are optical illusions and also tactile illusions, and we use the one thing to correct the other.

John Ziman used a similar analogy with maps – a political map and a geological map describe the same phenomena but they are doing it in different ways, according to different questions. He highlighted how much we think in terms of diagrams and visua lthings as well. But there’s always a temptation to become wedded to one particular map, and I think the economic map is the one that is currently being taken to represent reality– the bottom line. When you find what the profit and loss is, that’s the reality. And it’s of course the one that’s really under attack at the moment.

Spencer: In Science and Poetry you point out that detailed thinking emerges from imaginative roots, and all science includes philosophic assumptions. I think that’s quite an unfamiliar thought to many people today. Do you want to unpack it a little bit, particularly in relation to Darwinism?

Midgley: Yes, we all have myths through which we explain the world. The word ‘myth’ is a bit awkward because it is sometimes used simply to mean ‘false’, but I find its other meaning very useful. I also talk about dreams and dramas and visions and so forth. Whichever way one talks about it, it’s about an imaginative background, a way of seeing a problem in the world which determines what questions you ask, how you select your questions. The idea that simply, honestly finding the answer to questions is all you need doesn’t work – you’ve got to have the right questions. I think that as the history of science has built up and emerged it’s become clear that this has been a very important factor at every stage.


Evangelicals, “Twilight”, and the Suppression of Female Desire


A teenage friend who shares my interest in shirtless hunks introduced me to the Twilight phenomenon, the insanely popular saga for young adults about a love triangle between a vampire, a werewolf, and a young woman with low self-esteem. I confess that I did enjoy the books and movies, mostly for the eye candy but also because the plotting is pretty good. I consider it a guilty pleasure, though, since the relationships and characterization are decidedly anti-feminist. Bella feels completely unworthy of her two superhuman squeezes, and has no interests in life except her romantic obsession. The guys’ treatment of her is also controlling and patriarchal.

The Other Journal , an online journal of theology and culture published by Mars Hill Graduate School, has posted an incisive series of articles by Kj Swanson about evangelicals’ embrace of Twilight. In contrast to Harry Potter, which Christian conservatives denounced for its supernatural themes, Twilight gets approval from evangelical commentators for its promotion of abstinence until marriage.

However, Swanson argues that the common ground between Twilight and evangelical culture is the more disturbing message that good women have no sexual desire, and that it is our responsibility to tame men’s uncontrollable lust by suppressing our own. The series also reflects complementarian gender stereotypes that often pop up in evangelical self-help books about relationships. Men are “naturally” protectors and women are “naturally” victims in need of rescue by a white knight (or sparkly white vampire). Swanson notes how this can lead to an abusive or self-destructive dynamic:

With Edward’s hypervigilance comes Bella’s understanding that aggressive control is an act of care and that protection is conveyed through anger. Consequently, when love is given primarily through protection, being in danger becomes a necessary scenario for receiving love.


For instance, in one distressing scene from New Moon, when Edward has temporarily broken up with Bella, she seeks out a group of men who had previously tried to assault her, so that Edward will telepathically sense her danger and reappear.

This impulse toward self-annihilation recurs at several other points in the book, driven by Bella’s sense that she has nothing else worthwhile to offer her loved ones except the sacrifice of her life. Noting similar themes in evangelical advice guides for young women, Swanson argues that Christian readers of Twilight are too quick to analogize Bella’s sacrifice to Christ’s, when hers comes from a place of shame rather than love. Swanson contrasts this to feminist theologian Phyllis Trible’s view that “the ‘self-effacing woman’ [in Bible stories] is not held up as a Christlike
model to emulate, but as a symbol of what Christ’s death called to an
end.”

Meanwhile, my teenage friend most definitely wears the pants in her relationship with her sweet quiet boyfriend, and has never been shy about declaring that she’d like to “bang” Orlando Bloom. Literature is received in complex ways.

