Trans-Cendence

Eye of Newt. . .

2011-12-22T03:21:00.000-05:00

Since Newt Gingrich seems to have become the latest to become the darling of the ABM (Anyone But Mitt) movement among the know-nothing Tea Party and “Evangelical” Christianist Republicans, let’s take an opportunity to skewer one of his latest platform statements – his response to the call by the WAcKO Iowa group, The FAMiLY LEADER

NEwT: To Bob Vander Plaats and the Executive Board of The FAMiLY LEADER: I appreciate the opportunity to affirm my strong support of the mission of the FAMiLY LEADER by solemnly vowing to defend and strengthen the family through the following actions I would take as President of the United States.

Defending Marriage. As President, I will vigorously enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, which was enacted under my leadership as Speaker of the House, and ensure compliance with its provisions, especially in the military.

JP: The fact that the so-called Defense of Marriage Act is really an assault on states’ rights, an assault on marriage, and actually does nothing to preserve and strengthen marriage, is lost on Newt. DOMA is unconstitutional and likely to be held to be unconstitutional by the courts.

NEwT: I will also aggressively defend the constitutionality of DOMA in federal and state courts.

JP: A waste of taxpayer dollars, to defend a law that should so obviously a violation of the Constitution to anyone who claims to be a constitutional scholar.

NEwT: I will support sending a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the states for ratification.

JP: it’s so rare that constitutional amendments to take away rights are introduced. The last one ushered in Prohibition. The constitutional Amendment we need to see is a reintroduction of the Equal Rights Amendment. It is about time.

NEwT: I will also oppose any judicial, bureaucratic, or legislative effort to define marriage in any manner other than as between one man and one woman. I will support all efforts to reform promptly any uneconomic or anti-marriage aspects of welfare and tax policy. I also pledge to uphold the institution of marriage through personal fidelity to my spouse and respect for the marital bonds of others.

JP: Given Newt’s personal history, “personal fidelity to his spouse” in that “one man/one woman for life” scenario can only mean returning to the first wife he previously abandoned while whoring around with the second, and the third he whored around with while still married to the second, and abandoning the later whores. But he is a whore himself who deserves the serial polygamy he *really* favors. His “one man and one woman”pledge should mean just that – not just serial polygamy, or “one man and one woman at a time.” Oh, but wait, to his adopted Roman Catholic Church, Newt gets a pass, since neither of his earlier marriages are recognized by the pedophile-pandering priests (or any of the other more decent priests) in his Church as having been valid. But don’t all these “Evangelical” Christianist types look at Roman Catholics as “papists” in sort of the same way they see Mormons as pagan idolators? Wouldn't that be especially true since he used to be a white Southern Baptist good ol' boy, and he actually converted to the papist cause? Aren; these the same sort of people who objected to Al Smith and Jack Kennedy?

NEwT: Defending the Unborn. I believe that life begins at conception.

JP: He “believes.” This is important. I will note that this belief that “life begins at conception” has absolutely nothing to do with the idea of when that life is entitled to be considered a human being. Anyone who professes to be a bible-believing Christian and who does not accept the idea that the soul is intimately connected with *breathing* (i.e., the span of a human person’s ensoulment runs from first breath to last only. Even under the English Common Law, which was rather bible-based in many ways, a baby that was born, but did not take a single breath, was not deemed to be a person, but was called stillborn. No inheritance or inheritance rights would pass through such a non-entity. But Newt is one of those people who like the idea of granting full personhood status to inanimate corporations. He would also likely consider the construction plans to be a home, and pans on regulating chicken eggs as if they were fully formed and once-breathing chickens. But his "belief"is consistent with the kind of thing the Pope wants to impose on all Americans.

NEwT: On day one of my administration, I will sign an executive order reinstating Ronald Reagan’s Mexico City policy that prevents taxpayer dollars from being used to fund abortions overseas.

JP: That’s right, Newt “believes” and only his beliefs count. How he can say this, and then claim to defend “Religious Liberty” two points down from this one, is a conflicted position that can only be taken seriously by people who do not have the capacity to understand the fact that these principles are in opposition - such as anyone who might have signed Robbie George and Chuck Colson's bombshell of a Manhattan Declaration. So Newt wants to take way from the religious freedom of women. For Newt, women are a necessary inconvenience, and as an originalist on the Constitution, he believes that women should not be counted, and that African Americans should be returned to a state of involuntary servitude. (See his position on appointing "Originalist" judges!)

NEwT: I will also work with Congress to repeal Obamacare, defund Planned Parenthood so that no taxpayer dollars are being used to fund abortions but rather transfer the money so it is used to promote adoption and other pro-family policies, and enact legislation that provides greater protections for the unborn.

JP: Even the English Common Law recognized that “the unborn” are not people. So protecting the “unborn” means taking away the rights of women who are already born. And so little of Planned Parenthoods budget goes to abortion, Most of it goes to other reproductive health services. I am sure that Newt would rather give taxpayer money to "religious" groups that discriminate against people they don't like.

NEwT: Defending Religious Liberty. As President, I will vigorously defend the First Amendment’s rights of religious liberty and freedom of speech against anyone who would try to stifle the free expression of believers.

JP: Newt wants to impose his religion in everyone, and then comes out with this? This is inconsistent with his policy on women’s reproductive rights. There are women who share my religious belief that is bible based, and consistent with the common law understanding that we are only human beings between first breath and last breath. Our souls are intimately bound up in our breath – and literally, “spirit” and “breath” are the same thing. So, why doesn't our religion count? Is it because Newt only believes that Religious freedom is for people who agree with him?

NEwT: I will also promote legislation that protects the right to conscience for healthcare workers so they are not compelled to perform abortions and other procedures that violate their religious teachings.

JP: how about the religious liberty of healthcare workers whose religious beliefs allow them to participate in assisting women in their reproductive health care. I think that people who have a religious objection to performing their jobs should find another line of work.

NEwT: Defending Against Debt. As President, I will undertake vigorous policies to maximize capital investment and job creation, along with common sense entitlement reforms, to dramatically turn around the nation’s fiscal situation.

JP: This is meaningless drivel. Newt has every intention to line the pockets of fat cats at the expense of the people. He already intends to scuttle child labor laws.

NEwT: Building upon the same principles I championed during my four years as Speaker, when we reduced the national debt by over $400 billion and dramatically reduced the national debt as a percentage of the GDP, we will reduce the enormous burden upon American families of the public debt and unfunded liabilities.

JP: Newt is infamous for being the huckster who designed the program one can only call “The Contract On America” - The only way to fairly accomplish the goal he seeks is to stop the insane defense spending and end the wars. It is a well-known principle since the Vietnam war that America can’t afford to have Guns *AND* Butter.

NEwT: Defending the Right of the People to Rule Themselves. Today, as federal courts have intervened in sectors of American life never before imaginable, including the intervention in the definition of marriage as well as when unborn life can be protected under the Constitution, the public has increasingly come to view them as an usurpative device for unelected rulers.

JP: The real activist judges have ruled that fictitious corporate “people” have the same rights as human beings – the next step is to give corporate entities perpetual voting rights. And the slippery slope will be to give Republican-built robots voting rights (something that they apparently have tried clandestinely in Ohio, with the apparent voting rights of voting machines there). The courts actually exist to protect the *individual* people against the tyranny of the majority – a job they don’t do terribly well because of conservative activism from the bench

NEwT: This abuse of power and loss of public confidence amounts to a constitutional crisis. I believe the executive and legislative branches each have an independent responsibility to interpret the Constitution,

JP: That is true, within their parameters, but the SCOTUS has the final say on constitutionality.

NEwT: and in those rare circumstances when they believe the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, have engaged in a serious constitutional error, they can choose among an array of constitutional powers to check and balance the courts.

JP: The “check and balance” on the SCOTUS is the constitutional amendment process. Is Newt an ass, or what? Since he is a self-proclaimed constitutional scholar, doesn’t he actually know this?

NEwT: As President, I will nominate for federal judgeships, including justices of the Supreme Court, only those individuals who are committed to an originalist understanding of the Constitution. Judges with an originalist understanding will subordinate themselves to the meaning of the Constitution as it was intended by the framers, and not substitute their own judgments about its meaning.

JP: Originalism is an error. Times have changed, and I expect a SCOTUS and federal judges who are more civilized than their predecessors, and more civilized than the Founders, who believed in slavery, and in the oppression of women. Newt is saying tight here that he wants to roll back the interpretation of the Constitution to a point prior to 1870.

NEwT: The inherent judicial self-restraint that comes from an originalist approach to the Constitution offers the best long-term assurance that federal judges will not exceed their powers and trample on individual liberties. I will also work with Congress to use the Constitutional means available to reassert the right of the elected branches of government to defend their understanding of the meaning of the Constitution, including limiting the jurisdiction of the federal courts to decide on certain issues, when they believe the federal courts have engaged in a serious constitutional error.

JP: I think that Newt treads on dangerous ground here. While the courts have traditionally been a drag on progressivism, on occasion they lurch toward civilization. Newt would kill that, and insure that the tyranny of the majority can crush individual rights for people who don’t fit into the majority. Newt is a dangerous demagogue, and a threat to the republic, as dangerous as a mad dog I the streets. If he were to be elected to the presidency, I would fear for the survival of the nation. Gingrich, the Gingrinch, would steal the childhood from children, freedom from women, and human rights from LGBT people.

NEwT: Sincerely, Newt Gingrich

JP: Newt is *anything* but sincere. He is a liar, a cheater, an adulterer, a miserable excuse for a human being, and he has a problem with the meaning of words. His answer to charges of influence peddling was that he was not a “lobbyist.” This fuzzy definition thing is exactly the same kind of thing that he ha the House impeach Bill Clinton for exhibiting – Clinton was technically truthful when he said that he “did not have sexual relations with that woman.” Because what Clinton meant by “sexual relations” was limited to a particular act that he didn’t actually perform. So Gingrich technically tells the truth when he says he was not a “lobbyist” but there are other aspects of influence peddling that he had his hand in once he was gone from Congress. Newt’s hands are stained and unclean. None of the Republican candidates for President are qualified for the job, but Newt has shown himself to be less qualified than Michele Bachmann. He is already committing “high crimes and misdemeanors” under his own definition of the term, well before getting the nomination, much less taking office.

Yet another Cissexist bisexual or “political lesbian” Radfem gets it wrong

2011-08-15T18:30:00.005-04:00

Over on Facebook, my friend Zoe Brain pointed out an interesting but sad article this morning.

Someone named Bev Jo, as a “guest” columnist on the anti-trans Gender Trender blog, writes an essay entitled Fighting the "Lie" of Trans, which summarizes everything that’s wrong with the cissexist POV on trans people adopted by many radfems based on the patriarchist birth-genital-essentialist position of the Roman Catholic Church, imported into radfem philosophy by the false spinnings of the twice-born Athenas, Catholic college-based professors, Mary Daly and her empire-building protégé, Jan Raymond.

On Facebook, while riding on the commuter train this morning, I summarized a response as follows:

The only time I ever lied about myself was when I was trying to assimilate in accordance with societal expectations. All the writer is doing is showing a particularly malicious, clueless, institutionalized pseudo-patriarchist cissexist POV no different from the cissexist birth genital essentialiam brought into Radfem philosophy by Catholic college professors, twice-born Athena fembots Daly and Raymond, who corrupted Radfem philosophy from the inside.

But sitting at the computer in my office after work, I decided to read and analyze Bev Jo's article a little more deeply. I have just started reading Mary Daly's book Gyn/Ecology in an effort to better understand why Radfem philosophy took a cissexist turn, beyond the surmise that I've made based on my exposure to the writings of Daly's protégé Raymond.

Right in the beginning, Bev Jo tells us she is a Lesbian, and then proves she can’t be one!

She parenthetically claims

“Who women choose to love is a choice, not something as trivial as ‘sexual orientation.’”

That is a statement that can only be made by

(a) a woman with a bisexual sexual orientation who has a natural orientation that allows for such a choice, and who chooses to suppress her heterosexual side, or

(b) a woman whose natural sexual orientation is actually heterosexual, but who is so wrapped up in radfem philosophy that she rejects her natural orientation, suppresses it, and “chooses” to assimilate – for such as make that “choice,” the choice itself can be a cause for psychological imbalances.

So I don’t know what Bev Jo’s sexual orientation is, but she proves by her own words that she herself has no place in lesbian space, except perhaps to the extent that bisexual women are welcome.

So, having appropriated the identity of a Lesbian, she proceeds to assume the patriarchal authority to exclude others who have more right to Lesbian space than she herself does. This pseudo-patriarchy is not new, it has been a hallmark of Radfem cissexist thought since even before Mary Daly wrote her metaethics book Gyn/Ecology.

If anyone has made “death threats,” they are responsible for their own behavior. There is no excuse for oppressed trans women to make futile death threats against their oppressors. I am aware of an unfortunate use of violent imagery in a Facebook conversation by two trans advocates who should know better, but I am not aware of any actual death threats.

Bev then asks a rhetorical question about women’s reactions to “men claiming to be women.” I can only ask a counter-question – where are the men who are claiming to be women? I am a woman, I am a lesbian, and I was erroneously assigned male at birth, but I am not and never was a man, even though I spent years trying to live a lie and assimilate with societal expectations based on that erroneous assignment.

Bev Jo does not have a right to call me a man. I have more of a right to deny her right to call herself a lesbian, because he own words indicate that she cannot possibly be a real lesbian.

Bev Jo in her essay shows her amazingly incredible ignorance about transsexual women. She certainly has never met me, and it seems clear to me that she has never actually met a real trans woman. If the story she tells about her “stalker” is not made up, the person she describes does not fit within the parameters of being a trans woman.

She also does not seem to understand what it is like to be a girl, growing up in a situation where everyone expects you to be a boy. Unfortunately, those of us who have had that experience resent it when someone else takes our narratives and distorts them. I have already had the dubious “honor” of being quoted more than once on the “mansplainin’ transplainin’” site. One of those quotes was an explanation of how I felt when I was four years old in the 1950’s, from the perspective of being a four-year old. The people who run that site thought that my simple child’s-eye view of the differences between boys and girls, and my realization that I was being told I was with the wrong group, was quite amusing. I am sure they enjoy their cruel little laugh at my expense.

When Bev Jo describes how some women look (referring to them as “female impersonators”) she does not realize that there are many trans women who don’t need artifice. It would seem that she gets her ideas about what trans women are like by poring over the writings of the notorious Opus Dei psychiatrist Dr. Paul McHugh, an eating disorders specialist who advised the Vatican abut trans issues. Her description is almost exactly what McHugh wrote:

McHugh wrote in a 2004 article entitled “Surgical Sex” in First Things:

“The post-surgical subjects struck me as caricatures of women. They wore high heels, copious makeup, and flamboyant clothing;”

Bev Jo writes similarly:

“they look like drag queens with their heavy, ugly makeup, plucked unnatural eyebrows, garish costumes, etc.”

Bev Jo’s apparent reliance on yet another patriarchist source like McHugh is more evidence of the nefarious influence the Roman Catholic Church has exerted on radfem philosophy.

Bev Jo rejects those of us who have surgery, and she rejects those of us who do not or cannot have surgery as well.

Bev Jo has apparently not been exposed to the mass of scientific evidence that shows that trans women are not, and never were, men, regardless of whether we have GRS.

Bev Jo has shown herself by her words to be an agent of the patriarchy.

She even writes. “It’s a basic weapon of patriarchy to divide women.” And then she proceeds to do just that – making sure that there continues to be a barrier between cissexual women and transsexual women.

I know who I am. I know that the scientific research backs me up. I have developed self-confidence. I am a woman, I am a lesbian, and no pseudo-patriarchist cissexist radfem is going to steal my identity, just because they themselves don;t know what a woman is.

You’ll note I am not using the term “transphobia.” The better terms to use are “cissexist” and “cissexism.” The relationship, particularly that of the institutionalized variety cause by a lack of understanding of trans lives, is eerily similar to institutionalized racism – and just as white people have to work very hard to see institutionalized racism, cissexual people have to look very hard to see the institutiopnalized cissexism that permeates the society.

If not by virtue of being cissexist, how is it that the Roman Catholic Church and the Radfem philosophers are so totally aligned on the issue of trans women?

One thing Bev Jo gets right – the alliance between some Radfems and their fellow separatist TS separatists, is still a variety of cissexism. Just as radfem philosophy as it relates to trans women is pseudo-patriarchist, the position of TS separatists is a pseudo-cissexist imitation of the radfem position, which makes it pseudo-pseudo-patriarchist. The willingness of the TS separatists to oppress other trans women as a means to gain entry for themselves into radfem circles, is pretty disgusting.

Bev Jo wants to organize het women to join with radfems. Um, that strategy is probably a non-starter – particularly with what Bev Jo already wrote in the beginning of her article about straight and bisexual women.

One would think that women – all women, straight, bi, asexual and lesbian, cissexual and transsexual, ought to be able to get along.

Why should Bev Jo be strategizing at marginalizing the most marginalized women, just because we are different and not cissexual?

Bev Jo should know that the National organization for Women already supports trans women – maybe she should get a clue from them.

As to being in opposition to NAMBLA, I am surprised that is an issue. Even the gay men I know are condemnatory of NAMBLA, why should women hesitate to condemn child abuse?

Well, when we get to Bev Jo’s conclusion – even RuPaul would acknowledge that female impersonators are not women. But RuPaul identifies as a gay man, even though he does costume very well. RuPaul is not a trans woman. I doubt that RuPaul would want to be called a trans woman or a transsexual, or a transgender person.

On the other hand, if one were to watch the RuPaul Drag Race show, some of the people who work as “drag performers” actually *are* trans women – and while they are involved in drag culture they are often working toward transition.

It may be hard to tell the difference by looking at them, and Bev Jo has already shown that she can't tell the difference, but all anyone has to do is ask.

So, when Bev Jo asks for lesbians to put females and lesbians first, she should be inclusive of trans women who are lesbians. The fact that she isn't? That is very, very sad.

But when you start with false premises, as Bev Jo does, it is really difficult to come to a correct conclusion.

Archbishop Dolan’s “Timmy One-Note” Afterthoughts on Marriage

2011-07-08T16:10:00.000-04:00

I have to say it: New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan is no John the Baptist. If he were, he’d be telling his superiors in the Vatican hierarchy the truth about marriage, and he’d likely lose his job, but not his head.

Instead, he continues to play it safe in his quest for his cardinal’s red hat.

In his July 7, 2011 blog essay, entitled Some Afterthoughts, he refers to the historic passage of the Marriage Equality Act as New York State having “sadly attempted a re-definition of marriage.” But the Act was no attempt to “redefine” marriage, but rather involved an extension of connubium, which is “the right to marry” so that it is applied on a gender-neutral basis, in addition to the enactment of certain “religious protections” to insure that it is clear on the face of the legislation that those religions with faiths based in misogyny, patriarchy, and heterosexist supremacy, may continue to limit the marriages they sacramentalize and celebrate to those that they do allow.

It is interesting that he says, “the Church neither has nor wants political ‘clout.’” That is actually refreshing, since it is likely to be an indication that Archbishop Dolan does not plan to order priests in the archdiocese to refuse communion to Governor Cuomo and Catholic legislators who voted for the bill as retribution for their not following the Church’s party line.

The archbishop expressed concern about the religious protections, referring to, but not citing any, “editorials already call(ing) for the removal of guarantees of religious liberty.” I’d really like some credible evidence of this.

Dolan goes on to accuse pro-marriage equality forces of religious intolerance – the case where the bully accuses his victim!

He refers to his side as “those protecting traditional marriage” as if the proponents of the gender-neutral connubium are in some way against traditional marriage. We are not.

There are many LGBT people who have suffered persecution at the hands of the Church and other so-called “Christian” Christianist organizations. I do not blame them for their issues with the opponents of marriage equality, or their form of expression of their reaction to having been bullied by people like Dolan.

I myself will point out that Archbishop Dolan is a heresiarch, and that he really is not a Christian but is rather a Christianist, as is the rest of the Roman Catholic Magisterium. In a credal sense, the RCC hierarchy is nearly as true Christian as the Orthodox Christians who did not add a filioque to the original Nicene Creed. But in a doctrinal sense, as it pertains to moral theology, the Roman Catholic Magisterium is deeply in error because of its teachings in opposition to true natural law (as opposed to the Aristotelian conception of nature brought in by Aquinas), and because of the many Church Fathers whose writings were misogynistic and heterosexist. The Church’s interpretations of biblical passages related to LGBT people is rooted in misogynistic heterosexism, and are among the things that are the cause of error. (I won’t get into matters of faith, since I have evolved theologically since the Catholic Church threw me out in 1999, to the extent that I am now Unitarian/Universalist – so I am not Christian myself, in a credal sense, any more).

Archbishop Dolan apologizes, and I will share that apology here:

“. . . if we did hurt anybody in our defense of marriage, I apologize. We tried our best to insist from the start that our goal was pro-marriage, never anti-gay. But, I’m afraid some within the gay community were offended. As I replied recently to a reporter who asked if I had any message to the gay community, ‘Yes: I love you. Each morning I pray with and for you and your true happiness and well-being. I am honored that so many of you are at home within our Catholic family, where, like the rest of us, we try, with the help of God’s grace and mercy, to conform our lives to Jesus and His message. If I have offended any of you in my strenuous defense of marriage, I apologize, and assure you it was unintentional.”

I will accept that the apology is sincerely intended, but if only Dolan understood what it is that he, and the Church, are doing, I think he would want to rethink his position. (Certainly, casting his position as a “defense of marriage” is still an error.)

I could start with the schizophrenic passages in the Official Catechism of the Catholic Church, in which homosexual “activity” can never be “condoned” while homosexual people are to be “respected” and that there should be no discrimination against them. While Dolan is not responsible for the schizophrenia, he should interpret it in a more humane manner.

The tension between respect and condonation is thick – and the Church hierarchy often steers a course that can only be understood within the context of this tension – it is what allows Catholic organization leaders to refuse to allow a student group that has the word “gay” in it, but to permit the group without the name. I often find myself explaining (but not justifying) such actions on the basis of this.

From what I can tell, the Church Magisterium’s vehement opposition to even civil marriage rights is rooted in the “condonation” thing, even though I think that is a very wrong interpretation. The Church should be outside the civil marriage loop – it should be concerned solely with the sacrament of matrimony for Catholics. The opposition to civil marriage smacks of discrimination, and should be seen as against the Catechism. The problem is that the insane ravings from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the topic ties Dolan’s hands, so that in order to come across with the official party line of the Vatican, he has to make himself seem to be a fool (But, I am sure he might rejoin with, “but only a Fool for Christ!” or at least “only a fool in a quest for the red hat!” were he to read this essay)

Archbishop Dolan does not understand that we who support civil marriage rights being legally extended on a gender-neutral basis know that this does not have a single negative effect on the traditional marriage. There is a difference between connubium and matrimonium; while conjugal aspects of human reproduction through heterosexual sex acts are integral to many traditional marriages, they are not integral to all of them, and there are children integral to many same-sex couples’ lives.

Archbishop Dolan was in New York when New York adopted a no-fault divorce law just last year. He refers to the Church opposing no-fault divorce “sixty years ago.” Where was he last year, when the National Organization for Women was fighting valiantly in a losing effort to prevent New York from being the last state to adopt no fault divorce? I see nothing in his blog essays from 2010 that indicate that he was railing to stop the no-fault divorce law at that time.

There are many areas of the marriage “fight” where I could join with Archbishop Dolan. There are aspects of my 45 years as a practicing Catholic that still remain important to me, and aspects of Catholic morality that are not evil. The principles of monogamy and fidelity within marriage are sound. The idea that divorce should be limited to adultery and spousal abuse is one that I could support – I never understood the idea of “until death do us part” as meaning “or until we get tired of each other.”

I wonder what Archbishop Dolan would do about the thing that damaged marriage the most in the past century – the abolition of the common law regarding “bastardy and filiation.” This single legal change meant that women who would refuse a man carnal knowledge until “the ring is on the finger” because of the consequences to he and to any child, are now allowed to scheme on how to get celebrities and sports figures to get them pregnant out of wedlock so they can bring on the paternity suit. (One change I would make to the common law, though, is that it should not be the child who should be labeled as a “bastard,” but the man who was the “carnal sperm donor.”)

To my knowledge, while Republican Catholic and other Christianist legislators in New York State fought hard to include “religious protections” against gender-neutral connubium, there has never been any attempt by the Catholic Church or other Christianists to exempt Catholic marriages, or marriages performed in Christianist churches, from “no fault” divorce laws. While it is true that the Church maintains rigorous control over the granting of Church annulments, the canon law has been changed in such a way as to make it possible for just about any Catholic marriage to be annulled on the grounds that the parties were not really ready to be married at the time they were wed.

In addition to the above, there is much else to give the lie to how “the Church has always stood up for (its understanding of) marriage.” Yes, within the confines of spiritually guiding Catholics, but not to interfere with the civil laws – except for this time.

Where are the religious protections in the civil law against civil divorce involving Catholic marriages? I am sure that the LDS would join in to protect one of their forms of marriage, and the fundamentalist Christianists would support a civil “covenant marriage” concept that would be more difficult to end than the usual, run of the mill, marriage.

Here’s a quote that has me in partial agreement:

“And now we ring the steeple bell again at this latest dilution of the authentic understanding of marriage, worried that the next step will be another redefinition to justify multiple partners and infidelity. If you think I’m exaggerating, within days of the passage of this bill, one major newspaper ran a flattering profile of a proponent of what was called ‘nonmonogamy.’ Apparently, ‘nonmonogamy’ is the idea that society is unrealistic to think that one man and one woman should remain faithful in marriage, and that openness to some infidelity should be the norm!”

I think the Archbishop is referring to the New York Times Magazine article on infidelity that prominently featured Dan Savage, which caused some interesting conversation over at the Joe.My.God. blog, entitled "Homoquotable - Dan Savage" (Is this the "editorial" he was writing about earlier? - if so, it's not an editorial, but is rather a magazine article, and Dan Savage was perhaps tryig to be practical rather than theological.)

Marital infidelity is something that should not be legally condoned, or condoned by the Church. However, I would not push my moral position beyond that. The law against adultery and the adultery ground for divorce already contains defenses for both condonation and procurement. So, in the situation where both parties to the marriage enter into the marriage with the agreed intention of condonation or even procurement, I’d hesitate to be a moral judge. (With the "no fault divorce" law, they could get divorced anyway, but what if that were to change and divorce became more difficult to get without a legitimate reason?)

To speak against the practice, to advise against it, yes. To forbid it, no. People should be allowed make their own personal moral choices, though there should be guidance available for those who want it. I would not change the law with regard to marriage to eliminate adultery as a ground for divorce, or to remove the defenses.

On the issue of multiparty marriages, that, too, is one that requires more examination. The state should provide a legal structure for various kinds of multiparty marriages (much as it allows various different kinds of business entities), all of which would require the up-front consent of all parties in advance, and all parties would have to be competent adults who freely and willingly enter into the arrangement with full knowledge and understanding and without any coercion. Ideally, each party should be required to be represented by an independent attorney as well, since it is not likely that most people would fully understand the various ramifications of such a marriage.

As I have pointed out in the past, the Catholic Church itself has examples of forms of multiparty marriage, albeit marriage-like family structures that do not require sexual congress among the parties – these are the various religious orders of priests, nuns, monks, lay brothers and sisters, particularly evident in those who live in religious communities, such as monasteries or convents. In some ways, these are marriage-like structures modeled on the natural law relating to certain insect colonies and other creatures.

If Archbishop Dolan were pro-marriage, he’d be for both gender-neutral connubium and a framework for multiparty civil marriage that would protect all parties. But he isn't - he is just pro one kind of marriage, and against other kinds.

Dolan’s blog post shills a bit for Robbie George. I have demolished some of Robbie’s writings in earlier blog essays –it would be a pleasure to do it again.

Dolan frustratingly holds “fast to the God-given definition of marriage, and acknowledge that no unfortunate legislative attempt can alter reality and morality.”

It’s interesting that in this, Dolan himself, like his mentor Robbie George, is retreating from reality in his inability to understand gender-neutral connubium as not affecting traditional marriage at all. He is retreating from morality by what I would call an institutionalized heterosexist blindness. It’s sad, really, that he does not understand that the misogynistic, heterosexist supremacist position of the Church is one which has no basis in Truth. Heterosexist supremacism can be understood by an analogy to white racist supremacism - which I would assume is a concept the archbishop can readily grasp. The idea that opposite-sex couples are superior to same sex couples, and that their legally sanctioned relationships should be better than those of same sex couples, that opposite sex couples have a relief valve for their natural sexual urges by way of a sanctioned moral marriage right, but that no same sex couple can have such a legal or moral outlet, is rooted in the same sort of thinking that led white supremacists to believe in the moral superiorityof the white race, that it is the pinnacle of evolution, and that the black race is destined by the Bible to be the chattel slaves of the white race, because they are the descendants of Canaan, and all the other arrant nonsense that goes witth the racial bigotry of white supremacists.

Archbishop Dolan would have to be blind to be unable to make the connection. He could try to rationalize the different kinds of -isms as having some sort of moral difference - but it would be just like turning to the Bible and retelling the story of the children of Ham to justify slavery.

Even so - he really likes his job, and he really wants that cardinal's hat. Even if we could provoke a crisis of personal conscience in him, he would likely push it deep below his conscious thought, lest he run off the rails on his trajectory to a princedom in the Catholic hierarchy.

He started his essay with John the Baptist, and ended his article with Thomas More, both of whom quite literally lost their heads, while Dolan himself only loses his rationality and moral compass on the subject of marriage (to be fair, he does it on women's reproductive rights as well - but that's the misogyny again).

