Phoenix Allows Gays Hospital Visitation Rights

Photo courtesy of theliberaloc.com

Gays in Phoenix have been celebrating--to some extend--since yesterday. The city, smacked in the middle of Republican land, has launched the domestic-partner registry.

But before anyone can say, "welcome to the land of Dorothy," reality sets in and the fantasy ebbs. This registry is designed only to provide one, and only one, benefit: hospital visitation rights. Straight, unmarried couples who live together can also register for this same benefit.

So why all the hoopla? In some states, like Florida, my home state (click here for related Florida story), gays cannot even have this basic human right. Advocates of this registry hope that this small step toward equality will lead to giant leaps forward, akin to what happened in California, which started with a limited domestic partnership act of 1999 that gradually expanded to cover a multiple array of benefits, ranging from health to legal adoption of a partner's last name.

All that was progress until the fatal Proposition 8 this past November. For every step forward, it seems as though we take half a step back. Such is human progress. Click here and here for articles on the Phoenix initiative.

When "Making HIstory" Does Clinton In

I am a big fan of Hillary Clinton. Why you ask? I read her autobiography, Making History, from cover to cover. I read with bated breath the part about her parents' neighbors in Arkansas--a gay couple, a doctor and a nurse--who befriended her parents. This was more than a neighborly friendship. The gay couple came to her parents' aid in the worst of times whilst they daughter was thousands of miles away in Washington, DC battling a "right-wing conspiracy." That grace can enter one's life in the darkest moments is always a turning point. And so it was for Clinton; she credits this expression of unqualified love for her steadfast support of gay rights.

Well, fast forward to many years later on, now to be precise. Just a few days ago, Washington GLBT friendly politicians, including openly out Wisconsin Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, have begun lobbying Clinton, in her role as secretary of state, to reverse the longstanding discriminatory policy toward US State Department employees' same-sex partners.

Also, at the department level, diplomats and officials have begun making the same kind of noise. Read this comment from a gay diplomat made during a "town meeting" with other officials:

Ralan Hill, a gay diplomat, called the policy “active discrimination against me and my family.”
“As one example, if I were assigned overseas to a post that came under a mandatory evacuation order, I would be required to leave, although the Department is under no legal obligation to do anything to help my partner. He could be left literally to fend for himself in a war zone,” Hill told Clinton (comment excerpted from this article).

Clinton responded in this manner:

She agrees that this was a “real concern” of “workplace fairness, employee retention, and the safety and effectiveness of our embassy communities worldwide.”

“So I have asked for a staff review of current policies, especially those that are set forth in State Department regulations and recommendations, and a strategy for making effective changes,” Clinton said.

But then Clinton threw this zinger. It is one of those that reminds you how complicated the legacy of the Clintons is.

Clinton reminded the audience that the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) tied her hands since hat legislation defined marriage as a heterosexual union as applied to federal employees and partners.

And of course, DOMA was signed into law by none other than her husband--President Clinton. It's more than awkward; it's downright embarrassing. How will Clinton extricate herself from this tangled web of past ties?

Vermont Moves Closer to Legalizing Gay Marriage

Photo credit: www.farm1.static.flickr.com
By LISA RATHKE – 11 hours ago
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — Nine years after becoming the first state to permit civil unions, Vermont moved a step toward legalizing gay marriage Friday.
A bill that would allow same-sex unions was introduced in the Legislature, causing a crowd of about several hundred supporters to gather at the Statehouse in celebration.
"This really is a great day and a part of moving forward to a time when all Vermont couples will be treated equally under our laws," said a sponsor, Rep. Mark Larson.

I am not surprised that Vermont is going down this road. Attitudes in New England states have always been more progressive, more cosmopolitan. That in stark contrast to those in the Far West. Will New York, the Empire State, be the next one to go down this road of openness and equality?

Click here for full article.

"Schooled in Murder" (Book Review)

"An acrimonious English department faculty meeting at Chicago-area Grover Cleveland High leads to murder in Zubro's intriguing 12th Tom and Scott mystery (after 2006's Everyone's Dead but Us ). English teacher Tom Mason's troubles begin after he discovers the corpse of teacher Gracie Eberson, an eraser stuck in her mouth, in a supply room also occupied by two male teachers engaged in a sexual tryst. The guilty pair deny Tom's official report about their illicit activity, and an anonymous tip implicates Tom in Eberson's murder. When the dead body of another teacher turns up behind Tom's car, Tom turns sleuth. Tom's lover, Scott Carpenter, and such friends as Meg Swarthmore, Grover Cleveland's feisty librarian, and police officer Frank Rohde lend support. Zubro, a high school English teacher himself, invests this whodunit with sharp insights into what can happen when prejudice rules as well as timely lessons on educational chicanery."

As described by Publisher's Weekly Review, this novel by Mark Richard Zubro, is a murder mystery with a gay twist. Published in 2008 by the reputable St Martin's Minotaur, the work is the latest addition to Zubro's "The Tom and Scott Mysteries" series.

For book nerds like myself, reading is a pleasure. This is particularly so for a teacher like myself, who spend endless hours plodding through mind-numbing student papers. But trying to find insightful, high quality reading material, in this over-commercialized and visually oriented age of ours is like trying to find needles in a haystack, to borrow a well-worn saying.

Thankfully, "Schooled in Murder" passes the muster--by the wisp of a hair (or should it be, by the particles of an eraser?). Pettiness arising from oversized egos rears its ugly head, and soon, it feeds into the twin murders at this high school. Each death in retrospect is not unexpected, as the disparate pieces begin to fall into place.

