4 posts tagged “lgbtqi”
Check out the LA Times article here.
In a 4-3 ruling, the justices rule that state marriage laws are unconstitutional.
SAN FRANCISCO — – The California Supreme Court ruled today that same-sex couples should be permitted to marry, rejecting state marriage laws as discriminatory.
The state high court’s 4-3 ruling was unlikely to end the debate over gay matrimony in California. A group has circulated petitions for a November ballot initiative that would amend the state Constitution to block same-sex marriage, while the Legislature has twice passed bills to authorize gay marriage. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed both.
Finally, some decisive action on this!
Here's a quote from our shitty, shitty Governor, Mr. Schwarzenegger, that makes me feel a little more secure in today's ruling:
"I respect the Court's decision and as Governor, I will uphold its ruling. Also, as I have said in the past, I will not support an amendment to the constitution that would overturn this state Supreme Court ruling."
The Kentucky Senate has passed a bill that, if passed in the House, will ban universities and state agencies from offering benefits to the partners of gay and lesbian employees.
Even worse than the actual decision is the way the Courier Journal describes those who voted against it. One was labeled a “homosexual” after his only quote in the article. The entire article is riddled with quotes about why people felt this ban should be passed. Of course, the big shocker, religious values played a huge part. Vernie McGaha, R-Russell Springs, the bill’s sponsor, said:
“I do not recognize domestic partnerships as being a correct thing. My Bible teaches against it.”
Of course, the ridiculous thing behind it all, is that it hurts the Universities in the area. It also hurts the students, who may not get a top quality education in Kentucky because the University couldn’t recruit one expert due to their sexuality and lack of available partner benefits.
University presidents have opposed the bill, saying it hurts their ability to recruit researchers and professors.
University of Louisville trustees voted in 2006 to become the state’s first public university to extend health-insurance benefits to unmarried domestic partners, including homosexuals. the University of Kentucky followed suit, and Eastern Kentucky University is looking at the issue.
Nearly 300 universities and colleges across the country, and more than half of the Fortune 500 companies, provide such benefits, according to the Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights advocacy group based in Washington.
“Our position is and remains that we are hopeful the legislature will allow the universities to have the flexibility to make health-care decisions for their employees and their families,” UK spokesman Jay Blanton said.
U of L spokesman John Drees said the bill would make it difficult to work toward its goal of becoming a top metropolitan research university — a goal the General Assembly set in 1997.
“If you want to compete with the best universities and the best corporations, you need to be able to offer the same types of benefits they offer,” he said.
This just SCREAMS DISCRIMINATION! I never understood why sexuality was such a difficult thing for people to comprehend discrimination of. Religions are constantly fighting for their right not to be discriminated against, and yet, that is a chosen identity. Identities that you are born with, such as gender (unless you change it), race, etc have been protected from discrimination for quite awhile… but sexuality has not. And that’s because the church has people believing that homosexuality is a choice, and therefore a sin:
They also see a homosexual orientation as being a choice. Because they see this “behavior” as wrong (at one point, it was criminal) and preventable, they view the LGBT community as asking for special rights that allow them access to the insitutions that privilege heterosexuals. The process goes something like this: if sin as a choice, and homosexuality is a sin, then homosexuality must be a chosen path. This argument is, essentially, flawed because it is based on the idea that being LGBT is a choice. (For the sake of time and length, I am not going to go into LGBT as being inborn v. chosen v. environmental debate. My reasons for this are because the Christian Right does not, so I do not need to do so to deconstruct their argument.)
Religious identity is a choice. And according to the Christian Right, being “a homosexual” is also a choice. If religious identity wasn’t a choice, it would be assigned in the ways that gender and race are. Religion is, however, a chosen identity.
Religion is, also, protected by the Consitution. Sexuality is not. This is special rights. The Christian Right’s response to this accusation is that they are not special rights because the designers of the Consitution put them in there, so they shouldn’t be removed. While it is true that religion was added into the Consitution and is protected by law, this response to the argument that religious identity does not dodge the issue of special rights. This still doesn’t answer the question of why religion gets protection but sexuality does not.
Chosen identity or not, there is simply not reason whatsoever that a person’s “choice” to be gay (or straight!) should lead to discrimination in every aspect of their life. The right to marry, secure health care from a partner, safe work environments and protection from employment discrimination, adoption, child custody, and more, are all rights that are not granted to LGBT individuals at the federal level. Instead, they are granted on a case-by-case basis.
My advice? Move to California. It’s nice.
