I had planned to attend the rally Wednesday evening in West Hollywood to celebrate Judge Walker’s decision, but because Pajamas media asked me to write a piece on the ruling (and because work on that piece took longer than anticipated), I chose to stay home and complete it. (Hey, they’re paying me.)
Fortunately, while writing the piece, I was corresponding with reader Chris H who attended the rally. His report:
I got to rally about 630 just as Villaraigosa was starting the Spanish version of his speech. Chad Griffin gave pretty much the same speech he did on TV this afternoon. They also trotted out some of the lawyers. The speeches were the usual rehash and thank yous to everyone. The most interesting was Ted Olson who talked about how foolish the defense was during the trial and lightly touched on the constutional issues. Rally wrapped up at quarter to seven with them blaring Born in the USA. Crowd wasn’t too big…stretched from the stage at Robertson back to the swings at the play area. I think maybe 600 or so on a rough count but I’m not an expert at crowd estimation.
Based on what I read about the trial, I pretty much agree with Olson. I have heard many sound arguments in favor of retaining the traditional understanding of marriage, few were considered at the trial.
I do believe that the strongest argument against state recognition of same-sex marriage is that the institution is rooted in sex difference. In dismissing that difference, Walker was at his weakest, relying on 1960s mumbo-jumbo rather than actual scientific research.
I was struck by how small the crowd was (particularly compared to last May’s rally against the state Supreme Court decision upholding Prop 8). Here’s one of Chris’ pictures:
I do have a theory about the small turnout and it is most un-PC, so I won’t mention it here. At least not yet.
How many would have shown up had it rained?
hey, just asking….
Somewhat related to the “yawn” factor reference in my previous comment….
So the blogosphere gives GayPatriot its biggest traffic day in years for my post “withdrawing” my apology to Shirley Sherrod…
… but Prop 8 decision barely draws a blip?
WTF? I need to know if I should be more of a racist white guy…. or a self-loathing gay. *sarcasm off
Dan,
The fact that your hypothesis on the turnout is “most un-PC” only increases my desire to learn what it is.
Same here! I’m wracking my brain trying to guess what it is!
Oy vey! Oh, I’m sorry, Ai Caramba!
Dan, you really need to write a lengthy post expanding on this. I know you are finishing your studies relating to this, and need to hear what you have to explain why sex difference is so vital that it over-rides the judges legal opinion, and why the defendants didn’t pursue you line of reasoning in a stronger fashion.
Sonicfrog, you’ll be pleased to note that I just scribbled this note, reminding myself to do just that:
Great minds. 🙂
That said, it’s not that sex difference should override the judge’s legal opinion, but that the judge misrepresented the very real science on sex difference in over-riding the will of the people.
Pajamas media eh?
I knew this was part of the right-wing echo chamber.
Btw, how does it feel to be a “gay conservative” when you’re merely an oxymoron to most right-wingers?
You do know that right-wingers consider being gay a (sinful) conscious choice yes?
For right-wingers your only function as gay conservatives is is to act against the interest of your kind like Kapos, other than that have no use for you.
“You do know that right-wingers consider being gay a (sinful) conscious choice yes?
For right-wingers your only function as gay conservatives is is to act against the interest of your kind like Kapos, other than that have no use for you”
Sigh David. I am very opposed to same sex marriage but in the real world many of us do not see a person’s value in politics and more importantly in his or her’s Human Dignity as a person all summed up and defined by their various sexual orientations. Even on the “scary right”
David, please provide some evidence to back up your allegations about what “right-wingers” believe. I’ve spent the better part of the last 15 years as an openly gay man in conservative/Republican circles and have found a much greater welcome there than I do as an openly conservative man in some gay circles.
Please tell me how you derived your conclusions about what right-wingers believe. Thanks.
PS. Oh, and don’t forget to include links to your sources and evidence to back up your prejudice, er, opinion.
