Much is being made of the geographic clustering of counties where the majority of voters have approved R-71 (right, in green). Vote results are dismissed by some folk with a "well of course Puget Sound counties...". It is true that election results do rather neatly support the stereotype of Washington's east-west divide. But putting the R-71 results in historical context reveals a deeper story: almost every Washington county shows an increase in pro-equality voting.
The last time Washington voters had the opportunity to ratify a pro-equality law at the polls was in 1997. Initiative to the People 677 proposed an employment non-discrimination law. The ballot title read Shall discrimination based on sexual orientation be prohibited in employment, employment agency, and union membership practices, without requiring employee partner benefits or preferential treatment?.
The measure was rejected 59.7% to 40.3%. Contrary to the current image of the Puget Sound area of W ashington as progressive, not one single county - not even Seattle's home of King County - voted to approve I-677. Contrast that with the current election where the electorate as a whole approved R-71 and majorities in 8 of Washington's 39 counties have approved R-71. But the truly stunning statistic is that the rate of ballot measure approval increased between 1997 and 2009 in all but one county.
Another mark of progress is the fact that voters in 21 counties approved R-71 by over 40%. Forty percent was the average statewide approval rate for I-677 in 1997. Those 21 counties are: Clallam, Clark, Cowlitz, Grays Harbor, Island, Jefferson, King, Kitsap, Kittitas, Klickitat, Mason, Pacific, Pierce, San Juan, Skagit, Skamania, Snohomish, Thurston, Wahkiakum, Whatcom, Whitman.
As you consider the graph, realize tize that in contrast to R-71, I-677 was rather narrow in scope. It dealt only with the employment discrimination of individuals. Voting yes on I-677 didn't ask voters to contemplate the meaning of family; didn't ask voters to recognize the existence of gay and lesbian parents; didn't ask voters to find the fiction in school-focused scare tactics. In other words, not only have Washington voters moved towards equality in virtually every county, they've shown by their R-71 vote that they're open to supporting equality much more comprehensively in the law. This is big.
It's an open thread! Pleeeeease feel free to chat, blogwhore, and link-share in the comment thread...
So below is what my cartoon sockpuppet Bookworm Bob & I have been looking at since the weekend and Tuesday's election.
• I spoke about the City Council vote in Tampa yesterday. Well, the vote's in... St. Petersburg Times' Tampa council grants protections to transgender people:
The City Council on Thursday gave unanimous preliminary approval to expanding its human rights ordinance to protect transgender people from discrimination.But does that mean cross-dressers are protected, too?
Specifically, the ordinance prohibits discrimination on the basis of "gender identity and expression." ...
So the answer would be "Yes." Realistically, cross-dressing is so stigmatized in our society that not extremely few people would be going to work one day as Albert, the next day Alice, and the next day as Albert again. As a rule, trans people just don't alternate in their work presentations like that.
All that said, Hooray for Tampa, Florida!
• ABC News' Wall St. Before Main St. for H1N1 Vaccine? - Reports That CDC Set Aside Vaccine for Businesses Has Some Crying Foul:
Despite long lines at health clinics around the country prompted by widespead shortages of the vaccine for H1N1, some on Wall Street may have made their way to the front of the line, a public health watchdog group charged Thursday.Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has demanded an investigation into why the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention approved small amounts of H1N1 vaccine for distribution at 13 companies including Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase.
CREW executive director Melanie Sloan wrote a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. "Although CREW has been unable to uncover the demographic makeup of [these companies], surely it is safe to assume the vast majority of their employees are not pregnant women and children, young adults up to 24 years old, and healthcare workers," Sloan wrote. "Under these circumstances, it is the height of irresponsibility for the CDC to approve distribution of the vaccine to anywhere other than where it is most likely to be provided to those at the greatest risk." ...
Well, this can't be seen as good optics for the CDC and financial banking giants.
• From the UK's Times Online: Evangelical outrage over play featuring transsexual Jesus:
A controversial play which portrays Jesus as a transsexual woman was defended yesterday by its writer who has herself crossed the gender barrier to live as a woman.Jesus, Queen of Heaven, has caused a storm of protest from Christian evangelical groups, who picketed the Tron Theatre in Glasgow when it opened this week.
However, their attacks have caused deep offence to the play's author, who also acts the leading role. For Jo Clifford -- formerly the playwright John Clifford -- wrote the piece in an attempt to create greater understanding of transgendered people like herself.
