Many of the gay/lesbian activists in the past have called for “tolerance” in respect to Americans fully accepting the homosexual lifestyle. However, with the defeat of prop. 8 in California, we have seen many gay/lesbian activists resort to the tactics of “intolerance” by the use of fear, intimidation, and threats against opponents to to promote the legalization of same sex marriages. Very ironic.

As an early activist for Gay rights with Queer Nation, I feel many of the current round of gay rights organizations have lost sight of the history of our movement.

All movements for humans rights move in steps. Incremental expansion of rights, and then over time, a changing of the cultural acceptance of further change.

Marriage is a religious institution which is controlled and governed by Religion. The civil rights associated with marriage is granted by law.

I feel that by going for the emotional title of “marriage” first, without securing the legal civil rights was a mistake. It allowed the religious community to rally around a cry of “not in my church” and use the threat of “Forced gay marriage” into a religious context.

Nothing was further from the truth, however it was a grand propaganda victory against gay rights.

By overreaching for a “title” they movement made a huge mistake.

Joe - Your comment seeks to demonize gays and their supporters who are calling people who hate out on their hatred. Going into the Constitution to strip citizens of their rights is a call to action, whatever form it may take. Supporters of Proposition 8 used scare tactics and outright lies to garner support and those who funded the effort, such as the Mormon Church, need to feel an impact beyond a simple petition or protest.

Boycotts are needed. Loud protests are needed. America needs to know supporters of civil rights WILL NOT sit down and let others silence us and take away our rights.

Cody - In America “separate but equal” does not apply. If a state calls it “marriage”, then marriage it is. Until all legal unions have a different name by law, it is called “marriage”.

Doonesbury said it best in a comic. Mike is talking with a black man about gay rights. The black man says being gay is wrong. So Mike says to him “Well, you’re black” The black man responses angrily “there’s nothing wrong with being black!” Mike replies “It wasn’t always that way.”

It so often appears, folks want freedom for themselves, yet at the same time see nothing wrong with denying it to others. Welcome to America.

Gerald D. Boggs
Afton Virginia

They should spend a bit more time explaining exactly what benefits gays and lesbians are losing by not being able to leagally marry. Are they losing health insurance, ability to adopt, benefits for life insurance? Would civil unions resolve this? I’d like to hear more about that.

Hi, Tom,

It’s been ages. A concern I have about the discussion of Proposition 8 is its ill-formulation with regard to African-Americans. A dimension of American race politics, especially with regard to issues of sexual orientation, is the tendency to construct African-Americans and Latinos as somehow more bigoted than other groups. The initiative would not have passed without the large number of white voters who supported it. The African-Americans, myself included, who are strong supporters of gay marriage, of equal rights for gay-Americans, are rendered invisible in these discussions by what is, in the end, an insidious form of racism under the guise of benign or shared political expectations.

What is overlooked in such discussions is, for example, the lived experience of gay African Americans and gay Latinos, in a discussion that presupposes sexual orientation as solely a white interest. The OPEN and historical presence of gay-African Americans in black communities suggest a more complex and nuanced understanding of these issues. Even the formulation “a black man is heading into the white house” misses the point that we live in a country in which exceptions and rules are subverted when it comes to race: Obama can be understood as an exception that supports a rule, the result of which is this: One can consistently love (and vote for) Obama while hating black people.

We are at a crossroads of civil rights POSSIBILITY, but there is still much work to be done, and what is clear is that black communities are again being asked to carry the larger share of the moral burden.

Sincerely,
Lewis (past news-analyst for ON POINT)

Two analogies for why the word “marriage” matters:

1) I heard a woman talking about how she can remember when there were separate drinking fountains and that someone explained to her that it shouldn’t matter to African Americans because it was “the same water”. Likewise, civil unions are not the same as marriage.

2) The social difference: If you say you are getting married, people know what to ask about, what to give, they ask about what colors you are wearing and where you are having the reception. If you say you are having a commitment ceremony, or civil union, etc, they aren’t sure what to say because it’s not something they are used to. Imagine a Jewish kid in a mostly non-Jewish community telling his friends he is getting his bar-mitzvah.

I would like the guests (or someone) to explain this to me: What is the legal basis for some people being able to vote on the rights of others, rights they themselves have?
Would it be OK for people to vote on whether vegetarians could live in my town? How about a vote on allowing Jews to own property? A vote on forbidding Catholics to divorce?

Civil rights for minorities of a certain race should not be compared to gay rights. We shouldn’t forget that being gay is a lifestyle choice, not a separate race of people. People can choose how to act regardless of where their passions, inclinations, or thoughts lead them, which is not true of race, national origin, etc. It is amazing that it is beginning to be described as something similar when it is so very different. Civil rights for race minorities should not be compared as similar to gay rights.

While this is an excellent discussion, I wish there was more discussion about gay rights issues other than marriage.

There is still legal discrimination in many areas - employment, housing, custody of children.

There are still gays and lesbians being beaten and killed in anti-gay attacks.

There are still sodomy laws on the books, making certain sexual acts illegal.

I think focusing on marriage is doing a disservice to the greater struggle for equal rights.

Marc - You’re wrong. Being gay is not a lifestyle “choice”. Very few people I know would choose to be ostracized by society. That’s like saying being born Asian is a choice. Or being born with blue eyes is a choice.

I believe the Gay Marriage issue is one created in part by the state and the “church”. The state is not really involved in the legal ramifications in the beginning, only if the partnership comes to divorce, property settlements and child care and support. The “church” and ceremonial aspects take priority in the beginning, but are seldom interested in the eventual outcome.

I would like to see the “civil union” of man and wife, gays, or even elderly friends(for tax or care reasons) take place at city hall with a multipage contract outlining statutory responsibilities and rights, signed and sworn before an officer of the court.

Then if the couple so desire to seek the blessing or consecration before a god and church, then have the ceremony for that purpose.

In the case of separation and divorce, the “church” should have a counseling and dissolution process (annulment, etc) to take care of the spiritual and family responsibilities. Then the court will divide the union, and settle statutory issues.

Presented in this manner, I suspect many will take the civil union more seriously with less attention to frivolity and more to the statutory ramifications and responsibilities.

I’m tired of the “Gay argument”. Gay people have been around for as long as straight folk and I believe it is biologically based. Now is the time to fight for the rights Gay Americans deserve. Straight folk have to understand if they are not part of the solution they are part of the problem.

My brother-in-law has been married (here in MA) for a few years and he and his partner are happy. Their marriage should be seen in the same light as my 16 year “traditional” marriage. It was his marriage that changed my opinion from passive support to active support.

I’m a straight guy who is tired of Gay hate and I’m speaking out about it when I can. Equal rights for marriage, jobs, adoption and nothing less.

Great show Tom et al.

Beth - The Supreme Court invalidated all sodomy laws in the U.S. in the Lawrence v. Texas case.

This is a huge issue in this country, as they are saying on the radio now. People should not be allowed to vote on the rights of others. Period. This is especially true because many don’t know much about an issue or even know gay people and can easily be persuaded by scare tactics.

The discussion of Gay Rights being positively supported under the Obama Administration misses one huge point. A majority of the gay marriage/adoption bans passed this November were a direct result of discriminatory voting by a majority of African Americans who do not support Gay Rights. These are the same voters who overwhelmingly voted to elect Barack Obama to the White House. Am I to believe that he will actively stand up to the discrimination that is promoted among his most supportive voting block?

Luis,

My point is exactly that; it is NOT the same as being born with blue eyes or being born Asian. Those don’t require any action, they are manifest at birth. If I’m born with a love of chocolate, I am not a separate race of people, nor do I have to eat it, even if I was born with it.

I think we need to turn the problem of gay marrage up side down. Basically the state should only be allowed to sanction civil unions - event for straight people.

Marrage should only be the province of the individuals religious, spiritual, or philosophy, what ever they choose.

How about a Supreme Court case to judge that the state cannot sanction marrage on the basis of separation of church and state? The state would only be allowed to sanction civil unions for all.

Being gay is not a choice. Choosing to act on those urges (i.e. gay marriage) is a choice. Much like an alcoholic is born that way, but they do not need to act upon it.

