Category Archives: Politics and Culture

Cyril and Priscilla Defend Traditional Marriage


Parodies of the National Organization for Marriage “There’s a Storm Gathering” advertisement are still proliferating on YouTube. The ad is such a spur to creativity that one could almost hope for NOM to release more of them, were it not for the fact that their scare-mongering tactics could actually convince people to take away our families’ rights.

Meanwhile, always alert for that silver lining behind the storm cloud, my friend Greg and I were inspired to make our own video with our new friends “Cyril” and “Priscilla”:

Here are some more of our favorites from the web:



Another Stripe in New England’s Rainbow


Yesterday, Maine joined Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa and Vermont in establishing equal marriage rights for same-sex couples. Maine Gov. John Baldacci (D) became the first governor to sign a marriage equality bill. Kudos to Equality Maine and MassEquality volunteers who helped ensure passage of this important civil rights legislation.

Meanwhile, New Hampshire’s marriage equality bill has passed the House and Senate, and awaits a decision by Gov. John Lynch, who has previously said that he favors civil unions but would restrict “marriage” to heterosexual couples. If you’re a NH voter, contact Gov. Lynch now to let him know that you support full equality. Follow this issue on the New Hampshire Freedom to Marry website and find out how you can help. MassEquality is also organizing a door-to-door canvass in NH this Saturday; sign up here.

And in Washington, D.C., the city council approved legislation to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states, in a 12-1 vote, with Marion Barry as the dissenter. (With respect to Barry’s claim to “stand on the moral compass of God,” I’ll let his Wikipedia entry speak for itself.) It’s tragic that this is becoming a blacks-versus-gays issue, at least according to the rhetoric of the African-American ministers who vowed to fight the measure. I understand that African-American families have much to lose in a culture of sexual libertinism, but this seems to me like a classic instance of a dominant group (wealthy white heterosexual elites) playing two oppressed groups off against each other so that neither one makes progress. Mass-marketed obscenity, poverty, sexism, a failed drug war, and the legacy of slavery are far more responsible for family instability. But the folks who profit from all of the above would rather we blamed the gays.

This 2007 article from the Contra Costa Times offers some interesting facts about the silencing of black gay Christians:

Fourteen percent of the same-sex couples in the United States are black, and gay and
lesbian black families are more likely to include children than other races, according to a
2005 analysis of Census data by the National Black Justice Coalition and the National Gay
& Lesbian Task Force.

The year before, a Pew Forum survey found 64 percent of black respondents opposed same-sex
marriage.

Some other good links on the issue:

http://www.witnessfortheworld.org/ourweeklyarticle.html
http://gayspirituality.typepad.com/blog/2004/04/black_christian.html
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/8/4/9/0/p184901_index.html

Northampton Pride 2009


Every day is Pride Day at Reiter’s Block, of course, but this weekend I had the chance to celebrate with nearly 10,000 GLBT folks and straight allies at Northampton Pride. My husband and I marched with friends from our church, St. John’s Episcopal Church in Northampton, and then I tabled for MassEquality. If you haven’t already done so, visit their website and send a message to your Massachusetts legislators to support the transgender non-discrimination bill.

Photos below are by my man Adam Cohen. He went home to do some actual work after the parade, so I don’t have pictures of the stage acts from the afternoon, because carrying around the camera would have interfered with my ability to eat ice cream and buy rainbow-themed jewelry. I particularly enjoyed the performances by poet-songwriter Arjuna Greist, who sang about Jerry Falwell being forgiven by the queer angels in heaven, and the Pioneer Valley Gay Men’s Chorus (the cute young interpreter put a little extra flair into his hand gestures, if I’m not mistaken). Towards the end, our loud and proud emcee Lorelei Erisis reminded us that we were also celebrating on behalf of all the GLBT people in countries where it’s not safe to come out.

Marchers gather in Lampron Park for the start of the parade.

From left: Shawn, Lady Marmalade, David, and Jim.

The usual suspects.

City Councillors Marianne LaBarge and Michael Bardsley. Vote Mike for Mayor!

Jewish Community of Amherst’s Rabbi David Dunn Bauer says, “That’s Rabbi faggot to you.”

More faith groups show the flag.

Jack Hornor, the head of our local MassEquality chapter.