Thomas More was a brilliant man, but he was also a creature of his times. Neither the admittedly erudite but misguided Robbie George nor Archbishop Dolan can hide behind that fig leaf. They live in a world where they have access to sufficient rational knowledge to change their views - unfortunately, the availability of Rational Truth may well not be efficacious in their cases.

Marriage and the Arrogant Heterosexist Supremacist

2011-07-04T12:55:00.000-04:00

Robert P. George, from Princeton University

Now that we have disposed of the December 2010 propaganda article co-authored by Robbie George, let’s turn to Robbie’s thoughts on marriage in New York, Sex and the Empire State, which seems to be either a play on Helen Gurley Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl or the more recent television and silver screen series, Sex and the City. We’ll leave the origin of the “Sex and the. . . “ formula title to the students of the lingual arts.

Remember, the interview is in National Review, which is a conservative magazine with pretensions of the sort of lofty intellectual-seeming snobbery usually reviled by more bread-and-butter conservatives as an effete liberal trait.

So one can understand the article's introduction that indicates that Governor Cuomo “rewrote” the meaning of marriage when he signed the Marriage Equality Act last week. Of course, the meaning of marriage has been rewritten in the New York Domestic Relations Law and its predecessors many, many times. All this last “redefinition” accomplished was to complete the process pursuant to which the marriage laws of the State of New York have become fully gender neutral in their application. The last step was to extend connubium – the right to marry – to persons of full age and sound mind regardless of the gender of their intended spouse.

In the interview, Robbie comes out swinging, referring to this simple vote on connubium as a matter rooted in the loosening of sexual ethics.

Pray tell, Robbie, how does the extension of the civil rights, responsibilities, privileges and obligations of marriage on a gender-neutral basis have anything to do with loosening any sexual ethics? Indeed, this new law involves a re-affirmation by the State of New York of the dignity and favor placed on the institution of marriage as the basic unit of family formation and as the bedrock of stability in society.

One would think that advocates of marriage would leap with joy at the idea that persons with a homosexual orientation would no longer be denied the connubium with a spouse of the same gender. The extension of marriage rights on a gender-neutral basis is morally neutral as to the rights of opposite-sex couples, and a moral good to same-sex couples previously denied the rights.

Robbie accuses Kinsey of being a liar and a fraud, accusations that if one merely reads the Manhattan Declaration that Robbie co-authored, one would know could be fairly lodged at himself.

It’s interesting that Robbie seems to associate gender-neutral marriage with “sexual freedom” – when marriage itself provides legal limitations on sexual freedom. One should suppose that society should discourage licentious behavior among those with a same-sex orientation quite as much as it discourages licentious behavior on the part of opposite-sex oriented people.

Robbie asserts that with this “sexual freedom” thing, that

“marriage simply cannot function as the central principle or standard of rectitude in sexual conduct, as it has in Western philosophy, theology, and law for centuries.”

The simple act of enlarging the range of connubium on a gender neutral basis doesn’t have a basis in any “sexual freedom” thing, so Robbie can rest easy. But no. Here is his central argument:

“The idea that sexual intercourse (the behavioral component of reproduction) consummates and actualizes marriage as a one-flesh union of sexually complementary spouses naturally ordered to the good of procreation loses its force and even its sense.”

Perhaps that idea was a misdirection in any case. For Robbie, it seems, it’s all and seemingly only, about f-cking, and not just f-cking, but only heterosexual f-cking.

Robbie’s randy idea still works within the context of opposite-sex marriages. But just as opposite sex marriage can exist in situations in which there is “one flesh” but not “one soul,” it is possible for same sex marriages to be situations in which there is “one soul” and where the “one flesh” aspect just does not happen to be procreative.

That is not a tremendous leap, and if the examples of Canada, Massachusetts and other places where the right to marry has been made gender-neutral, Western society is not about to collapse because of this.

Perhaps Robbie should focus more on sexual liberationists and leave LGBT people alone.

As I pointed out in my last essay, Robbie’s next argument is false, as well. Proponents of making civil marriage gender neutral are not against “traditional marriage” at all. What we are opposed to are those who use “traditional marriage” as a means to enforce heterosexist supremacy, and who by their arrogant position seek to deny extending connubium on a grender neutral basis.

It’s not traditional marriage that is bigoted, it’s the heterosexist supremacist position that LGBT people are not as good as straights that is ignorant, intolerant, bigoted and immoral.

Heterosexual is good. Heterosexist is bad. There is a difference, Robbie, and if you can discern the difference you will be going a long way toward reducing the level of internalized and institutionalized heterosexism and cissexism.

The root of Robbie’s sexual ethics is misogyny and patriarchal dominance. The idea that women are lesser beings who should have less rights has been deeply engraved in Western Culture until more enlightened and civilized times. Western society once tolerated serfdom and chattel slavery, but we have become more civilized over time, and these cultural appendages are no longer tolerated.

Robbie’s worries about multiple-party marriages are premature. The legal structure to define, support and govern two-party marriages are already there. With the gender-neutralization of all aspects of marriage with the single exception of connubium, the extension of marriage rights to same sex couples is an easy thing to do.

Getting to the point where multiple party marriages will be possible will take a great deal of effort. If Robbie is interested in getting this done right, rather than willy-nilly, perhaps he could start a call for legal and sociological experts to put together a model statute that would cover the mutual rights and respobsibilities of multiparty marriages. Commencement and dissolution issues would be much more complicated in these marriages, and of course, the safety and care of children should be a paramount interest to the parties and to the society.

So let’s not bring in multiparty marriages to the discussion, we're not there yet! But alas, Robbie doesn’t seem to understand that society hasn’t got anything put together that would support such a structure.

I am aware that polygynous polygamy is an easy adaptation, but that kind of multiparty marriage is only a standard traditional patriarchal marriage on Viagra. The practice of splinter Mormon sects is more of a warning of the wrong way to do it than it is an example of what should be done.

When Robbie refers to New York as being “one of the most socially liberal states in the Union,” he seems to have forgotten that there is more to New York State than New York City, and once one gets beyond Westchester and Rockland counties, the social conservatism is so thick one can cut it with a knife.

It isn’t sexual liberationist ideology that is at work in the drive to marriage equality on a gender-neutral basis, yet Robbie keeps playing that line in the hope that if he repeats it often enough, people will believe it. Well, Robbie is barking up the wrong tree.

Robbie thinks that the extension of connubium on a gender neutral basis has “abolished marriage” and “replaced it with a counterfeit.”

All Robbie is doing here is histrionically raving heterosexist themes. The fact that Robbie cannot see that only one thing has changed in the law – two, if one counts the “religious protections” that were put in place to insure that the Catholic Church and the Knights of Columbus don’t have to sacramentalize same-sex weddings or allow the receptions in their halls. (The religious protections are broader than that – all a church has to do is say that racial mixing is against their religious principles, and presto, the Masons don’t have to allow a racially-mixed marriage reception in their halls, either.

For Robbie’s heterosexist notion, marriage is not a marriage without heterosexual f-cking. And if that isn’t a limitation placed on the institution, he would just take his balls and bat and go home.

Without heterosexual f-cking, to Robbie, with this “counterfeit” marriage:

“there is no intelligible basis in them for the norms of monogamy, exclusivity, and the pledge of permanence that structure and help to define marriage as historically understood in our law and culture.”

That, of course, is the purest heterosexist hogwash. Whatever was in the New York Domestic Relations Law as it related to monogamy, exclusivity and fidelity, etc, that was there immediately before the Marriage Equality Act, is still there afterward.

As to permanence, that is a point to which Robbie’s Roman Catholic Church only gives lip service. Its canon law makes the obtaining of an annulment incredibly easy these days, and the grounds have been made such that virtually any Catholic marriage can be nullified on the basis of the parties’ allegation that at the time they got married, they were not truly ready to get married. If we are going to agree with Robbie that permanence is a mark of marriage, then be forwarned, no Roman Catholic marriage is a true marriage either.

New York was the last state in the United States to allow true “no-fault” divorce. New York already allows serial polygamy, the parties do so one spouse at a time. With the no-fault divorce, it’s so much easier to change partners. And it was this way even before the connubium was extended on a gender-neutral basis.

If Robbie was concerned about the state of marriage, his concentration on heterosexist concerns meant that he did little or nothing to oppose “no-fault” fivorce.

For that matter, what has Robbie done about restoring the common law law of bastardy, pursuant to which no child born outside a marriage has any inheritance rights or rights of support from the sperm provider, unless the sperm provider voluntarily filiated himself to the child. The abolition of these laws in the 1950’s was perhaps the single largest blow to the institution of marriage. Women who had previously refused to allow sexual congress to a man unless and until “the ring is on the finger” within a few years were throwing themselves at rock stars and sports figures in the hopes that a child would be produced, and the paternity suit would follow.

That is what heterosexists have already done to marriage. Robbie cannot blame LGBT people for the failings of heterosexuals. But he does.

I am all for monogamy, exclusivity and yes, even permanence, though with the last, there must be a way out of a truly abusive marriage short of ending the life of the abusive spouse.

Robbie’s idea that mothers, children and the poor are harmed by same sex marriage is ludicrous. The fact is that in New York alone, there are tens of thousands of children in poor black and latina lesbian families who will be immeasurably helped by the marriage equality act. For Robbie, though, the inconvenient facts just get in the way.

Robbie says:

“Of course, among the activists and leaders of the movement to redefine marriage, it is already difficult to find anyone who believes that same-sex marriages demand as a matter of moral obligation sexual exclusivity.”

Well, Robbie, here I am. Though I don’t refer to the marriage equality movement as “redefining marriage,” all I think of it as doing is making connubium fair to LGBT people.

What Robbie should be doing, rather than opposing gender-neutral connubium, is to preach the principles of “monogamy, exclusivity and permanence” as hallmarks of a moral marriage. I would be happy to join him in that.

The harm happens when same-sex couples are not granted the connubium. There was a time when marriage laws created unequal marriage rights that had a basis in the gender of the spouse. Wives had one set of rights (and at some times, no rights), while the husbands had a completely different set. The idea of two husbands or two wives was virtually inconceivable from a legal standpoint. With different appurtenant rights and responsibilities, people ith a same-sex orientation developed what Robbie would disdainfully refer to as “alternate lifestyles.” Having been denied the right to marry, many turned their backs on the institution and all of its trappings. I am of the opinion that with the availability of marriage, the next generation of same-sex-oriented people can be integrated into the society much better. The preachers and the priests should think of how to reach them with moral messages of “monogamy, exclusivity and permanence.”

One of the useful bits I adapted from Paragraphs 24 and 25 of Casti Conubii in an earlier essay bears repeating here

24. This mutual molding of [~~husband and wife~~] spouses, this determined effort to perfect each other, can in a very real sense, as the Roman Catechism teaches, be said to be the chief reason and purpose of matrimony, provided matrimony be looked at not in the restricted sense as instituted for the proper conception and education of the child, but more widely as the blending of life as a whole and the mutual interchange and sharing thereof.

25. By this same love it is necessary that all the other rights and duties of the marriage state be regulated as [~~the words of the Apostle: "Let the husband render the debt to the wife, and the wife also in like manner to the husband,"~~] not just a 50-50 proposition, but as each spouse giving 100% to the other, to express not only a law of justice but of charity.

NOTE: [~~Bracketed~~] portions to be deleted, Italicized portions are my gender-neutral replacements.

There was also an earlier encyclical, Pope Leo XIII’s Arcanum from 1880, that also dealt with Catholic marriage, While it’s aimed at Catholics, I’ve adapted a little piece of it to illustrate a message drawing to other religious traditions as well:

In the story from the Biblical book of Genesis, God, who had created the original Adam in God’s own image and likeness as male and female, proceeded to divide Adam into two people so that the human person would not be alone. The Greeks contribute to our understanding of this unitive nature of human beings, a story, from Plato’s Symposium, about how human beings were first created in combined pairs, male-and-male, and female-and-female, as well as in the form of male-and-female from the Genesis story. In the Biblical First Book of Samuel, we read of the love between David and Jonathan being so great that they become “one soul.”

From the Gospel we see clearly that this doctrine was declared and openly confirmed by the divine authority of ~~Jesus Christ~~ Yeshua, son of Miriam. He bore witness to the Jews and to His Apostles that marriage, from its institution, should exist between ~~two only, that is, between~~ one man and one woman; that of two they are made, so to say, one flesh; and that the marriage bond is ~~by the will of God~~ so closely and strongly made fast that no man may dissolve it or render it asunder. "For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be in one flesh. Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. What, therefore, God hath joined together, let no man put asunder." And Yeshua never said a word against marriage as being between men, or between women, and thus, while the conjugal “becoming one flesh” is representative of the generative power of marriage between a man and a woman, we must not forget that becoming “one soul” as did David and Jonathan is the form of marriage appropriate to those with a same-sex orientation.

One thing I might hasten to note, about the “let no man put asunder” part, is that at the time that Yeshua walked on earth, divorce was something only the husband could obtain, and it was incredibly easy, All he had to do was say out loud, three times, “I divorce you.” And that was it, the wife had to leave, the husband kept all the children, and it was a very, very patriarchist, misogynist and sexist process. No wonder Yeshua spoke so strongly against the abuse as a part of his messahe of social justice,

Same sex marriage, while it was enjoyed by David and Jonathan, was not something that was available during Yeshua’s life, or for most of history. Western civilization only became civilized enough to abolish chattel slavery in the 19th century, and to gradually improve the legal rights of women and minorities. Only in the 21st century have western societies become civilized enough to extend connubium on a gender-neutral basis.

When it comes to divorce, it makes sense to recognize that it is a solution best left to last resort. But when there is an abusive relationship, or one spouse has broken the marriage vow by way of marital infidelity, divorce should be an available option, but marriage should not be terminated by a court except for grave cause. Is no-fault divorce somehow “more civilized?” I doubt it. But Robbie and his friends at NOM are so focused by the blindness caused by a heterosexist supremacist mindset, and have devoted millions of dollars and tons of hours fighting against justice, when there are real moral battles to fight that they have not addressed.

Robbie gives the credit for the Marriage Equality Act to the Republican-controlled New York State Senate (though from his perspective, it’s an allocation of blame).

What happened in New York does not damage marriage, it gives marriage the biggest boost it has ever had.

One can only hope that the marriage vote in New York can help the U.S. Supreme Court in making a decision in the Prop 8 case, Perry v. Schwarzenegger.

On the third page of the online article, Robbie does address the idea of divorce, and he identifies no-fault divorce as marriage’s equivalent of Roe v. Wade. This is surprising, since the National organization for Women fought very hard against no-fault divorce in New York, a fight in which both Archbishop Dolan and Robbie George were silent or nearly so.

Robbie believes that the anti-marriage position of his NOMbies will help Republicans in 2012. Perhaps he will prove prophetic, but the damage already dons since 2010’s mid-term congressional elections should be a strong signal to voters to elect Democrats in 2012 at all levels of government.

Robbie temporized about the idea of bringing marriage discrimination back to New York, but we already know that his colleague Maggie Gallagher has already unveiled a four-year plan to do this – a plan that is entirely unrealistic.

Robbie pooh-poohs Governor Cuomo’s membership in the Roman Catholic Church. Andrew may well be a cafeteria Catholic, because he takes seriously the obligation of having an informed conscience seriously, and has chosen to reject those teachings of the Roman Catholic Magisterium that are immoral and evil. Perhaps if the Catholic Church reformed itself, Governor Cuomo might be a “better” Catholic. (And yes, I would like to see Governor Cuomo and Sandra Lee get married, but I won’t judge their personal moral choice on the issue. Perhaps now that the Marriage Equality Act is the law in New York, they might make a point of doing so, and explain that their main reason for not getting married is that they could not do so in good conscience until the Act becomes law. Now, that would be a sweet statement to make in favor of marriage – not the heterosexist supremacist kind that Robbie George espouses, but the real thing, on a gender-neutral basis that is inclusive of and respectful to all marriages.

Robbie also has unkind words for the moral struggle of upstate State Senator Mark Grisanti, who provided the 33rd vote for marriage. He had not been on the whip count, but he explained his vote so eloquently on the floor of the senate that it brought tears to my eyes. Robbie thinks the very real religious protections will be “cover” for Grisanti and the others who fought to make sure they were in place.

What Robbie does not realize is that it took 17 Republicans to allow the bill to go to a vote. All they needed to do was bring the vote up to 32 from the 29 Democrats willing to vote for it. But it took at least 17 of them to tell Majority Leaser Dean Skelos to let it go to a vote.

Don’t discount the reality of the religious protections, Robbie.

Before the vote, I was afraid that the religious “protections” were going to be a poison pill. To a very small extent, they were, but not a fatal poison. It turns out that they should appease thpose whose heterosexist supremacism is built into their religion, but only to the extent of the celebration of weddings and wedding receptions. That is fine, we can live with that,

Robbie is fearful that the protections might not survive judicial scrutiny, even though the New York Act contains an in terrorem clause designed to provide further protection for fearful religious bigots.

As to legislative repeal of the "religious protections?" There is the possibility of that, I don't deny it. The only concerns I have is organizations that use state funding to discriminate. Other than that, the religious protections are fine. I would not insist that the Catholic church sacramentalize same-sex marriages - that would actually violate religious liberty (unlike the bogus religious liberty that Robbie prefers, that would protect only those who believe in religious liberty for those who agree with him).

Robbie incredibly still believes that religious liberty should belong only to heterosexist supremacist Christianists.

To illustrate thatm, take this quote from Robbie, in which says:

“If you ask, “What can be done going forward around the country to protect religious liberty?” the answer is this: Win the fight to preserve the legal definition of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife. Period.”

Robbie should really consider taking a really serious look at his moral blind spot. The institutionalized heterosexism (again, heterosexuality is okay, heterosexism is evil!) is his biggest failure. Heterosexism itself is built on a foundation of misogyny. It’s built into the Catholic Church’s moral theology, which is the biggest failure of the Catholic Church itself.

Robbie sums up a truth, but expresses it in heterosexist terms. Children actually need loving parents. The sex of those parents is immaterial, except to the heterosexist supremacists, for whom only an opposite-sex marriage should be permitted.

Robbie closes with the “intellectual challenges” that he thinks that marriage equality advocates “have not met and cannot meet.” I have news for Robbie, I took care of that yesterday.

Quo Connubialis?

2011-07-03T21:28:00.003-04:00

The infamous arch-enemy of marriage equality and LGBT rights, Robert P. George, was quoted in a June 28, 2011 interview in the conservative National Review Online, entitled Sex and the Empire State touting a paper he co-wrote with Sherif Girgis of Princeton University’s Philosophy Department and Notre Dame Political Science professor Ryan T. Anderson, simply titled What is Marriage?

The pseudo-scholarly article may be cited as:

Girgis, Sherif, George, Robert and Anderson, Ryan T., What is Marriage?. Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 245-287, Winter 2010.

Now, before anyone gets impressed by the “scholarly” seeming journal name, I’ve read that this journal is not a peer-reviewed journal, and is affiliated with the notoriously right wing Federalist Society. So when we read Sharif/George/Anderson article, we have to take into account the bias that is built into the article by the authors, and we also must remember that the reality is that it was intended as a propaganda piece to be used by The National Organization “for” Marriage, a notoriously anti-marriage organization, of which Robbie George is the board chair emeritus.

Unfortunately, we're not going to be able to get to the National Review article in this essay, since it ran 13 pages in Word, just going thrrough a debunking of much of the pseudo-scholarly article.

You might also remember Robbie George as one of the principal authors, with convicted Watergate felon Chuck Colson, of the infamous Manhattan Declaration, which I subject to a scathing analysis in my blog essay entitled Responding to the Manhattan Declaration

So with that as prologue, let’s look at the What is Marriage? Article, and see what we might uncover.

---

The authors create two “competing views” of marriage, conveniently labeling them as “conjugal view” and “revisionist view” – thus creating an immediate bias in favor of the former and setting up the latter as a straw man to beat up. Let’s call them the “procreation centric” and “family-formation centric” to create a more level semantic playing field (rather than to provide a naming scheme favoring the latter, such as “breeder marriage” and “equal marriage”).

Many of the concepts and even the phraseology of the argument made by the authors can be drawn from papal encyclicals of Leo XIII (Arcanum, (1880)) and Pius IX (Castii Conubii (1930)). The buzz words "conjugal union" and as we will later see, "true marriage" come from these documents.

So, if the authors were limiting themselves to marriage as it is conceived by the Roman Catholic Church, we would be a smidgen less critical. But when they presume to apply Roman Catholic doctrine beyond the constraints of adherents of that religion, they go too far.

The authors place a central focus on what they refer to as “the behavioral part of the process of reproduction,” which seems to reduce the centrality of “procreation centric” marriage to nothing more sacred than simple heterosexual f-cking. They indicate that the bearing and rearing of children “contributes to its distinctive structure.” But this sex-act-centered definition, seems to paint a broader exclusion and is intended to leave out those heterosexual couples in which one or both are infertile, or post-fertile, or choose not to have children, as well as those whose marriage contract is made on a gender-neutral basis in those jurisdictions in which the connubium of the right to marry is available on a gender neutral basis.

The “procreation centric” definition also seems to ignore the fact that gay men and lesbians may adopt, or have children from a prior heterosexual relationship (or even as the result of rape or incest) – what about those families where there are two parents, but they happen to both be the same sex, or one or both happen to be transgender?

Moving to the “family-formation centric” view (what they call “revisionist”), the authors do a fairly credible job in their definitional paragraph of describing a gender-neutral rationale for the connubium, while pointedly leaving out the fact that there are many same-sex relationships in which there are children being reared, a situation that also brings in aspects of the matrimonium concepts of marriage. Key to this contractual “family-formation centric” view is the idea that the state should recognize and regulate marriage on a gender-neutral basis because “the state has an interest in stable romantic partnerships and in the concrete needs of spouses and any children they may choose to rear.”

I also find no fault with the fact that the authors cite as to the matrimonium not being based solely on religious beliefs – this makes perfect sense, since the care and nurture of children must be a central function of a society that grow and continues to the next generation. One need only look at the Shaker religious movement, to find a focus on non-procreation to find a societal culture that made nice furniture but died out because none of the members did any procreating.

The issues I have with placing primacy on a matrimonium based solely on children conceived within the particular marriage on the basis of heterosexual reproductive sex acts between the parties to the detriment of having marriage in which the connubium is open on a gender-neutral basis to accommodate those whose sexual orientations make them different from the norm, are twofold.

First, not everyone in a marriage relationship can (or should) have children. There are very real issues of a worldwide human population that is out of control, as we struggle to feed a population fast approaching seven billion people before the end of this year of 2011), in a world that did not reach one billion people from the distant mists of time until somewhere around 1820 (it took nearly 500 years to double population from 1350 until then), and had perhaps 2.5 billion people when I was born in the 1950’s baby boom. Technically speaking, the human population is a plague that is reaching, or has reached, epidemic proportions, and the authors seem to think that the principal purpose of marriage should continue to be fueling massive population growth.

While I do not think placing the power of the state to make and enforce limits on reproduction, I do believe that we need to recognize that there are limits to human population growth. Continuing an age-old Western societal emphasis on human reproduction that was aimed at building the population size of nomadic desert tribes (the Hebrews) and of warlike empire-building city-states (the Romans) that combined by way of the adoption of a Hebrew splinter sect as the official religion of the Roman Empire in 325 C.E., is not a moral or effective way to address massive overpopulation. It does not help that most civilizations, other than the Chinese civilization, don’t seem to have addressed the issue (and the Chinese found it necessary to impose limits as a matter of state policy).

Moving back to the What is Marriage? article, the authors seem to believe that the “procreation centric” view and the “family formation centric” views of marriage are somehow in conflict – and that the adoption of civil laws that complete the legal equality of the sexes in marriage by making the connubium gender neutral, where all the other rights of marriage have already been made gender neutral is somehow detrimental to children.

The authors (and the anti-marriage equality organizations like NOM) take the preposterous position that adopting a ”family formation centric” view of marriage damages the “procreation centric” view.

The authors try to distinguish the anti-miscegenation laws overturned by Loving v. Virginia, that extended the connubium on a race-neutral basis, from the new laws extending connubium on a gender-neutral basis.

Incredibly, thay say: “antimiscegenation was about whom to allow to marry, not what marriage was essentially about.”

Stop. Right. There. Simply put, both the repeal of anti-miscegenation laws and the enactment of gender-neutral marriage laws, both affect the connubium¸ and not the matrimonium that involves the care, rearing and custody of children.

Just as the ban on interracial marriage was designed to enforce and establish white supremacy, the ban on same-sex marriage is designed to enforce and establish heterosexist hegemony. The argument against gender-neutral marriage literally drips with institutionalized heterosexist bias.

We live in a society that has the medical scientific ability to allow women to conceive without the necessity of having that biological heterosexual sex act going on. It is possible for both lesbian and gay couples to raise children who are biologically related to one (or both in some cases) of the parties, whether the children are conceived by artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, surrogacy or other methodology, in addition to those children biologically related to one of the parties from a pre-existing relationship. It is also possible for lesbian and agay couples to raise children who are abandoned by heterosexual parents for any number of reasons.

The fact that heterosexual people can make babies by accidentally engaging in certain reproductive heterosexual sex acts at the wrong time of the month does not justify creating or continuing a special limited method of family formation that encourages prolific breeding.

The authors blithely ignore the fact that marriage laws have changed over the years. In New York, until 1848, the husband controlled the inheritances of the wife, and until 1860, the husband owned and controlled the wages of the wife. Married women under the common law were not more than the chattel slaves of their husbands, and should their husbands be unhappy with them, the courts would invariably place the children with the husband.

They ignore the many other changes that have been made over the years, changes that started with nearly all the rights of marriage residing in the husband, meandered for a time so that the wife had some rights that were seen as superior, particularly in the context of divorce, and eventually resulted in marriage in which the bundles of rights between the parties have all been made gender neutral. In most cases in the United States, all but one, and that is the connubium – the right to marry.

New York is the sixth state to make the connubium gender neutral. Several other countries around the world have also taken this more elightened and non-heterosexist viewpoint.

Nothing in the law recently enacted in New York, or previously enacted in those other places, has taken a single iota away from opposite sex marriage, not even the matrimonium or the idea that a heterosexual marriage should be “procreative.”

That does not mean that if world population continues to rise exponentially, something will not have to be done – if heterosexual people cannot remain continent on their own, or at least start using effective forms of birth control to slow down the growth, the governments may have to trample on individual liberty for the public good.

The authors pull out the hoary arguments based on incest – that despite having legitimate reasons to discourage incest, that the connubium should be allowed to those with close genetic relationships. (New York is a state that, unlike some other states, does allow first cousins to marry.) (They might as well raise polygamy and the various fetish object and animal arguments of traditionalist marriage opponents).

The public policy argument, though, bears a look – with rampant breeding leading to massive overpopulation, there is possibly a draconian public policy argument to be made in favor of the notion that perhaps heterosexual connubium be limited only to the eldest child of a married couple, with younger children and all children born out of wedlock being required to have birth control implants to prevent the possibility of impregnating or becoming pregnant.

(Of course, this is the kind of thing that one nation couldn’t necessarily do without finding itself at a reproductive disadvantage against competing nations which could have a desire to expand territory at the expense of the less-densely populated but morally superior neighbor. Thus the idea of social control being imposed by one nation-state, other than China, with the hugest problem, is one that may carry detrimental consequences in the event of war, where there are fewer bodies to throw into uniform on one side than the other. Perhaps technological advantages can maintain some parity or superiority for the less-reproductive nation, but there is no guarantee of this.

At some point on page 250, the authors start meandering toward an Equal Protection argument on page 251, where they diddle with the idea of polyamory.

Of course, there are arguments in favor of permitting various kinds of polygamous family formation, but such relationship recognition has to wait for the law to be revised in such a way to make them possible.

In the 1950’s and 1960’s, the idea of same-sex marriage wasn’t even on the drawing board. People with minority sexual orientations were persecuted by the heterosexist majority, with so-called “anti-consensual sodomy” laws (which by name completely misrepresent the nature of the inhospitable patriarchist macho misogynist men of Sodom, who weren’t gay, but were rather people who hated strangers and people who were different from them (much like the American right wing, with its anti-immigrant and anti-LGBT positions are the true heirs of Sodom). Transgender people were persecuted by laws such as New York’s “three articles of clothing” law.

In those days, the legal rights of husbands differed greatly from the rights of wives – and that made marriage a sort of “sour grapes” proposition for lesbian and gay people who might have wished to form families. It is the oppressive laws that encouraged the development of the idea of “alternative lifestyles” to people for whom the idea of marriage was too high up on the arbor to reach.

But when the laws became gender neutral, the idea of connubium came within reach. The striking down of the anti-sodomy laws in 2004 in Lawrence v. Texas made it even more attainable.

The authors introduce the concept of “real marriage” into which they place their heterosexist notions and deny reality to non-heterosexual unions. Let’s call this what it is – no need to be polite, and call it “heterosexist marriage.” That is, marriage that does not extend the connubium on a gender-neutral basis. When the civil marriage laws are fully gender-neutral, nothing is lost to opposite sex marriage, and all familypforming relationships are enhanced.

On page 252, the authors pronounce that only marriage between a husband and a wife can be “real marriage.”

They make an example of two people pledging to monogamously play tennis with each other and only each other, until death parts them. Is that a marriage?

They didn’t have to go far to be in reductio ad absurdum.