The play's opening night was attended by about 300 demonstrators. Roman Catholics joined evangelical Christians for a two-hour protest during which they waved placards and sang hymns...
I feel the Christian love. 
[Below the fold: Trigger Alert for today's Washington DC Tea Party event sign, and the Wiener Story Of The Day.]
• ThinkProgress' Right-wing protesters at GOP rally display prominent sign tying health care to the Holocaust:
ThinkProgres fefs' Lee Fang snapped this photograph of a prominent sign being displayed at today's GOP anti-health care rally. It's unclear whether this sign is one of the many being handed out by Americans for Prosperity, the corporate front group sponsoring today's rally. The sign reads "National Socialist Health Care: Dachau, Germany -- 1945"
Seriously, the Tea-Baggers are just out of control.
• Our Wiener Story Of The Day: Peru, Indiana Tribune's Hot Dogs Shut Down Tigers; Peru ends season with 30-0 loss:
FRANKFORT - Frankfort's defense and ground game were too much for Peru to handle as the Tigers fell 30-0 in a Sectional 20 second-round matchup on Friday.Much of the game was played in a steady downpour and stiff wind, especially in the first half. The elements took passing out of the equation as the two teams combined to go 0-7 through the air.
Making it a ground game was more than fitting for the run-oriented Hot Dogs, who pounded the rock to the tune of 311 yards on 39 attempts.
Frankfort (7-4) quarterback Blake Ayers and wingback Korben Shirar spearheaded the attack. Ayers totaled 106 yards and two touchdowns, and Shirar gained 124 yards with one score.
...The Tigers (2-9) most productive play of the first three quarters came on their initial snap as Nate Gillespie galloped 24 yards. The Hot Dogs run defense stiffened from there out, holding Gillespie to -4 yards on the rest of his first half carries and limiting the Tigers' to 76 total yards on the night.
The Hot Dogs' line play, on both sides of the ball, was the difference in a game that was played mostly between the hashes...
Local football games...what's not to love about a team called the hot dogs? 
So anywho...It's an open thread! What are you thinking about today, or what books or articles have you been reading the past few days? Wanna share?
And again, please feel free to chat, blogwhore, and link-share in the comment thread because...it's an open thread! Woo-hoo! 
As I mentioned in the post on my blog yesterday (linked above), my husband and I were invited to attend this LDS fireside entitled "Better loving our gay brothers and sisters" at the Berkeley ward (read 'congregation') of the Oakland stake (read diocese). A few months ago, the stake president (Catholic bishop), Dean Crittle, organized a entire series of these firesides in every ward (11 in total). They were so well attended, they decided to hold a fireside to allow more to attend. Guy and I were invited by one of the speakers.
And so we went. We took BART since the bridge was closed, and had a nice time talking. We were picked up at the Berkeley BART station by our good friend Trevor Southey. We found the chapel, and though I didn't want to, we set foot inside a Mormon chapel. After we sat down (in the front row), I turned to Trevor I said "I am angry." I was. I was having a hard time just being there. I wanted so speak, in fact I wanted to yell and vent and cry. I didn't. I sat as calmly as I could as President Crittle started the fireside.
Allow me to recount this fireside as best as I can. President Crittle started by enumerating 6 points concerning the Mormon understanding of 'same gender attracted' people (as always, LDS leaders refrain from the word 'gay', much less 'homosexual'). Punctuating these points, different members of the audience read statements by various church authorities that supported them. Paraphrased, and to the best of my recollection,
1. Sexuality is innate. 2. Sexuality is unbidden. 3. Sexuality is for the most part, unchangeable. Marriage to the opposite sex will not change sexual orientation of gay men or women. 4. We do not know what causes sexual orientation 5. What the cause is in immaterial to LDS doctrine 6. We should show nothing but love and acceptance to our gay brothers and sisters, especially those in our families.
My first rush of reactions to these points was several fold. It did help dissipate my anger some as I sat there. Here was a leader of the church, bluntly stating in no uncertain terms many of the things his gay brothers and sisters have been telling Mormons for years. Though I disagree with, or at least would strongly caveat, the 4th point, most I would agree with. I was thankful that this man, this leader of the church was finally telling his people, hundreds of fellow Mormons, what we've been trying to tell them for years, laying out clearly and succinctly everything every Mormon should understand. We do not come by this lightly, we do not choose this, we do not blithely disregard beliefs and doctrines. We struggle and have struggled mightily with it.
