Bob Katter's anti-gay ad: the "gay couple" portrayed

I think the most offensive thing about this ad is the image used to portray gay people. Because the chests were pixelated out, I thought the two men were naked, and this was some sort of sexualisation of the issue. That's not the case as it turns out, and I'm now unsure if the original ad aired with the pixelation effect or not, or if later people added that because they thought was actually being depicted could be considered offensive.

What was actually depicted was imagery that I found on a website that provides stock photos for the depiction of homosexual couples. The pictures in this case are from a series entitled Portrait of a Homosexual Pregnant Couple Expecting a Baby. The part that was pixelated out shows the younger man of the portrayed couple with what looks like a white sculpted set of breasts and a distended belly, obviously not real but intended to evoke the appearance of a pregnant woman. Both partners are bare-chested, and both are wearing jeans.

So, two questions: (1) Why intentionally censor this? (2) Why use these images? The sculpted belly and breasts may be a tad racy, but both chests were censored in the ad, so I really don't know what's going on. The use of the images seems a bit more clear to me, as a means to demonstrate that what same-sex couples are really doing is pathetically aping "genuine" (heterosexual) relationships i.e. ones where one of the partners actually can get pregnant. By neglecting to mention that this is an artistic photoset, the ad dishonestly implies that gay men do this kind of dress-up as a serious activity. The pixelation kind of spoils that message, though.

Was the ad pixelated in this way when it was originally shown on television?

Bishop to child of same-sex parents: "who are your REAL parents?"

On Compass tonight, the Anglican bishop Rob Forsyth was posed a question about a child of a same-sex couple who was asking why her parents were not allowed to be married. Forsyth, an opponent of same-sex marriage, simply stated that he would tell such a child that the reason that they could not get married was simply because that they were not a man and a woman. When pressed a little on how he would explain to the child why he might suggest this about the child's parents, he outright stated that he would inquire from the child who the "real" parents were.

I find it fascinating that in a world of heterosexual adoption, heterosexual surrogate pregnancies, and heteroxual step-parenting, that the adoption, surrogacy or even step-parenting of a child by a same-sex couple could be so readily assumed to mean that the love, commitment and responsibility that turly defines parenthood should simply be ignored in favour of decreeing that the biological parents MUST be the real parents - regardless of how either the same-sex parents or the biological parents actually feel about the child, and even regardless of how the child feels about the same-sex parents. Please stop assuming you know what's in the best interest of a child that isn't yours either biologically or emotionally, bishop, because insinuating that a child's family isn't really their family is not a way to treat a child well.

Gay people's anger getting misinterpreted as usual

The US Department of Justice recently filed a brief in response to a challenge to America' Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the US law that ensures US state don't have to recognise same-sex marriages in other states, and prohibits the federal government from recognising same-sex marriages in any way, including same-sex marriages in states where same-sex marriage is now legally recognised at the state level.

Gay rights advocates have been upset by the brief, although you'd be very hard pressed to find out the main reason why from the news reporting and DOJ PR about the issue. The problem is not so much the fact that a brief was filed in support of DOMA but the language and arguments used in the brief. As David Link put it:

It is gratuitously insulting to lesbians and gay men, referring (unnecessarily) to same-sex marriage as a “form” of marriage, approving of congressional comparisons between same-sex marriages and loving relationships between siblings, or grandparents and grandchildren, and arguing (with a straight face, I can only assume) that discrimination against same-sex couples is rational because it saves the federal government money. There are some respectable arguments in this motion, and this kind of disrespect is offensive.

Yet the DOJ statement in response to the public outrage pretends otherwise, defending their actions as if it was the decision to file a brief alone that was making gay people upset:

As it generally does with existing statutes, the Justice Department is defending the law on the books in court. The president has said he wants to see a legislative repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act because it prevents LGBT couples from being granted equal rights and benefits. However, until Congress passes legislation repealing the law, the administration will continue to defend the statute when it is challenged in the justice system.

