Gay Couples Finally Win Right to Be Pressured About When They're Going to Have Kids [Rights And Rites]

As same sex marriage becomes the norm from sea to glittering sea (much to the chagrin of angry folks with their mouths stuffed full of deep fried poultry parts), gay couples are discovering all sorts of the hidden benefits of being legally allowed to get married. Like paying out the ass for a venue because proprietors of reception halls triple the price whenever anyone says the W word. Or like the relentless pestering from family and in-laws over when — or if — they're going to have children.

The New York Times, in another piece that makes the New York City intelligentsia's vision of America sound like a living realization of one of Rick Santorum's nightmares, discusses the relatively new phenomenon of newly married same-sex couples' relatives bugging them about when they're going to have some babies. Not only are relatives asking, but other gay couples have begun pressuring each other. From the Times,

But for Jeff Krehely, 35, who has been married for six years, there is no escaping the question in his social circles. His friends ask. His colleagues ask. His parents are so eager that they have taken to sending birthday cards to his two cats (they call them the "grandkitties").

On the Fourth of July, when Mr. Krehely and his husband sipped iced coffee with several other gay couples, he knew it was only a matter of time before the subject came up. Three of the five couples said they were seriously considering adopting.

"Everyone's asking: What's your timetable? What's your plan?" said Mr. Krehely, a policy analyst, who is still weighing whether to take the plunge.

While some gay couples are being pressured to adopt, in many parts of the US, there's a stigma against same-sex couples adopting. In Utah and Mississippi, it's illegal for same sex couples to adopt children. And in several other states, where gay marriage isn't legal, prospective parents need to jump through several legal hoops in order to have a child of their own.

Even so, the tide is turning. Public opinion has shifted dramatically since the turn of the century, when only 38% of Americans thought that adoption should be legal for same sex couples. A survey conducted last month and released last week found that for the first time, the majority of Americans (52%) think that gay couples should be eligible to adopt kids.

It's great to see loving same sex couples who are finally free to build the families they never thought were possible — and join the Straights in being perpetually harangued over babies. Misery loves company.

[NYT]

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Noted Corporate Leviathan Amway Linked to an Anti-Gay Marriage Group [Rights And Rites]

Amway, the Michigan-based purveyor of fine, consumer-pleasing clutter, has been linked to the National Organization for Marriage, one of country's most vocal advocates against same-sex marriage. Amway's proximity to NOM has spurred Fred Karger, the president of LGBT activist group Rights Equal Rights, to call for a boycott of the Amway, which could prove pretty hard for the average person to do considering that Amway has its fingers in everything from cleaning products, to jewelry, to the NBA (Amway has the naming rights to the Orlando Magic's professional playpen).

In 2009, the Douglas and Maria DeVos Foundation — Douglas DeVos is Amway's president — donated a cool $500,000 to NOM. That three-year-old donation prompted Karger to announce an Amway boycott on Friday. He linked the company to Chick-fil-A, and explained that NOM, like the Christian chicken-breast peddler, "constantly defends anti-LGBT companies." The DeVoses reminded everyone that Amway itself hasn't taken an official company stance on the marriage issue — only the DeVoses have, and, they would have the general public know, expressing "personal beliefs as a participant in the democratic process" is "one of the highest callings of any individual." Having an opinion and expressing it is one of the highest callings, everyone, even if that means expressing stupid opinions, like that Pierce Brosnan was good in the Mamma Mia! movie, or that McDonald's doesn't clearly serve the best fries.

Orlando Magic, Amway Boycotted For Anti-Gay Marriage Donation [ABC News]

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National Organization for Marriage Unmoved by Infographic of the Bible’s Many Awful Marriage Possibilities [Rights And Rites]

An infographic purporting to show the bible's actual nightmarish definition of marriage in the years when people still thought the sun was either the poison bump on the back of an enormous gila monster or an egg yolk that could end famine has been steadily canvassing the internet, yet has somehow failed to dissuade the National Organization for Marriage that maybe the whole "one man, one woman" note has been struck a little too often. The infographic shows how biblical definitions of marriage include, though are not limited to, the following perversities: man + woman + concubines; man + woman + slaves; man + oodles of wives; and rapist + victim. All of that sounds like pretty damning evidence — straight from the most important textbook ever, no less — that perhaps the conservative case that marriage is strictly between a man and woman because, like, the bible is a thing has some holes.

Aha! exclaimed NOM's Ruth Institute on its blog — the infographic only proves that conservative worries about same-sex marriage are well-founded, because...

