Tim Gill

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Here’s a fascinating piece about gay software mogul Tim Gill and his efforts to defeat anti-gay political candidates through under-the-radar donations. Key paragaphs:

Gill decided to find out how he could become more effective and enlisted as his political counselor an acerbic lawyer and former tobacco lobbyist named Ted Trimpa, who is Colorado’s answer to Karl Rove. Trimpa believes that the gay-rights community directs too much of its money to thoroughly admirable national candidates who don’t need it, while neglecting less compelling races that would have a far greater impact on gay rights—a tendency he calls “glamour giving.” Trimpa cited the example of Barack Obama: an attractive candidate, solid on gay rights, and viscerally exciting to donors. It feels good to write him a check. An analysis of Obama’s 2004 Senate race, which he won by nearly fifty points, had determined that gays contributed more than $500,000. “The temptation is always to swoon for the popular candidate,” Trimpa told me, “but a fraction of that money, directed at the right state and local races, could have flipped a few chambers. ‘Just because he’s cute’ isn’t a strategy.”

Together, Gill and Trimpa decided to eschew national races in favor of state and local ones, which could be influenced in large batches and for much less money. Most antigay measures, they discovered, originate in state legislatures. Operating at that level gave them a chance to “punish the wicked,” as Gill puts it—to snuff out rising politicians who were building their careers on antigay policies, before they could achieve national influence. Their chief cautionary example of such a villain is Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who once compared homosexuality to “man on dog” sex (and was finally defeated last year, at a cost of more than $20 million). Santorum got his start working in the state legislature. As Gill and Trimpa looked at their evolving plan, it seemed realistic. “The strategic piece of the puzzle we’d been missing—consistent across almost every legislature we examined—is that it’s often just a handful of people, two or three, who introduce the most outrageous legislation and force the rest of their colleagues to vote on it,” Gill explained. “If you could reach these few people or neutralize them by flipping the chamber to leaders who would block bad legislation, you’d have a dramatic effect.”

Tim Gill is my new hero.

Misheard Words

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Tonight’s “Smallville,” on which Lex Luthor is getting ready to marry Lana Lang:

Lex: I don’t know if I can wait. How about we just run off and elope?

Lana: That would be a big waste of 400 gay men.

At which point Matt turns to me and says, “What did she just say??”

“A waste of 400 GAME HENS,” I reply. He’d heard wrong.

“Oh!” he said. “I was going to say, that’s quite a wedding if it takes 400 gay men to pull it off.”

I swear, Matt and his hearing sometimes.

SLDN to Pace: Apologize

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Servicemembers Legal Defense Network to Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace: Apologize for remarks about gay people.

I’m skeptical of calls for an apology. What good is an apology from Pace if he hasn’t changed his views? His apology would be worthless. Gay servicemembers don’t need an apology. They need a new policy. (That’s kinda catchy: “No apology! New policy!”)

I’ll admit, I also thought to myself: does the SLDN’s call for an apology make gay soldiers seem weak? After all, if you can’t deal with an offensive remark, how can you possibly deal with being shot at?

But this isn’t about insulting an individual. This is about denigrating an entire group of American citizens, in and out of the military. The call for an apology is a reminder that gay people have dignity. It wouldn’t be okay for Pace to make similar comments about Jews or blacks; it’s not okay to say them about gays, either.

But an apology? An apology is a nicety. It’s etiquette. Screw etiquette. People have been polite to gays to their face and then bad-mouthing them behind their backs for years. That doesn’t help anyone.

We don’t need an apology. We need a change in attitude. Who the hell is Peter Pace to judge us? He isn’t a god. He shouldn’t act like one.

We don’t need to put up with this crap in 2007. From anyone.

Pace and Gays

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The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, said today that homosexuality is immoral. “I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts,” he said. “I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is okay to be immoral in any way.”

Oh, but hey, killing – that’s totally moral.

Hypocrite.

Ann Hulbert

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I don’t like this piece in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine about “Generation Next.”

Ann Hulbert cites a Pew Research Center study to make the claim that Americans aged 18-25 are more anti-abortion and yet more pro-gay-marriage than their forebears, and she proceeds to ponder this apparently strange contradiction.

First problem: I don’t know where she gets her claim about abortion.

Roughly a third of Gen Nexters endorse making abortion generally available, half support limits and 15 percent favor an outright ban. By contrast, 35 percent of 50- to 64-year-olds support readily available abortions.