I believe in the separation of church and state. Therefore I do not think that the state should bestow “holy matrimony” upon a couple, but only civil unions. I think this would solve the problem of people against gay being forced to recognize a gay couples marriage, as well as give lgbt etc. people the equal rights under the law.

Marc - Your main point though is that it’s a lifestyle “choice”. Something you are born with is NOT a choice. Your love of chocolate is not something you are born with because suppose you never had chocolate then you would never yearn for it. Like you stated, it may be natural but it is not something that has to be acted on.

It is much harder to not yearn and be attracted to someone of the same sex and no one can restrict one from loving someone else. The only way this is possible is if you are born in seclusion without access to other people, ever. I think it is unreasonable to expect a gay person to live to that standard, and therefore it is unreasonable for two people who love each other to be denied their legal rights that other couples have. In that sense, it is very much a civil rights issue.

This morning’s show is what drives me crazy about NPR. I really want to support Public Radio, and appreciate much of the programming, but, when it comes to issues relating to homosexuality, NPR is clearly a cheerleader and not an objective, mature forum for discussion of the issues. How can you have a program to discuss this issue and have no black pastors or Mormon elders on to provide their point of view? Clearly there is another side to this issue, or 30+ states would not have voted to maintain the definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman, so why not have an open and balanced discussion? What are you afraid of? Such a discussion is also not enhanced by Tom Ashbrook offering his congratulations to his guests for their gay “marriage.” The host displaying his bias is clearly going to skew the “conversation.”

It doesn’t “require any action” to be gay.

It does require some “action” to have sex.

Is that what you’re thinking of? If gay people don’t have sex, they’re not gay?

If I’m celibate for years, does that mean I’m asexual?

1) I agree strongly with those who have said that host’s question framed with an analogy to race is inappropriate — oppressions should not be compared, those oppressed should not be in competition with each other, and it ignores those who overlap the categories. This is only divisive. Further, it opens the debate about people either being born with or choosing a trait, another useless discussion. If you need any analogy, in order to promote better comprehension, perhaps religion is one. People can be born into a religion or choose it, but we accept by law, that no one should be discriminated against due to their religion.

2) While marriage is the most publicized contested area right now — most states and the US Federal government do not prohibit discrimination in areas of employment, housing and public accommodation. Benefits for married people disadvantage those who are not in a couple. In most of Europe, people do not have benefits tied to whether they are in a relationship. I do think anyone who wants marriage should have it, for some, it may not be the best choice, and it may not be the most important problem for lesbian & gay civil rights.
It took Massachusetts 17 years to pass its gay/lesbian civil rights act. We need it in more states and in the federal law. In my mind this is just as important, or maybe more important than marriage as it would affect more people.

Thank you.

I’m first of all surprised to see On Point break with what seems to be their usual policy of having people from both sides on the show at the same time. Bringing on two or three people who are going to absolutely agree with one another and tear down any caller who disagrees is not the best way to encourage dialog on the matter.

I agree strongly that we need to remove hatred and fear from the equation. This is an emotional issue, and it is too easy for people on both sides to get up at arms and feel very defensive about it. When I watched the ads produced by both sides of this argument, and I felt that the the ones produced by the pro-Proposition 8 camp were far more tasteful and factual (yes, I took the time to verify the facts) than the ones produced by the proposition’s opponents. The worst one that comes to mind is the “The Mormons are taking away our rights, and they’ll take away yours too if you don’t stop them” ad. I have seen the same pattern in other aspects of the campaign as well. On the one side there appear to be a bunch of concerned religious folk, who vote their minds, and on the other a bunch of activists who resort to vandalism, protests, and law suits to make their point. If we want to get rid of hate, let’s get rid of it on both sides.

I was very disappointed that you only had one side of the argument represented by your guests. Since the vast majority of Americans are straight and do not support gay marriage (it was outlawed in California by POPULAR vote!) why not have somebody who stands against gay marriage as a guest?

In the Eastern Orthodox Church homosexuality is looked at as a sin. While the individual may be “predisposed” towards that sin (alcoholics, drug addicts, etc. are often genetically predisposed to those spiritual infirmities) that doesn’t mean they should be given special privileges. Each individual has their own particular struggle. For some it’s anger management, others an eating disorder, others a huge ego, and still others homosexual feelings. However, there are no activist groups with the goal of allowing people who are genetically predisposed towards anger problems to take out their anger on whomever they please.

I’m not implying that these people should be shut away or totally silenced, but trying to make straight people, who don’t support gay marriage, accept it is wrong.

Marriage is the union of a Man and Woman. If the Lord wanted people to be homosexual why did he make Eve and not another Adam?

There are several very successful homosexual recovery programs in the US today, for example:
http://www.peoplecanchange.com. Many of these people who have gone through these programs have been completely healed of this infirmity.

A more balanced presentation of the issue would be much appreciated.

Dear Tom Ashbrook and the On Point program director:

Thank you so much for not doing yet another “this expert is for gay marriage and this expert is against gay marriage” program where we have to listen yet again to one side broadcasting fear and misinformation while the other valiantly tries to defend itself.

If one were doing a program on the experience of black people, it would be a no-brainer that all your guests should be black and that to have them have to answer to an opposing white guest, expert or not, would be offensive and wrong-headed in the extreme.

You don’t do a program on the Holocaust and invite as one of your guests someone who believes that the Holocaust never happened, as if the two opposing points of view have equal merit. But it’s still all right, no de rigeur, to invite someone who doesn’t know the first thing about being gay to be on equal footing with someone who has had to deal with the stigma of it all his or her life.

It is sad to have to state that this is the first time I have heard a national radio program, either yours or other, where gay people just got to speak for themselves without the counterpoint of a legitimized bigot. Thank you for that.

Sincerely,
James Rogers

It is vital to clear up the misconceptions surrounding the use of the word “marriage” as well as the meaning of marriage throughout time.

Civil unions are unacceptable as a substitute for marriage. They do not confer the same legal rights. While the difference between the linguistic symbolism of “marriage” and “civil union” is important to discuss, there are also legal differences of substance which, unfortunately, seem to get lost in the argument. One important difference is the legal portability of the marriage from state to state and country to country. Please visit this page to learn more about why we need civil marriage, not civil unions: http://www.glad.org/uploads/docs/publications/cu-vs-marriage.pdf

While we’re reviewing facts instead of arguments with no basis in reality: Marriage has NOT always been between only between one man and one woman. Anthropologists have performed decades of research on human relationships, and their research debunks that myth. (Start here for more info: http://www.aaanet.org/press/an/0405if-comm4.htm )
The American Anthropological Association (the world’s largest association of anthropologists) has taken an official stance in support of marriage equality. http://www.aaanet.org/press/ma_stmt_marriage.htm

I frankly see no reason why opponents of equal rights for all should be given any air time on NPR. The discriminatory mission to spread the dangerous word of intolerance does not belong on my public radio. But that’s not the reason that misinformed preachers of hate weren’t featured here. The stated point of the program was not to debate the validity of civil rights and equality, but instead to check in to see where LGBTQ rights are at this point in time with some of those who are best equipped to speak on the matter.

Kudos to Tom Ashbrook and On Point for this programming.

There are hundreds of reasons for all Americans to support gay marriage. However, trying to compare sexual orientation to ancestry/country of origin/race/eye color is obviously comparing apples to oranges.

Comparing the Holocaust and slavery to gay marriage IS racist and insulting. I doubt that African-Americans compared Jim Crow to the holocaust in order to get those laws abolished. Insulting other groups is not the way to get things done.

Gay marriage should be promoted for its own good and benefits to our country. Prop 8 ads did EVERYTHING to avoid showing the benefits of gay marriage. There were NO gay couples in ads, NO gay families, NO gay parents, NO gay military people. They did everything to AVOID showing that gays are normal everyday people who simply want to live like everyone else. As someone pointed out before, how many movies (including Milk) about gay rights show gay characters?

So in the end, there were no positive emotional images attached to the anti-prop 8 movement. They instead made the poor choice of using “civil rights”, which already has its own images of tear gas, dead school children and police dogs. When people went to vote, the gay marriage and tear gas image combo did not compute.

