Hell's Kitchen Journal: Jarrett Barrios: Equal Right To Marry, And Divorce
By David Mixner
Copyright By David Mixner
Oct 10 2010
http://www.davidmixner.com/2010/10/hells-kitchen-journal-jarrett-barrios-equal-right-to-marry-and-divorce-.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DavidMixnerCom+%28DavidMixner.com%29
(Note: This article first appeared in the September 2nd "Boston Globe" but I feel it deserves more exposure)
Jarrett-barrios-2 It was Roberts dining on delectable pasta in Italy — that seduced me into seeing “Eat, Pray, Love.’’ Surely, I thought, this will be the escape I need after a long week, the latest in what has been an emotional year. And in a completely unexpected way, the movie was uplifting. It’s an adventure through geographic states and emotional states, not in search of the perfect spaghetti, but one person’s reengineering of her world.
But I wasn’t ready for the emotional challenge I encountered in the first minutes of the film. Roberts’s character, Liz, wakes up to an unfulfilled life in which she disagrees constantly with her husband. She leaves him to begin a journey — literally. She spends a year traveling first to Italy, then to an ashram in India and, finally, to Bali. The lush, colorful settings provide the opportunity for Liz to reflect on her foundering marriage and the guilt she carries with her.
At one point, a friend tells her, “You’re completely consumed with being the perfect wife.” For Liz, failure at perfection hits hard. I suppose it’s why I found myself crying in those divorce scenes. Divorce is hard — impossibly hard for those who, like Liz, want desperately for everything to be just right.
Back in 2004, Massachusetts became the first state to grant lesbian and gay couples the full legal protections of marriage. As the only openly gay member of the state Senate, I involved myself deeply in the struggle to protect this decision. I did it to secure the future of Massachusetts’ gay and lesbian families. I also did it so I could marry my partner of 11 years.
“By the powers granted to me by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I now pronounce you married.” Those words ring in my memory in harmony with the joyous bells of the church. It was a perfect wedding.
It had to be. I was one of the first elected officials in the country to marry his same-sex partner. In part because there were so many naysayers, we worked to be a model couple — with each of us trying be the perfect husband. Like other lesbian and gay couples, we hoped to show our relationships for what they are: loving partnerships that deserve the possibility of “happily ever after” that marriage promises.
But as our families continue the march towards equality, the gay and lesbian community often doesn’t talk about divorce, even though some of the most important protections associated with marriage are exercised at the end of a relationship — protections that help the more economically vulnerable partner, give a formula for sharing the care of the children, and establish how two people can disentangle a life’s worth of acquisitions, compromises, and dreams.
Just as gay and lesbian couples share the joys of marriage, we will share the pain of divorce, something for which we have no template. Divorce plumbs impossible depths of sadness. It involves separating the dishes and the books and all the other things you acquired back when you both still felt the lightness of love, asserting to a judge at a public trial that, yes, your marriage has broken down irretrievably, and telling your parents whose marriage of 47 years hangs heavy over your anemic explanations to them.
Nearly a year ago, I separated from my partner. At the time, we had been together for 16 years and married for over five. I felt I couldn’t discuss it beyond my close circle of friends. Especially if you’re gay and arguing that marriage should be open to you, divorce seems to be the ultimate failure.
Today, in five states, gay and lesbian couples can marry. That means we have the ability to grow together — and, for some of us, to grow apart.
That’s where Julia Roberts’ bright smile shines light on the discussion.
Beyond the food and prayers and love she finds in her travels, Liz finds a way to speak to all of us about the world beyond divorce — including those who so recently gained the ability to marry. For gay and lesbian people, stories of perfect couples may pave the way to marriage, but don’t help much when you’re ending one. “Eat, Pray, Love’’ shows us a glimpse of life beyond a failed marriage. We’ve tried to be ideal husbands and wives. But as we learn to live with our equality, we also need the latitude to fall short of perfection.
Jarrett Barrios, a former Massachusetts st
Permission To Hate.....
