Archive for the ‘Gay Rights’ Tag
The Amazing Democrats – Editor’s comment: God Bless America – Everyone got it wrong and to a point, so did we. Leave a comment
Here’s An Idea: Why Doesn’t Mike Huckabee and the GOP Same-Sex Marriage Haters Move to Russia! Leave a comment
by Olga Bugorkova and Ghada Tantawi (BBC News)
It was wildly popular, but not everybody likes Facebook’s pro-gay marriage photo filter – it’s prompted a backlash in Russia and across the Arab world.
If you went on Facebook over the weekend you may have seen friends’ profile pictures turned multi-coloured. Maybe you even tinted your own pic. A rainbow filter tool was introduced by the company after last week’s landmark Supreme Court decision which cleared the way for same-sex marriage across the US. But in some areas of the world the response to the initiative was less than enthusiastic – and even downright hostile.
In Russia, several filters were created which splash the colours of the national flags rather than rainbow banners across a picture. One such app has been downloaded more than 4,000 times. “Our response to the rainbow world #Proudtoberussian,” said one typical comment by Moscow resident Elena Starkova.
Russia has controversial laws which ban providing information about homosexuality to people under age 18, and a recent poll showed that more than 80% of Russians oppose legalising same-sex marriage.
Despite this, some Russians back lashed against the backlash. Anna Koterlnikova, who had changed her profile pic to a rainbow flag, commented: “Sorry! I’m straight and Russian but I’m not a homophobe!”
In the Middle East, many social media users also came out strongly against the rainbow flag. “It’s a message that it hurts me,” said Egyptian Twitter user Sharif Najm, while Rami Isa from Syria tweeted: “Damn you and your marriage. You have distorted our innocent childhood [symbol], we used to like the rainbow.” Ahmad Abd-Rabbuh, an Egyptian political science professor, said that gay marriage “is not in harmony with society and culture.”
“I know that I will make many of my friends angry,” he commented.
In Egypt, around 2,000 tweets mentioned the rainbow motif, most of them critical. Some users even went so far as to sarcastically blame a weekend storm on users who turned their profile pics multi-coloured. But not all reaction was negative. Egyptian TV presenter Muna Iraqi commented: “[I support people’s] right to live and love freely, without any persecution.”
Of course, it also should be noted that same-sex marriage is by no means universally popular in the US – about two-fifths of Americans oppose it, according to the Pew Research Center.
“I’m 100% against gay marriage,” tweeted Joshua Taipale. “I have gay friends and they’re great ppl; it’s not personal. But U.S. can’t decide. Should be state-by-state.”
And some transsexual activists continue their criticism of Facebook – which sponsors San Francisco’s gay pride parade – for its “real name” policy.
Now GOP, Let Us Now Debate The Other Real Serious Issues for 2016: Homelessness in our US Cities, Immigration and Fair Wage Increases for All. Leave a comment
by Robert Schlesinger (US News)
It is a rare day indeed that I find myself agreeing with former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, but I applaud this sentiment about the Supreme Court’s affirming marriage equality in Obergefell v. Hodges: “Now is the people’s opportunity [to] respond because the future of the institution of marriage is too important to not have a public debate.”
I agree. Bring it on. Love is love – and if the GOP wants to go to war over that, well that’s just fine.
Of course Santorum isn’t a lonely cultural revanchist. Most of his fellow 2016 aspirants have trashed the decision. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee – a happy warrior before the changing national landscape highlighted his angry crusader side – railed against an “imperial court” and called for supporters to “resist and reject judicial tyranny.” Former. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was more circumspect, saying he supports traditional marriage and that the court was wrong, but avoiding inflammatory rhetoric of resistance and rebellion. “In a country as diverse as ours, good people who have opposing views should be able to live side by side,” Bush said in his statement.
The degree to which GOP presidential wannabe response to the decision is unhinged seems indirectly related to their standing in the polls – the closer they are to bottom, the more hysterical their histrionics. Which makes sense for two reasons: The Huckabees and Santorums of the field are desperately trying to make the top-10 cut for the first debate, on Fox in August. The easiest way to do that is to claim the mantle of most outraged culture warrior. On the other end of the spectrum, people like Bush who stand a chance of being the nominee don’t want Obergefell to become their 2016 version of Mitt Romney’s “self-deportation” – a debate moment that long outlives its utility and becomes an anchor in the general election.