Nor is the anger over how the DOJ supported DOMA in their brief appearing in mainstream media reports: CBS simply states "Gay rights groups are upset that Obama appears to be going back on his word [to repeal DOMA]. But the Justice Department says it's following the standard practice of defending existing law", with no indication of the main problem identified by prominent gay rights advocates such as Andrew Sullivan that "the question is not why the DOJ should defend existing law; it is why they chose to lard it up with such egregious anti-gay rhetoric and religious right arguments"

It is very hard to put forward your case about why something is hurtful to you when the very reason that it is so hurtful is not being made known. No wonder you get people claiming that gay people get "hysterical" over things. If I was seeing someone getting really mad and upset just because a brief was filed in a court case, I'd probably think they were hysterical too. But that's not the root cause of the anger here: it's the actual callous language in the brief that's at the heart of the matter. And yet, I fear, most people will be completely unaware of that, thanks in no small part to the PR actions of the DOJ itself.

Statistical skullduggery from the Fatherhood Foundation: "proving" gay relationships shorter

On page 10 of the anti-gay pamphlet "21 reasons why gender matters" there is a piece of statistical deception that is very popular among anti-gay circles. It is one that needs no examination of references to spot.

The text is as follows:

Heterosexual married couples have a far lower rate of relationship breakdown than homosexual couples. As an Australian Government report stated, “According to a 1995 study, ten per cent of marriages failed within six years, 20 per cent within ten years, 30 per cent by twenty years, and 40 per cent by thirty years.”65 In comparison, a study of the Melbourne homosexual community showed that 40 per cent of men had changed partners in the past 6 months; 9.8 per cent had been in a relationship for only six months to a year; 18.8 per cent for 1-2 years; 15.3 per cent had lasted for 3-5 years; and only 15.7 per cent were in a relationship of more than five years – meaning 84 per cent had broken down after five years.

The lie is glaringly obvious to anyone within even a slight understanding of statistics: the Fatherhood Foundation is comparing every single homosexual relationship to only those heterosexual relationships that are called "marriage". They've deliberately and dishonestly weighted the heterosexual side of the comparison by excluding all unmarried opposite-sex couples, and then used that false data to try and paint homosexual couples as inherently inferior across the board. Unmarried opposite-sex couples, and not married opposite-sex couples, would be the real equivalent of unmarried same-sex male couples such as those allegedly studied in Melbourne. But making a comparison that's actually valid wouldn't give the Fatherhood Foundation the opportunity to smear the gay community with their misinformation now, would it?

What opposition to gay marriage is really about

It's not about marriage. It was never about marriage. It's about homosexuality.

Many opponents of gay marriage claim otherwise. Some are sincere in that belief. But they're still mistaken.

The "we're pro-marriage, not anti-gay" argument rests on the assumption that the relationship between two gay people is qualitatively different from a relationship between two straight people in such a way that the entire meaning of marriage would be changed if it were to be applied to both types of couples. This inaccurate impression is bolstered by the cosmetic fact of the difference in gender make-up of the two couples.

Those of us who support gay marriage believe that the difference in gender make-up does NOT translate to any difference in meaning. A man wanting to marry a man and not a woman is no different from a man wanting to marry a 60-year-old and not a 40-year-old. All the emotional aspects of an opposite-gender relationship that are fulfilled by marriage occur in EXACTLY the same way in a same-gender relationship. Not "almost" the same, not "approximately" the same, but EXACTLY the same.

Same-sex couples who want to get married do not believe that marriage would be "redefined" by letting them marry. Letting them marry would instead mean that marriage was finally being made available to every couple that qualifies for it according to its current meaning.

They have no problem with the meaning of marriage as it currently exists. They just disagree about which types of relationships conform to that meaning. They believe that their relationships do conform to it.

Opponents of gay marriage do not believe this. They believe that a same-sex relationship CANNOT be the emotional equivalent of an opposite-sex one. It therefore cannot be fulfilled by marriage in the same way that an opposite-sex relationship can be, and the very meaning of marriage would be changed if marriage could include same-sex relationships as well as opposite-sex ones.

People's opposition to gay marriage therefore stems not from their view of marriage, but from their view of homosexuality. As long as they believe that homosexual relationships cannot have the same emotional aspects to them as heterosexual relationships do, they will believe that including same-sex couples in the definition of marriage would mean "redefining" marriage in a way that renders marriage less than it was. Because they believe this, they will also view themselves as "pro-marriage" rather than "anti-gay". They are mistaken.

