Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are...

In law school, I spoke as a straight "ally" to various classes for the campus office of LGBT Affairs. During orientation, the speakers, both gay and straight, shared their coming out stories. The stories ranged from extremely painful to funny to sweetly innocent. One woman's story of her adolescent crush on a camp counselor was so cute I wished I was a girl just so I could date her.

I find revisiting my story every now and again a refreshing reminder of why I believe in tolerance and acceptance, and why the fight for full equality cannot stop until it is a reality. Here's my story -- I hope you'll share yours as well.

I went to college a fundamentalist Christian. I thought being gay was a sin, and that gay people should be prayed for. I wasn't hateful about my beliefs, but they were relatively firm.

Until I met Rob. Rob and I worked for the campus conference office, he as a full-time conference planner and me as a student assistant. Rob was in his late 20s, good looking, and very self-assured. He was a fun guy to hang out with, and we spent many a day criss-crossing campus together in the department minivan.

Some way into that summer, I said something about Rob, to which a co-worker replied, "You do know Rob is gay, don't you?" I didn't. But rather than the "ick" reaction you might have expected, what came to mind was more of a "huh, what do you know?" I couldn't instantly categorize or judge Rob, because I knew him, and we were friends. As the summer wore on, he said a few things that made his orientation clear, such as his trademark "doing the bobblehead at all the boys walking down the hall."

That one relationship triggered a change of mindset. I left college with the conviction that discrimination against LGBT people was wrong. But moving back to my little hometown to write for the local newspaper, the subject never really came up and I didn't do anything with my conviction.

Then our state senator came to town. At a time when major education issues were before the state legislature, he held a town hall meeting where the one and only topic was preventing gays from adopting. He had sponsored legislation to this effect based on anecdotal, hearsay evidence about a pair of gay men who adopted a child, and it was later discovered that one of them had a criminal record. This, somehow, made gays on the whole unfit parents.

What shocked me as I sat in a little diner covering the event was the prevalence of gay jokes being whispered back and forth between the "town fathers" at the meeting, most of whom were Democrats. I left the meeting furious, and logged on to join the ACLU that day. In a number of small ways, I've spoken for love and equality for the relationships of LGBT citizens since that day.

How about you? How did you come to accept your own sexuality, or come to the conclusion that you were "straight but not narrow?"

I drink alone, with nobody else

The Midwestern Household is movin' on up the I-95 corridor this month, as we relocate from Maryland to Philadelphia. Ms. MG has already made the trip -- she moved into our new house and started her new job two weeks ago. Me, I'm still camping (literally - sleeping bag, camp mat) in our empty condo, with no furniture and, as of this afternoon, no TV. So here I sit, enjoying a pinot grigio and Manwich (cuz that's how I roll), and ungodly silence.

Tres excited about my new gig -- going to be working for an alternative energy company that builds wind turbines and is looking to get into solar. Should be a big culture change from my law firm days. It's a great time to be getting into this industry, and I'm looking forward to learning all about it.

Mr. Conservative

HBO began running a documentary this week on Barry Goldwater, dubbed "Mr. Conservative" and often credited with launching the modern conservative movement in the course of his unsuccessful 1964 bid for the presidency. The documentary, spearheaded by his granddaughter, portrays Goldwater as an "old school" conservative more in line with William F. Buckley or Andrew Sullivan than what passes for "conservatism" today. Goldwater might more accurately be called a libertarian, because his fundamental premise was that less government involvement (read, interference) in the national life should be the goal of politicians. In this, he appears to have maintained a consistency rarely seen today, applying his philosophy to both economic and social issues, such as abortion (he didn't believe the government had any right to tell women what to do with their bodies). Later in life, he even came to renounce his previous resistance to gays in the military, concluding that there was no sound policy reason to exclude people because of their sexual orientation, which he considered none of the government's business.

The documentary was interesting not only as a profile of a figure I must admit to knowing little about, but also as a timeline of the evolution of the conservative movement from its libertarian roots to its current Christianist paternalism. Goldwater himself had little use for the "social conservatives" whose inclusion in the GOP led to its electoral success, frequently clashing with Jerry Falwell and other fundamentalists.

I've often thought that the primordial conservative movement, prior to its co-option by radial reactionaries, offered some potentially valuable ideas to public debate. It is interesting that more and more "old school" conservatives are now rebelling against the current state of the movement, which has betrayed the values that Goldwater and others sought to promote. I plan to follow with some regularity the evolution of this debate within the movement, and am looking forward to reading Sullivan's forthcoming book on "The Conservative Soul." Goldwater, and conservatism past and present, certainly contain faults and follies, but in a time when reason is being pushed further and further from the public square, they just might be symbols worth resurrecting.

