Truth Wins Out is thrilled to announce that we’re collaborating with Pride Vermont to bring the NOH8 Campaign to our state for the first time this September. The NOH8 photoshoot will be held in conjunction with Pride Vermont at Burlington’s Battery Park on September 22, 2012 from 1-4 p.m.

The NOH8 Campaign is a photographic silent protest created by Hollywood-based celebrity photographer Adam Bouska and his partner Jeff Parshley in response to the passage of Proposition 8. Photos feature subjects with duct tape over their mouths, symbolizing their voices being silenced by Prop 8 and similar legislation around the world, with “NOH8” painted on one cheek in protest.

Over 20,000 people have been photographed for the NOH8 Campaign, including celebrities like Kathy Griffin, Lisa Ling, Ben Patrick Johnson, Cindy and Meghan McCain, Miley Cyrus, Leslie Jordan, the Kardashian sisters, Jane Lynch, Lt. Dan Choi, Margaret Cho, and Lance Bass. Thousands of other everyday people (including yours truly and his husband) have been photographed at NOH8 open photoshoots across the country.

Head on over to the NOH8 website for more information about the photoshoot on September 22. Mark your calendars and come to Pride Vermont, visit with Truth Wins Out (we’ll be there!), and make a statement by getting photographed for this great campaign.

Michael Knaapen & John Becker posing for the NOH8 Campaign in Chicago, October 2010

Whether or not their names are immediately familiar, many of you will remember Derence Kernek and Ed Watson. They’re a gay couple from California who made a powerful video earlier this year for the Courage Campaign. In it, they urged the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to lift the stay on U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling overturning Proposition 8 — which would have allowed marriages between same-sex couples to resume in the state — so that the two of them could wed while Watson was still able to remember their 40-year relationship and recognize his beloved partner. You see, Watson had recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and it was progressing rapidly. The two men gently (and heart-wrenchingly) asked for the simple dignity of being able to marry each other while there was still time.

Well yesterday, time ran out for Ed Watson. He died at age 78, still waiting to be able to legally marry the person to whom he had dedicated over 40 years of his life.

Every day that LGBT couples around this country are forced to wait for equality, every day that LGBT people are denied the freedom to marry the person they love, real people like Derence Kernek and Ed Watson suffer the consequences.

Ed Watson: one more life extinguished before equality could be realized.

I wonder how many more were extinguished today?

The Christian Right lost — for now — a second battle today when U.S. District Court Judge James Ware denied the groups’ demand that the government force trial participants to surrender video footage of the trial in which California’s antigay, antifamily Proposition 8 was overturned. (Read More)

A U.S. District Court judge dealt a setback today to Christian Right efforts to weed gay judges out of the federal judiciary system.

Chief Judge James Ware rejected the argument by Christian Right political organizations that no gay judge who is in a relationship may rule on a case involving legally recognized relationships such as marriage. Narrowly speaking, antigay groups had sought to prevent any gay person other than a celibate or “ex-gay” from serving as a judge in family-law matters. More broadly, the Christian Right groups sought to rationalize a future ban on female, black, atheist, and Jewish judges serving in cases involving minority constitutional rights.

On the question of whether Judge Vaughn Walker should have recused himself from a trial against California’s Christian Right-sponsored Proposition 8, Ware ruled:

“The sole fact that a federal judge shares the same circumstances or personal characteristics with other members of the general public, and that the judge could be affected by the outcome of a proceeding in the same way that other members of the general public would be affected, is not a basis for either recusal or disqualification under Section 455(b)(4). Further, under Section 455(a), it is not reasonable to presume that a judge is incapable of making an impartial decision about the constitutionality of a law, solely because, as a citizen, the judge could be affected by the proceedings. Accordingly, the Motion to Vacate Judgment on the sole ground of Judge Walker’s same-sex relationship is DENIED.”

Ware further explained:

“Requiring recusal because a court issued an injunction that could provide some speculative future benefit to the presiding judge solely on the basis of the fact that the judge belongs to the class against whom the unconstitutional law was directed would lead to a Section 455(b)(4) standard that required recusal of minority judges in most, if not all, civil rights cases. Congress could not have intended such an unworkable recusal statute.”