The problem with Huckabee, Santorum and the other members of the righteous GOP who were so quick to issue statements of condemnation is that they are trying to refight the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s but seem incapable of grasping that the nation has changed.
President Barack Obama this morning aptly compared the decision to “justice” arriving “like a thunderbolt.” The storm that produced that thunderbolt gathered with shocking speed. Who would have believed 11 years ago that the GOP’s shameless 2004 campaign strategy – using anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives to rally its base – would prove to be a fleeting high water mark before the tide of public opinion and then, following it, the la
]When Gallup asked respondents in 2005 whether same-sex marriage should be legal, a mere 37 percent answered in the affirmative. As recently as 2010 the polling organization found that only 44 percent believed it should be legal. Last month that number had rocketed from minority to supermajority – by 60 percent to 37 percent Americans believe that marriage equality should be legal.
Now the Supreme Court has ruled – correctly – that the Constitution’s equal protection clause does apply, well, equally – that law in this case happily conforms to the beliefs of the American people. If the leaders and would-be leaders of the Republican Party wish to spend the next year lecturing the public about why it’s wrong, then by all means they should go right ahead.
The conservative columnist (and as a New York Daily News columnist, my corporate cousin) S.E. Cupp was visibly moved on CNN this morning discussing the ruling. She gave an eloquent warning to her party: This isn’t a moment in history, she said, it’s the future. She’s right. The Pew Research Center has tracked the same evolution on the issue as Gallup and has broken it out by age group. They found that your likelihood of supporting marriage equality is directly related to your age. The younger you are, the more likely you are to support it – and support has been growing across all age groups. Here’s the Pew chart:
As Cupp said, this isn’t a data point, it’s a trend. It’s the future.
You can’t fight the future, but the Republican Party is certainly welcome to try.
Why Did Ireland’s Youth Say “Yes” To Same Sex Marriage in Huge Numbers? High Schools There Teach the History of U.S. Civil Rights. Leave a comment
The BBC’s Shane Harrison looks at how the Republic of Ireland’s vote in favour of legalising same-sex marriage caps an extraordinary week for the country.
The Republic has become the first country in the world to introduce same-sex marriage in a popular vote, just days after the Prince of Wales visited Mullaghmore in County Sligo where his great-uncle Lord Mountbatten was murdered by the IRA in 1979.
While in Sligo, Prince Charles also visited the grave of the Irish poet, WB Yeats, under the shadow of Ben Bulben mountain in Drumcliffe cemetery.
The poet was born 150 years ago and many of his verses were quoted during the Royal visit.
Nearly every Irish student learns the lines from the poem September 1913: “Romantic Ireland is dead and gone, it’s with O’Leary in the grave.”
O’Leary was an old Irish revolutionary who wanted to free Ireland from British rule.
The referendum result speaks volumes about a changed Republic of Ireland and it is tempting to write: “Catholic Ireland is dead and gone.”
It was the revelation that Bishop Eamon Casey had fathered a child that first started a process which, for many, undermined the authority of the Catholic Church.
Soon afterwards a tsunami of revelations about child sex abuse involving priests and cover-ups by bishops further and greatly diminished the standing of the church hierarchy in a country that is nominally 85% Catholic, although empty churches and declining Mass attendance tell another story.
It was only in 1993 that homosexual acts were decriminalised; civil partnership was introduced in 2010.
Throughout the campaign, bishops preached against a “Yes” vote for same-sex marriage and indicated their deep unhappiness with the government’s proposal.
They were joined by social conservatives and Catholic lay groups in expressing their view that the proposal undermined the traditional family of a husband, a wife and children.
But only three of the 166 members of the Irish parliament publicly supported that view and urged a “No” vote.
Against the hierarchy stood a coalition of all the main political parties, gay rights activists and their families and supporters.
It is noticeable that the “Yes” vote was strongest in more urban areas and among younger voters who study the African-American struggle for civil rights for their state exams.
And it was also noticeable in conversations how many of them were influenced by that struggle for equality in Saturday’s result.
Thousands returned from abroad to vote, and thousands more delayed their working holidays after finishing university exams to register their support for the government’s proposal.
Social media was abuzz with their stories.
Some “No” campaigners feared the worst from early on; some privately said that even if they won this time they knew they were battling against the tide of history because such was the strength of feeling among young people that there would be another referendum and it would then pass.