Look carefully at the image and you will see that in ALL of the examples, both genders are represented. This image reinforces the conservative position about needing a gender requirement, it does not undermine our position. And here is why: marriage has always been understood primarily as the means to bearing and raising children. Yes marriage provides companionship to the married partners, but that has never been the reason we needed marriage as a society.

Of course, the Ruth Institute doesn't explicitly defend any of the more, um, passé iterations of biblical marriage (despite what Think Progress' headline insinuates), but the organization does try really, really hard to work with pretty bleak material. A selective reading of the bible will yield pretty much whatever its peruser is looking for — that's sort of the point. The bible is really just a comprehensive reference book for moral dilemmas spiced up with a few beheadings, monsters and wars. It'd be almost impossible to show someone biblical evidence of anything because the bible is like a cloud — where one person sees a deity trying to test a person's faith, someone else sees an asshole trying to prove to his cosmic adversary that he can literally shit all over some sap named Job and the guy will still be super devoted to him. Like a dog.

NOM Defends Biblical Marriage, Including Slavery, Concubines, Polygamy, and Rape [Think Progress]

Image via MNStudio/Shutterstock.

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Batshit Colorado Pastor Is Getting Unreasonably Angry at the Muppets [Rights And Rites]

A Colorado pastor named Kevin Swanson had a conniption fit on his radio show Generations with Vision last Friday about the Muppets breaking ties with Chick-fil-A, again demonstrating that some fundamentalist Christians are more comfortable having dialogues with imaginary creatures than with real people.

Swanson and co-host Dave Buehner suggested that the fryers at Chick-fil-A should be filled with frog legs and then cleverly added that some sort of porcine sandwich should be added to the menu as well, both of which menu amendations, however awful in this context, would actually still be okay with Chick-fil-A's bovine marketing firm. Earlier this year, it may have seemed impossible that even the most vitriolic of bigots could take issue with the Muppets, what with the way they handled Tex Richman, but bigotry knows no reason or bounds, which is why a radio troll like Kevin Swanson thinks that this passes for actual historical analysis:

A Christian perspective ultimately brought the death penalty upon homosexuality between roughly 350 AD and roughly 1850 or so. For about 1,500 years that form of life had pretty much been eliminated except here and there. Of course, now you have a massive, massive increase in this kind of thing.

Swanson also shocked listeners by suggesting Bert and Ernie are gay, adding that "tolerance only runs one direction-you only can tolerate gays, you can't tolerate those who don't support gays." "Support" and "tolerate" are two very different words — nobody has to actively support anything that they don't want to support. If Swanson prefers to make halting love to a single horrified woman, he can just sit quietly at home and think about how the dinosaurs were really just robots created by a time-traveling Steven Spielberg in a diabolical conspiracy to prove that God isn't real. It's not that anyone wouldn't tolerate a bigot like Swanson's right to keep his bad opinions to himself, it's that people don't and shouldn't tolerate vitriol.

CO Pastor Wants Kermit, Miss Piggy On Chick-Fil-A Menu For Taking "Sodomy Route" [Queerty]

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If You Shame One Thing Today, Let it Be This Bed & Breakfast Owner's Hateful Letter about AIDS and Queers [Rights And Rites]

Sometime between Will & Grace and Glee, America collectively decided it would stop being grossed out by same sex marriage. But that memo didn't reach everyone, especially the crazy old assholes who own a Bed & Breakfast called Camp Whitebriar in New Jersey. After a lesbian mom took to Facebook to voice her dismay over a pro-Chick-fil-A, anti-gay sign outside of its doors, the proprietor of the inn responded with a long winded, barely coherent screed about how lesbians are just jealous of her hotass straight marriage, gays are ruining The Children, AIDS is awesome because that means that she doesn't have to serve queers. Bonus: the letter "overused" quotation marks "so" much that it "almost" hurts to "read it." ALSO THERE ARE ALL CAPS TO DENOTE EMPHATIC, CRAZED SHOUTING. It's a little treasure of haterade.

The sign that prompted the original complaint was one of those cheap looking yellow light up deals with the interchangeable letters that Camp Whitebriar's owners had customized to say "CHICK FIL A APPRECIATION DAY AUG 1 WEDNESDAY MARRIAGE ONE MAN ONE WOMAN ONE GOD." Fellow Jerseyan, lesbian, and mom Joanne Fraschilla got an ooky feeling from the sign and wrote the following totally respectful but firm complaint on Camp Whitebriar's Facebook page:

This is somewhere my son loves to pass by and we have been excited to visit. Not anymore. I'm sad to see a local business anti LGBT marriage.