Civil unions vs gay marriage: "separate is not equal" explained in depth

In advocating the inadequacy of civil unions as a substitute for gay marriage, a claim is often made that "separate but equal" is an impossibility: separate cannot be equal. I've never really seen an adequate explanation as to why this is. Sure, Brown vs Board of Education struck down the idea as unconstitutional when the US Supreme Court ruled against segregated schooling, but simply pointing to the fact of that court ruling, and saying that's the end of it, isn't good enough. You have to look at the reasoning of the decision and see if it can apply to civil unions. So I did.

An interesting fact that I see straight up is that the decision was only intended to apply to the question of segregated schooling. Plessy vs Ferguson, the 19th century court decision that created the "separate but equal" idea in the first place, was originally applied to segregated accomodation, and wasn't actually overturned by this ruling. In this ruling, the legitimacy of the "separate but equal" doctrine in any area besides education wasn't considered. It seems that it is therefore necessary to explicitly lay out a case why the "separate but equal" doctrine is just as pernicious in a different context.

There is guidance from the ruling on this. It was the "intangible" factors associated with education that tipped the court in favour of ruling "separate but equal" unconstitutional in the realm of public education. These "intangibles" were described in one case as "those qualities which are incapable of objective measurement but which make for greatness in a law school". Even with complete equality in legal statute, and in access to buildings and teachers, the mere fact of separation negatively impacted these intangible qualities because the act of separation was inferred to demonstrate the inherent inferiority of the minority group. This created in the segregated school-children "a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone."

If it is possible to point out that there are "intangible" factors associated with marriage, then they need to be taken into account to determine if separation of same-sex couples into "civil unions" unjustly demonstrates the "inherent inferiority" of same-sex relationships.

Are there such "intangible" factors in marriage? Hell, yes. The intangible benefits of marriage are the whole point of legally recognising any marriage at all in the first place. All the legal framework about rights and responsibilities is there entirely because marriage is presumed to have some indefinable qualities, "incapable of objective measurement" to use the Supreme Court's language, that makes it worthwhile.

And yes, the separation of same-sex couples from opposite-sex couples does promote inequality in the way those "intangibles" would be provided. You can see this already in the way people talk about the issue. Talk to any person who supports "civil unions" for gay people but "marriage" for straight people. Their excuses make it clear pretty quickly that they want the separation specifically because they believe that the "intangible" benefits of marriage for opposite-sex couples either couldn't exist, or would exist only in an inferior form, in a gay "marriage". "Marriage is about raising children" implies that same-sex couples are inferior child-raisers. "Marriage is a sacred tradition" implies that same-sex couples are excluded from the sacred. "Marriage is about what's best for society" implies that same-sex couples are not good for society. Even "we shouldn't risk experimenting with the established definition of marriage" implies that there's something inherently risky about treating same-sex relationships as on par with opposite-sex ones.

So the reasoning of Brown vs Board of Education does apply to the question of civil unions and gay marriage. A separate institution for gay people, even one that functions like marriage in legal statute, will create an inherent inequality in the provision of the intangible benefits of marriage that is biased against gay people. This is wrong. Only gay marriage can provide complete equality.

Unfortunately, most people don't believe that same-sex couples are really equal to opposite-sex couples.....

Some thoughts on Proposition 8: I'm not mourning

My attitude towards the successful passage of Proposition 8 in California has been surprisingly optimistic, given the emotions of sorrow and hurt expressed by others concerning its passing. Sure, I don't have the personal connection to things that happen in the USA, or to the gay couples in California who were hoping to get married, that those who do feel hurt by its passage have.

But consider:
In 2000, the Vermont state court legalised civil unions. Such unions were a scary and radical notion at the time, and their initial existence only just survived an attempt at a constitutional amendment outlawing them. Gay couples, in the form of "civil unions", remain legally recognised there to this day.

In 2003, the Massachusetts state court legalised gay marriage. Gay couples, in the form of marriage and not just "civil unions", remain legally recognised there to this day.

