Sunday News Roundup

Here's what I've been reading around the web:

• Americablog:
  
  • Civil Unions instead of Marriage?
    

    It's an interesting, and age-old, proposal (so to speak): Put marriage off for another day, and go for civil unions today. It's what they did in Washington state this last election, well, in their case it was domestic partnerships with the full benefits of marriage. While I'm not a big fan of "separate but equal" - especially when you can get much more - settling for second best is an interesting interim proposition when it comes to marriage. A few years of civil unions or domestic partnerships on the books, and no locusts in sight, and it will become harder and harder for the Mormon and religious right anti-gay bigots, and the pedophile-enablers in the Catholic Church, to argue that gay unions somehow "hurt" straight couples.
    
    The danger with this approach is when you choose separate but equal over full equality simply because you're afraid to try for more. That's the growing impression of the Obama administration's approach to gay civil rights (and practically every other issue): Why try for more when you can settle for less? That's not a strategic move. It's weakness, and a missed opportunity.
    

  • Working together: African Americans should be supporting gay civil rights and LGBT people should be supporting African Americans and people of color. We're all in this together. As marginalized people, we should not be trying to marginalize someone else. Yet, all too often, various sub-communities get lost in the shuffle. For instance, the greater population of L's and G's forgetting/overlooking the B's and T's; the L's, G's, and B's being willing to throw T's under the bus; or even the greater LGBT population leaving out the LGBT people of color when discussing which political issues we should pursue first. Likewise, the African American community tends to downplay, overlook, or even outright deny the existence of LGBT members. When they do acknowledge their existence, they are extremely reluctant to support our rights, and feel that the Civil Rights fight has been usurped. However, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
    
• Box Turtle Bulletin
  
  • Hatemonger Scott Lively blames foreign gays for Uganda's "Kill Gays" bill http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2009/11/28/16976
    
• Joe My God:
  
  • LA Times Condemns the Manhattan Declaration—Nuff Said.
    
  • New Jersey's Catholics are asked to pray against marriage equality. This is an example of blurring the boundary separating Church and State. While I personally disagree with their position, I do feel that this activity is acceptable action for a church. Now if the church starts offering incentives or exerting more pressure—massive bulletin campaigns, leaflets, videos from the bishop, etc. I think that is going a bit far.
    
• Bilerico
  
  • The common thread between Stupak, Pitts, and Uganda? Alleged C Street cult "The Family"
    
  • Stupak-Pitts Amendment: When does it go from taking "one for the team" and signing away rights wholesale? Is that a precedent we want to set?
    
  • Point: Outing Priests is fair game at churchouting.org
    
  • Counterpoint: Using sexual orientation as a weapon Is it possible that outing priests will backfire on the community?
    
  • Should the LGBT community reevaluate it's political priorities?
    
• The Wild Reed: Roman Catholic Church has lost all credibility in matters of Sexuality
  

  With the report from Ireland indicating that yet again the Church hierarchy and the local government covered up years of priests sexually abusing children, they have lost all credibility to tell others what they should be doing with their sexuality. Incidentally, my loving partner Philip has started a Facebook group to petition the UN to hold the Vatican responsible by sanctioning Vatican City, and asking all countries to strip diplomatic rights from them. The group is called "The Vatican Violated Human Rights; The UN should hold them accountable." I urge you to check it out.