Um, “roughly a third” is the same as 35 percent. Especially in a survey, which has a margin of error. According to the original report, that “roughly a third” is actually 32 percent, which is statistically indistinguishable from 35 percent.

So the premise of Hulbert’s article is basically worthless.

As for her second point, that younger people are more tolerant of gay marriage, she comes up with a convoluted reason why people can be both anti-abortion (which, again, she hasn’t shown) and pro-gay-marriage:

[M]aybe there are signs here that Gen Nexters are primed to do in the years ahead what their elders have so signally failed to manage: actually think beyond their own welfare to worry about — of all things — the next generation. For when you stop to consider it, at the core of Gen Nexters’ seemingly discordant views on these hot-button issues could be an insistence on giving priority to children’s interests. Take seriously the lives you could be creating: the Gen Next wariness of abortion sends that message. Don’t rule out for any kid who is born the advantage of being reared by two legally wedded parents: that is at least one way to read the endorsement of gay marriage.

It’s really much simpler than that. Younger people are more supportive of gay marriage because they’re more supportive of gay people in general. Younger people aren’t morally superior or more thoughtful than their forebears; they’ve just grown up knowing more gay people, and therefore knowing more facts about gay people – such as the fact that we’re not all totally irresponsible perverted satyrs who want to destroy society – as opposed to the older generations, who grew up with prejudices and stereotypes based not on actual gay people but on what they thought they knew about gay people. And it’s more difficult to change your social views the older you get – not impossible, but more difficult.

So the younger people aren’t smarter or better. They’ve just grown up in a world that has a more accurate view of gay people than in the past. And that’s because more and more gay people are out today, and at younger ages, than in the past. It’s harder to demonize a group of people when you actually know people from that group.

It’s not that complicated.

And the article is therefore totally pointless.

The Roxy Closes

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The Roxy apparently closed this weekend.

I went there only once, in 1999, shortly after I moved back up north from Virginia. I went with some people I’d met on the Internet. It was okay. The thing is, I can’t really dance. Not Elaine Benes awful, but not great. I’m very self-conscious when I dance, because I never know if I’m doing it right.

Anyway, from the article:

Mr. Blair, who had owned gay health clubs, explained the coding system that he and his business partners devised for the Roxy’s loyalty cards and mailing lists. “We rated everybody on a scale from 1 to 4 based on how they looked,” he said. They kept the rankings in a database, so that for certain events they could direct their invitations to a specific mix of loyal customers and trophy guests.

“We gave out very few 1s — that’s the worst-looking, or for straight people,” he said. “Then, most people got 2s; if they’re pretty, they got a 3. Four is for people we have to let in free — either they’re really hot or they’re a friend of mine or somehow important in the club community.”

Excuse me while I throw up.

Passport Name Nixed

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Two women get married in Massachusetts; one of them legally takes her spouse’s name under state law; three years later, her application for a U.S. passport is rejected because the federal government won’t recognize the name change.

So Amanda Lison will have to go to Probate Court to get the name change recognized by the federal government, even though her married name appears on her driver’s license and Social Security card. (How’d it get on her Social Security card?)

“A spokesman from the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C., said same-sex couples seeking a passport under a married name can’t do so absent additional documentation, and that the government doesn’t recognize such name changes based solely on marriage certificates, as it does for heterosexual married couples.”

There’s been lots of focus in the last few years on state-recognized same-sex marriage. People forget that there are about 1,138 federal rights that DOMA bars to gay couples, no matter how enlightened their own state might be.

We’ve got a long way to go.

The Media and 2008

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We were watching “Meet the Press” this morning. Tim Russert was interviewing two journalists about the 2008 election.

You know, the one that’s happening 20 months from now?

The race has been in full swing for two months, of course, and it’s utterly ridiculous. Bill Clinton didn’t declare his candidacy for president until early October 1991, four and a half months before the New Hampshire primary. But what’s amazing isn’t that the candidates are declaring so early – candidates have declared this early in past elections. What’s amazing is that the media is covering the race so extensively so early.

A majority of people wish the Bush presidency were over. Iraq is a mess, Bush won’t budge, and there doesn’t seem to be anything anyone can do about it.

