Apropos of nothing, but...

...I am now legally married.

How awesome is that?







(Now for the rest of my LGBT family who aren't allowed to. Need to get you in on this shit, because this fun should be shared. Your inevitable marriages will lift something of a shadow from everybody else's, so we've got some politicians to harass until they explode. Let's do this shit.)

Shameless Boasting

Look what we have!



Handfasting hasn't happened yet, and we won't be doing any of the legal end of things for quite some time (changing of names mainly, since we aren't signing a marriage contract as long as the laws are discriminatory), but we have our indestructible engagement rings. Look at them!

We're gonna be hearing about this for a while...

You know how California is getting sued over Prop 8 because it's a flagrant violation of the Constitution?

The anti-equal-rights activists just realized they got randomly assigned a gay judge.

Oops!

I mean, we're all having a good laugh over this because they're seriously standing up in front of a gay man and attempting to convince him of the essential depravity of gay people (including predictable but bizarre assertions about their propensity to rape children). Their case was shit before--and they knew it (and you can tell they've known it from the start by the way they've tried to hide their arguments and lie about their motives and backing), but now this.

The down-side is that they'll obviously turn this into another narrative about the oppressive liberal establishment imposing its Supah Sekrit Homo Commie Agenda on the Good Decent Christian People of this nation. Never mind that according to the Constitution, we have judges to doublecheck laws and make sure they're Constitutional; actually using them is "unamerican."

Walker here is damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. On the one hand, he has the option to cement into judicial precedent his own status as a second-class citizen. On the other hand, if he brings the 14th Amendment into the discussion, the defendants in the case will slink off growling about how gays are so mentally twisted that they aren't even qualified to evaluate the Constitutionality of laws.

Can't be teachers, can't be parents, can't be judges, can't be married, can't be people. Same old, same old. They were going to find a reason to pretend an unfavorable ruling isn't legitimate. We just know now in advance what that's going to be.

Huzzah!

MN Society of Friends wins at civil rights.

The congregation will continue to hold both opposite-sex and same-sex weddings at its meeting house, but will no longer sign the legal marriage certificate for opposite-sex couples. Instead, couples will need to have the certificate signed by a justice of the peace.

"Everything else proceeds as it normally has, except that we will not sign the marriage certificate," Landskroener said.

You go, guys.

(ht karjack via rm)

NYS Senator Savino speaks on Marriage Equality

Thanks to keori for this video link.



She has said everything that should be said. Everything. One bit hits particularly close to home for me, since looking up to a lesbian couple is one of the core reasons why I won't marry my partner in a state where they can't do the same. This video is really profoundly amazing. Share it.

Fundamentally Different

"Promising equal treatment to some is fundamentally different from promising equal treatment for all," Moreno said. "Promising treatment that is almost equal is fundamentally different from ensuring truly equal treatment."

Far and away the best commentary I've seen on this has been from rm. Excerpt:

The entire situation, that this is even something we're debating as a nation, is so completely irrational, I kinda can't deal with it. It is only rational if the debate is framed thusly: "are gay people human?" and until people who are anti-equal marriage are willing to make the assertion that gay people are not, in fact, human and as such should not be allowed to enter into any legal contract or business relationship, I have even less than zero patience for their arguments.

Say what you mean and mean what you say. Even if I find your personal "deeply held beliefs" bigoted and offensive, I'm peripherally willing to acknowledge you as a thinking person if you at least have the nerve and the intellect to stand by what you really mean.

Exactly. Exactly that.

Families: Legitimate and Illegitimate

Vermont passes gay-marriage bill

BOSTON (Reuters) - Vermont lawmakers on Tuesday overrode a veto from the governor in passing a bill that would allow same-sex marriage, clearing the way for the state to become the fourth in the nation where gay marriage is legal.

The Vermont House of Representatives passed the bill by a 100-49 vote after it cleared the state Senate 23-5 earlier in the day. In Vermont, a bill needs two-thirds support in each chamber to override a veto.

Those of you who know me know that I don't cry often. I really don't. I find the act a distasteful lapse in self-control comparable to urinating on oneself. But I've been on the edge of it for over an hour now, since I heard about this.

Part of it is sadness at how far we've yet to go, but most of it is relief. State by state we're overriding people who think that same-sex marriage threatens their own, even if they can't explain why or how. State by state, victory and setback after victory and setback, we're making progress.

But why cry over it? Why get so emotional about something that doesn't really affect me?

That's what you think.