Today, though, is not the first recent indication of the diminished standing of the Catholic Church.
Two years ago, the bishops failed to stop the government and politicians from introducing legislation to allow for abortions in cases where there was a credible suicide threat from a woman if she was forced to continue with her pregnancy.
And in many ways the same-sex marriage referendum is just one stage in church-state relations before the main confrontation – the repeal of the eighth amendment to the constitution that gives an equal right to life to the mother and the unborn.
The referendum on this in 1983 was extraordinarily divisive and left a bitter taste in the mouths of many involved.
While another referendum on repealing the amendment is unlikely until after the next election, both sides are already preparing for it.
Those wanting change argue that it currently prevents terminations in cases of fatal foetal abnormality, where the foetus cannot survive outside the womb, and where a pregnancy has resulted from rape or incest.
Those seeking the retention of the amendment – and it’s not just the Catholic Church and other Christian institutions – argue from a human rights point of view that the foetus or unborn child also has a right to life.
But that’s all for another day.
I began with WB Yeats but I’ll finish with, perhaps, the best known Irish gay man, Oscar Wilde.
The phrase “the love that dare not speak its name” comes from a poem by his lover Lord Alfred Douglas and was mentioned at Wilde’s gross indecency trial that would see him jailed.
After the same-sex referendum result, not any longer, Oscar, not any longer.
Flip-Flopper Jebbie is at it again and even Ireland may vote “Yes” this Friday for Same-Sex Marriage. Leave a comment
by Patrick Healy (New York Times)
Former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida hardened his position against same-sex marriage in an interview that aired on Sunday, making clear he did not believe in constitutional protection for gay marriages — an issue now before the United States Supreme Court — and leaving out his past call for “respect” for gay couples.
Appearing on “The Brody File” on the Christian Broadcasting Network, Mr. Bush, a likely Republican candidate for president in 2016, was asked in a brief interview if he believed there should be a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
“I don’t, but I’m not a lawyer, and clearly this has been accelerated at a warp pace,” he said. “What’s interesting is four years ago, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had the same view that I just expressed to you.” He added: “Thousands of years of culture and history is just being changed at warp speed. It’s hard to fathom why it is this way.”
He also warned that the country’s future would be at risk without traditional marriages between a man and a woman who go on to raise children.
“To imagine how we are going to succeed in our country unless we have committed family life, committed child-centered family system, is hard to imagine,” Mr. Bush said. “We need to be stalwart supporters of traditional marriage.”
Mr. Bush was explicitly opposed to same-sex marriage for years, but in recent months, since he has been considering a run for the presidency, he has made a wider range of statements — saying same-sex marriage is an issue that should be decided by the states, for instance. This winter, as gay couples began to wed in Florida, Mr. Bush also struck a conciliatory tone about those marriages.
“We live in a democracy, and regardless of our disagreements, we have to respect the rule of law,” he said in a statement to The New York Times in January. “I hope that we can show respect for the good people on all sides of the gay and lesbian marriage issue — including couples making lifetime commitments to each other who are seeking greater legal protections and those of us who believe marriage is a sacrament and want to safeguard religious liberty.”
Mr. Bush reiterated in the “Brody File” interview on Sunday that his views about same-sex marriage are based on his Catholic faith. “I think traditional marriage is a sacrament,” he said. “It’s at the core of the Catholic faith.”
Ireland’s Marriage Equality Moment
By FINTAN O’TOOLE (NEW YORK TIMES)
DUBLIN — ON a Sunday in May, a reporter for The Irish Times went looking for religious people who might be expected to oppose same-sex marriage. The issue is a hot topic in Ireland because on Friday the nation votes in a referendum that, if passed, will enshrine marriage equality in the Constitution.
The reporter engaged an older woman after Mass at Dublin’s main Catholic cathedral. “I’m just going to vote for gay people because I have nothing against them,” the woman, Rita O’Connor, told the journalist. “I can’t understand why anybody is against it.” And she dismissed the church’s opposition: “It’s a stupid carry-on.”
Conservatives sometimes say that marriage equality is an elite project, pushed through by courts or parliaments, but popular enthusiasm for the cause is palpable. The referendum has already been good for the travel trade.
