DOMA Hurts Gay Military Couples [VIDEO]

Posted on February 24, 2013 by Mark Blackmon

DOMA Hurts Gay Military Couples After DADT Repeal, Says U.S. Marine Corps Captain Matthew Phelps.

On the heels of the one-year anniversary of the end of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” U.S Marine Corps Captain Matthew Phelps made history when he became the first gay man to propose marriage to his boyfriend Ben Schock at the White House.

Now the newly engaged couple are featured in a new video that demonstrates how the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, counteracts many of the benefits same-sex military spouses should be receiving in the wake of the DADT repeal.

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration has urged the Supreme Court to strike down DOMA when it hears arguments next month.

The Obama administration on Friday urged the Supreme Court to strike down the Defense Of Marriage Act in a brief that calls the law unconstitutional because it violates “the fundamental guarantee of equal protection.” HuffPo

MP’s Heartfelt Speech on Marriage Equality in the UK

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Mark Blackmon

Here’s a clip of Mike Freer, a Tory MP, in the House of Commons with a common sense, no nonsense defense of marriage equality. Americans should listen to Mr. Freer and contemplate his message. To me what it really all boils down to is “some in the church don’t like it, so we shouldn’t do it.” And I say to that, “Bloody bollocks!”

H/T Andrew Sullivan, on whose site I first saw this.

Wyoming Gay Rights: Conservative State Takes Small Steps Forward

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Mark Blackmon

“I think people are beginning to realize that this is just not a big deal. The sky doesn’t fall,” said Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, who signed on as a co-sponsor on the anti-discrimination bill. He said recent decisions on gay rights in the courts, the military and other states are bleeding into the state’s consciousness.

In this year’s session, for the first time in years, no one sponsored “defense of marriage” legislation seeking to prevent the state from recognizing same-sex unions performed elsewhere.

via Wyoming Gay Rights: Conservative State Takes Small Steps Forward. Huffington Post Gay Voices.

The late Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) famously supported gay rights.

This may surprise people who are only familiar with today’s conservative movement, but old line conservatives get it. The late Barry Goldwater, the Republicans’ 1964 presidential candidate, was known as “Mr. Conservative” but he had little to do with a conservative movement that he saw as co-opted by the religious right.

[In 1989, he] stated that the Republican party had been taken over by a “bunch of kooks.” In a 1994 interview with the Washington Post the retired senator said, “When you say “radical right” today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican party and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye.” (Conservpedia)

He had no use for Jerry Falwell, either. He famously said, “Every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.”

As to gay issues, Goldwater claimed that gay rights just made good conservative common sense. When the military’s ban on gay and lesbian service members was under fire in the early ’90s, Goldwater said flatout, “Everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar.” He also said, “You don’t have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.”

My dad was what I liked to refer to as a “Goldwater wingnut.” When I was a little kid, I’m sure we had the only Volkswagen bus with Goldwater ’64 bumper stickers. Later in life, Dad got “religion” and became a Clinton Democrat and we stopped arguing about politics and started agreeing on issues. It was weird! HA!

Today, I wish Dad was still around to knock around these issues with me. I think we’d both agree that gay rights, women’s rights, all civil rights, in fact, are real conservative values. Like Goldwater — and perhaps, Wyoming’s own famously conservative thinker Alan Simpson — Dad and I would likely agree that today’s Republican party has no roots in the historic Republican party.