In other states of course, constitutional amendments restricting marriage to the union of a man and a woman were passed even in advance of any state court ruling suggesting that it should be otherwise. These amendments often passed by very large margins.

And yet, in 2008, in California, their version of civil unions – domestic partnership legislation – is and remains uncontroversially on the books. Far from radical and threatening, they are viewed as the safe compromise. As for the passing of Proposition 8....

Support for the Proposition received an enormous amount of financial support, such that gay rights groups were constantly struggling to match it. Much of the work to garner support for the Proposition came from the considerable financial and political muscle of the Church of Latter Day Saints, who came awfully close to crossing the line separating church from state, if not passing over it entirely, in their zeal to see it passed. And a great deal of the attempt to garner support for Proposion 8's passage was done through propagating distortions and fabrications, as documented by the LA Times here

With all of these tremendous advantages, the total amount of support that this huge assault of money and lies managed to muster for Proposition 8 was....52%. A paltry 2% over the majority mark.

I am sorry for those who have suffered because the advances made in the last 8 years were not as far-reaching as they were thought to be. But they are far-reaching. The anti-gay forces may have won this time, but they were barely able to hold their own, even with their full amassed might brought to bear. And even then it's still unclear whether they got everything they wanted; word from the California Attorney-General's office is that Proposition 8 will not be applied retroactively: already-married same-sex couples will remain legally married.

All that's happened here is a temporary setback. In fact, from where we were a year ago, we've actually gained a tiny bit of ground. We now have actual married gay couples to point to in California, which makes it that little bit easier to talk about the issue in real human terms rather than in terms of airy abstract ideals. I think we're continuing to inch ahead.

From the academic journals: "contingent" relationships, "essential" relationships, and why gay people would want to marry

A side-effect of my time at uni is that I see academic articles in the scholarly databases I can access which make me think: "hm, I can see how that's relevant to a public issue of the day". For instance, I found an article in the Canadian Journal of Political Science that clarifies a few issues about gay marriage. Well, about marriage, at any rate.

It's by P. Neal and D. Paris, from vol 23, issue 3 of that journal, published in 1990. Its title doesn't make it sound that relevant: "Liberalism and the Communitarian Critique:
A Guide for the Perplexed", but it is. The subject matter is concerned with elucidating an ongoing debate between, as it says, liberals and communitarians. Communitarians accuse liberals of having an understanding of the self that is unjustifiably "atomistic", ignoring the importance of social relationships and community in two ways: missing the importance of social relationships in people's construction of their own identity, and missing the general moral good in itself that comes from having a "community". Liberals for their part accuse communitarians of placing the values and rules of institutions and groups above the right of an individual to make their own individual choice for themselves.

The relevance of the debate to marriage comes from the two different understandings that the two groups have of what Neal and Paris call "shared relations": liberals emphasise the value of contingently shared relations, while communitarians emphasise essentially shared relations. Quoting Neal and Paris:

A contingently shared relation is a relationship between two or more antecedently defined separate selves which, however much it may affect their attitudes and behaviour, does not penetrate the identity of the separate selves to the point that the identity of each becomes partially or wholly constituted by the relation itself. An essentially shared relation penetrates this deeply; when two selves essentially share a relation, the identity of each self is partially or wholly constituted by the relation.

Neal and Paris make no value judgement on which view is superior, but they do point out which relationships conform to which model. Marriage, for examples, is generally an essentially shared relation:

marriage is or can be a relation whereby two separate selves become redefined in their identities as one through the relation with the relation (as union rather than contract) coming to constitute what were once separate selves as one shared self.

This is, I believe, what people who are pushing for gay marriage for themselves want. They value and want an essentially shared relationship with their would-be spouse that would subsume the identity of the participants: "let two become one", "'til death do us part", and so forth. I wonder if the people pushing gay marriage as an abstract matter of legal rights for others, and who personally think that the idea of getting married is stupid, understand that?

Neal and Paris mention that essentially shared relations can be poisonous to those involved: abusive relationships and divorce are both depressingly common occurrences. Yet, as they also say, it is not enough to discredit the very idea of essentially shared relationships based only on the existence of abusive cases; it would be just as easy to criticise liberal values of individual independence on that basis using those horror stories of people who die alone and whose bodies go undiscovered for months.

