LGBT Books to Warm Up With — from The Huffington Post

It’s been a cold winter. Very cold. One of the things that I’m doing to keep warm is to take an imaginary LGBT cruise in my head — through books — to exotic lands.

The first stop was the land of queer history, which I entered by reading Katie Gilmartin’s mystery Blackmail my Love from Cleis Press. This who-dunnit traces a lesbian narrator, Josie, tracking down her gay brother’s disappearance in 1951 in San Francisco. The book begins with Josie donning her brother’s clothes, exploring gender as she interviews people who knew her brother. One person she talks to is a deeply closeted, gay, school teacher. At that time, gay school teachers had to keep their sexuality under wraps at all costs or lose their jobs. One of the chief misconceptions was that “homosexual” was synonymous with being a child molester. The thought of being thusly accused is at the heart of this gay teacher’s internalized homophobia. He watches himself scrupulously — his every movement. The story of intrigue also leads us through the underworld of gay bars. This page-turner of a mystery is rooted in historic fact and is a reminder of how LGBT people survived before gay liberation.

My next stop was sunny Thailand in Ladyboy and the Volunteer by Susanne Aspley (Peace Core Writers). I learned a little bit about the Peace Corps but far more about the culture of Thailand where sixty percent of foreign men entering the country participate in the sex industry. I also learned about “ladyboys”, who are male to female transgendered women, who in many ways are accepted in their culture. Many of the ladyboys participate in the sex industry to send money home to their families. In my favorite passage in the book, the straight but not narrow female narrator asks her ladyboy friends what their clients do when they find out. One replies:

When I do tell them, they get more excited, because they have never been with a ladyboy. Susan, all men are a little gay. Homo in some way. They just don’t admit it. When they travel to Thailand, no one knows them here, so they do things they would not do back home. Experiment.

When I picked up Love Together, Longtime Male Couples on Healthy Intimacy and Communication by Tim Clausen, I thought I would be reading about an experience vastly different than mine. But what I found was that as a lesbian in a long-term relationship (thirty years now and counting), I have a lot in common with these guys. The author interviews many couples by the length of time they have been together, starting with ten to twenty years and ending (in Section Six) with couples together sixty to seventy years. Overall, I enjoyed reading the commonalities between all the couples. Many talked about making each other laugh and gave commonsense advice such as being kind to your lover.

I loved reading the words of the men who had been together many decades — maybe because they had much wisdom to offer or because they made me feel young again (possibly both). In particular, I enjoyed reading the words of John McNeill described as “one of the true giants of the gay and lesbian community.” McNeill is a former priest and in 1976, penned the groundbreaking book The Church and the Homosexual. He’s been with his partner Charlie for almost fifty years. In the interview, he says:

Spiritually, I take very seriously that statement in the scripture that God is love. Any if anyone loves, they know God. I have always believed that this includes a gay love relationship, which is a genuine human love and therefore contains the Divine. It’s another way of knowing God. That certainly has been the fundamental belief system for me in my relationship with Charlie for the last forty-seven years.

The temperatures were dropping, but I was a little warmer when I came back from my cruise.

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Living Marriage Equality: Redeeming the Dream and All I Love and Know

I was elated with the recent victory for same-sex marriage. The dominoes are falling — even if we still have a fight ahead of us. I was delighted to read, in Michelangelo Signorile’s post on the right’s new strategy, that one of the crusaders against gay marriage is “furious and stunned.” It is a complex issue — states rights vs. federal law and Signorile’s warning that “we had better pay attention” is an apt one.

I am a new convert to the cause of same-sex marriage. I have been a lesbian for most of my life and a second generation feminist. When I was young, I never dreamed of being married. When I came out (in the early 1980s), I was hugely relieved that I had dodged the matrimonial bullet.

It was only after turning 50, that I began to see the light. I was so hugely relieved — yes, relieved — when marriage became legal in the state in which I live, that I stopped to think about the fact of having lived under layers of oppression my entire life.

Recently, I read two books — Redeeming The Dream by David Boies and Theodore B. Olson and All I love and Know, a novel by Judith Frank — that put this into perspective.

Redeeming the Dream, The Case for Marriage Equality (Viking, 2014) tells the reader how two establishment lawyers, one liberal, one conservative, David Boies and Theodore B. Olson decided to work together to defeat Proposition Eight, a history making case that ended up at the Supreme Court of the United States along with Edith Windsor’s landmark case against DOMA (the federal Defense of Marriage Act).

The book (complete with photographs) is a good primer on the history of LGBT rights as well as a compelling read about the behind the scenes context of this historic legal battle.

A central argument to the belief systems of the authors and the case was that the illegality of same sex marriage is related to bullying, hate crimes, and all other forms of discrimination that LGBT people face.