On the other hand, for multiparty marriages, what better example than to look at an existing Roman Catholic phenomenon,, that of certain religious orders of men and women. These bear, in a group sense, many of the indicia of marriage – in which nuns or sisters say their final vows in a white wedding gown, wear a plain gold band, and profess themselves to be “brides of Christ,” making them the celibate equivalent of Mormon “sister wives” who don’t have reproductive sex with each other, and have a husband who is conveniently unable to engage in reproductive sex with them.

The close-knit relationships of the members of these religious orders are, to me, certainly indicative of family formation, in relationships that are not based on sex, relationships that involve groups and governance much like business organizations.

(Similarly, male members of religious orders are similarly brides of Christ in a same sex union without sex being involved as a necessary incident.)

For many straight married couples of advanced age, sex is often an absent part of their relationship – should they then no longer be allowed to be married to each other? No – there are so many other benefits, burdens, rights and responsibilities in the bundle of rights that are appurtenant to legal marriage, that it would be unconscionable to deny them on the basis that reproductive sex is no longer possible for them.

Sex, whether it is reproductive or not, may make a couple “one flesh” but love makes them “one soul.”

One can argue that loveless arranged or dynastic marriages are not true marriages. While it is true that the two may become “one flesh” for the purpose of reproduction of heirs, but without becoming “one soul” their relationship is only a parody of marriage, even if the union is legal. Perhaps in this, we might discern the true nature of what the authors are trying to identify as “real marriage.” But the reality is based on love, not sex – and that is something the authors should have considered.

Marriage should not be a property transaction to seal the alliance of one family with another, for business or for the ruling of nations. Marriage should not be a matter in which an immigrant from a small Sicilian village seeks out a “paisan” from the same village so he can marry a daughter of the paisan, right off the boat, who has never met him before – but it has been at times such a sham, even with children having been produced.

The procreation-centric view is not even good Catholic theology. Robbie George should familiarize himself with Casti Comubii, and encyclical written by Pius IX, in 1930, which I cite in my June 17, 2011 Marriage v. Civil Unions essay.

Much of Casti Conubii could easily be adapted to read in a gender-neutral manner without losing any of its moral force.(At the same time, much of it could easily be pared down with Jefferson's Razor to eliminate the parts that make it seem as if God actually had something to do with the civil institution of marriage for people who do not adhere to the mythological structure of Catholic Christianity or of Bible-based Christianity)

To Pius IX, the primary reason and purpose of marriage is that of a determined effort on the part of the spouses to perfect each other, by giving their entire beings to the relationship. He saw it not in the restrictive procreative sense, but for the blending of life as a whole.

This is something that does not require opposite gender parties to work, This is what family formation is all about, and this is why marriagelaws, including the right to marry, must be gender neutral.

However, it should also be clear that the Roman Catholic encyclicals do not and should not represent the totality of our understanding of the civil institution of marriage,

For example, one passage in Casti Conubii gives us the authors' source for the idea of "true marriage" only being the "conjugal" kind.

"For each individual marriage, inasmuch as it is a conjugal union of a particular man and woman, arises only from the free consent of each of the spouses; and this free act of the will, by which each party hands over and accepts those rights proper to the state of marriage, is so necessary to constitute true marriage that it cannot be supplied by any human power."

There are references in the text to the Roman Catholic code of Canon Law. Canon Law applies to the Roman Catholic Church and has neither force nor effect as the law of the United States or of the several states.
I have not even gotten through a third of the What is Marriage? Article, and its clear already that there is almost nothing that the authors write that cannot be refuted, and the things that they write that are actually true are things that are not objectionable in the first place.

Soldiering on, we move to the special parental relationship with children – and this is something that gay and lesbian couples can share just as well and just as effectively as opposite-sex couples.

The authors address the idea of consummation on page 257, and define it in the “traditional” sense – but the idea of David and Jonathan, married husbands, kissing in the field while David goes “amplio” is completely lost on them.

The authors turn to references to studies on parenting of children. The thing about this is that if there really were competent studies of the nature they put in this non-peer-reviewed article, the sources would almost certainly have been used by the defense in the California Proposition 8 case. The fact that the only experts that the opponents of marriage could find in that case actually helped make the case for marriage lends credence to the idea that I should not waste time trying to address these bits of biased research.

At page 260, they start addressing the idea of harm being done to opposite sex marriage by extending connubium on a gender-neutral basis. They talk about “abolishing” the procreation-centric view of the matrimonium as if that would actually be adversely affected by gender-neutral connubium. These are separate aspects of marriage, and their conclusions do not follow.

Their explanations are institutionally cissexist, and unfortunately, they can’t see it. Citing to Maggie Gallagher and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops as being authoritative is rather sad. We well know the bias of both sources, which are worthless.

They argue that gender-neutral marriage would :obscure the value of opposite-sex parenting” as an ideal, without understanding the notion that children are the center here. Opposite-sex couples will still have heterosexual relationships, and children. Same sex couples with children would see their children enjoying the benefits of marriage. Single-parent families might see a societal encouragement to form a family with someone of their own sexual orientation, rather then resisting the idea because they cre not compatible with someone else.

On Page 263 they get bolder with the heterosexist supremacy argument, seeming somewhat like racists who would assert that white parents make better parents than parents of other races, without taking into account the many disparities in things like legal recognition. If someone unbiased did a study of people in Massachusetts with marriages and children, who got married after marriage was made gender-neutral in that state, such a study would be worth consideration.

One can make a comparison of divorce rated in states that have fair marriage laws as opposed to states with heterosexist marriage laws. The states with marriage fairness have significantly lower divorce rates than the other states. This says a lot about the positive aspects of marriage equality on even opposite-sex marriages.

Lower on the page, they turn to the false argument of a threat to “moral and religious freedom.” As I pointed out in my criticism of the Manhattan Declaration, Robbie George only sees religious freedom as belonging to people who share religious beliefs similar to his own.

Proponents of marriage equality have no problem with traditional marriages, which would certainly not be abolished. But let’s call a spade a spade – only a heterosexist supremacist would hold to the view that heterosexual marriages and families are morally, spiritually and otherwise better than same-sex marriages and families, just as a white supremacist would se white marriages as superior to any others.

The lie about the Catholic Charities adoption service in Boston appears on page 264. It is well known that Catholic Charities voluntarily gave up it operation rather than give up on state financing of their operation. The Latter Day Saints still discriminate on the basis of their own religion in their adoption agencies in Massachusetts becaseu they take no state money.

Disruptive students who use religion as a cudgel are properly disciplined. In the public square, gays are legally just as good as straights, and to hold otherwise does not injure religion, it is biased, bigoted and prejudiced people who flock to religions and images of God that reflect their own biases, prejudices and bigotry. Religion should be a shield and not a sword – no one should require Catholic priests to perform sacramental marriages for two Jewish straight people, for example – gender-neutral marriage isn’t even a necessary component toward showing how silly the authors’ argument is.

No one is forcing straight people to enter into gay marriages. But Robbie George and his co-authors feel free to deny Unitarians the right to perform same-sex weddings. The authors are willfully blind on this issue – their heterosexism obfuscates any real argument they might find – and they just do not have any realistic religious argument.

The bigotry of people who deny that LGBT people are equal is an objective fact, and their religion is not an issue. No real Christian would oppose same sex marriage. Only Christianists do that – and while many Roman Catholics are Christians, the Roman Catholic Magisterium itself is an immoral body that on this issue attempts to require Catholics to reflect the evil in their hearts.

There is a huge difference between “proponents of conjugal marriage” (what I have been calling “procreation-centric”) and the cissexist opponents of making marriage laws gender-neutral. Referring to NOMbies like Brian Brown, Maggie Gallagher or Robbie George as “proponents of conjugal marriage” (Robbie’s term” without taking into account the bigoted half of their position, is at the least disingenuous, and certainly misleading.

No one, except perhaps the folks at Zero Population Growth (and honestly anyone else worried about rampant overpopulation), have any issue with the procreation-centric concept for those who believe in it. It’s the opposition to gender-neutral marriage laws that comprises the prejudice that people of good will find objectionable.

Believing in “procreation centric” marriage is not “hate.” Opposing the human rights issue of extending the connubium on a gender-neutral basis is – it is that simple, it is a wonder that the authors can’t seem to grasp that their arguments are so weak that they have to rely on lying in their article to try to make their lame points.

And now we’re about half-way through this mess.

I don’t have to argue anything about infertility – I don’t have any problem with gay or infertile couples marrying, so this isn’t going to bother me. Their attempt to use heterosexist arguments to make a distinction is still objectionable.

At page 269, we get to a section on challenges for “revisionists.”

Anyone who has seen the way marriage laws have changed over the centuries should have some idea that the idea of making one last step toward making the entire marriage law gender neutral by adding the connubium to the gender-neutral aspects is just one more step on the arc of history bending ever-so-slightly toward justice.

Their challenges seem to be based on heterosexist assumptions.

I am not going to defend those who are subversives – I recently had a direct encounter with people of that mind-set over at the Joe.My.God. site comment area on an entry entitled Homoquotable - Dan Savage

(There are 227 comments at the time I am writing this, so it may take a while to find my comments)

I wrote (in part):

“Marriage should involve a commitment of mutual trust, support, and fidelity.”

One response (in part):

‘Says who? Where is the Marriage Policy and Procedure Book that outlines this? You made it up, didn't you? C'mon - confess.”

O which I reply (again in part):

“This somewhat exasperated lawyer (who admittedly does title insurance for a living these days, but has in the past handled a number of matrimonials) suggests that you take a look at a nice law book called "The Domestic Relations Law" of the State of New York. (assuming that since Dan was speaking of the recently signed Marriage Equality Act, that we are talking about New York law). Perhaps also looking at the many cases over the years that interpret the law.”

I suggest that readers of this article go take a look at Joe.My.God. – it is a great source for the news of the day on LGBT issues.

Robbie George and his co-authors mention Michaelangelo Signorile on the subversion topic, and the article I commented on quoted Dan Savage in a post New York marriage vote article on marital fidelity.

All I can say is that the existence of people who would abuse the institution of marriage is not something one finds exclusively in gay circles. Any time a heterosexual married man, like a Donald Trump, a John Edwards or a Newt Gingrich (mentioned only because they have been in the news,, steps out on his wife, he is abusing the dignity of marriage. (And this is not an exclusively Republican or straight phenomenon. Disrespect for marriage comes from many sources – but advocating for extending connubium on a gender-neutral basis is not one of them.

They go on to raise absurd arguments not worthy of even a response. I’ll issue a challenge to the authors, if I haven’t addressed something in this pretty much “stream-of-consciousness” response to the pseudo-scholarly article – point it out here and I will provide an answer.

The authors seem to not know tha basis for same sex attraction. I have a hint, it is not different from opposite-sex attraction, only reverse-polarized.

Their analysis suggesting that same-sex attraction in a small minority of the population is “undesirable” is just more cissexist supremacist tripe. One might just as easily think of heterosexuality as undesirable in a world threatened by rampant overpopulation – but I’m not doing that, it’s just as logical an assumption to make as the cissexist one.

Even their thought experiment at the end is a narrow-minded cissexist one. I can only point out, once again, the development of Catholic religious orders of nuns. sisters, brothers and monks, priests, etc. as exemplifying family-like institutions very much similar to marriage that don’t require sexual relationships as a basis.

Reason is on my side, it seems – and the chink in Robbie George’s armor is still there. His morality is flawed, as is his logic. Gathering like-minded othes to co-author the article does not provide any improvement at all.

Perhaps I might at some other time get to the National Review interview that was New York-specific. But this essay has been so long in response to the principal arguments in the pseudo-scholarly article, that I don’t feel justified forging any farther ahead.

Radical Feminists: tied to social conservatism and the Catholic Church

2011-06-30T18:57:00.004-04:00

The birth-genital essentialist movement in the United States is composed of an unlikely alliance of social conservatives (whether they be populists, tea-partiers, Republicans or fundamentalist Christianists, Jewists or Islamists), the Roman Catholic Church’s Magisterium, and the proponents of the kinds of “radical feminism” that derive their creed from the Roman Catholic-influenced teachings of Mary Daly and her protégé, Janice Raymond (both of them Catholic, with careers teaching at Catholic universities).

Birth genital essentialism denies the reality experienced by people who identify as transsexual or transgender, a reality that was denied by medical experts in the 1960’s, but a growing body of medical scientific research in the past seventeen is proving that transsexual and transgender people are not delusional members of the sex we were assigned at birth.

The unfortunate victims of this birth-genital essentialist coalition are the various members of the trans community. I hasten to add that the “trans community” is not actually a community so much as it is a diverse collection of people who share a single characteristic of not being cisgender.

Let’s limit ourselves for the moment, to simplify things, to those whose identities are consistent with those of the opposite sex. (at the end, we can re-include the more gender-diverse)/

I’ve just read an otherwise rather intelligent article entitled Feminism, sex and gender, by someone whose handle is "No Anodyne" at the “radfem Hub” site.

I thought it read very well until the writer started going off the rails because of the writer’s cissexual, or rather cissexist, blindness to those who are different.

Here is a particularly troubling excerpt:

The way this conflation [of sex and gender] happens is through the concept of “gender identity” — that is, the person accepts the gender role of man or woman, regardless of that person’s biology. A biological male can “identify” as a woman and a biological female can “identify” as a man. Remember that there is absolutely no scientifically-proven evidence that gender (man and woman, masculinity and femininity) has a biological basis. The only thing that is provable is whether someone is female with XX chromosomes or male with XY chromosomes and has the primary sex characteristics that almost always accompany those genotypes. (Intersex conditions do nothing to refute this. Just as the fact that a very small percentage of people are born without arms does not convince us that having arms is not a standard state for humans.)

What happens when we say that anyone who says they are a woman is a woman, is that sex is erased as a meaningful category for a legal basis for discrimination. If sex is the same as gender and gender is whatever an individual says it is, then there is no way to create laws that protect females as a biological sex.

The writer’s concept of “gender identity” is oversimplified and startlingly similar to the primitive conception expressed by some Republican members of the New York State Assembly when they were debating the passage of the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act a couple of weeks ago.

Both the writer and these conservative Republicans have themselves hung up on the idea that “gender identity" means “a man” can just up and announce that today he’s “going to be a woman” and run into a women’s rest room so he can rape the female occupants.

However, that is just not the case. The person who asserts a gender identity that is that of the opposite sex often feels that way from the age of somewhere around four. After spending decades in trying to hide the true self beneath the façade, the individual starts transition. That is not some “man” just saying “I identify as a woman” without actually identifying as a woman.

The writer ignores 17 years of scientific evidence since 1995 that started with research identifying parts of the brain where trans women have the same neuronal density as cis women, and trans men have the same neuronal density as cis men, and has continued to the evidence of genetic predispositions explaining the mechanism by which a brain can develop along one sex’s blueprint, while the genital tact development follows the other.

Once we get out of the cissexual world in which gender identity, the 23rd chromosome pair and the genital tract development are all consistent, we have a tiny percentage of people who are different. Trans women are not and never were men. Trans men are not and never were women. Being trans is biologically-based, and the studies are there to prove it (and rather than list them again, just refer to the addenda to “My June 14, 2011 Letter to Dean Skelos on GENDA”essay posted to this blog on June 15, 2011. I recommend that the author read these scientific studies rather than assuming that the source for “gender identity” as an oversimplified concept involving a "choice" are the Roman Catholic Church, conservative politicians, or worse, the opaque and pretentious pseudo-academic writings by Judith Butler about gender as “performance.”

But the writer, starting with a false premise of “gender identity” that has nothing to do with the development of the brain and seems to be a matter of “free choice,” like deciding whether to have coffee or tea with breakfast, then goes on to ignore the fact that a small number of people are different and do not fit into the cissexual binary based on their birth genital tract development. To the cissexist writer, people who are different are a tiny minority and just do not matter when it comes to the identities, rights, and feelings of the majority.

The blasé dismissal of “intesex conditions” as being relevant is a huge cissexist boo-boo on the writer’s part. Trans people with genetic and ontological differences should not be ridiculed, victimized and told that we do not belong where we belong, just because some cissexual woman feels that because she was born with a uterus, no one born without one can legitimately be a woman. (There is a “lite” version of that centered around the vagina that is used by some post-op separatists to differentiate themselves from those who are not “real.” To me, all they are doing is drawing a pseudo-cissexist bright line in a place where it accepts them, and only them, as an exception.)

The assertion that because the law might protect “gender identity and expression” that this somehow would have to replace “actual or perceived sex” as a protected class in human rights laws, is patently absurd. No one is replacing sex with gender. It’s either adding an added criterion for the class previously defined as sex, or adding a separate classification altogether. Nothing is taken away.

That idea that adding gender to human rights laws hurts sex as great a fallacy as the NOM position that allowing gender-neutral marriage will adversely impact opposite sex marriages. There is no connection.

Radical feminism needs to shake off its Catholic roots, and the error that has crept into feminist analysis.

Trans people, particularly trans women, were once victimized by gender stereotyping as much as anyone else. And we still are victimized. In 1970, I was refused treatment for transsexualism because I was attracted to women – and the psychiatrist explained that “they wouldn’t cure me of one mental disorder to give me another.”

Others had to jump through hoops and convince their psychiatric gatekeepers that they were stereotypically ultra femme in order to get their surgery letters –the same psychiatrists (like Paul McHugh from Johns Hopkins) who later criticize the trans people for fitting into the stereotypes the gatekeepers insisted that fit.

Ultimately, neither transsexualism nor lesbianism is a mental disorder, though the psychiatric establishment is a little slow to acknowledge the former.

I get the fact that radical feminists want to transform themselves into the patriarchal ideal of reducing womanhood to being a walking, talking uterus, (the only difference being that the radfems rightly prefer to be walking, talking uteruses with a choice and control over their own bodies – that’s a good thing (having control over their own bodies, not the "walking, talking uterus" part!) and would still be there if they stopped oppressing my people.)

But womanhood is not that simple – how one identifies is based on our brain structures, and not our genitals or reproductive organs. A women with a hysterectomy does not stop being a woman.

In a comment, to the article, the author expands on the fallacies, stating that the trans argument is

“I FEEL like a woman therefore I AM a woman.”

That is partly true – the standard narrative dating back to the 1950’s for women born trans was that of feeling like “a woman trapped in a man’s body.” But it ignores the modern science. The reality is that we have women’s brains, at least in the relevant parts related to identity, and we have a male genital tract at birth.

The radfem comes back with:

“ there are females who don’t FEEL like “women” they FEEL like HUMANS, yet they ARE objectively females, so the trans argument is false for that reason alone”

There is no logical connection of one to the other. The fact that some people are weakly bigendered to the extent that they identify as a-gendered (neither male nor female, just “human”) is merely a different kind of identity. Nothing is refuted. There are also people assigned female at birth who identify as men and transition, they are men born trans and they were never really women at all. We who are trans are WBT and MBT, and not M2F or F2M, (or the even worse radfem acronyms M2T and F2T, which reflects their erroneous birth genital essentialist-based assumptions).

She continues:

“ the socialization of females is important in our society, but that is what makes the discussion about GENDER important, but that has nothing to do with SEX (biological reality)”

With this, I’m getting gender as in “gender stereotypes” and “gender expectations based on sex assignment.” How much pain trans people go through as children because of the expectations based on the color of the blanket we were wrapped up in when we were born. Mid-life transitioners like me have to get a crash course in socialization – I think I was able to condense about 16 years into six months, but having had a daughter, I think I had a head start. It's an important thought she has but not relevant to whether trans women are women - if we need help with socialization, it would be nice if help were provided rather than scorn.

She concludes the argument with

“ it is SEX, biological reality, that separates males from females. And it is not how we feel about that biological reality”

I agree that it’s about biological reality – but sex, and the biological reality of it is a lot more complicated and diverse for those who are intersex and trans than that XX XY genetic oversimplification, or the penis v. vagina oversimplification. Sex is not just the uterus v. the prostate. Some people, whether they are intersex in one way or another, including trans people, fall outside the stupid standard box. And how we feel is often a reflection of that biolgical reality.

Those of us who do fit into the brain-based identity consistent with the opposite sex, ought to be allowed to socialize and be recognized on that basis. If there has to be a requirement that we no longer be reproductively capable with the OEM equipment, I can live with that, long term HRT does that pretty well – the one thing I can state with a certainty is that we are biologically different and never belong to the original sex. In a binary-based society, we belong with that opposite sex, or we need a special niche that hasn’t existed in Western culture since the rise of Christianity and the attempt to exterminate the gallae.

As to those I left out of the discussion at the outset - just like we have bisexual people, we have various kinds of bigender people whose identities, also highly likely to be biologically based, don't fit into the standard binary. Just ebcasue they don't fit the binary assumptions does not mean we have to shoehorn them into the assumprions. I may not fully uinderstand them, but I respect the fact that they are different.

Dismissing trans and intersex people because we are a tiny minority is cissexist oppression, and should be called out for what it is.

Until it can free itself of cissexist assumption about people who are not cissexual, the branch of radical feminism that rejects trans women only proves it is rooted in patriarchy and allied with the Roman Catholic Magisterium and conservative Christianists in an unholy alliance to oppress trans people for being different.

Until then, all the cissexist "radfemsplainin'" about trans and intersex people is a lot like "mansplainin'" - explaining things to people who know exactly who we are, as if we didn't exist and don't count. I get it, but I don;t have to like it.

Editorial Pic-toon: BozObama Speaks on Marriage

2011-06-30T10:55:00.004-04:00

Don't get me wrong, I am a supporter of the President, but when he is wrong . . .

In 1996, when running for the Illinois state senate from a district on the south side of Chicago (according to the Jim Croce song, the "meanest part of town"), Barack Obama strongly supported same-sex marriage, writing in a letter to Chicago's LGBT newspaper:

"6) I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages."

I grant that he was running for a state position, and that this is not inconsistent with his current statement that he sees the issue as a states' rights issue, but when he was running for president, and even now, he has also back-tracked, de-evolved, so to speak, and now only supports civil unions.

His current statement about mariage being a states' rights issue, is largely a correct one if one is speaking solely about the ordinary regulation of the various bundles of rights associated with marriage - but what he fails to take into account is that when the states run afoul of the federal constitution in regulating marriage, the federal government can step in and enforce the constitution.

There have been a good number of federal cases along these lines, most notably the Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia (388 U.S. 1 (1967). The right to marry is a fundamental civil right.

In his dissent in Lawrence v. Texas, (539 U.S. 558 (2003), Justice Antonin Scalia, no friend to the LGBT community, points out the the court's decision to hold anti-"sodomy" laws unconstitutional would inevitably lead to the court recognizing the fundamental connubial right to marry for same-sex couples:

Today’s opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions, insofar as formal recognition in marriage is concerned. If moral disapprobation of homosexual conduct is “no legitimate state interest” for purposes of proscribing that conduct, ante, at 18; and if, as the Court coos (casting aside all pretense of neutrality), “[w]hen sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring,” ante, at 6; what justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples exercising “[t]he liberty protected by the Constitution,” ibid.? Surely not the encouragement of procreation, since the sterile and the elderly are allowed to marry. This case “does not involve” the issue of homosexual marriage only if one entertains the belief that principle and logic have nothing to do with the decisions of this Court. Many will hope that, as the Court comfortingly assures us, this is so.

The current Prop 8 case wending its way through the federal courts will test whether Justice Scalia's words are prophetic. Just as Lawrence followed the SCOTUS elimination of the racial "separate but equal" concept in Brown v. Board of Education (347 U.S. 483 (1954)), so it is that the Prop 8 case can follow Lawrence. Justice Scalia is not likely to be on the right side of this one, either, but one can always be pleasantly surprised.

President Obama, of all people, should recognize the federal constitutional implications of the right to marry. Not only is he a law professor by profession, a brilliant man in many respects, he is also the son of an interracial couple who at the time he was born could not get married in more than 18 states - because of people maintaining a "states' rights" position on the subject of their connubium. In 1967, the SCOTUS held otherwise on connubium for interracial couples. It is likely that a fair and just Court will do he same for the issue that the connubium right to marry must be understood on a gender-neutral basis under bedrock federal constitutional principles.

I'd like to share a quote from a sermon by the Rev. Theodore Parker, a Unitarian minister and Abolitionist leader, which was the inspiration for a similar quote attributed to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

"I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice."

- "Of Justice and the Conscience" (1853)

I support President Obama in his presidency, even though I disagree with him on this and a number of other critical issues. Despite those disagreements, he remains the most qualified candidate in the field for the 2012 election. Not a single Republican currently in the hunt for the Republican nomination is qualified for the presidency. Not one. I am hoping that President Obama evolves on the issue of marriage and these other critical issues. His second term will provide him with his legacy. Will he be wearing a clown nose all that often? (At least he doesn;t wear it all the time, like his anticipated opponents).

Looking toward 2016. In the meantime, I'm also seeing a strong Democratic candidate emerging for the 2016 presidential election - New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. In his first year in office as Governor, he has pushed an amazing package of bills through what is perhaps the most dysfunctional state legislature in the nation. And his popularity was recently reported at 64% in New York, higher than any other governor, including the Republican I expect will be Mr. Cuomo's 2016 opponent for the presidency, New Jersey's Chris Christie.

Is “Rev.” State Senator Diaz willing to violate his oath of office?

2011-06-28T17:04:00.001-04:00

Ruben Diaz was quoted in the Christian Post as saying the following things:

“Pastors and religious leaders are supposed to remember that we are supposed to be Christians before being Democrats or being Republicans. Our responsibility is with Jesus and not with Democratic Party or Republican Party."

"We should always think first as Christians; we should not be concerned if that person is Republican or Democrat. We should be concerned if that person has Christian values and go all the way for that person."

Senator Diaz is in a special position, and is not just a pastor and religious leader, he is also a New York state senator. He took an oath of office that follows this format:

I [state your name] do solemnly swear [or affirm] that I will support the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of the State of New York, and I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of New York State Senator according to the best of my ability [so help me God.]

When he wears his pastor hat, he should certainly feel free to act in accordance wioth the dictates of his personal religious beliefs (within reason, of course), but it may be argued that by putting his own particular and narrow religious views above the broad sweep of the federal and state constitutions when he is wearing his “state senator” hat, Diaz could be violating his oath of office.

That is not to say that his vote against the marriage equality bill or its additional religious protection amendment in and of itself violates the federal or state constitution. Indeed, the New York State Court of Appeals, in its 2006 decision that left the issue of marriage equality to the legislature, Hernandez v Robles (2006 NY Slip Op 05239), 855 NE 2d 1, 7 NY 3d 338, 821 NYS 2d 770 (2006) the New York Court of appeals expressly held that marriage on a gender-neutral basis was not required under the constitution of the State of New York or by the language of the existing statute.

But we have to note for the record, that even before the vote on the marriage equality bill and its additional religious protection amendment, out of state marriages have been understood to be recognized for all purposes under the law of the State of New York, when they are valid in the jurisdiction of origin. This is because they do not violate the express public policy of the State of New York, even if the marriage could not be performed in New York. Since New York had never passed a state-level Defense against Marriage Act, the Appellate Division in the 4th Department confirmed this on February 1, 2008, in Martinez v. County of Monroe (50 A.D.3d 189; 850 N.Y.S.2d 740).

However, it is the “Rev.” State Senator Diaz’s reasoning for his vote that makes me suspect that he would choose his religious bigotry over constitutional requirements.

It is interesting that Diaz ignores the express teachings of the Gospel in placing his religion first, over his constitutional obligations.

Jesus taught a basic separation of Church and State – see the synoptic gospels on “rendering to Caesar.” In all three, at Matthew 22:21, Mark 12:17, and Luke 20:25, we see that when confronted by a question as to the authority for a particular thing, whether it be secular or spiritual, the rules to follow ae those that go with the respective authority. For religious marriage, by all means there is no problem with looking to one's own sacred scripture or the interpretation of it that one understands, but when dealing with the civil rights of the citizens of the state, one particular religious belief should not be the primary consideration to trump the civil rights of all the citizens.

If rendering to Caesar is not enough of a scriptural admonition, there is also the teaching “no man can serve two masters” that I find in two of the synoptic gospels, at Matthew 6:24 and Luke 16:13. While Jesus is specifically referring to God and money, the spiritual and temporal authority are still intended to be separable - and when there is a conflict, and it is not possible to do justice to the one or the other in a proper circumstance, stepping down from the obligation that cannot be met would be proper.

Even when he identifies himself, the “Rev.” State Senator (or the State Senator “Rev.”), he can’t seem to avoid combining his titles and his allegiances – and yet, he readily and constantly admits putting his “Rev.” hat above his “State Senator” hat. When the time does come that he has a conflict between his oath of office and his religion, he will put his religion first, and he openly admits it in nearly everything he says on the subject. Should such a time come, if he does not resign his office and it can be established conclusively that he violated his oath of office, he could suffer consequences.

Since it would be really hard to prove his motivations if he did not keep yapping about them, Diaz should perhaps take some additional precedent from Jesus himself, and just stop telling everyone that he puts his religion ahead of the constitution and his oath of office. This way we can only guess that he might be violating his oath of office, but we wouldn't actually be able to pin it on him.

See, in particular Matthew 21:23-27.

In this passage, Jesus remains opaque about how he interprets his own source of authority for his teaching in the temple courts. When asked by the religious authorities to explain his authority, Jesus responds with a question about the source of John’s baptism, from divine or human authority – and when they refused to answer that, he also refused to answer them himself. Were Diaz silent about his motives, it would be impossible to prove whether they violate his oath of office.

It is one thing to for him to take his religious beliefs into consideration in deliberating how he should vote on the legislation placed before him – and it is quite another to set aside all other considerations other than his religious belief in formulating that vote.

Diaz can get away with putting his religion first if only he doesn’t advertise his reasoning so obviously. Otherwise he might find himself accused of violating his oath of office, and his own words would be found to incriminate and condemn him.