By David Mixner
Copyright By David Mixner
Oct 11 2010
http://www.davidmixner.com/2010/10/permission-to-hate.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DavidMixnerCom+%28DavidMixner.com%29
Hate Over the last month, hate seems to be in the air. The news is filled with acts of violence directed toward LGBT citizens around the world. Everywhere we look we can see hate toward homosexuals pouring out of the woodwork. Suicides, torture, riots, fire bombings and beating all have taken place within weeks. We have witnessed an epidemic of our young killing themselves, mobs roaming the streets of Belgrade, Serbia chanting "death to homosexuals" and the unspeakable torture of three members of our community in the Bronx.
These stories are the ones that get covered but the incidents of violence and hate seem to be growing by the day. Bullies feel free to push students to their death. Politicians use the results as a political football or, even worse, remain silent. Commentators, in a rush for higher ratings, escalate their rhetoric to extreme levels of hate without regard to the consequences. Outrageous proposals to separate LGBT citizens from the rest of society seem to be flourishing. The word 'fag' is used as if it had no power on other's lives.
There is no question that some of what drives such open and unrestricted hate is that the closer to freedom the LGBT movement comes the more the haters will come out of the their closets. We have seen in previous movements in history just such a pattern. We are winning in the courts, with public opinion and at the local levels of every community. Quite honestly as we march to that inevitable victory, the road will become more and more difficult the closer we come to that moment.
Also even more important is that the haters have been given permission to hate. Anytime a candidate distinguishes us from the rest of America they are saying to other Americans we are different from the normal rules of civilized behavior. When elected officials say "marriage is between a man and a woman" they are sending a signal that full equality is wrong and should not happen. In a vacuum it seems like a harmless statement but in the context of an epic struggle for freedom, those words take on real power and give people permission to hate.
Failure to take courageous stands only gives those who hate permission to express that hate unchecked. Yes, they have arrested those who tortured those three individuals in the Bronx. The police protected Serbian LGBT citizens. The entire country is responding to the suicides. The fact of the matter is that none of this should have happened if people everywhere would stand as one for LGBT rights.
When elected officials look the other way or remain silent those less in the know feel their hate is justified. When newspapers come out for marriage equality and then openly endorse those who bitterly fight it, their message of tolerance has lost its power. When commentators can simply apologize for hate-filled messages and then continue with their campaign of hate then the apologies are meaningless.
Let's face it. Those who duck and weave politically to avoid standing by our side are giving permission to those whose hate against LGBT people is simmering under the surface. Many actually might believe that people will approve of their brutality. After all, even the most respected leaders don't believe we should have the same rights as other people. They preach tolerance but their actions and silence fuel the flames of intolerance.
There was an old civil rights anthem called "Which Side Are You On?" Now is the time for people to chose and to be unwavering, courageous and forceful in not just condemning past violence but to take action to avoid future hateful acts. Leaders can no longer duck and dodge this issue. They can no longer put an asterisk by our rights making them conditional. The battle has been engaged, people are dying and the time is now. The time for compromise has long passed. You are either with us or against us. Our leaders must chose now and act accordingly both in words and in deeds.
In "Poetic Edda" Havamal, verse 127, it says:
When you come upon misdeeds
speak out about those misdeeds
and give your enemies no peace.
ate senator, is president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.
While Bronx Torturers Arrested, Yankees Fans Sing Hate
By David Mixner
Copyright By David Mixner
Oct 11 2010
http://www.davidmixner.com/2010/10/while-bronx-torturers-arrested-yankees-fans-sing-hate.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DavidMixnerCom+%28DavidMixner.com%29
As police rounded up the torturers of three gays in the Bronx, just across the way in the same Borough a group of Yankees fans this past Saturday, according to Queerty.com, were once again singing in the stands a horrific anti-Gay song. Can you imagine young LGBT youth coming to the playoff's to root for the Bronx Bombers and listening to this hate? Included in the lyrics of the YMCA tune was this line:
"Gay man, you will catch a disease / Gay man, don't touch me please / Because gay man, you've got a disease."
Here is a clip of the same song sang by the fans three years ago. Guess the Bronx torturers inspired them to sing it again this past Saturday.
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