Ware emphasized that all Americans are bound to protect one another’s fundamental rights, and that everyone has an equal stake in protecting those rights. Members of a minority group are neither more nor less vested in protecting the rights of all, than the general public:

The fact that this is a case challenging a law on equal protection and due process grounds being prosecuted by members of a minority group does not mean that members of the minority group have a greater interest in equal protection and due process than the rest of society.  In our society, a variety of citizens of different backgrounds coexist because we have constitutionally bound ourselves to protect the fundamental rights of one another from being violated by unlawful treatment.  Thus, we all have an equal stake in a case that challenges the constitutionality of a restriction on a fundamental right.

Those who pit majority privilege against minority rights undermine constitutional law and civil society.

While Ware’s ruling represents a step toward restoration of constitutional equality and pro-family policy in California, the struggle to overturn the antigay, antifamily, and un-American Proposition 8 continues.

The state Supreme Court must still decide whether Christian Right groups — operating under the banner ProtectMarriage.com — can step in and defend the proposition, since those who had legitimate jurisdiction over the proposition opted not to appeal Walker’s original ruling.

It’s sort of a slow news day, but there are three interesting pieces sitting here as open tabs on my screen, so I will share them with you so that I may then close them:

1. Damon Root has an interesting analysis at Reason about the state of the Prop 8 case and its chances when it inevitably reaches the Supreme Court.  Reason is often an intellectual wasteland, but this is one case where their libertarian perspective and analysis is worthwhile reading, especially as it pertains to Anthony Kennedy:

As for Monday’s proceedings, the outcome looks likely to be favorable to Prop. 8’s opponents. Earlier this week the 9th Circuit announced that Judges Michael Hawkins, Stephen Reinhardt, and N. Randy Smith will hear the appeal. Hawkins and Reinhardt are both widely known as judicial liberals. Indeed, National Review’s Ed Whelan promptly denounced Reinhardt as arguably “the most aggressive liberal judicial activist in the nation.” But perhaps more importantly, as George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr pointed out, “Reinhardt writes like there is no Supreme Court, and as a result his opinions have a remarkable ability to annoy the Justices.” That makes the chances of Perry reaching the Supreme Court even higher.

Assuming that happens, much will depend—as it often does—on the swing vote of Justice Anthony Kennedy. And when it comes to gay rights, Kennedy leans libertarian. In Lawrence v. Texas, for instance, Kennedy declared that “Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct.” Similarly, in his 1996 majority opinion in Romer v. Evans, Kennedy struck down a Colorado constitutional amendment forbidding state officials from taking any action designed to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination. As he wrote, “the amendment imposes a special disability upon those persons alone. Homosexuals are forbidden the safeguards that others enjoy or may seek without constraint.” Together, these decisions suggest Kennedy will once again join the Court’s liberal bloc.

2. Re: the Wingnut Freak-out over gay things at the Smithsonian, a writer named Mark Judge has a piece at Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller which is, somehow, worth reading.  This is officially the first time I’ve read anything at that site that made any sense.  It’s interesting because Judge is, like Bill Donohue, a conservative Catholic, but somehow his panties aren’t all in a wad about the gay stuff!  Indeed, he appreciates the art for what it is, and, unlike Bill Donohue, Judge is intelligent enough to understand the controversial installation about AIDS:

“A Fire in My Belly” shows a crucifix being covered by ants. To me — a conservative Catholic and supporter of Bill Donahue and the Catholic League — it made perfect sense. Christ took on our sins, which meant enduring the terrible humiliation that can come with suffering. This doesn’t mean one needs to resort to blasphemy or scatology, as (yawn) avant-garde artists have done in the past; but it also means that showing Christ with sores, or bruises, or even bugs on him can be an expression of faith and solidarity. If David Wojnarowicz was identifying a friend’s suffering with the suffering of Christ, he was just doing what Christians are called to do. Of course, liberals love to identify their suffering with Christ while ignoring the Lord’s call to conversion, of rejecting sin and becoming a new man. And gay art can particularly suffer from watch-me-suffer kitsch and bombast — “Angels in America,” etc.