Regie O’Hare Gibson: Slam Poetry Videos


This weekend, at the Florence Poetry Festival , I had the great pleasure of hearing champion slam poet Regie O’Hare Gibson. We were both Massachusetts Cultural Council grant winners this year, and I am just honored that the panel thought I was in the same league as this guy. Enjoy these videos from his appearance at Hampshire College in 2008.

“When They Speak of Our Time”

“Greek Tragedy for the Ig’nant”

Northampton Trans Pride 2010: Photos and Videos


Known as the lesbian capital of the universe, Northampton is also home to a sizeable and politically active transgender community. Last weekend, we hosted the third annual New England Transgender Pride march and rally. The event was semi-officially named “Northampton Trans Pride” (there was a last-minute change of sponsors) but was designed to be a community gathering for transpeople across the region. See coverage on p.8 of the Sept. 16, 2010 issue of The Rainbow Times .

A complete video of the march and 2-hour rally on the steps of City Hall, recorded by Adam Cohen, can be viewed on our North Street Neighborhood Association blog. Among the highlights: FTM trans elder and activist Bet Power, curator of the Sexual Minorities Archive, gave an impassioned speech calling for an end to transpeople’s status as third-class citizens. To commemorate the 9th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, 2010 Miss Trans New England beauty queen Toni Olin-Mignosa gave a sweet and reverent performance of the Star-Spangled Banner. In the crisp early-fall sunshine (so disturbingly reminiscent of that day in 2001), with the flag waving above her, the song was a quietly powerful statement that transpeople were claiming the ground of full inclusion in America.

Here are just a few of the hundreds of photos we took. Pictures of the march are mine, those of the rally are Adam’s.


2010 Miss Trans New England pageant winner Toni Olin-Mignosa (center) and fellow contestants Jasmina Andino (L), an activist for HIV+ and homeless youth, and Faye Coon (R), a spoken-word artist.


Representing the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition.


Pageant contestant Ava Cordero, who did a quick change into an equally fab outfit for the rally.


Translation, a transgender youth group. Check out the proud mom at left: “I love my trans son”.


“When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple…”


Our charismatic emcee and last year’s pageant queen, Lorelei Erisis.


Hard-rockin’ LezleeAnne Rios and her band. She won the People’s Choice Award at the pageant.


The obligatory photo of me in sunglasses. At left, the golden-voiced Arjuna Greist, a “folk n’ word” artist whose rendition of “O Tranny Boy” had us in stitches.


The event organizers. And a little old lady for peace!

A Stockholm Syndrome in Women’s Poetics?


Gently Read Literature is a monthly web journal of essays on contemporary poetry and literary fiction. In “The Myth of Women’s Masochism”, her essay in the September issue, Stephanie Cleveland takes aim at the eroticizing of violence by successful female poets. Her argument echoes the radical feminist critique of so-called Third Wave feminism, namely that young women today have bought into the rebranding of sexual exploitation as avant-garde and liberating, because it seems too hard to fight the patriarchy. See, for example, Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (Free Press, 2005).

Cleveland’s article begins thus (boldface emphasis mine):

A few years ago, I read an essay in Boston Review on sex education in the U.S. public school system. In that essay, poet and Harvard lecturer Maureen N. McLane praised self-proclaimed “sex-radical” Pat (now Patrick) Califa as a sexual revolutionary. McLane identified Califa’s “infernal trinity—family, conventional sexuality, and gender,” as the fundamental institutions “sexual conservatives wish to defend” (30). She then assured her readers that, although, “From one angle, Califa’s work [] feature[s] defenses of man-boy love, [her] sex-positive embrace of critical sexual thinking, wherever it might lead, remains, if not a model an incitement” (30). My question at the time of reading McLane’s essay remains my question for those who identify as sex radical while simultaneously claiming an allegiance to feminism to date—namely, what exactly is a defense of “man boy love” an incitement to? Put another way, if feminism involves a commitment to social justice, equality, and respect of persons, and if it also involves a commitment to the emancipation of women and children grounded in a rejection of sexual abuse and patriarchal sex (Bar On 76), how then could any incitement toward acceptance of child rape be consistent with a feminist approach to sex?

