NewsTrust - Gay and Lesbian Issues - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

Are Same-Sex Couples Better Parents?

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Lisa Belkin - Nov. 12 (Opinion) - Are the parenting styles of these couples and the psychological development of their children different from families led by heterosexual couples? There is an increasing body of data about this, too, compiled and analyzed in a new book by Abbie Goldberg, an assistant professor of psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. In an essay in the magazine this weekend, I explore that question and conclude that in some ways same-sex parents have a lot to teach the rest of us.

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Are there asexuals among us?

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Scientific American - By Jesse Bering - Nov. 11 (Opinion) - some scientists believe that there may be a fourth sexual orientation in our species, one characterized by the absence of desire and no sexual interest in males or females, only a complete and lifelong lacuna of sexual attraction toward any human being (or non-human being).

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Much Worse Than I Expected

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Andrew Sullivan - Oct. 11 (Opinion) - The president gave a speech he could have given at any point in the last three years. No one in that room could disagree with any of the things he said. I sure don't (with the exception of the hate crimes hooey). And he said it well

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Commentary: Gay is not the new black - CNN.com

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

CNN - By LZ Granderson - Jul. 16 (Opinion) - Far from flowing rainbow flags, the sound of Lady Gaga and, quite honestly, white people, stands a nightclub just outside of Wicker Park in Chicago, Illinois, by the name of The Prop House. The line to get in usually stretches down the block, and unlike many of the clubs in Boystown and Andersonville, this one plays hip-hop and caters to men who may or may not openly identify as gay, but without question are black and proud.

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Stonewall Plus Forty

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New Yorker - By Hendrik Hertzberg - Jun. 30 (Opinion) - The President has said all the right things. But there have been signs, before the election and after, that where gays are concerned his fine-tuned ear for the emotional resonance of his actions has an alloy of tin.

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Pitts: What does a homosexual demon look like?

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Salt Lake Tribune - By Leonard Pitts Jr. - Jun. 29 (Opinion) - To Manifested Glory Ministries of Bridgeport, Conn.: Perhaps you wouldn't mind telling me what a "homosexual demon" looks like. I will confess that until last week, I had no idea demons even had sexual orientations. Or, for that matter, sex. Then I happened upon a video that is making the rounds online. It depicts members of your congregation conducting what can only be described as the "gay exorcism" of a 16-year-old boy.

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Op-Ed Contributor - Why I Now Support Gay Marriage

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Tom Suozzi - Jun. 13 (Opinion) - WHEN I ran in the Democratic primary for governor against Eliot Spitzer in 2006, I vocally supported civil unions for same-sex couples but did not endorse equal marriage....I was wrong.

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Editorial - Vote on Gay Marriage

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Jun. 04 (Opinion) - ..There are few new arguments to be made behind closed doors. By now, the Senate’s 62 members have heard from every interest group. They know the polls and the politics. They know that New York is lagging behind others — including New Hampshire, where Gov. John Lynch, who had previously defined marriage as strictly between a man and a woman, signed legislation legalizing same-sex marriage on Wednesday.

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Sit Down, Ted Olson and David Boies

Sat, 30 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - By William N. Eskridge Jr., Darren Spedale - May. 30 (Opinion) - Adversaries in Bush v. Gore, Ted Olson and David Boies are a power couple of super-lawyers supporting same-sex marriage. Dismayed that California voters overrode their state Supreme Court's guarantee of marriage equality for lesbian and gay couples, Boies and Olson have brought a federal constitutional lawsuit to invalidate the voters' action.

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Calif. Marriage Ruling: One of the ‘Lucky’ Couples

Fri, 29 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Newsweek - By David Schmader - May. 29 (Opinion) - My husband and I are lucky. We're one of the 18,000 gay and lesbian couples who get to keep our Californiamarriage certificate after the state Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld Proposition 8, the voter-approved ballot measure restricting the state's marriage rights to heterosexual couples. But as the San Francisco Chronicle's Bob Egelko wrote: "The justices ruled unanimously that Prop 8 was not retroactive and that gay and lesbian couples who relied on the court's May 2008 ruling to get married before the Nov. 4 election will remain legally wed."

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Attorneys Olson & Boies Interviewed About Filing Federal Suit Against Cailf. Prop 8

Thu, 28 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

MSNBC - By Chris Matthews - May. 28 (Interview) - Attorneys Ted Olson and David Boies Interviewed About Filing A Federal Lawsuit Against California Prop 8

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A Setback for Equality

Wed, 27 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - May. 27 (Editorial) - The California Supreme Court got it terribly wrong Tuesday. It upheld Proposition 8, a state constitutional change on last fall’s ballot intended to prohibit marriage by couples of the same sex. In addition to denying basic fairness to gay people, the court’s 6-to-1 ruling sets an unfortunate legal precedent that could allow the existing rights of any targeted minority to be diminished using the Election Day initiative process.

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A Victory for Democracy

Wed, 27 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - May. 27 (Editorial) - The gay rights lobby is apoplectic, though we suspect the decision will eventually be seen as a victory for gay rights -- precisely because it respected the ordinary rhythms of democratic debate. That wasn't the case in 2008, when the same court created a right to gay marriage by reading it into the state constitution. Yet when moral and social disputes are "settled" by the judiciary, they inevitably become even more divisive than before, inspire a political backlash and in any case are denied the durability that comes from popular consent.

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Three more states back gay marriage, but will Obama?