The protagonist, Tom Mason, finds himself in a conundrum. The discovery of the first body takes place soon after he stumbled upon a gay "sexual tryst." Incidentally, this so-called tryst is your typical gay man meets married man affair. But there is more tryst than sex here, just to forewarn you. As you read this novel, you probably will wonder: Does this tryst play a role in Tom being implicated in this murder? Is Tom indirectly being blackmailed? And what is the relationship between this first and the second murder?

Enjoy this book. It is a quick read. My one criticism is that the author sometimes chooses to use overly high-flaunt diction, when it is not necessary to do so. After all, this is not Walt Whitman-like, either in contents or theme.

The Small Steps of a Long Road to Equality

Just a few days ago, University of Tampa, a private university in Tampa, Florida, finally after a long, hard fought fifteen-year struggle by faculty and students alike granted same-sex partner benefits to its employees. Read here for the full report.

The piece cited the following statistics:
"Other private universities, including Lynn, Nova Southeastern and the University of Miami, offer domestic partner benefits, as do approximately 80 percent of U.S. News & World Report’s top 50 colleges and more than half of Fortune 500 companies, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education." But of course, lots of other schools, public and private, in Florida still have their doors slammed shut to the proposition of domestic partnership benefits.

For me, someone who lives in the Greater Tampa Bay area, it is no surprise that the struggle in this subregion--the fight for true equality--has been long and hard. And sometimes the struggle has been as simple as convincing young minds to just be willing to listen to the voices of a different world.

Colleagues who teach in surrounding colleges often tell me that homophobia is still strong on campuses. I remember as a college teacher myself in this area, facing resistance from students who protested against a short story written by William Faulkner just because the author in passing mentioned that one of his character "liked men." Or take the time my students several years found a Walt Whitman poem, "Calvary Crossing the Ford," supposedly unacceptable because the poet paid homage to the bravado or masculinity of the men. The students' opposition in this case lies, I suspect, Whitman being a homosexual, rather than his elegy to these men's courage. I can also tell you the time when some students complained to the school's dean about a poem by a lesbian writer who wrote passionately of the intersections, and triple oppressions, of race, gender, and sexuality. This was a poem that had to rely on profanity to make its pointed argument. And I could go on and on, but you get the point.

Today, after all what I deem to be unnecessary drama, I am still teaching that short story and poems, and many other so-called controversial writings. I still have the dream, that one day, our fears of the unknown, of the "Other," can somehow be put to rest, and that we will rise to greet the world.

Repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" Will Lead to Gay Marriages?

Image courtesy of http://diocuore.blogtownhall.com/2008/08/08/openly_homosexual_marines.thtml

Recently Religious Right organizations and other right-wing groups are making noise that President Obama will not only repeal the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy for the armed services, but also, that any such repeal will be a "back door" to gay marriages. Does that make sense to you? It doesn't to me.

For one thing, as one conservative gay journalist (yes, they do exist!) cum former marine cum former porn star (ok, your head might spin at this point) argues that the rank and file do not care about the "gay issue." It has no bearings on the morale or discipline within the services. Click here to read his arguments, which unfortunately, were forwarded to argue against repealing the existing policy. At least, he and I agree on the supporting premises, if not the conclusion!

Now consider the logic of repealing such a policy leading to the sanctioning and legalizing of gay marriages. Repealing such a policy requires an executive order that the president issues. But legalizing gay marriages requires at least the assent of the jurisprudence, as we have seen in recent years in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and California. And it probably will demand a nationwide law in place such as those in countries as diverse as Spain, Mexico, and Canada that have embraced gay marriage or variations of it. Such a law has to pass in the US Congress.

So how can repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" lead to gay marriages? Perhaps the only impact such a repeal can have on the second hot button issue is in galvanizing support for gay marriages. But even then, trends in polling show that Americans are more and more against this military policy but still fairly stable in their opposition to gay marriages. So it is unlikely that Americans will be persuaded to see the ending of this policy as endorsement for gay marriages. I think Americans on the whole can see this military policy as unwise, irrational, and even downright silly but still balk at endorsing gay marriages. For one thing, the current policy undermines our readiness and sends the wrong signal to many of our allies that already accepted gays into the military whereas gay marriage is seen by many Americans as far more muddled since it has been demonized as the antithesis of the Judeo-Christian paradigm of the nuclear family.

"Long Term Relationship" (Film Review)

It has taken me forever to get my hands on this film, originally made for the gay cable channel, Here! Apparently, this is a favorite movie among some Blockbuster customers as it is always checked out. Last night I finally got to watch to it. Long-Term Relationship(97 mins.) is billed as a romantic comedy and for the most part, it does deliver that much and a little more.

Glenn (played by Matthew Montgomery, a so-so attractive guy) has been doing what some 30-something gay men do: "whoring" around, going from one meaningless fling (if you can even call it that) to another. Then, one day, he decides he has had enough of the single scene in Los Angles. How he arrives at this moment of epiphany left me confused as there is little explanation for this turning point. I guess that is the "beauty" of this genre of films--the contrived becomes uncontrived. So Glenn next consults the personals, hoping to find his soul mate.

Glenn soon meets Adam (played by hunky Windham Beacham--is there anything about him a gay man would not like?). who conveniently is a true southern gentleman who has just moved from Atlanta. Glenn falls for Beacham, but then complications arise. Beacham has a secret--one that shocks Glenn and his skeptical friends. The secret is also good for a few laughs. But the next complication seems even more of a greater hurdle and it raises the eternal question--are they compatible with each other?

The movie throws in a very progressive set of parents for Adam that surprises Glenn. In contrast, some of Glenn's friends are distant from Adam, creating some tension along the way. Both Adam and Glenn must navigate these relationships in order to sort out their own budding love affair.

The film overall is sweet, though thankfully not saccharinely so. It has some funny lines, even though others are pretty corny. I would recommend watching this film with a romantic date, though never with a one-nite stand unless you want to undermine the agenda for the evening later on.