The parade begins.

Dueling signs (College Church is our local evangelical congregation).

A Bridge Street resident shows pride, country-style.

Crowds line the Main Street parade route.

Mike with the Rev. Dr. Andrea Ayvazian from Haydenville Congregational Church. HCC had the largest church-group presence (the Daily Hampshire Gazette said 50 people) and the best T-shirts, which said something like “I love my gay neighbor…straight neighbor…Muslim neighbor…addicted neighbor…” etc.

The one and only Lorelei Erisis.

This kid’s picture should be next to “fabulous” in the dictionary.

See you in 2010, everyone!

Best “National Organization for Marriage” Video Parody: Stephen Colbert


After the recent gay-marriage victories in Iowa and Vermont, a mysterious new conservative group called the National Organization for Marriage released an apocalyptic TV commercial, “There’s a Storm Gathering,” which alleged that gay-rights initiatives are taking away Christians’ religious freedom. Now, I could write a serious blog post about the contradictions of invoking the liberal-pluralist language of individual rights and tolerance to defend religiously motivated restrictions on gays’ civil rights. And maybe I will soon. But the parodies of the NOM video that have sprung up all over the web offer a more memorable rebuttal than I ever could.

First prize goes to The Colbert Report’s spot from Thursday night. Noting that New York’s Gov. David Paterson has introduced a same-sex marriage bill, our favorite mock-conservative mourns for “the good old days when our  governor upheld the traditional definition of marriage as being between a man, a woman, and an Emperor’s Club hooker.” There’s a great gay storm gathering, and “pretty soon the winds will be blowing each other.”

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Colbert Coalition’s Anti-Gay Marriage Ad
colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

The characters in Zane Johnsen’s spoof ad speculate on what will happen when a nice hetero family sees gay couples on TV: “It is like a flood in the living room and the whole family is being washed away by the wiles of Satan and his dark army of homos…Peter begins playing with Molly’s dolls…Your wife leaves the house a mess and goes back to college…”

This more serious ad from GoodAsYou.org debunks the factual claims of the original. “There’s a bullshit storm gathering.” Indeed.

And for sheer creativity, as well as some adorable visuals, the prize goes to this ad sponsored by The National Association of Organizations Against Cat(s) Licking Each Other(s) Organizations Committee (NSOACLEOOC).

Thinking of creating your own video for marriage equality? Enter it in Project Pushback’s contest before May 18 and you could win $2,500. Project Pushback is an initiative of the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center.

Defense-of-Marriage Laws as Religious Violence


On the progressive Christian website Religion Dispatches, John Pahl, a professor at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, makes some concise and cogent arguments that “defense of marriage” laws such as Proposition 8 are a form of religious violence. Laws restricting civil marriage to one man and one women, Pahl writes, “violate sacred texts, are idolatrous, and scapegoat a powerless group.” I particularly appreciated this argument, which I hadn’t heard before:

DOMA Laws perpetuate an association of sex with power, and thereby do damage to any sacramental sensibility that might remain in association with even heterosexual marriage. As Hendrik Hartog and other historians have shown, marriages have shifted in the modern era from patriarchal patterns of coverture to social contracts in which couples seek mutual fulfillment. Such contracts might be compatible with a sacramental sensibility, since they entail pledges of sexual fidelity and commitments to share social resources and responsibilities, along with (one might argue) other gifts of God. DOMA Laws associate sexual fidelity with legislated forms of coercive power, and inhibit the deep trust and mutuality intrinsic to modern (and sacramental) marriage. They establish hierarchies of relationships, and associate heterosexual unions (and sexual practices) with dominance.

Read the whole article here. Other recent articles of interest at Religion Dispatches include an overview of progressive Christianity’s diverse roots, and an investigation of the Christian Patriarchy movement.

Equal Marriage Rights Win in Vermont


The Vermont legislature today voted to override the governor’s veto of a marriage equality bill that had passed last week. The law permits same-sex couples to marry, and recognizes such marriages performed in other states. Vermont now becomes the fourth state to recognize same-sex marriage, and the first to have done so by direct legislative initiative rather than a court decision. Thanks are due to Vermont Freedom to Marry, MassEquality, and all the other activists and volunteers who contacted their elected officials to speak up for equality. From the Vermont Freedom to Marry e-newsletter:

This is a proud day for Vermont and Vermonters. Throughout this three and a half week process, we have engaged with one another with as much civility and respect as possible given the intensity of the heartfelt views many of us — across the spectrum — brought into this debate. And in the end, we did the right thing. The forces of justice, fairness and love proved far stronger than one man’s veto pen.