But my next reaction was a phrase that kept popping into my head "Too little, too late." Perhaps not, perhaps any step towards understanding and love is a good step, no matter how small and tentative. Perhaps little is better than none, and late is better than never. He did not go so far as to say, and could not, the church's doctrine, or even their actions politically should have been different or should be different in the future. But at least he was counseling understanding and love.
Too bad it wasn't a year or more ago. Because, coming after the violation that was the huge effort of the church to rip my family's rights away, it still felt a bit like an abuser apologizing to the person they abused. Perhaps they mean it sincerely, but they'll have to understand if the abused looks at the apology with a huge healthy dose of skepticism, perhaps disdain even.
Still, a step.
President Crittle then had four stories, three from within the stake, of gay men and their struggle. The first a young man who read a short piece about the hopelessness a celibate single gay man in the Church feels and how different ierent it is from being a single straight man or woman in the church, the second was a woman who told her story of her marriage to a gay man, the torture he felt and their subsequent divorce, was third was a reading from a letter by Henry Stuart Matis, a gay Mormon who committed suicide. The last story was from a man, someone who my husband knows from 20 years ago, who came out, divorced his wife and then fell into a life of drugs, promiscuity and worse, only to bring himself back and return to the church, though remaining an out and celibate gay man. He is now a ward missionary leader (which I would love to talk to him about some day).
The stories were filled with woe and sorrow. These are true. The church's past responses to it's gay brothers and sisters have created a life of sorrow and woe for us. It has driven many into painful marriages that end is deep sadness, it has driven many into lives of loneliness, hopelessness, despair and some to suicide. I can not deny that, I have lived it myself. And any step to help other Mormons understand that their response to their gay brothers and sisters can lead them to that despair... or not... is a good step.
But you know what was glaringly absent? Any stories of gay Mormons that ended up happily outside the church, or happy relationships, or even explicitly any stories where gay men and women don't fall into a life of promiscuity and abuse outside the church.
Maybe they couldn't bring themselves to do that? Perhaps by doing so suggests that there is a life for gay men and women outside of the structure of the church, one that can be happy. I could be reading into it too much. It could be that in some of the other meetings earlier this year, the did tell stories of men and women who were leading fulfilling lives in committed relationships. If they did, I'd love to hear it.
As it was, after the meeting was over, I had an opportunity to speak with President Crittle. I thanked him for what he was trying to do, I sincerely was grateful that he had made such a great effort over these last few months to help his members understand more. I also explained to him my concern that they studiously seem to avoid any stories of gay Mormons in happy committed relationships. I could point to several, many who are raising children, in his own stake that could tell that story.
I could tell that story.
I asked him to consider that next time. I'll refer him the names. I doubt, but am hopeful, that those stories will be told at a fireside some day.
During the conversations afterward, a tall man about my age wanted to introduce himself to me and my husband, he came and shook our hands and introduced himself as "Bob Packer." Since I was talking to others, the name did not register, I politely greeted him and continued talking to someone else. Later, my husband explained to me who he was. He was the LDS 'point man' for the Yes on 8 campaign. He was a person in large part responsible for the huge financial and volunteer turn out of the Mormon membership for Prop 8. I was surprised and just a bit flummoxed that he, of all Mormons, would be there, much less to seek us out to introduce himself. If there'd be someone I'd want to talk to, someone I'd want to understand, someone who could in some small way explain to me what my former faith was thinking, he'd be the one. Alas, I missed the chance. Perhaps another day.
I had several conversations later, including with the woman that told the story of her former husband, later that also helped me again understand that there are many Mormons within the church who sincerely and honestly believe in our equal treatment, who love us for who we are and not for who they paternalistically want us to become. I should know that, they are in my own family. These men and women, these Mormons, who are an example of what it is to love unconditionally and without judgement. Guy's parents and two of hwo of his brothers and their families are such Mormons. They are out there.
And if anything, this meeting reminded me of that.
I am under no illusions that there is any reconciliation, nor maybe ever will be, with the LDS institution. Though I am still angry at the church, though I do not believe in any way that the church as an institution feels any remorse for the efforts to remove my family's rights and though I understand this is a very very small step forward have the huge leap back the church made last year, any step is welcome.
No comments:
Post a Comment