Bob Herbert recently wrote an op-ed in the New York Times lamenting the fact that people are obsessing over Anna Nicole Smith and Britney Spears instead of focusing on our country’s real problems. The Times printed several letters in respose, and two of them left me so depressed. The first:

What are we supposed to do? I spent a lot of time paying attention to all the ”real news” of the world. I got angry, and I acted on that anger. I engaged in intense debates with family and friends, I signed petitions, I marched in protests. And we still went to war, there is still little support for mothers and children, the minimum wage still isn’t a living wage, Americans still produce 25 percent of the world’s pollution.

And then I decided I didn’t want to live my life angry all the time if it wasn’t going to do any good, if no one would listen. I still pay attention to the ”real news,” but then I turn to entertainment to forget it all, because I feel helpless to make a difference.

The second:

It’s not that people don’t want to know — they know.

But when there is absolutely nothing we can do about it, when appeals to elected officials result in no action, when marches on Washington are obstructed and ignored, when you have an administration that seems bent on instilling terror into the hearts of its citizens and promising in vain to keep them safe while mindlessly destroying both the infrastructure and the reputation of the country, well, hey, Anna Nicole and Britney remind us that at least we’re not like them and that there remains a tiny percentage of our lives over which we do have control.

Depressing.

The House could impeach Bush and Cheney – a simple majority is all that’s needed. But the Senate would never convict either of them; that would require 67 out of 100 votes, and no Republican will want to make Nancy Pelosi the president. (But maybe they could impeach Cheney first.)

If this were a parliamentary system, there could be a vote of no confidence and Bush could be replaced. But in our stable American system, we’re slaves to the calendar. Like the Manhattan street grid imposing its cold logic on the organic Manhattan environment, our presidential elections descend upon us from above every four years, our constitutional gods completely uninterested in our short-term desires. The price of stability is that we’re stuck. (Okay – stability and a gutless Congress.)

Even the media wishes it were all over. And that’s true regardless of journalists’ political leanings. Bush is boring, because he’s rock-stubborn; there’s no excitement in covering things that don’t change.

And so, for the next year, we’re going to watch each new flavor-of-the-month candidate rise and fall. This month it’s Obama and Giuliani; eventually it’ll be Edwards and McCain and Romney and Brownback and so on, until (as in 2003-04 with Kerry) we end up right back where we started, when Clinton and McCain get the nominations.

Meanwhile: 687 days and counting. Sigh.

Aaron Charney II

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New York Magazine has a long article this week about the gay attorney vs. big law firm lawsuit that I mentioned a few weeks ago.

This description of Aaron Charney, the plaintiff, sounds very familiar to me:

He says he’d never had a gay experience until he was 25 — “I wouldn’t call it a relationship,” he says. He wanted all his ducks in a row — the B.A., the J.D., the secure career track — before reckoning with that part of his identity. “You come to a point where you realize that issues are no longer malleable, and you know who you are, and you make a decision,” he says. “You have to really know yourself before you make a decision like that. Because you don’t want to regret it later.”

Much of the article, though, is about the crappy attitude and behavior of several of the partners at Sullivan & Cromwell. Reading the article just reaffirms for me that I would never have survived five minutes in a place like that. And I don’t understand high-stress lawyers who treat other people like shit. How do those people live with themselves? So you make a lot of money? So what? People like him and her should be ashamed of themselves.

Incidentally, I’m creeped out by David Lat’s coverage of the case. I went to Lat’s site today for the first time in a couple of weeks to see what he had to say about the New York Magazine article. It turns out that he’s visited Charney’s apartment building and blogged about it. That goes beyond obsessive.

Travel

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I had brunch with my family yesterday. My parents are going to Israel in April. My brother and his wife are going to Peru next week. As for Matt and I, we have no travel plans.

I’m trying to figure out if I’m okay with that. My dad said Matt and I should travel somewhere, and we’ve talked about it occasionally. But I don’t have the money for it. Or at least I think I don’t. I have a very little savings cushion – less than one month’s living expenses.

Travel just seems like such a pointless thing to spend money on. You spend money on a trip and then you go on the trip and all you’re left with is memories. Why travel? I’m not too interested in seeing new places when I could just read about them. The only benefit I see in traveling is that it breaks up your routine and gives you some new experiences. But is that worth hundreds of dollars?

I admit, I’m also a little scared about travelling. The unknown. I’ve lived in Japan and travelled in the Far East, but it was with my family. Most of my vacations have been with my parents.

My dad said I should “live a little.” Why does that have to mean traveling?