He’s wrong about Angels in America, and he’s wrong about the value of blasphemy [I would argue that blasphemy is an extremely appropriate subject matter for art], but it’s nice to see a conservative religious person who hasn’t completely checked his brain at the door.  The writer actually loved much of the art in the Hide/Seek exhibit, and even talks about which piece of art in the exhibition was his favorite and why.

3.  Finally, former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper has a message for troops who would complain about having to serve with people they know are gay:  Deal with it.

Happily, the vast majority of service personnel will do what they’re told. Which will not be a hard sell given that most have already gone on record that they will not mourn the inevitable death of DADT.

Of course, if what bugs you as a pro-DADT warrior is the idea (or the reality) of being forced to get naked in a shower or jammed into a tight submarine or fox hole with someone who’s attracted to members of the same sex, the answer for you is simple: Deal with it. That brother or sister is a human being, you are a human being: Work it out. Straight cops across the country have been lathering up with openly gay colleagues for a long time now. Yet, incidents of locker room misconduct are so uncommon as not to register at all in internal affairs data.

Having spent three-and-a-half decades in a paramilitary institution, I can attest to the rarity of a policy, any policy, that is embraced by all. But I can also confirm that most police personnel adhere to even those policies they find onerous. Why? In part, because they’re made to understand the penalty for not following orders. There’s every reason to believe military personnel will likewise comply.

As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, who served with many gays throughout his long and distinguished service, pointed out, military personnel who can’t or won’t accept the new policy will have to find another line of work. (Don’t look for a mass exodus.) The same is true for those considering military service in the future.

Yep.  The whole piece is great, so read it.

Our opposition essentially believes that any judge who doesn’t hate gay people the way they do is inherently unqualified to preside over any case involving gay people, and they laid that belief bare this week:

Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a request that he recuse himself from the Proposition 8 case because he is married to Ramona Ripston, who plans to retire in February as head of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Southern California office.

The ACLU is an outspoken opponent of Proposition 8.

Supporters of the gay marriage ban argued in court papers Wednesday that the judge appointed by President Carter would have trouble remaining impartial because of his wife’s link to the ACLU.

Awww.  Too bad.

In case you didn’t hear this when it came out late yesterday:

A federal appeals court Wednesday authorized the televising of a Dec. 6 hearing on whether Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage, should be struck down.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals granted a request by C-SPAN to broadcast the two-hour hearing, which is scheduled to start at 10 a.m. The court said C-SPAN would provide its tape to other broadcast media that receive court permission to televise the hearing.

The 9th Circuit is hearing an appeal of an August ruling by U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker, who presided over a trial that examined such questions as whether homosexuality could be changed and whether same-sex parenting harmed children. Walker wanted to broadcast the trial on the Internet, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 to ban cameras on the grounds that witnesses could be intimidated during testimony.

So that’s cool.

This one was a squeaker for the very pro-gay Kamala Harris, who has vowed not to defend Proposition 8, but Harris’s campaign has declared victory:

Kamala Harris’s campaign has declared victory after a narrow race between her and Republican Steve Cooley to become California’s next attorney general. According to a press release from campaign spokesperson Ace Smith, “uncounted ballots will only bolster Kamala Harris’s lead… the provisional ballots cast on Tuesday will reflect Harris’s victory.”

Harris has vowed to let Proposition 8 die in a federal appeals court. Cooley had said he would support California’s initiative banning same-sex marriage. Oral arguments in the case begin December 6 — the current governor and attorney general of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger and incoming governor Jerry Brown, are refusing to defend the antigay ballot initiative. It can only bolster the case of attorney Ted Olson, leading the case against Prop. 8, that the state’s incoming executives also do not support the proposition.

So there are silver linings to be found in Tuesday’s atrocious election.

Focus on the Family today misinformed its readers about legal background to the Ninth Circuit ruling in Perry vs. Schwarzenegger against Proposition 8.