Dear Tom,

I wonder if you are fully capable of helping people to understand the true context of the gay marriage debate.

Today a caller named Lewis attempted to address a very important question at the core of this debate, which is: What are our rights? Is the recognition of a marriage, by the state, to anyone or any few persons we choose to wed our right? Not only did you fail to recognize the importance of this question, you aggressively challenged the validity of this with a vapid reference to the perceived notion that the caller was black and the hypocrisy of a minority group member that might question your perceived notion of the rights of another minority group to marry.

This type of resistance from a talk show host is obviously a crucial part of your job but your failure to offer any such criticism of those that called in as proponents of gay marriage points to your inability to critically address the question.

One caller proposed that her son was a decent and moral person, a doctor and philanthropist, as if somehow the degree to which one group does good in the world should help us answer this question. Another proposed that people who vote against gay marriage do so out of hatred, ignorance, and their perceived susceptibility to the prop 8 propaganda from the right. It appears that you lack the comprehensive understanding and the fortitude to critically oppose those that might agree with you and at the same time you fail to see true insight from those that oppose your ideology.

A talk show host who is only critical of those he personally disagrees with is not a very good one.

John

Relative to gay marriage: What is the difference between gays living together and a parent and a child or even two roommates living together? Most people would say that the main difference is unnatural sex acts. Then why can’t a mother and daughter living together receive the benefits of being married?

I have no objection to ANY two people contracting to receive the rights of visiting the other in the hospital, inheriting estates, etc. These are contracts between the two people involved. However, when it comes to such things as Social Security benefits, or insurance benefits, or joint tax returns, etc, these involve everyone in the society. Social Security taxes or insurance costs or income taxes will go up for everyone to pay for the extra benefits. I can not go along with this for ANY of these groups including gays.

Allow a single civil union contract for things that only affect the two people but leave marriages to only two people of the opposite sex.

I’m surprised more people don’t make analogies to other protected civil rights in this country. Plenty of people contest comparisons to race, either because they believe that homosexuality is a choice (personally I find that to be hogwash but that’s not relevant) or they feel the comparison is in some way inappropriate (again I disagree but I can respect that still.)

However with that in mind, why not compare it to another protected civil right, one Mormons should be rather aware of, protection of rights regardless of religious beliefs? After all there was a time in quite a few places Protestants and Catholics were forbidden to wed each other as well. And while some people try to argue that who you’re attracted to is a choice, I doubt they can try to argue that what your faith is, isn’t; at least not in the same context.

Is pedophilia a choice?

Far too many straight Americans pretend this is a recent phenomenon, mocking it as a “frivolous,” “faux” issue that has been “forced” upon them this past decade by people bent on a “gay agenda”, when in fact, the demand for gay marriage dates back to the last quarter of the 19th century! (There is proof of actual same-sex marriages dating as far back as ancient times.)

The pioneer of gay rights, who was politically active long before the first-wave German Homosexual Emancipationist Movement (1897-1933), the Hanoverian government jurist Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895), both came AND spoke out publicly (”[hat] offen und laut Zeugniß abgelegt”) in the 1860s and ’70s on the subject of mob rule (”despotische Majoritäten”/”despotic majorities), “der Urninge zertretenes Recht”/”Uranians [i.e. homosexual] rights which have been trampled underfoot”, and “das urnische Liebesbündniß”/”Uranian marriage”. The word “homosexual” was coined in May 1868, in a letter written by pro-gay activist Karl Maria Kertbeny to Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs. Ulrichs, however, continued to use his own terminology for same-sex love.

—————–
KARL-HEINRICH ULRICHS’ PROTEST AGAINST MOB RULE, AND DEMANDS FOR SAME-SEX MARRIAGE, GERMANY 1870:

“We fight against the arrogance of despotic majorities. Therefore we despise by all means the prevailing liberalism which is hollower than empty nuts, which instead of bread offers us stones, which demands freedom only for the majority, who are already at the helm, but who, as soon as it is a question of an oppressed minority, which is not to their taste, never and nowhere stand up for freedom; which endlessly falsifies it through its inherent despotism, which without blushing daily scorns human rights and tramples on human dignity. …. The Uranian [gay man] is also a legitimate citizen of a State founded on the rule of law. As such, he may therefore demand from the legislator that he remain consistent when it comes to the basics of justice and not apply double standards to him and the Dionian [heterosexual]. … The State does not have the right to act on whim or for the sheer love of persecution. The State is not authorized, as had been the case in the past, to treat Uranians as outside the pale of the law. … In Juvenal, we read of someone chancing on a friend in the street, ‘Whither goest thou?’ Response: ‘I have a wedding ceremony to attend; nubit amicus. ‘i.e. A friend is taking to himself a husband’ In Martial (12) we find an actual report of a wedding: Barbatus duro nupsit Callistratus Afro … [“The bearded Callistratus married the rugged Afer']…. I do not see why we should not just as well be allowed to read here in Germany: ‘Berlin, May 15th. Once again, on this day Uranian wedding vows were solemnly exchanged before a priest and witnesses in the local St. Hedwig’s Church. The fiancés were senior civil servant, Dr. Callistratus, and the guardsman Afer, excused from duties. Both men at the same time received the Sacrament of Holy Communion.’” —-Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs, in (Engl. transl.): “Prometheus: Contributions to the Investigation of the Riddle of Nature Uranianism [homosexuality] and to the Discussion on the Moral and Social Interests of Urningthum [i.e. the gay and lesbian community]” paragraph 7, Chapt. IV and paragraph 41, Serbe (publ.), Leipzig, January 1870, and Ulrichs’ “‘Araxes’: a Call to Free the Nature of the Uranian from Penal Law”, C. Hübscher (Hugo Heyn) (publ.), Schleiz [in Thuringia, now a federal state in Germany], 1870.
———————
For those who might question the accuracy of this translation, I am including the original German text and respective German book titles:

“Wir bekämpfen die Arroganz despotischer Majoritäten. Unter allen Umständen verachten wir daher den herrschenden Liberalismus, welcher hohler ist, als taube Nüsse, welcher uns [Urningen, d.h. Homosexuellen] statt Brodes Steine beut; welcher Freiheit nur für Majoritäten fordert, die bereits am Ruder sind, sobald es sich dagegen um unterdrückte Minoritäten handelt, die seinem Geschmack nicht zusagen, nie und nirgend für Freiheit eintritt, der ohne Ende dieselbe fälscht durch den ihm innewohnenden Despotismus, der ohne zu erröthen alle Tage Menschenrecht verhöhnt und Menschenwürde zertritt. … Auch der Urning [Schwule] ist berechtigter Bürger des Rechtsstaats. Als solcher aber darf er vom Gesetzgeber fordern, ihm die Grundlagen der Gerechtigkeit innezuhalten, nicht mit zweierlei Maß zu messen ihm und dem Dioning [Heterosexuellen]. … Er hat nicht das Recht, ihm gegenüber sich leiten zu lassen von Willkühr oder blinder Verfolgungssucht. Der Staat ist nicht befugt, wie bisher geschah, den Urning zu behandeln wie einen rechtlosen. … Bei Juvenal lesen wir, wie jemand auf der Straße einem Freunde begegnet, ,Wohin des Weges?‘ Antwort: ,Ich muß zu einer Hochzeitsfeier; nubit amicus.‘ D. i. ein Freund verheirathet sich an einen Mann. Bei Martial (12. 42) finden wir einen förmlichen Heirathsbericht: Barbatus duro nupsit Callistratus Afro … [,Der bärtige Callistratus heiratete den kernigen Afer‘]. … Ich sehe nicht ein, warum man nicht ebensogut bei uns sollte lesen dürfen: ,Berlin, den 15. Mai. Heute ward in der hiesigen Hedwigskirche wieder ein urnisches Liebesbündniß feierlich vor Pfarrer und Zeugen geschlossen. Die Verlobten waren Herr Regierungsrath Callistratus und der beurlaubte Gardist Afer. Dieselben empfingen gleichzeitig das Sacrament der hl. Communion.‘“ —- Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs, in: „Prometheus: Beiträge zur Erforschung des Naturräthsels des Uranismus [Homosexualität] und zur Erörterung der sittlichen und gesellschaftlichen Interessen des Urningthums [d.h. der schwullesbischen Gemeinde].“, §7, IV u. §41, Serbe’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Leipzig, Januar 1870, u. „,Araxes.‘ Ruf nach Befreiung der Urningsnatur vom Strafgesetz.“, Schleiz, Verlag von C. Hübscher (Hugo Heyn), 1870.