I am not suggesting that he be removed from office, only that he be somewhat more discreet about his motives and his parody of reasoning.

Of course, he does not even really understand Christian teachings about marriage – most Christianists don’t understand the true meaning of the Good News - they look to the miracles and things that require a suspension of disbelief, and not to the social justice message.

Let’s look briefly at two passages:

In Matthew 19:6, Jesus refers to traditional opposite sex marriage, in which the two become “one flesh.”

But in the one same-sex marriage referred to in the Bible, we get this, in 1 Samuel 18:3 (the link is to the KJV for this passage), that essentially, David and Jonathan are knit together as one soul by their covenant.

One flesh, and one soul - and as if the beating of a single heart. The two relationships are the same sort of thing in bible terms, as far as establishing a family relationship (the connubium aspect, even though a same sex couple’s relationship (or the relationship between opposite sex couples in which one partner is infertile or menopausal) does not naturally produce children?

Senator Diaz should seriously consider looking more carefully at both his beliefs and the obligations he has under the two or more hats he wears. He does not seem to be able to reconcile his obligations to both his masters, the constitution and his (erroneous) version of God.

Connubial rights the last step toward a fully gender-neutral domestic relations law

2011-06-27T10:08:00.001-04:00

Connubium, which is the Latin term for the right to marry, is a right that has now completed in New York the gender-neutralizing of the state's domestic relations law.

Marriage is a right, and certainly not an obligation. The bundle of rights, responsibiliities, privileges and obligations that come with the issuance of a license and the performance of a ceremony in front of witnesses is not mandatory.

There was a time when there was no hope for connubial rights for same sex couples, and that went deeper than the different terms for spouses, "husband" and "wife."

Years ago, the law provided a different bundle to the male party than that provided to the female party, and if we go far enough back we see that the woman's bundle was often rather less, and then sometimes some aspects of the bundle were preferential to the woman. The idea was that there was a certain legal complementarity that could not heve existed under the law with two wives, or two husbands.

In those days, before the rest of the domestic relations law was gender-neutralized, there was not a hope for legal marriage in the L&G community - and as with the Fox in Aesop's fable involving the grapes that were so tempting but just out of reach, the community insulated itself with the idea that such unequal rights as were offered to the heterosexual parties to marriage only confirmed and expanded patriarchal dominance, or were in some other way just sour and inedible.

In the past couple of decades, the state legislature has gone so far as to smoothe out all the differences in the bundles of rights afforded the parties to marriage, until there was only one right that had not been made gender-neutral, and that was the connubium.

And now it has, at least in New York, five other states and several countries.

There are those for whom the grapes are still sour and will always be that way - and they still have the right to not get married.

For others, the right to form a family with the mutual rights and obligations appurtenant thereto, is a right that they would like to exercise - and having the right is a good thing.

Archbishop Dolan still disagrees. Yesterday, after celebrating mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan, which is no longer on the route of the annual LGBT Pride March since New York City shortened the diustance for the sort of parade that requires street closures, he continued to assert that "marriage is between a man and a woman." He has only 20-something days left for that to be true in New York. After that, he will be able to truthfully say that "opposite sex marriage is between a man and a woman" or "the Sacrament of Matrimony in the Roman Catholic Church may be celebrated only by a man with a woman." The connubium of marriage has been legislated to be gender-neutral in New York - and perhaps it would be wise for the archbishop to consider that there is a difference between civil marriage and the Roman Church's sacrament. (But of course he can't do that. As nice a man as he is on a personal level, he has no choice but to stick with the party line as ordered by the irrational minds that control the Vatican. I am sure that Dolan is smart enough to know how silly he sounds, but that cardinal's hat is within reach, and this is a boat he would rather not rock. )

It's interesting to note that the Archbishop's position seems to be consistent with that of those in the L&G community who oppose marriage as a patriarchal institution, despite all the gender-neutralizing that has been done to the rest of the domestic relations law before the connubium was also made gender-neutral.

Neither Dolan nor the L&G folks who philosophically oppose marriage rights on a gender neutral basis seem to realize that the law has done all that smoothing-out of the respective rights of the parties to marriage, a smoothing of the way to last week's historic passage of marriage equality in New York. Connubium is (or shortly will be) a gender-neutral right in New York.

The New York compromise should be a blueprint for other states to follow - even though the conservative anti-marriage churches are not happy with the extension of the connubium, and they are not openly celebrating the protections for those religious organizations that do not wish to celebrate marriages or host wedding receptions, I am sure that they are secretly pleased with the latter.

Maggie Gallagher’s Delusional Dream of Revenge in New York

2011-06-25T23:32:00.000-04:00

In a piece for National Review entitled The GOP Will Pay a Grave Price, NOM’s Maggie Gallagher rattles her sword at New York’s Republican senators for daring to allow the recently-enacted marriage equality law to be brought to a floor vote.

Gallagher is well known for not having a really good grasp on the facts, but she tells the truth when she writes, concluding with a question:

“N.Y, Republicans did not have to bring gay marriage up for a vote: What does it mean that they passed gay marriage in N.Y.?”

The question from her perspective appears to be a rhetorical one, since she continues with a commitment of $2 million to “persuade” Republicans, stating “Voting for gay marriage has consequences.”

But let’s answer the question for her:

Maggie Gallagher does not understand what the New York GOP senators do - that the redistricting that will be coming prior to the 2012 elections will likely result in a possibly permanent loss of majority status, as the population of New York concentrates more in New York City. The Republicans in the Senate knew that this year was their best and possibly last chance for many years to make a deal to provide "religious protection" in a marriage bill, and that had they not made a deal now, marriage would have come to New York in January 2013, and without the express statutory "protections."

It was not just the three Republicans who voted “aye” to bring the bill one vote more than the minimum 32 required for passage. It took at least 17 of the Republicans in the32 member majority conference ( including many who did not actually vote for the bill) to tell the majority leader to let the bill go for a vote.

NOM previously promised $1million for each Republican who voted for the bill. It seems that they can’t count up to $4 million necessary to make good that original threat

Maggie and her friend Archbishop Dolan seem to ignore the “religious protections” provisions that the Republicans worked very hard to make sure were added to the bill before they were willing to let ot go to a vote. Perhaps the fear is that the compromise worked out in New York will snowball across the nation – since getting the marriage equality bill through was a more bipartisan effort than the final vote count reveals.

Remember, Maggie, it was not just the four who actually voted for the bill to bring it over the top. There are at least 13 more who had to be willing to allow it to go to a vote – and it is not going to be easy for you to figure out exactly who they are.

What exactly is the plan, though, Maggie? Is it that you really want to encourage the election of more Democrats to the State Senate in 2012? That will happen without your money, because of redistricting. If you think it will mean that you will be working with Mike Long to elect Conservative Party candidates in three-way elections, you are much more likely to get even more Democrats elected.

That will make it easier for us to get GENDA passed in 2013.

So, Maggie, please do your worst! But the arc of history bends toward justice, and you are on the losing side of history.

Nuances from last night's New York Marriage vote

2011-06-25T16:34:00.002-04:00

The "Rev." State Senator Ruben Diaz, Sr.

I don't know how many people noticed it, but the "Rev." State Senator Ruben Diaz, Sr., a pentacostalist minister who admits to having become "one flesh" with a second wife while his first wife is still alive, and admitted in an interview this week that it was wrong to do this, did his best last night to try to derail the well-organized procedure for the marriage vote in the State Senate.

It wasn't just the length of his comments, which went well over the stipulated two minutes. (To be sure, Senator Duane and others also exceeded two minutes in their own comments). But in his halting English, he kept insisting that he was "laying aside the bill." He became agitated, and repeated several times that he was getting no respect, that he had said to "lay aside the bill." He said he had a right to "lay aside the bill."

What Diaz did not seem to understand, was:

(a) he was recognized solely for the purpose of explaining his vote on the bill" - and

(b) that there had been a bit of ledgerdemain when the amendment and the bill were first taken up, that precluded Senator Diaz being able to lay the bill aside (i.e., put it off until later).

Last night's women's discussion group at my local LGBT center trooped into The LOFT's library rather than meet. We were watching the internet livestream feed on a large monitor, hoping it wouldn't crash (it didn't), but wen the Assembly bills were first taken up, we noticed that they were being laid aside. At first, some thought that meant that the bills were not going to get a vote, but without missing a beat, the president of the Senate continued with the repartee with majority leader skelos about there being a message from the governor at the desk, for each bill.

After having each been laid aside, the bills were then taken up on the basis of the governor's message of necessity - first the amendment, and then the main bill (the reverse of the order they had been taken up in the Assembly).

So, when Diaz tried to lay the bill aside, he couldn't, because the bills had already been laid aside once, and because he had not been recognized for the purpose of laying a bill aside but for explaining his vote.

It turns out that Diaz is as poor in his senate procedural rules as he is on interpreting the bible, or in his command of the English language. As to the last, I hope he is more proficient in Spanish, even if I don't understand a word of it.

As to his feeling of not being respected, I am sure that he is going to repeat that - he was trying to use every trick he knew to keep the bill from being considered.

Then in the other things he said, he chastized the Republicans for not all marching in lock-step (something he, as a Democrat, has always had a hard time doing). He complained that the Republicans were responsible for letting the bill go to a vote.

On that last point, I think is was not grounds for complaint, but for admiration, despite the fact that nearly all of them disapproved of the purpose of the bill.

As one of them pointed out, had they not let the bill go to a vote then, it would have come up in a couple of years, and when it came up again, it would not have all the "religious protections" they were able to build into it.

Before the final language came out yesterday, I was quite frankly worried that the poison pill provisions were going to be wayy more onorous than they were. I grant that the in terrorem clause (the one that invalidates the whole law in the event one provision is set aside by a court) was way over the top, but not totally unexpected.

Essentially, on the issue of marriage, the proponents and opponents are so polarized, that no one on either side trusts the motivations of the "other side." We are fond of demonizing each other.

Diaz showed that he was possibly the only member of the Senate not willing to lay that aside in the chamber and move forward.

Unlike the advocates on both sides, like me, who operate outside the chamber, the senators have the responsibility of actually making the law, despite their sometimes almost insurmountable differences.

Some senators, mostly Democrats, were justly pushing for the extension of the connubium of marriage on a gender neutral basis.

Other Senators, mostly Republicans, were justly (and with the bill safely passed, I can state this) trying to protect their religious institutions from what they perceived as an assault that goes against their most deeply-held religious views.

Frankly, I do believe the Republican majority is well aware of the fact that 2012 may be the last time they have a majority in the near future, so they set out to get the best deal they could get, to protect the mostly religion-based interests of the opponents,knowing that in 2013, a democratic majority senate could pass marriage without all the bells and whistles that were written into this bill.

I don't really think the bells and whistles were wholly necessary, though I can understand the fears that led to their adoption.

While I really do see the concerns of the opponents to be rooted in bigotry and prejudice, I can admire the way a few of the Republicans were able to negotiate a deal with the Governor to work a way to get the bill passed in a way that could reasonably protect the religious prejudice without harming the legal rights of the proponents. I also have to admire the willingness of most of the 28 Republicans who voted no on the main bill, to allow it to go to a vote. I only wish that they would have used the amendment that was voted on first, to signal who they were - that they were among the at least 17 in the majority conference that were needed to let the bill get the vote.

And that is the truth. If there were not 17 members of the majority who understood that there were enough votes for the bill to pass, and were at least comfortable with, if not fully satisfied by the "religious protections" that had been negotiated (what I still tend to call a poison pill even though it did not turn out to be fatal"), there would have been no vote last night.

Last night's vote was the result of the democratic process at work - not a perfect bill for either side, but one that gave each the things that they needed the most.

A victory for "our side," and, though they may not want to admit it openly, a victory for "them," too.

Diaz, though, made it clear that he was not part of any solution, only part of the problem.

Like Archbishop Dolan, he will not acknowledge the victory that the opponents won on religious protections.

State Senator Greg Ball

Senator Greg Ball wanted more of a poison pill. And to be honest, I don't know if he was willing to let it go to a vote as it was. His principal role in the past couple of days was to signal to me that the poison pill provisions were not going to be fatal, when he announced his NO vote in advance.

Senator Tom Duane, who in the moment of victory took the time to call for passage of GENDA next, was gracious - he chivalrously referred to all of his colleagues as heroes for their work in the process, even those who voted agaisnt the bill, even Diaz.

So, the marriage canary tells me that the only hope for GENDA next year would be if there is something the Republicans feel a need to do to protect some legitimate constituency of theirs. Sadly, the way the opposition to GENDA is shaping up, I don't think there is anything that we can offer in compromise. All we want is the same protection that has been provided to other minorities under the hate crimes and human rights laws.

The trans community has to organize and lead the charge for GENDA. I am hopeful that we will not be forgotten by the marriage people, but many of them will be moving on to other states and to federal issues, Some, however, will do everything they can to help us out - but we have to find a way to take the lead.

The latest draft of the amendments to the Assembly bill - PASSES!

2011-06-24T17:38:00.002-04:00

The canary is not dead, just a little sick:

S T A T E O F N E W Y O R K

8520

2011-2012 Regular Sessions

I N ASSEMBLY

June 24, 2011

Introduced by M. of A. O'DONNELL -- (at request of the Governor) -- read

once and referred to the Committee on Judiciary

AN ACT to amend the domestic relations law, in relation to the ability

to marry; and to amend a chapter of the laws of 2011, amending the

domestic relations law relating to the ability to marry, as proposed

in legislative bill number A. 8354, in relation to the statutory

construction of such chapter; and repealing certain provisions of the

domestic relations law relating to parties to a marriage

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, REPRESENTED IN SENATE AND ASSEM

BLY, DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:

Section 1.

Section 10-b of the domestic relations law, as added by a

chapter of the laws of 2011, amending the domestic relations law relat

ing to the ability to marry, as proposed in legislative bill number A.

8354, is REPEALED and a new section 10-b is added to read as follows:

S 10-B. RELIGIOUS EXCEPTION. 1. NOTWITHSTANDING ANY ~~OTHER PROVISION OF~~ STATE, LOCAL OR MUNICIPAL LAW, RULE, REGULATION, ORDINANCE, OR OTHER PROVISION OF LAW TO THE CONTRARY, A RELIGIOUS ENTITY AS DEFINED UNDER THE EDUCATION LAW OR SECTION TWO OF THE RELIGIOUS CORPORATIONS LAW, OR A CORPORATION INCORPORATED UNDER THE BENEVOLENT ORDERS LAW OR DESCRIBED IN THE BENEVOLENT ORDERS LAW BUT FORMED UNDER ANY OTHER LAW OF THIS STATE, OR A NOT-FOR-PROFIT CORPORATION OPERATED, SUPERVISED, OR CONTROLLED BY A RELIGIOUS CORPORATION, OR ANY EMPLOYEE THEREOF, BEING MANAGED, DIRECTED, OR SUPERVISED BY OR IN CONJUNCTION WITH A RELIGIOUS CORPORATION, BENEVOLENT ORDER, OR A NOT-FOR-PROFIT CORPORATION AS DESCRIBED IN THIS SUBDIVISION, ~~SHALL BE DEEMED TO BE IN ITS NATURE DISTINCTLY PRIVATE AND THEREFORE~~ SHALL NOT BE REQUIRED TO PROVIDE SERVICES, ACCOMMODATIONS, ADVANTAGES, FACILITIES, GOODS, OR PRIVILEGES FOR ~~RELATED TO~~ THE SOLEMNIZATION OR CELEBRATION OF A MARRIAGE. ~~2. A~~ ANY SUCH REFUSAL ~~BY A BENEVOLENT ORGANIZATION OR A RELIGIOUS CORPORATION,~~ ~~INCORPORATED UNDER THE EDUCATION LAW OR THE RELIGIOUS CORPORATIONS LAW,~~ TO PROVIDE SERVICES, ACCOMMODATIONS, ADVANTAGES, FACILITIES, GOODS, OR PRIVILEGES IN ~~CONNECTION WITH SECTION TEN-A OF THIS ARTICLE~~ SHALL NOT CREATE ANY CIVIL CLAIM OR CAUSE OF ACTION OR RESULT IN ANY STATE OR LOCAL GOVERNMENT ACTION TO PENALIZE, WITHHOLD BENEFITS, OR DISCRIMINATE AGAINST SUCH RELIGIOUS CORPORATION, BENEVOLENT ORDER, A NOT-FOR-PROFIT CORPORATION OPERATED, SUPERVISED, OR CONTROLLED BY A RELIGIOUS CORPORATION, OR ANY EMPLOYEE THEREOF BEING MANAGED, DIRECTED, OR SUPERVISED BY OR IN CONJUNCTION WITH A RELIGIOUS CORPORATION, BENEVOLENT ORDER, OR A NOT-FOR-PROFIT CORPORATION.

2. ~~3. PURSUANT TO SUBDIVISION ELEVEN OF SECTION TWO HUNDRED NINETY-SIX OF~~ ~~THE EXECUTIVE LAW,~~ NOTWITHSTANDING ANY STATE, LOCAL OR MUNICIPAL LAW OR RULE, REGULATION, ORDINANCE, OR OTHER PROVISION OF LAW TO THE CONTRARY, NOTHING IN THIS ARTICLE SHALL LIMIT OR DIMINISH THE RIGHT, PURSUANT TO SUBDIVISION ELEVEN OF SECTION TWO HUNDRED NINETY-SIX OF THE EXECUTIVE LAW, OF ~~SHALL BE DEEMED OR CONSTRUED~~ ~~TO PROHIBIT~~ ANY RELIGIOUS OR DENOMINATIONAL INSTITUTION OR ORGANIZATION, OR ANY ORGANIZATION OPERATED FOR CHARITABLE OR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES, WHICH IS OPERATED, SUPERVISED OR CONTROLLED BY OR IN CONNECTION WITH A RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION, TO LIMIT ~~FROM LIMITING~~ EMPLOYMENT OR SALES OR RENTAL OF HOUSING ACCOMMODATIONS OR ADMISSION TO OR GIVE PREFERENCE TO PERSONS OF THE SAME RELIGION OR DENOMINATION OR FROM TAKING SUCH ACTION AS IS CALCULATED BY SUCH ORGANIZATION TO PROMOTE THE RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLES FOR WHICH IT IS ESTABLISHED OR MAINTAINED.

3. NOTHING IN THIS SECTION SHALL BE DEEMED OR CONSTRUED TO LIMIT THE PROTECTIONS AND EXEMPTIONS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATIONS UNDER SECTION THREE OF ARTICLE ONE OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.

S 2. Subdivision 1-a of section 11 of the domestic relations law, as added by a chapter of the laws of 2011, amending the domestic relations law relating to the ability to marry, as proposed in legislative bill number A.8354, is amended to read as follows:

1-a. A refusal by a clergyman or minister as defined in section two of the religious corporations law, or Society for Ethical Culture leader to solemnize any marriage under this subdivision shall not create a civil claim or cause of action OR RESULT IN ANY STATE OR LOCAL GOVERNMENT ACTION TO PENALIZE, WITHHOLD BENEFITS OR DISCRIMINATE AGAINST SUCH CLERGYMAN OR MINISTER.

S 3. A chapter of the laws of 2011, amending the domestic relations law relating to the ability to marry, as proposed in legislative bill number A. 8354, is amended by adding a new section 5-a to read as follows:

S 5-A. THIS ACT IS TO BE CONSTRUED AS A WHOLE, AND ALL PARTS OF IT ARE TO BE READ AND CONSTRUED TOGETHER. IF ANY PART OF THIS ACT SHALL BE ADJUDGED BY ANY COURT OF COMPETENT JURISDICTION TO BE INVALID, THE REMAINDER OF THIS ACT SHALL BE INVALIDATED. NOTHING HEREIN SHALL BE CONSTRUED TO AFFECT THE PARTIES' RIGHT TO APPEAL THE MATTER.

S 4. This act shall take effect on the same date as such chapter of the laws of 2011, takes effect.

The bottom line? It's really not a lot worse than it was before - and to boot, all it really does is extend to marriage a number of the religious exemptions that were included in SONDA, just with a lot more teeth to make sure there are no challenges.

The in terrorem clause, threatening to invalidate the whole law if any part of it is successfully challenged, is a particularly interesting touch - it might have been added at the suggestion of a GOP senator with a trusts and estates practice, familiar with the value of simmilar in terrorem clauses in the drafting of wills.

While I might feel a little queasy that the Republicans felt necessary to throw all this in, I think that if and when this passes in both Assembly (and perhaps a single bill incorporating all the changes in the Senate), it should be time for a minor and muted celebration. They're not doing anything with GENDA.

But if they do want similar "religious protections" in GENDA, I guess I will have to take a close look at them - as long as they apply acoss the board, as these seem to, then it should be fine.

So, if a religion does not want to perform interracial marriages or the local Masonic Lodge does not want to allow an interracial couple to have their wedding reception at their hall, this bill will protect the Masons, and not a thing can be done about that.

UPDATE: The amendment passed in the Assembly first, and then the Senate first passed the Amendment, and then the underying bill. ha maon bill passed 33-29 - with one vote more than the 32 needed for passage. Upstate Senatr Grisanti was vite #33 - and his explanation of his vote was nearly as well received at The LOFT as Senator Duane's emotional and stirring words.

I cannot help but be pleased that marriage has passed - it's as close to equality as one could reasonably expect, given the power and influence of the Roman Catholic Church.

In the final analysis, the opponents got what they really felt they needed - keeping weddings that don't want out of their churches and affiliated organization reception halls - and the proponents got the word maddiage and civil equality, at least outside those churches and affiliated organizations.

Cassandra reads the tea leaves: NY Marriage bill may be a canary for GENDA strategy

2011-06-24T11:10:00.001-04:00

The canary, a songbird species, was used as recently as 1987 in the coal mining industry to warn miners of the danger of toxic gas buildup. It's not that the canaries were trained to sing out a warning, but rather, they would succumb to the toxic gases before human miners could - and the cessation of the chirping would also provide an audible indication that something could be amiss.

The three ring circus in the closing days of the 2011 New York legislative session, with controversy swirling around the extension of rent control, the imposition of a 2% cap on school tax increases, and the marriage "equality" bill, is providing advocates for GENDA (The Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act) a foretaste of what the scenario might be for the 2012 session, if GENDA were to be taken up by the Republican-controlled state senate.

There were two marriage bills considered by the Assembly, both of them chiefly sponsored by Assemblymember Danny O'Donnell, who, like his celebrity sister Rosie, is openly gay.

In this blog essay, I am going to set both of them out and analyze the evolution of the "poison pill" up to last week.

Hereis the original bill, A7600:

S T A T E O F N E W Y O R K

7600

2011-2012 Regular Sessions

I N ASSEMBLY

May 10, 2011

Introduced by M. of A. O'DONNELL -- read once and referred to the Committee on Judiciary

AN ACT to amend the domestic relations law, in relation to the ability to marry

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, REPRESENTED IN SENATE AND ASSEMBLY, DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:

Section 1. Legislative intent. Marriage is a fundamental human right. Same-sex couples and their children should have the same access as others to the protections, responsibilities, rights, obligations, and benefits of civil marriage. Stable family relationships help build a stronger society. For the welfare of the community and in fairness to all New Yorkers, this act formally recognizes otherwise-valid marriages without regard to whether the parties are of the same or different sex. It is the intent of the legislature that the marriages of same-sex and different-sex couples be treated equally in all respects under the law. The omission from this act of changes to other provisions of law shall not be construed as a legislative intent to preserve any legal distinction between same-sex couples and different-sex couples with respect to marriage. The legislature intends that all provisions of law which utilize gender-specific terms in reference to the parties to a marriage, or which in any other way may be inconsistent with this act, be construed in a gender-neutral manner or in any way necessary to effectuate the intent of this act.

S 2. The domestic relations law is amended by adding a new section 10-a to read as follows:

S 10-A. SEX OF PARTIES. 1. A MARRIAGE THAT IS OTHERWISE VALID SHALL BE VALID REGARDLESS OF WHETHER THE PARTIES TO THE MARRIAGE ARE OF THE SAME OR DIFFERENT SEX.

2. NO GOVERNMENT TREATMENT OR LEGAL STATUS, EFFECT, RIGHT, BENEFIT, PRIVILEGE, PROTECTION OR RESPONSIBILITY RELATING TO MARRIAGE, WHETHER
DERIVING FROM STATUTE, ADMINISTRATIVE OR COURT RULE, PUBLIC POLICY, COMMON LAW OR ANY OTHER SOURCE OF LAW, SHALL DIFFER BASED ON THE PARTIES TO THE MARRIAGE BEING OR HAVING BEEN OF THE SAME SEX RATHER THAN A DIFFERENT SEX. WHEN NECESSARY TO IMPLEMENT THE RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF SPOUSES UNDER THE LAW, ALL GENDER-SPECIFIC LANGUAGE OR TERMS SHALL BE CONSTRUED IN A GENDER-NEUTRAL MANNER IN ALL SUCH SOURCES OF LAW.

S 3. Section 13 of the domestic relations law, as amended by chapter 720 of the laws of 1957, is amended to read as follows:

S 13. Marriage licenses. It shall be necessary for all persons intended to be married in New York state to obtain a marriage license from a town or city clerk in New York state and to deliver said license, within sixty days, to the clergyman or magistrate who is to officiate before the marriage ceremony may be performed. In case of a marriage contracted pursuant to subdivision four of section eleven of this chapter, such license shall be delivered to the judge of the court of record before whom the acknowledgment is to be taken. If either party to the marriage resides upon an island located not less than twenty-five miles from the office or residence of the town clerk of the town of which such island is a part, and if such office or residence is not on such island such license may be obtained from any justice of the peace residing on such island, and such justice, in respect to powers and duties relating to marriage licenses, shall be subject to the provisions of this article governing town clerks and shall file all statements or affidavits received by him while acting under the provisions of this section with the town clerk of such town. NO APPLICATION FOR A MARRIAGE LICENSE SHALL BE DENIED ON THE GROUND THAT THE PARTIES ARE OF THE SAME, OR A DIFFERENT, SEX.

S 4. Subdivision 1 of section 11 of the domestic relations law, as amended by chapter 319 of the laws of 1959, is amended to read as follows:

1. A clergyman or minister of any religion, or by the senior leader, or any of the other leaders, of The Society for Ethical Culture in the city of New York, having its principal office in the borough of Manhattan, or by the leader of The Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, having its principal office in the borough of Brooklyn of the city of New York, or of the Westchester Ethical Society, having its principal office in Westchester county, or of the Ethical Culture Society of Long Island, having its principal office in Nassau county, or of the Riverdale-Yonkers Ethical Society having its principal office in Bronx county, or by the leader of any other Ethical Culture Society affiliated with the American Ethical Union; PROVIDED THAT NO CLERGYMAN, MINISTER OR SOCIETY FOR ETHICAL CULTURE LEADER SHALL BE REQUIRED TO SOLEMNIZE ANY MARRIAGE WHEN ACTING IN HIS OR HER CAPACITY UNDER THIS SUBDIVISION.

S 5. This act shall take effect immediately.

Now, let's take a look at the bill introduced by Assemblymember O'Donnell, at the request of Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is reported to have had discussions with at least some Republican leaders before hammering out some "poison pill" language for the bill I am going to enbolden the differences, or at least the ones I find:

S T A T E O F N E W Y O R K

8354

2011-2012 Regular Sessions

IN ASSEMBLY

June 14, 2011

Introduced by M. of A. O'DONNELL, GOTTFRIED, GLICK, TITONE, KELLNER, BRONSON, J. RIVERA, SILVER, FARRELL, SAYWARD, LENTOL, NOLAN, WEISEN BERG, ARROYO, BRENNAN, DINOWITZ, HOYT, LIFTON, MILLMAN, CAHILL, PAULIN, REILLY, BING, JEFFRIES, JAFFEE, ROSENTHAL, KAVANAGH, DenDEKKER, SCHIMEL, HEVESI, BENEDETTO, SCHROEDER, J. MILLER, LAVINE, LANCMAN, LINARES, MOYA, ROBERTS, SIMOTAS, ABINANTI, BRAUNSTEIN -- Multi-Sponsored by -- M. of A. AUBRY, BOYLAND, BROOK-KRASNY, CANESTRARI, COOK, DUPREY, ENGLEBRIGHT, LATIMER, V. LOPEZ, LUPARDO, MAGNARELLI, McENENY, MORELLE, ORTIZ, PRETLOW, RAMOS, N. RIVERA, P. RIVERA, RODRIGUEZ, RUSSELL, SWEENEY, THIELE, TITUS, WEPRIN, WRIGHT, ZEBROWSKI -- (at request of the Governor) -- read once and referred to the Committee on Judiciary

AN ACT to amend the domestic relations law, in relation to the ability to marry

THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, REPRESENTED IN SENATE AND ASSEMBLY, DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:

Section 1. This act shall be known and may be cited as the "Marriage Equality Act".

My comment - The original bill didn't have a title, and a bill like this, even with the "poison pill" provisions we are going to review, really should not have a name with "Equality" in it - because the poison pills expressly allow discrimination.

S 2. Legislative intent. Marriage is a fundamental human right. Same sex couples

~~and their children~~

My comment - I have no idea why on earth the Republicans insisted that the words "and their children" be stricken from the declaration of legislative intent. It appears to me to be more than a mere oversight, and I think that the omission is an outrage.

should have the same access as others to the protections, responsibilities, rights, obligations, and benefits of civil marriage. Stable family relationships help build a stronger society. For the welfare of the community and in fairness to all New Yorkers, this act formally recognizes otherwise-valid marriages without regard to whether the parties are of the same or different sex. It is the intent of the legislature that the marriages of same-sex and different-sex couples be treated equally in all respects under the law. The omission from this act of changes to other provisions of law shall not be construed as a legislative intent to preserve any legal distinction between same-sex couples and different-sex couples with respect to marriage. The legislature intends that all provisions of law which utilize gender-specific terms in reference to the parties to a marriage, or which in any other way may be inconsistent with this act, be construed in a gender-neutral manner or in any way necessary to effectuate the intent of this act.

