At Last...

He and his husband are both in the Navy. He was quoted as saying this has been a "really, really big year for them."

I just found out that Etta James's "At Last" was the first dance song at the wedding reception following Seattle's first day of marriage equality, wherein 138 same-sex couples said their vows, exchanged their rings, and sometimes debated who was taking whose last name, and I am in literal tears.

BAHAHAHAHA

"We were discussing gay marriage in class and some girl was like ‘God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve’ and another girl was like ‘God ain’t create that cheap-ass lace front on your head either. That shit is Lucifer-made.’"

(via come correct)

Marriage equality photoset

(reblogged from Indie. Radiant.)

Maryland officially legalized same-sex marriages today. Meanwhile, the governor of St. Petersburg wants to make it illegal to read, write, or say the word "gay".

A number of my friends are of the opinion that I need to become less US-centered. Thus, I bring these two pieces of news into conversation with one another and urge you to sign this petition to let the governor of St. Petersburg know that potential tourists won't stand for this.

I support LGBTQQI rights and marriage equality to the core of the core of my being.

Call me controversial (please, it would make me happy), but I honestly don't understand how I, as a Black person, could think otherwise. Well, okay, I don't understand how anyone as a human could feel otherwise, but that's beside the point. 

Monday was Martin Luther King Day, and I didn't post anything mainly because it was the day before all final papers were do and I was writing my heart out about Awkward Black Girl, but also because my feelings on him and his day haven't really changed since last year's post.

So, even if it's a few days late, what I want to say is this: our people and our allies in other communities dedicated (and dedicate, present-tense) their lives to ensuring that we would not be classified as "second class citizens," as lesser than anyone else on the basis of something as artificial as race, and that we wouldn't be subjected to the oxymoronic (is that a word?) standard of "separate, but equal." We know that separate is inherently unequal. It's the basis for life as we know it today. 

So how can we have the audacity to have demanded such rights and recognitions for ourselves and to work towards or even wish for the exact same rights and recognitions to be denied to others on the basis of their sexual orientation? Anyone who cries that race is a social construction must also recognize that normative conceptualizations of sexuality are just as socially constructed. 

So if you want to live the words of King and other civil rights leaders this week, next month, and in your daily life, watch this video. Cry like I did. And do. the. right. thing. Support marriage equality. Support non-discriminatory citizenship. Support love and family and justice.



 

L.O.V.E.

That's what the fight for marriage equality is about. Everything else is just a fringe benefit. The important thing is to recognize and validate love and commitment wherever they come in this world full of false starts and not-so-happy endings.

This ad actually made me tear up a little. 

SANCTITY OF MARRIAGE MY BLACK ASS.

Reblogged from The Angry Black Woman, who makes me happy.

2nd 30 Day Letter Challenge: Day 17--Letter to a Politician: Freddie D and my thoughts this 4th of July

Dear American Politicians,

This letter contains excerpts from Frederick Douglass's 1852 speech, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" 

1. "This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. I am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? Were the nation older, the patriot’s heart might be sadder, and the reformer’s brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought that America is young. Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. As with rivers so with nations."

 So today I ask, is America still young? 235 years is much longer than 76, but cannot hold a candle to thousands, as Freddie D suggests so eloquently. So do we still have time to work things out and became a nation whose values are not, in any way, hypocritical? Do we still have time to develop the backbone to stand for things we believe in rather than fall to popular opinion? Do we still have time for popular opinion to become informed? Do we still have time to care, to see the bigger picture, to remember the meaning of the word democracy? Or has our window for greatness closed? If all the masses do to observe today is barbecue and drink and watch some fireworks, who will remember the gritty history and the gritty details of the present? Sometimes I feel like we as a nation are hungover after having gotten drunk on our own ideals, and now we're too out of it to do anything but lay in bed with a cold compress and watch it all play out. We need to wake the fuck up and do something. That's the meaning of independence. In that vein:

2. "We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future. To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. But now is the time, the important time. Your fathers have lived, died, and have done their work, and have done much of it well. You live and must die, and you must do your work. You have no right to enjoy a child’s share in the labor of your fathers, unless your children are to be blest by your labors. You have no right to wear out and waste the hard-earned fame of your fathers to cover your indolence."