Instead of citing the actual ruling, Focus lawyer Bruce Hausknecht parroted ProtectMarriage.org’s hasty rationale for a stay. Hausknecht is most interested in the stay request’s reference to Adams v. Howerton, a 1982 immigration case involving a same-sex couple that was based not upon federal family law, but upon a 1952 immigration law’s definition of foreign spouse.

Seeing a flimsy opportunity for profit, Focus breathlessly concludes:

Apparently, the 9th Circuit has already decided as a matter of law that there is a “rational basis” for a duly-enacted law that favors heterosexual marriage over homosexual marriage.

In short, Hausknecht parrots a false precedent from a sister political organization’s distortion of an unrelated field of law, and presents the antiquated distortion of history as if it were accepted case law.

Hausknecht then insinuates that Judge Vaughn Walker has recklessly ignored immigration rulings that Focus incompetently claims are “binding” upon U.S. citizens — and that may well be found unconstitutional, as U.S. society has become less bigoted against citizen women, blacks, religious minorities, and legal immigrants since 1952.

Focus on the Family clearly wishes it were still 1952, when all people were equal — but only if they were white, male, Christian, and of European descent. Maybe if they close their eyes, open their wallets, pray in “tongues,” and shout such irrational pseudo-legal babble loud enough, then a miracle will happen, their wallets will fill up, and it will be 1952 when they open their eyes.

Crazier things have happened.

Oh. Wait. No, they haven’t.

U.S. Catholic bishops and CNSNews.com declared today that they had “refuted” the Ninth Circuit federal ruling on the constitutionality of Californians’ equal access to civil institutions such as marriage.

The bishops consistently argued that facts are less important in a court of law than “faith” and evidence-free “reason” (prejudice).

Cardinal Francis George, head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), rejected [Judge Vaughn] Walker’s claims, stating that “no court of civil law has the authority to reach into areas of human experience that nature itself has defined.”

The Aug. 4 ruling, which the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put an emergency stay on this week, stated that, “Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians.”

With this statement, the bishops lied about the core reasoning of the ruling, which was:

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California constitution the notion that opposite sex couples are superior to same sex couples.

The bishops didn’t stop there. Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the bishops, said in an e-mail to CNSNews.com that “Judge Walker, in his decision, backed his bigotry with errors, including the misstatement that the ‘Catholic Church views homosexuality as sinful.’ The fact is, the Catholic Church sees homosexuality as a condition, an inclination in a person, something not intrinsically sinful.”

According to Walsh, Catholic autocrats are unbigoted for imposing their antigay prejudices upon all the civil institutions that couples of all faiths or no faith may require — and meanwhile, Walsh contends, courts that defend civil law and constitutional equality are bigoted for rejecting false Catholic claims to authority over civil society and for rejecting Catholic false distinctions between sin and supposedly-unholy-disorders-that-cause-one-to-sin. The spokeswoman is also quoted projecting the bishops’ own desire to “upend the U.S. Constitution” onto the targets of the bishops’ bigotry.

Among other highlights of the CNS press release:

• Francis de Rosa, a Virginia church administrator, attaches a qualifier to human rights, arguing that no one has the “special” right to be who they are, if that happens to be “gay.” de Rosa further argues that material facts are unnecessary in a court of law — only a politically correct faith and factually unsupported “reason” (theology) are required: “Vaughn Walker’s ruling asserts that the Catholic argument against homosexual acts is without a ‘rational basis,’ yet that teaching is not based solely upon principles of faith. It is certainly possible to argue from pure reason that it is against the nature of the human person to engage in homosexuality.”
  Without a shred of evidence, de Rosa and other bishops falsely state — only when not under oath — that “homosexuality is a pyscho-sexual disorder that harms the person and society.”
• Without a single study in existence to support his claim, William Donahue of the Catholic League chimes in — falsely stating, “All the psychological data show that children need a father and a mother” — no matter how abusive, incompetent, or unavailable said pairs happen to be.
• Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, makes the heretical suggestion that perhaps voters — not the Vatican — can somehow define marriage for Catholics and every other faith. “Citizens of this nation have uniformly voted to uphold the understanding of marriage as a union of one man and one woman in every jurisdiction where the issue has been on the ballot.”
• Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento, California, projects his own “hysteria” onto the Northern California federal circuit.