S 3. The domestic relations law is amended by adding two new sections 10-a and 10-b to read as follows:

S 10-A. PARTIES TO A MARRIAGE. 1. A MARRIAGE THAT IS OTHERWISE VALID SHALL BE VALID REGARDLESS OF WHETHER THE PARTIES TO THE MARRIAGE ARE OF THE SAME OR DIFFERENT SEX.

2. NO GOVERNMENT TREATMENT OR LEGAL STATUS, EFFECT, RIGHT, BENEFIT, PRIVILEGE, PROTECTION OR RESPONSIBILITY RELATING TO MARRIAGE, WHETHER DERIVING FROM STATUTE, ADMINISTRATIVE OR COURT RULE, PUBLIC POLICY, COMMON LAW OR ANY OTHER SOURCE OF LAW, SHALL DIFFER BASED ON THE PARTIES TO THE MARRIAGE BEING OR HAVING BEEN OF THE SAME SEX RATHER THAN A DIFFERENT SEX. WHEN NECESSARY TO IMPLEMENT THE RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF SPOUSES UNDER THE LAW, ALL GENDER-SPECIFIC LANGUAGE OR TERMS SHALL BE CONSTRUED IN A GENDER-NEUTRAL MANNER IN ALL SUCH SOURCES OF LAW.

S 10-B. APPLICATION. 1. NOTWITHSTANDING ANY OTHER PROVISION OF LAW, PURSUANT TO SUBDIVISION NINE OF SECTION TWO HUNDRED NINETY-TWO OF THE EXECUTIVE LAW, A CORPORATION INCORPORATED UNDER THE BENEVOLENT ORDERS LAW OR DESCRIBED IN THE BENEVOLENT ORDERS LAW BUT FORMED UNDER ANY OTHER LAW OF THIS STATE OR A RELIGIOUS CORPORATION INCORPORATED UNDER THE EDUCATION LAW OR THE RELIGIOUS CORPORATIONS LAWS SHALL BE DEEMED TO BE IN ITS NATURE DISTINCTLY PRIVATE AND THEREFORE, SHALL NOT BE REQUIRED TO PROVIDE ACCOMMODATIONS, ADVANTAGES, FACILITIES OR PRIVILEGES RELATED TO THE SOLEMNIZATION OR CELEBRATION OF A MARRIAGE.

2. A REFUSAL BY A BENEVOLENT ORGANIZATION OR A RELIGIOUS CORPORATION, INCORPORATED UNDER THE EDUCATION LAW OR THE RELIGIOUS CORPORATIONS LAW, TO PROVIDE ACCOMMODATIONS, ADVANTAGES, FACILITIES OR PRIVILEGES IN CONNECTION WITH SECTION TEN-A OF THIS ARTICLE SHALL NOT CREATE A CIVIL CLAIM OR CAUSE OF ACTION.

My comment – Sections 10-b 1 & 2 are not objectionable – all it means is that if the local Knights of Columbus, American Legion, Lions Club, etc., as well as the churches and schools, can arbitrarily deny the use of their halls or other facilities for weddings. It doesn’t mean that they can deny a celebration for other purposes than a “solemnization or celebration of marriage” – so maybe one of the extras the GOP Senators might be looking for here would be additional rights to discriminate.

3. PURSUANT TO SUBDIVISION ELEVEN OF SECTION TWO HUNDRED NINETY-SIX OF THE EXECUTIVE LAW, NOTHING IN THIS ARTICLE SHALL BE DEEMED OR CONSTRUED TO PROHIBIT ANY RELIGIOUS OR DENOMINATIONAL INSTITUTION OR ORGANIZATION, OR ANY ORGANIZATION OPERATED FOR CHARITABLE OR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES, WHICH IS OPERATED, SUPERVISED OR CONTROLLED BY OR IN CONNECTION WITH A RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION FROM LIMITING EMPLOYMENT OR SALES OR RENTAL OF HOUSING ACCOMMODATIONS OR ADMISSION TO OR GIVING PREFERENCE TO PERSONS OF THE SAME RELIGION OR DENOMINATION OR FROM TAKING SUCH ACTION AS IS CALCULATED BY SUCH ORGANIZATION TO PROMOTE THE RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLES FOR WHICH IT IS ESTABLISHED OR MAINTAINED.

My comment - This Section 10-b.3., already in the Assembly version, should be a deal breaker unless there is a provision added that this does not apply to any of these entities or organizations if they receive any source of public funding, and I would also add “or exemption from taxation” – though I don’t think that would go over very well. I am appalled because this piece of the bill goes beyond marriage rights - we are dealing with a broad range of things, and a broad range of entities. This may well be intended to be a legislative overturning of the 2001 New York Court of Appeals decision in Levin v. Yeshiva University, 96 N.Y.2d 484, 730 N.Y.S.2d 15, in which the Court held that Yeshiva University's restriction of housing to those with legally recognized family relationships with a student violated the New York City Human Rights law provisions on discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. This provision, without the addition of a ban on public funding for entities that so discriminate, will be a rather legislative rollback of both the New York City human rights law and the New York State Human Rights law, as amended by the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act in 2002 - I wonder whether the people and organizations supporting marriage equality right now understand that the poison pills already in the bill may well go too far? Or are they so blinded by a single-minded desire to not have to take a drive or train trip to Connecticut to get married there and have the same full legal rights in New York as anyone else, with no poison pill?

The thing is, the passage of the original bill without a specific addressing of the Yeshiva University case, would have been enough to overturn the specific facts of the case - since the unmarried lesbian couple would under the new law have the right to marry, the school's housing rule would no longer be violative of the human rights law because refusing accommodation an unmarried couple would not be discriminatory on the basis of sexual orientation. Of course, if they would in fact be legally married, then we'd be in the same situation of having the school run afoul of the human rights law. So it should be an acceptable "poison pill" but only if the law provides the school may take no public money if it intends to discriminate. If they do, the law should prohibit the discrimination.

.
S 4. Section 13 of the domestic relations law, as amended by chapter 720 of the laws of 1957, is amended to read as follows:

S 13. Marriage licenses. It shall be necessary for all persons intended to be married in New York state to obtain a marriage license from a town or city clerk in New York state and to deliver said license, within sixty days, to the clergyman or magistrate who is to officiate before the marriage ceremony may be performed. In case of a marriage contracted pursuant to subdivision four of section eleven of this chapter, such license shall be delivered to the judge of the court of record before whom the acknowledgment is to be taken. If either party to the marriage resides upon an island located not less than twenty-five miles from the office or residence of the town clerk of the town of which such island is a part, and if such office or residence is not on such island such license may be obtained from any justice of the peace residing on such island, and such justice, in respect to powers and duties relating to marriage licenses, shall be subject to the provisions of this article governing town clerks and shall file all statements or affidavits received by him while acting under the provisions of this section with the town clerk of such town. NO APPLICATION FOR A MARRIAGE LICENSE SHALL BE DENIED ON THE GROUND THAT THE PARTIES ARE OF THE SAME, OR A DIFFERENT, SEX.

S 5. Subdivision 1 of section 11 of the domestic relations law, as amended by chapter 319 of the laws of 1959, is amended and a new subdivision 1-a is added to read as follows:

1. A clergyman or minister of any religion, or by the senior leader, or any of the other leaders, of The Society for Ethical Culture in the city of New York, having its principal office in the borough of Manhattan, or by the leader of The Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture, having its principal office in the borough of Brooklyn of the city of New York, or of the Westchester Ethical Society, having its principal office in Westchester county, or of the Ethical Culture Society of Long Island, having its principal office in Nassau county, or of the Riverdale-Yonkers Ethical Society having its principal office in Bronx county, or by the leader of any other Ethical Culture Society affiliated with the American Ethical Union; PROVIDED THAT NO CLERGYMAN OR MINISTER AS DEFINED IN SECTION TWO OF THE RELIGIOUS CORPORATIONS LAW, OR SOCIETY FOR ETHICAL CULTURE LEADER SHALL BE REQUIRED TO SOLEMNIZE ANY MARRIAGE WHEN ACTING IN HIS OR HER CAPACITY UNDER THIS SUBDIVISION.

1-A. A REFUSAL BY A CLERGYMAN OR MINISTER AS DEFINED IN SECTION TWO OF THE RELIGIOUS CORPORATIONS LAW, OR SOCIETY FOR ETHICAL CULTURE LEADER TO SOLEMNIZE ANY MARRIAGE UNDER THIS SUBDIVISION SHALL NOT CREATE A CIVIL CLAIM OR CAUSE OF ACTION.

S 6. This act shall take effect on the thirtieth day after it shall have become a law.

My comment - the original bill was to take effect immediately. I suspect that the idea of providing a 30 day window would be to allow opponents of connubial marriage rights being legally permitted on a gender-neutral basis, an opportunity to take their case to the courts to try to block the bill from becoming effective.

Now, as I am writing this, the GOP senators should be meeting as a majority conference, and it is possible that the fate of the marriage bill is in their hands. We will not get a chance to see the final draft of the bill as they amend it to add more "poison pill" provisions

Further negotiations have been had between the Governor and Senators Andrew J. Lanza from Staten Island, Kemp Hannon from Long Island, and Steven Saland from Dutchess County, who have been pressing to enlarge the "poison pill" aspects beyond those already added to the Assembly bill. In addition, there have been the "three men in a room" meetings among Governor Cuomo, Senate majority leader Dean Skelos, and Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver, that have, or may have, touched on the addition of additional poison pill language that would make the marriage bill less one of "equality" and more one of a second class status. Perhaps the opponents have decided that we are the kind of fools who are willing to take a legal right under the same name but with a different outcome.

If what the Albany legislative meat grinder does to the marriage bill results in an enactment of a bill with the objectionable provisions already noted, as well as others, what would the GOP-controlled senate do to GENDA, assuming that the Republicans were to decide to take it up today, or in 2012?

Well, the marriage tale has not yet been fully spun out - but when I analyze the final result, I am sure it will be a cautionary tale, a canary that will have succumbed to the poisonous vapors exhaled by the members of the Republican majority that controls the New York State Senate.

The worse the marriage poison pill, the less likely it will be that the friends and advocates of GENDA will be able to avoid a similar fate in 2012.

If the marriage bill does in fact turn out to be a dead canary, I would suggest that the 2012 legislative strategy for GENDA, with a Republican controlled state senate, should be to expend enough effort to pass the Assembly the fifth time, but to concentrate the trans community's meager assets on influencing the outcome of the 2012 elections.

We will have an advantage - the 2010 census results are likely to create enough additional Democratic seats ao that even with the GOP drawing the lines, there should be at least 35 Democratic senators taking office in January 2013. We will not have to swallow a poison pill in 2012 for GENDA, we just have to make sure that those 35 Democrats (with the exception of Ruben Diaz Sr., who appears to be a lost cause) are all going to support GENDA the way it was written.

I have been posting and tweeting about the marriage bill poison pill for the past several days. The juggernaut is in the hands of the GOP Senate majority - I do not want to give them GENDA to add the same sort of poison.

Audio file of WCBS 880's Peter Haskell reporting "vast majority" in Senator Lanza's district supports marriage equality

2011-06-22T12:48:00.000-04:00

WCBS 880′s Peter Haskell In St. Sen. Andrew Lanza’s District In Castleton Corners, Staten Island

If the button does not work, you can find the link here, part way down the page:

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/06/21/lawmakers-return-to-albany-to-tackle-gay-marriage-rent-control/

While Senator Lanza is best known for changing his vote (because he was threatened, or rather, strongly urged by Senator Ruben Diaz to change his vote) at the Judiciary committee meeting last year that killed GENDA for the last session, it is possible that he might vote for marriage if he hears enough from his constituents

Here is his Contact Information:

Albany Office:
State Senator Andrew J. Lanza
188 State Street Room 915
Legislative Office Building
Albany, NY 12247

--
Phone: (518) 455-3215
Fax: (518) 426-6852

District Office:

State Senator Andrew J. Lanza
3845 Richmond Ave. Suite 2A
Staten Island, NY 10312

--
Phone: (718) 984-4073
Fax: (718) 984-4455

E-Mail:
lanza@senate.state.ny.us

Here is what I tried to fax and ended up e-mailing:

June 22, 2011

By FAX to 518-426-6852

Hon. State Senator Anthony J. Lanza
188 State Street - Room 915
Legislative Office Building
Albany, NY 12247

Re: WCBS Newsradio 880 reports “Vast Majority” of Staten Islanders support Marriage Equality

Dear Senator Lanza:

A broadcast yesterday from Castleton Corners by Newsradio 880 reporter Peter Haskell indicated that the vast majority of your constituents support extending the right to marry on a gender neutral basis.

Your YES vote on this bill will be critical.

Please vote YES for marriage Equality, and NO to any poison pill. Religious institutions already can choose whose marriages they will bless, and that right will not change by extending the connubium of marriage on a gender neutral basis.

This is the last part of the Domestic Relations Law that has not been already made gender neutral.

Please vote YES on the Marriage bill, and tell Majority Leader Skelos that you don’t want to add a poison pill to the bill

Do the right thing!

Thanks,

Joann Prinzivalli

Separated at Birth?

2011-06-21T18:38:00.002-04:00

After posting, earlier today, the photo of myself speaking yesterday at the Westchester County Board of Legislators, I ran across a photo of Maggie Gallagher, one of the people from NOM, the National Organization "for" Marriage, speaking up in Albany against marriage. (I put the "for" in the organization name quotation marks because it's actually Orwellian Newspeak on the pat of NOM and actually means "against" - Maggie's organization is well known for being implacably opposed to laws extending the connubium of marriage on a gender-neutral basis.)

Though there appears to be some superficial resemblance between Maggie and me, we were not actually separated at birth.

We may live in the same county, but we are light years apart on the issues of justice, fairness and equality.

Maggie makes a lot of money running NOM for a large salary, and I make no money at all working with NYTRO (The New York Transgender Rights Organization) on a voluntary basis when I have a moment apart from my day job, and for no compensation except the satisfaction of working for equality.

Still and all, while the exterior appearances might be vaguely similar if one squints at the picture, I would hope that one can tell us apart. Look carefully: I'm the one not lying through my teeth.

On the history of the Westchester LGBT Advisory Board: a speech

2011-06-21T17:58:00.001-04:00

The following is the text of my speech last night at the ceremony marking Pride Month at the commencement of last night's Westchester County Board of Legislators' meeting:

A Brief History of the Westchester County LGBT Advisory Board

The history of the Advisory Board begins a decade before the Board was formed, with the initial creation of a position of part-time liaison to the lesbian and gay community by County Executive Andrew O’Rourke, in 1992.

The first liaison was Norma Karmiol Crohn, whose served from 1992 to 1994. In 1994 Dr. Zelle Andrews was appointed by County Executive O’Rourke, and she served until 2000. The position was made full time and filled briefly from February to May 2001 by Joseph DeFilippis, a community activist, He was followed by Laura Newman, who was appointed by County Executive Andrew Spano in October 2001. Ms. Newman served until October 2007. In January 2008, she was replaced by Yvette Christofilis.

The position of liaison was consolidated with other liaison positions at the beginning of the Astorino administration in 2010, and the person appointed to fill the consolidated position was Diane Balistrieri, who continues to date to provide a connection between the Advisory Board and the county executive and other county officials.

From the time of the initial creation of the liaison position, one of the primary interfaces of the liaison with community groups was with one group, the LOFT in White Plains. By late 2001, the community landscape had changed, and there were a multiplicity of organizations serving the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender population in Westchester County.

Before the Advisory Board was created, Liaison Laura Newman, recognizing the changed landscape of the community, expanded the liaison’s contacts with LGBT community organizations to go beyond the LOFT. While The LOFT remained and still is the largest LGBT community center, Ms. Newman recognized that there were a number of other groups in the county. Initially, she ran several meetings with community groups in 2001 and 2002, but this proved to be somewhat unwieldy over time.

The LGBT Advisory Board was created in 2002 for the purpose of providing a conduit between the LGBT community and the County Executive, through the Liaison. Consisting of unpaid volunteers appointed by the county executive on the recommendation of the liaison and the board, the board serves as a think tank and its purpose is to advise the county executive on LGBT issues. Members of the board provide the liaison, and the county executive with their expertise in issues that relate to the diversity of the LGBT community within the county. The board assists the liaison in other ways, helping to formulate policy recommendations, surveying the community for needs assessment purposes, and more recently, providing an annual report to the community in a Town Hall meeting.

In addition to having meetings that are open to the public, since 2006 the advisory board’s annual Town Hall meeting in the late spring, provides a conduit for the board to report to, and obtain input from, the LGBT community. The board also set up a program of annual awards to recognize achievements of individuals, businesses, and organizations that contribute to the life-blood and well-being of the community.

The Advisory board has been involved in assisting with the annual PrideWorks program for LGBT youth, sponsoring college summit meetings to engage college students with the community, and in implementing ever-so-needed sensitivity training programs for police and county employees.

The Advisory Board also contributed to the formation of the Westchester Pride Coalition, an organization of 13 community groups based in Westchester County, that organized annual pride celebrations, commencing with Pride at Playland in 2009.

As we look to the future, the advisory board hopes to continue its work of service to both the county government and to the community.

My sermon for Juneteenth, at Memorial United Methodist Church

2011-06-20T08:37:00.000-04:00

The celebration of Juneteenth marked a milestone in the history of African American people in the United States. June 19, 1865 was the day that Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, where he read General Order #3 finally informing the slaves in the State of Texas that they were free, and implementing the Emancipation Proclamation made by President Lincoln on January 1, 1863.

And with the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15thAmendments, no longer would African American men each be counted as 3/5ths of a man, but only for the purpose of enlarging the impact of the votes of white men in slave states.

But who was left behind?

African American women.

ALL women.

In most states, still under the common law, marriage meant that “the two shall become one, and that one is the husband.” New York was one of a few states that had enacted “Married Women’r Property Acts, first in 1848, allowing married women to control their inherited property, and then in 1860, allowing married women to control their won wages.

But in many other states, women were given from the custody of their fathers, to the custody of their husbands – without rights, just like the “civil death” imposed on convcted felons.

The abolitionist movement had been almost evenly split on the idea of women’s rights.

So – when the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments were added to the Constitution, women were told, “you have to wait.”

Women worked on various states, securing the right to vote in some, and ecpanding the number of states in which they obtained legislative relief from the common law “civil death” for inheritances, and wages.

Finally, in 1920, Tennessee became the last state needed to ratify the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote – 55 years after Juneteenth.

Women had parity in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – BUT that was a fluke. The last minute amendment to add coverage for women was added by a segregationist, who thought that by adding women to the Act, it would lead what he believed would be fellow patriarchist northern moderates to reject the whole bill.

We are seeing a similar act playing out in the New York legislature today – at the time I wrote this sermon, New York is on the cusp of possibly enacting an historic bill that would enlarge the connubium of marriage rights by making the freedom to marry a gender neutral one, rather than being one of requiring that the parties be members of the opposite sex.

I can think of a couple of similar occasions – when the Roman Republic amended its laws to provide for connubium between patricians and plebeians. Prior to that, patricians and plebeians could not intermarry.

In American history, for many years there were laws against racial mixing in marriage – though they were for the maintenance of some mythical “purity” of the “white race,” since interracial marriages were permitted as long as no party was white.

California was the first state to overturn its anti-miscegenation laws, but the culmination of the effort came when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Virginia’s law (as well as the laws of the remaining 18 states with such laws on their books) in the 1967 Loving v. Virginia (388 U.S. 1) case.

Today, there are yet other civil rights movements, and just as there was a situation in which the recognition of legal rights of women have lagged behind the rights of African American men, we now have a situation where the recognition of legal rights of transgender people are lagging behind those accorded to people whose sexual orientation is not heterosexual.

New York stands to be the sixth state to allow marriage rights to be expanded on a gender neutral basis – and this does provide rights to transgender people, too. But we were left out of the hate crimes law in 1999, and the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act was passed in 2002 without including transgender people in human rights laws.

Trans people are perhaps the least understood and most maligned minority in the United States. A recently published study, entitled Injustice at Every Turn, discloses the extent of the plight of my people. And yet, in debating the GENDA bill in the Assembly last week, Republicans were openly referring to it as a “:sexual perverts and predators relief act” in their remarks..

Celebration may be coming soon on marriage. And I will join in those celebrations, though my celebration will be muted, somewhat. As Frederick Douglass noted in his famous 4th of July speech in 1841, my time for celebration will not yet have arrived. And until my people are freed from the bonds of discrimination under the law, the idea of celebration rings hollow.

In today’s reading from Isaiah (Is. 61:1-2, 10-11), we see a foretaste of Juneteenth, and of the eventual recognition of the human rights of transgender people “The Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim freedom for the captives and release of prisoners.

And what does Paul (Gal.3:26-29) have to say? We are all one in Christ Jesus, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female.

In the Gospel of John (John 15:9-17) Yeshua himself calls us friends, and not slaves or servants.

So when people proclaim in their ignorance that God hates gay people, or that transgender people are less than human, they do not know what they are talking about.

When people, including high ranking prelates in large churches, hold out against basic human rights for transgender people, and the right to marry for people who are different, quite frankly, they are not asking WWJD!

So – on this celebration of Juneteenth, when there is much to praise, much to celebrate, and much for which to give thanks, we should also pause and reflect on just how much farther we must go before the arc of history bends far enough so that justice for all can be rendered, and we can all be free.

Marriage: New York Republicans looking for poison pill approach?

2011-06-19T19:34:00.001-04:00

The news reports are that the fate of the New York marriage bill, for this year, and perhaps next year, will be up to the Republican state senate majority caucus - Senator Dwan Skelos, the majority leader, has left it up to his causuc to decide whether to bring the bill to a vote - and he noted that if they do decide to allow a vote, that it would be a "conscience vote" and that no vote would be taken if the majority within the majority caucus would prefer to impose party discipline - there would not be a vote taken at all in the event that party discipline is required.

The whip count isfor marriage is 31 - which includes 29 of the 30 Democrats (all except the implacable Ruben Diaz, Sr., who inexplicably voted in favor of the Dignity for all Students Act last year - which means he really is not all norally bad, but rather a particularly dark shade of gray).

(Meanwhile, the whip count for GENDA is already at 32 - enough for passage, but again, in the hands of the Republican majority leader and his caucus full of senators who falsely refer of us as "perverts and predators.")

However, getting that last vote might require unacceptable concessions.

The law, as of right now, is that same sex couples can go to neighboring Canada, Vermont, Massachusetts or Connecticut (or even several other jurisdictions that are a longer drive, or a plane flight away), get married legally in that other jurisdictin, and right now, today, have all the rights appurtenant to marriage in New York State.

That is because the New York State legislature has never passed a state-level Defense Against Marriage Act (called the Defense of Marriage Act by the alternate-reality proponents of such laws). While the New York Court of Appeals in 2006 left the performance of marriage within the state to a decision to be made by the legislature, the courts have consistenty held that marriages legally performed out of state are fully enforceable in New York.

So if the Republicans decide that they won't support a bill that merely addresses the idea of expanding the connubium of marriage to make the institution gender neutral (extending the right to same-sex couples does not in any way adversely affect the rights of opposit-sex couples), they would be offering a poison pill defense - making the bill so unpalatable that no reasonable supporter should be willing to vote for it.

Some of the proposals for the poison pill will institutionalize the primacy of religious-based discrimination outside of the churches themselves. Such a pill should be left untasted. It would be far better to wait for redistricting and the 2012 elecstions, so that marriage, and GENDA both, can be enacted by a new legoslature in January 2013 as a top legislative priority,

The Republican majority must know that it is on borrowed time - the results of the 2010 census will resound as the death knell to Republican domination of the state senate in New York, even though the Republicans are the ones who will be drawing the district lines, the census results will result in at least 35 democratic senators coming out of the 2012 elections.

My advice to Democratic senators - if the Republicans go for a poison pill approach, do not take the pill! It would be better to wait for real equality than to lessen the rights of LGBT New Yorkers who were and will be married out of state and already have marriages that are fully valid in New York State under New York law. Make marriage, GENDA, and the Republican intransigence a major 2012 campaign theme, and then commit to doing justice in January 2013.

Addendum - June 21, 2011: This afternoon there were news reports that deals hed been cut on a "framework" for dealing with the rent control and tax cap issues, but the reports indicated that the Senate majority was considering adding "religious protections" to the marriage bill - there are more than adequate religious protections in existing marriage law, and to create a separate, lesser marriage right so that someone claiming to be "religious" can discriminate by providing spousal benefits to some married amployees and not others is a poison pill and should not be condoned.

If they want to provide religious protection, the bill should contain a provision that prohibits ministers of religion from performing any marriages as witnesses on behalf of the state (if they are also acting as presiders for their religious rite) - we should have a system similar to that used in Europe, in which the civil rights are not confused with the sacramental rites.

Speaking at Heritage of Pride Rally: and looking back at history

2011-06-19T18:57:00.000-04:00

No, you won't find me on the program, but Noah Lewis from Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund (TLDEF) was on the program, and graciously shared his four minute time slot with Patricia Harrington, one of the other plaintiffs in the birth certificate lawsuits, and me.

In my brief comments, I looked to the history of the New York City Pride Rally, particularly at a dark chapter eleven years ago when Jim Fouratt, a Stonewall veteran and Radical Faerie, used his time on the podium as a featured speaker to share his discredited views about transgender women, and then turned to the present, looking forward to the day when the laws and regulations actually catch up with the science.

Here are my prepared remarks:

Remarks by Joann Prinzivalli at Heritage of Pride Rally, June 18, 2011

Eleven years ago today, at the Pride Rally in Bryant Park, the featured speaker, a stonewall veteran, claimed that transgender women are only “gay men in denial” - those of us in attendance who knew better than that turned our backs on that speaker.

Transgender women, like me, never really were men even if we spend part of our lives trying to fit into societal expectations.

Having the government fix the birth certificate regulations to recognize the reality that we are different, and having my birth certificate corrected, will go a long way toward erasing the prejudice that comes from ignorance of the biological reality that scientific study has discovered over just the past 17 years.

While I started the lawsuit in 2009 on my own, and obtained a victory against the City on its motion to dismiss the case, I am grateful to TLDEF, and to Noah Lewis and the other lawyers who are moving the lawsuit forward.

My piece lasted about 40 seconds - but I thought it important to look back to the history.

But the history of the relationship of trans rights to the New York City Pride Rally has a longer, darker history.

In my brief remarks, I did not have the opportunity to go back all that way to 1973, when the late Sylvia Rivera was pulled off the stage at the New York City Pride Rally when she tried to speak.

According to one account of this episode, found in Martin Duberman’s book Stonewall:

“During the 1973 gay pride rally in Washington Square Park, Jen O’Leary of GAA [Gay Activists Alliance] publicly denounced Rivera for 'parodying” womanhood.' Lesbian Feminist Liberation passed out flyers opposing the ‘female impersonators.’”

According to one report, “Sylvia Rivera Talk at LGMNY (June 2001)” (transcript by Lauren Galarza and Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes) Sylvia, herself, recalling the incident, shared the following:

“I had to fight my way up on that stage and literally, people I called my comrades in the movement literally beat the shit out of me.”

Contrast that to what happened to Jim Fouratt in 2000 - when a large number of people, aware of his proposed comments, attended to portest by silently turning our backs on him during his speech.

And then yesterday, we made it to the stage - no one tried to pull us off. No one was calling us "female impersonators" or "gay men in denial." No one was denying our legitimacy.

We have a duty to future generations, to use whatever means are available to help the arc of history bend toward justice.

We have to educate, advocate, demonstrate, legislate, litigate - we must speak truth to power and pray that power will be used with love.

I'd like to think that somewhere, if there is a heaven, Sylvia is smiling today, as the work toward justice for the trans community continues.

Marriage v. Civil Unions, with a postscript on Trans Rights

2011-06-17T12:29:00.000-04:00

On the issue of marriage v. civil unions – “separate but equal" is still as bad an idea as it was during the period in which the United States permitted racial segregation with that as the basis), I'd like to examine the whole "civil union" as an alternative to "marriage" basis.

The ancient Romans used a term matrimonium to deal with the marriage concept of caring for children (the first part of the word comes from mater - the Latin word for "mother").

They had a separate concept of connubium (a word from which the English term "nuptial" emerges) that dealt with the rules as to who one could marry. In the early Roman Republic, patricians and plebeians could not intermarry - they did not have the right of connubium with each other, regardless of whether there would be children in a relationship.

Opponents of marriage fairness, whether they are in complete opposition, or merely want to create a separate legal status for gays, are possibly confusing matrimonium with connubium.

The right to marry is an issue of connubium - and the civil term "marriage" does not have to rerefer to a combination of matrimonium and connubium. (And with marriage being permitted between opposite-sex octogenarians and infertile (and other) couples who might not have the desire to raise children, the connubium issue - who may marry whom, is paramount.

It could easily be argued that the state is primarily concerned with the connubium aspect of marriage with marriage equality bills.

Even though the matrimonium aspect is one that would more often affect opposite-sex couples because of the fact that babies often (but not always) come as the result of heterosexual sexual encounters, matrimonium also involves caring for and nurturing children – something that studies have shown that gay and lesbian couples can do as well as, if not better than, heterosexual couples.

