Category Archives for noonprop8

Fearing Harassment

The Supreme Court ruled today that the names of petition signers of Washington State’s Referendum 71 must be made public [Update: however, according to Courage Campaign, the ruling is complicated and whether R-71’s signatures themselves are to be released remains an open issue].  The referendum passed last fall, preserving domestic partnership rights and hence legal protections for gays, lesbians, and seniors.

Protect Marriage Washington had sought not only to fail this referendum, overturning domestic partnership and legal protections for gays and lesbians (and this isn’t even about marriage — this has been called the “everything but marriage” law), but also to keep the names of those who sought to do so private — apparently because of fear of retribution from “violent homofascists.”

Let’s get it straight, Protect Marriage, because you know this already but I’m not sure you want your signers to know this. Equating me to a violent homofascist is your attempt to continue to enjoy legal protections exactly while continuing to harass me. Don’t get me wrong, harassment is not OK – but just as it’s not OK for you to be harassed, you may not legally continue to do this to me.

Make no mistake: The real harm is where harassment of gays continues to enjoy legal protections.

I know this well. During the Prop 8 campaign, there was plenty of harassment on all sides to go around. Whereas the No On Prop 8 campaign officially sought to speak out against violence perpetrated on and by any side, however, the Yes On Prop 8 messaging, ignoring the real harms against LGBTs and supporters during the campaign, simply fanned the flames, in many cases equating gays with Hitler and categorizing us and bands of — well — violent homofascists:

And here’s the outcome of that (PDF).

While at the press conference after last week’s closing arguments in the federal trial against Prop 8, I had the opportunity to engage with a person working for Protect Marriage. He choked up when he told me of his inner conflicts, and that he saw how we (LGBTs) have been treated and it’s not OK.  He related that his colleagues at Protect Marriage had also received death threats. (An aside: read Karen Ocamb on the backstory on Prop 8 witnesses and fear of harassment in this case).

I’ll say it again. Harassment is not OK. But let’s be clear.  There is a solid history of real harm against folks like me and at the root of what most of us want is simply to live without that harm. I think most people, given the chance, understand this. So, Protect Marriage, try some honesty the next time, and make sure your petition signers know that overturning gay legal protections is akin to continuing to legally protect harassment against gay people, and if you sign for that, you stand by it publicly.

Fear of harassment is real.  You can feed it, or you can work against it every day of your life.  Make your choice today. I choose the latter.

Prop 8 Trial Closing Arguments: What really separates you from me?

Charles Cooper and Judge Vaughn Walker: view from the overflow2 room

Charles Cooper and Judge Vaughn Walker: view from the overflow2 room

My wife and I arrived at the Federal Building an hour before the closing arguments began at 10am, but by then we were already number 30 in a line waiting to get into the overflow room. We were told the overflow room was full and only press could reserve passes. By 10am, the line to get in looked to be 150 people at least – and luckily they had opened an additional two overflow rooms.

So we had plenty of time while standing in line to talk to people around us.  Though we were mostly too full of nerves to talk, we did meet one really nice guy behind us in line and talked about the trial, and about how my wife and I wish we could just invite the people who don’t want us to marry over for cocktails so we could really talk to each other and see how we are alike and how we are different. He told us he’d also be honored to have us over to visit him and his wife.

We finally all got in to overflow room nr. 2 and Leanne and I tweeted the entire way till the trial concluded at 4pm.  (There were brief breaks — we rode the elevator UP with David Boies; we rode the elevator UP with Cleve Jones and Dustin Lance Black; we got to talk to the many great NCLR folks there… we felt starstruck).

Charles Cooper - speaking after intro from Andy Pugno (to his right) and before Ron Prentice (to his left)

Charles Cooper - speaking at press conference after intro from Andy Pugno (to his right) and before Ron Prentice (to his left)

There’s obviously much of record there and much to say about what Olson and Cooper and Walker said during the trial — and there’ll be much written elsewhere, now and for a long while to come — but to me the most amazing thing happened after the trial so I want to write this now.