Truthiness Goes Nucular

The WaPo reports today that Rethuglicans continue to put politics before the truth, issuing a report on Iran's nuclear capabilities that the IAEA calls "outrageous and dishonest". The report, written by a single GOP staffer and released before it could even be voted on by the House intelligence committee, contains claims about Iran's nuclear program that intelligence officials acknowledge cannot be supported.

Privately, several intelligence officials said the committee report included at least a dozen claims that were either demonstrably wrong or impossible to substantiate. Hoekstra's office said the report was reviewed by the office of John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence.

Negroponte's spokesman, John Callahan, said in a statement that his office "reviewed the report and provided its response to the committee on July 24, '06." He did not say whether it had approved or challenged any of the claims about Iran's capabilities.

"This is like prewar Iraq all over again," said David Albright, a former nuclear inspector who is president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. "You have an Iranian nuclear threat that is spun up, using bad information that's cherry-picked and a report that trashes the inspectors."

The committee report, written by a single Republican staffer with a hard-line position on Iran, chastised the CIA and other agencies for not providing evidence to back assertions that Iran is building nuclear weapons.

Wow, talk about the tail wagging the dog.

If anyone has forgotten "the lessons of 9/11," it's Republicans who value political advantage over policy based on solid intelligence. The lack of shame and decency prevailing in the majority party is simply staggering.

Hands Off Constitutions

Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has a great op-ed in today's WaPo arguing against the wave of "constitutionalizing" sweeping across the nation in connection with gay marriage. Judge Wilkinson argues that matters evoking such passionate debate should be left to the normal legislative process, rather than being enshrined in state and federal constitutions either by judicial ruling or constitutional amendment.

The Framers meant our Constitution to establish a structure of government and to provide individuals certain inalienable rights against the state. They certainly did not envision our Constitution as a place to restrict rights or enact public policies, as the Federal Marriage Amendment does.

Ordinary legislation -- not constitutional amendments -- should express the community's view that marriage "shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman." To use the Constitution for prescriptions of policy is to shackle future generations that should have the same right as ours to enact policies of their own. To use the Constitution as a forum for even our most favored views strikes a blow of uncommon harshness upon disfavored groups, in this case gay citizens who would never see this country's founding charter as their own.

The judge's essay is a refreshingly balanced view of how the American legal and political systems were intended to interact. As passionately as I want to see gay Americans enjoy equal marriage rights, my thinking is evolving somewhat as to the best way to achieve this result. Increasingly, I wonder if working through state legislatures isn't, in fact, the better way to go, even though it could delay the achievement of equal rights for some time.

The increasing prominence of the so-called "procreation" rationale signals, in my opinion, the beginning of the end for marriage discrimination. Both the New York and Washington supreme courts, in refusing to find a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, held that inequality could remain because the legislature could rationally believe that restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples was necessary to encourage opposite sex couples to form stable family units for the raising of children.

"Poppycock!" you say? Exactly. It is poppycock, and it's the thin thread on which marriage discrimination currently hangs. Even the fundies have shifted, in large part, from arguments based on their reading of Christian theology to arguing "on behalf of the children." They had to, because the moral arguments simply hold less and less sway as more Americans are exposed to openly gay friends, neighbors and co-workers, and greater awareness of the hardships inflicted on gay families. Taking the fight to state legislatures will require discriminators to continue relying on such flimsy arguments, and in the long run, those arguments will not hold water with people.

As I say, my thinking is evolving. But I can see the arguments now for moving away from a judicial strategy to a full-on legislative push for equality.

Rest In Peace, Crocodile Hunter

I'm quite saddened by the freak accident that took the life of The Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin. My thoughts go out first and foremost to his family, who must be devastated, despite the constant risks Irwin faced in his professional life. The Australian government has offered to give him a state funeral, should his family so choose.

The impact Irwin had on conservation awareness will be a great loss. His methods were unorthodox, to say the least, and probably more than a little reckless. But that Aussie bravado did something the more tame animal experts out there (like the imminently respectable Jack Hanna) could not -- reach a broad audience with a conservation message. Irwin's antics thrilled audiences, and in the process, held their attention long enough to educate them, even a little, about the need to care for and protect all species, even the unlovable ones. Irwin found "real beauties" among the venomous, the dangerous, and the irrationally hated creatures of the world. Would that his example translated into our dealings with humans as well.

I don't know what, if anything, the afterlife holds, but it isn't too difficult to imagine the Crocodile Hunter explaining to others at the Pearly Gates that the "amaaaazing stingray" was only doing "what Nature created it to do." So were you, Steve, and we thank you for it.

Miles O'Brien Is A Tool

Today is moving day in the Midwestern Household, and I've had CNN on all morning. I just have to say -- Miles O'Brien has got to be one of the biggest tools on television. He makes jokes at inappropriate times, is a borderline misogynist, and generally conducts himself with the same smirking swagger that makes me loathe GWB. He's too cute by half for my taste. Just read the news, jerk off.