Another central argument is that everyone has a right to marry. The authors cite Loving vs. Virginia (the landmark case decided by the Supreme Court in 1967 which struck down laws against interracial marriage) as a legal precedent:

Loving had confirmed that marriage was a fundamental right, and that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited states from infringing on an individual’s right to marry without a sound basis.

 The central argument from the opposition was that marriage is for the purpose of procreation. After winning the case against Proposition Eight at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the proponents of Proposition Eight appealed and the case ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court.

When faced with the refutation of the procreation rationale, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan asked about the constitutionality of denying the right to marry to heterosexuals over the age of fifty five.

Justice Kagan interrupted to say, “No, really, because if the couple — I can assure you, if both the woman and the man are over the age of fifty-five, there are not a lot of children coming out of that marriage.”

And the rest, as they say, is history.

All I Love And Know, a novel by Judith Frank (HarperCollins, 2014) explores the lives of a gay male couple who unexpectedly become parents when one of character’s brother, who lived in Israel with his wife, was killed along with his wife by a suicide bomber. The brother and his wife had previously made arrangements for the gay brother and his partner to become the guardians of their two children, an infant boy, and a little girl with a developing and edgy personality.

In addition to dealing with their own tragic loss, the two men are suddenly faced with the reality of becoming parents. The novel is multi-layered, the writing is illuminating and compelling (and takes up the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) and the issue of gay marriage doesn’t come up until late in the story. However, the two gay men continually face the issue of homophobia. The (non-Jewish) partner of the man whose brother was killed does his best to become a good parent (and is, in fact, a natural) — but a rift develops between them based, in part, on the discounting of their relationship.

It is a novel about many things but mostly it is about family — including the legal ties that bind a family.

The novel is set in Israel and Northampton, Massachusetts, at the same time that Massachusetts is the first U.S. state to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples.

At the risk of revealing too much I will say that the little girl with the very big personality is thrilled that these two men can get married.

And that is what it is all about.

 

first published in The Huffington Post

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Pride Month readings — Love and Marriage — Photos

 

I hope you will join me and my partner, Barbara McPherson (on percussion) for a Pride poetry performance at

Moonstone Poetry @ Fergies Pub

Wednesday June 25th at 7 pm

1214 Sansom Street.
Philadelphia, PA 19102

“Love and Marriage” with Janet Mason and Barbara McPherson

Celebrate Pride with an evening of poetry and percussion and a reading from Janet’s recently completed novel:

Art, a novel of revolution, love and marriage

Janet Aalfs (far left), Renee Bess, Judith Witherow and Janet Mason at Big Blue Marble Books

It was pleasure to emcee a wonderful reading last weekend with Janet Aalfs, Renee Bess, and Judith Witherow at the Big Blue Marble bookstore in the Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia.  I also read with Maria Fama and Judith Witherow on Saturday afternoon at The Wooden Shoe Bookstore on South Street. Both event were wonderful and it was good to be in the company of good friends and good discussion.

 

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Still Married in Pennsylvania: PA Constitutional Ban Struck Down and Marriage Is Re-Defined

“So are we all legally married?” was the question that I posed to our long-time friends, Mary and Joanne, and my partner as we all drove to a Thai restaurant. Last summer, the four of us went to the Montgomery County Courthouse when a judge went rogue, got married, and afterwards went to a nearby Thai restaurant.

“I don’t know,” replied Mary with characteristic drollness. “But I don’t think it’s fair to call Pennsylvania ‘Pennsyltucky’ anymore since Kentucky struck down its same sex marriage ban.”

This time we were having Thai again and had lots to catch up on after the long cold weather that kept us in our respective homes. My partner Barbara and I have been together for 30 years and Mary and Joanne have been together for nearly as long. We have known each other for decades. Joanne and Barbara used to work together at the Post Office.

After lunch, we spent the afternoon sitting on the patio behind Mary and Joanne’s lovely home. We talked about many things — chiefly about how we all were living on less money (both of us consist of one partner who is retired and the other self employed) and how we actually have a higher quality of life.

Gradually, the talk turned to marriage.

We all agreed that same-sex marriage is redefining the institution of marriage. For one thing, we are not taking each other’s last name. (Straight women often disappear into their husband’s last name — unless they choose to keep their own.) As lesbian-feminists, all of us dislike the word “wife” and refuse to use it to describe ourselves.

We were having such a good time sitting in the sun and laughing, that we forgot to check the news, even though we knew that the ruling on the PA constitutional ban against same sex marriage was due soon. It wasn’t until my partner and I had had left and were driving down the street, that Joanne came running after us and told us the good news.