Matrimonium is the part of the marriage equation that Roman Catholics celebrate as a Sacrament of Holy Matrimony." For Catholics, the *sacramental* aspect is the matrimonium - at the same time, the Church recognized the connubium aspect for those who, in addition to the sacrament, wish to celebrate a Nuptial Mass.

There is nothing in any pending bill for marriage equality, marriage fairness, or the right to marry, that has any negative or deleterious impact, on the matrimonium aspect of marriage. In fact, what marriage equality bills do is enhance matrimonium to benefit children who live in households in which the parents are a same-sex couple.

This will have a particularly great impact on African-American and Latina lesbian couples, who are more likely to be raising children from previous relationships, than any other demographic. (One can argue that opposition to marriage fairness is racist, and onewould be right, in that context).

Religious-based opposition to civil marriage equality is absurd – perhaps a slogan should be made of "Marriage Rights for all, not Marriage Rites for all" with a crucifix for the central T in Rites. Despite rhetoric coming from some circles, there is no requirement that religions that do not accept marriage except between members of an opposite-sex couple, would be forced to perform or sacramentalize same-sex unions.

Still, for those religions that would wish to celebrate marriages for same-sex couples, a sacramental rite for same-sex marriages (or for octogenarians or infertile couples) would not have to include aspects that relate to matrimonium - (I mention marriages for opposite-sex octogenarians way past their child-bearing years in this context - this would avoid the necessity for some of the questions relating to bearing children - I have seen Catholic ceremonies for the elderly in which the question is always asked.) Of course, if the couple does have existing children (whether related by blood or adoption to one or both of the parties), plan to adopt, or have plans for surrogacy or medical procedures ranging from artificial insemination to embryo implantation, a celebration of the matrimonium aspect would be just as welcome as it would be

As I have mentioned, from the *civil* side in the marriage equality bills, we're talking mostly about connubium - the right to marry. The matrimonium comes in only if there are children involved, wheher pre-existing, later adopted, or in the case of pre-menopausal lesbians, even naturally born (though perhaps not "naturally" conceived, though I would not refer to artificial insemination or other fertility treatment as "unnatural.")

Using a different term for the connubium of same-sex couples than that used for the connubium of opposite-sex couples is a bad idea.

Call it marriage. Period. The focus is on the connubium - and that is the *only* change that marriage equality laws make. Matrimonium does not change - if there are or will be children, than the family created by marriage, regardless of the gender of the couple, will benefit the children.

For Roamn Catholic thrologians, one might find support for the idea in an unexpected place – a 1930 Papal encyclical from Pius XI, that, while it does put primacy on matrimonium, does place a lot of value in other aspects of marriage - this encyclical could actually be rewritten with very few changes to incorporate Catholic theological teachings that could be applied to same-sex couples as well.

Casti Connubii is the name of the encyclical.

Here is an excerpt, from Paragraphs 24 and 25:

24. This mutual molding of [~~husband and wife~~] spouses, this determined effort to perfect each other, can in a very real sense, as the Roman Catechism teaches, be said to be the chief reason and purpose of matrimony, provided matrimony be looked at not in the restricted sense as instituted for the proper conception and education of the child, but more widely as the blending of life as a whole and the mutual interchange and sharing thereof.

25. By this same love it is necessary that all the other rights and duties of the marriage state be regulated as [~~the words of the Apostle: "Let the husband render the debt to the wife, and the wife also in like manner to the husband,"~~] not just a 50-50 proposition, but as each spouse giving 100% to the other, to express not only a law of justice but of charity.

NOTE: [~~Bracketed~~] portions to be deleted, Italicized portions are my gender-neutral replacements.

It's *possible* that one day, ancient texts will be rethought - after all, even our Declaration of Independence and other foundational documents are sexist - with the declaration that "all men are created equal" - at a time when married women were considered as "civilly dead" as any convicted felon, since in marriage under the common law, "the two become one and that one is the husband."

Today, we read men in that document as encompassing both men and women. Perhaps the day will come when old documents that relate to sex-specific marriage roles can be recast and reunderstood in a gender-neutral manner.

Many states have made their marriage and domestic relations laws largely gender neutral, even if many have not yet taken the final step of making the connubium also gender-neutral.

New York State is once again on the brink of recognizing the broadening of connubium to make it gender neutral.

Postscript: (Meanwhile in New York, the transgender community languishes, desperately awaiting Senate passage of the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA) – a bill which would serve to “catch up” the trans community on the issues of hate crimes (passed without us in 1999), and on human rights (passed without us in December 2002). GENDA passed in the Assembly this year one day before the Assembly passed the Marriage bill. While the Senate should take GENDA up immediately before marriage, that depends on the Republican leadership of the Senate, as to whether one, both, or neither bill will come up for a vote.

While making marriage laws gender neutral is a positive step for the trans and intersex communities as well as the members of the lesbian, gay and bisexual communities, the failure to enact GENDA will remain an indictment against the members of the legislature, and the governor, for not following through on this vital bill as well.)

When marriage equality comes to New York, and I fervently hope it does, if GENDA is not also passed, my celebration will be somewhat muted. Will the ardent advocates of marriage turn to help pass GENDA? Or will they disappear? And if GENDA does not get a Senate vote - when redistricting come in 2012, it would be my fervent hope that it would result in the election of 35 or 36 Democrats to the Senate - because once that happens, there will be no excuses left.

My June 14, 2011 Letter to Dean Skelos on GENDA

2011-06-15T15:55:00.003-04:00

The New York Transgender Rights Organization
Joann Prinzivalli, State Director

June 14, 2011

The Honorable Dean G. Skelos By FAX to 518-426-6950
Legislative Office Building, Room 909 Page 1 of pages
Albany, NY 12247
United States

Re: The Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA)
S 2873 (Duane, et al.)/A5039 (Gottfried, et al.)

Dear Senator Skelos:

The Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA) (S2873/A5039) just today passed in the Assembly for the fourth time.

I am writing to urge you to put this bill to the floor for a vote. I understand that you can put it through Rules and get it to the floor that way.

I am saddened by listening to some of the Assembly debate – some Republican assemblymembers have an understanding of the meaning of the bill to protect “a man who might one day decide he feels like a woman, and immediately start using the women’s restroom” or might in some way be used to protect sexual predators. I assure you that this bill would not provide any protection for a voyeur or any other male sexual predator who might want to wander into a women’s restroom or locker room.

When I wrote the first draft of the bill in December 2002 in the week after the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act was passed without an amendment to include language specifically protecting transgender people, I made sure I thoroughly researched the evolution of the language used in various local and state ordinances. I am annexing to this letter for your reference the result of that research.

The annexed research also provides a survey of local law enactments in New York State that cover transgender human rights: New York City has had such protections in place since 2002, and more primitive language was adopted in Suffolk County and the City of Rochester since 2001. While Westchester County had the first introduction in 1999, a fully trans-inclusive human rights ordinance was not adopted there until 2009.

The need for GENDA cannot be exaggerated. A recent national study shows that transgender people are seriously disadvantaged in areas of employment, housing, public accommodations, etc. This study, entitled Injustice at Every Turn can be found at:

http://www.thetaskforce.org/reports_and_research/ntds
and the full report iiself can be accessed at the following URL:

http://www.thetaskforce.org/downloads/reports/reports/ntds_full.pdf

I urge you to read this full report – it is an eye opener.

Then there are the economic costs of not passing GENDA. A Massachusetts study can be accessed at the Williams Institute website, www.law.ucla.edu/williamsinstitute. While it does not directly deal with New York, the adverse economic effects on New York State incurred by not passing GENDA are likely to be similar. I am sure that Senator Ball wants to do what he can to reduce costs and increasing revenue to the state without increasing taxes, and passing GENDA is actually one small way of doing that. (As an aside, the economic benefits of passing the marriage equality bill should not be underestimated. Millions of dollars are lost by new York State every year, with lesbian and gay couples opting to get married in Canada, Vermont, Massachusetts or Connecticut –and this actually adversely affects marriage-related businesses in New York State.)

While religious faith should not adversely impact human rights, I am terribly saddened by opposition to GENDA from New York State’s Roman Catholic bishops, and from the Rev. Duane Motley and his organizations, who apparently do not understand that sacred scripture includes Isaiah 56, Matthew 19:12, and Acts 8, all of which relate to transgender people.

However, GENDA would not adversely impact the Catholic Church or other churches, which would not have to ordain transgender people or solemnize marriages in which a transgender individual is a party. Existing human rights law has sufficient exemptions so that the Church can continue to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, and GENDA would not provide any greater coverage for transgender people than is provided to any other protected class.

The nature of transgender people is also misunderstood by many, including people like Rev. Motley. In 1965, a blue ribbon medical commission in New York City determined that transgender people are delusional members of their initially-assigned sex for whom any medical or surgical treatment is merely palliative. This is the kind of thinking that is at the root of much opposition –but it is as outdated as the geocentric cosmological theory or the classification of whales as fish.

Much has been learned in scientific studies between 1995 and the present. The current scientific understanding of transgender people is that we are developmentally different, and do not belong to that initially-assigned sex. There are genetic predispositions that have been found for the embryonic development in which the brain develops along one gendered path, while the genital ducts develop along the other. I am also annexing to this letter a survey of a number of scientific studies that reflect the recent developments in the understanding of transgender people.

I urge you to take the evidence I have provided into consideration and allow this bill top go to a vote – you have an opportunity to stand on the right side of history and favor justice, fairness and equality for all by moving this bill.

Sincerely,

Joann Prinzivalli
State Director’
New York Transgender Rights Organization

JP:ns
Encs
cc: Hon. State Senator Tom Duane
Eric Bottcher (by e-mail)
Christopher Argyros (by email)
Colin Casey (by email)

---

- RESOURCES -

A DISCUSSION OF THE LEGISLATIVE SOURCES FOR
DEFINITIONAL LANGUAGE USED IN
THE GENDER EXPRESSION NON-DISCRIMINATION ACT;
AND
A SURVEY OF LOCAL LAW ENACTMENTS IN NEW YORK STATE
THAT PROTECT TRANSGENDER PEOPLE

By Joann Prinzivalli, State Director, New York Transgender Rights Organization
You ask about the source for the term "Gender Identity and Expression" as used in GENDA (The Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act):
Current bill number S 2873 (Duane, et al.)/A5039 (Gottfried, et al.)

The proposed definitional language for "gender identity and expression" is found in Section 3 of the bill, which reads as follows:

S 3.

Section 292 of the executive law is amended by adding a new subdivision 34 to read as follows:
34. THE TERM "GENDER IDENTITY OR EXPRESSION" MEANS HAVING OR BEING PERCEIVED AS HAVING A GENDER IDENTITY, SELF-IMAGE, APPEARANCE, BEHAVIOR OR EXPRESSION WHETHER OR NOT THAT GENDER IDENTITY, SELF-IMAGE, APPEAR ANCE, BEHAVIOR OR EXPRESSION IS DIFFERENT FROM THAT TRADITIONALLY ASSO CIATED WITH THE SEX ASSIGNED TO THAT PERSON AT BIRTH.

When I wrote the first draft of the GENDA bill in December 2002, I was cognizant of the language then proposed for a similar amendment to the New York City Human Rights Law, (Local Law 3 of 2002, passed as Intro 24 in April 2002), and I was aware of the history of the adoption of housing, employment and human rights laws that cover transgender and gender-different people since 1995. An excellent resource for this is "Transgender Equality," published by the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) available online at

http://www.nclrights.org/site/DocServer/transeq.pdf?docID=1302

(I must disclose that I am cited in footnote 74 in this resource.)

While working on the first GENDA draft in December 2002, I took the history of the development of human rights law language over the years very seriously. The fact that half the population of the state was already covered by a well-drafted and inclusive ordinance, made it fairly easy for me to choose the language adopted by new York City earlier that year.

In the 1980's, New York City changed its human rights law - the word "sex" was replaced by the word "gender." it is believed that this change may have been an early attempt to broaden the protected class, but all it did was make the definitions seem more vague. See, e.g., Maffei v. Kolaeton Industry, Inc. 164 Misc. 2d 547; 626 N.Y.S.2d 391 (Sup. Ct. N.Y. 1995), which broadly interpreted the change.

The language of the New York City Human Rights Law definition of gender as adopted in 2002, now includes "gender identity and expression:

23. The term “gender” shall include actual or perceived sex and shall also include a person’s gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior or expression, whether or not that gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior or expression is different from that traditionally associated with the legal sex assigned to that person at birth.

The New York City language was adapted from a statutory formula first adopted at the state level by the State of Rhode Island in 2001.

2001 - H 5920 Substitute A, amending Chapter 34-37 of the Rhode Island General Laws

34-37-2.3. Right to equal housing opportunities -- Gender identity or expression. -- Whenever in this chapter there shall appear the words "sexual orientation" there shall be inserted immediately thereafter the words "gender identity or expression."

34-37-3. Definitions -- When used in this chapter:
. . .
(17) The term "gender identity or expression" includes a person's actual or perceived gender, as well as a person's gender identity, gender-related self image, gender-related appearance, or gender-related expression; whether or not that gender identity, gender-related self image, gender-related appearance, or gender-related expression is different from that traditionally associated with the person's sex at birth.

Prior to the use of the formulation in Rhode Island, legislation to protect the human rights of transgender and gender-different people used various formulas. It was not until the 1990's that the term "transgender" began to be used to describe transsexual and other gender-different people. The earliest ordinance from 1975 was enacted in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and amended that City's human rights law definition of "affectional preference" (what we would today call "sexual orientation"), to include "having or projecting a self-image not associated with one’s biological maleness or one’s biological femaleness."

In 1986, Seattle used the terms "transsexuality and transvestism." In 1999, based on a recommendation from the City of Seattle Commission on Sexual Minorities recommended an amendment to make the law "more accurate, inclusive, and more easily administered."

The language adopted in Seattle may be the first use of language that was adopted at a statewide level in Rhode Island. The Seattle language defined: " ‘gender identity’ means having an identity, expression, or physical characteristics not traditionally associated with one’s biological sex or one’s sex at birth, including transsexual, transvestite and transgendered, and including a person’s attitudes, preferences, beliefs and practices pertaining thereto."

One can see that this Seattle language can be related back to that first Minneapolis enactment, which was the source of the use of the term "self-image" in current definitional formulae.

While there are other inclusive formulas out there, since the adoption of language similar to the Seattle or Rhode Island Language in New York City in 2002, all county and local ordinances adopted in New York State have followed the New York City formulation with slight variations.

The quickly put together but nearly comprehensive survey of the human rights ordinances adopted (and proposed) in counties and municipalities in New York State that follows, indicates that the definitional formula used in the New York City human rights law has held up in later statutory enactments. In the two or three cases that predate the New York City amended ordinance, different language was used. Items are presented in reverse chronological order:

(Possible) Pending legislation NOTE: (This may have been re-introduced for 2011):
Albany CountyLocal Law K of 2009
Introduced 11/9/2009
Section 3.11.
11. The term “gender” shall include actual or perceived sex and shall include a person's gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior or expression, whether or not that gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior or expression is different from that traditionally associated with the legal sex assigned to that person at birth.
(Note: My last information on this bill is that it was on the agenda of the Albany County Audit and Finance Committee for March 27, 2010

Laws already adopted:

Westchester County –
April 13, 2009, Human Rights Law amended by unanimous bipartisan vote 16-0;
April 2008 Fair Housing Law enacted

The Westchester County Human Rights Law as amended by Local Law 4 of 2009 on April 13, 2009, and the Westchester County Fair Housing Law adopted in 2008 (Local Law 4 of 2008), also use the identical definition, which in Westchester County is one of the sub-definitions of "gender" which is also defined as "the physiological or psychological characteristics

From the Westchester County Fair Housing Law (Local Law 4 of 2008)

L.L. No. 4-2008

Section 700.20 Definitions
. . .
G. Gender shall mean:
1. The physiological and psychological characteristics of being a male or female; and
2. Gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior, or expression, whether or not such gender identity, self image, appearance, behavior or expression is different from that traditionally associated with the legal sex assigned to that person at birth.

The language from the Westchester human rights law:

700.02 Definitions.
. . .
9. Gender means:

a. The physiological and psychological characteristics of being a male or female; and

b. gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior, or expression, whether or not such gender identity, self image, appearance, behavior or expression is different from that traditionally associated with the legal sex assigned to that person at birth.

2008
City of Binghamton Human Rights Law (Local Law 008-001 (adopted 12/15/2008),
Section 45-3(5):

45-3
. . .

5. "Gender Identity or expression" shall mean having a gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior or expression whether or not that gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior or expression is different from that traditionally associated with the sex assigned to that person at birth.

2006
Town of Rhinebeck (policy)
Employment Non-Discrimination policy adopted by Town Board of the Town of Rhinebeck, Decemebr 11, 2006, resolution increasing classifications covered under Rhinebeck’s non-discrimination policy to include “gender-identity or expression” and“ sexual orientation”
§902 of the Employee Handbook was amended to include:

d. The term “Gender Identity or Expression” shall mean having or being perceived as having a gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior or expression, whether or not that gender identity, self image, appearance, behavior or expression is different from that traditionally associated with the sex associated with that person at birth.”

duly passed by 5-0 vote of the Town Board at a regular meeting held on December 11, 2006.

2004
Tompkins County
Tompkins County, Chapter 92, Anti-Discrimination Local Law No. 6-1991, as amended by Local Law No. 1-2004 Chapter 92 of the Laws of Tompkins County § 92-3 - vote of 11 to 4

§ 92-3

GENDER IDENTITY AND EXPRESSION
A person's actual or perceived gender identity, gender-related self-image, gender-related appearance, gender-related behavioral or physical characteristics, or gender-related expression, whether or not that gender identity, gender-related self-image, gender-related appearance, gender-related behavioral or physical characteristics, or gender-related expression is different from that traditionally associated with the person's sex assigned at birth. This shall include but not be limited to:
A. Transsexuals in all stages of transition, including preoperative, postoperative and persons living in a gender other than their birth sex;
B. Persons (including cross-dressers) whose gender expression occasionally differs from their birth sex; and
C. Intersexed persons born with anatomy or physiology that includes medical characteristics of both male and female whose sex was assigned at birth and who sometimes manifest physical characteristics, expressions or identity that differs from the sex assigned.

2003
City of Ithaca
Adopted July 9, 2003

§ 215-2. Definitions
When used in this article:
. . .
11. The term “gender” shall include actual or perceived sex and shall also include a
person’s gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior, or expression, whether or
not that gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior or expression is different
from that traditionally associated with the legal sex assigned to that person at birth.

2002 (for Anti-Discrimination Law, and 2006 for Fair Housing)
City of Buffalo
Part II Chapter 154 of the City Code of the City of Buffalo

Article III Antidiscrimination Law
[Adopted 9-21-1999, effective 10-4-1999; amended in its entirety 9-17-2002, effective 9-30-2002]

§ 154-9. Definitions
. . .
GENDER IDENTITY AND EXPRESSION
Includes a person's actual or perceived gender, as well as a person's gender identity, self-image, appearance, expression or behavior, whether or not that gender identity, self-image, appearance, expression or behavior is different from that traditionally associated with the person's sex at birth.

Article IV Fair Housing Law
[Adopted 5-2-2006, effective 5-17-2006]

§ 154-13 Definitions
. . .
GENDER IDENTITY AND EXPRESSION
Include a person's actual or perceived gender, as well as a person's gender identity, self-image, appearance, expression or behavior, whether or not that gender identity, self-image, appearance, expression or behavior is different from that traditionally associated with the person's sex at birth.

New York City
Intro 24 of 2002, passed in April 2002, amended subsection 23 of the Definitions section of the New York City Human Rights Law, and was the first use in New York State of "gender identity and expression” and the definition used was similar to that first used in the State of Rhode Island in 2001:

§ 8-102 Definitions. When used in this chapter:
23. The term “gender” shall include actual or perceived sex and shall also include a person’s gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior or expression, whether or not that gender identity, self-image, appearance, behavior or expression is different from that traditionally associated with the legal sex assigned to that person at birth.

Earlier enactments:

2001
Suffolk County
§ 89-13 of Suffolk County's Local Law No. 14-2001

RESOLUTION NO. 802 - 2001, ADOPTING LOCAL LAW NO. 14 - 2001, A LOCAL LAW TO STRENGTHEN AND IMPLEMENT APPLICATION OF COUNTY HUMAN RIGHTS LAW TO PUBLIC ACCOMMODATIONS, EMPLOYMENT AND HOUSING

Section 2. Definitions.
G.) The term “gender” shall mean both the biological and social characteristics of being female or male.

Adopted August 18, 2001; Approved by Suffolk County Executibve Robert J. Gaffney September 20, 2001(after a public hearing Sept. 10, 2001); Filed with the Secretary of State on October 5, 2001 (Effective Date)

City of Rochester
General Ordinances of the City of Rochester
§ 63-2 Definitions
Adopted May 15, 2001 by Ordinance No. 2001-131

GENDER
Includes the biological and/or social characteristics of gender and gender identity.

1999
Westchester County
Human Rights law proposed that defined gender as “the biological or social characteristics of being female or male.” At the time of enactment, the definition (later amended in 2009 to clarify the definition) defined gender as “the biological characteristics of being male or female.” The statute also had a provision that included protection on the basis of “actual or perceived” membership in a protected class. On this basis, I wrote an article published in the LOFT Community News in 2000, in which I advocated that the term “biological” should be construed as meaning “physiological or psychological” and this interpretation was used by the Westchester County Human Rights Commission in accepting jurisdiction of human rights complaints from transgender people.

NOTES ON THE SCIENCE:

Here is what some of the science tells me:

In 1995, in a peer-reviewed article in Nature, entitled A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality [Nature 378, 68 - 70 (02 November 1995); doi:10.1038/378068a0] the researchers involved gave us a first glimmer into transsexual brain structures.

This was confirmed in a follow-up study in 2000, entitled Male-to-Female Transsexuals Have Female Neuron Numbers in a Limbic Nucleus, published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism Vol. 85, No. 5 2034-2041

..

In 2008, two separate studies from Australia established separate genetic predispositions for different kinds of transgender development.

In one study, the predisposition for those who develop with female-identified brains and male genital tracts was shown to involve a long androgen receptor gene:

Lauren Hare, Pascal Bernard, Francisco J. Sanchez, Paul N. Baird, Eric Vilain, Trudy Kennedy and Vincent R. Harley. Androgen Receptor (AR) Repeat Length Polymorphism Associated with Male-to-female Transsexualism. Biological Psychiatry, Advance online publication date 27 Oct 2008, Jan 2009 print edition

The other study,aimed at those who develop with male-identified brains and female genital tract development, was entitled A Polymorphism of the CYP17 Gene Related to Sex Steroid Metabolism is Associated With Female-to-Male But Not Male-to-Female Transsexualism by Bentz, Eva-Katrin; Hefler, Lukas A.; Kaufmann, Ulrike; Huber, Johannes C.; Kolbus, Andrea; Tempfer, Clemens B., published in Obstetrical & Gynecological Survey: December 2008 - Volume 63 - Issue 12 - pp 775-777
doi: 10.1097/01.ogx.0000338093.21452.0b

These studies, and the brain structure studies from 1995 and 2000, provide clues to the ontological developments that result in transgender people. While there is much additional study required, these studies make it possible to discredit the earlier understandings of transgender people that date back to 1965, in which transgender people were seen as merely delusional members of their initially-assigned sex, for whom any treatment is seen as merely palliative.

- excerpted from my blog essay at:
http://trans-cendence.blogspot.com/2011/04/e-pur-si-muove-response-to-keith.html

A further list of scientific resources (which includes references to two of the above studies (in italics) (courtesy of Zoe Brain):

Male-to-female transsexuals show sex-atypical hypothalamus activation when smelling odorous steroids. by Berglund et al Cerebral Cortex 2008 18(8):1900-1908;

Male–to–female transsexuals have female neuron numbers in a limbic nucleus. Kruiver et al J Clin Endocrinol Metab (2000) 85:2034–2041

Sexual differentiation of the human brain: relevance for gender identity, transsexualism and sexual orientation. Swaab Gynecol Endocrinol (2004) 19:301–312.

A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality. by Zhou et al Nature (1995) 378:68–70.

A sex difference in the hypothalamic uncinate nucleus: relationship to gender identity. by Garcia-Falgueras et al Brain. 2008 Dec;131(Pt 12):3132-46.

White matter microstructure in female to male transsexuals before cross-sex hormonal treatment. A diffusion tensor imaging study. - Rametti et al, J Psychiatr Res. 2010 Jun 8.

Sexual Hormones and the Brain: An Essential Alliance for Sexual Identity and Sexual Orientation Garcia-Falgueras A, Swaab DF Endocr Dev. 2010;17:22-35

Male Gender Identity in Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome by T'sjoen et al. Arch Sex Behav. 2010 Apr 1.

Biological and Psychosocial Correlates of Adult Gender?Variant Identities: a Review by J.F.Veale & D.E.Clarke, Personality and Individual Differences (2009) 48(4), 357-366

Sexual differentiation of the human brain in relation to gender identity and sexual orientation D.Swaab & A.Garcia-Fulgaras Functional Neurology, Jan-Mar 2009:

Neuroimaging Differences in Spatial Cognition between Men and Male-to-Female Transsexuals Before and During Hormone Therapy by Scoening et al J Sex Med. 2009 Sep 14.

Regional gray matter variation in male-to-female transsexualism. by Luders et al Neuroimage. 2009 Jul 15;46(4):904-7.

Clinical Implications of the Organizational and Activational Effects of Hormones M.Diamond Hormones and Behavior 55 (2009) 621–632

Dichotic Listening, Handedness, Brain Organization and Transsexuality Govier et al International Journal of Transgenderism, 12:144–154, 2010

Specific Cerebral Activation due to Visual Erotic Stimuli in Male-to-Female Transsexuals Compared with Male and Female Controls: An fMRI Study by Gizewski et al J Sex Med 2009;6:440–448.

Responding to Archbishop Dolan on Marriage

2011-06-15T15:48:00.003-04:00

With all the hoopla about marriage equality finally getting close to a vote in the New York State Senate, New York Roman Catholic Archbishop Timothy Dolan writes (or rather, lies) in his blog about “The True Meaning of Marriage” as a last-ditch effort to try to stop the law from being enacted – and as has been typical and usual with Roman Catholic hierarchs in the United States, he advocates for moral injustice, using lies and misrepresentations as his methodology.
http://blog.archny.org/?p=1247

He commences his diatribe with:

“The stampede is on. Our elected senators who have stood courageous in their refusal to capitulate on the state’s presumption to redefine marriage are reporting unrelenting pressure to cave-in.”

Hmmm. “Redefine Marriage” is a stock phrase used by the opponents of the New York marriage bill. The impression is that marriage has lasted for thousands of years without change, and now some people want to “redefine” it so that men and women can’t marry each other.

The fact is that passing the marriage bill will not change a single thing about opposite-sex marriages and the families of people in opposite-sex marriages. Their marriages will not be redefined.

Not only that, but civil marriage gets “redefined” all the time. In ancient Rome, there were several different forms of marriage, and marriage has historically included various forms of polygamy, including both polygyny and (sometimes) polyandry. The Bible indicates that polygyny was one of the earlier forms of marriage – one husband with more than one wife. Indeed, even same-sex marriage was allowed, in some cases. In 1 Samuel 18:3 we see King Saul’s son Jonathan marrying the future King David, and then later in the chapter we see David also marryins Saul’s daughter Michal, thus becoming Saul’s “son-in-law a second time.” (See Darby or ASV, not the Vulgate or translations based on the Vulgate, because Jerome intentionally fudged the applicable verse). In Rome, the Emperor Nero, after killing his pregnant wife Poppaea, later married Sporus, a young man who resembled his dead wife.

In the early Christian Church, as Boswell points out, same-sex unions were actually blessed by Christians. (Indeed, in Christ Jesus, according to Paul, we are “neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female.”)

Also, according to Paul, marriage for Christians has nothing to do with procreation, but is for the sole purpose of allowing those with a strong libido an opportunity to have licit sex. See 1 Cor. 7:8-9.

But let’s look at the law as it evolved in New York – not an unchanging tradition spanning thousands of years – but a matter of civil law that has evolved over time.

After the English took over from the Dutch, New York was subject to the English common law, which developed over centuries. Marriage under the common law created a single legal person – “the two shall become one” – and then, as Blackstone (or Lord Coke) notes in a corollary, the married woman essentially suffers from a disability that is the equivalent of civil death for a prison inmate – “and that one is the husband.”

This was the barbaric traditional form of marriage for enough hundreds of years to be part of the common law that was the common law of New York State as well.

In 1836, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Ernestine Rose started petitioning for a “Married Women’s Property Act” that would allow married women the right to inheritances – until then, being that “the two are one, and that one is the husband,” the husband had control of inheritances – and would often enough spend it on liquor in taverns while leaving his wife and children destitute.

The religious leaders of the day, like Archbishop Dolan, were appalled – to change the civil law relating to marriage would destroy the institution! And the state senate took 12 years, until 1848, to actually pass the law – and then only because some senators realized that the inheritances that should go to their daughters and grandchildren were likely to end up in a tavernkeeper’s hands if they did not pass the bill.

It took another twelve years to push a bill through the legislature in 1860 “redefining marriage” again, to allow working women the right to their own wages – until then, husbands had control over those as well, and they were just as likely to spend their wife’s wages on strong drink as they were to spend their inheritances.

So many other changes have been made in the years since 1848 and 1860 – “redefining” marriage again and again . . .and again.

So, what’s all the ruckus from Archbishop Dolan about this particular proposed change?

