In a secret meeting last week, Australia’s Prime Minister banned members of his party from voting ‘Yes’ on marriage equality. It was a dirty move.
But a few brave politicians have promised to take a stand for love and vote 'Yes’ anyway. If a few more rebellious politicians join in, marriage equality could have enough support to pass.
So that got us to thinking… imagine if members of Parliament could see beautiful photos of gay and lesbian couples who HAVE been allowed to marry – like in the UK, Canada, and the USA – just before they’re deciding what to do. It’d remind them of the global wave of marriage wins and show that the tide can’t be held back.
All Out members from around the world sent in photos to make this beautiful video. If enough people chip in, we can buy an advertising slot on Sky News – a channel that streams inside Parliament. The powerful message could get enough politicians to join the rebellion and vote 'Yes’ on marriage equality.
Here’s the deal: there’s a marriage equality bill on the table in Australia, and the government is deciding right now whether to block it. They need some love.
Will you post a photo to send to politicians trying to block equality? (Think wedding pics, selfies with the person you love, or just you with a note! Just like these amazing ones from All Out members worldwide.)
Tag it with #DearOz and we’ll put your pictures from around the world where the government can’t ignore them. If you don’t want to post, you can send them over to [email protected].
This is what decades of love looks like. PBS pulled together beautiful portraits of LGBT couples in the US, along with their words about why marriage equality matters.
Maggie, a 3rd grader from Texas, has a lot to say about marriage equality - and she sent her thoughts to congress:
“Dear Congress,
Would you like it if someone wouldn’t let you get married to a person you loved of your own gender? No. So why are you not letting people do that? That needs to change, and it needs to change now. Would you rather me send letters all year? Or you listen the first time? Your choice.”
Virginia could pass a law that allows doctors, teachers, and all businesses to deny service to gay, lesbian, and bi people under the guise of “religious freedom”. In the face of progress for marriage equality, this is how anti-gay groups are fighting back.
If we can convince members of the voting committee to vote ‘no’, it will never see the light of day. We need a giant public outcry right now to show the committee that citizens in Virginia and around the country are paying attention.
After a short on Friday, Germany’s Parliament voted to approve same-sex marriage, paving the way for marriage equality in Germany, the New York Times reported on Friday.
The vote came just days after German Chancellor Angela Merkel, leader of the Christian Democrats, broke with her party and dropped her opposition to same-sex marriage, saying she supported a free vote.
Now the bill will go to Germany’s upper house, where, as CNN reported on Friday, it is likely to pass. Read more(6/30/17)
“same sex marriage will ruin the sanctity of marr- “
Misguided people: please don’t say “Oh, it’s just TV, it’s scripted.“ Blah blah blah. To say that marriage equality will ruin the "sanctity” of anything is the biggest load of shite when nonsense like this is on TV and the divorce rate is ALREADY 40 to 50 percent! AND it’s even higher when there are children in the picture. Straight people have done a fine job of ruining the sanctity of marriage themselves.
In less than 24 hours Ireland will go to the polls for one of the most important votes in the country’s history and I’m completely and utterly terrified.
It’s widely known that the Marriage Equality Referendum will ask the people to decide if same-sex marriage should be given the same legal recognition as heterosexual marriage, and support for the Yes vote appears to be widespread.
Grothman told McKenna that the Supreme Court’s reasoning, which was based on the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, was an affront to the Americans who died in the Civil War because it was “a strong religious war to further a Christian lifestyle by getting rid of slavery.”
“Our president during the Civil War was, of course, Abraham Lincoln, who was known as the most biblical of presidents, somebody who quoted the Bible a lot,” he said. “In the Civil War, some 600,000 people died in a country that was much less populated than that today. And it was a much more religious country and I think a lot of people who died fighting in that war felt they died fighting for a religious cause, you know, ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ and all that.
“I think it would shock those people who died in that war to find out the constitutional amendment which was ratified kind of as a culmination of their great efforts and their great deaths would be 150 years later, a little less than 150 years later, used by these five robed, arrogant, robed people to take this constitutional amendment and say that that constitutional amendment that was drafted after the Civil War was in fact an amendment designed to say that same-sex marriage had to be legal.”
