My e-mail this week has several copies of an article in USA Today headlined: “Drives to ban gay adoption heat up in 16 states.” The first sentence announces that anti-adoption efforts “are emerging across the USA as a second front in the culture wars that began during the 2004 elections over same-sex marriage.”

Actually, no. There has been some talk of putting forward anti-parenting measures, but as far as I know there has been tepid interest, and nothing is “heating up.” A proposal in Ohio is now on its death bed, and other parenting bans have been raised and killed for several years. The article doesn’t list the 16 states, but Focus on the Family seems to believe that they are: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont and West Virginia.

Based on what? Just as an example, this week the West Virginia House of Delegates voted down a proposal to amend the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage, so I can’t imagine that any of those lawmakers are seriously contemplating a prohibition on gay adoption. I don’t have the time or inclination to research every one of these states, but let’s Google a few of them with “adoption” and “gay.”

Dateline last September: “A bid by a Kansas lawmaker to ban gays from adopting children has been blocked by the chair of a legislative committee and the issue is likely dead for the foreseeable future.” I find no information about any pending bill in Arizona. Alabama had an adoption bill filed in the legislature last spring, but there’s no evidence that it advanced. Some far right lawmaker in Oregon floated an adoption ban last year, but that fell flat, and there was also a flurry of bills in Tennessee, all of which died if I recall correctly.

More Ranting
I don’t want to downplay the threat of right wing attacks on the GLBT community, specifically on parents. But I can’t stand it when a newspaper takes a complicated and ambiguous subject and turns it into a black and white statement of fact.

It’s actually quite a gray area, in part because assaults on gay foster and adoptive parents are far less popular among mainstream voters than are the efforts to “protect marriage.” Second, conservatives have to worry that piling on the anti-gay politics could backfire and actually generate support for gay couples and parents. Finally, the war on marriage is far from over, so there’s no reason to drum up a new, and less promising, call to arms.
And on that note, let’s take issue with the whole concept of a “second front” in the culture wars. The second front is not a change of subject, it is a new wave of anti-marriage ballot measures. Idaho has just become the sixth state on the list of those with a 2006 vote on same-sex marriage. The state senate passed a measure during my last deadline at roughly the point where I blithely announced there was “nothing earth shattering” going on in the state legislatures, and whatever they were up to could wait until this week for review.

Plus, Idaho was on my list of safe states because the legislature had killed marriage amendments two years in a row. So much for my credentials as a sharp reporter. Oh, and I also had listed West Virginia as a state that would “probably” advance an amendment to the voters this year, but happily I was wrong again. Mind you, just because I have my own mild imperfections does not mean I can’t condemn the glaring faults of other reporters, like the ones at USA Today.

Meanwhile, everyone still expects Wisconsin to pop out a ballot measure this year, but it looks as if legislation might stall in Minnesota and will probably die in the New Hampshire house in a few weeks. I won’t get into the petition gathering states, because I can sense you’re tired of the subject.

Did Shooter Have a Couple of Shots?
By the way, my favorite inside Washington news source, Capitol Hill Blue, writes that Secret Service agents say that Cheney (or “Shooter” as Maureen Dowd has dubbed him) was clearly inebriated during the unfortunate hunt. I’m still sticking to my theory that he was having a tryst with Pam or Katharine. No, I don’t have any evidence. This isn’t the New York Times. I don’t need no stinking evidence! Plus, both explanations quail tail, don’t they?

No Free Pass for Hillary
Speaking of the New York Times, the formerly-Gray Lady reports that Alan Van Capelle, head of the Empire State Pride Agenda, has sent a memo to his board announcing that he will refuse to cooperate with any gay group raising money for Hillary Clinton. Clinton’s opposition to same-sex marriage deserves a reaction from the community, he reportedly wrote. And supporting her “will send a message to other elected officials that you can be working against us during this critical time and not suffer a negative pushback from the gay community.

“We have become a community that throws money at politicians, and we demand nothing in return,” he went on. “And that’s what we get: nothing. It’s the wrong message to send.”

Do you agree? Me too. According to the Times, Van Capelle said he’ll personally vote for Clinton’s reelection, he just does not want to see her receive the financial and emotional backing of the state’s leading GLBT organization. Clinton, like many of her Democratic ilk, has a vague position in favor of civil unions but remains disingenuously opposed to marriage equality.

Another Appellate Court Loss in NY
You know what? That’s a position that will be more and more difficult to maintain in states like New York, New Jersey, Washington and California, where marriage equality may arrive sooner rather than later. The Empire State’s highest court has just begun its review of an appellate court decision against marriage rights for gay couples. That case is on track for oral arguments in spring, and a decision later this year.

The situation was complicated last week by a separate New York appellate court ruling in a different set of same-sex marriage cases. That ruling unfortunately also went against us, but it’s not yet clear if the appeal will be combined with the first case. I can’t imagine that New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, will be hearing two identical cases, so we’ll see.

I wonder how many times I can use the words appellate or appeal in one item. Not that I have much choice in the matter unless I want to lumber out of the vocabulary gate with “court of intermediate review.”