Far from radical, I would argue that the practice of sexualizing the bodies of children for adult men is actually fairly conventional, as old as patriarchy. Feminism, conversely, affirms the radical (and comparatively new) idea that all practices which violate the rights of women and girls to determine what can be done to our bodies are morally and ethically unacceptable (Bar On 76).

I bring up McLane’s essay here because I think it highlights the ways in which, in recent decades, feminism has been co-opted by a school of neoliberal individualism which aims at preserving—or at least making peace with—the sexual status quo. When pondered thoughtfully however, the fact of child sex abuse throws a pretty big wrench into the liberal argument that the right to individual expression in one’s sexual conduct needs to be upheld at all costs, as does the fact of rape. Our sexual relationships take place within a given social context, one under which all people do not have the same access to power. In order to deny a rapist the ability to “express” his sexuality on or in her body, a woman needs political, social, and economic equality with men; we currently have none of these. This means that a refusal to make judgments about sexual choices and sexual ethics, whether consciously intended or no, is a tacit endorsement of male-supremacy and a boon to those with the most power in contemporary culture—that is, white men.

Perhaps more importantly, abdicating the right to make ethical judgments about sex translates to an abandonment of the vulnerable and comparatively weaker; it is an extremely effective way of silencing victims of child rape. Critical sexual thinking on the other hand involves maintaining an awareness of the material context within which our relationships take place. It means choosing which versions of sex fit with the world we would like to create as feminists. This cannot be reduced down to simply following wherever sexual thoughts might lead—particularly not if they lead to acts of violation on or in another person’s body. That sort of following has more to do with cruelty, privileged laziness and irresponsibility than it does with revolution.

Sadly, I write at a time when postmodern ethical relativism has all but silenced critical thinking about sex in the academy. Many women working within the university system seem reluctant to challenge male-supremist ideology on sex directly; at a time when the predominant philosophical mode holds that nothing really means anything apart from the way we choose to interpret it, overt questioning of social inequity and misogyny do not win a female author any popularity points. But, if as Erik Anderson optimistically writes, “postmodernism as a loose set of aesthetic principles (or loosely principled aesthetic, or principally loose aesthetic) [may have already] ended or is ending” (1), I would argue that women’s poetry ought to be used as a weapon to help hasten that decline.

Instead of defiance however, in my reading of contemporary women’s poems I frequently find male dominance eroticized, masculinity deified, and the sexual subordination of women and children embraced or symbolically “played with,” but seldom challenged. The conventional notion of women’s supposedly innate sexual submissiveness seems to have saturated much contemporary poetic work as well, especially among women. We write as though we are afraid of creating anything that might dampen the erection of a male colleague. Men after all—even the sensitive, literary ones—have frequently laughed at our gentler, more egalitarian versions of sex; they’ve explained to us repeatedly that making love is dishonest, while fucking is truth. And we believe this, groomed to doubt ourselves, determined to prove we can succeed in the male dominated upper echelons of the poetry community….


Read the whole article here.

Book Notes: Carol Smallwood, “Lily’s Odyssey”


In Carol Smallwood’s novel Lily’s Odyssey (All Things That Matter Press, 2010), a retired scholar in a working-class Midwestern town struggles to process her memories of childhood incest and unravel its effects on her psyche.

This book’s strengths are its sharp characterization of people and cultural settings, and the connections it draws between domestic abuse and sexist institutions that conspire to keep it secret. On her long journey to claim her truth, the narrator must rethink not only her family’s official storyline of virtue and vice, but the messages from religious authorities and psychologists who dismiss a woman’s perspective. Metaphors from her scientific research give her a creative way to resist. This book shows how trauma can give birth to an artist’s intellect that notices and questions human behavior.