And along the way, we built new bridges. The debate galvanized the majority of Vermonters in the quest for fairness and inclusion, uniting the business community, clergy and ordinary folks from the four corners of our state. In our editorial pages we’ve seen compelling calls for justice, personal stories, and thoughtful analysis. And in communities around the state, thousands of Vermonters stepped up to the plate — writing your legislators, coming to the Statehouse, knocking on doors, and making phone calls. Some of you have never engaged in the political process before, and some hadn’t thought much about the freedom to marry until it hit the front page. But you opened your hearts, heard a better future calling, and dedicated yourself to making our world a more loving place.

And the courage of every single legislator, and the commitment of every single volunteer and donor, has made a difference. We made it over the top without a cushion. Every single one of us has truly mattered.

Your actions matter to Sandi and Bobbi, who can finally get married right here in their own home state after 42 years of committed life together — through life-threatening sickness, job loss, and the challenges of parenting, as well as the joys of raising a child, being grandmothers, and sharing each other’s company.

Your actions matter to Nina and Stacy who have spent a dozen years advocating for children of gay and lesbian parents — including their own. It matters to their son, Seth, who deserves to grow up in a world that recognizes, respects, and protects his family as much as any other.

Your actions matter to Scott, who as an adolescent struggling with his sexuality regularly contemplated suicide because he felt less worthy than his heterosexual siblings. And to the next generation of Scotts whose load will be lighter in a world where our laws don’t reinforce outdated social stigmas.
Your actions matter to kids that haven’t yet been born, youngsters who don’t yet realize how we made a better world for them, and soulmates yet-to-be-joined by fate or good fortune.

Vermont can serve as a beacon of hope to the kid on the playground in Indiana, bullied by his peers because he’s not macho enough. To the lesbian mother in Georgia in fear of losing custody of her child because she’s gay. And to the worker in Montana who is afraid to come out to his boss for fear of losing his job.

To all of you — thank you for making this difference!

Meanwhile, a gay-marriage bill has passed the New Hampshire House and is awaiting action in the Senate, and similar bills are pending in Maine and New Jersey. Also today, the Washington, D.C. city council voted to recognize same-sex marriages that were performed legally in other states. Washington, D.C. already has a civil-unions law and is considering a move to full marriage equality, which will need approval from Congress.

To volunteer for phone-banks targeting these states, contact MassEquality.

Gay Marriage Victory in Iowa, Veto Threat in Vermont


Gay marriage became a little more mainstream Friday when the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously upheld a lower court’s ruling that the state’s ban on same-sex unions was unconstitutional. The high court agreed that a law restricting marriage to one man and one woman violated the state constitution’s equal protection clause. The legislature “excluded a historically disfavored class of persons from a supremely important civil institution without a constitutionally sufficient justification,” the justices concluded. Read the court’s decision here.

According to news reports, state lawmakers have little interest in pushing for a constitutional amendment to overturn the ruling. California, watch out: the mantle of progressive leadership may be passing from you.

Meanwhile, in Vermont, both chambers of the state legislature voted by a large majority to pass a law that would grant equal marriage rights to same-sex couples. Vermont’s civil unions law offered many of the same legal benefits as marriage but GLBT advocates had argued that the two-tier system created the appearance of second-class citizenship.

Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas has vowed to veto the law. The override vote could occur as early as this Tuesday. Call the governor’s office at 802-828-3333 and ask Gov. Douglas to respect the will of the people and not stand in the way of civil rights for all families. MassEquality is also organizing a phonebank to call Vermont voters this weekend. You can make calls at their Boston office or use their nifty new telecommuting software to call from home. 

“Blogging for Truth” Counteracts Hate with Stories of GLBT Lives


A new collaborative website for GLBT folks and their allies, Blogging for Truth, is collecting examples of virulent anti-gay propaganda from the radical right, and urging pro-gay bloggers to counteract those lies with the stories of their own loving, wholesome, spirit-filled lives.

