Little noted outside of the San Francisco Bay Area, this week marked the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Harvey Milk. The San Francisco supervisor and gay rights pioneer was gunned down in his office on November 27, 1978. I suspect Milk would be amazed if he were to return today and witness the advances in the struggle for gay equality and dignity achieved in the quarter century since his death.
The Perils of One-Party Partisanship.
Former Massachusetts governor William Weld, a fiscally conservative/socially inclusive Republican, says he'd like to officiate at a gay wedding, the Boston Globe reports. Meanwhile, the state's current GOP governor, Mitt Romney, and Democratic attorney general, Tom Reilly, oppose the ruling by their state's Supreme Judicial Court that the commonwealth may not "deny the protections, benefits and obligations conferred by civil marriage to two individuals of the same sex who wish to marry."
Without Weld's appointments to Massachusetts' highest court, it's unlikely the ruling would have come down in favor of the gay plaintiffs. In 1990, Weld beat homophobic Democrat John Silber in the governor's race. Had Silber won, he would not have appointed gay-supportive judges. Interestingly, despite his strong opposition to gay rights (which is still ongoing), gay establishment groups and liberal Congressman Barney Frank supported Silber in 1990 for the sake of partisan unity.
The Queen Speaks.
From last week's
address by Queen Elizabeth to parliament, outlining Tony
Blair's agenda for the coming session:
My government will maintain its commitment to increased equality and social justice by bringing forward legislation on the registration of civil partnerships between same sex couples.
The Labour government's proposal, which enjoys support from the opposition Conservatives (Tories) and will become law within two years, allows gay and lesbian couples to register their unions as civil partnerships, granting virtually all the rights enjoyed by married couples in the United Kingdom.
(A pdf of the Labour government's report on the proposal is available online, but may take several minutes to download.)
Hypocrisy Watch.
Froma Harrop, writing in the
Providence Journal (free, fast registration required), notes
that if conservatives really wanted to shore up marriage, they'd
tackle the culture of divorce. But of course, since so many are
themselves divorced, that might not be so appealing. Harrop
writes:
Georgia ("the buckle of the Bible Belt") sent twice-divorced, thrice-married Bob Barr [author of the Defense of Marriage Act] to Congress -- and as a sermonizing conservative. Another divorced Georgia Republican, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, was plotting to dump his second wife while lecturing on the decline of American civilization. The late Sonny Bono, a rock star turned GOP conservative, had fathered four children by three of his four wives. He also condemned gay marriage as a threat to the family.
And it's not all Republicans. Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat, had broken up his own marriage, then accused Bill Clinton of setting a bad example for his children.
As
President Bush has said, "I caution those who may try to take
the speck out of their neighbor's eye when they got a log in their
own."