A Curious Eye

50 Cent, in an interview in which he endorsed marriage equality on the grounds that “If everyone else is for it, then hey, to each his own. I don’t have personal feelings towards it because I’m not involved in that lifestyle,” also decided it made sense to tell the world that:

So in process, we need organizations for straight men. We do. We need organizations for straight men in the case you’ve been on the elevator and somebody decides they want to grab your little buns. Times are changing. Those organizations are set up for at one point they were being attacked for those choices. Now its completely different. Obviously [homosexuality] is more socially accepted.

One of the hardest things about getting people to surrender their privilege is helping them to understand that giving some of it up isn’t going to materially change their living conditions. Asking that women be treated equally isn’t to ask that women have the right to sexually harass men or to invert the pay gap so women make more than men. Advocating for gay rights is in part about communicating that 50 Cent’s arrogant fear that gay men want to grab his ass is unfounded. Liberation, done right, can make things better for both people who have privilege and people who don’t. The people who are disadvantaged get access to the rights they see denied them. And then people who have privilege end up freed from their fears of what might happen if things change, benefitting from their contact with people they were previously separated from.

Keep reading at ThinkProgress.org

Since President Obama came out in favor of gay marriage a couple of weeks ago, there’s been a noticeable shift in black Americans’ opinion on gay marriage. A new Washington Post-ABC survey found that 59 percent of black people now say they support same-sex marriage—an 18 point jump since Obama’s announcement. Fifty-three percent of Americans now believe that same-sex marriage should be legalized; that represents a seismic shift since 2006, when just 39 percent of those polled thought it should be legalized.

The Washington Postwarned of a “relatively small sample size,” but numbers elsewhere are echoing the pattern: A recentPublic Policy pollshowed that 57 percent of Maryland voters approve of the new gay marriage law, with 55 percent of African Americans planning to vote for the law and only 36 percent now opposed. Those numbers have reversed from just a few months ago, when 56 percent of black voters saying they would vote against the new law and only 39 percent planning to uphold it.

Perhaps more important than the numbers, influential black celebrities like Will Smith and Jay-Z, along with political leaders like Jesse Jackson, Corey Booker, and Rep. John Lewis, have come out in favor of same-sex marriage. So has the NAACP. Obama’s not getting much love from the black churches, but he seems to have persuaded, or at least emboldened, a large portion of the black community to support gay rights.

Keep reading at Good.is

By JUANA SUMMERS | 

5/13/12 11:21 AM EDT

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said Sunday that while he supports “dignity and respect” for all Americans, including gays and lesbians, that doesn’t mean gay marriage should be legalized.

“People in this country, no matter straight or gay deserve dignity and respect. However, that doesn’t mean it carries on to marriage. I think that most Americans agree that in this country, the legal and historic and the religious union, marriage has to have the definition of one man and one woman,” Priebus said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Priebus, who said earlier that he does not believe the fight for marriage equality is akin to a civil rights issue,  added that he believes gays and lesbians deserve equal rights, including in the area of workplace discrimination.

“I think they deserve equal rights, in regard to say discrimination in the workplace, issues such as Mitt Romney has pointed out numerous times, hospital visitations. I think that for the sake of dignity and respect, sure. But if you’re defining marriage as a civil right, then no, I don’t think people who are of the same sex should be married under our laws,” he said.

One GetEQUAL activist says that when President Obama articulated his evolution, everyone seemed to forget where else he either hasn’t evolved or hasn’t acted.

BY DAN FOTOU

MAY 14 2012 5:36 AM ET

Ever since Wednesday, I can’t help but feel conflicted and a bit deflated. Don’t get me wrong – it was a good day and a strong step forward for President Obama to finally come out in support of marriage equality. We can anticipate gay rights being a major talking point during an election year; this time not so much as a liability but instead as a voting bloc that has power. But here’s the thing – when Obama articulated his evolution, he failed to acknowledge marriage equality as a civil rights issue. He fell back on the tired Republican line that “marriage is a states’ rights issue.” Does he not realize the heartbreak and destruction we face, as individuals and as a community, from one ballot measure to the next – and that with each vote against us we’re denied another piece of our dignity as full human beings?