Want to help? Sign up to be added to their blogroll; then, during the week of May 25-31, 2009, “LGBTQ bloggers and all allies are invited to write articles about the truth of our existence and lives. To blog facts and/or the results of real scientific studies carried out by real scientists. To blog your personal experiences, and how the hate affects you personally.”

“Thin” by Lauren Greenfield Shines Light on Anorexia and Its (Mis)treatment


Acclaimed photographer Lauren Greenfield’s movie Thin was shown this week at Smith College, in connection with an exhibit of her photographs at the college art museum (now through April 26). This cinema-verite documentary, which first aired on HBO in 2006, tells the stories of four young women with severe anorexia/bulimia who are in-patients at the Renfrew Center, an eating-disorders clinic in Florida. Greenfield writes on her website:

Every girl is affected by the desire to be thin. In the United States, we grow up feeling like our bodies are an expression of our inner selves. To be thin is to be beautiful, disciplined, and even moral. Fat is equated with laziness, slovenliness, a lack of regard for oneself, and a deficiency of self-control….

The making of Thin was a continuation of my decade-long exploration of body image and the way the female body has become a primary expression of identity for girls and women. I spent five years photographing and interviewing girls and women around the country for a book and exhibition called Girl Culture. In that work, I explored the way the body is a medium for girls to express their identities, ambitions, insecurities, and struggles. I was interested in the fact that girls learn from an early age that a woman’s power comes from her body and its display. The way girls present, decorate, reveal, and manipulate their bodies is a reflection of society’s conflicting messages and expectations of women. The female body has become a tabula rasa on which one can view the interplay between society’s imprint and the individual’s voice and psychology.

In this context, the pathology of eating disorders is compelling, symbolic, and important to understand. It is extreme and atypical, but unlike most other mental illness, it has a visible relationship to the values of mainstream culture.

Thin is an excellent, important, heartbreaking film that raises more questions than it answers. For me, and the Buddhist friends with whom I saw the movie, the issue of anorexia was actually overshadowed by what we perceived as the abusive tactics of the clinic staff. In a strange way, the treatment program mirrored back the patients’ obsessively narrow focus on food and weight, setting up a contest of wills centered on starving versus force-feeding. Staff members constantly accused the women of lying, and worked to break up friendships between them, for fear that they would conspire to break the rules. Doublespeak abounded, as when the counselors used the word “support” to describe searching the patients’ rooms, and said that a patient (Polly, one of the four main characters) lacked “integrity” because she had covered for friends who violated house rules about smoking in the bathroom.

It was almost unbearable to watch the scene where the counselors browbeat Polly’s friends into turning her in. After paying thousands of dollars, she was kicked out, still not cured, because she had given another girl some antidepressants and gotten an illicit tattoo. Polly committed suicide in 2008.

Another of the film’s main characters had to leave because her insurance ran out (a not uncommon occurrence at the clinic, it appeared), and others reverted to purging and food restriction almost immediately after treatment ended. To what end, then, were all these violations of trust?

I’m no expert, but it seems to me that women with eating disorders need to be given a collective framework for their experience–a political and/or spiritual analysis to help them understand that the culture is sick, so that they can channel that immense willpower into social change instead of self-destruction. Where are the radical feminist anorexia clinics?

Abuse of Women, Misuse of Faith


In a new article on the Relevant Magazine website, The Church and Domestic Abuse, reporter Lyz Lenz describes in chilling detail how conservative churches keep women in abusive relationships. Citing the sanctity of marriage, women’s duty to submit to their husbands, or the general Christian obligation to forgive wrongdoing, these faith communities wholly ignore the power imbalances that were the primary focus of Jesus’ own moral teachings. Lenz writes:


I can’t tell you her name or how I know her. This is because she is still living with her husband despite years of emotional and physical abuse. He’s cheated on her and cleaned out their bank account to spend on drugs, pornography and online gambling. She left him briefly after a young girl accused her husband of molestation, but she went back to him after a week. Why? I asked her.