I’ve been following Glen Grothman’s career since he served in the Wisconsin State assembly. In fact he was one of the inspirations for this blog. I’m actually surprised that this is Congressman Grothman’s first appearance here. I’m certain it won’t be his last.
I do love it when terrible legislators don’t bother with the media filter and post their unedited thoughts right to social media. Makes it so much easier to gather material.
BTW The ND House Majority Leader, who leads Kiefert’s caucus, was quick to say that party disagrees with Kiefert’s own views.
Today, the day the Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional for a state to deny same-sex couples marriage licenses, kind of sucked for me.
First, let me say that I’m excited about marriage equality. I believe marriage inequality was one of the most severe ways that discrimination was codified into the laws of our nation; it was a United States government-approved message that same-sex relationships were marked as illegitimate or at least less legitimate than ‘opposite’-sex pairings. I also believe bans on same-sex marriage violated the Constitution. I believe this ruling was just. And I am thrilled and moved when I think about my friends who understandably feel like their relationships finally got the validation they deserve today. I am thrilled and moved when I think about the fact that no child will again grow up in the United States thinking that marriage, the validation that comes from a marriage license, and the rights that are awarded as part of being married are off limits to them simply because of whom they love or might love in the future. I think about those of us who did grow up believing that, the people who only in their wildest dreams believed they would someday have access to this institution that (like it or not) is fundamental to our society’s understanding of family – they got that today. Their wildest dreams came true. I am so happy about that. And, full disclosure: as a transgender person, I have a horse in this race, too. Regardless of the assigned sex of my spouse, before today, marriage was a complicated thing for me as no governmental office could really straighten out whether my future marriage would have been “same-sex” or not. And I do plan on getting married and am excited about that part of my future. Let me be clear: I am very happy about this ruling.
And I didn’t want today to suck. I accepted a wonderful friend’s invitation to watch the SCOTUS blog’s live updates and celebrate should they decide for marriage equality. I toasted with champagne and I texted friends – I was glad this was the decision. I was moved and excited for all the reasons I describe above. And I tried to really connect with that – I watched videos of people in my state of Kentucky get marriage licenses that mere hours prior had been prohibited to them. I read statements and listened to speeches praising the decision. I clicked “like” on all the statuses celebrating the ruling. I even had friends get engaged. I also clicked “like” on all the pride-themed facebook photos of my friends (especially my straight and cisgender identified friends). I repeatedly told myself how remarkable it was that I was witnessing this outpouring of mainstream support for same-sex relationships.
I wanted so badly to be purely exuberant. I wanted to lose myself in the celebration of this decision. I wanted to be able to look back in a year or a decade and say “on the day the Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality, I couldn’t contain my happiness.” I wanted to join friends for drinks and take instagram pictures with big smiles. I wanted to hug my friends for whom this was really personally meaningful and toast to them. And for the record, I’m mostly really really glad that lots of people were able to do all this. But I couldn’t. I spent most of my day in bed.
I kept thinking about how just yesterday, my partner and I were at a close friend’s house helping him gather his suit so that he could attend the funeral of a veteran and trans woman who took her own life this week. I thought about the people who cared about her pressing their suits and slipping on their black shoes. I thought about this scene of a group of people mourning the deeply felt loss of a trans woman while the streets outside filled with confetti and rainbow flags and celebration of marriage rights. This image kept returning to my mind and I became increasingly pained by the hashtag #lovewins. Love just didn’t feel like it was winning yet to me.
In 1973, Ursula Le Guin wrote a short piece titled “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.” It describes an amazing, exciting, energetic, and beautiful summer festival in the utopian city of Omelas, where people are truly joyous and successful.
“A boundless and generous contentment, a magnanimous triumph felt not against some outer enemy but in communion with the finest and fairest in the souls of all men everywhere and the splendor of the world’s summer; this is what swells the hearts of the people of Omelas, and the victory they celebrate is that of life.”
This utopia, however, is contingent upon the imprisonment and suffering of a child, who is locked in a basement. LeGuin describes the town’s awareness of the child’s existence and the absolute rule that not even kind word be spoken to it. She writes that the townspeople of Omelas are often disgusted or angered by this, but ultimately they accept the child’s suffering and ignore it in order to allow for the success and happiness of Omelas.
