Marriage amendment stalled!

One day after nearly 400 people packed the state capitol rotunda with chants of "Stop this bill!", the state Senate chose not to vote on and to table Senate Bill 1250, the marriage amendment. Senate leadership made this move after learning that the bill had no chance to move in the state House.

Right here in Pennsylvania- our state that some pundits like to simplify into Philly, Pittsburgh, and Alabama- the LGBT civil rights movement achieved a significant victory. And it happened because both Democrats and Republicans stood up against the legislation.

This was a victory, but the bill is stalled, not dead. Now we need the state House to hold firm in its stance to not move the bill, if it were to pass the Senate. Anyone in Pennsylvania who is reading this needs to contact their representative with the message, "Oppose the marriage amendment. Oppose Senate Bill 1250." Only call your personal representative. Out-of-district communication is really irritating to legislators.

Find your rep at the House website. Talking points on the issue are available at our website.

Meanwhile, throughout the week, editorial boards have been coming out (so to speak) against the marriage amendment, like The Patriot News of Harrisburg:

What is sometimes referred to as a "defense of marriage" initiative is an attempt to fundamentally alter a constitution -- intended to protect the liberties of people from the power of government -- to discriminate against the state's minority gay population.

The notion that the institution of marriage is somehow put in jeopardy by the prospect of gay couples formalizing their relationship in civil union, which is illegal by statute in Pennsylvania, is preposterous.

And The Public Opinion of Chambersburg:

We agree with opponents who say this amendment would formally codify discrimination within the state's constitution. State Sen. Vincent Fumo of Philadelphia summed the issue nicely when he echoed the words of the Founding Fathers, who believed constitutions defend minorities from the tyranny of the majority.

And the most prominent conservative newspaper in the state, Richard Mellon Scaife's Pittsburgh Tribune Review:

But perhaps even more onerous is the effort to ban same-sex civil unions. What, gays and lesbians, because of their sexual orientation, somehow do not have the same and fundamental right of contract as their heterosexual counterparts?

Surely legislative backers of this amendment have more pressing business in Harrisburg than to attempt to enshrine discrimination into the Pennsylvania Constitution. That they appear not to suggests voters should make a change in November.

I'm looking forward to the day when we drive the final nail into the coffin of this foolish idea.

Andy in Harrisburg

Loving for all

As our lawmakers debate Senate Bill 1250, the marriage item, I hope they pause to consider the words of Mildred Loving.

Loving, a black woman whose challenge to Virginia's ban on interracial marriage led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling striking down such laws nationwide, has died, her daughter said Monday.

Peggy Fortune said Loving, 68, died Friday at her home in rural Milford. She did not disclose the cause of death.

"I want (people) to remember her as being strong and brave yet humble -- and believed in love," Fortune told The Associated Press.

Loving and her white husband, Richard, changed history in 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their right to marry. The ruling struck down laws banning racially mixed marriages in at least 17 states.

Last June, on the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia, Mildred wrote the following essay which was reposted yesterday on DailyKos:

By Mildred Loving

When my late husband, Richard, and I got married in Washington, DC in 1958, it wasn't to make a political statement or start a fight. We were in love, and we wanted to be married.

We didn't get married in Washington because we wanted to marry there. We did it there because the government wouldn't allow us to marry back home in Virginia where we grew up, where we met, where we fell in love, and where we wanted to be together and build our family. You see, I am a woman of color and Richard was white, and at that time people believed it was okay to keep us from marrying because of their ideas of who should marry whom.

When Richard and I came back to our home in Virginia, happily married, we had no intention of battling over the law. We made a commitment to each other in our love and lives, and now had the legal commitment, called marriage, to match. Isn't that what marriage is?

Not long after our wedding, we were awakened in the middle of the night in our own bedroom by deputy sheriffs and actually arrested for the "crime" of marrying the wrong kind of person. Our marriage certificate was hanging on the wall above the bed. The state prosecuted Richard and me, and after we were found guilty, the judge declared: "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix." He sentenced us to a year in prison, but offered to suspend the sentence if we left our home in Virginia for 25 years exile.

We left, and got a lawyer. Richard and I had to fight, but still were not fighting for a cause. We were fighting for our love.

Though it turned out we had to fight, happily Richard and I didn't have to fight alone. Thanks to groups like the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, and so many good people around the country willing to speak up, we took our case for the freedom to marry all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. And on June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that, "The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men," a "basic civil right."

My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God's plan to keep people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation's fears and prejudices have given way, and today's young people realize that if someone loves someone they have a right to marry.

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don't think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the "wrong kind of person" for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people's religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people's civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard's and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That's what Loving, and loving, are all about.