The latest bad a-court decision took a familiar path to injustice. There are a couple of questions any court must consider before jumping in to the meat of the two main arguments in favor of marriage equality. First, does the denial of marriage to same-sex couples amount to the denial of a “fundamental right” under constitutional law? Second, should the gay couples being treated differently than their straight peers be considered a “suspect class?”

Basically, if you say yes to either question, you must wind up on the side of same-sex couples. Say no to both, and you can then ride the lowest standard of judicial review all the way to an anti-gay decision. The lowest standard of review gives the benefit of the doubt to a legislature, and accepts almost any excuse on behalf of a compromised statute.

For example, addressing the weak rationales offered by the state of New York for limiting marriage to cross sex couples, the court acknowledged:

Certainly the logic of each of these grounds is neither flawless nor finely tailored; however it need not be. ‘Where rationality is the test,’” quoted the court, “[a state] ‘does not violate the Equal Protection Claude merely because the classification made by its laws are imperfect.’”

In other words, New York’s attorneys can insist that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples improves the reading scores of third graders throughout the state and cuts crime to boot. That’s (almost) good enough to pass the rational basis test.

Trailer Tissue
Moving on, the Associated Press reports (and I quote) that: “A man accused of fatally beating his roommate with a sledgehammer and a claw hammer because there was no toilet paper in their home has been arrested.” According to the wire service, 58-year-old Kenneth Matthews was beaten so severely that he had to be identified by his fingerprints. Killer roommate Franklin Paul Crow, 56, explained that the two of them were fighting over the status of lavatory supplies when Matthews pulled out a rifle. Crow, naturally, had no choice but to beat him into an unidentifiable pulp of flesh.

There’s no word on whether these intemperate characters were more than roommates. Oh, wait. I just checked out a photo of Crow on the Internet, and I assure you—based on a lifetime of gaydar analysis—that he is heterosexual. The two men lived in a Florida mobile home, and Crow looks, well, he looks like the sort of man who would bash your face in with a hammer if you brought home the store brand rather than Charmin’. Let alone if you left the tissue off the list entirely.

Are you wondering why we diverged off the subject of same-sex marriage into a subhuman world of mindless violence? I just felt like we deserved some fun, that’s all.

Beating the System
Here’s an interesting item. Apparently some British lawyers are more than willing to help non-residents scam the authorities by pretending to be gay in order to get immigration papers. Undercover reporters from the Sunday Times approached a dozen law firms with questions about whether they could sign up for civil partnerships with foreign family members or friends. Lawyers in six of the firms said it would be just dandy, noting that there’s no requirement for civil partners to, um, be actual partners.

“It shouldn’t be a problem,” said one south London solicitor. “You just say you’re girlfriends. As for what goes on behind closed doors, [that] has got nothing to do with anybody.”

Civil partnerships were recently launched as an alternative to marriage for gay and lesbian couples in the UK. Among other benefits, they allow you to sponsor your foreign partner for residency, and compared to marriage, they are easier to obtain and dissolve. Considering the number of fake marriages arranged for the purpose of getting residency, it’s not surprising that civil partnerships would quickly evolve into a similar device. And it’s just another example of the pitfalls of setting up parallel marriage lite institutions. 

The phenomenon does lend itself to a good screenplay, kind of a gay version of Green Card with Gerard Depardieu and Hugh Grant. I see Gerard and Hugh as a classic odd couple, with Hugh as the prissy one and Gerard as the big slob. Of course, they’re both straight as an arrow, but when the inspector comes to call, the two of them must suddenly turn on the romance. Everything’s fine until Hugh comes home one day to discover that Gerard has forgotten to buy toilet paper. In a shockingly unexpected scene, Hugh pulls out a straight razor and slits his own throat.

That scene is out of another movie I just saw, which I won’t name in case you haven’t seen it. For those of you who have indeed seen the throat-cutting movie, will you answer a question for me? What the hell happened in the end? Did it make any sense to you? E-mail me please.

X Marks the Spot
Do you remember Laurel Hester, the dying police officer who fought successfully for pension benefits in Ocean County, New Jersey? She died. Hardly a surprise under the circumstances, but still sad.

And before we go, there’s a new gay gene study involving women with one or more gay sons. I read all about the research, but I can’t seem to lay my hands on the article right now. No matter! I remember it all and will explain the complex science in “layman’s terms” so that all you non-geneticists will understand.

It seems that women’s cells have two X chromosomes, and men’s have one X and a Y. Women don’t need the extra X, so they toss it away, in the cellular trash can, if you will. Most women pick one or the other X chromosome to toss away at random. Let’s say the X chromosomes are all called Andy and Mike. Half of the women’s cells will throw away Andy, and the other half will throw away Mike.

But in many mothers of gay sons, all the cells throw away Andy. Or, conversely, they all throw away Mike. Whatever. They throw away the same chromosome in all their cells, which is usually “not done,” in scientific parlance. Curious, n’est-ce pas? The researchers warned that the study sample was small, and that it remains to be discovered why the chromosome casting anomaly was not seen in all mothers of gay sons.
I promise to let you know the instant I hear anything further on this matter.

E-mail Ann Rostow at arostow@aol.com