Erratum: Ulrichs’ demands for gay marriage, of course, don’t date back to “the last quarter of the 19th century” but to the mid-19th century.

This is a travesty. But we, your gay and lesbian teachers and students, your banker and lawyer and doctor and dentist, your priest and minister and rabbi, your daughter and son, niece and nephew, your co-worker and neighbor and friend - we will not be silenced, we will not be denied our civil rights, we will not go away. We will secure our civil rights, and we will be recognized under law, regardless of how long it takes.

Johnny Beans

I have to respectfully say that I see no civil rights being denied anyone in the gay marriage debate.
We are all governed by the same standards within marriage. Generally, no one is allowed to marry within their same sex. It’s the same standard for everyone. What the gay and lesbian community seem to be fighting is ironically the equality of the law, in that we are all held to the same standard.
When folks were denied the right to vote, own property, or attend public schools, these were inequalities that were made “equal” through common sense and good legislation. These people were originally governed by different standards. In the end, the laws weren’t changed; the people were simply recognized as being protected by the same laws as everyone else.
In contrast, the gay and lesbian debate seems to look at a law that is equal for everyone and tries to custom fit it to fit their atypical lifestyles. They don’t like the law like it is. They don’t want equality under the law; they want differet laws to govern their special situation.

The “last great civil rights movement” is a different one. Why not do a show on it, since you either forgot about it or are not aware of it to begin with?

youthrights.org

As as a black Mormon I listen to On Point this evening on Gay marriage. I was disappointed that there were no opposing views on the show. I respect gay and lesbian point of views but for myself this is a religious issue as is for many people. I support civil unions and equal rights under the law but I can not support gay marriage because this is an issue of faith for me as well as many other people.

Michael from Boston

As Don A. points out above, the recognition of a marriage by the state is clearly not a civil right. If it were so, a mother and daughter would be permitted to marry. If such a pair chose to live together and share the struggle to produce income while raising that daughter’s children together, why should they not be permitted to share the Social Security, health care, and pension benefits that all married couples are permitted?

Is it because when these benefits were bestowed on married couples all those involved including legislators and their constituents intended these restrictions and benefits to apply only to the union of an unrelated man and woman?

Ask yourself, are all but the most fundamental human rights rights tempered by culturally defined restrictions? Do you have a right to drive, to own guns, to own property, to use that property as you wish? The answer is yes but according to a set of limitations. Do Gay couples have their fundamental rights to live and love and raise children together? Absolutely. Is recognition by the state as “married” a civil rights issue? I don’t see it as such. Not unless all those who choose to be married are permitted to do so and I have not yet heard a bit of sympathy for those that think marriage between more than just two consenting adults is preferable.

Your argument on people being born gay is very weak. There is no direct link to a person’s sexual orientation and genetic makeup. Every human is born with a tendency to do what he feels is comfortable and pleasing to him. Unfortunately history has shown us that doing whatever comes to mind can be highly destructive, not only to yourself but your entire community. That is where education and discipline comes in to play, which ultimately led to regulation, which until recently has worked to make nations really prosperous ( not just monetarily).

The human body cannot function or reproduce with same-sex activity. That is how the human race came to be in the first place, and although the same-sex relationship could nurture and even mentor a youth, the ultimate end result is a carbon copy of the influencing parents, creating a new generation of youth that believe in their thought process because they trained the child to believe so.

I believe that gays know that a child is a blank slate born without direction and full of emotion waiting to be molded and shaped into something. Why not a new generation of gays that will build a foundation for their cause? I know I sound like i hate the gay community but i don’t. They’re human just like me. It is not my preference. and make no mistake, until someone can point out a gene that causes a person to be gay that is in me, (or any other living being for that matter), that can be passed down to their offspring, a person being born gay is an impossibility.

If you want to be gay that is cool as long as you are willing to live with the ramification that it brings. Be what you want; that is the American way isn’t it? Think how you want to, act how you want. It is your life. But please don’t try to make it a law where you want everyone else to recognize you formally and you get rights that a normal married couple get. Those laws and rights were created to help a normal marriage because a normal marriage naturally produces offspring witch were to add to the normalcy of everyday living.

I mean let’s get real. #here was all this hubbub before prop 8 went to vote? Where were all the voters fighting prop 8 during the voting process? The American public has spoken. Surprise! Most people don’t want their son or daughter falling in love with a person of the same sex. It is not hate, it is their preference. Gays have theirs and heterosexuals have theirs.

Gays are everywhere; you cannot deny their existence. I have got some pretty cool friends that are gay. If hetero kids choose to go their own way when they turn 18 than so be it, that will be there choice. But the same way you want to adopt and raise kids to be gay or make their choice, we expect to do that with our children and not be forced to show my kid the unnatural way of existing. It is my right — the same one you enjoy. You are forcing those who don’t share you view to have your view an d that is unconstitutional. All men are created equal, but this is a preference not your genetic make up.

As usual, my disappointment with NPR grows. I have tried to contact them numerous times on the issue and they do not even show me the respect of answering my concerns. The issue is about same-sex marriage, not gay marriage. There is an LGBT community out here and many of us who want same sex marriage are not gay, many of us are bi or transgendered or even intersexed.

As usual, NPR is treating this issue in a very incomplete manner. As some of you have pointed out they do not bother to include the points of view of those who are opposed to same sex marriage but they are so inculturated into the whole ‘gay political’ everything that they do not even include the various points of view in support of same sex marriage and only present a singular and limited point of view on the side supporting the issue.

This is exactly why I do not financially support my local station here in Boston because they carry NPR and it regularly offends.

Bravo!

Great show. I don’t listen to the show every day, but I’ve listened to it enough to have felt that gay and lesbian viewpoints are rarely heard on the show. (And I may have missed those shows, too.) So I appreciate your exploring the question: are gay rights civil rights?, in depth.

As to people who bemoan you’re not showing “both sides” of the question, give me a break. Haters have their say every day of the week: In 2004, I had to watch the president, thankfully soon to be ex-president, get up and use the State of the Union address to defend “the sanctity of marriage” and oppose gay civil rights — mostly, it seemed to me and to a whole lot of other people, as a way to distract people from an (even then) failing economy and a difficult war. And while I wouldn’t go so far to call Republicans Nazis, it sure looked to me like the oldest political tactic in the book. Focus the hate. Distract the public. (Full disclosure: I am gay and of German Jewish descent.)

The week after the Obama victory an older white woman in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York voiced her dismay and concern that we would now have a Black president. I’m pretty insulated from people with views like that, so I was surprised to hear her say it, assuming that because I’m white I was open to hearing it. It’s not that I think people like her don’t exist: they’re just not talking to me about their views. But you know something? The people who share her views were not given space in the mainstream media this election. And isn’t that how it should be? We collectively accept that the American people are decent, and for the most part don’t like the idea of denying whole groups of people their civil rights. But it’s still, for the most part, okay for people – within public discourse - to express their blanket prejudice against gays, lesbians, and transgendered people. And to use those views to gain political power and votes, in ways that assuredly stir up acts of violence against my people and against our families. So thanks for framing a conversation about our civil rights without feeling you must include the many, many people who don’t want me to have them!

Mr. Ashbrook has shown a continual dislike for Mormons. Whether it was his emphatic disclaimer that he was not a Mormon during the show about tattoos, or discussing him drinking wine with Brigham Young’s descendants with Terry Tempest Williams, or his baited question at the end of this podcast - Mr. Ashbrook has shown a particular disregard for my faith. I can only wonder if Bruce Bastain’s placement on this program was intentional. I really like this program and Mr. Ashbrook, but I don’t understand why he continually targets my religion.