In many ways, the atmosphere of Omelas that Le Guin describes sounds like the amped-up, utopian version of celebrations happening today. I think it is easy to draw the analogy that like Omelas and its willful ignorance of a suffering child, much of the celebration happening today is contingent upon ignoring the continued suffering that marriage equality cannot change. Plenty of people have written (in more eloquent and informed ways than I can) about this suffering, which sadly extends even beyond the aforementioned epidemic of trans suicide to the violence against trans women of color, to the lack of anti-discrimination clauses that include gender identity (and yes even sexual orientation in some states), to systems that continue to leave no room for non-binary gender identities and expressions, to systems that continue to oppress and further marginalize low income communities and people of color, etc.
Maybe I struggled to fully lose myself in celebration of the marriage equality ruling, because it felt too much like Omelas. That’s what I felt like I was watching play out when the trans woman of color and immigrant who staged a protest during President Obama’s speech at the White House pride gala was laughed at, mocked, dismissed, and called a “heckler” by the crowd of mostly white cisgender gay men who just wanted to celebrate the (albeit exciting and awesome) LGBTQ victories of the past year without having to think about the groups of people they aren’t fighting for.
I think I also believe a few painful things to be true: 1) no victory for trans people or another more marginalized sector of the “LGBTQ” population will ever be celebrated this loudly; 2) the ‘swift change’ that is so exciting regarding public support for same-sex marriage came from hard work and visibility that was possible because there was a lot of financial investment in this fight – because unlike the other issues facing my community, being denied marriage rights is something that actually affects people with privilege; 3) there is a huge risk that support of the LGBTQ orgs who need to continue to fight for the causes listed above (and so many more) will lessen as the rallying cry of marriage equality can no longer be utilized; 4) many of the people celebrating today are part of the social currents and systems that continue to oppress members of the LGBTQ community that are not white, cisgender, typical in gender expression, upper SES, and male.
I don’t fancy myself very radical – I am not really challenging the institution of marriage, and I think marriage equality is important, and I am truly happy and proud that our country has achieved it.
But I couldn’t celebrate it today. Not the way other people were, and not the way I honestly wanted to. I’m glad for people who could. I think a lot of people are very aware of all of the pain and concerns I described and pretty successfully shut that off for a day in order to enjoy a big victory. And that’s appropriate. I’m glad they could.
“On Monday, the Supreme Court turned away Indiana’s attempt to strip equal parenting rights from married same-sex couples. The court’s decision ensures that same-sex couples in Indiana will remain the lawful parents of their own children, ending the state’s six-year-long crusade to remove their names from their children’s birth certificates. But beyond Indiana, Monday’s order also suggests that a majority of the justices aren’t eager to roll back marriage equality.”
Cora Latz and Etta Perkins wedding ceremony. 1973. Cora Latz and Etta Perkins Photographs. GLBT Historical Society
ONE Completes CLIR-Supported Project with GLBT Historical Society
May 4, 2015
ONE Archives at the USC Libraries has recently completed a collaboration with the GLBT Historical Society to process 111 collections of primarily California-based LGBTQ pioneers and organizations. Funded by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), the Out West project included the digitization of over 400 photographs and the development of a dynamic website showcasing the collections and images, accessible here.
Our love is just as real. Pasted in Fitzroy, VIC. I was very excited by the supreme court ruling in the US recently. Congratulations to all my friends up in the US! I, personally, do not view marriage equality as purely symbolic. Anyone who has tried to move internationally with a partner, or anyone who has tried to adopt children understands that being married makes the process so much easier. So its a big deal that has real impacts for many people’s lives. But here in Australia, along with many other countries, marriage equality still does not exist. I really have never understood why this is such a big deal to straight people (other than the basic fear of things that are different than them). When queer people fall in love its the same basic chemical reaction in their brains as with straight people.
The model for this painting is the mega-fierce artist Marian Machismo. Who lives and works here in Melbourne.
This election season has been on fire since the beginning. With so many large personalities and explosive debates, it can be hard to keep up sometimes. Many hard-hitting issues have been covered since the race for the presidency started, but we still haven’t heard much on LGBT issues.
We did some digging, and here are some of the top statements some of this year’s most notable presidential hopefuls have made on LGBT issues throughout the years. You’ll find that some candidates have evolved while others…not so much.