Sun, 10 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The Independent - By Rupert Cornwell - May. 10 (Opinion) - It hasn't been formally designated as such, but so far this is America's year of gay rights. The signs are many and various. Sean Penn won this year's Oscar for best male actor with his brilliant portrayal of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to political office in the US. Since January, the country has had a president who describes himself as a "fierce advocate of equality for gays and lesbians". And most remarkable of all, within the past few weeks three more US states have legalised same-sex marriage. Do not misunderstand me. America is not about to turn into the social conservative's vision of hell, where marijuana is available in diners, an abortion clinic stands on every corner and old-fashioned Christian marriage is about to vanish from the Earth. Indeed, it is far from certain that these limited successes for gay marriage will endure.

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Amen, Brother

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New Yorker - By Paul Rudnick - Apr. 27 (Comedy News) - What my therapist says is that I am a heterosexual with issues. —Ted Haggard. Thank you, Ted, and God bless you, Ted’s therapist. My name is Stan Belker, and I’m the pastor here at Our Lady of the Irredeemable Sinner, in Nashville, and, just like Ted, I, too, have struggled with my sexuality and have come out the other side, into the good green pastures of Christian family life.

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Iowa’s Family Values

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Steven W. Thrasher - Apr. 09 (Opinion) - In 1958, when my mother, who was white, and father, who was black, wanted to get married in Nebraska, it was illegal for them to wed. So they decided to go next door to Iowa, a state that was progressive enough to allow interracial marriage. My mom’s brother tried to have the Nebraska state police bar her from leaving the state so she couldn’t marry my dad, which was only the latest legal indignity she had endured. She had been arrested on my parents’ first date, accused of prostitution. (The conventional thought of the time being: Why else would a white woman be seen with a black man?)

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R.N.C. Leader Under Fire

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Mar. 12 (Review) - Asked whether homosexuality is a choice, Mr. Steele responded no. “I think that there’s a whole lot that goes into the makeup of an individual that, uh, you just can’t simply say, oh, like, ‘Tomorrow morning I’m gonna stop being gay,’” Mr. Steele said. “It’s like saying, ‘Tomorrow morning I’m gonna stop being black.’”

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Jerry Brown's Push to Undo Proposition 8

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By George F. Will - Jan. 15 (Opinion) - Brown's audacious argument is a viscous soup of natural-law and natural-rights philosophizing, utterly untethered from case law. It is designed to effect a constitutional revolution by establishing an unchallengeable judicial hegemony.

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Never Ask a Gay Man for Directions

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Scientific American - By Jesse Bering - Jan. 11 (Review) - So if I come from such Euclidian-headed genetic stock, why is my own brain slow as molasses when it comes to finding my way around town? According to mounting evidence being gathered by University of East London psychologist Qazi Rahman and his colleagues, it probably has something to do with the fact that I’m gay. Mind you, it’s not that I’m poor at directions because I’m gay, but rather Rahman has discovered a nontrivial neural correlation between these two psychological traits. This correlation is similar in nature to the finding that left-handed individuals demonstrate better memory for events than right-handers due to their generally larger corpus callosums, a neurological boon that facilitates episodic recall. Southpaws aren’t better at recalling memories because they’re left-handed, but because of the common physical (brain) denominator underlying the expression of both traits.

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You’re Likable Enough, Gay People

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Frank Rich - Dec. 28 (Opinion) - You can’t blame V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop and an early Obama booster, for feeling as if he’d been slapped in the face. “I’m all for Rick Warren being at the table,” he told The Times, but “we’re talking about putting someone up front and center at what will be the most-watched inauguration in history, and asking his blessing on the nation. And the God that he’s praying to is not the God that I know.”

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The center and change

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By Ta-Nehisi Coates - Dec. 23 (Comment) - Groups advocating "change" whether of the FDR sort or the Reagan doesn't usually come from the center (unless maybe the "change" is realizing that there actually is a center.) The most important changes of the 20th century -- social security, ...

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Warren On? Party Off.

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Richard Cohen - Dec. 23 (Opinion) - Not that he was planning to attend, but Barack Obama should know that my sister's inauguration night party -- the one for which she was preparing Obama Punch -- has been canceled. The notice went out over the weekend, by e-mail and word of mouth, that Obama's choice of Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation had simply ruined the party. Warren is anti-gay, and my sister, not to put too fine a point on it, is not. She's gay.

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Will Obama Press For End Of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'?

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

All Things Considered - By David Welna - Dec. 22 (Opinion) - Mr. President-elect, you rarely spoke out as a candidate against the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that excludes openly gay people from the military. But when the group Human Rights Campaign asked you about it a year ago, you said this: "America is ready to get rid of the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy. All that is required is leadership."

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Put differences aside, let us pray together

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Atlanta Journal - By Cynthia Tucker - Dec. 21 (Opinion) - Like President-elect Barack Obama, I disagree with many of the views espoused by the Rev. Rick Warren. Pastor of an Orange County megachurch and best-selling author of “The Purpose Driven Life,” Warren vehemently opposes abortion and same-sex marriage. He has gone so far as to compare gay marriage with incest, polygamy and pedophilia, which I find deeply offensive. But as a member of the Christian left, I would still bow my head for a prayer led by the Rev. Warren (assuming he doesn’t disparage any group in the process). There are some important issues on which we agree, after all: Christ’s ministry emphasized an obligation to help the needy; Christians ought to be good stewards of the planet; and, most important, God’s love is for all.

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Taking Yes For An Answer

Sat, 20 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Atlantic Monthly - By Andrew Sullivan - Dec. 20 (Opinion) - I sense an understandable but, the more I think about it, misjudged response on the part of my fellow gays and lesbians.

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