You see, I know a beautiful family. I've mentioned them before. Two brilliant, insightful, creative, stable, and loving women who are raising a son together. He's an amazing kid, creative and free to a degree that I was never allowed to be. They may not be perfect--no family is--but they're still the kind of family that I always wished I was secretly part of, that would realize someday that I didn't belong in that fearful and angry place, that I didn't belong where intelligence was something to be resentful of, that I didn't belong in a family where people intimidated each other and did violence to each other. I thought--like many kids in my position--that someday my real family would find me.

I didn't care whether that family had one mom or two, one dad or two. I just wanted somebody around who could look at me and know me for who I was, and still somehow love me. I just wanted somebody I could trust to be proud of me when I succeeded, and be there for me when I didn't. I wanted somebody I didn't have to be afraid of, or threatened by. I wanted what every lonely, angry little girl in my position wants. I wanted safety and love, and I didn't care who from, as long as it was real.

Four more states. Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, and Iowa. Four states are finally done telling my friends and their son that kids should grow up like I did and not like their son will, because their son won't have a "real" family (not a good, wholesome American one like mine, at least). Four states are done defining a real, government-sanctioned family as one with the right composition of sexes and not one with the right kind of love and unity.

Shows what the rest know. I may have had a "real" family, but I spent my whole childhood wishing I had anything else, anywhere else, with a group of people like my friends and their son. If they're not a family, what is? If their son isn't part of a family, then what the hell am I?

What's a family to you? Has anyone ever told you that you don't have one? That you shouldn't have one? Can you even imagine what that feels like? I don't know if I can, but the closer I get the more deeply it hurts. I don't want anyone to feel that.

So here's a hat tip to these four states. We're far from done, but a little hope goes a long way.

Blog Rundown!

Stuff I've been reading.

United States "lapsing Into Paganism." I, for one, welcome our new Pagan pervert overlords.

Public opinion on US war prisoner policies: it's not what you think. Should we keep Guantanamo open? Is torture okay? Are we doing it? Should we investigate our leaders for war crimes if we decide that we're doing it?

Russia drops their missile plans because Americans aren't being idiots anymore.

US President adopted into Crow tribe. An older article, but one I just found. Very cool!

Dear White People. An essay that had me pondering for a good few hours.

Being "colour blind" is NOT a solution. Another very good one.

Yes! Go Connecticut!

An article for those of you who haven't heard yet!

Connecticut okays same-sex marriage.

Connecticut's Supreme Court ruled Friday that same-sex couples have the right to marry, making the state the third behind Massachusetts and California to legalize such unions. The divided court ruled 4-3 that gay and lesbian couples cannot be denied the freedom to marry under the state constitution, and Connecticut's civil unions law does not provide those couples with the same rights as heterosexual couples.

"Interpreting our state constitutional provisions in accordance with firmly established equal protection principles leads inevitably to the conclusion that gay persons are entitled to marry the otherwise qualified same sex partner of their choice," Justice Richard N. Palmer wrote in the majority opinion that overturned a lower court finding. "To decide otherwise would require us to apply one set of constitutional principles to gay persons and another to all others," Palmer wrote.

I am absolutely thrilled about this. I've been seriously considering for a long time now that as long as a same-sex couple cannot marry in my state, I won't marry either. I'll get a domestic partnership agreement or whatever it is they're allowed to do. My small part to erode the "separate but equal" tripe that privileges my relationship above a same-sex relationship for no good reason.

While Indiana is certainly a long ways away from coastal states that are giving all their residents the same freedom to participate in the same legal contracts regardless of sex, this is hope. And I'm glad of it, for all of us.

Damn Mexicans!

So I read someone complaining about the reason so many people in the US are out of a job is that Mexicans have stolen them.

Now, the obvious first point is that many of these people supposedly believe in the free market above all else. For them to cry "wait that's not fair!" when they lose out to competition that's willing to work more for less... it's just a little disingenuous.

That's not what got me thinking, though. What got me thinking was the similarity between these claims and claims by various ethnic groups that they have to compete with other ethnic groups for marriage. I remember hearing men in my family complain when I was a child that lots of women want to date black men because they have bigger cocks. Really. That's the only reason. "That's just not fair, them comin' in with them huge cocks! They stealin' our wimminz!"

Even in Europe where they're supposedly so much more comfortable with other cultures than America is... there's a long history of warring ethnic groups putting out propaganda explicitly aimed at convincing like to marry like. "Our girls marry our girls. Your girls marry your girls." Yes, this is about ethnic and cultural purity, but it wouldn't be a problem if men in each culture weren't so afraid they would prove unable to "measure up" against (read: "compete with") the foreigners.