While I understand that the nonchronological structure is meant to show how traumatic memories bleed into the present, I personally wished Smallwood had thrown in a few more clues to indicate where we are on the timeline when a new scene begins. By the time I finished the book, I had figured out all the essential information, but orienting myself was sometimes distracting. On the other hand, perhaps that’s the effect she was going for. Being inside Lily’s head is the experience of an incisive mind condemned to spend most of its energy flailing around in a fog.

This review by Jan Siebold shares some more of the book’s highlights. Jan Siebold, a school library media specialist in East Aurora, New York since 1977, received her MLS from the University of Buffalo. Jan has served as NYLA Secretary, and received the NYLA/SLMS Cultural Media Award in 1992. She is the author of Rope Burn (Albert Whitman, 1998), Doing Time Online (Albert Whitman, 2002) and My Nights at the Improv (Albert Whitman, 2005), three middle grade novels on numerous award lists.

Some authors use the word “odyssey” to simply represent a journey or a passage of time. In Lily’s Odyssey author Carol Smallwood takes a more literal approach. Just as Odysseus spends years making his way home after the Trojan War, Lily struggles to find her true home in the world.

She has encountered her share of cannibals, lotus-eaters, sirens and monsters along the way, but it is her abusive Uncle Walt and his Cyclopic wife Hester (who turned her one good eye away from the incestuous situation years ago) that have haunted Lily’s thoughts and dreams since childhood.

Smallwood’s Homer-like use of a nonlinear plot is well-suited to the story since Lily’s journey is rather like trying to piece together a jigsaw puzzle. With intelligence and humor Lily navigates the passages of her life which include marriage, motherhood, psychotherapy and education. She even spends time in Ithaca while working on a Master’s Degree in Geology. In fact, geological references are abundant as Lily explores her lifelong fascination with the formation of the earth and her place on it. Readers can feel Lily’s sense of frustration at the ever-shifting underground plates that prevent her from finding solid footing.

Orphaned at an early age and sent to live with her aunt and uncle, Lily later explores her obsession about abandoned animals and plants, and eventually discovers its root in her childhood. What may seem obvious to the reader is not as easily seen by Lily,
whose vision of the past has been obscured by the trauma of abuse, insensitivity and denial.

The book begins with the death of Uncle Walt and Lily’s return to the house where she had spent her childhood. It is there that Lily begins to think about reinventing herself without the existence of Uncle Walt in her life.

The author’s use of imagery is at times stunning. “I heard the train whistle. I saw myself as a bird following the train as it wound its way through the landscape, leaving only smoke as evidence that it had passed.” Referring to her aunt, Lily thinks about “Tulips closed as tightly as Aunt Hester’s lips.”

Smallwood’s many cultural, historical, scientific and religious references are a nod to her readers’ awareness, intelligence and curiosity. They elevate the story and allow us to discover more about Lily’s world and our own.

On a basic level the reader can relate to Lily’s awkward attempts at relationships, and to her wickedly funny observations about people. We cheer for Lily as she leaves behind her dismissive husband Cal, the lecherous Dr. Schackmann and other toxic people whom she encounters. We understand as she questions the tenets that were instilled during her strict Catholic upbringing, including “the duties and sufferings of women as wives.” We yearn for Lily to find the illumination and peace of mind that she seeks.

In a particularly vulnerable moment Lily pens a letter to God. In the letter she writes, “Women need new paths. To find our way out of the old labyrinths requires more than one lifetime.”

Through Lily’s Odyssey, Carol Smallwood gives us hope that one lifetime might be enough for Lily and others to find their way.


Find out more about Carol Smallwood’s other writing and editing projects here. She is the editor of numerous anthologies about librarians, library science, and women’s writing careers.

Marriage Equality Versus Fertility Cult


After the federal court overturned California’s Prop 8 gay marriage ban earlier this month, conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat lamented the passing of a certain ideal of the family:

This ideal holds up the commitment to lifelong fidelity and support by two sexually different human beings — a commitment that involves the mutual surrender, arguably, of their reproductive self-interest — as a uniquely admirable kind of relationship. It holds up the domestic life that can be created only by such unions, in which children grow up in intimate contact with both of their biological parents, as a uniquely admirable approach to child-rearing.