Tom,

Would you please have guest which present both sides of the argument? It is clear that you have an agenda to push and do not want to have a balanced debate. I have no problems with giving homosexuals full civil rights for taxes, adoption, and visitation. America provides the opportunity for people to live their life how they choose. Church and state should be kept separate. Marriage is a religious commitment and I feel offended by a secular group trying to redefine what is a commitment between husband and wife. Until the Bible says marriage is anything but between a Man and a Woman it should stay that way.

“When shall we learn, what should be clear as day, / We cannot choose what we are free to love?” — W.H. Auden’s reflection on the right to will, expressed in his poem “Canzone”, 1942.

All this facetious, transparently self-serving and circular “reasoning” against gay marriages (that, for instance, gay and lesbian men are “free” to marry someone of the other sex!), all this mindless chatter about homosexuality being a “choice” misses the point entirely, while simultaneously (albeit unintentionally) exposing the coercive nature of the “heterosexual dictatorship” and “compulsory heterosexuality”, this unjust and undemocratic caste system we currently live in, as it has been rightly called and described by Christopher Isherwood and Adrienne Rich, respectively.

Adrienne Rich’s strongly argued and sensitively written statements on “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” offer undeniable proof that heterosexuality is a system, a “political institution” that “has had to be imposed, managed, organized, propagandized and maintained by force.”

In a free and truly democratic society, two consenting adults should have the freedom to choose whom they fall in love with, and their relationships and decision to remain committed to each other should be respected and honored by society, whether or not they are of the same sex, or intend to produce children, or conform to this or that group’s religious beliefs (or myths and superstitions, if one happens to be a -constitutionally protected- atheist).

In a society that incessantly propagandizes, awards, privileges and sanctifies heterosexual relationships, while denying or ignoring same-sex love as a viable and equal alternative and punishing those who form such gay and lesbian relationships (by treating them, and GLBT people in general, as inferior, or morally reprehensible) we can easily turn the tables and make a counterclaim that many (if not most) people choose to be heterosexual, or at least to OUTWARDLY lead heterosexual lives, if only to avoid the social ostracism and negative fallout from all quarters that would arise should they dare choose to live their lives with a same-sex partner (such as being forced to support an inherently oppressive system by paying higher taxes than heterosexually married couples, excommunication from one’s church, discrimination in housing, lack of job security once one’s homosexuality is disclosed, etc. etc.) that are, incredibly enough, still a fact of gay life in 21st-century America.

Straights can no less “prove” that they did NOT “choose” to be heterosexual than homosexuals can. Even Sigmund Freud, who openly and vocally supported the world’s first Homosexual Emancipation Movement (in Germany, from 1897 until 1933) called into question heterosexuality’s supposed “goes-without-saying naturalness”:
“Psychoanalytic investigation very strongly opposes the attempt to separate homosexuals from other persons as a group of a special nature. By also studying sexual excitations other than the manifestly open ones it discovers that all men are capable of homosexual object selection and actually accomplish this in the unconscious. … In the psychoanalytic sense the exclusive sexual interest of the man for the woman is also a problem requiring an explanation, and is not something that is self-evident and explainable on the basis of chemical attraction.”
—— Prof. Sigmund Freud, LL.D., “Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie” ["Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality"], Franz Deuticke (publ.), Leipzig and Vienna, 1905.

Whoops! — a couple of typos slipped in there!
“… gay and lesbian men …” should, of course, read “gay men and lesbians” and the second typo should read: “Straights can no less ‘prove’ that they did NOT ‘choose’ to be heterosexual than homosexuals can [when it comes to their attraction to the same sex].”

Sorry folks! I managed to mess up that one line twice (both times while I was getting drowsy and ready for bed, late at night Central European Time), which, to avoid utter confusion, should read: “Straights have just as little ‘proof’ that they did NOT ‘choose’ to be heterosexual as do homosexuals [when it comes to defending the naturalness of their own sexuality].”

—————
Let’s take a closer look at this whole “natural/unnatural” argument, which straights (who are, of course, the “natural” ones) almost always revert to when they lack a viable counterargument as to why gay and lesbian people (the “unnatural” ones) do not deserve equal treatment, and which gays and lesbians often counter with (”I was born that way!”) when attacked by bigots for “choosing” their “lifestyle” (”Lifestyle?” What exactly do straights mean by that word, that conjures up images of slick fashion magazines?…our getting up in the morning? showering? getting dressed? going to work? coming home tired and cranky? washing the dishes? doing the laundry? going to the supermarket? paying one’s bills?):

An Iowa City resident named William Stosine once noted that “Those who are prejudiced against gays start out by saying homosexuality isn’t natural ‘because animals don’t do it.’ When it’s pointed out that, yes, animals certainly do, they simply flip-flop and say ‘well, people aren’t animals!’” This is precisely the kind of hare-brained, incoherent “reasoning” homophobic straights spew forth when confronted with a real-life gay man or lesbian, with the usual, predictable outcome:
“Heads, they (the bigots) win, tails we (everyone else) lose.”

“The whole of human history is an ‘argument with biology’” writes Jon Ward in “The Nature of Heterosexuality” (in the anthology “Heterosexuality,” GMP Publishers Ltd, London, 1987): “The very civilization which the most homophobic ideologues are eager to defend is the ANTITHESIS of nature: law and art. This logical oddity is most transparent when appeals are made — as they have been recurrently since [Thomas] Aquinas [in the Middle Ages(!), whom the Catholic Church to this day cites in order to “justify” discrimination of homosexuals!] and before — to the animal kingdom. The animals serve simultaneously as the model of sexual decorum, and the very type of debasement. Thus (in truly Thomist vein) the self-appointed ‘defender’ of heterosexuality: Human sexuality is a continuum of nature — animal, human, and self. Unless we understand this, we are in danger of becoming lower animals only.

Herein lies the mystery of sexual prohibitions. The crime of sodomy represents at once a descent to the pigsty, and the failure to behave like a proper pig. The point is this: that the natural ethic, taken to its logical conclusion, would cancel humanity altogether. Hence it is confined, in a transparently irrational fashion, to the sexual field.

Human SEXUALITY is proclaimed a ‘continuum of nature’ — not human government, or human poetry, or human aviation, or human gateau. AIDS is ‘nature’s retribution’; a collapsing tower block isn’t. Where it is promulgated, the law of nature is absolute, and carries the power of life or death. But it is only promulgated in one or two territories: pre-eminently, sex. The assumption on which the heterosexual imperative founds itself is radically inconsistent. … So long as lesbians and gay men suffer the assaults of its ‘natural’ pretensions, heterosexuality will remain a prison — even for the nicest warders. Freedom for heterosexuals will only be found where those whom they have oppressed are already seeking it: on the uneasy margin of the natural world which is called the human condition.”

In “Created Equal: Why Gay Rights Matter to America,” lawyers Michael Nava and Robert Dawidoff take a firm stand against the ideological forces of heterosexism and homophobia: “Why, one must ask, if heterosexuality is ‘natural,’ is all this effort being expended to promote it? Is it because what is being promoted is not natural sexuality but a form of social organization that excludes those to whom its promotions are not addressed? … The culture has no business promoting heterosexuality at the expense of homosexuality, and if this sounds radical, then ask yourself if you agree that the interests of white Americans or male Americans should not be promoted at the expense of black or female Americans. The same principle of equality is at work in all three cases.”

Um, Andrew, marriage *is* a religious commitment. But gay rights activists are not lobbying to try to legislate what churches and temples do. That is why it is called “civil” rights. Many people still believe that white skin is God’s reward and dark skin is God’s punishment. We are still entirely free to believe that. Some churches probably still preach or at the very least imply that. And they are free to do so. But whatever the beliefs of individuals and particular faiths, our laws, since the 1960s, say that discrimination on the basis of ethnicity or race is wrong, and do not prohibit people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds from partaking of the legal and financial and societal benefits of marriage — though undoubtedly there are still many Americans who don’t like or approve interracial relationships or marriages.

If you read about the history of marriage, you will see that it always had both a religious and civil component. Control of marriage rights were often a road to power: as in European church officials who could determine who kings could and couldn’t marry. Marriage was not just religious, it was intensely political. Royal families were joined through marriage. Wars were fought because the church controlled marriage law.