In response, she received this note:

Isn't it wonderful Joanne Fraschilla, that you and your son can enjoy the animals here because I have a traditional marriage with a husband who works with me 90 hours a week to take care of these animals, and the summer camp....we're 66-68 years old....there were no gays or queers in our time.....if two old ladies chose to live together..so be it, let them deal with God when they get there...but to have the "face sucking" thrown in my face of two gay lesbians who are totally destroying the "normal balance in a child's life" as you claim your son...where is the role model that your son needs to know how to act like a man? or will he only see the "one sided selfishness" of a "single parent"...and end up an out cast in society by being "gay" himself because he didn't have a father as a role model. I'll pray for you....remember what the bible says: "Lay down with dogs, get up with fleas".....guess that's why God invented aids.... THIS LOCAL BUSINESS WILL BE ONE MAN ONE WOMAN ONE GOD MAKES MARRIAGE....AND PROUD TO DO SO....YOU SHOULD BE SO LUCKY TO OWN YOUR OWN BUSINESS

Ostensibly, that idiot opus was penned by Carole Lokan-Moore, proprietor of the place and, from the sound of it, New Jersey's angriest and most reality-challenged closeted lesbian. The letter is filled with sparkling fact-free gems — Really? There were no gays or queers back in the olden days? Gay parents make kids into gay adults? And it doesn't say "Lay down with the dogs, get up with the fleas" anywhere in the Bible; that's a very dumbed down version of a quote from Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack — but I suppose facts have no place among homophobic Chick-fil-A supporters who believe that eating trans fat-filled chicken one sweltering day in August will somehow stop the march of social progress. Anyway! As many things in the LGBT world do, this story Gets Better.

According to Joe My God, Lokan-Moore isn't just a B&B owner — she's also a failed politician who only received 416 votes in the GOP primary when she ran for New Jersey State Senate last year. Her campaign's motto? "Good Old Fashion Common Sense." She's also a member of the NRA, the Daughters of the Confederacy, and, confusingly, a high ranking Girl Scout. Basically the human version of a comment on Fox Nation. Here's part of her platform:

N. J. needs legislators who will "think outside of the box" to get control of spending. NJ needs legislators who will not "spend tax payers money on private interest groups like Planned Parenthood" Our Governor Vetoed Diane Allen's Bill to waste 7 million of tax payers money, but she attached it, to another bill, and it passed. As a Christian, I do not want my tax money payed to the Largest Abortion Clinic in the Country. It is time for the "Career politician to go back home". It is time to shrink our Government spending by half. It is time to let "new Ideas" spring forth to stimulate this economy. Let's cut the Regulation and make N.J. ‘ready for Business" & welcome back the entrepreneurship of tomorrow.

Ten bucks she's a birther! Any takers?

Fraschilla has since started a petition to get Lokan-Moore to apologize, but I say we let Carole Lokan-Moore continue to be an unapologetic bigot, loudly and in the open. We've only got a short window of time left before these people begin to understand how the internet works and stop writing idiotic things on Facebook for the world to ridicule. Don't apologize, Lokan-Moore! Keep up with the "unnecessary" quotation marks AND SHOUTING and use of the word "queers" like it's still something that hasn't been all but completely reclaimed.

Besides, sans apology, Fraschilla has an excuse to focus her attention on that easy-to-playfully-vandalize sign in front of Camp Whitebriar. With a few letters left over, she could have made the sign spell "A HYPOCRITICAL DICK" and taken hilarious pictures next to it giving the thumbs up symbol. That would have at least made the front page of Reddit.

[Joe My God]

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Democrats Are Just About Ready to Include Same-Sex Marriage in Party Platform [Rights And Rites]

Just a few months after Barack Obama said that it should be totally cool for same-sex couples to get married, Democrats seems poised to add same-sex marriage to the party platform.

Party officials met in Minneapolis over the weekend, approving the the first step to change the party platform. The next hurdle will come in two weeks when the entire platform committee meets in Detroit to vote on the inclusion of same-sex marriage. If the change is approved, it would then be up to Democratic Convention delegates to vote on when they convene in Charlotte this September. Though the language in the proposal could be revised, Democrats who were briefed on the Minneapolis decision don't think that there will be any major obstacles to same-sex marriage being included in the party platform. Language in the platform also included a condemnation of the Defense of Marriage Act, which boasts a somewhat misleading name because it doesn't so much safeguard marital unions as it does prohibit people from being recognized as married couples. There's a perfectly reasonable explanation for that, of course — Republicans crafted it on Washington D.C.'s district-wide Opposite Day, a little-known holiday on the official calendar that is particularly sacred to the GOP.

Democrats Move to Include Gay Marriage in Party Platform [NY Times]

Democratic platform includes marriage equality plank: sources [Washington Blade]

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