Note the odd specificity of this “ideal”. Why “sexually different” (have you ever met two partners who were sexually identical?), and why “biological parents”? These ethically irrelevant qualifiers must be thrown in to preserve the tenuous distinction between procreative straight couples and everyone else.

I agree with Douthat, and with conservative defenders of marriage, that society does have an interest in channeling the disruptive force of sexual desire into stable relationships, surrounding physical intimacy with emotional safety, and orienting lovers toward a future that extends beyond their desires of the moment. Christians should want to strengthen marriage because it can promote integration of body and spirit. Sex without a long-term investment in your partner’s well-being presents a temptation to ignore the golden rule that one should treat others as an end in themselves, not a means to an end.

Thus far, we’re still in the realm of ethics — behavioral standards based on evidence of what is or isn’t conducive to human flourishing. We can express our judgments about marriage versus other sexual arrangements, in hopes that this will encourage responsible choices. But Douthat also wants to make judgments about types of people, deeming one group superior to another, although this serves no purpose because the differences between them are biological and beyond their control. Stigma will not deter the disfavored way of being; at best, it’s a very un-Christian appeal to pride as an inducement for straight married couples to be faithful spouses and parents.

Gay political columnist Andrew Sullivan responds on his blog, The Daily Dish:

…Ross’ argument simply ignores the existence and dignity and lives and testimony of gay people. This is strange because the only reason this question has arisen at all is because the visibility of gay family members has become now so unmissable that it cannot be ignored. Yes, marriage equality was an idea some of us innovated. But it was not an idea plucked out of the sky. It was an attempt to adapt to an already big social change: the end of the homosexual stigma, the emergence of gay communities of great size and influence and diversity, and collapse of the closet. It came from a pressing need as a society to do something about this, rather than consign gay people to oblivion or marginalization or invisibility. More to the point, it emerged after we saw what can happen when human beings are provided no structure, no ideal, and no support for responsibility and fidelity and love.

If you have total gay freedom and no gay institutions that can channel love and desire into commitment and support, you end up in San Francisco in the 1970s. That way of life – however benignly expressed, however defensible as the pent-up unleashed liberation of a finally free people – helped kill 300,000 young human beings in this country in our lifetime. Ross may think that toll is unimportant, or that it was their fault, but I would argue that a Catholic’s indifference to this level of death and suffering and utter refusal to do anything constructive to prevent it happening again, indeed a resort to cruel stigmatization of gay people that helps lead to self-destructive tendencies, is morally evil.

What, in other words, would Ross have gay people do? What incentives would he, a social conservative, put in place to encourage gay couples and support them in their commitments and parenting and love? Notice the massive silence. He is not a homophobe as I can personally attest. But if he cannot offer something for this part of our society except a sad lament that they are forever uniquely excluded, by their nature, from being a “microcosm of civilization”, then this is not a serious contribution to the question at hand. It is merely a restatement of abstract dogma – not a contribution to the actual political and social debate we are now having.

We gays are here, Ross, as you well know. We are human beings. We love one another. We are part of countless families in this country, pay taxes, work hard, serve the country in the armed services, and look after our own biological children (and also those abandoned by their biological parents). Our sex drives are not going away, nor our need to be included in our own families, to find healing and growth and integration that alone will get us beyond the gay-straight divide into a more humane world and society.

Or are we here solely to act as a drop-shadow to the ideal heterosexual relationship?
…


I don’t share much of my personal life on this blog. Regular readers know that I was raised by two moms. But I’d like to speak up now on behalf of another group that’s also slighted by the biology-obsession of the Prop 8 crowd: Adoptive families.