When gays and lesbians can marry in more than the 2 states in which we can now marry, (as we can in Holland, South Africa, and elsewhere) it will not determine anything about what particular religions believe or don’t believe. Couples, gay and straight, will be free to make marriage a religious ceremony, or not. Not all straight married people see their union as religious. Some get married solely because of the social and economic benefits. Or simply because they love one another and want to share a life. We agree, as a society, that this is a good thing, a stabilizing thing, a beautiful thing, even when the couple are atheists. This is what separation of church and state means! Otherwise, the state would require married couples to demonstrate they’d been married by a religious institution to validate the union as they do in some countries. We don’t do that, and we shouldn’t, since who would decide which religions did “real” marriages and which didn’t?

This is why we are lucky to live in the US; because we are not a theocracy. Marriage has been between a man and a woman, it’s true. We also were a nation of slaves and slaveholders, and we were a nation in which women didn’t have the vote. Thankfully, in our nation, political progress happens, and it’s written into our Constitution that as ideas change, laws change.

I didn’t have the show on for the duration, but heard one thing I’d like to comment on. One of the women, Leslea Newman I think, stated that gay marriage passed in Mass. because it was voted on by the “educated”, etc, and kept out of the realm of the populace. She was referring to Prop 8 being an Ballot Initiative, open to a vote by everyone, including the ignorant, and suggested that this was the wrong way to go about such issues.

Guess what, Ms. Newman: This is America, a democracy, and the Initiative in California is one of the most direct processes of determining the actual will of the People on certain issues, particularly when the issue is as simple and direct as Prop 8. And you know what? Even “ignorant” people get to vote. All we did here in California is define the word “marriage”, into our constitution in a way that our forefathers and ancestors from all over the world for thousands of years would have never guessed would be necessary. If you think that certain issues should be kept out of the hands of the People to get your preferred result, then you don’t want to live in a democracy where everyone in the voting booth has the right to express their opinion. I often don’t agree with election results either, but you won’t here me say that so-and-so shouldn’t have had the right to vote on a particular thing.

Further, that you think only “ignorant” people got Prop 8 passed is short-sighted; people who may not even personally know gays (as you suggested) are bombarded with “positive” presentations of gay people every day in the media, and yet voted to preserve a traditional definition of the word “marriage” - AGAIN. This is the second time California has voted this way. Sounds like a mandate to me.

My opinion is that those of us who have traditional marriages don’t want that word diluted by being forced to accept that it must include any other relationship people might dream up, whether it’s monogamous gays or any other combination. Once the door is opened, who’s to say where it will stop? All those other people who have relationships that even monogamous gays would consider deviant will eventually be willing to come out of their closet and want to redefine marriage too. Are monogamous “ignorant” gays then going to limit those people from having using the word? The word becomes meaningless if the definition can include anything. No one’s trying to keep gays from Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness - just from using a word to name their relationship that by definition over the ages has never included them. I’m highly disappointed that a few states have actually gone along with it. This isn’t enlightened. It’s shortsighted.

Lots of other words can be used, and given a legal definition that can carry all the rights and benefits that people think they deserve, but please don’t call it “marriage”.

With respect to Lewis Gordon’s point - yes, there were certainly many conservative white voters who voted for and supported Prop 9; what is striking was the percentages of African-Americans who joined their ranks (70% as reported by the LA Times).

Maybe I had some naive notion that groups who have experienced oppression would somehow band together and support each other - but I was totally floored. To be clear, I’m offended that anyone would want to take away rights from a group they are not a part of - rights that they themselves enjoy.

It’s completely unfair to pin blame for Prop 8’s success on a single group - but when you grow up learning about the struggles of the civil rights movement, watching the videos of the dogs and beating, listening to those inspired speeches … I don’t know … the idea that that same group could dismiss the sort of discrimination gay people suffer is unbelievable.

I understand there’s nuance to the dynamics of any community and rationally I get that there are number of factors why groups voted the way they did - from religion, to exposure to the gay community, etc. - but this really caused a visceral reaction in me. I was physically disgusted and no matter what I do that feeling sticks. Maybe I’m wrong for feeling it but I can tell you this - I’m certainly not the only one.

The sad thing - I believe Gordon is correct and those groups that DO harbor racism against blacks are going to jump all over this. Everyone loses in this situation.

whoops, I mean prop 8.

What is both shocking and revelatory is the direct connection (in both a temporal and ideological context) between what German historian Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller calls the “theologization, Christologization (marriage as the Bridehood of Christ) and sacramentalization of ‘holy matrimony’” laid down at the Second Council of Lyons in the year 1274, and the simultaneous “relegation of sodomy to one of the death-worthy crimes.” In parallel to the sacramentalization of heterosexual marriage, and “the wave of literature praising” that institution, religious authorities in sermons and public speeches, began calling for “pogroms” against “sodomites” (Bernhardin of Siena!). “In the mid-13th century … that is, in the first phase of written statutes, laws against sodomites were promulgated in important cities: Siena 1262/70, Bologna 1288, Florence followed in 1325, Perugia in 1342. … Thus, between 1250 and 1300, homosexuality developed into a crime that was to be punished with the death penalty.”

According to Hergemöller, typical medieval forms of execution for gay men were: “death by starvation after being locked up in a large bird cage,” “drowned in swamps,” “drowning … being shackled and then tossed into the sea,“ “… strangulation. The garrotte, a ligature of chain used to strangle someone to death, was the preferred instrument of execution for sodomites in the Netherlands of the early modern era, but it was also avidly used in Spain, Portugal and other countries. … But the most typical form of punishment for sodomites in the Middle Ages was being publicly burnt at the stake, the same mode of death that heretics, Jews and witches met with. Normally, the victims were beheaded before being burnt … but such means of easing the transition to death were not obligatory.”[1]

“Holy” heterosexual matrimony thus served, from the very beginning, as an instrument of (lethal) oppression of homosexuals! This only goes to show how desperately this “time-honored” institution is in need a complete, democratic overhaul. Denying us the right to marry only perpetuates the suffering which began with these murderously exclusive tactics that were once part and parcel of “holy matrimony”.

It comes as no surprise, then, that the first publication of ANY laws in colonial America, the “Capitall Lawes of New-England,” as “Established within the Iurisdiction of Massachusets” in 1641 and ‘42, included the death penalty for sodomy. Most of the fifteen capital crimes were based on Old Testament references actually cited (!) in the text! The capital laws of Massachusetts Bay provided death for:
1.“any man” who worshipped “any other God, but the Lord God” (Deut. 13. 6., etc.)
2.“any man or woman” who “be a Witch” (Exod. 22. 18, Lev. 10. 27, etc.)
3.“any person” who “shall blaspheme the Name of God the Father, Sonne, or Holy Ghost, with direct, expresse, presumptuous, or high-handed blasphemy, or shall curse God in the like manner” (Lev. 24. 15, 16)
4.“any person” who “shall commit any wilfull murther [murder]” (Exod. 21. 12, 13, 14, etc.)
5.“any person” who “slayeth another suddenly in his anger, or cruelty of passion” (Lev. 24. 17, etc.)
6.“any person” who slew another “through guile” (Exod. 21.14)
7.“a man or woman” who “shall lye with any beast or bruit creature, by carnall copulation” (Lev. 20. 15, 16.
8.“a man” who “lyeth with mankinde, as he lyeth with a woman, both of them have committed abomination, they both shall surely be put to death. (Lev. 20. 13)
9.“any person” who “committeth adultery with a married, or espoused wife, the Adulterer, and the Adulteresse, shall surely be put to death. (Lev. 20. 10 and 18)
10.“any man” who “shall unlawfully have carnall copulation with any woman-childe under ten years old, either with, or without her consent, he shall be put to death. (No Old Testament references here.)
11.“any man” who “shall forcibly, and without consent, ravish any maid or woman that is lawfully married or contracted, he shall be put to death.” (Deut. 22. 25&c.)
12.“any man” who “shall ravish any maid or single woman (committing carnall copulation with her by force, against her will) that is above the age of ten yeares ; he shall be either punished with death, or with some other grievous punishment, according to circumstances, at the discretion of the Judges : and this Law to continue till the Court take further order.” (No Old Testament references here.)
13.“any man” who “stealeth a man, or man-kinde, he shall surely be put to death.” (Exod. 21. 16)
14.“any man” who rises up “false witnesse wittingly, and of purpose to take away any mans life, he shall be put to death.” (Deut. 19. 16, 18, 19)
15.“any man” who “shall conspire, or attempt any invasion, insurrection, or publick rebellion against our Common-wealth, or shall endeavour to surprize any Towne or Townes, Fort or Forts therein : or shall treacherously, or perfidiously attempt the alteration and subversion of our frame of pollity, or government fundamentally, he shall be put to death. (Sam. 3. & 18, & 20)

[Note: Bible passages might be incorrectly numbered due to the relative illegibility of numbers in the original document (photocopy).]