I gave my friend a high five, kissed my partner (now my legal partner/spouse), and as we drove home, we joked about putting a sign and a trail of tin cans on the back of our car.

“Same-sex marriage is legal in 17 U.S states and the District of Columbia: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington,” according to CNN.

The Huffington Post quoting the Associated Press, explains:
“Pennsylvania’s ban on gay marriage was overturned by a federal judge Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III called the plaintiffs — a widow, 11 couples and one of the couples’ two teenage daughters — courageous.
‘We now join the 12 federal district courts across the country which, when confronted with these inequities in their own states, have concluded that all couples deserve equal dignity in the realm of civil marriage,’ Jones wrote.
An appeal to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is likely. Gov. Tom Corbett’s office had defended the law after Attorney General Kathleen Kane called it unconstitutional and refused to defend it.
State marriage bans have been falling around the country since the U.S. Supreme Court last year struck down part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.
In all, 18 states give legal status to gay marriage. If Jones’ decision stands, Pennsylvania would become the 19th and legalize gay marriage throughout the Northeast.”

The ACLU has an online petition requesting that the PA Governor (who is running for re-election this year) respect all families in the state by not appealing the ruling. I signed the petition and hope you will too.

I have to admit it feels good to have equal rights.

(from The Huffington Post)

Post Script:  Today (5-21-14), I read the news that the PA Governor is not going to appeal the ruling.  Now it feels REALLY good to have equal rights.

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What Ping the Duck, Duck Dynasty, Same-Sex Marriage in Utah, and Most of the Rest of Us Have in Common — Tea Leaves in The Huffington Post

from The Huffington Post

Since the Duck Dynasty controversy surfaced, I’ve been keeping my distance.

Even though I’ve never seen the show — or heard of it before the controversy — I found the whole thing, well, distasteful. I’ve been a lapsed vegetarian for years — and still avoid red meat and pork. And the few times that I’ve eaten duck, I found it not too my liking. It’s too greasy for starters. And it tastes like an old friend from my childhood.

The Story About Ping was one my favorite childhood books. Written in 1933 by Marjorie Flack and illustrated by Kurt Wiese, the story chronicles the life of Ping, a duck, who lived on the Yangtze River with his sisters and brothers and his extended family on  a “wise-eyed” house boat.

I mentioned The Story About Ping in my memoir Tea Leaves in the context of reading The Magic Mountain, to my dying mother, a classic book and 700-page tome by Thomas Mann, and one of her favorites that she had read start to finish years before I was born “just because,” she told me, “I wanted to.”

Reading to my mother about the protagonist’s (Hans Castorp) experience in a tuberculosis sanitarium in the Swiss Alps provided us with some closure — she was returning to a world that she once inhabited in a book and I was, in a way, returning to the pages of my childhood.

As I read, my voice grew low and sleepy. Reading out loud to my mother recalled my childhood, her voice lulling me to sleep, weaving through the worlds of Treasure Island, Anne of Green Gables and, my favorite, The Story About Ping. Now it was she who was wide awake remembering the world of this book that she once inhabited as she jumped ahead, telling me about Hans and the other patients sitting outside every afternoon taking “the cure,” wrapped in blankets, inhaling the cold air, attended to by nurses who must have been wondering if they were going to be next.

Books have always enriched my life. I am a thinking person and, as such, also find reality TV rather distasteful. Or, as I have long been fond of saying, “I am not a big fan of reality.”

Some notable exceptions have been the Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best? reality show (loved the “lesbian episode”) and RuPaul’s Drag Race.

The fact is I rather enjoy not being in the American mainstream — and, for the most part, being oblivious to it.  But when Jessie Jackson released his statement saying that the Duck Dynasty “Patriarch’s” comments on race being “more offensive than the bus driver in Montgomery, Alabama, more than 59 years ago,” I took notice.  I remembered shaking Jackson’s hand in 1984. I remembered that I was part of his rainbow coalition.

Part of what I find distasteful about the Duck Dynasty controversy is that it proves the saying that there is no such thing as bad publicity — even when it comes to racist and homophobic comments. Sales of the shows products have skyrocketed.

Then I read about the comments that this same Duck Dynasty “Patriarch” made at a Christian conference in 2009 advocating that men marry teenage girls. (In most states this is against the law.)

What the Duck Dynasty controversy illustrates most strongly is that we are more alike than different. Racism and homophobia and sexism all have things in common. In addition to offending African-Americans, the LGBT community, and women, his comments also offend those who love women which, one can assume, includes most straight men.  In a just world, the man who made the comments would be fired from his job.