The answer is a combination of moral error and conflict in the Church’s catechism that leads to a nearly schizophrenic response whenever the idea of “gay” is broached.

Archbishop Dolan continues:

“The media, mainly sympathetic to this rush to tamper with a definition as old as human reason and ordered good, reports annoyance on the part of some senators that those in defense of traditional marriage just don’t see the light, as we persist in opposing this enlightened, progressive, cause.”

Tamper? No. The arc of history bends toward justice, and the proposed amendment to make marriage laws gender-neutral is just, fair, and right. Tamperis a loaded word – improve would be better and more accurate.

As we have already noted, the “definition as old as human reason” is a fiction invented by Archbishop Dolan to cover his apparent ignorance of the fact that the definition of marriage has been amended many times in the past couple hundred years, and has changed over time as humanity has become more civilized.

Those “in defense of traditional marriage” should be honored to vote for the marriage bill – it makes no changes whatsoever to traditional marriage. All it does is expand the definition to include marriages that are gender neutral as well as those between opposite-sex individuals.

Dolan continues:

“But, really, shouldn’t we be more upset – and worried – about this perilous presumption of the state to re-invent the very definition of an undeniable truth – one man, one woman, united in lifelong love and fidelity, hoping for children – that has served as the very cornerstone of civilization and culture from the start?”

The archbishop apparently has little knowledge or understanding of civil law – and even of the law of his own Church. My own Roman Catholic marriage was ended by civil divorce more than 10 years ago (I didn’t start the proceedings), and then annulled by a Church tribunal of his diocese (though I admit it precedes his elevation to the archbishopric in New York). Is Dolan even aware that New York “tampered” with the whole “lifelong” thing a long time ago? That the grounds for civil divorce have changed many times, most recently when New York began allowing “no-fault” divorce? Isn’t he aware that his own Church’s Canon Law has changed many times with regard to marriage and annulment – with the most recent annulment rules being so liberalized that one prominent canon lawyer was quoted as stating that there was not a Catholic marriage in America that could not be annulled under the current rules?

Does the archbishop realize that procreation is not the sole reason for marriage – sure, the Roman idea of “matrimonium” involves procreation, but “connubium” does not. Perhaps he should brush up on his Latin.

Then the Archbishop gets cutesy:

“Last time I consulted an atlas, it is clear we are living in New York, in the United States of America – not in China or North Korea. In those countries, government presumes daily to “redefine” rights, relationships, values, and natural law. There, communiqués from the government can dictate the size of families, who lives and who dies, and what the very definition of “family” and “marriage” means.”

“But, please, not here! Our country’s founding principles speak of rights given by God, not invented by government, and certain noble values – life, home, family, marriage, children, faith – that are protected, not re-defined, by a state presuming omnipotence.”

Um – with his geographical references, Archbishop Dolan seems to imply that changing the law is something that only happens under “godless communism.”

But the Archbishop is just being silly here and making false analogies.

Indeed, he is so wrong that it would actually be funny if he weren’t attempting to be so serious.

In the United States, we have representative government, legislative bodies that are charged with making and amending laws and administrative bodies making and interpreting regulations, and courts watching over it all – on the federal, state and local levels. For most purposes, marriage is viewed as being among the laws that is defined at the state level, except to the extent that the state presumes to violate an individual federal constitutional right.

To that end, the United States Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia is most instructive, and the Archbishop should consider reading it one of these days.

And then you notice, he sneaks in something in the list of things godless Communists like to redefine – “natural law.” I can’t help but laugh at his ineptitude. It is the Catholic Church whose ideas and concepts of “natural law” have nothing at all to do with nature, and everything to do with Aristotle’s interpretation of nature. We’re lucky that the Church got as far as Aristotle – but Dolan is as wrong here as some of his predecessors in the hierarchy were when they condemned Galileo.

Let’s move on just a little. We know that in the United States, rights, relationships, laws, regulations, etc. are constantly being changed, interpreted and reinterpreted, by legislative and administrative bodies and courts. Yes, there are constitutional limits, but in many ways, the laws and regulations change as the society changes. This is how democratically elected republican government works, unlike the way the Vatican works, which is strictly top-down, and woe to the priest of bishop who steps out of line - so, which is more like North Korea – the Roman Catholic Church, or the New York State legislature?

Continuing with his misstatements, the Archbishop writes: “Please, not here! We cherish true freedom, not as the license to do whatever we want, but the liberty to do what we ought; we acknowledge that not every desire, urge, want, or chic cause is automatically a “right.” And, what about other rights, like that of a child to be raised in a family with a mom and a dad?”

I understand the difference between freedom and licentious behavior, having spent some time in a Roman Catholic seminary in my pre-transition youth. However, Archbishop Dolan is misusing the concept here. He might make sense if he was describing sexual promiscuity as licentious behavior – but even that, if engaged among consenting adults is legally permitted, regardless of whether it is moral liberty or licentiousness. Lawrence v. Texas clarified the unconstitutionality of laws prohibiting adult consensual sexual behavior other than heterosexual penile-vaginal intercourse. These laws were generally enforced only against gay people, even though a great deal of heterosexual sexual activity, within and outside of marriage, involves activity other than penile-vaginal intercourse. Morality is an individual matter, while legality is based on constitutional grounds. Like Hebrew National hot dogs, we answer to the higher authority – of the Constitution, and not on the laws of a Church imposed on the basis of arbitrary and capricious interpretations of ancient religious writings.

Incredibly, Dolan continues:

“Our beliefs should not be viewed as discrimination against homosexual people.”

That is a bald-faced lie, told with a straight face. Discrimination against the LGBT community is found in nearly everything the Roman Catholic hierarchy writes about marriage, or about transgender human rights. It is as if we are all less than human in the eyes of the Church hierarchy.

Dolan continues:

“The Church affirms the basic human rights of gay men and women, and the state has rightly changed many laws to offer these men and women hospital visitation rights, bereavement leave, death benefits, insurance benefits, and the like. This is not about denying rights.”

It is *all* about denying rights, Archbishop. And denying it is futile.

He continues:

“It is about upholding a truth about the human condition. Marriage is not simply a mechanism for delivering benefits: It is the union of a man and a woman in a loving, permanent, life-giving union to pro-create children. Please don’t vote to change that. If you do, you are claiming the power to change what is not into what is, simply because you say so. This is false, it is wrong, and it defies logic and common sense.”

Marriage as the union of a man and a woman will not change, by the amendment of the law- it will also mean the union of a man and a man, and a woman with a woman, and of a transgender or intersex person with a man, woman or other transgender or intersex person. The Church will still allow infertile octogenarians to marry despite the lack of any possibility of creating children. The church will bless the marriage of a man to a woman who has had a complete hysterectomy.

For that matter, the Church will not be forced to marry any non-Catholics, or even Catholics who want a same-sex wedding. The right to discriminate on that level will be preserved – just as a church that would not sanctify an interracial marriage can licitly deny the right to such a wedding in its sanctuary.

Dolan begins his conclusion:

“Yes, I admit, I come at this as a believer, who, along with other citizens of a diversity of creeds believe that God, not Albany, has settled the definition of marriage a long time ago.”

Again, Dolan does not seem to understand that there is a huge difference between civil marriage and the Roman Catholic sacrament of Holy Matrimony. To the extent that Dolan is referring to Holy Matrimony as a sacrament – “an outward sign, instituted by God, to give grace” – he is on solid Catholic theological ground, right from the Baltimore Catechism – but once he presumes to step into the legislative process for civil marriage, his particular religious prejudices should hold no sway.

He wraps up with:

“We believers worry not only about what this new intrusion will do to our common good, but also that we will be coerced to violate our deepest beliefs to accommodate the newest state decree. (If you think this paranoia, just ask believers in Canada and England what’s going on there to justify our apprehensions.) But I also come at this as an American citizen, who reads our formative principles as limiting government, not unleashing it to tamper with life’s most basic values.”

Canada and England do not have the constitutional protection of not having established churches, and do not have a constitutional guarantee of freedom of religious expression. So yes, Archbishop, it’s paranoia – you’re not a “state religion” like the Church of England, and the U.S. has a strong aversion to establishing a religion, and a strong constitutional provision in favor of “free exercise” of religion.

If by “violating our deepest beliefs” he means that providing spousal benefits to married gay employees is somehow wrong, then he’s likely to have his deepest beliefs violated, just as the courts will require a blood transfusion for a Jehovah Witness’ baby over the objections of parents, or a court would convict someone who decides that their “deepest” religious beliefs require them to kill Wiccans, or stone gays to death, or otherwise not respect the rights of others.

This is where we should have a discussion about the difference between “freedom” and “license” – your freedom to exercise a Catholic faith does not give you the license to prevent women from exercising their constitutionally guaranteed reproductive rights. Your freedom to be Catholic does not give you the license to disrespect my Unitarian marriage, or to treat my marriage in any way under the law as different from any other marriage. Just because the Catholic Church teaches that transsexual people cannot marry anyone, male, female, or other, does not give the Church the right to deny me any civil benefit, even though the Church does not have to provide me with a sacrament.

Dolan violates my deepest beliefs with every word he has written in this blog essay – but that does not give me the right to censor him – he has the right of free speech even if he is lying, as long as he’s not committing defamation. His calumnious column is evidence of his deep official and possibly personal bigotry – I had hoped that he would at least try to keep himself to Church business rather than meddling – but they haven’t given him his cardinal’s hat yet, so he must feel that he has to cater to the irrational ravings from the Vatican on the subject. Would that he were brave enough to stand up and speak truth to power and risk his position. But he’s typical of the corporate middle-management about to break into the upper echelon – don’t rock the boat.

There is no intrusion, just a fairer, more decent law that will provide legal protection to families in need. Poor black and latina lesbians with children,( often children from prior relationships in which they tried to maintain a straight marriage against their natures because of societal expectations) are likely to have the biggest benefit from the broadening of the marriage law. They and their children will benefit.

Society will benefit from the New York legislature’s enactment of marriage equality – and I sincerely hope the legislature does do the right thing, despite pressure from Dolan and the other foes of freedom.
-

E pur si muove: A response to Keith Fournier’s lies and disinformation

2011-04-04T23:34:00.011-04:00

Deacon Keith Fournier recently wrote an ignorant, inflammatory and inaccurate piece on transgender activism which was published at Catholic Online, entitled Exchanging the Truth of God for a Lie: Transgender Activists, Cultural Revolution

Fournier’s article is evidence of the continued resistance of the tradition-encrusted Roman Catholic Church’s to advances in scientific understanding that caused that Church to bring Galileo to trial for heresy, to condemn the more advanced (though still rather simple, cosmologically, as the Sun itself is not now understood to be the center of the universe, and is only a rather minor star in a peripheral spiral arm of a galaxy of over 200 million stars in a Universe that is staggeringly huge) scientific understanding of heliocentricity as being “false and contrary to Holy Scripture" because Galileo dared challenge the prevailing Church-accepted Ptolomaic geocentric theory of the solar system’s workings.

The Cardinals who condemned Galileo in their profound 17th century ignorance of the advances in cosmological science, pronounced in their decision that heliocentrism is “absurd and false philosophically and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture” and that “The proposition that the earth is not the center of the universe and immovable, but that it moves (around the sun) and also with a rotational motion, is equally absurd, philosophically false and theologically erroneous.”

After a study of the Galileo trial that was commenced in 1979, on Halloween in 1992 Pope John Paul II finally issued an explanation, lifting the edict of Inquisition against Galileo, 359 years after the fact. While not actually apologizing, the pope said that

"Galileo sensed in his scientific research the presence of the Creator who, stirring in the depths of his spirit, stimulated him, anticipating and assisting his intuitions."

Pope John Paul II pointed out at that time that the province of the Church is theology, and not science or astronomy. The pope indicated that the lack of modern scientific knowledge among the Cardinals on the tribunal,

"led them unduly to transpose into the realm of the doctrine of the faith, a question which in fact pertained to scientific investigation.”

And yet, Deacon Fournier, like many in that Church’s Magisterium, seems to have learned nothing at all from the serious error of those who put science on trial, and decided incorrectly.

Deacon Fournier is today in the same position of those 17th century Inquisition cardinals. He confuses his erroneous theological interpretation with Truth, he misstates and misinterprets the science and he ignores the evidence that explains the physiology of transgender people, the evidence for genetic predispositions and ontological development of brain structures along one sexed blueprint, while genital duct systems follow the other blueprint.

Instead, he starts with accusations that transgender people are the product of moral corruption, ignoring the moral corruption and mean-spirited attitudes that infest his church’s Magisterium. He misinterprets Romans 1 as a condemnation of homosexuality, rather than understanding that it is a condemnation of people who engage in sexual practices against their God-given natures while intoxicated during Bacchanalian religious rites. But why is Fournier beginning with a misdirected attack on homosexuality when the intended victims of his bullying are transgender people?

Does he not know the difference between sexual orientation and sex assignment, or with gender identity?

When Fournier erroneously declares that there are biblical references that must be ripped out of the Bible by those who maintain that “there is no reference to the rejection of homosexual practices in the Bible” - he is the one who has apparently ignored 1 Samuel 18, 2 Samuel 1 and many references in between, that relate to the marriage of David and Jonathan. In addition, he would have to rip out the often is interpreted story of the Men of Sodom – because a proper reading of that passage actually condemns Fournier’s own position, which, while wholly wrong, are consistent with the interpretive writings of Benedict XVI about things that “everyone knows” about Sodom, when he was merely Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and the head of the successor to the Inquisition, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

But Fournier iss supposedly condemning transgender people – so lets start with Isaiah 56, Matthew 19:12 and Acts 8 - all of which don’t seem to appear in Deacon Keith’s Bible – or he would understand that even Jesus knew about transgender and intersex people, and that we are special to God. Or he might ponder about the relationship between Genesis 1:27 and the secret name of God derived from reading the Tetragrammaton backward in Hebrew – which translates out as “He/She.” (This analysis is courtesy of Rabbi Mark Sameth of Pleasantville, who knows more about Jewish scripture than Deacon Fournier and any college of Cardinals combined.)

Fournier cites to the Reuters story about the lawsuits challenging New York’s birth certificate regulations. As I am the plaintiff in the first of these cases, I would suggest that he would do much better to refer to the actual legal documents and to the scientific materials that provide the basis for some of the challenge, rather than engaging in fanciful flights of illogic.

After quoting from the Reuters article, including a quote from me, he still does not have a clue, despite the words pointing him in the right direction for inquiry.
The next thing, Deacon Fournier starts some gibberish about the Australian Human Rights Commission recognizing “23 genders.” The ignorant article he first refers to cites to the Australian document – which does not identify 23 genders at all, but rather 23 terms for various gender identities on the spectrum of transgender identity that is in the gray area at the edge of the artificial binary that Western society imposes on the physiological sexual diversity in the nature of human beings. Those who accept the binary of sex as some strict “male and female” construct will shrug off those who don’t quite fit into their arbitrary definitions as abnormal, as “freakazoids,” or as delusional.

For Deacon Fournier’s edification, my best guess as to what “neutroi” might mean, is perhaps a weakly bigender identity that is the gender identity equivalent of asexuality. But that is not itself a “gender” if by gender Fournier means “sex assignment.”

Fournier is confused by all this, and he is in turn confusing apples with oranges – it is as if he is saying that some school board is no longer dealing with students as “boys” and “girls” but as” jocks, brainiacs, nerds, geeks, cheerleaders, skaters, outcasts, preppies, artsies, druggies, goths, gangstas, punks, rednecks, queers, etc.”

Interestingly, the Australian commission looks with favor on the language being considered by “the United States Senate” called “for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2009” which defines gender identity as:

‘the gender-related identity, appearance, or mannerisms or other gender-related characteristics of an individual, with or without regard to the individual’s designated sex at birth’.

The wording of the federal Bill has a number of advantages over the narrower Australian definitions that only protect people who identify as a member of the ‘opposite’ or ‘other’ sex.

I could go through a detailed history of how the American definition grew and evolved between 1979 and the present day – but I will leave that to another essay.
Of course, Fournier is too busy making things up about “23 genders” to actually find anything useful to discuss, at least until he gets really deep into his article.
Fournier attacks hormonal and surgical treatments that are used to help those transgender people who feel the sociocultural pressure to conform those parts of our bodies that can be brought into greater conformity with the artificial binary expectation of society.

Perhaps in a society that respected the diversity of natural sex as was common among many world cultures in ancient times and even more recently, before those cultures were exposed to western binary prejudices, there would be a cultural niche appropriate for those who are different. However, we live in a society that recognizes two sexes, so the accepted medical practice is to try to help transgenderr people conform more closely to the physiological norm for those whose brain development is similar to our own.

Certainly, the late iranian Shi’ite Ayatollah Khomenei actually understood more about transgender people than the Catholic Church – even though the mullahs who have followed him have twisted his fatwa on the subject to give gay people they plan to execute by stoning, an alternative, to subject themselves to transsexual surgeries rather than a painful death.

Fournier writes, without a clue as to the real science:

“Medical science confirms that our identity as male or female affects even our brains. In addition, even the physical appearance must be sustained by massive doses of synthetic hormones.”

In the first sentence, he gets a glimmer of the truth – yes, there are sexed differences in brains – but he ignores the science – that transgender people have sex-differentiated brain structures in the hypothalamus that conform to those of the other genital sex.

In 1995, in a peer-reviewed article in Nature, entitled A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality [Nature 378, 68 - 70 (02 November 1995); doi:10.1038/378068a0] the researchers involved gave us a first glimmer into transsexual brain structures.

This was confirmed in a follow-up study in 2000, entitled Male-to-Female Transsexuals Have Female Neuron Numbers in a Limbic Nucleus, published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism Vol. 85, No. 5 2034-2041

But Deacon Fournier, as little as he understands the theology of transgender people (or gay people, for that matter) fails even more spectacularly to understand medical science. The first thing is that not all hormone therapy is by way of “synthetic” hormones. (He apparently does not know how premarin is manufactured, for example). Then he does not undertsand that synthetic hormonal therapies are used for a number of medical treatments – for example, one of the diabetes drugs that keep me alive every day is called Byetta, and it is a synthetic hormone derived from Gila monster saliva, which works as a mimetic for hormones secreted by the first two feet of the small intestine at the beginning of the digestive process and which stimulate the pancreas to produce insulin.

In rejecting surgeery for those transgender people who need it and can have it, he should also reject other life-saving surgery - perhaps he should forgo a needed triple bypass, because the intervention of a surgeon would violate his body as a temple of the Holy Spirit and interfere with God’s plan for his life and death. Applying this sort of “theology” to science is exactly what went wrong with the Galileo case – and Fournier is repeating history.

He also does not really understand the source of the “sub secretum” document issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – it was issued first in 2000, and then circulated in 2002 to the bishops when it became apparent that none of the bishops had been asking their papal representatives anything about transgender people.

This document was leaked to Catholic News Service in February 2003 – and that is where a lot of the information available to the public about this document comes from.

It is believed that the source for mush of the erroneous information about transgender people in the sub secretum document came from Dr. Paul McHugh, an Opus Dei zealot whose area of psychiatric expertise is eating disorders, but who, as head of the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, shut down that institution’s sex reassignment surgery clinic. Much of the thrust of McHugh’s animus against transgender people comes from his severe lack of understanding of the facts – and his attack is on the discredited theories of the late John Money – an attack that Deacon Fournier continues. But the attack is misdirected, and is not against the actual science, but only at John Money's discredited ideas.

In addition to McHugh, another person thought to have been a source for the document was Urbano Cardinal Navarrete, a Spanish Jesuit most noted for being responsible for the enforced masculinization by the of the three persons of the Holy Trinity – Navarrete is thought to have been responsible for the invalidation of Catholic baptisms performed using gender-neutral references to the Trinity (example: Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier), rather than the traditional patriarchal masculine Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This pronouncement of masculine attributes of God is as ridiculous as the Church’s position on transgender people – but as long as they are sticking to theology for the adherents of their increasingly irrelevant and morally backward Church, that last is something that does not affect me, and as ludicrous as it is, there is no reason for me to do more than snicker at their patriarchist chutzpah, especially since I've since rejected the trinitarian doctrine and the divinity of that great Jewish teacher, the Rabbi Yeshua ben Miriam.

The place where the Church goes wrong on the science as it relates to transgender people is in its insistence on birth genital essentialism as a reaction to the unsound theories of John Money, and to certain aspects of feminism (though the Church itself is the source of the birth-genital essentialism espoused by some who style themselves radical feminist separatists based on Catholic-influenced doctrine passed to them by the late Mary Daly and her protege, Janice Raymond, the infamous author of The Transsexual Empire.

Fournier directs his attack without taking into account the individual’s personal biological, genetic and developmental factors that indicate that this birth genital-based assignment is incorrect.

In 2008, two separate studies from Australia established separate genetic predispositions for different kinds of transgender development.

In one study, the predisposition for those who develop with female-identified brains and male genital tracts was shown to involve a long androgen receptor gene:
Lauren Hare, Pascal Bernard, Francisco J. Sanchez, Paul N. Baird, Eric Vilain, Trudy Kennedy and Vincent R. Harley. Androgen Receptor (AR) Repeat Length Polymorphism Associated with Male-to-female Transsexualism. Biological Psychiatry, Advance online publication date 27 Oct 2008, Jan 2009 print edition

The other study,aimed at those who develop with male-identified brains and female genital tract development, was entitled A Polymorphism of the CYP17 Gene Related to Sex Steroid Metabolism is Associated With Female-to-Male But Not Male-to-Female Transsexualism by Bentz, Eva-Katrin; Hefler, Lukas A.; Kaufmann, Ulrike; Huber, Johannes C.; Kolbus, Andrea; Tempfer, Clemens B., published in Obstetrical & Gynecological Survey: December 2008 - Volume 63 - Issue 12 - pp 775-777
doi: 10.1097/01.ogx.0000338093.21452.0b

These studies, and the brain structure studies from 1995 and 2000, provide clues to the ontological developments that result in transgender people. While there is much additional study required, these studies make it possible to discredit the earlier understandings of transgender people that date back to 1965, in which transgender people were seen as merely delusional members of their initially-assigned sex, for whom any treatment is seen as merely palliative. It is the erroneous assumption at the root of the Roman Catholic Church Magisterium's position, and it is just as wrong as relying on the Bible to classify bats as birds merely because they fly, or whales as fish because they swim in the ocean.

Strangely enough, once one realizes that this misplaced genital essentialism is the primary issue with the Magisterium’s doctrine, it becomes apparent that things like Bishop Gregory’s quote about “canonical condition” can be made to make sense. Of course, it’s okay to see gender as fixed at birth, as long as we understand that it is the brain and not the genitalia, that is the predominant factor in the correct assignment. In addition, it should be obvious that even the Bible recognized some people as falling outside the male/female binary - the people classified as "eunuchs."

After all – my own situation is one in which I am asking the City of New York for a correction of the error made in my assignment at birth, as well as to conform my birth certificate with my other identity documentation. I am looking for a correction, not a change. There is a difference, one lost on Deacon Fournier.

Indeed, the Church’s position is and should be purely theological, and not scientific. He Magisterium should keep its theological noses out of the scientific arena and the medical science as it relates to who is properly assigned to which sex, unless it wishes to conform its theology to the prevailing science, and is willing to change that theology when the scientific understanding becomes more complete.

I am not calling for a right to “choose” a gender – I am calling for a legal right to correct my sex designation on a document that was erroneous at the time of my birth. And if the Church won't change my baptismal certificate, that's perfectly fine, since I have rejected their theology a while ago.

Deacon Fournier and his Church have a nasty habit of interfering in areas about which their Magisterium has no credible scientific, legal or cultural business. These include civil marriage, women’s reproductive rights in the civil arena (they can call whatever they want to be “sinful”), and the human rights, dignity and worth of transgender, lesbian, intersex, bisexual and gay people. The Church can deny us the priesthood, it can deny us the right to a sacrament of matrimony, but when it interferes in the civil arena in its gross, immoral and theologically unsound manner, they should expect pushback from those they oppress in their mean-spirited effort to impose their peculiar and backward morality on those whose moral compass actually points in the right direction.

Western Civilization became what it was in large part despite the resistance ot the Church, not because of it.

Thank the Arabs. Thank the Irish. Thank the Jews. Thank the Greeks and the Romans. Thank Thomas Aquinas, who more than anyone else was responsible for the Church accepting Aristotle, which allowed for a jump-start for the renaissance. Thank Martin Luther and Henry VIII, at least a little. Thank the scientists, engineers and inventors who brought the Industrial Revolution.

But the Church itself has done more harm than good over its lifetime, particularly when it acts in ignorant tradition-bound resistance to advances in science and to a kinder, gentler, superior morality. And rather than making me wait 359 years for a tepid apology, perhaps Deacon Fournier can start the ball rolling by apologizing now. But I won’t hold my breath or that. I would only hope and pray that the day comes when God will open his eyes, soften his heart and make him open up to the idea that at least some of the things he knows for sure about sex and gender may not be right 100% of the time.

Valerie Jarrett (or maybe her boss Barry O.) still clueless?

2010-10-24T07:08:00.005-04:00

Here is a clip from CNN, showing both American Hero Lieutenant Dan Choi's response to the Obama Administration's incredibly arrogant and stupid decision to appeal the federal court decision striking DADT, and Administration Spokesperson Valerie Jarrett repeating her laughably silly talking points in response.

(NOTE: If you are seeing this as a Facebook NOTE, go to my Blog to actually see the video!)

http://www.trans-cendence.blogspot.com

Let's set the record "straight" on the President's power on DADT, and why the Administration position is playing politics, as Lieutenant Choi points out.

To be fair, President Obama can (and does) point to a number of positive accomplishments, but his errors, misssteps, and his continual attempts to compromise with evil has weakened his administration.

The statutory authority to suspend the discharges in found in 10 USC § 12305 - the exact text of this statute is quoted here, so that it might be abundanty clear that President Obama has failed on this issue:

§ 12305. Authority of President to suspend certain laws relating to
promotion, retirement, and separation

(a) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, during any period members of a reserve component are serving on active duty pursuant to an order to active duty under authority of section 12301, 12302, or 12304 of this title, the President may suspend any provision of law relating to promotion, retirement, or separation applicable to any member of the armed forces who the President determines is essential to the national security of the United States.

(b) A suspension made under the authority of subsection (a) shall terminate

(1) upon release from active duty of members of the reserve component ordered to active duty under the authority of section 12301, 12302, or 12304 of this title, as the case may be, or

(2) at such time as the President determines the circumstances which required the action of ordering members of the reserve component to active duty no longer exist, whichever is earlier.

(c) Upon the termination of a suspension made under the authority of subsection (a)of a provision of law otherwise requiring the separation or retirement of officers on active duty because of age, length of service or length of service in grade, or failure of selection for promotion, the Secretary concerned shall extend by up to 90 days the otherwise required separation or retirement date of any officer covered by the suspended provision whose separation or retirement date, but for the suspension, would have been before the date of the termination of the suspension or within 90 days after the date of such termination.

So, what part of 10 USC § 12305 (a) does Valerie Jarrett or Barack Obama not understand?

DADT should have been addressed with a statutorily-permitted "stop loss" executive order within the first 90 days. The Joint Chiefs should have been told on day 1 to prepare for this, and resignations accepted from those not willing to implement the stop loss. The Congress should have been told on day 1 that repeal was a priority issue just as important as the economy.

The President and his administration claim a desire to repeal DADT through congressional efforts - but Congress has already provided the means for the President to stop the losses - based on a statute passed by Congress before DAY ONE OF THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION. The President should have issued such an order within his first 90 days of taking office, so that there would have been no shameful discharges under his administration.

As long as there are members of the reserves serving during a war, national emergency or other circumstances, the suspension of discharges of LGBT persons in military service could be ordered by the President. The question to Valerie and Barry has been and still is:

Why does the administration not make use of existing law to suspend the discharges?

And Lieutenant Choi knows the answer - it's a cold political calculation - and it's one that is an utter failure. On the one hand, the President claims, in his own words, and through his people, that he is committed to the repeal of DADT. But his actions show an opposite commitment. He already has the STATUTORY authority to stop the discharges - but he has failed to do so. He has the authority to recognize the decision of the federal court that sets aside the DADT statute as unconstitutional, but instead, has ordered an emergency appeal to keep the discharges coming.

There is one glimmer of good faith - the Secretary of Defense recently amended DoD policy on how to implement DADT discharges - and this may actually be the closest thing to a "stop loss" order that we are going to see. Authority to decide on discharges under DADT has been stripped from unit commanders and are now in the hands of five senior DoD civilian personnel. This is fairly close to a stop loss order - and could well have kept Arabic language expert Lieutenant Dan Choi in service to the nation, protecting us from harm.

But why hasn't Valerie Jarrett pointed that out?

We've been told that Lieutenant Choi tweeted that his re-enlistment papers, taken during the week during which the discharges were suspended, are apparently being shredded by the Army. I don't think it should be like that - why hasn't Valerie, who knows that Dan Choi re-enlisted the moment he could do so, asked Secretary Gates why this isn't being handled by the five civilians in charge? Don't they still have a shortage of Arabic translators? Or is this a case of "military intelligence" as an oxymoronic statement?

White House FAIL on DADT; Ted Olson in 2012?

2010-10-21T17:08:00.008-04:00

Senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett shows exactly how clueless the Obama administration is about the duty to uphold the law in this video:

(IF you're seeing this as a facebook note, do yourself a favor and go directly to my blog at:

http://www.transcendence.blogspot.com

Facebook does not pick up the video.

