If You Didn't Call in "Gay" Today ...

... please to enjoy this: Prop. 8, The Musical:



(Bill Frost)

Prop 8 Blowback and the Gay Voltron

[Proposition 8] Ah shit I can't believe I didn't see this coming! The LDS church gets the high five from their long time deep-fried southern baptist foes (and others) for helping defeat gay marriage in California, according to a trib story pointing out an online thank you petition signed by over 3000 Prop 8 supporters to LDS Prez' Monson.

All this time I figured the elders of the Zion command center were making a ginormous mistake extending so much uncharacteristic political squeeze into the politics of another state. I figured their getting up to their elbows into the politics of the Prop 8 debate with tens of millions in donations, phone banks and ward house warnings would blow up in their collective faces and ignite a gay revolution.

A revolution uniting disparate equality groups into a unified, well organized machine--with GLBT groups from across the country coming together like an enormous gay Voltron firing a wrathful rainbow upon the dark iniquities of social injustice with laser-like intensity.

Let there be light I say!

And what was there? Instead of unity we've seen the likes of Dan Savage asking to boycott Utah. We have Kroger brand anthrax sugar showing up at LDS temples and church building vandalism across the state and country.

But there is light too. The equality movement still has momentum of course and shouldn't be counted out yet. Especially with advocacy groups at home and elsewhere putting the pressure on for more sex orientation and identity equity on a number of fronts from housing to employment non-discrimination. The problem is that while this revolution is still coming together, the LDS position is not only as strong as before but is now starting to win over their long time evangelical foes. The Baptists, who would never invite the Mormons into their cool Christians club before, have now signed onto an online petition thanking the LDS church for its support on the issue.

It's beginning to look like this last election was a revolution. But with the Obama-phenomena magically blue-ifying states across the conservative south and west, perhaps a counter revolution by the religious right maybe in the works. What's that choking sensation I feel? Why it might just be the bible belt, slung over the Rockies and slowly being cinched up. (Eric S. Peterson)

Mormons and Marriage Polemics

[Mormon Sophistry] We called our friends David and Jimmy last night in San Francisco. They were married on Oct. 25 on a lovely day in that city, after 27 years together in a committed relationship. David is nearly 70. His reaction to Prop 8 passing in California was about what I expected. "We'll keep fighting," he said. "It's not going to go away, people aren't going to give up. We know that."

They don't know what's going to happen to the legal status of their marriage. Like the rest of us married stiffs, they go to bed together each night and wake up each morning, do their lives and are grateful to have someone on their side, helping them through. The outcome of the vote won't change that. Still, to live in a society that would recognize their marriage, that would be something all right.

The LDS Church issued this official statement regarding its well-publicized and the multi-million-dollar-funded fight it encouraged for Prop 8. It's posted on the church's "newsroom" link. According to LDS leaders, they have always supported joint property rights, the right of gay partners to visit each other in the hospital and many of the benefits that heterosexual married partners enjoy. It's just that marriage thing that they can't stomach.

The subtext of the official message is fascinating. The message was posted following Barack Obama's rout in his presidential victory. Obama drew millions of supporters who have never felt remotely a part of American politics or its power structure--blacks, Latinos (check out final election result maps and the border regions of every state from Texas westward to California. All of them, blue, blue, blue), gays, young voters. These people are the future of U.S. power and culture and the LDS hierarchy knows it. They had to issue a statement that seems inclusive and welcoming. The numbers in the U.S. are against them. The future is about same-sex marriage, an expansion of civil rights and a world with fewer borders, boundaries and restrictions on "people who aren't like us."

My friends David and Jimmy may not live long enough to see the change. But then I look around at the number of twenty- and thirty-somethings who are proudly gay and lesbian, who are politically engaged and who vote. It's just a matter of time. (Holly Mullen)

Oh, That C-r-r-a-z-y San Francisco

[Travelogue] I just returned this afternoon from four days in the sassy and totally independent 51st state of San Francisco. And I feel right now as I always do after returning to SLC from SF--a little dizzy, a little like I've been transported from one planet to another.

In a good way.

My husband and I drove to SF for the wedding of a gay couple that is very dear to us. David Hardy and James Brentano have been committed to each other for 27 years. They own a condominium together in the city's Mission Dolores neighborhood. They have been together in sickness and in health. They each come from a huge, extended family (David a former Mormon of pioneer stock who grew up in Salt Lake City; Jimmy a Catholic who spent most of his youth in Connecticut). They got married in a lovely public park called Sigmund Stern Grove in the city's Sunset neighborhood. (That's the historic Trocadero Inn, above, which is where we danced and drank toasts to our friends' happiness.) Siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles and friends came from all over the country to celebrate. It was one beautiful event.

Of course, it held all that much more meaning that our friends chose to get married in the final days leading up to California's vote on Proposition 8, which would ban same-sex marriage. David and Jimmy are taking the whole thing in stride--if pro-Prop 8 forces are successful in banning their now-legal marriage, they will simply stay together, stay in love and keep fighting for the long-overdue recognition of their civil rights.

Anyway, San Francisco is famous for running a huge number of ballot initiatives every election year, and this season is no exception. There are 24 initiatives (they are identified by letters in the alphabet, so the list goes all the way to X). Needless to say, there are measures before San Francisco voters this year that would curl the hair of Utah voters. For instance, a nice woman with wildly curly gray hair, hanging past her waist, was standing outside a natural foods store in the Bernal Heights neighborhood, where we were staying, handing out leaflets for Initiative V, which would ban the Junior ROTC program and military recruiting in the city's public schools. This newspaper columnist is outraged by the notion.

Couldn't you just see it here in Utah?

So, I'm back in the real world now. SLC is my city and I love it. But it's always good to get the ol' senses recharged in San Francisco now and again. (Holly Mullen)