 Next I say that having never really experienced any other part of the world, I am patriotic almost to a fault. Though I hope to do some traveling eventually at some point, the US of A is the end-all be-all for me, and I'm okay with that. There's nothing I'd rather be than American. There is nothing I would rather be than a black American, but that means that, like Freddie D all those years ago, I would like to call attention to the things America overlooks as we celebrate ourselves today. He calls attention to the peculiar institution of American slavery:

3. "I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave’s point of view. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery-the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;" I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just. But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more, and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light?"

I would like to call attention to its lasting effects, as well as to the lasting effects of the fourth value this country was raised on: 'life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness[, and patriarchy].' I want to ask you, America, whether you are celebrating poverty and the disproportionate percentages of women, children, and people of color [and their women and children most of all] who fall below the poverty line in this country. I want to call attention to the wage gap between men and women. I want to call attention to the fact that, according to multiple very-well run audit studies by one of my professors, Devah Pager, it is easier for a white man with a criminal record than a black man with no criminal background to get a JOB in this country, and that was BEFORE the recession hit. I want you to remember the founders' cries of "No taxation without representation!" and ask yourself who exactly our legislators represent. Is the nation's best interest those of its richest or its poorest? America, are you celebrating our failing public schools? Our inability to truly separate church and state and recognize love in all its forms? The tightening and tightening of border control and anti-immigration sentiment in a land that once proclaimed 

"Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" --Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus", mounted inside the Statue of Liberty

America, have we EVER truly been the land of the free? Certainly not when my man Freddie was talking to you, certainly not now while we have the highest incarceration rates in the entire world. Certainly not now when getting caught with a bag of weed can lose not only your liberty, by sending you to prison, but also silences your voice (as many states ban ex-felons from the ability to vote), and makes it impossible to break the cycle of poverty and self-destruction (as you cannot receive federal financial aid or welfare).

"What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelly to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival."

So I ask you, how much has changed? I don't want to feel like I've abandoned my people--American women, American children, American people of color--by wearing my red, white, and blue today.


Maya

I'm black. "Ally" isn't even a strong enough term for my support of gay rights. THIS ISN'T THAT RADICAL. Get over it.

“It is something resting with the parties themselves, for them to decide. If they choose to face this possible prejudice and think that their own pursuit of happiness is better subserved by entering into this marriage with all its risks than by spending the rest of their lives without each other’s company and comfort, the state should not and cannot stop them.” –Justice Carter, Perez v. Lippold (California Supreme Court case from 1948)

The powerful language found in this week’s readings for my Race and the American Legal Process class, regarding the nullification of antimiscegenation laws struck me not only for the sheer forcefulness of the Courts’ opinion, but also for the clear and profound connections these decisions seemingly should have to the current gay rights movement. I have always had an understanding that the gay rights movement has ties to the civil rights movement, and as such been thoroughly disgusted with the heteronormativity and blatant homophobia that categorize such a substantial percentage the African-American community at large, but these court cases have elevated that understanding to a new level; I honestly cannot understand how, with such potent precedent to stand on the shoulders of, LGBT rights activists have not yet secured marriage as a “fundamental…basic civil right” for same-sex couples. My first question is what exactly places the freedom to marry within the scope of basic civil rights; when was it first guaranteed that citizens of the United States have a right to marry? And after gaining a better understanding of that history, I would like to know how the heteronormativity and homophobia that led to the Defense of Marriage Act differ from the white supremacy and precept of inferiority that led to the antimiscegenation and criminalization-of-sexual-relations laws Justices Traynor, Carter, and Warren speak so forcefully against?

Call me naïve, but I am imagining a world in which the quotes from the Perez v. Lippold and Loving v. Virginia read like this:

“Since the right to marry is the right to join in marriage with the person of one’s choice, a statute that prohibits an individual from marrying a member [of his or her same sex] restricts the scope of his choice and thereby restricts his right to marry.”

“The right to marry is the right of individuals, not of [groups of people with the same sexual orientation].”

“Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry or not marry, a person of [the same sex] resides within the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.”

Are these conceived statements really so farfetched? What would it take to bring them to fruition?