I have no sympathy for this. Women aren't refusing to date these white guys because their dicks aren't big enough. Women are probably refusing to date them because (like my father) they're narrow-minded blockheaded assholes. In short: they aren't succeeding in the market because they themselves aren't competitive, not because someone else has an unfair advantage. The solution is for these men to adjust to the market demands for guys who aren't assholes, not to bitch about how the ones who're succeeding don't really deserve it. When someone else offers something that makes them more competitive (whatever it may be), the rules of the free market state that they're not cheating. They're competing.

So to all those people bitching about how Mexicans are stealing your jobs (just like Irish people used to steal our jobs and Italians used to steal our jobs and Chinese people used to steal our jobs) ask yourself how badly you want that strawberry-picking job. Badly enough to compete for it as vigorously as the Mexicans? Badly enough to work for almost nothing with no job security and no benefits with an employer who will likely abuse you physically or sexually?

Do you really want that job you just lost to a Mexican?

No?

Then it's not their fault you don't have a job, is it? It's yours, for not being willing to flow with the market. No wonder you got left behind, eh?

Granted, this only applies to people who can simultaneously believe that A) the free market will solve all problems, but B) that they've somehow been slighted by the introduction of competition for jobs.

You guys. You wouldn't even be worried about this shit if we didn't have unions that pushed decades ago for things like minimum wage and job benefits. If this were the Industrial Revolution, you'd be willing to compete on an equal ground with the Mexicans because you'd be used to working the way they work: in unsafe conditions and for a pittance.

These people just annoy me because it doesn't seem like they're thinking very carefully about all these things they're claiming simultaneously. I want several things from them. If you're going to cry foul every time competition doesn't work out in your favor, maybe you could also adjust your own demands to make yourselves more competitive. Or, and here's a thought, you should re-evaluate how strong your faith in the free market really is now that you're the one losing out.

I don't care which you do. Just start making sense, please.

Women in "Godly Marriages"

I was having a discussion once with a born-again Christian who was arguing passionately that it is best for women to be under the "loving headship" of a man, the way that the church is under the loving headship of Christ. The ideal marriage is not an egalitarian one, but one in which a man governs the woman based on his own consideration and love for her.

I did not see this as an ideal marriage, and have little interest in it. I'm one of those college-educated "women's libbers" who feels that I'm qualified to have my own means of economic support, and the same social and political autonomy as a man. Most importantly, I feel I'm better off this way.

My issue with taking the gender roles offered in the Bible at face value is that traditional heteronormative (if you'll forgive the jargon) marriage roles are upheld as "Biblical" (which is itself a largely-undefined term), but advocates are really just picking and choosing from what's in the Bible to support what they'd like.

Now, I know that "picking and choosing" is a trigger-phrase for a lot of people who are debating the Bible, and it's often used as a way to instantly condemn as "UnBiblical" whoever gets it applied to them. I feel it's appropriate here, though. There are a lot of aspects of the submissive-woman/leading-man arrangement that clearly came from the culture in which the Bible was written.

Levirate marriage is the best example of this I can think of. Because women in those times didn't have any economic power of their own (aside from prostitution, which is not exactly desirable), they had to be married to survive. If their husband died, it was his brother's duty to marry the widow (often in addition to his own wife) so that he could support her and give her the offspring that his late brother could not.

This came up in Matthew 22:23, and Christ doesn't deny the worth of this practice. He just says that in the world to come NO ONE will be married. If Christ had a problem with the practice, that was his chance to say something. He did not, and Matthew 22:23 is actually a better argument against romantic relationships overall than it is against Levirate marriage.

The reason I bring up Levirate marriage is that it's a practice that was assumed as normal in the time of Christ, and not condemned by him as adultery. The reason people don't practice it today is because we live in a different culture. "Oh, that's just what they did then," people say. "We know better now. Marriage is between one man and one woman, and these are the obligations each has to the other. The Bible says so (in the parts that we choose if we ignore the parts that we don't like)."

Marriage in the time of Christ (and in the early church of Christ) was a much more complex thing than it gets credit for, and if we can accept that Levirate marriage doesn't belong in our modern society, why are we blindly accepting all gender roles attributed to the Bible? To put it another way, if we can trace practices like Levirate marriage back to the culture of the Bible's authors and thus dismiss their applicability for us, but we ascribe divine sanctity and authority to the parts we DO like... how is that honest? At the very least I think it requires that we find another definition of what counts as "Biblical," since clearly "it's okay in the Bible" is not enough.

Of course, another alternative is to pay close attention to what the cultural atmosphere was like at the time the Bible was written. What did the authors take for granted? What was "normal" to them, and what was deplorable? It was normal and natural to them that a woman could not support herself without a man. It was normal and natural to them that if men are good, women will be supported. If men are not good, women are the ones who suffer. Oh well.