To date I don't think I've seen an argument against marriage that wasn't based on either pointing to the subsection of those marital relationships that are abusive and problematic, or else asserting freedom and a sense of self as values that shouldn't be given up to something like marriage. I think enough marriages are sufficiently unproblematic enough to view the institution itself as not inherently compromised, and I am unconvinced that a person who chooses to subsume their identity in marriage has made an inferior moral choice to someone who doesn't. Sure, it could be the wrong choice for some, and nobody should be forced to get married if they don't want to be, but for others, subsuming their identity in marriage may be the thing that makes them happiest.

I think this understanding of marriage as being an essentially shared relation is also why "civil unions and "domestic partnerships" are an inferior alternative to marriage. Do those legal constructions carry the same sense of two individuals giving themselves to a shared identity, incorporated from both of them, that marriage does? My impression is that they don't. In fact, I think placing gay unions in a separate legal category can encourage the view that such relationships are contingent. They're not really marriage, after all.

Touching on Bristol Palin's family life, considering the relevance of gay marriage to it

Not sure if I should write this, but...

Several bloggers I read, that happen to be openly gay, have been the most vocal proponents of the idea that it's okay to make the family situation of Sarah Palin an issue, in spite of Obama's harsh words on the subject. It's sort of understandable that gay people would be the ones who feel most annoyed at the obvious double standard of so-called "pro-family" people like the Palins in a situation like the one they're in: denouncing gay people as causing the breakdown of the family, while there's an as yet unmarried, pregnant teenage daughter in their family.

Do this bisexual man want to ask a few questions myself? Weeelll...

I do have one question that relates to the general political issue of gay marriage rather than to any so-called "character" issues that may or may not be highlighted in the Palin family's private life. Anti-gay marriage writer Stanley Kurtz has claimed that gay marriage in the Netherlands (more accurately, registered partnerships in the Netherlands, but many conservatives like to skip over the difference) is at least partially to blame for rising amounts of out-of-wedlock births there. The actual mechanism by which this actually happens isn't made altogether clear. Apparently the existence of alternatives to "traditional marriage" makes people abandon the institution in favour of cohabitation, which is bad. And totally different from, say, two teenagers entering into a shotgun marriage because the girl got knocked up, which I suppose is good: it is, after all, a traditional marriage form (including the "father who didn't want kids having to marry the girl he got pregnant" bit, that's a very old and common marriage tradition in our society that has not yet been destroyed, sad to say).

So anyway, a question for people who opposes gay marriage:
How did gay marriage help cause this Bristol Palin's out-of-wedlock pregnancy? Since you so readily claim that it's acceptance of relationships like mine that contributes to the existence of family-unfriendly situations like the one in which Sarah Palin's daughter has found herself, please illustrate the mechanism by which that occurred in this situation. I don't see it, and I'd like you to point it out. I hope you agree that if you claim that gay marriage has nothing to do with this situation at all then I think you're entirely correct: gay marriage has NOTHING to do with the family situations of other people, and gay marriage opponents should stop falsely claiming that it does.

Gay marriage:The Australian Christian Lobby on Lateline

Lateline last night had some reporting on same sex marriage and civil unions last night as the ACT government once again presses ahead with its plan to introduce civil unions in that Territory. Jim Wallace from the Australian Christian Lobby was on, arguing that gay people did not deserve to be married because their relationships did not compare to heterosexual relationships in the slightest.

As so frequently happens from people opposing homosexuality, he spouted a lot of incredibly precise-sounding statistics, not a single one of which can be readily verified by anyone ("Various studies show that..." was the phrasing he used to avoid anyone noting his dearth of real evidence,if I recall correctly). I have from time to time managed to track down some of these wayward statistics to find that they are distorted, misunderstood, and one occasion outright made up (and yes, I can provide sources for that accusation if asked). Other people have also tried to expose this deceptive practice, but it's hard going. For one, most people are statistically illiterate. For too many people, numbers that sound exact, references that appear voluminous and charts that look professionally created count for far more than statistics that are actually accurate. For another, even when the actual reality is presented, it's all too easy for people to ignore the evidence by discrediting the person presenting the evidence on the basis that they're a homosexual who "has an agenda".