Equality is an abstract concept. I don’t believe that it is something that can easily be defined. But apparently, every year, the World Economic Forum thinks it can easily define gender equality. This year, the evaluated 128 countries. The WEF just released the Global Gender Gap Report for 2007. According to their website, it measures gender equality across the following four areas:
1. Economic participation and opportunity – outcomes on salaries, participation levels and access to high-skilled employment
2. Educational attainment – outcomes on access to basic and higher level education
3. Political empowerment – outcomes on representation in decision-making structures
4. Health and survival – outcomes on life expectancy and sex ratio
I sat and stared at these categories for awhile and tried to figure out what about them it was that bothered me. It took me some time and a lot of thinking, but then I realized it. And it was so obvious. They didn’t even consider choice. And I’m not talking about pro-choice or anti-choice, I’m talking about the choice to excel economically or to be a stay at home father.
You can’t measure choice. And if you can’t measure choice, how can you measure equality?
If there’s one thing in the United States you can say to a room with pretty much any demographic and get an extremely negative response from a large amount of people, it’s “tell me how you feel about special rights”. We have this obsession with denying people “special” rights, which kind of goes against American individualism, but that’s an entirely different topic.
I never really could put my finger on what it was that bothered me about the Christian Right being so against LGBTQI rights. Other than the fact that they’re being complete bigots with no respect for human variance, I couldn’t really figure out what about their arguments bothered me so much.
And then I read this book*, and it all made sense.
The Christian Right argues that LGBTQI individuals should not be allowed access to marriage, adoption processes, and other civil rights due to their sexuality**, which they see as a sin. They also see a homosexual orientation as being a choice. Because they see this “behavior” as wrong (at one point, it was criminal) and preventable, they view the LGBTQI community as asking for special rights that allow them access to the insitutions that privilege heterosexuals. The process goes something like this: if sin as a choice, and homosexuality is a sin, then homosexuality must be a chosen path. This argument is, essentially, flawed because it is based on the idea that being LGBT(QI) is a choice. (For the sake of time and length, I am not going to go into LGBTQI as being inborn v. chosen v. environmental debate. My reasons for this are because the Christian Right does not, so I do not need to do so to deconstruct their argument.)
The flaw was not obvious to me at first. And then I saw it.
Religious identity is a choice. And according to the Christian Right, being LGBT(QI) is also a choice. If religious identity wasn’t a choice, it would be assigned in the ways that gender and race are. Religion is, however, a chosen identity.
Religion is, also, protected by the Consitution. Sexuality is not. This is special rights. The Christian Right’s response to this accusation is that they are not special rights because the designers of the Consitution put them in there, so they shouldn’t be removed. While it is true that religion was added into the Consitution and is protected by law, this response to the argument that religious identity does not dodge the issue of special rights. This still doesn’t answer the question of why religion gets protection but sexuality does not.
Now, this contradiction could be avoided entirely if the Christian Right changed their position on the origin(s) of homosexuality. However, if the Christian Right changes their position on homosexuality from that of choice to something else (either inborn, environmental, or a myriad of other factors that are still under debate), they can no longer blame the homosexual individuals for their “sins”. If homosexuality is no longer a choice, then same-sex sexual acts are no longer a sin. If homosexuality is no longer a choice, then it should be just as protected as other identities, including race, sex, gender, ethnicity, class, education level, religion, etc.
There are no federal laws preventing job discrimination based on sexual orientation.
There are no federal laws to protect hate crimes against LGBTQI individuals (there are, but they are very limited and only apply if the crime is committed during/after a federally protected act or on federal property). Hate crimes are not thought crimes. Hate speech? Well that’s a fine line I’m not prepared to walk (again, time and length), but not everything you say is protected by “freedom of speech” and there’s nothing wrong with that.
As of 2004, there are 1,138 federal benefits of marriage that are denied to same-sex couples as civil unions or domestic partners.
These aren’t special rights, they’re equal rights. I don't understand the hatred.
* Please take note that this book was written published in 1999, so it doesn’t have information on Lawrence v. Texas or the goings on in Massachusetts.
** I use the acronym LGBQTI to encompass the entire community, which the Christian Right as rallies against as a whole. While the propoganda on “sexuality” targets LGBTQ individuals, it does not talk about intersexed people. Intersexuality is not a sexuality, it is merely a biological welding of the male and female genders together in some way. Even though the Christian Right does not explicitly mention anything against intersex individuals in their anti-gay rhetoric, I’ve included it in the acronym because they church targets the entire community with their tactics.