Yea David 🙂 thank you Daniel. I am a strait, white, blue eyed, blond haired, Christian female. At this moment in time it seems the whole world hates me. I’ve been called a racist, Nazi, h8ter, bigot, crazy, oppressor, evil and I could go on. All for wanting to balance the budget, don’t spend my children and their childrens future. Quit lying to us, dividing us and please treat our soldiers with respect and honor. Can we follow and enforce our laws, can we respect the voters decisions after the majority of the state voted. Can we teach real history and give us parents more choices for schools, we want more choices. Can you leave our wonderful health care alone, let the market deal with it. Can you imagine the choices we would have if the gov truly got out of the way?! I just want freedom for all, I want everyone to thrive, I want everyone to be rich and healthy. It’s true my dreams are big and what I do know the gov can’t fulfill any of them only “We The People” can. I believe God gave us this wonderful country as a gift and we have not been good stewards, myself included but I can change that and I can also change what people call me. I just don’t want the gov to force that change.
#8: “You do know that right-wingers consider being gay a (sinful) conscious choice yes?”
I know some do. They’re some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet and their beliefs have had absolutely no effect on the way I live my life.
I also know that ignorant leftist homos consider being a conservative a sinful, conscious choice. They’re all insufferable, histrionic twits like you and I couldn’t give a fu*k what they think.
David spilled pile on his keyboard and wrote:
“For right-wingers your only function as gay conservatives is is to act against the interest of your kind like Kapos, other than that have no use for you.”
Two words. “Ted Olson.” While I disagree with Mr. Olson’s taking of this case, to say he’s a gay-hating conservative is as irrational as most of your other statements.
One more word, from a different Ted “BWA-HA-HA-HA!”
The only “choice” being made here is yours, sweetie. I didn’t “choose” to be gay, but you certainly did make the conscious decision to be a self-involved bullshit artist.
[Citation Needed]
So we’re mob lieutenants now? Who knew??
Nice!!! I’ve always had a thing for Sonny Corleone, myself. 🙂
Michael was always too damn whiny.
[We have removed those portions of David’s comment which did not address the requests made to him to back up the allegations he made about “right-wingers’ attitudes toward gay conservatives. –Ed.]
Btw, how does it feel to be a “gay conservative” when you’re merely an oxymoron to most right-wingers?
[Citation Needed]
Citation Given:
From the American Family Association:
About Judge Walker and why gays are incapable of holding public office:
“He is Exhibit A as to why homosexuals should be disqualified from public office. Character is an important qualification for public service, and what an individual does in his private sexual life is a critical component of character. A man who ignores time-honored standards of sexual behavior simply cannot be trusted with the power of public office.”
http://action.afa.net/Blogs/BlogPost.aspx?id=2147497241
More from the American Family Association:
“The fundamental issue here is whether homosexual conduct, with all its physical and psychological risks, should be promoted and endorsed by society.”
http://action.afa.net/Media/PressRelease.aspx?id=2147497207
Um, David, you’re citing one right-wing organization. That’s it. It represents only one segment of a very, diverse movement. You have yet provided no evidence that the AFA speaks for “most right-wingers.”
“Right wing hastens to hold up gay adoptive dad, alleged pedophile, as typical of all gays ignoring statistically, well over 90% of pedophiles are heterosexual.
From the Christian News Wire:
“Lombard Demonstrates Why Gays Should Not be Allowed to Adopt”
“The on-line rape of his 5-year-old adopted son by Duke University’s openly-gay, Frank Lombard, is no anomaly. Instead, Lombard’s molestation fits the pattern that emerged in the latest review of the scientific literature about gay fathers.”
http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/7829810803.html
WorldNetDaily:
Soy is making kids ‘gay’
“There’s a slow poison out there that’s severely damaging our children and threatening to tear apart our culture. ”
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53327
David, glad to see i got you rooting around on right-wing web-sites, but you’re only dealing with one segment of the right. You don’t seem to understand that religious conservatives aren’t the only ones out there while ignoring the increasing presence of openly gay people in Republican and conservative ranks.
About Judge Walker and why gays are incapable of holding public office:
Question, David; how would you feel if you were a defendant who knew that, if the judge found for the plaintiff, that he personally would receive a large reward?
Walker should not have ruled on this case. According to the ethics of the bar, even the appearance of impropriety, including the perception that one will gain personally from ruling a certain way or another, should be avoided. Since the argument is that gay marriage does not affect opposite-sex couplings in any way, it should have been a straight judge.
