Good morning, readers. I’m having a tough time finding the right chord to strike for the first notes of this week’s column. I keep gravitating towards the Daily Telegraph headline sent to me by newshound Rex Wockner, that reads: “Drag Queens Sought for Midget Murders.” But I fear that would trivialize the weighty GLBT material that will follow in due time. How superficial would it be to lead with the midget murders on a week when the Senate passed the Matthew Shepard hate crime bill! 

Yes, sound the trumpets. Cue Copeland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. Oh hell, make it the William Tell Overture. The Senate tacked hate crimes onto the defense appropriations bill, so we are a conference committee away from sending “something gay” to the desk of the president for the first time. The conference committee needs to strip out a poison pill amendment that mandates the death sentence for certain federal crimes, but other than that detail, we’re home free.

I know you want to hear about the midgets, but I’m not finished. I can’t help being pleased by this modest step in the right direction, but as I’ve written before, a hate crime law is last on my personal gay agenda. It is an ineffective deterrent to a type of violence that will only abate gradually with the help of substantial gay rights legislation. The repeal of the military ban. The addition of sexual orientation to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Immigration reform for the partners of gay Americans. Federal recognition for gay marriages. These are worth the drain on our political capital, even if our investment will not be realized immediately.

The effort to pass hate crimes, by contrast, reflects a plodding devotion to the last 20 years of gay rights strategy in Congress, a strategy that focused on the low hanging fruit of hate crimes and a stand-alone workplace bias bill with loopholes galore. Now, although much has changed and the more interesting fruits have also dropped within an (ambitious) reach, we remain fixated on our original objectives and incapable of reassessing our legislative goals.

But enough with the cynicism! By the way, I think the term “midget” is politically incorrect. That noted, according to the Daily Telegraph, police in Mexico are on the hunt for two drag queens who may have switched to male attire after poisoning two midget wrestlers with an overdose of  “eye drops combined with alcohol.”

Yes, I too am mystified by the modus operandi. However it was executed, the toxic concoction dispatched brothers Alberto and Alejandro Jimenez, aka Parkita and Espectrito II. The crime and subsequent robbery took place after a drunken orgy, the Telegraph reports.

A Mindless Interlude
Before plunging into our next topic, have you taken a close look at the Orbitz commercial that features a helicopter type machine landing on a golf course? A guy jumps out and gives the golfers a rebate for their hotel bill, illustrating the claim that Orbitz will refund some of your money if anyone else gets a better deal for a hotel. One of the golfers is wearing a Human Rights Campaign logo on his shirt, but you won’t notice unless you look for it. Or at least I didn’t notice until Mel pointed it out to me. This is a classic case of “wink and nod” advertising, in which a sponsor gives a secret shout out to the gay community that only we can hear. 

And while I’m on the subject of TV commercials, I have fallen in love with the Travelers Insurance ad with the adorable shaggy dog who frets over the safety of his bone. He hides it in the laundry, he buries it, he puts it in a safety deposit box, but still he worries. At night, he tosses and turns with anxiety as nightmarish images of loss haunt his fragile sleep. At last, he retrieves the precious artifact from the bank vault and (we assume) buys an insurance policy from Travelers. He is last seen cavorting in the yard, while his bone sits in the house under a little Travelers umbrella.

As a golf fan, I am frequently bombarded with Travelers ads and long ago tired of the dapper gentleman who encounters children and circus people and uses his stupid umbrella to resolve their various dilemmas. What a pleasure it was, therefore, to be able to watch the charming dog commercial during the British Open last week. Watson really blew that putt, don’t you think?

Leno Cleans Up California Marriage Mess
Mark Leno has introduced an important bill in the California legislature that will clarify the status of all those people who got married prior to Prop 8, but did so somewhere other than California.

The California Supremes failed to rule on the status of this cohort, but as you all know, the court went ahead and ordered California to recognize the 18,000 in-state marriages contracted between May and November. These couples relied on the law at the time, and cannot be retroactively stripped of their marriages, the justices said.

That’s fine. But what about the California couple who got married in Massachusetts during the same window? And what about the couples who were already married when the window opened - let’s say in Canada - and could not remarry in the state? Are these unions now dissolved? Presumably not, but it’s not clear.

Leno’s bill will establish the legal status of these limbo marriages, although I’m sure some of the Prop 8 people will argue that such a law runs afoul of the noxious amendment. The bill will also codify the equal rights of those same-sex couples who marry now, and who can’t “call themselves married” in California, even though of course they can call themselves anything they damn well please. The California Supreme Court made clear in its last ruling that nothing short of complete equality is legal in the state, with the rather significant exception of the use of the word “marriage.”

Timing Is Everything
The more you think about it, the more absurd it seems that the gay population of California finds itself in such a ridiculous position. Indeed, it is so convoluted that the Olson/Boies federal lawsuit really would be a slam-dunk if the attorneys attacked the uniquely bizarre state of California marriage law, rather than aiming to dismantle the entire structure of marriage inequality nationwide. 

(In proofreading, I realize I didn’t properly introduce the background on the Olson/Boies suit, and I’m not going to fill it in. If you’re not familiar with the suit, you may skip directly to the end of this column, or if you like, you can go back and reread the section on my favorite TV commercials.)

(Editor’s note: {Sigh} The Olson/Boies suit has filed suit in the federal courts, challenging the constitutionality of Prop 8 and the ban on same sex marriage. This has caused considerable consternation, as Olson and Boies – notorious opponents in the Bush v. Gore case in the 2000 election – have no experience litigating gay civil rights law, although it’s notable that two such prominent and generally opposing attorneys have taken up the case for marriage. Gay legal groups have offered their expertise and sought to intervene in the case. Olson and Boies expect a swift resolution at the U.S. Supreme Court. A hearing on the intervention of gay legal groups takes place in Oakland on Aug. 17.)