Lauri in York

Senator Fumo, slavery, and our precious civil rights

Senator Vince Fumo (D-Philadelphia) has taken a lot of heat for comments he made earlier this week at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing. In a heated discussion over Senate Bill 1250, the marriage amendment, Fumo suggested that- given the chance- the legislature would pass a bill to reinstate slavery, especially if it was on a secret ballot.

I was there. Obviously, Fumo was over the top. But what has been missed in the self-righteous outcry from the media and some legislators is the logic behind Fumo's comment. His logic was spot on, and only The Philadelphia Inquirer has been bold enough to say so. The bishop who testified and whom Fumo was sparring with at the time claimed that this important civil rights issue should be decided by voters, and Fumo was rebutting that point by claiming that voters don't decide what rights minorities have and don't have. To do so would place the minority in the hands of a tyrannical majority.

During the hearing, I was waiting for someone to make that point. Fumo did so but used a horrible example, slavery. But examples abound of issues on which we would not want voters making decisions. Interracial marriage, desegregation of public transportation, and desegregation of public schools- to name just a few- were important civil rights issues decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, not the voters. Would bans on interracial marriage been declared unconstitutional if left in the hands of voters, rather than the court, as it was in Loving v. Virginia in 1967? Can you imagine a majority of Americans or Arkansans voting for desegregation of schools in 1954?

The Framers were not perfect, as I've said here before, but they knew from experience that minorities of all sorts needed to be protected from the mob mentality of the majority. In their day, it was religious and political minorities. Later in our country's history, we came to our senses and protected the rights of racial and ethnic minorities. And today we fight hard for equality for our friends in the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender community.

Andy in Harrisburg

On Monday, stand tall for the rights of all!

I just sent this message to everyone I could think of. If you are within a day's drive of Harrisburg, you should be at The Rally for All Families at the state capitol rotunda at 1pm, a rally in opposition to Senate Bill 1250, the marriage amendment.

PLEASE FORWARD
Dear friends,

Yesterday's Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Senate Bill 1250, the marriage amendment, left me angry, amused, and mystified. It was a raucous affair with one witness claiming that marriage came "up from the ground" and supporters of the bill hooting and hollering and chattering throughout most of the hearing. Opponents of this ridiculous idea were there, and we’re thankful for that. Unfortunately, supporters of the bill outnumbered us.

The hearing was a reminder of this simple fact:

WE NEED YOU AT THE STATE CAPITOL ROTUNDA ON MONDAY AT 1PM FOR THE RALLY FOR ALL FAMILIES!

The Pennsylvania Senate needs to feel the pushback. They need to know that we’re not going to stand quietly by while they waste the people’s time on this divisive legislation.

Will you join us at 1pm on Monday at the state capitol rotunda? And bring friends!

Your senator needs to hear from you, and to that end, there will also be a lobbying training at 11am on Monday. We'll let you know where it will be by the end of the week.

I find it offensive that a renegade band of senators would use our state constitution to restrict rights and turn an entire community into second-class citizens, even though 65 percent of Pennsylvanians support civil unions for same-sex couples while just 27 percent oppose. Constitutions are for protecting and expanding rights, not restricting them.

See you Monday in Harrisburg!

peace,
Andy

Andy Hoover

Community Organizer/Legislative Assistant
American Civil Liberties Union of PA
Don't mourn. Organize.



PLEASE FORWARD

The Value All Families Coalition presents…



THE RALLY FOR ALL FAMILIES
STOP THE MARRIAGE AMENDMENT!

State Capitol Rotunda
Harrisburg, PA

May 5, 2008 at 1:00 P.M.

Lobby Training at 11am
Training Location: TBA

For more information, including transportation, contact:
Equality Advocates Pennsylvania
(215) 731-1447 x 10
or visit www.equalitypa.org

Andy in Harrisburg

Who is abstaining anyway?

The first year of college is kind of like a geography and sociology lessons, mixed into one.

“Tennessee borders Georgia?” incredulous Californians ask me.

“You’ve never been to a mall?!” We exclaim at the girl from New York City.

Soon, we become each other’s reference. I am the one who knows everything about barbeque, but the girl from Buffalo is the one to go to if you need to find out about winter weather.

But there was one place where I didn’t expect to become the expert.

We were sitting around one day at lunch, when the subject of sex ed came up.

“Yeah,” I say casually, “In my high school it was all pretty bad, but the guy who talked about the Diamond Zone was the worst.”

“The Diamond Zone?”

“He told us that ‘too far’ was anything that was in our Diamond Zone - the area from your chest to your hips. And if a boy touched you there, he was stealing from your husband.” I assumed that while my friends may have not ever met Diamond Zone guy, they had surely been exposed to similar speeches.

“WHAT?!” I looked up from the cafeteria’s excuse for meat loaf into the shocked stares of kids from California, New Jersey, New York, and Colorado.