“The fundamental issue here is whether homosexual conduct, with all its physical and psychological risks, should be promoted and endorsed by society.”
And that is a good question, David. It is scientifically proven that gay men have a rate of STDs forty times the national average. People like yourself and your need for promiscuity have killed hundreds of thousands already with your behavior.
Why should society encourage you to do that, David, especially when gays and lesbians like yourself oppose monogamy and insist that promiscuity in marriage is desirable?
Meanwhile, Frank Lombard’s views and behaviors were endorsed and supported by the vast majority of gays and lesbians — until it became public knowledge that he was pushing and promoting his beliefs that children were merely sexual toys for gays and lesbians to whore out online.
‘You don’t seem to understand that religious conservatives aren’t the only ones out there while ignoring the increasing presence of openly gay people in Republican and conservative ranks.”
Ignore you? Are you kidding the right-wing LOATHE you… you are a freak consciously choosing a sinful “lifestyle” according to the right.
It’s funny how how people have illusioned yourself to think the right-wing has embraced you when they literally wouldn’t touch you with with a 10ft pole.
Your only use to the right-wing is to act against the interest of your own kind,
From the “America’s Survival Blog”
Clikck on “Gay Rights, “Evil Angel,” and the Age of Moral Suicide. (PDF)”
http://www.usasurvival.org/
George Alan Rekers one of the founding board members of the Family Research Council.
Rekers has testified in court on the allegedly destructive and sinful nature of homosexuality, and the unsuitability of gay and lesbian people for parenthood, in a number of court cases involving organizations and state agencies working with children.
Later, he hired a man who offered male prostitution through a website called Rentboy.com as a “travel companion.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Alan_Rekers
Um, David, you say the right-wing loathes me? Please provide that evidence. And you’ll have to discount my having spent the better part of the last 15 years as an openly gay man in conservative circles.
And I’m not the only one. Just look at how gay people have been welcomed at Tea Parties.
Look, you have provided some evidence of nutty right-wingers which we all know exist, but those religious conservatives don’t represent the full universe of conservatives. And let me repeat: my experience has been that it is easier to be openly gay on the right than to be openly conservative in gay circles.
That experience corresponds with that of many of my readers and gay conservative acquaintances.
And now we can see what gays and lesbians like David — sorry, Evan Hurst and the organization “Truth Wins Out” — support.
In 1986, ILGA adopted a position that says the group “supports the right of young people to sexual and social self-determination.”
In 1988, ILGA declared “this conference recognizes that existing same-sex age-of-consent laws often operate to oppress and not to protect; that in many countries, existing laws on sexual coercion and rules of evidence also often operate to oppress and not to protect; that therefore member organizations are urged to consider how best children, adolescents, and people of all ages can be empowered and supported against both sexual coercion and sexual oppression and to work towards that end.”
In 1990, ILGA “calls on all members to treat all sexual minorities with respect and to engage in constructive dialogue with them. In another position adopted that year, ILGA declared that it “supports the right of every individual, regardless of age, to explore and develop her or his sexuality.”
“Walker should not have ruled on this case. According to the ethics of the bar, even the appearance of impropriety, including the perception that one will gain personally from ruling a certain way or another, should be avoided. Since the argument is that gay marriage does not affect opposite-sex couplings in any way, it should have been a straight judge.”
The was nicely blogged about on Obsidian Wings today,
“If You’re All White in America”
“….if homosexuality influences analysis of legal issues involving civil rights for homosexuals, doesn’t heterosexuality also influence decisions regarding these same matters? After all, heterosexuality is no guarantor of objectivity, it just provides a different set of subjectivities, which are not per se superior to other vantage points.”
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2010/08/by-eric-martin–many-prominent-conservatives-are-making-the-argument-that-judge-walker-is-gay-and-that-therefore-his-decisi.html
“Um, David, you say the right-wing loathes me? Please provide that evidence. And you’ll have to discount my having spent the better part of the last 15 years as an openly gay man in conservative circles.
And I’m not the only one. Just look at how gay people have been welcomed at Tea Parties.”
Hey B. Daniel Blatt your naivete is just too cute.
Sure, as long as you act within the confines of the right-wing’s white Christian male power structure of course you’d be welcome.