David Boies wrote a beautiful op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this week, presenting the elegant and compelling constitutional case for marriage equality that will one day become settled law in this country. And why “one day?” Why not now, or two years from now? The first paragraph of Boies’s essay answers that question.

“When I got married in California in 1959,” Boies wrote, “there were almost 20 states where marriage was limited to two people of different sexes and the same race. Eight years later the Supreme Court unanimously declared state bans on interracial marriage unconstitutional.”

So let’s do the math. California was the first high court to end a state ban on interracial marriage, in a 4-3 decision back in 1948. By the time the question of miscegenation laws arrived at the U. S. Supreme Court 20 years later, mixed race couples could marry in 34 out of 50 states, while 16 states, including Virginia, still clung to restrictive racist marriage policies. And as the High Court noted in its decision, 14 states had repealed interracial marriage bans in the previous 15 years. 

As you recall, by the time the Supreme Court overturned sodomy laws in 2003, only 13 states still enforced these criminal statutes. I can’t remember the numbers, but I do know that state sodomy laws had been falling like dominoes over the years running up to the Lawrence case. 

At present, same-sex marriage is legal, or about to be legal, in five states. Maine will become the sixth if voters approve marriage equality this fall. Some 30 states ban marriage by constitutional amendment and another 13 ban marriage equality by law. New Mexico is the only state without a formal law or amendment against marriage, but obviously same-sex couples can’t marry in the Land of Enchantmen,t so it’s a moot distinction.

To summarize, it’s been just over five years since Massachusetts opened the doors to marriage in May of 2004. Five states have followed, but 43 states reject marriage equality. Two years from now, we may be able to marry in New York and New Jersey, but anti-gay amendments are not coming down in the red states anytime soon. The Supreme Court will duck and weave, but they are not likely to order more than four fifths of the country to legalize marriage. Not yet.

Do we have to wait until 2024 to ask the High Court to embrace the powerful arguments that support our case? Do we have to wait until 30 states legalize marriage before we enshrine our rights in constitutional law? I certainly hope not. But do we have to wait some length of time? Five years, seven years? The answer is yes. 

Meanwhile, the Olson/Boies case, if litigated in a strategic manner, will add the giant state of California back into the list of free marriage states, where its presence will hasten the day that the rest of us can wed. That achievement, along with a potential victory in the Massachusetts challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act, could indeed come to pass in a few years. At that point, our position will be immensely strengthened, and a federal challenge to all anti-gay marriage laws will have every chance of success.

Correction?
In my column about this case last week, I mentioned the public letter written by Chad Griffin of the American Foundation for Equal Rights to the three gay legal groups who have filed a motion to intervene as plaintiffs in the Olson/Boies suit. Griffin is the instigator and money man behind the lawsuit, and the letter he wrote was - how shall I put it - a little nuts. 

Last week, I wrote that Griffin “displayed a remarkable lack of emotional discipline in sending out a public letter addressed to all three.” And his spokesman, Yusef Robb, sent me a “correction,” quoting that line and informing me that “the letter was sent privately and before they filed their motion.”

Since the letter was dated July 8, and the motion was filed July 8, and, um, the Associated Press obtained a copy of the letter on July 8, I can perhaps be forgiven for assuming the letter was public. 

It also read like a public letter, full of bullet points and reaching at times a fever pitch of barely disguised hostility. It certainly didn’t read like a genuine effort to discuss the motion to intervene. Nor did its timing suggest that it was intended to persuade.

However, I dutifully asked Lambda’s Jennifer Pizer and Kate Kendell of the NCLR to tell me when they got the letter. Pizer never saw a copy until it was released to the public later that day. Kendell got an email copy on the afternoon of July 8. I didn’t ask the third named recipient, Mark Rosenbaum of the ACLU, because I didn’t have his email handy and I was lazy.

According to Pizer, the three legal groups discussed the idea of intervening with the Olson/Boies team, and had considered presenting a motion at the hearing in Judge Vaughn Walker’s courtroom earlier this month. The team asked them to hold off until after the hearing, which they agreed to do. After the hearing, they decided to intervene and attempted to contact the Olson/Boies gang that week, without success. Then, on the day of the motion, they get the crazy letter from Griffin - as does the Associated Press and newsman Rex Wockner. Notably, the Olson/Boies lawyers themselves have not commented on the plan to intervene, telling the Recorder that they will respond during the court process established by Judge Walker.

I then sent several emails to Yusef Robb, asking him to answer “yes or no” to the question of whether he released the letter to the Associated Press. First, I got a vague reply and then silence. Sorry to jump to conclusions, but that suggests the Foundation wrote (or at least dated) the letter on the 8th, emailed it on the 8th and then released it to the press on the 8th, ergo, it’s a public letter. 

It’s interesting to me that I was asked to correct the record on this point, because I’m guessing in hindsight that the letter did not reflect particularly well on its sender and this was an effort to imply that it was a private correspondence. It wasn’t. Go read it yourself.

And my last word on this subject is that gay reporters the land over have spent the last week accidentally calling Chad Griffin, “Chad Gibson” and vice versa. Chad Gibson is the guy who was sent to the ICU during the Ft. Worth bar raid. By the way, the Ft. Worth city council has now asked the U.S. Attorney to open a federal investigation into the raid at the Rainbow Lounge on the anniversary of Stonewall. Three local investigations are already underway.

-arostow@aol.com