Camille is a twentysomething working in the LGBT nonprofit industry. She runs an LGBT news blog at gaywrites.org.
Evangelical pseudo-historian David Barton is the latest big-name conservative to get all worked up over the country’s growing acceptance of marriage equality, but he says he doesn’t even need God to back up his anti-gay stance. This week on his radio program, WallBuilders, Barton claimed that “homosexual marriage” has proven to be a flop in the 12 nations where it’s legal. (Actually, it’s 13 countries — with France being the most recent country to legalize same-sex marriage, and Uruguay and New Zealand having same-sex marriage laws going into effect later this year.) Misrepresenting a ten-year-old study, Barton said: I don’t need religion or a Bible to prove that homosexual marriage is not a good deal for a country. We have now twelve nations who have adopted homosexual marriage; they have stats. Jesus did give us a good admonition in Matthew 7 that you can judge a tree by its fruits, so if I take the nations that have homosexual marriage and I look at them, I say okay, in those nations where you have homosexuals allowed to marry, only two percent of homosexuals do marry. So even though they want homosexual marriage, 98% of homosexuals don’t marry when they [can] get it and the average homosexual marriage lasts eighteen months and involves eight extra-marital partners. Now by what stretch of the imagination would you consider that to be a marriage? (The audio clip from the original program is available here via Right Wing Watch.) [Click headline for more…] Read more
There’s a revolution coming — led by Christian Americans who are furious that the Supreme Court has redefined their marriages. Or so says Mat Staver, the chairman of notoriously anti-gay Liberty Counsel. It comes as no surprise that Staver has long warned about the apocalyptic repercussions of repealing the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8. Now that the Supreme Court has all but abolished both anti-gay laws, Staver won’t keep quiet. Here’s the video, courtesy of Right Wing Watch: [Click headline for more…] Read more
In its second gay rights case of the day, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to dismiss an appeal of Proposition 8 on standing. The decision of the Ninth Circuit Court striking down Prop 8 was “vacated and remanded,” meaning same-sex couples in California will once again have the right to marry — but marriage equality is not newly legalized anywhere else. [Click headline for more…] Read more
The Supreme Court today finally issued its decision on one of the most landmark gay rights cases of the century. By a vote of 5-4, the Court ruled the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional. United States v. Windsor, the case brought by 84-year-old Edie Windsor, challenged DOMA on the premise that the law did not offer equal protection to people in same-sex marriages. After the death of her partner of 42 years, Thea Spyer, whom she married legally in Canada in 2007, Windsor was hit with more than $360,000 in inheritance taxes because the United States did not recognize their marriage, a burden she would not have faced had she married a man. [Click headline for more…] Read more
When Danielle Powell fell in love with the woman she would marry, it ended up costing her nearly $6,000 — and her education. Powell was finishing her psychology degree at Grace University in Omaha, Nebraska, when she started openly dating Michelle Rogers. Unfortunately for her, Grace isn’t your ordinary college, but a private Christian school that requires its students uphold a rigid code of “moral” conduct: [Click headline for more…] Read more
