Jeremy Hooper's Blog, page 20

Court upholds Houston's Equal Rights Ordinance

Finding that the anti-LGBT petitioners fell short of the signatures needed to put it on the ballot, Houston's much politicized equal rights ordinance is now law. Mayor Parker is overjoyed:

The law will protect LGBT Houston from discrimination in city employment, city services, public accommodations, etc. But don't fear, anti-LGBT opponents who have wasted so much time on this: you still have every right to be wrong, to advocate wrongheadly, and to speak as much overheated nonsense about c...

Maggie Gallagher won't toast you while you trap your spouse in sin

Here's what Maggie Gallagher, doyenne of the marriage discrimination movement in America, says she would say to a loved one who invited her to a gay wedding:

Here’s what I think. We are born male and female, and marriage is the union of husband to wife that celebrates the necessity of the two genders’ coming together to make the future happen. I know you don’t think that. I know the law no longer thinks that. But I have staked my life on this truth.

The problem for me in celebrating your...

NOM pre-spins its likely low #March4Marriage attendance

National Org. For Marriage president Brian Brown just posted a truly desperate plea for supporters to give even more money in order to send people to their completely under-the-radar March For Marriage. Brian writes:

[NOM]

"I'm going to have to cancel many of the buses..." Expect that to be the excuse he gives if/when the turnout for this march is as paltry as momentum seems to suggest it will be. Because it can't possibly be NOM's fault. No, no. It's those donors who failed NOM, not the...

'Children of gays' lawyer to SCOTUS: Ban same-sex marriage so bisexuals will marry heterosexually

David Boyle is the Long Beach, CA, attorney who serves as counsel for Robert Oscar Lopez, Brittany Newmark-Klein, and those same four of five so-called "children of gays" (who are more accurately children of divorce and other fractured relationships) who keep popping up all over the conservative media. And now in his own brief, where he argues many flawed reasons for why same-sex marriage bans are a social good, he makes this truly novel argument about bisexuals and sexually-fluid persons:

...

Audio: Ryan T. Anderson says sexual orientation speaks to content of character; links it to sadomasochism, polyamory

Sexual orientation is not "shorthand for certain kinds of actions." Obviously. Sexual orientation is a scientifically recognized sexual identity relating to human beings and the gender to which we are attracted.

If you are going to talk about homosexuality, the logical thing to which you would compare it is heterosexuality. Again, obviously. Chosen acts and behaviors, and even gender identity, exist within the spectrum of sexual orientation. Acts (in this case lifestyle choices, accurately)...

WHOA: FRC 'reediting' all those heinous fasting-for-marriage prayers I've been showing you!!

For the past eight days, I have shown you the truly heinous ways that the Family Research Council, an organization that likes to deny it's an anti-gay animus group even though the more the talk the more they prove they are, has been praying against gay people, our rights, our families, and our allies. It all culminated in yesterday's, a wholly parenting-centric one which began with a prayer the strongly insinuated gay parents would be better being drowned in a sea than allowed to "offend" ch...

Man who dedicates his life to fighting marriage equality, gay parenting: 'I don't work to harm others'

Heritage Foundation staffer and National Org. For Marriage award winner Ryan Anderson has supported "change" efforts (or at least the catholic-Preferred celibacy), told a gay man who resides in a marriage equality state that he can never really be married, has made countless comments about what parents like me supposedly do to our children, and daily promotes some of his movement's most dedicated opponents of LGBT rights. But no harm, says Ryan:

[Ryan Anderson]

My reply:

Perpetuating h...

FRC's eighth day of fasting-for-discrimination: Uses passage about forced drowning to condemn gay parents

Day eight of the Family Research Council's twenty-one days of prayer is all about gay parents and our children. And this is how it begins:

Day 8: April 14, 2015: 21 Days of Prayer & Fasting for Marriage [FRC]

Pssst...it's parents like me and equality supporters like you who they are suggesting would be better drowned than allowed to "offend one of these little ones." Lest you be confused.

From there FRC goes on to pray against "unnatural households" and children like mine, and prays aga...

NOM: Marriage is some creepy number that looks like it's about to behead one spouse

First of all, the second spouse very much looks like it could be another woman. But either way, the whole effect is just weird and slightly creepy:

[NOM]

If nothing else, NOM's number looks just annoying. Like, "Get the hell out of my way, ten! I'm trying to smooch here!"

Then again, encroaching into people's love is pretty much NOM's brand, isn't it?

Desperate anti-gay movement's latest attempt to dehumanize: Gay unions harm straight kids

It's no longer enough for the losing marriage discrimination movement to claim that civil parity for certain kinds of couples—couples who have long existed, formed bonds, and formed families, regardless of equal marriage rights—is damaging to our own lives and families and eternal destinies. No, no—in this late stage in the game, with so much writing on the wall, Public Discourse, a journal that is as extreme in its positions as the American Family Association but which tries to hide that fa...