And that's my big problem with attempting to reinstate millenia-old cultural norms by encouraging women to be economically dependent on men. Sure, in an ideal world this'd all work out fine. But we don't live in an ideal world, and in the world where we live now... if anybody in this system fall short (which Christian theology teaches that they must) women suffer. Women will bear the brunt of their own failings AND the failings of the men on whom they are dependent.

That's why feminists don't like these gender roles. It's not that they hate men. It's that men have to be perfect in order for this system to work, and even Christian theology admits that this is a lost cause. Because feminists are concerned with women being able to survive in a world where humans are imperfect, they assert that women need to have their own social and economic viability. Feminists therefore take issue with the Christian "traditional" marriage. It assumes that it's important for women to be healthy, safe, and otherwise well off, but not important enough to build a system that will actually produce that end.

For Human Rights Blogging Action!

California... we have our differences... but you won today. You won everything ever. Go you. Gods willing the rest of the nation will stop dragging its ass and catch up to this decision.

"I brought this on myself; I knew at the start how He gets..."

James McGrath posted in his blog about a comment I made in class one day. Now, I'm starting from the common metaphor that the relationship between God and Israel (or Christ and his Church, take your pick) is analogous to the relationship between a man and his wife. Men and their wives are close, have bonds of loyalty and mutual respect and various obligations they owe one another. They even cause each other pain, as men and wives can. As cited on that page:

Rabbi Joshua ben Levi says: “The Assembly of Israel said to the Holy One: Even though He embitters me and causes me to suffer, He shall lie between my breasts” (Yalkut Shimoni, Song of Songs, 984).

This gets me to my next point. McGrath links 1 Corinthians 10:6-12.

We should not test the Lord, as some of them did—and were killed by snakes. And do not grumble, as some of them did—and were killed by the destroying angel. These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come. So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall!

This goes beyond the acceptance that spouses may occasionally inadvertently hurt each other. Every time Israel displeases God, a great and terrible wrath is unleashed, to human eyes seeming way out of proportion to the crimes committed. And yet Israel is still to blame for these outbursts. No matter what God does, if it was something Israel did to set Him off... Israel is required to repent. Israel must not test the Lord, and Israel must not complain. Otherwise God is left doing something terrible and asking, "Baby, why do you make me hit you? You know how I get."

I could easily end here and say that Christianity is essentially patriarchal, both based in misogyny and perpetuating it by elevating it to God-like behavior. But that's a boring place to end, and reserved for really lazy scholars. The big question is, which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Did ideas about God's right to abuse Israel give the Israelites fuel to abuse their wives? Or did the norms of Israelite marriage color their portrayal of God's relationship with Israel? One thing seems certain: the normative relationship between married people in America does not include one party using corporeal punishment to discipline the other, and then blaming the violence on the disciplined party. In this our cultural context is very different from what the Israelites were taking for granted.

Now, does this mean we have to throw out the spousal metaphor because our spousal relationships have changed? Or can we keep the spousal metaphor and change our relationship with God to suit it? Now that women are encouraged to take onto themselves more autonomy and agency, even at the expense of their husbands' power, does that recast the roles of God and Israel, or of Christ and the Church? Just as women are demanding more respect and consideration from men, are Christians free to demand more respect and consideration from God?

It seems to me that we either have to throw out the spousal metaphor now that men aren't allowed to abuse women the way God abuses Israel, or we have to demand that God keep up with modern ideals. I personally find this latter option much more interesting. If men and women are rightly treated as equals in a marriage, does that mean that God and Israel should be rightly treated as equals?

This implication totally turns the mainstream Christian hierarchy on its head. While Judaism allows for much more dispute with God (Israel itself means "struggle with God"), Christianity tends to adopt a much more submission-oriented approach. The assumption that humans must submit to God no matter what seems at odds with the "equality resolution." The only option then is to decide we're wrong to treat men and women as equals. Instead of changing our relationship with God to fit our modern social context, we must reverse our modern social context to match an earlier relationship with God.

It seems in the interest of Biblical orthodoxy one would have to choose the latter. It's the neatest way to seal up this nasty friction resulting from a metaphor that no longer seems to apply. Return everyone to the conditions under which the metaphor worked.

Still. As a woman who doesn't particularly want to go that route, I'll suggest a new relationship with God. What happens when humans demand the equality and respect from God that wives demand of husbands? It might require a re-imagining of God's place in our lives, and that re-imagining may essentially change a religion whose core is "submit yourselves to God; He knows best." If we essentially change Christianity to fit God into new ideas of mutual spousal respect, is it still Christianity anymore? If no... what is it?