In the recent past, the (woefully misnamed) Rev. Daniel Lovely[2] of the Watertown Baptist Temple in New York, advocated capital punishment for homosexuals. “They should be killed through government means. There a lot of people in Watertown that enjoy living in a non-Christian world and it’s got to be stopped.”

In the theocracy such “Religious Right” kooks strive for, we might well find ourselves confronted with the (no doubt verrrrrrrrry selective!) reintroduction of Bible-based legislation such as that of mid-17th-century New England (leaving out, of course, all passages that might directly affect HETEROSEXUAL male behavior, such as the death penalty for “committing adultery” and “ravishing maids.” After all, it probably wouldn’t be in the best interests of religious zealots and right-wing Republicans (such as the known adulterer Newt Gingrich), to have two-thirds of the population, including themselves and most of their parishioners and following, decimated. No wonder today’s gay and lesbian community, like Jesus Himself, loathe the hypocrisy of holier-than-thou religious leaders!

Incitement to verbal or physical acts of violence against gay and lesbian people is fascism, pure and simple. Due to its own history, “incitement to hatred against a minority” [“Volksverhetzung”] is a punishable offense in today’s Germany that can lead up to five years imprisonment.

Magnus Hirschfeld, who was both Jewish and homosexual, founded the world’s first homosexual emancipation movement in Berlin in May of 1897. It was crushed, its buildings ransacked by brownshirted Storm Troopers, its books tossed into huge bonfires and burned, all gay rights groups disbanded, gay bars closed and homosexuals hunted down and incarcerated in concentration camps shortly after Hitler seized power in 1933. “Thousands of homosexuals were sent to forced labor camps.” writes the United States Holocaust Museum. “There, in an explicit campaign of ‘extermination through work,’ homosexuals and other so-called security suspects were assigned to grueling work in ceaselessly dangerous conditions [for instance, the brickworks near the Sachsenhausen concentration camp just outside Berlin's city borders].” “At least 1,000 homosexual men are known to have been held at Sachsenhausen between its opening in 1936 and the end of the war. Many perished from the exertions of grueling labor in the brickworks.” My lover and I visited an exhibition on German homosexuals incarcerated between 1933 and 1945 in Sachsenhausen in 2000, at the grounds of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp itself, which is now a memorial site. He had nightmares for months on end afterward. “Homosexuals in these camps were almost always assigned to the worst and often most dangerous work. Usually attached to ‘punishment companies,’ they generally worked longer hours with fewer breaks, and often on reduced rations. The quarries and brickyards claimed many lives, not only from exertion but also at the hands of SS guards who deliberately caused ‘accidents.’” A memorial site was inaugurated in the center of Berlin in May of this year “to honor the thousands of homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945.”

The four-meter (13-foot) high monument, which has a window showing a never-ending film of two men kissing (which will be replaced in two years by a lesbian couple that is kissing, then, every two years, by gay- and lesbian-related film material), was unveiled in Berlin on May 28, 2008. The new memorial - which was inaugurated by Berlin’s gay mayor, Klaus Wowereit, and Germany’s Culture Minister, Bernd Neumann (incidentally a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Party) - is situated across the street from that for the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The Nazis branded homosexuality an aberration threatening their perception of Germans as the master race, and 55,000 gay men were deemed criminals. As many as 15,000 of those men were killed in Nazi concentration camps. What’s more, after the “liberation” of the camps by the Allies, those survivors who wore the pink triangle - denoting that they had been imprisoned as homosexuals - were treated as common criminals who had deserved their incarceration. A yellow Star of David under a superimposed Pink Triangle represented gay Jewish prisoners. (So much for America exporting its version of “democracy” to the world. When it came to “queers,” their line of thinking was, and sometimes still IS not unlike the Nazis’.) Many were transferred to prisons proper to serve out their terms . . . According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “The Allied Military Government of Germany repealed countless laws and decrees. Left unchanged, however, was the 1935 Nazi revision of [the anti-homosexual] Paragraph 175. Under the Allied occupation, some homosexuals were forced to serve out their terms of imprisonment regardless of time served in the concentration camps.” This gross injustice serves as a clear indictment of American homophobia, all those who continue to preach and teach against gays and lesbians and treat gay marriages as somehow “inferior” to their heterosexual counterparts.

“Europeans have gone through an extended and extremely productive post-fascist learning process. … In the Sixties and Seventies West Europeans gradually dissociated themselves —in what was at times a long-drawn-out struggle— from the persistent after-effects of fascism, and also from a conservative version of Christianity that was jointly responsible for anti-Semitism and fascism, but which, in the postwar period, distracted from its complicity by insisting on sexual purity.
West Europeans have since developed a new moral discourse in which the infliction of suffering is regarded as a more important problem than the practicing of sexual freedom. In short, they learned to regard sexual rights as essential, inalienable human rights.” — Dagmar Herzog in: “Illegitimite Child of the Sexual Revolution: The Religious Right in the USA, Sex and Power” [“Illegitimes Kind der sexuellen Revolution: Die religiöse Rechte in den USA, Sex und Macht”] in the anthology “Queer Lectures,” p. 35, (publ.) Männerschwarm Verlag, Hamburg, Germany, 2008, [English translation mine].

People like Daniel Lovely and Pat Robertson (who, sounding like a medieval theologian or priest, blamed the GLBT community (!) for the New Orleans floods), who cloak their hatred in pseudo-religious rhetoric, are the true threat to civil society, not same-sex marriage!

For the aforesaid reasons, we gay men and lesbians demand the absolute separation of Church and State, and the rescission of DOMA and ALL reactionary state constitutional amendments of the past decade based on Biblical myths, enforcing the supremacy of straight marriages, and our subsequent degradation to 2nd-class status.
————
Footnote:
[1] Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller, “Randgruppen der spätmittelalterlichen Gesellschaft” [“Fringe Groups of Late-Medieval Society”, Fahlbusch Verlag, Warendorf, 1990.
[2] Text taken from a http://www.unc.edu document from Watertown, N.Y., 1979: “The emergence of gay activism in a small town in upstate New York [in 1979] resulted in violence, harassment, death threats, fire bombings and a call for the execution of local homosexuals.
Watertown, a factory community of 30,000, recently saw the establishment of a gay advocacy group, the Watertown Gay Task Force. This prompted an anti-gay backlash cam- paign by the Rev. Daniel Lovely of Watertown Baptist Temple.
According to the Task Force president Pat Tanner, the ‘God Says Death to Homos’ campaign begun by Lovely prompted more violence and harassment. It included the severe beating of one woman.
Lovely was quoted in the local newspapers as saying that the execution of homosexuals is justified.
‘They should be killed through governmental means,’ Lovely said, ‘there are a lot of people in Watertown that enjoy living in a non-Christian world, and it’s got to be stopped.’”

Other sources:
Bernd-Ulrich Hergemöller, “Sodom and Gomorrah: On the Everyday Reality and Persecution of Homosexuals in the Middle Ages,” Free Association Books Ltd, London/New York, 2001.

D. J. Noordam, “Riskante relaties: Vijf eeuwen homoseksualiteit in Nederland, 1233-1733” [“Risky Relationships: Five Centuries of Homosexuality in the Netherlands, 1233-1733”], Verloren (publ.), Hilversum, The Netherlands, 1995.

Jonathan Ned Katz, “Gay/Lesbian Almanac: A New Documentary [from the Early American Colonies, 1607 to 1740 to the United States, 1880-1950],” Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., New York, 1994.