One would think that social conservatives, being pro-life, would want to encourage adoption as an alternative to pregnancy termination. But their rhetoric on gay marriage ties them in knots. As Sullivan observes, gay couples are parents too. The only way to tell them apart is to elevate procreative ability to a spiritual ideal. Inadvertently perhaps, this attitude wounds and discourages potential adoptive parents, reinforcing our fear that infertility is a kind of failure, an exclusion from the highest level of sacred marital union.

As my husband and I have proceeded on our journey to build our family through adoption, we’ve become sensitized to this fertility bias. “Don’t you want to try to have your own children?” well-meaning acquaintances might say. (What do you think we’re doing?)

Through extensive reading and conversations with other families, we’ve also become convinced that an open adoption–where the birthparents are an ongoing part of the child’s life–is beneficial for all parties, especially the child. This too can be a hard sell to friends and relatives shaped by the one-mommy-one-daddy culture. It gives Heather Has Two Mommies a whole new meaning.

I found an unlikely soulmate in sex columnist Dan Savage. In his open adoption memoir The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant, he describes attending an adoption education seminar with a group of infertile straight couples. While the others were grieving the loss of the biological child they’d expected, he and Terry were thrilled that, as gay men, their civil rights had progressed to the point that they could start a family at all. Savage speculates that a lifetime of hearing heteronormative rhetoric contributed to his straight companions’ identity crisis and exacerbated the pain of infertility (boldface emphasis mine):

Heterosexual identity is all wrapped up in the ability of heterosexuals to make babies. Straight sex can do what gay sex cannot, make “miracles.” The straights at our seminar had expected to grow up, fall in love, get married, make love for fun, and sooner or later make love to make life. Infertility did more than shatter their expectations; it undermined their sexual identities.

Straight sex can be recreational or procreational–or both–but gay sex can only ever be recreational. Gay sex is never a means, only an end, and the end is pleasure. Homophobes use this to justify their hatred of gays and lesbians: straight sex, since it can make a baby, is “natural”; gay sex, since it can only make a mess, is not. Babies make straight sex more important than gay sex, so straights are therefore more important than gays. Babies underpin all hetero-supremacism, from “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” to “Gays don’t have children, so they have to recruit yours.” Even when straights are using birth control, procreation still sanctifies straight sex. Even when straights are having sex that couldn’t possibly make babies (oral, anal, phone, cyber), the fact that these two people could make babies under other circumstances or in other positions legitimizes straight sex.

This is pounded into the heads of gay people and straight people alike. Gays grow up believing that their desires, pleasures, and loves are illegitimate; and straights who fall for the hype believe they gotta work that magic, gotta make that baby, or…what? A straight person who can’t make a baby isn’t really a straight person at all. And if you’re not straight, you must be…what? You’re like my boyfriend and me. Suddenly your sex is all recreational, like gay sex, delegitimized and desanctified. Oh, it’s an expression of love–but so is gay sex, and that never made gay sex okay. No babies means no miracles, no magic. The sex you’re having may still be pleasurable, but in a sex-hating (and consequently sex-obsessed) culture, pleasure is not a good enough reason, otherwise gay and lesbian sex would never have been stigmatized.

I sympathized with the straight people sitting around the conference table. I understood what they must have been going through. I had been through it myself, a long time ago. When I hit puberty, I got the news that I was functionally infertile. But the straight couples at the seminar had only recently gotten that news, and they were still adjusting to it. How much we had in common with them was driven home by the rhetoric the counselors used during the seminar. It was the rhetoric of coming out. The straight couples were encouraged to accept what they could not change. In time, they’d see their “problem” as a blessing. It was important to tell family and friends the truth, even if they might not understand at first. They might in their ignorance ask hurtful questions, but be patient and try to answer. And while it is possible to live a lie, possible to adopt a child and pass it off as your biological child, no one can spend a lifetime in the closet.

