Half of the world’s strongest militaries allow gays, why can’t we?

22 out of 26 NATO member countries allow gays in their militaries.

GlobalFirePower.com ranks military strength.  Their Top 10 are USA, China, Russia, India, UK, France, Germany, Brazil, Japan, and Turkey in that order.

USA – Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

China – gays not allowed

Russia – gays have been able to serve openly since 2003

India – decriminalized gay sex in 2009, can’t find info about military

UK – gays have served openly since 2000, have been allowed to wear their uniforms in Gay Pride events since 2008

France – gays allowed since 2000

Germany – lifted a ban in 2000 that kept gays from becoming officers

Brazil – hard to tell

Japan – no official policy

Turkey – compulsory service for men 18-41, information was difficult to find but seems that they have policy similar to DADT

Imagine

Imagine a 13-year-old girl gets married in New Hampshire.  That’s the only state where it’s legal to marry that young.  Now imagine she and her husband can’t file their federal taxes together because no other state allows 13 year olds to marry.  Imagine her husband gets injured on their vacation to Indiana, and she can’t visit him in the hospital because in Indiana you have to be 15 to get married.  Imagine the couple decides to move to North Carolina, and they have to pay for separate rental applications and credit checks because you have to be 14 to get married in North Carolina.  But this is just your imagination, this 13 year old and her husband will have the rights of marriage where ever they go.

You might be repulsed by the idea of such a young girl being married, but it’s legal.  And because it’s legal where they got married, the federal government recognizes their marriage and every other state recognizes their marriage.  Because they’re straight.

In 1996 our government passed the Defense of Marriage Act.  It ensured that the federal government and other states didn’t need to recognize same-sex marriages, even if they were legal in the state where they were performed.  Same-sex marriage is now legal in five states and more states are moving in that direction.  Gay and lesbian couples married in those states face the problems I described above.

Fifty-five years ago the Supreme Court decided in Brown v Board of Education that separate is “inherently unequal” and required the integration of schools.  Education is a state’s right, but when it came down to discrimination, the federal government took a stand.  Likewise, marriage is a state’s right, but the LGBT community needs fairness and equality.  DOMA must be repealed.

Please contact your elected officials and demand marriage equality.

Why do gays and their allies…

… find it so important to convince everyone that being gay is not a choice?

One of my (gay) friends asked me this last week.  He had a good point: Religion is a choice, yet it’s a protected status.  I also saw the question come up on Yahoo! Answers.

I’ve been pondering this amidst all the hoopla surrounding the Prop 8 decision.  Supporters of Prop 8 and opponents of marriage equality in other states make this argument about how the legalization of same-sex marriage will affect their children’s education.  Kids will be taught that it’s *gasp* okay to be gay and okay to want to marry someone of your own gender.  What these arguments say to me is that these people fear their children will become homosexual if they learn that being homosexual is okay.  So here’s where the “being gay isn’t a choice” argument comes in.  Don’t make some BS argument about protecting your kids from being “indoctrinated” and “turning gay.”  So, in my mind, that’s why it’s important for people to understand that you don’t just “turn gay” because you wanted to.

2-13% (research varies) of the population is gay.  Your kid might be one of them.  They might come out sooner and be happier about who they are because they learned that it’s not wrong to be gay, but learning about it didn’t make them be attracted to people of the same sex.  Straight people didn’t need to learn about traditional marriage to cause them to be attracted to people of the opposite sex.

How about being a little more Christian?

ReligiousTolerance.Org and one of my high school religion teachers (a Catholic deacon) assert that of the nearly 300 suggestions from Jesus on how to live and believe that are recorded in the New Testament only 3 pertain to sexual ethics.  And of those 3, none address homosexuality.

WhatMormonsBelieve.Org has little to cite from “The Book of Mormon” to support the church’s opposition to homosexuality.  It seems all they could come up with was “the natural man is an enemy to God” (Mosiah 3:19) and that through the grace of Jesus weaknesses can become strengths (Ether 12:27).  I know little about “The Book of Mormon,” but neither of these seem to explicitly condemn homosexuality.

I don’t believe in the literalness of the Bible, but there are many people who do.  If you’re a believer of Jesus and the New Testament, you need to see how minute Jesus’s concern was for sexual issues versus his concern with poverty and “loving your neighbor”.

Using numbers from the LDS’s own website, church members donate about $9.1 million a year for humanitarian work (and I respect them for that).  I figure 1 percent of Jesus’s teachings touch on sexual ethics, so if Mormons want to oppose gay marriage it would make sense for them to use about 1 percent of their charitable donations to support Proposition 8.  That would be about $91,000.  But no, Mormons contributed more than $17 million to the “Yes on 8” campaign.

Why the disproportionate concern with homosexuality?

“The Defenders”

I’m not interested in voting on who you can marry.  Why worry about who I might want to marry?

“I’m a lesbian. Would you like to punch me?”

So I’m a little behind on the local news.  Two weeks ago today, a lesbian woman was beaten outside a club in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle.  Her attacker punched her to the ground and kicked her in the face, calling her a “dyke bitch.”

Where I first read about it. My blog title comes from the art project Gina Genius (of Team Gina) is doing.

Samantha Ronson was the headlining DJ at the event.  She blogged about it.

Pics of the survivor.

So if you’re a lesbian and concerned about gay bashing, please consider joining Gina Genius’s project.

Here’s my contribution: