Ruby-Sachs: Is Laura Bush giving us too little too late?

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Laura Bush is touring with her new memoir. Inside are all sorts of Bushy juicy tidbits, but the interviews about the book have recently focused on her admission that she believes gay committed couples deserve the same legal rights as everyone. It’s incredible really, that the first lady from an administration famous for pushing for a Consitutional amendment banning gay marriage would come out for gay marriage.

Or maybe it isn’t.

We have seen a numbers of conservative politicians have come to Jesus moments after they are out of power. Colin Powell supported the repeal of DADT after his administration fell. John McCain’s wife came out for gay rights after the election run was over. And now Laura Bush decides that it is safe to admit that she disagreed with her husband when he used his Presidency to attempt to combat the gay rights movement.

The first question is, what does this do for them? The answer, they get the benefit of a progressive label, even if their position isn’t particularly radical, because of their previous conservativism. The alienation they might experience amongst the more conservative base doesn’t matter because they are risking nothing. Basically, they get all the credit with none of the risk.

The second question is, what does this do for them? Joe Solomnese from the Human Rights Campaign thinks it indicates a shift in the hearts and minds of Americans. I think fighting for hearts and minds, while important and valuable, has very little real value. What if we had waited for the hearts and minds of the racist Southern governors during the civil rights movement? We would never have made the strides in equality that we take for granted today. The same is true for gay rights. We don’t need Laura Bush’s heart and mind, we needed her to stand up when her voice had some power.

It’s not that Laura Bush should not vocalize her support for equality. She should. But we should hold off congratulating her for seeing the light. The gay community can turn around and say, “good thing you have your head on straight, wish you had a backbone to go with that quick analytical ability you are so keen to show off.”

It’s just not sufficient to believe in equality. You have to do something about it too.

*Credit for all the good ideas in here goes to Jane Saks – who is among the breathing!

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Changes in San Diego reflected in San Diego’s Pride Parade, Festival

The hundreds of San Diegans who marched for gay rights in the mid-1970s walked through a city largely indifferent, even antagonistic, to the cause.

What strides they have made.

Today, up to 9,000 people will take part in the San Diego Pride Parade, including the mayor, police chief and seven of the eight City Council members. Organizers are expecting 175,000 spectators from across the country and as far away as Australia, Germany and Britain.

While San Diego’s parade may never be as big as those in San Francisco or Los Angeles, there are many signs of how San Diego has changed into a city in the forefront of the campaign for gay rights.

In November, in the days after California voted to ban same-sex marriage, the largest protest in the nation occurred in San Diego. More than 20,000 people marched, double any other city’s turnout.

The size of San Diego’s crowd came as a surprise to many, including Cleve Jones, the gay rights activist and lecturer who founded the AIDS Memorial Quilt and was an intern for slain San Francisco supervisor and gay icon Harvey Milk. Jones is the grand marshal of today’s parade and several others around the country.

See Changes in San Diego reflected in today’s Pride Parade, Festival

San Diego Union Tribune

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Gay Marriage Battle Heats Up In Nation’s Capital NPR

Until 2004, same-sex couples couldn’t wed anywhere in the country. Now, gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, Maine and most recently New Hampshire.
Despite these historic strides by the gay rights movement, though, the United States is still a nation divided over whether to redefine marriage.
The California Supreme Court on May 26 upheld the state’s voter-approved constitutional ban on gay marriage, but ruled that some 18,000 same-sex couples who wed before Proposition 8 took effect would still be married under state law.
Twenty-nine other states have enshrined voter-approved prohibitions blocking same-sex marriage in their state constitution as a way to keep state judges from overturning the bans. See Gay Marriage Battle Heats Up In Nation’s Capital NPR

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Bill would ban adoptions by unwed couples

The state had an infant, 2 weeks old, 10 weeks premature, HIV positive and abandoned at a hospital. The child wasn’t expected to live long but needed 24-hour care and parental nurturing.

Would they take the baby, asked the social worker who had evaluated and approved them for foster care.

“That was a Friday. We garage-saled all weekend and picked him up that Monday,” Morgan said. The couple later adopted the boy.

“Now we have this beautiful, healthy, happy, totally normal 18-year-old son. You tell me — what’s wrong with that?”

Morgan said he and his partner were the first openly gay couple to adopt in Tennessee.

If bills introduced in the Tennessee House and Senate this session succeed in the state’s new, Republican-dominated legislature, unmarried couples — gay and straight — could be barred from adopting.

People on both sides of the issue say their primary concern is the welfare of children. But that’s where the agreement ends about who should and should not be able to adopt in Tennessee.

The bills’ advocates say that Tennessee law was never intended to allow unmarried couples to adopt but that the state attorney general and Department of Children’s Services interpreted it incorrectly.

It’s clear children belong in “traditional” families, they say.

But those who oppose the bills say they would leave more children lingering in a state system that has made strides since a court ordered Tennessee to more swiftly connect eligible children with adoptive families.

“Remember that children in foster care don’t typically have a line of people going around the block waiting to adopt them,” said Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute.

See Bill would ban adoptions by unwed couples