Ireland does not permit citizens to vote from abroad, so many younger people are traveling back for the historic vote. Anyone booking a flight to Dublin from Boston or New York before Friday must expect to pay top dollar. Closer to home, a London-based group named Get the Boat 2 Vote has organized group travel by rail and ferry.
If polls are accurate, Ms. O’Connor represents a majority view — in a corner of Europe hardly thought of as a bastion of liberalism, like Sweden or the Netherlands. In spite of opposition from the Roman Catholic and Presbyterian churches, from Islamic leaders and conservative civic groups,surveys of public opinion consistently show more than 70 percent in favor of the government’s starkly simple proposal to add a line to the Irish Constitution: “Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex.”
Few on either side of the argument expect the result to be as emphatic, and Irish referendums have a history of surprising results. Twice in recent years, major changes in European Union treaties have initially been rejected by Irish voters in shock results. Most pollsters believe that some likely “no” voters are shy about saying what they think.
Nevertheless, the odds are that the Irish will embrace same-sex marriage, and by doing so send a message that they accept gay men and lesbians as ordinary citizens. Who would have guessed that the country poised to become the first country in the world to grant same-sex couples full legal equality by direct popular vote would be socially conservative Ireland?
There is a certain poignancy in this possibility. The most notorious case of the legal persecution of homosexuality in modern Irish history was the trial and imprisonment of the writer Oscar Wilde, in England, in 1895. In 1916, a campaign to prevent the execution of the Irish revolutionary Roger Casement was thwarted when influential supporters were shown extracts from Casement’s secret diaries, detailing his homosexual activities. For a long time, Irish nationalists insisted that the diaries must be forgeries (forensic studies later authenticated them).
Ireland retained British laws against “gross indecency” — under which Wilde was punished — on its statute books after independence in 1922. Upheld by the Irish Supreme Court, those laws were not changed until 1993, and only after an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
Ireland was thus one of the last Western democracies decriminalize consensual sexual activity between adult gay men. That it may now consolidate same-sex marriage as the new normal in the developed world is striking evidence of how quickly and profoundly attitudes have changed. If it happens, it will owe much to two circumstances, one great and epic, the other small and intimate.
Few democracies have ever seen such a close alignment of religious and political power as Ireland after independence. The new state was overwhelmingly Roman Catholic and deeply identified with the church. For decades, almost all political parties followed church teaching on “moral” questions and inscribed that teaching in law.
Contraceptives were fully legalized only in 1985. Divorce was outlawed until a narrowly approved referendum in 1995. Ireland’s abortion laws are still so restrictive that they allow almost no exceptions, even for rape, incest or fatal fetal abnormalities.
Yet the church’s power proved immensely damaging to those who once wielded it. Its arrogance resulted in the catastrophic scandals of church leaders’ covering up decades of child abuse by priests and religious orders. The church’s moral authority has largely collapsed in Ireland.
As a result, its ability to influence the referendum on same-sex marriage is limited. Many church leaders have avoided taking a hard line. This owes something to Pope Francis’s more conciliatory tone on homosexuality, but even more to an awareness that many of the faithful, like Ms. O’Connor, no longer take church teaching on sexuality as gospel. The archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, went so far as to warn church leaders not to use “language which is insensitive and over-judgmental” — a warning surely rooted in his understanding of the other, more personal force in this debate.
Changes in attitudes to L.G.B.T. people have been driven by one overwhelming factor: Once people were out of the closet, they were not “them” but “us” — family, friends, neighbors. This is a powerful force in a close-knit country like Ireland.
Ireland doesn’t always function well at the level of large institutions, but the Irish tend to be good at social relations. If they know you, they want to think well of you.
Before the referendum campaign got underway, the minister for health, Leo Varadkar, who is widely seen as a possible future prime minister, announced that he was gay. The only negative reactions were good-humored expressions of disappointment from female admirers of the 36-year-old doctor, while some gay men joked on social media that their mothers were urging them to marry the minister.
Mothers count in this debate. The Irish mammy is a formidable figure and Irish mammies want their children to be able to marry, whatever their partner’s gender.
In a memorable intervention, a former president of Ireland and a practicing Roman Catholic, Mary McAleese, joined her son, Justin, who is gay, in calling for a “yes” vote. Borrowing from the 1916 proclamation of the Irish Republic, she said that she wanted “the children of the nation to be cherished equally.”
Standing between mothers and what they want for their children is not a comfortable place for the proposition’s conservative opponents to be.