“Oh… yeah. We never actually learned about condoms.”

I quickly found myself in the minority.

Suddenly, I became the girl with the abstinence-only stories. Later that week, I sat down at the table and a girl looked at me and said, as if asking for a particularly horrific ghost story, “Tell me more about the Diamond Zone.”

Apparently, in some parts of the country there aren't abstinence speakers talking about saving your carnal treasures. Kids don’t get in trouble for handing out condoms before prom. And it’s down-right weird to be asked to sign a virginity pledge when you’re in the eighth grade.

But at my all-girls private school, this was all normal. And if the well-funded groups fighting for abstinence-only prgrams were to be believed, it is also necessary.

Indeed, these groups can produce evidence to show its effectiveness. Recently, a group of health experts testified on sex ed before congress. Also on the panel? Two experts arguing against comprehensive sex education and for abstinence-only until-marriage programs. One oft-cited study used to combat the facts about comprehensive sex education comes from the right-wing Heritage Foundation. The report claims that abstinence-only sex ed was working, due to the evidence that abstinent teens are more successful in life than non-abstinent teens.

One of the sources for the Heritage Foundation report was this study about abstinent teens being better students and generally more successful. To believe abstinence groups, abstinent teens come from abstinence programs, because, after all, “sex education programs… focus, almost exclusively, in encouraging youth to use condoms.” This fact is simply untrue.

So wither the abstinent teens? I cannot turn to my own studies, being an under-funded eighteen years old and an abysmal math student, but I can turn to my own experiences.

You see, I realized a funny thing when I was forced to rehash my high school sex “ed” horror stories. A lot of these kids, from Berkeley, California to New York City, were virgins. Never forced to make an abstinence pledge or told to protect carnal treasures, they were healthy, happy students in a good college, pursuing business, law, or health, blissfully unaware that groups such as the Heritage Foundation would see students given condoms, as they were, as sexually deviant high-school drop-outs.

In contrast, whykNOw abstinence, the delightful panderer of fear and misinformation at my school, produced a graduating class of 100 girls that, by the end of the summer, had already yielded three pregnancies. Safe sex, to many of my classmates, meant “pulling out.” In addition, girls often clingingly protected their virginity, while giving “blow jobs” to casual crushes, not realizing that oral sex carries risks as well.

In fact, the only thing I knew about oral sex in high school was that, according to my horrified health teacher, “that boy will want you to put his penis in your mouth.” That was it. I don’t even remember being told that you could catch an STD from oral sex.

The preachy fear of my high school’s abstinence program did little more than keep the ignorant in the dark and temporarily fuel promises of “purity,” the majority of which will later be broke, without contraception and with huge guilt.

When abstinence groups quote statistics, they might want to think about where their abstinent teens come from.

Marshall Bright is an undergraduate intern at the Duvall Project

Mixed messages

While I adamantly believe it is the sole right of a woman to make the choices about her body, I have also always been able to understand how a reasonable person might object to abortion.

But the problem is there seem to be so few reasonable people whose objection is just about abortion. All too often, these are the same folks who take ridiculously strident views (One really has to wonder what's really going on in their heads) about women's sexuality.

For instance, often they're the ones behind the drug counter who want to be able to deny a woman access to her birth control - Bill Maher calls them "activist pharmacists" - due to their own personal religious objections.

And since we're already quoting Bill Maher, here's his response to those people who would deny their daughters vaccinations that could prevent a deadly form of cervical cancer because they fear it would lead to sexual promiscuity.



And of course, let's not forget those esteemed Pennsylvania lawmakers who last fall tried to stand in the way of regulations that would have guaranteed rape victims (rape victims!) access to emergency contraception at hospitals across the state.

Sigh.

So, it is refreshing and perhaps worth celebrating the fact that our freshman U.S. Senator supports a bill that would restore college student access to low-cost birth control.

From a Planned Parenthood news item:

After months of lobbying by Planned Parenthood staff, and a groundswell of grassroots support for affordable birth control, Senator Bob Casey, Jr. has signed on as a co-sponsor of the Prevention Through Affordable Access Act (S. 2347). Since January 2007, college health centers and safety net providers lost their ability to purchase low cost birth control as a result of a legislative oversight. This has caused birth control prices to skyrocket to up to 900% for some women! A no-cost legislative fix has been introduced in both the House and Senate to combat the problem, and there is hope that these vehicles will move in the coming weeks.

The news item encourages people to write Sen. Casey a letter of support.

Hooray for the sanity in this measure. As has been shown time after time, improved access to birth control means fewer unwanted pregnancies, which means fewer (Say it with me) abortions. After all, that's supposed to be what they're fighting for.

Lauri in York

Harold and Kumar shout out to the ACLU

This weekend is the opening of Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. The ACLU gets a shout in the clip below.



Andy in Harrisburg