Thanks to Marriage Equality USA’s Molly Mckay, we got into the press conference right after the trial. We immediately met the smiling man we had shared the “nr. 30” spot in line with before the trial, and he gave us a big hug.  I then asked him what his interest was in being there — “I work at the California Family Council and with Ron Prentice at Protect Marriage,” he said.  To my other side was Kate Kendell, tireless and amazing director of NCLR, and to this side was “the enemy.” And we were already friends.  It was an amazing and bizarre moment.

Olson: "Our clients - they're not plaintiffs, they're human beings who stand for everyone"

Olson: "Our clients - they're not plaintiffs, they're human beings who stand for everyone"

As I listened to “his side” talk at the press conference about the wrongs people like us were doing to people like my daughter, I kept receiving pictures on my cell phone of my daughter, who was at that moment twirling with a friend in the playground in the brilliant light. And he and my wife and I kept talking about our families, and re-extended the invitations to visit. We shared pictures of beautiful family. I thought about the truly thin line that separates “our side” from “their side” and what in the end we are really fighting for.  I felt like the future is a bright light toward which we run, and one day none of this will matter anymore.  We’ll be beyond.

When shall we learn what should be clear as day

We cannot choose what we are free to love

W.H. Auden

Charla Bansley, would you say that to my face?

my daughter -- climbing to new heights

my daughter -- climbing to new heights

My daughter, like many young kids, finds transitions difficult. Now that she’s been in Kindergarten for one month, things are getting better for her. We were thrilled when she was awarded “Community Leader of the Week” at her school last week, for exercising all of the school’s five “be’s” and in particular for being a good listener. Here are the five “be’s:”

  • Be Safe
  • Be Respectful
  • Be Responsible
  • Be a Listener
  • Be a Learner

It warms our hearts endlessly that she has achieved so much in so short a time. Her moms are especially proud of her earning the award for listening. We could all stand to listen a little closer, so I’m paying attention to my daughter for tips here.

I’m particularly interested today, as the Maine Yes on 1 folks release their “It’s everything to do with schools” ad (see Julia Rosen’s post from today for a good summary of it), in the quality of Being Respectful.

In the ad, Charla Bansley re-introduces the Wirthlin family clip from last year’s California Prop 8 ad. The Wirthlins are the ones who warn us of gay marriage being taught in schools. They even took this to court. In the court’s ruling, from a post over at Dirigo Blue, is the following:

An exodus from class when issues of homosexuality or same-sex marriage are to be discussed could send the message that gays, lesbians, and the children of same-sex parents are inferior and, therefore, have a damaging effect on those students. … It might also undermine the defendants’ efforts to educate the remaining other students to understand and respect differences in sexual orientation.

This is what’s really going on here. The Wirthlins and Charla Bansley have no respect for me and my wife, and want us nowhere near their children. Charla Bansley goes a step further in this word-for-word quote, as Julia Rosen reports:

Public display of psychosis and we have dealt with it by redefining decency down so as to explain away and make normal what a more civilized, and ordered, and healthy society would label deviant and the result has been a stunning failure.

Not only do you not want us around, Charla Bansley, but you find that we are psychotic, deviant, indecent, AND a stunning failure.  Really Ms. Bansley?  If you met me, would you say that to my face? Would you say that to my five-year-old girl?

In reality, Charla Bansley, the Wirthlin family, dear people of Maine (and California): If you vote to pass Question 1 just as California voted last fall to pass Proposition 8, we are not going to disappear. And furthermore, if we met you while we were dropping our kid off at school, we’d have a smile for you — maybe even a hug, especially if you were having a hard drop-off — just like for the rest of the parents we meet.  I am delighted that my child is at a school that teaches respect and inclusion, and I would be happy to teach my child to respect your child even if they are different in any or many ways.

I just want to close with this, if I have your attention: If you can’t treat us with respect in return, would you please at least not teach your children to hurt us, or to ask us to die, or otherwise bully us? Kindergarten can be hard enough as it is (and it looks like some of us could stand a refresher on the curriculum of being respectful).

PS: Take a look at last year’s California ad side-by-side with today’s Maine ad: