2009 Cincinnati Gay Pride!

Hi! Haven't posted in ages, too much summer, too much having fun endlessly with too little time to process or download to this. Nevertheless, here's some good photos. By the way, we remain one of the 18,000 gay couples legally wed in California.

'the only lasting question about today's events'

Just take a look at this excerpt from a joint statement issued by Iowa state Democratic senate majority leader and house speaker:

“The court has ruled today that when two Iowans promise to share their lives together, state law will respect that commitment, regardless of whether the couple is gay or straight.

"When all is said and done, we believe the only lasting question about today's events will be why it took us so long. It is a tough question to answer because treating everyone fairly is really a matter of Iowa common sense and Iowa common decency."

Op zoek naar Maria - Dans in het Centraal Station van Antwerpen

to delight kids and their moms--this event happened March 23, 2009 in the main train station in Antwerp, Belgium

Iowa and Vermont!

They just legalized gay marriage within one week, Washington DC city council votes to recognize gay marriages performed elsewhere too. I'm happy, shocked, our California marriage still in limbo, awaiting the word of the California Supreme Court.

Jon Stewart and Mike Huckabee on Gay Marriage

This is another straight white man, goddess love 'em sometimes, making our case, so clearly, and refusing to cede ground to "religion" or the fear of "redefining marriage." It's great--enjoy.

Why Heterosexuals Need Us to Never Ever Marry

(photos from http://election2008.advocate.com/proposition_8/index.html)

So this week I found out that a queer mom can do it all, go to a supremely heterosexual parenting conference and an anti-Proposition 8 rally in Cincinnati. As a result of all that emotional and analytical chaos I figured out a crucial cultural fact: I know why hetersexuals need us to never marry.

Two places I've been this week that are so different they shouldn't be on the same planet: Last weekend I went to my first parenting conference, with William Sears, the Leave No Child Inside Guy, other good people I'm sure, and Rosalind Wiseman, author of Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence. This parenting conference was 1,500 strong, and I found myself looking for anyone who looked like me, who could possibly be gay. I saw three (three!) women with short hair, and that was it. And I knew it was fantasy to even hope for gayness for two of those three. I found no mirror--saw some people who were probably hippy moms, quite a few baby-carrying moms, and some possibly poorer moms, but the percentage of blond moms and moms with floofy, bad haircuts was distressingly high. I was at sea in a storm of people I should have been able to identify with, and actually did--why else was I there, spending babysitting money I didn't have--but I was also adrift.

Now Wiseman was fierce--articulate, compassionate, loaded with info, and she said: to keep other adolescent girls in line, the top two threats are to call them "uptight" (being easy is better) and "dyke." For guys it's worse: it's "gay" and "fag." I've heard versions of this before but sitting there in the audience with only protecting my daughters in mind, thinking as a parent rather than as a scholar of gender and sexuality, wrecked me. I was crying by the end, unable to leave because the session had been so packed it took ten minutes for everyone to disperse, sitting in the back ransacking my little pink conference freebee bag for some distraction from the pain.

Then I go to the Proposition 8 rally in Cincinnati, with my kids of course, and friends. It was good, well-attended despite the rain, Margaret Cho spoke and sang a dirty ditty she'd composed about the Mormon Church and where they could put certain objects. Saw lots of people I identified with, though only a few moms.

So this is my conclusion: Keith Olberman and others who say: Let gays get married, it has nothing to do with you (you heterosexual who voted yes on 8)--is wrong, dead wrong. Judith Butler is right: we are necessary for heterosexuals to create themselves, and their sense of themselves, we are their boundaries--we limit them, as Wiseman, in other language--affirmed. And the Yes on 8 people are right on this one point: we will mess with with the notion of marriage, of their marriage in particular, and we will, given enough rights, seriously upend with their notion of themselves as heterosexual and as gendered. That's immense.

What does 'heterosexual' mean if not the opposite of gay, right?

Heterosexual:
1. you can marry,
2. you are privileged--even if you don't acknowledge it--
3. you are normal,
4. you are right.
5. you are godly

Gays are--and must stay--:
1. unable to marry
2. not privileged (oppressed)
3. abnormal
4. wrong.
5. sinful

And powerful as that is, that isn't even the half of it, because gayness is also, at its core, about gender. And as we riff on Wiseman via feminist theory, "dyke" and "fag" are on some level about gayness but really it's about maintaining gendered (heterosexual) norms. In other words queerness serves to make "boys" be properly male and "girls" be properly female. So:

What does "masculine" mean if not the opposite of gay? to Wiseman's adolescents (and to too many of us):

man:
1. masculine (in clothes, haircut, style, toughness, lack of emotion, film book and music choices, etc etc, it inflects so much)
2. oriented toward women
3. smart
4. normal
5. athletic

Gay:
1. effeminate
2. oriented toward men
3. stupid "that's so gay"
4. abnormal
5. unathletic

Of course there is also the stereotype of gay men as hypermasculine (both in muscles and funnily enough in being oriented towards men) and the stereotype of dyke as "masculine" and a world of other race-, class-, age-, region-based nuance--but that gets subtle, and this is not about subtle
or about truth, but about our cultural marriage of convenience with binary opposition, about stereotypes and
generalizations that have real effects.

So, heterosexuals NEED us to keep their kids on the straight and narrow, to help their adolescents grow up to be "properly" gendered and with "proper" sexual orientation. If the Mormon Church and other conservative groups allow "marriage" to complicate the sharp binary oppositions they themselves use to form their own sense of self, then their sense of self is blurred, confused, less boundaried. And you know that Mitt Romney and them are uptight, need uptightness, need boundariedness.

And that's why marriage is so important. For us, too. It is a shorthand for how they define themselves in terms of gender and sexual orientation. OF COURSE WE ARE THREATENING! But too bad for them, we are also right.

Keith Olbermann Speaks Out On Prop 8

Somtimes Olbermann is over the top, but I really like what he says to straight people who voted for this. Justice is justice.