She told me that a woman spoke at their church a couple weeks before. The speaker explained how her husband used to be violent, but she didn’t leave him because she knew that God’s plan for a marriage was that it should last forever. Once, the husband’s violence put their baby in the hospital. When he saw what he’d done, he repented and was never violent again.

“That’s why I went back,” the woman told me. “What if it doesn’t end?” I asked. But the woman didn’t answer. The conversation was over.

According to the Department of Justice, almost one-quarter of Americans were raped and/or physically assaulted by a current or former spouse, cohabiting partner or date at some time in their lifetime. Jocelyn Andersen, a Christian domestic violence survivor and author of Woman Submit! Christians & Domestic Violence, argues that the Church’s teachings on women and submission have given rise to an epidemic of domestic violence among Christians. In her book Quiverfull, journalist Kathryn Joyce argues that the Christian belief system, which focuses on women’s submission and the headship of men, encourages the abuse of women. In his book Domestic Violence, What Every Pastor Needs to Know, Al Miles reveals that the theological training and beliefs given most clergy can actually contribute to increased violence and abuse of the victim. Christianity, according to some, is the problem….

Later in the article, Lenz tells the story of a woman who was ostracized by her church for trying to divorce her abuser:


“I was raised in the church and fully intended on marrying someone who fully shared my faith,” says Lisa Van Allen, a licensed therapist and owner of Van Allen and Associates. “I went to a Bible school and came home and met the man who would be my husband at church. There was a total of three years from the time we started dating until we were married. ”

Not everything was perfect. Van Allen found out later that there were some people in the church who knew her husband had problems, but no one told her about them at the time. She says: “When it got closer to the wedding, I had some concerns. He struggled with intimacy. Anything with touch or opening up, he pulled away.” Van Allen took her concerns to her pastor who told her that they were just pre-wedding jitters and all the trouble would go away once they were married.

But it didn’t go away. “In the car on the way to the honeymoon, I knew I had made a horrible mistake,” she says. Her husband began to exhibit bizarre behavior on the honeymoon: He locked himself in the bathroom and ranted and raved in front of the mirror. When they got home, the physical abuse began. Again, Van Allen took her concerns to her pastor, and he told her she was nagging and henpecking. She talked to her pastor a third time he told her, “You go home and you obey your husband and everything will be fine.”

The violence escalated. At one point, he exploded and pushed her down the stairs. Van Allen tore a ligament and hurt her back. She told her parents who confronted her husband, but it didn’t help. “The way I was raised,” Lisa says, “divorce was never supposed to be an option.” Van Allen and her husband moved and went to a new church, but there she experienced the same accusations and stonewalling she endured at her previous church. “No one did anything,” she recalls. “Most of the time I was put down, I was told I was ‘pushy’ and not being ‘in submission.'” The violence escalated and Lisa reached out to a professor she was working with in graduate school. He got her husband into a drug trial and his personality improved. “Toward the end of the trial,” Van Allen says, “I went to the pastor and I told him how sick my husband was and how the drugs had helped, but that I knew he would go off them. I asked them for help and again, they blew me off, like they did before.”

Van Allen stayed in her marriage for 10 years because of the advice of her church. “It was hard for me,” she says. “I was raised to believe that pastors were second to God and that wives were supposed to be submissive and that divorce was not an option.” But that changed the night her husband tried to kill her. When her church found out that she had filed for divorce, they disciplined her. “They told me I could no longer serve. They told me I could come if I wanted, but I could only sit on the pew. I couldn’t sing anymore, I couldn’t play the piano, I couldn’t work with the kids. I was treated like a pariah.”

“Looking back,” Van Allen says, “what [the church] did to me was abuse. They used their power to control me—to not help me but to add to my pain.” After the divorce, Van Allen left the church and went on what she calls a spiritual journey, visiting and working with different churches. When her husband started stalking her, those churches provided refuge. Van Allen recalls once when her husband broke into her apartment; she fled to the Episcopal church she had only recently started attending. “The pastor there sheltered me and went with me to make sure my apartment was safe.”

Read the whole story here.

For good advice on the difference between healthy Christian forgiveness and submission to abuse, I recommend the book Don’t Forgive Too Soon by Dennis, Sheila and Matthew Linn, and the Boundaries book series by Henry Cloud and John Townsend.

“They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.” (Matthew 23:4, TNIV)