It's Ok to be Gay: An Education

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Green Lantern, one of DC Comics’ oldest and most enduring heroes, is serving as a beacon for the publisher again, this time as a proud, mighty and openly gay hero.

The change is revealed in the pages of the second issue of “Earth 2” out next week, and comes on the heels of what has been an expansive year for gay and lesbian characters in the pages of comic books from Archie to Marvel and others.

But purists and fans note: This Green Lantern is not the emerald galactic space cop Hal Jordan who was, and is, part of the Justice League and has had a history rich in triumph and tragedy.

Instead, he’s a parallel earth Green Lantern. James Robinson, who writes the new series, said Alan Scott is the retooled version of the classic Lantern whose first appearance came in the pages of “All-American Comics” No. 16 in July 1940.

And his being gay is not part of some wider story line meant to be exploited or undone down the road, either.

“This was my idea,” Robinson explained this week, noting that before DC relaunched all its titles last summer, Alan Scott had a son who was gay.

But given “Earth 2” features retooled and rebooted characters, Scott is not old enough to have a grown son.

“By making him younger, that son was not going to exist anymore,” Robinson said.

“He doesn’t come out. He’s gay when we see him in issue two,” which is due out Wednesday. “He’s fearless and he’s honest to the point where he realized he was gay and he said ‘I’m gay.’”

It’s another example of gay and lesbian characters taking more prominent roles in the medium.

In May, Marvel Entertainment said super speedster Northstar will marry his longtime boyfriend in the pages of “Astonishing X-Men.” DC comics has other gay characters, too, including Kate Kane, the current Batwoman, The Question, and married characters Apollo and the Midnighter.

And in the pages of Archie Comics, Kevin Keller is one of the gang at Riverdale High School and gay, too.

DC has been a leader in incorporating gay characters into its comics — they had one of the first male gay kisses back in 1988.

Since then, numerous comic book heroes and villains have been written as gay, lesbian or transgender — from Batwoman to Hulkling and Wiccan in the pages of “Young Avengers.”

Green Lantern would be the highest-profile openly gay hero — even the parallel earth version.

“It was just meant to be — Alan Scott being a gay member of the team, the Justice Society, that I’ll be forming in the pages of ‘Earth 2,’” Robinson said. “He’s just meant to be part of this big tapestry of characters.”

Some groups have protested the inclusion of gay characters, but Robinson isn’t discouraged, noting that being gay is just one aspect to Scott.

“This guy, he’s a media mogul, a hero, a dynamic type-A personality and he’s gay,” Robinson said. “He’s a complex character.”

(Source: yahoo.news.com)

Someone of the past few photos have pointed to the hypocrisy of Mormons calling “traditional marriage” between one man and one woman. There are Mormons who support gay marriage and there are gay Mormons. There are also many Mormons who do not support polygamy. 

The point of these photos/signs is to point out that the Mormon Church, as a whole not just one sect, supported polygamy. Mormons cannot claim that the one way marriage has ever been is between one man and one woman. Even Mitt Romney is related to polygamists. 

Marriage has not always been between one man and one woman and the definition of “traditional marriage” has changed over the course of history. Even from the times of the 1920’s to today, marriage has changed dramatically, even between heterosexual couples. 

We are nearly one month removed from the vote on Amendment One in North Carolina, and only days removed from the official certification by the state that made the amendment official. Many have written from their perspective since the vote. Some urged people to boycott our state, even suggesting that the Democratic National Convention should move. I tend to agree with Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt who wrote in The Huffington Post: “End this talk of boycott. Visit North Carolina, and help us have the conversations necessary to move this state forward. None of us can do this alone.”

We need you now more than ever because the foundation has been laid for a brighter future of equality in North Carolina as a result of the campaign that we waged.

When we began the campaign we stated that we intended to have 1,000,000 conversations across North Carolina. We urged our supporters to speak to their parents, uncles and aunts, siblings, cousins, friends and neighbors. We called on them to have the difficult, honest conversations that were needed to move our state forward and, overwhelmingly, they responded.

Volunteers quit their jobs to travel the state, one supporter bought 5000 yard signs and added hundreds of miles to his odometer driving around distributing them. People came out of the closet — some spoke of being gay for the first time, others became straight allies who cared.

The unique nature of the campaign was underscored by the business, political, and religious leaders who spoke out courageously — some at great risk to their careers. Jim Rogers, the CEO of Fortune 500 Duke Energy, said that one day we would regret Amendment One as his generation regretted Jim Crow lows. Attorney General Roy Cooper called the amendment “unwise” and “unfair.” Richard Vinroot, former GOP nominee for Governor, and Harvey Gantt, former Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate and an icon to many, appeared in a advertisement against the amendment together.

Those leaders, and the thousands of volunteers they inspired, represented the best of North Carolina. They were the better angels of our state’s nature.

Our campaign broke ground in giving them the tools to speak out, speak up, and bring about change. We hired a documentary filmmaker who crisscrossed the state to bring forth powerful stories.

One such story came from Andrea McConnell who drove three hours to be filmed for fifteen minutes because her sister had been murdered by her boyfriend and she was concerned that domestic violence protections would be weakened.

Reverend Ricky Woods eloquently issued a call to action when he said that his faith called him to oppose Amendment One because of our charge to stand up for “the least, the last and the lost.” Reverend Barber from the NAACP of North Carolina appeared on film from his home church decrying the “dirty tricks” of the amendment.