Now we all had some common ground.
(pp.25-26)


Ted Olson Defends Prop 8 Victory on FOX News


In this 7-minute video, constitutional lawyer extraordinaire Ted Olson eloquently rebuts FOX News commentator Chris Wallace’s effort to pin the “judicial activist” label on him. A longtime hero of the libertarian Right, Olson gives our cause a bipartisan face. Olson argues that in overturning California’s gay marriage ban, the district court did not create new rights, but rather ensured that a well-established fundamental right was equally extended to all citizens. Send him a thank-you note at the Courage Campaign website.


Northampton Celebrates the Prop 8 Decision


(From left: Princess Queerpants, Ericka Soto, transgender activist Trystan Dean, & Rev. Tinker Donnelly. Photo by Adam Cohen.)

Northampton yesterday celebrated the overturning of California’s gay marriage ban at a rally organized by Gary Lapon from the W. Mass. chapter of Equality Across America. Joyful, tearful speeches marked how far we’ve come, yet also reminded us not to forget other ongoing civil rights battles, for GLBT folks and others. It can be hard for an embattled minority to avoid tunnel vision, focusing on one’s own struggles without making the leap to the broader realization that everyone is affected when anyone is oppressed. I always appreciate how Gary, a socialist, connects the dots between issues like gay marriage and employment discrimination, transgender issues, racism, and immigrants’ rights.

Enjoy this half-hour video, recorded by Adam Cohen. Speakers include Gary, Trystan, Tinker, Michael Fiorentino, Kate Losey, Ben Taylor, and yours truly (around the 27-minute mark).



Federal Court Rules “Proposition 8” Gay Marriage Ban Unconstitutional!


Hooray!

U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker of San Francisco has issued a landmark ruling in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, overturning California’s Proposition 8 gay marriage ban as a violation of the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the U.S. Constitution.

The Courage Campaign’s Prop 8 Trial Tracker has posted a thorough analysis of the 138-page decision (read the full text here).
Go send them a donation; they’ve worked hard to inform the public about
this historic legal battle, despite the other side’s efforts to keep
the proceedings secret.

Judge Walker ruled that there is no rational basis for the government to impose gender-based restrictions on the fundamental human right of marriage (boldface emphasis mine):

The evidence shows that the movement of marriage away
from a gendered institution and toward an institution free from
state-mandated gender roles reflects an evolution in the understanding
of gender rather than a change in marriage. The evidence did not show
any historical purpose for excluding same-sex couples from marriage, as
states have never required spouses to have an ability or willingness to
procreate in order to marry….Rather, the exclusion exists as an
artifact of a time when the genders were seen as having distinct roles
in society and in marriage. That time has passed.

The right to marry has been historically and remains the right to
choose a spouse and, with mutual consent, join together and form a
household….Race and gender restrictions shaped marriage
during eras of race and gender inequality, but such restrictions were
never part of the historical core of the institution of marriage….Today, gender is not relevant to the state in determining spouses’
obligations to each other and to their dependents. Relative gender
composition aside, same-sex couples are situated identically to
opposite-sex couples in terms of their ability to perform the rights and
obligations of marriage under California law….Gender no longer
forms an essential part of marriage; marriage under law is a union of
equals.

[…]

Plaintiffs do not seek recognition of a new right. To characterize
plaintiffs’ objective as “the right to same-sex marriage” would suggest
that plaintiffs seek something different from what opposite-sex couples
across the state enjoy —— namely, marriage. Rather, plaintiffs ask
California to recognize their relationships for what they are:
marriages.

(And that, folks, is why gay marriage is a feminist issue.)

The court concluded that the ban was purely motivated by anti-gay animosity: “Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California
Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to
same-sex couples.”

Though the decision was immediately appealed and is likely to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, a trial judge’s factual findings are entitled to great deference on appeal. Thus, it’s significant that Judge Walker devoted 100+ pages to a thorough examination and rejection of the other side’s factual claims that gay marriage harmed children, straight marriages, and society as a whole.

Watch this space for video of tomorrow’s celebratory rally and kiss-in on the steps of Northampton City Hall. I’d better go iron my rainbow-striped pants.