I've tried to track down the sources for Wallace's scientific-seeming numbers, with very little success. I've only found one. It's a statistic that occurs relatively frequently in anti-gay propaganda. Anti-gay activist frequently claim that a study in Holland showed that homosexual relationships only last an average of 18 months. The usual tactic when quoting the study is to then compare this to a study which grotesquely overinflates the average duration of heterosexual marriages (note: not heterosexual relationships, heterosexual marriages. I leave it to the reader to figure out why any such comparison between homosexual relationships and only those heterosexual relationships that are heterosexual marriages is inherently dishonest). Jim Wallace in this case spouted the unsourced statistic that Australian marriages last an average of 33 years. I can't find that one at all, unfortunately.

The "Dutch study" in question, though, is called "The contribution of steady and casual partnerships to the incidence of HIV infection among homosexual men in Amsterdam", and is available online. Jim Wallace of Box Turtle Bulletin has already done a fairly good job of demolishing the idea that this is a representative sample of homosexual couples:

We have a study population that was heavily weighted with HIV/AIDS patients, excluded monogamous participants, was predominantly urban, and under the age of thirty. While this population was good for the purposes of the study, it was in no way representative of Amsterdam’s gay men, let alone gay men anywhere else.

Perversely, Wallace went even further than most anti-gay activists in his denunciation. He didn't just say homosexual relationships only last an average of eighteen months, he said homosexual marriages only last an average of eighteen months. From the Lateline transcript last night

JIM WALLACE: And our experience is, that where homosexuals are given marriage, for instance as in Holland, that the average length or duration of those relationships has been eighteen months between two gay men. Now that's not marriage.

The study he's misrepresenting had absolutely nothing to say about homosexual marriages in the Netherlands whatsoever. Why does he think he can get away with such dishonesty? It appears to me that the depressing answer is: because he can. Anti-gay activists spout too many lies, and it takes too long to explain why they're lies, to ever be able to effectively catch them all.

There are reasonable questions to go into here about not just gay marriage but marriage itself - whether longevity is necessarily the best measure of a relationship's quality, whether marriage has any effect on the longevity of a relationship, whether this kind of collectivist reasoning about "average duration of a relationship" for a part of the population is a valid reason to deny relationship recognition to all members of that part of the population, including those who fall outside the average - but it is impossible to reach those points of argument when the debate is forever being poisoned by so-called Christians who see nothing wrong with basing their entire worldview about homosexual people and homosexual relationships on a foundation of lies.

In which gay marriage opponents appear confused on the issue

I can't be the only person who's noticed this...

In California, the State Supreme Court has scheduled a hearing on whether the state's ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional. One of the arguments in favour of the ban is that

the domestic-partner laws [of California] satisfy California's constitutional requirement of equal treatment for gays and lesbians.

That gets argued a lot, that a domestic partnership, civil union or something similar which gives the same legal rights and responsibilities as marriage should be good enough, even if it isn't specifically called marriage. Many supporters of gay rights find it persuasive, even. Who thinks that a "domestic partnership" is different from a "marriage" in anything except name?

Well, as it turns out, gay marriage opponents do - but only if it's heterosexual relationships at issue. In Maryland, US legislators introduced a Bill that

would abolish civil marriage ceremonies now confined to heterosexual unions in the state and replace them with domestic partnerships for all couples.

"Marriage" would be a label applied by religious institutions only. In secular law

The word "marriage" would be replaced with "valid domestic partnership" in the state's family law code.

The opposition's response? Derision.

"What they're talking about is an even more radical departure from traditional marriage than even advocates for gay marriage are talking about," said Del. Christopher B. Shank (R-Washington), the minority whip. "They're creating a situation for one special interest group that basically diminishes the value of marriage for everyone else."

So, an arrangement that for gay people is supposedly so similar to marriage that it makes gay marriage itself unnecessary is for straight people a departure from marriage so "radical" that it's demeaning for straight people to be limited to it.

Conclusion? "Separate but equal" never is.