And yet I’m envious whenever I hear of people who have gone to the Caribbean or gone to Berlin or wherever.

But why spend, again, hundreds of dollars, just to break up your routine?

Am I right about this? I don’t feel right about it. I don’t know.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to tell me what’s so great about traveling.

Ryan Gosling

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Last night, in preparation for the Oscars, I watched “Half Nelson,” starring Ryan Gosling as a drug-addicted teacher in Brooklyn.

His nomination for Best Actor is well deserved. His performance is so subtle, so real – he doesn’t even seem like he’s acting.

But most importantly, he’s SOOOOOOO easy on the eyes.

ryan gosling

Excuse me as I collapse into a little puddle.

Should Hillary Apologize?

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Regarding the debate over whether Hillary Clinton should apologize for her Iraq war vote and say that she made a mistake:

I’ve heard some people compare this situation to that of the current president. For example: “Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s inability to admit that she was wrong to support the authorization of the Iraq war is reminiscent of nothing so much as George W. Bush’s inability to admit that he was wrong in leading us into that war.”

Except that that’s total bull.

Bush’s problem isn’t that he won’t admit he was wrong in leading us to war. There are plenty of politicians who never admit mistakes. Politicians often switch sides on an issue while professing total consistency. (See Rudy Giuliani on abortion and Mitt Romney on gay rights.) Bush’s problem isn’t that he won’t admit mistakes – it’s that he won’t change his policies. It’s his actions that matter, not his words. Would people be happy if Bush admitted making a mistake but just kept to his current course?

I don’t see why it matters whether or not Hillary apologizes or admits to a mistake. First of all, she’s already said that if she knew then what she knows now, she wouldn’t have voted the way she did.

Of course, it’s totally possible that her vote was a political calculation meant to insure her against Republican accusations that she was antiwar. It’s also possible that she doesn’t really regret her war vote but just wants to win the Democratic nomination. It’s also possible that she doesn’t have strong feelings on the issue one way or another.

If she apologizes, it’s going to be seen as just another political calculation. And it probably would be one.

What matters is the future. What she would do about Iraq if she were elected president?

Unfortunately, that’s totally unclear to me. If anything, that’s the big issue – not whether or not she makes some dumb apology.

RI may recognize SSM

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Okay, here’s a case where legally defining same-sex relationships as “marriages” instead of “civil unions” makes a difference. According to today’s NY Times:

The Rhode Island attorney general said Wednesday that same-sex marriages performed in Massachusetts, the sole state where they are legal, should be recognized in Rhode Island. …“This is about Rhode Island citizens who entered into a valid, legally recognized same-sex marriage and returned here to live and work,” [Rhode Island’s attorney general said]. “There is no way, no law, no constitutional provision and, in my estimation, no right to allow the denial of basic human rights.”

Here’s the full text of the attorney general’s letter. (Here’s the request that prompted the letter.) A legal opinion of the state’s attorney general has no legal force on its own, but it’s likely to be followed by state agencies nevertheless.

The letter mentions only same-sex marriage, which today is legal only in Massachusetts. It says nothing about civil unions. If the New Jersey legislature had just gone ahead and granted the M-word to New Jersey same-sex couples, their marriages could be recognized in Rhode Island, too. But it didn’t. So they can’t. It’s up in the air.

It could be argued that the New Jersey legislature didn’t follow the New Jersey Supreme Court’s order to create marriage equivalence for same-sex couples, because there will be no equivalence if those couples move to Rhode Island. This is an iffy argument, though, because it’s Rhode Island’s fault for not extending its recognition to other states’ civil unions as well as marriages. The right place to contest or try to expand the Rhode Island policy is Rhode Island. Also, this seems to come into effect only when a couple moves to Rhode Island, at which point the couple would, for the most part, be outside of New Jersey’s jurisdiction.

It’s possible, of course, that Rhode Island could extend its recognition to civil-unioned couples from other states. But the AG’s letter doesn’t say that.

So the point is driven home: there’s no status truly equivalent to marriage. There’s just marriage.

Weeks Pass

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It’s amazing how fast the weeks have been passing since I started my new job. Every other Monday night I go to a trivia contest with friends; Tuesday night is chorus rehearsal; then it’s Humpday, then Thursday and then it’s the weekend – which zooms by – and then it’s Monday again.

And I have a job that I actually kinda like.

Someday I’ll wake up and suddenly be 65, won’t I. Scary.