The best answer to Valerie's obvious ignorance comes from former Bush solicitor general Ted Olson:

"It happens every once in awhile at the federal level when the solicitor general, on behalf of the U.S., will confess error or decline to defend a law. I don't know what is going through the [Obama] administration's thought process on 'don't ask, don't tell.' It would be appropriate for them to say 'the law has been deemed unconstitutional, we are not going to seek further review of that.'"

There is NO earthly reason for President Obama and his "Justice" department to be appealing the DADT decision. The existing statute allows him to issue a stop loss Order - something he should morally have done within the first 90 days of having taken office. The existing law is not constitutional - and the executive is not required to attempt to enforce a law known to be unconstitutional, at least once a court has correctly weighed in on the subject.

I am taking the opportunity right now to call on someone with brains, a heart and some backbone, to step up the day after the mid-term elections, and start campaigning in a run for the Presidency in 2012. Barack Obama has earned a primary challenge.

I am putting the Democratic Party on notice - I will continue to work for Democratic candidates who support real human rights and full equality. If Barack Obama is the Democratic candidate for president in 2012, I will not carry his petitions. I will not campaign for his re-election. I will not make a donation to his re-election, and I will vote for some other candidate. And if there is no suitable candidate, I will write in my own name.

If I had the money, the time, and the support, I would run for president in 2012 myself. I'm more qualified for the job than the incumbent - I have a brain, a heart, and a backbone, and I won't compromise with evil. While President Obama is a wonderful public speaker, and is very bright, he has not shown the heart or the backbone to do right by the nation.

You know what? Even though he's a Republican, I think I might be willing to vote for Ted Olson, regardless of party line. Maybe Ted should run in 2012.

Glenn Beck: Half Monkey. Really?

2010-10-21T16:59:00.003-04:00

WorldNutDaily is at it again, though this time, they’re merely the conduit.

In an article entitled, “Glen Beck: What if God made us from monkeys?” WND’s Joe Kovacs reports on Beck’s radio show defense of Delaware Republican U.S. Senate candidate Chrisine O’Donnell, and her decidedly creationist views with regard to evolution.

Beck is quoted as saying

“Did evolution just stop? I haven't seen the half-monkey/half-person yet.”

and

“There's no other species that's developing into half-people.”

He even refers to himself, jokingly, as a "half-monkey."

Beck’s justification apparently attemopts to lay its groundwork at the feet of the founding fathers, and without citing him, to Thomas Jefferson – Beck's reasoning includes nonsense like:

“God didn't create, if things evolve, then your rights evolve. You're not endowed by your Creator.”

I guess Glenn doesn’t know that Jefferson was a Unitarian, who was interested in nature and skeptical about miracles. Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence well before Darwin expounded his theory.

Evolution does not require a denial of the existence of God, though it does not require the existence of a god, either. However, the kind of God that could comfortably co-exist with evolutionary theory is the sort hypothesized by prominent medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas as a prima causa.

This is distinguishable from the God hypothesized by Intelligent Design, which co-opts evolutionary processes but requires the belief that they are “directed” rather than random. Intelligent Design allows believers the hubris of a humanity that is at the top of the chain of evolution, rather than just a different sort of creature. There are many who may even be atheists who also fall into this trap.

While literal Creationism and Intelligent Design ideas are not credible based on the evidence of scientific observation, there are still truths that can be discerned from the Genesis Creation story, as well as aspects that have led many to misleading interpretive conclusions. One does not have to accept literalist interpretations in order to draw out the good.

One of these is the idea of responsible stewardship over the earth and other creatures.

In our everyday lives, it does not matter tremendously whether one individual or another might have a personal belief in a literalist Creation story. Sadly, this is a concept that many literalists, particularly those who believe that the “Rapture” is just around the corner, have abandoned the idea of responsible stewardship. A Secretary of the Interior under Ronald Reagan believed that the sooner we lay waste to the environment, the sooner the rapture would come.

There is a growing movement among responsible evangelical Christians, that is a reaction against the nuttery fomented by the extremists at WorldNutDaily, with their focus on things like teaching creationism in the schools, persecuting gay people, and reducing women to a chattel status.

Before the Roman Catholic Church whipped them up, most evangelicals were neutral on the issue of women’s reproductive rights, and were content with the biblical teaching that taking the first breath was the point at which the soul is infused into a person. Now many of them believe that people are fully human from the moment of conception.

Before the Reaganites whipped them up, evangelical Christians were largely neutral on the issue of politics – preferring to adhere to the Biblical “rendering” teahing – leaving Caesar and God in separate realms. Now, there is a sadly strong Christianist Dominionist movement, braying at how “America is A Christian Nation” and working to impose their religious beliefs on everyone else. They even believe that “freedom of religion” applies only to those with a fundamentalist or at least conservative “Christian” faith, grudgingly including fellow-travelers such as Mormons and Roman Catholics.

Beck, who was born and raised Roman Catholic, is a 1999 convert to the Latter Day Saints. He certainly took a different direction than I, a cradle Catholic who, after being thrown out of the Catholic Church that same year, discarded the non-essential aspects of that faith that require a “suspension of disbelief,” and ultimately settled into Unitarian-Universalism.

Unitarian and Universalist principles grew up out of the same fertile 19th century Northeastern religious fervor that spawned the Mormon churches – and yet these churches evolved in very different directions. The Latter Day Saints invented a fanciful theology that requires a belief that the ten “Lost Tribes” of Israel somehow made their way to the North American continent, where they are supposed to have warred with the native peoples. Unitarians and Universalists evolved and merged into a non-credal religious organization based on a respect for many paths to enlightenment (though not all paths are enlightened), with a moral theology that is inclusive and tolerant.

While faith in an imaginary half-baked “history” is a Mormon theological requirement, the mere belief in it is not harmful in and of itself. I am sure that there are many positive aspects to the LDS faith, but there are some teachings that are immoral and destructive.

And Glenn Beck’s faith has among its tenets stories that are no more fanciful than the stories of miracles and the resurrection of more traditional Christianity, that the Unitarian Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the “endowed by our Creator” language in the Declaration of Independence, razored out of his personal Bible.
The problem comes when people like Beck and other CHristianists take their religious myths and expect them to be taught in the schools as science.

Evolution is a theory in the sense that it is an established and proven from a scientific point of view. Not everything is known about the processes of evolution, but based on the observations and evidence, it’s irrefutable. It’s not as if everything has been learned about how it works, but to date, all the evidence is in support of the theory.

That isn’t to say that evolution on earth and in our known universe might only be the result of certain local conditions, much as Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics are local explanations that test well on the human scale, but not in the large ((relativity) and small (quantum) realms. Indeed, large-scale bridge building has to take into account the curvature of the earth – towers that are perpendicular to the surface of the earth but a quarter mile apart are not parallel to each other, and Newtonian theory does not explain the bending of light by gravity, an explanation that makes Einsteinian theory useful on the macro scale.

The principle of natural selection as a random process, basic to evolutionary theory, still makes sense. People often get misconceptions as to the idea of the “survival of the fittest,” imagining competition a being one of “tooth and claw.”

Properly understood, evolutionary theory is simple and elegant, and is borne out by the paleontological record as well as by contemporary observation in shorter-lived animals.

Beck and O’Donnell both assume that we should be seeing monkeys evolving into humans in a short period of time, such assumptions are folly. They fail to realize that gross evolutionary change occurs over millions of years, and then there is also punctuated equilibrium, as creatures react evolutionarily to changes in their environment – those that fail become extinct. We do observe evolutionary change in reaction to environmental pressures occurring in short-lived species.

One bit of evidence for recent evolution among humans comes with the genetic distinction between Tibetans and the Han Chinese with whom they share a common ancestry. Most Tibetans have a genetic makeup that allows for thriving at high latitudes, while these genes are rare in Han Chinese. As with all humans, the evolutionary differences are not sufficient to make Tibetans and other humans into separate species. Even so, the development of these differences came over thousands of years, while the differentiation of primate species takes millions of years.

Perhaps Glen Beck might like to explain what makes Tibetans different from Han Chinese, and how Creationism explains the genetic changes. Han Chinese and Tibetans are both human, but there are differences that are explainable by evolutionary theory, but not by Creation theory, which does not take into account genetic differences among any people alleged to have been descended from a single couple who are supposed to have existed about 4,000 years ago.

In the article, Beck is quoted:

Beck explained, "If God didn't create, if things evolve, then your rights evolve. You're not endowed by your Creator."

"Just like you go from a monkey to a man, you go from simple rights to higher rights and somebody has to take those rights and give them to you and take them away or change them. This is again the evolutionary thinking of progressivism."

The philosophical basis for the idea of inalienable rights, while written in the societal context of a then-pervasive creationist deism, does not depend on a deity, but rather on a principle of self-evident truths.

These lofty-minded principles are assumptions. The idea that “all men are created equal” may well have meant, using the idea of “original intent,” to encompass only white, anglo-saxon, protestant property owning males, particularly because of the existence of slavery, the limitations on voting such as poll taxes and literacy tests, and the non-inclusion of women in colonial times. Jefferson himself was a slave owner, and treated at least one of his female house slaves as a concubine with whom he fathered children, and not necessarily with her informed consent, particularly because of the relative power between master and slave,

However, as much as Glenn Beck pooh-poohs the idea of the evolution of ideas, and the evolution of inalienable rights, we have seen the arc of history bend ever so slowly toward justice.

While today, we assume that “all men” uses a meaning of “men” that includes women and the descendents of former slaves, that was not self-evident to the founding fathers.

No one has to “give” us these rights, but as society gradually becomes more civilized, it begins to recognize these rights as being more pervasive.

Gays have just as much of an inalienable right as anyone else to serve in the military and get married – the problem is that the law does not in most cases currently recognize the essential justice of the situation.

Biblical literalists once asserted that the enslavement of racially non-white Africans and their descendants was based on the Word of God as found in Genesis – and they would refer to their slaves as “the children of Ham.” (Bible-based racism can be found in the early history of our space program – our first chimp in space was named Ham, for example.) Today they want their religion-based creationism taught in schools, and they want their particular brand of Christianist faith to be the basis for the secular law.

Yet African Americans were freed from slavery, only to find themselves after a few brief years of Reconstruction to be relegated to a second class status by reason of the separate and quite unequal doctrine of racial segregation that was permitted by the federal courts. Even today, there are lingering effects of a continuing and insidious institutionalized racism that permeates the United States like an evil stench, largely not noticed by whites but still an affliction.

Racism, Heterosexism, Patriarchism , Cisgenderism and Dominionism are all examples of barriers to an inclusive understanding of the principles on which the nation was founded. Glen Beck complains because he thinks that evolution gets in the way of our inalienable rights. The problem is that Christianist thinking is perhaps the biggest obstacle to our rights. Christianity is fine, Christianist oppression is not. Beck, like the folks at WorldNutDaily, does not get the difference.

Cuomo a strong second to Hawkins in NY Gov. Debate

2010-10-19T09:35:00.002-04:00

Last night, Trudy and I had the opportunity to attend the seven-way New York gubernatorial debate, which took place at Hofstra University in Long Island. Getting there was an adventure – Trudy drove down to my office in Manhattan, turned the steering wheel over to me, and we did manage to make it to the arena on time, despite the horrific traffic on the Long Island Expressway (which truly earns its sobriquet of “the world’s biggest parking lot”).

Attending the debate in person was a different experience than watching it on television, though there were several huge screens allowing us to see the candidates close up.

Trudy and I had excellent seats near the middle, in the sixth row. We saw our local district attorney, Janet DiFiore, in attendance, and Karen, a friend from church, who was there with the League of Women Voters.

It was interesting to see how the hosts, Hofstra University, together with Cablevision’s News 12 and Long Island’s Newsday newspaper, managed to fill in the floor seats of those invitees who couldn’t get there on time. There were a few hundred extras, invited by the University, seated in the stadium seating to the rear, who were poised to fill in, which explains why all the invitees had to be in our seats well before the debate began.

Cell phones not only had to be silent, they had to be completely off, though I bet that I could have gotten away with “airplane mode,” since the reason announced was that cell signals could interfere with some of the equipment. I did not, however, chance testing that hypothesis.

While we were supposed to sit quietly through the debate, there were instances during which some of the crowd erupted in impermissible applause. I did not succumb to the temptation, even though I do have a habit of muttering at the television when watching similar events from the comfort of my home.

It seems like the mainstream media take on the debate was to ignore the minor party candidates, except to the extent that they could add some “color” (and I don’t mean race) to the proceedings. Charles Barron, Kristen Davis, and to a lesser extent Warren Redlich, all managed to provide some sound bites for a media that ignores the rest of their message. Jimmy McMillan was a one-man comic relief. Sadly, one of the best candidates in the crowd, who stayed on message the whole night, the Green Party’s Howie Hawkins, did not get much of a mention at all from the MSM.

Here’s my scoring: Howie Hawkins, the Green Party candidate, got an “uptick” on my scoresheet on every response segment, making him the clear winner of last night’s New York gubernatorial debate, with a grade of 12 out of 12. If the debate was the only factor in my voting decision, Mr. Hawkins would be my choice for Governor. It’s actually too bad that the media is not paying him any attention.

Andrew Cuomo, clearly trying to stay calm and not make any mistakes, managed to make it to 2nd in my scoring, with 7-1/2 out of 12 upticks, while only managing two downticks – one of which was for his limited support of hydrofracking. Still, when I take his debate score, and give him extra credit for his experience and proven ability, he’s still going to get my vote.

In a strong third, Eliot Spitzer’s former madam, Kristen Davis, made a strong showing with 6 out of 12 upticks and only two downticks. It’s clear that if something happened to both Andrew and Howie between now and election day, she’d actually get my vote.

Charles Barron, the one-dimensional Freedom Party candidate, managed 3/12 upticks, and only 4 downticks. I was most disappointed with his inability to perceive that there are other disadvantaged minorities out there. His good points are outweighed by his negatives, particularly his purported “neutrality” on marriage equality (“the Freedom Party does not have a position” on that issue, indeed). None of us are truly free until we are all free -

Carl Paladino managed 1-1/2 upticks, and, while that’s technically a tie for last on upticks alone, he did have fewer absolute downticks (4) than the last two. Carl gets a special mention (and an entire uptick!) for his head-shaking gesture, followed by a pause and the query, “Is this a rebuttal?” in response to a scurrilous attack by the whiny libertarian, whose apparent aim, aside from whining (did I mention he was really whiny?) was to shill for the Republican congressional down-ticket, as if he has them on his own coattails.

The rather strange gentleman with the interesting beard, Jimmy McMillan, sitting between Carl Paladino and Andrew Cuomo, with his rambling, punctuated by his “the rent is too damn high” message, still managed to get 1-1/2 upticks (the full tick being for his closing statement, and the half for being in favor of marriage equality (the lost half-tick on that came from his apparent willingness to let a fetishist marry a shoe). Every time he spoke, I listened in almost rapt horror, as a torrent of disconnected verbiage washed over me.

The libertarian whiner, Warren Redlich, somehow managed to get 1-1/2 upticks with 5 downticks. His single strongest point had to do with capping bureaucratic pay. Though technically tied for last with Carl Paladino and Jimmy McMillan, it appears from my scoresheet analysis that he did, in fact, come in dead last when I factor in the downticks. Perhaps there is a place for him at “Cheers;” there really isn’t any place for him in government. I’m most disappointed, because my own political philosophy is what I might call lowercase, or “small-l”(that’s “ell”) libertarian. Big-L Libertarians like this gentleman seem to crawl out from under rocks to bay at the moon.

The bottom line? Despite Howie Hawkins’ strong showing, the biggest news seems to be that neither Andrew Cuomo nor Carl Paladino did themselves any real harm. I grant Carl scores low with me, primarily because I disagree with him on so much. But for those who agree with him, he did not shoot himself in the foot. It may be that he learned something from his Yehuda Levin experience.

Carl Paladino APOLOGIZES!

2010-10-13T11:49:00.004-04:00

After first trying to deny his words, or some of them (the ones he had in his written speech but didn't read), Carl Paladino has done something unusual - he has actually apologized.

The actual and unedited text of his apology is below. While I still disagree with him on a large number of issues and I still support his Democratic opponent in the New York gubernatorial election, the issuance of an actual apology that has a minimum of weasel wording is worth noting. As a reward, I am editing my earlier post to remove the caricature of Mr. Paladino's head with the Charlie Chaplin moustache photoshopped onto a picture of one A. Hitler, former Fuehrer of the Third Reich.

Here is the text of the apology, followed by my comments:

I am Carl Paladino, a father, a husband, a builder and a business owner. I am neither perfect, nor a career politician. I have made mistakes in this campaign - I have made mistakes all my life- as we all have. I am what I am - a simple man who works hard, trusts others, and loves his family and fears for the future of our State.

Yesterday I was handed a script. I redacted some contents that were unacceptable. I did also say some things for which I should have chosen better words. I said other things that the press misinterpreted and misstated. I sincerely apologize for any comment that may have offended the Gay and Lesbian Community or their family members. Any reference to branding an entire community based on a small representation of them is wrong. My personal beliefs are:

1) I am a live and let live person.

2) I am 100% against discrimination of any group. I oppose discrimination of any kind in housing, credit, insurance benefits or visitation.

3) I am 100% against hate crimes in any form.

4) I am in support of civil agreements and equal rights for all citizens.

5) My position on marriage is based on my personal views. I have the same position on this issue as President Barrack Obama. I have previously stated I would support a referendum by New York voters. I have proposed Initiative and Referendum so New Yorkers can decide important issues like this.

6) The portrayal of me as anti-gay is inconsistent with my lifelong beliefs and actions and my prior history as an father, employer and friend to many in the gay and lesbian community.

I am concerned with the future for all our citizens, gay, straight, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim and Agnostic. Although I am not perfect I do admit my mistakes. I will reach out to leaders of the gay community to educate me on how to better represent my support for the rights of all citizens. If elected as your governor I will stand and fight for all gay New Yorkers rights. I ask you for forgiveness on my poorly chosen words and the publication by others not involved with our campaign of unredacted script that did not reflect my oral statement or match my personal feelings. Please go to my website www.paladinoforthepeople.com to learn more detail about the issues including my staunch support for civil rights for all New Yorkers.

The only weasely words?

I did also say some things for which I should have chosen better words. I said other things that the press misinterpreted and misstated.

The "should have chosen better words" part requires some amplification, as does the "misinterpreted and misstated."

It's really hard to misinterpret and misstate an unaltered video.

Essentially, what Carl biggest mistake was to read someone else's words as his own, slightly edited. That someone was most probably the ultra-conservative right wing "Rabbi" Yehuda Levin, the leader of a tiny ultra-Orthodox but not Hasidic Jewish sect.

Carl was trying to garner support from these people by telling them pretty much what their leader wanted them to hear. So, if he doesn't believe what he told them, he was lying to them to get their vote, possibly not thinking that the terribly nasty things he was saying to pander to this small group was going to be spread to the rest of the world by way of the news media and the blogosphere.

This is the sort of campaign trick that used to work fairly well - a candidate would tell a small group what they wanted to hear without fearing that the words would be recorded and broadcast, and then promising something else to some other group.

In this case, Mr. Paladino got caught.

His hiding behind Barack Obama's skirts as if the President is his mommy, on the issue of marriage equality, is rather disingenuous. President Obama is wrong on this issue, and he is another example of a lying politician who has told many different stories to many different groups on many different issues, though President Obama's actual record is mixed.

If Carl really believes in "live and let live," he would be willing to put the Constitution above his religious prejudices - why should the Catholic Church decide whether gay Unitarians should be able to get legally married?

The fact remains that no one who places the immoral teachings of the Roman Catholic Church ahead of the Constitution of the United States or that of the State of New York, is and remains unqualified to be Governor.

The addition of "Initiative" and "Referendum" like they have in California, particularly if not limited so that individual rights are unaffected, is likely to result in what Alexis de Tocqueville referred to as "the tyranny of the majority." Popular votes taken to limit the rights of people who are different that they don't like, can result in injustice - the majority is not always right.

Carl - if your apology was genuine and sincerely intended:

- Will you openly sponsor a civil marriage bill as a Governor's program bill? (It has to be civil marriage, because "live and let live" does not work any other way unless you abolish civil marriage for everyone in New York and leave it up to the churches and individuals to decide for themselves on the basis of their own personal beliefs). It is okay for you to be personally against marrying a man yourself - you already have a wife, and a female concubine (well, how else am I supposed to describe the mother of your daughter . . .) - you don;t have to choose to marry a man - so that's where your personal beliefs are appropriate.

- Will you make GENDA a Governor's program bill? It would extend human rights and hate crimes protections to the trans community.

- Will you direct insurance companies and Medicaid to provide for medically appropriate care for all, including transgender New Yorkers?

- Will you pledge to let the federal government deal with immigration issues and leave the State out of it?

- Will you support abolishing city, town and village governments (excepting New York City) and provide for consolidation of services (including school districts) at the county level?

- Will you support making Medicaid costs the sole responsibility of the State without passing the cost off to the counties?

- Will you support the abolition of "member items?"

- Will you support the elimination of all loopholes in the mortgage recording tax?

- Will you support the adoption of the ACRIS recording system on a statewide basis, with local recording officers acting only as agents of the state? Will you provide for free online public access to land records (as they do in the State of Florida?)

I have much longer laundry list, but something along these lines would be a start.

Taking the Medicaid burden off county governments and consolidating local municipalities and districts to the county government level would go much farther toward reducing the real property tax burden than the things you're foolishly promising already.

But Carl, I do thank you for the apology - it's not something that a Ruben Diaz or a Sally Kern would ever do. It may be that all you need is a little education.

If you don't follow through on your apology, would you prefer I find a photo of Benito Mussolini to use as the basis for a caricature?

Carl Paladino Dysfunctional and Unfit for Governor

2010-10-10T22:43:00.016-04:00

PICTURE REMOVED BASED ON CARL PALADINO ISSUING AN APOLOGY.
Carl Paladino showing his true colors.

In a story published today, The New York Daily News quotes Carl Paladino, the clearly mentally unstable short-fused dysfunctional heterosexist whoremonger "Republican" candidate for New York Governor as saying,

"I didn't march in the Gay Pride parade this year. My opponent did. [There is nothing to be proud of in being a dysfunctional homosexual. That's not how God created us, and ] that's not the example that we should be showing our children - and certainly not in our schools."

*(italics show portion of Carl's statement NOT in the video remarks. Still, the rest was bad enough.)

Paladino was also quoted as saying that he does not support gay bashing,

"Don't misquote me as wanting to hurt homosexual people in any way. That would be a dastardly lie. My approach is live and let live."

It is actually even worse than reported at the Daily News - here is a video of the speech with some context:

Video source: Azi Paybarah via Pam's House Blend.

When Carl thinks of gay people as “dysfunctional,” he clearly shows his ignorance of the fact that for a percentage of the population, same-sex attraction is a part of their nature. When he says “That’s not how God created us” he shows his irrational prejudice is based on the teachings of some repellant and immoral false religious cult he may profess as a mask to cover his naked bigotry. When he talks about “examples for children” he implies that gays are unfit to be teachers, and that children should not be taught that there are different family constellations,and that gays should be relegated to the shadows and closets. Essentially, Carl has once again shown in a clear and unambiguous fashion that he is completely and totally unfit for election to the position of Governor of the State of New York.

The video reveals more:

Carl says:

"We must not pander to the pornographers and the perverts who seek to target our children and destroy their lives."

Carl is himself actually the sort of dysfunctional heterosexist pervert who wants to target our children, and anyone who is different, and destroy our lives, if we're not macho like him.

"I just think that my children, and your children, will be much better off, and much more successful, getting married and raising a family."

And what does he mean - is he supporting marriage equality? I sincerely doubt it, not in his bigoted context.

"And I don't want them to be brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid or successful option."

Carl proves he is a loon - homosexuality is not an option, it's a natural sexual orientation for a percentage of the population. Perhaps Carl should get some education before shooting off his mouth. Perhaps the sort of "homosexual" experiences Carl may have had were the kind that oversexed macho men who can;t keep "it" in their pants have when they don't have immediate access to women, like what he seems to have wanted to do with that New York Post Reporter he wanted to "take out" last week.

Carl Paladino has provem that he is is a liar, a sneak, a cheat, a whoremonger and an unscrupulous businessman. He is a clearly dysfunctional heterosexist who, based on the evidence of his display of sexual “prowess” won't be able to control his sexual urges unless he submits to a voluntary castration, and perhaps not even then.

He is so ashamed of his love child that he is unwilling to appear with her and his concubine with the rest of his family in campaign appearances. He has been paying off his concubine to keep her quiet and out of the picture. He pretends he is trying to protect the unfortunate child, but it is clear from his actions that he is not protecting her, but rather that he is ashamed of her – or else he would take her with him on the campaign, with both his wife, his concubine, and his other surviving children, and show the world he’s proud of her, and that she has a father who’s good for more than hush money.

After first erupting with his bilious and noxious lunacy, when he was challenged by a reported, he either backed off like the miserable cowardly pusillanimous uncouth wacko that he is, or he contradicted his earlier statement somewhat when he realized he went way over the line.

From what he says, it appears that he does not want private individuals gay bashing – he wants to make that the prerogative of the government of the State of New York. His earlier comments certainly did not imply a “live and let live” attitude.

Does he mean he is planning yet another way to repurpose the portions of the prison system that are going unused since the repeal of the horribly repressive Rockefeller drug laws? Is he already planning some sort of “final solution” for welfare recipients and gays?

Already, the camps he plans for welfare recipients sound like they will bear the motto, “Work will make you free.” The last time that was used, in the 1930's and 40's, the results for the inmates were not very promising.

Does he plan on rounding up gay teachers, and other LGBT people, and putting us all in camps, too, to be subjected to medical experiments from the quacks from NARTH in an attempt to find a “cure?”

When he was reported as making these statements, Carl was apparently talking to a group of Orthodox Jews – perhaps he forgot that Jewish people were among those rounded up for the camps the last time around – and maybe they have not forgotten. On the other hand, hearing their applause, perhaps they have forgotten - maybe they want it to happen all over again. Perhaps, in Carl's world, at some point he will be coming for them, too, and when he comes for them, who will speak up for them?

I must remind Carl that last week, he told a reporter from the New York Post, ”I’m gonna take you out!” If that wasn’t a threat of bodily harm, perhaps it was a request for a date. Considering Carl’s apparent satyriasis (inability to keep “it” in his pants), perhaps his dysfunctional voracity means he is willing to do it to anything that moves.

Carl Paladino has crossed the line one time too many. He has shown his true colors, and they are not at all pretty.

Carl, there is nothing to be proud of in being a dysfunctional heterosexual. Not all heterosexuals are dysfunctional, but your history shows that you're mentally unfit and not exactly monagamous. God did not create you to be a bigot and a whoremonger.

New York does need any more short-tempered ill-mannered bigots, Carl. You are certainly not an example of an upstanding citizen who merits election to office, and you are a bully - not the sort of example that schoolchildren should emulate. I am standing up to you, bully, and I am not going away. I am a transsexual woman and a lesbian, and I vote. My vote, and the votes of many millions of New Yorkers, are going to make sure that you are going to return to Buffalo with your tail between your legs.

I am calling on you to do something honorable for the second time in your life (the first being when, at the request of your now-deceased drug addict son, you honorably admitted the existence of your concubine and child to your wife) – Do yourself a favor and withdraw from the race, before you embarrass yourself any more, and before you are buried by a landslide at the ballot box.

The HTC EVO Calendar Bug is FIXED!

2010-09-23T12:40:00.002-04:00

UPDATE - September 23, 2010 -

Yesterday, the word went around that Sprint was delivering the calendar bug "fix" via an OTA rollout. I got mine today - it is a gradual rollout so it may take some time for everyone to get it.

I can confirm that the calendar bug I reported is fixed - it is now possible to edit an event without losing data.

Added goodies include a lifting of the 30 fps limit on video, and the ability to sync more than one g-mail account.

Having gotten used to the Jorte calendar monthly view, I'm not going to replace the widget 4 x 3 widget - I like the fact that it gives a little info about appointments rather than merely putting up a triangle to indicate something is there . . .

Gary Bauer Sows the Wind, May he Reap the Whirlwind!

2010-09-20T12:41:00.002-04:00

Gary Bauer, former president of the notorious “Family” Research Council, appeared at that organization’s recent “Value Voters Summit” to urge Christianist Dominionists, social conservatives, misguided “tea partiers” and the other assembled wingnuts, to get out and vote in November, using verbal imagery evoking the heroic struggle of the passengers of United Flight 93, who fought back against the hijackers, resulting in that plane ending up in a field in Pennsylvania rather than the White House or another building in Washington D.C.

This clip is actually rather inspiring:

But Bauer does not tell his audience that at least one of those “American heroes” on that Flight 93 was a gay man.

Okay, so they can’t handle the truth.

If these wingnuts are going to profane the memory of the martyrs of Flight 93 to push their evil agenda and motivate their colleagues to come out and vote, I perhaps should not stoop to their level.

But I will.

So, after watching the Bauer clip, follow it with a rendition of Melissa Etheridge’s “Tuesday Morning” -

Okay, folks – this song should silence the Bauers and the other wingnuts.

LGBT Americans are Americans, too – and our people can be and have been every bit as heroic as any other Americans.

We deserve the same rights as other Americans.

People like Gary Bauer want to push us down. They are motivating their troops to get out the vote.

I urge readers to share these two clips widely – and let your friends know that people who really love liberty, who really love freedom of religion, who really love American principles, have to get motivated to come out and vote.

Gary Bauer may have sown the wind with his speech – may he reap the whirlwind!

Or else, the misguided Tea Partiers and Christianist Dominionists like Carl Palladino, Christine O’Donnell, and their evil cohorts are going to win in November – and when they come for us, who will speak for us?