On a lighter note, and as proof that a country’s religiosity need not prevent it from allowing same-sex marriage, in fact, that it would be cruel and unethical to continue NOT allowing them, I’d like to quote one of the most prominent and outspoken straight supporters of gay rights, who comes from arch-Catholic (!) Spain. Spanish Premier José Luis Rodriguéz Zapatéro’s Socialist government is arguably the most pro-actively pro-gay national government in the world, and a new asylum initiative for “sexual refugees” (gay men, lesbians and straight women whose lives are threatened by the death penalty in their own countries) reflects that
commitment. Zapatéro demonstrated his commitment to gay human rights when he made an unusual speech in defense of same-sex unions before Spain’s parliament in July 2005, when it legalized gay marriage. If you
haven’t read it, Premier Zapatéro’s address was the most remarkable speech in favor of full equality for those with same-sex hearts ever delivered by a head of government anywhere, in which Premier Zapatéro
quoted two of the most illustrious gay poets in history. Here are excerpts from that now-famous speech:

“We are not legislating, honorable members, for people far away and not known by us. [In the Spanish original: ‘No estamos legislando, Señorías, para gentes remotas y extrañas.’] We are enlarging the opportunity for happiness to our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends
and, our families: at the same time we are making a more decent society, because a decent society is one that does not humiliate its members.”
“In the poem ‘The Family,’ our [gay] poet Luis Cernuda was sorry because, ‘How does man live in denial in vain by giving rules that prohibit and condemn?’ [In case you speak Spanish, the original text to Luis Cernuda’s poem, “La Familia,” reads: ¿Cómo se engaña el hombre y
cuán en vano da reglas que prohiben y condenan?]
“Today, Spanish society answers to a group of people who, for many years, have been humiliated, whose rights have been ignored, whose dignity has been offended, their identity denied, and their liberty oppressed. Today Spanish society grants them the respect they deserve, recognizes their rights, restores their dignity, affirms their identity, and restores their liberty.”
“It is true that they are only a minority, but their triumph is everyone’s triumph. It is also the triumph of those who oppose this law, even though they do not know this yet: because it is the triumph of
Liberty. Their victory makes all of us (even those who oppose the law) better people, it makes our society better. Honorable members, There is no damage to marriage or to the concept of family in allowing two people of the same sex to get married. To the contrary, what happens is this class of Spanish citizens get the potential to organize their lives with the rights and privileges of marriage and family. There is no danger to the institution of marriage, but precisely the opposite: this law enhances and respects marriage.”
“Today, conscious that some people and institutions are in profound disagreement with this change in our civil law, I wish to express that, like other reforms to the marriage code that preceded this one, this law
will generate no evil, that its only consequence will be the avoiding of senseless suffering of decent human beings. A society that avoids senseless suffering of decent human beings is a better society.”
“With the approval of this Bill, our country takes another step in the path of liberty and tolerance that was begun by the democratic change of government. Our children will look at us incredulously if we tell them
that many years ago, our mothers had less rights than our fathers, or if we tell them that people had to stay married against their will even though they were unable to share their lives. Today we can offer them a
beautiful lesson: every right gained, each access to liberty has been the result of the struggle and sacrifice of many people that deserve our
recognition and praise.”
“Today we demonstrate with this Bill that societies can better themselves and can cross barriers and create tolerance by putting a stop to the unhappiness and humiliation of some of our citizens. Today, for
many of our countrymen, comes the day predicted by Kavafis [the great Greek gay poet] one century ago:
‘Later ‘twas said of the most perfect society / someone else, made like me / certainly will come out and act freely.’”

Correction of two errata in my posting from Dec. 5th:
“‘Holy’ heterosexual matrimony thus served, from the very beginning, as an instrument of (lethal) oppression of homosexuals! This only goes to show how desperately this ‘time-honored’ institution is in need of a complete, democratic overhaul. Denying us the right to marry only perpetuates the suffering which began with these murderously exclusionary tactics that were once part and parcel of ‘holy matrimony’.”

One of the inscriptions on the plaque attached to the Berlin “Memorial for Homosexuals Persecuted in the National-Socialist Era” (which was built and funded by the Federal German government), reads: “Aus seiner Geschichte heraus hat Deutschland eine besondere Verantwortung, Menschenrechtsverletzungen gegenüber Schwulen und Lesben entschieden entgegenzutreten.” [“In light of its history, Germany has a special responsibility to firmly counter any violations of human rights against gay men and lesbians.”]

“We stand stunned before the brutality with which the Nazis threatened, persecuted and destroyed all those who did not correspond to their inhuman ideology,” Germany’s Federal Commissioner for Culture, Bernd Neumann (from the aforesaid Christian Democratic Union party, the German equivalent to America’s Republican party) said while inaugurating the memorial to homosexual victims of the Nazi regime six months ago. “The experience of war and Holocaust, state terror and tyranny, puts on us Germans a special responsibility to protect freedom and human rights.”

One of the last surviving homosexuals of the Holocaust and bearer of the Pink Triangle, 95-year-old Rudolf Brazda, who was incarcerated in the Buchenwald concentration camp from 1941 bis 1945, visited the above-mentioned Memorial on June 28th of this year. (Brazda lived with his lover, who died six years ago, for 35 years in southern Germany. He is presently residing in France.)

You will find his picture, and a short recount of his life (in German), at the following URL:
http://www.ondamaris.de/?p=1914

It is high time America, too, learned from its past mistakes and repented for both past and present trespasses it has committed against us.

Maybe now some of the readers here are finally, dimly, beginning to realize that state and national laws supporting and sustaining heterosexual supremacy and hegemony are, in the end, incompatible with democracy, or democratic ideals, as preached, but most certainly not practiced by the United States. Do you really need me to tell you that the Emperor is naked, and your “democracy” as it now stands — a farce? Under present conditions, the American Bill of Rights and the United States Constitution aren’t worth the yellowed, moldy parchment they’re written on. We can only hope Pres. Obama achieves the many goals (including the recission of DOMA and all antigay legislation, and the initiation of federal anti-discrimination laws) he promised to work toward should he become President.

Whoops, a German typo slipped in there! That’s “1941 to 1945″.

During Berlin’s gay and lesbian pride march on June 28, 2008, about half a million demonstrators, the entire procession, came to a halt upon reaching the site of the Homosexual Memorial and the Jewish Holocaust Memorial. All festive music was turned off, the dancing stopped, and suddenly, from one of the bandwagons, the melancholy, lilting voice of Marlene Dietrich drifted through the air, floating over our heads and the thousands of gigantic stone monoliths of which the Memorials are comprised, singing a sad song in German with beautiful lyrics from the great Jewish composer Friedrich Holländer (who was forced to emigrate to the United States after Hitler seized power in 1933). The song was “Ich weiß nicht, zu wem ich gehöre” [“I Don’t Know To Whom I Belong”], which ends with the words “…I think I belong to myself quite alone…” It was so spooky and gripping, that a tear began to well up in my eyes, and, as I looked around to the people standing near me, I noticed tears in their eyes as well. (If I had known that a gay survivor of the death camps was in our midst that day…..) I am truly grateful to be living in the present time and space, knowing how difficult, how murderously oppressive and hopeless, how necessarily hidden and duplicitous things were before, and how so much better and freer they’ve become now.
If anything, Proposition 8 served as a wake-up call, a startling reminder to all gay and lesbian Americans how fragile, precious, and easily lost freedom is. It has shown us in no uncertain terms that heterosexual supremacy and antigay hatred are still very much with us and that we must always remain vigilent and prepared, if necessary, to fight for everything we hold dear, our families, our freedom, our sense of self-worth, our dignity and that of our families, and protect them from those who wish us harm.
“They pissed off the wrong group of people,” comedian and actress Wanda Sykes told a crowd at Las Vegas, in response to the passing of Prop. 8. “They have galvanized a community. We are so together now and we all want the same thing and we shouldn’t have to settle for less. Instead of having gay marriage in California, no, we’re gonna have gay marriage across the country.”
Ms. Sykes was right: instead of putting us “back in place, where we belong” (under straight America’s heels, being stomped on), Proposition 8 has instead woken up a sleeping giant.

For those readers who have dared to question our moral agency as GLBT people, our right to speak up for and def