Tuesday’s passage of Amendment One in North Carolina fed on the prejudices and paranoia we’ve had to overcome for decades. Then President Obama made room for hate by invoking the states’ rights rhetoric. It’s in these very states that we are repeatedly victimized, stigmatized, assaulted, humiliated, and killed, all in the name of God and freedom. It’s in these very states that we need federal protections. The president issued a statement ahead of the vote saying he opposed any measure that added discrimination to a state constitution. But if he’s going to stand on the side of marriage equality, then why half-ass it and leave room for hate and intolerance to thrive from one state to another?

Equally heartbreaking is the fact that over the past several years, the marriage equality issue has defined our community to the point that nothing else matters; to the point where most folks within and outside of our community think once we’ve got marriage, we’ve got it all. Marriage, in fact, is only one slice of a very large pie. And it would benefit a minority within the community. It’s important, but the sad reality is that in a majority of states we can all still be denied a job, denied housing, denied public accommodations such as emergency care, denied access to education, denied credit, and denied federal funding for public programs just for being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. The president supports the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, but the call for full federal equality means full federal equality, not just simple lip service to pacify us once again during an election year.

With each new election season, it becomes ever so much clearer that the LGBT community continues to be played by our elected officials. “Hey, hey, look over there, look over there, that will make you happy and get you off my back!” Meanwhile, over here, the very issues that would significantly impact the daily lives of LGBT people get conveniently left behind in the news cycle, forgotten by us all, and a year later we ask, “Hey, what ever happened to…?”

Case in point: Over the past weeks a lot of media attention and activist energy focused on Obama’s refusal to sign an executive order that would protect from discrimination LGBT employees of federal contractors who receive more than $10,000 a year from the federal government. While the order wouldn’t cover all LGBT workers, research from the Williams Institute shows it would cover 16.5 million more workers – totaling 22% of the U.S. workforce – a significant down payment toward ENDA. This order has 73% approval of likely 2012 voters across party lines, including 61% support among self-identified Republicans, according to a poll from the Human Rights Campaign. And HRC found that 87% of Americans believe LGBT people already have employment protections, indicating that this move by President Obama would be a total yawn for the American public. It’s a no-brainer and certainly carries limited, if any, political risk. Yet, on Wednesday, with all the hype around Obama’s coming out for marriage equality, his refusal to sign the executive order had been forgotten by the press and the majority of the LGBT community who are now making campaign donations, calling him a champion and chastising anyone who questions Wednesday’s events.

Keep reading at Advocate.com

POSTED: 9:58 AM FRI, MAY 18, 2012 
BY STEVE LASH 
DAILY RECORD LEGAL AFFAIRS WRITER

Maryland must recognize as married same-sex couples who legally wed in other states, Maryland’s top court unanimously ruled Friday.

In its 7-0 decision, the Court of Appeals said recognition is required under the legal doctrine of “comity” because same-sex marriage is neither “repugnant” to the state’s public policy nor expressly prohibited by state law.

“Maryland recognizes liberally foreign marriages, even those marriages that may be prohibited from being formed if conducted in this state,” Judge Glenn T. Harrell Jr. wrote for the high court. “Liberal recognition of out of state marriages promotes uniformity in the recognition of the marital status, so that persons legally married according to the laws of one state will not be held to be living in adultery in another state, and that children begotten in lawful wedlock in one state will not be illegitimate in another.”

The Court of Appeals’ ruling comes as a Maryland state law permitting same-sex marriages is slated to go into effect Jan. 1.

But that law, the Civil Marriage Protection Act, will likely be put before Maryland voters this fall, as opponents of the measure are pressing to put it on the Election Day ballot in November.

Ironically, the Maryland court issued its ruling by essentially granting the divorce of a lesbian couple that married in California when the state permitted same-sex couples to wed.

Embodiment: A Portrait of Queer Life in is an archive and a journey through a rapidly changing community and the lives of people who offer brave new visions of what it means to be queer in America today. Stopping in churches, parks, high school classrooms, back yards and bedrooms, I have collaborated with individuals from both urban and rural areas for over 6 years. With this ever-growing archive of portraits, I aim to highlight a national experience while acknowledging its many diverging, overlapping and at times conflicting parts.  Created as a joint effort with participants who boldly stand in front of my lens,Embodiment reveals images of love and survival, creative forms of gender expression and the ever-changing anatomy of a family. It is my hope that these photographs will become a lasting archive for generations to come.