There’s away room at the right-wing table for those that stand up against the better interests of their minority group and do otherwise.
But don’t ever expect them to return favor on any policy that favors gay people.
As long a you support the interests of white Christian men you’ll be fine, hey maybe you could get a job on Fox New as their gay, gay basher.
My naivete, David, no, my experience.
You keep telling me there’s no room at the right-wing table for this and for that, but please tell me, have you ever participated in any “right-wing” confabs? You’re making assumptions about conservatives based on your own prejudices.
Basically, David, you’re telling me I’m naïf because I draw my conclusions from my own experiences with real-life conservatives whereas you know just how things are based on things you read on the web and learn from other left-wingers?
B. Daniel Blatt, sir just one more thing.
The right-wingers say gay hate crimes shouldn’t be called hate crimes, do you sign off on that too?
How far do you sell your soul to be apart of that group?
And btw, that should be “token Fox New gay, gay basher” since I doubt they hire many gays.
B. Daniel Blatt, here’s what you are defending sir,
“Bachmann compares gays to pedophiles on hate crimes bill”
“Rep. Michele Bachmann spoke out against federal hate crimes bill being considered on the U.S. House floor on Wednesday by conflating gays and lesbians with pedophiles, and saying that the bill would protect pedophiles from hate crimes.”
“Contrary to Bachmann’s statement, pedophilia is not considered a sexual orientation, a disability or a gender identity, and is instead a criminal act.”
http://minnesotaindependent.com/33675/bachmann-compares-gays-to-pedophiles-on-hate-crimes-bill
David please show me where I’m defending that statement (which isn’t actually a statement more a reporter’s paraphrase of something the Congresswoman said). And if you can’t, please apologize for suggesting that I do.
(I’ll save you some time–I don’t support that statement so you can just proceed with the apology.)
And while you’re at it, please explain why you doubt FoxNews hires many gays. Evidence of that network’s bias against gays must be substantiated.
if homosexuality influences analysis of legal issues involving civil rights for homosexuals, doesn’t heterosexuality also influence decisions regarding these same matters?
How so, David, since you and yours insist that granting marriage to same-sex couples would not affect heterosexuals one bit?
Or are you admitting that granting gay marriage would negatively affect heterosexuals?
You are contradicting yourself in an attempt to spin out of the obvious.
B. Daniel Blatt, here’s what you are defending sir,
“Bachmann compares gays to pedophiles on hate crimes bill”
Actually, David, as I demonstrated, gays and lesbians like yourself endorse and support pedophilia and sex with children and consider it a perfectly normal part of homosexual behavior.
In addition, gay and lesbian psychiatrists openly state that dressing children as sexual slaves and taking them to sex fairs to “show off” in front of naked and masturbating adults constitutes an “educational experience”.
So what we have here is “David”, aka Evan Hurst of the organization Truth Wins Out, trying to argue that his need for sex with children, which is endorsed and supported by his organization and his fellow gays and lesbians, is not pedophilia, just normal behavior for homosexuals.
Now, now, NDT. I don’t care for David/Evan Hurst much myself, but accusing someone of being a pedophile without evidence is overgeneralizing and wrong. I know you may be trying to make a point about how they overgeneralize Republicans/conservatives, but two wrongs certainly don’t make a right.
#31: “And btw, that should be ‘token Fox New gay, gay basher’ since I doubt they hire many gays.”
Even more proof that ignorant fools like David (who are only capable of expressing themselves in dippy slogans from left-wing bumper stickers) love to condemn Fox News for everything from global warming to the Holocaust, but they do so clearly WITHOUT EVER HAVING WATCHED IT.
David, if you think Fox News has a problem hiring gays, I have two words for you, girlfriend: SHEPARD SMITH.
David,
I happened to have a nice dinner a couple months back with a few gay men and Adam Housley from Fox News. Adam is not gay, works for Fox, and certainly didn’t seem to hate homosexuals.
The couple that owns the restaraunt are also conservative, they like Fox News, and are chummy with my gay friend. They also didn’t seem to hate gays either.
Now while non of these people actually are both gay and work for Fox News, it does lead me to believe that not all people associated with Fox News hate gays and would not hire them.