In a just world, the LGBT community would not have to fight for the legal right to marry. When I heard the news about the Supreme Court putting the brakes of same-sex marriages in Utah — at least until “a federal appeals court more fully considers the issue” — I was not, in fact, outraged. But then, I am an old-school lesbian feminist activist who has seen a lot of history and know that change happens slowly.

I have met queer college students who are angry. One college-aged lesbian I met in Atlanta said to me, “I thought that the whole gay marriage thing should be a non-issue by now. It should have been taken care of before I was born.”

Amusing as her comment was (especially since this young woman had grown up in the deep South), I had to admit that she was right.

Last summer, I was married during the short window of time when Montgomery County, Pa. Register of Wills, Bruce D. Hanes began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. My partner and I have been together for 30 years and deserve the same legal recognition as any opposite sex married couple.

But after, Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court upheld the state’s ban on same-sex marriage (a decision that Bruce Haines has filed an argument against). As a result, my partner and I, along with 173 other same-sex couples who were issued licenses in Pennsylvania, are not sure if we are still legally married.

It’s a similar situation to the 900 gay and lesbian couples who were legally married in Utah.

If I were a quarter of a century younger, I might be outraged.

But I’m fortifying myself for the long fight — we still have work to do.

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Married With Benefits in Montgomery County PA: Same-Sex Marriage As Real As It Gets

Married With Benefits in Montgomery County PA: Same-Sex Marriage As Real As It Gets

 

As a little girl, I never dreamed about weddings — and discarded my baby dolls for dump trucks.

As a grown woman (who became a lesbian-feminist in my early 20s) — I never professed to understand what the fuss was all about when straight women talked about looking forward to their “special day.” (Isn’t every day special? Isn’t the relationship as important as the wedding?)

Last week I went to the courthouse in Montgomery County Pennsylvania and got a marriage license.

My partner and I went with another couple and then a “self-uniting” ceremony where essentially we married each other without a third-party just as Quaker’s have been doing for centuries. It was a private ceremony, with just the four of us. There was no gathering of family and friends, no religious ceremony and no white wedding dresses. My partner and I have been together for 30 years and the other couple has been together for 27 years.

Surprisingly, being legally married does feel different to me — different in a good way. Afterwards, as we sat around the table at a nearby Thai restaurant having a celebratory luncheon, we remarked to each other that getting married was easy. 

We decided to go when one of the women in the other couple called and mentioned that she noticed that the American Postal Workers Union AFL-CIO has announced on their website that federal benefits are now available to same-sex spouses regardless of where they live or work — including health insurance and retirement benefits. Postal employees and retirees have until August 26, 2013 to make immediate changes to their health insurance enrollment.

There were no protestors at the Court House — either pro or con. There were no rainbow flags.  One of us commented that maybe same-sex marriage has become a non-issue — as it should be.

We had a moment of levity as my partner asked on the way in, “Okay, who’s pregnant?” — since we had all decided to get married so quickly.  And then we had an impromptu moment of silence as my partner asked, “I wonder what it was like to for the first interracial couples who married after it was legalized.” (The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of interracial marriage in 1967, overriding the laws of the states.)

In that moment of silence, we acknowledged that we were part of history, marching forward to claim our rights.

Thirteen states have legal same sex marriage and 30 states have state constitutional bans against gay marriage, while an additional five ban the right to marry by state law — including Pennsylvania. 

Montgomery County began issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples last month when a lesbian couple contacted the County through their lawyer and said they would like to get married.

Register of Wills, Bruce D. Hanes, reviewed the state constitution and found contradictions (the state constitution also says that civil rights of any resident shall not be denied and that no citizen shall be discriminated against because of their sex).  To date, about 135 same-sex couples have been granted marriage licenses in Montgomery County since last month when Hanes was contacted by the first couple.

Pennsylvania’s Republican Governor Tom Corbett’s administration has filed an injunction against Montgomery County to stop issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples. Oral arguments are scheduled for September 4 in the Commonwealth Court in Harrisburg.

On the opposite side of the state, four hours away in Allegheny County — which includes the Pittsburgh metropolitan area — Mayor John Fetterman of Braddock officiated a marriage of two men who had obtained a marriage license in Montgomery County. Interviewed on MSNBC, Fetterman described this as “an act of civil disobedience” and went on to say that legal same-sex marriage in Pennsylvania is just a matter of time.

Obviously, the fight in Pennsylvania is not over. 

This past July, the A.C.L.U. brought a lawsuit against Pennsylvania’s Constitutional Ban on Gay Marriage.

And a recent poll reports that 54 percent of Pennsylvanian’s are in favor of same-sex marriage.

Friends from New York state (where same-sex marriage is already legal) suggested that we have a protest wedding. A protest wedding is a great idea. 

But our marriage is already real — as real as it gets.

 

Read the entire piece in The Huffington Post

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