Why President Obama’s Support of Marriage Equality Might Make the Difference in Washington State

by PAUL CONSTANT

Whenever the president of the United States comes to Seattle, there’s always a swarm of looky-loos standing around, trying to get a glimpse, to say they were in the immediate proximity of a man who has made history. Our presidential audiences have often been angry, occasionally been giddy, and frequently been packed full of people obsessed with some vague plan to forward their own personal agenda. But President Obama’s speech at the Paramount last Thursday drew a very different crowd: It was a battalion of happy people out to demonstrate their gratitude.

People carrying signs and banners thanked President Obama for his announcement the day before that he “think[s] same-sex couples should be able to get married.” There was something more to the waves of adulation than simple gratitude for his supportive statements, though. As Washington State prepares for Referendum 74, a gay-marriage vote that will likely appear on the fall ballot, many revelers believed President Obama may have handed the pro-marriage-equality, approve-R-74 forces the leverage they need to win.

Josh Friedes, the marriage equality director for Equal Rights Washington, calls President Obama’s statement “a game-changer,” because it has generated or will generate “hundreds of thousands of conversations in Washington.” He explains that because of the president’s announcement, gay marriage dominated the news cycle for 72 hours last week and is still a major topic in the national conversation. What this means, he says, is that “at the water cooler, and at Starbucks, and at barbecues, and at churches, people are going to be talking about marriage equality.” When the public talks about marriage equality, Friedes says, marriage equality wins.

The numbers back him up.

Alison Peters cites a poll of 600 Washington voters that her firm, Alison Peters Consulting, performed in June 2011. It was a watershed moment for marriage equality in Washington because it was the first poll in which a majority of voters supported gay marriage—55 percent of likely voters approved marriage equality—but a discovery that Peters made over the course of the poll was even more meaningful.

It comes down to this: Talking about gay marriage greatly increases your chances of supporting marriage equality. Only 34 percent of voters who’ve never had a conversation about gay marriage support it. But 56 percent of all voters who have talked about gay marriage with a straight person support marriage equality. And even more impressive: 69 percent of all voters who have had a conversation about marriage equality with a gay person support marriage equality. All together, two-thirds of voters who have had a conversation about marriage equality support it. They’ve been forced to think through their position. That “swing of 35 points” (from 34 to 69 percent) between people who have and haven’t had a conversation, Peters says, “is staggering from a statistical standpoint.”

Keep reading at TheStranger.com

think-progress:

• Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI)
• Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)
• Democratic House Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD)
• Former Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-NE)
• Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn (D)
• House Assistant Minority Leader James Clyburn (D-SC) 

More details at ThinkProgress

The question is not, as Biden said last week, “Who do you love?” The question is: “Who is American?”

Yet, if little of the rhetoric around marriage equality concerns the stuff of marriage rights – taxes, inheritance, social security, immigration – even less of it expresses this civic character of the institution. Instead, arguments for same-sex marriage in America have taken on a perturbing libertarian strain: the government has no business in my private affairs; my marriage has no effect on yours. You can hear this in the outrageous refrain “If you don’t like gay marriage, don’t get gay married” – a blinkered and fantastically antisocial understanding of the value of marriage, as if the intolerance of homophobes was hopelessly permanent, rather than something we should all be working to change.

And when the movement for gay equality reduces itself to an isolationist platform, you can be sure of what comes after. Sooner or later, gays will win the right to marry in the United States. It is a certainty. But discrimination, intolerance, disease: these will be with us for a while, and if we make marriage into mere private affirmation rather than public endeavor, it’s hard to see how we can combat these other scourges together, once the weddings are over; in fact, it’s hard to see that the word “together” will signify anything at all.

The president is getting a lot of credit this week for striking a blow for equality. But if marriage is the only battle we win, that will not be any equality worth the name.

Read the rest at Guardian.co.uk