We released over 100 videos that told the story of why the amendment was bad for our people and our state over and over again. Storytelling is an ancient art but one that far too often becomes lost in the hustle and bustle of modern campaigning, but when faced with an amendment that sounded as if it was simply validating deeply seated beliefs for many about marriage, we knew that we had to do something different.

Our polling showed that when people were made to think of the harms that would come to children of unmarried families, gay and straight, that they began to turn against the amendment. We knew that when people were informed of the harms of the amendment for their family, friends, and loved ones that they would begin to move into the “against” column.

We used photos, videos, and graphics to prevent the National Organization for Marriage to make the campaign “us v. them.” A seasoned North Carolina politico friend of mine said it best when she said, “The brilliance of the campaign messaging is that we didn’t let the other side “them” the LGBT community.”

Our campaign preempted NOM’s usual tactics and messaging in such a way that the other side could not run their usual ads that try to make voters afraid of the LGBT of community which, in many ways, underscored the positives of our state and our people.

The successes of the coalition has spelled the end for closed-door discussions of LGBT rights in North Carolina, and brought this important issue front and center in public discourse. You could see that in the broad outrage against Pastor Charles Worley, who told his congregation that gays ought to be fenced in since they can’t reproduce. His own special brand of division won’t survive in North Carolina anymore, or at the least it won’t be the only message that people hear.

My friend Paul Guequierre, from the Human Rights Campaign, linked to Mayor Kleinschmidt’s piece recently and stated, “The people I met were some of the best. North Carolina is better than Amendment One.”

He was right. Our people are some of the best and our state remains better than this amendment. That fact was underscored by the thousands of protesters who rallied against Worley’s remarks over the weekend.

Even today, weeks after the loss, I believe that those who were fully informed regarding the amendment voted overwhelmingly against. The eight counties that officially rejected the amendment represent nearly thirty percent of our population. Beyond those eight counties we won the overwhelming majority of precincts in Greensboro, Wilmington, and Winston-Salem. We won many precincts in Greenville, which was a shining star down east for the campaign.

Consider also what we achieved, with the help of the NAACP, faith leaders, and others, in terms of unprecedented “against” votes from the African American community. In Wake County’s Roberts Park, a predominantly African American precinct, the early vote was 671 for and 2,071 against. That’s 75 percent against Amendment One. You find this pattern in urban counties across N.C.. In Durham, the majority of African American precincts voted “no” by almost 65 percent and in Mecklenburg (Charlotte), it was almost 53 percent. Even in Guilford and Forsyth, where voters as a whole approved the Amendment narrowly, voters in African American precincts rejected it by 53 percent and 55 percent respectively. In Durham some traditionally African American precincts voted 4 to 1 against.

The Prospect even noted that:

Yes, even rural North Carolina had islands of resistance. The amendment failed 2-to-1 on the African-American side of Scotland Neck, a village that has witnessed forty years of civil-rights struggles stretching from a landmark school-desegregation case in the 1970s to the recent stun-gun death of a black bicyclist. The result, says former Mayor James Mills, is an “organized and sophisticated” black electorate. “We were able to communicate was that this really had nothing to do with same-sex marriage,” he says. “What this has to do with is hate.”

Mayor Mills nailed the real divide in the vote with his quote. The communities that were informed voted against the amendment, and in doing so underscored the divide in our state — a divide that is felt in many, if not most, other states in our country.

The truth is that a great deal of our state is suffering economically and, for many, that suffering began long before the current recession. The people in my hometown of Lenoir have been left behind for decades by our political and business leaders. They didn’t buy our campaign’s argument that our state would be hurt economically or that our reputation would prevent the next Facebook from being born here because they have been left out of the boom cycle all along. For the most part, shifts to the global economy of the 21st century have meant jobs leaving rather than coming.

For many in my own family and my old neighborhood, these shifts are a threat. People’s fear has left them in disarray. which has, in turn, allowed cynical political operatives to urge them to “take our country back” and issue clarion calls to return to “the good old days.” These manipulative thought leaders have built that message into a platform that, to borrow a phrase from Governor Dean, urges them to misplace their anxiety over economic change and instead “cling to their guns” and the “homosexual agenda.”

It is a cynical form of politics that seeks to divide rather than bring us together. Sadly, during times of economic strain, it often works.

The Protect ALL NC Families Coalition will continue to work for LGBT equality, but the true wealth of the coalition all along was that it was a coalition of groups who also seek equal pay for women, fairness in the tax code, and who generally stand up for the least, the last, and the lost that Reverend Woods spoke of. When the coalition’s agenda takes hold, the message of division will be diminished and the North Carolina that we believe in will grow.

When Theresa Volpe and Mercedes Santos sought a marriage license in Illinois earlier this month, the Cook County Clerk’s Office worker suggested a civil union instead, the women recalled. But Volpe and Santos already had one. Then, the clerk turned to a colleague. “They want an upgrade,” she said.

The clerk’s words hit home for Volpe and Santos, who have been together for 20 years, but cannot marry because of an Illinois law that defines marriage as between a man and a woman. “It really emphasized the fact that we got the downgraded version,” Santos said.

Last year, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn signed a bill legalizing civil unions for gay and lesbian couples, but Volpe and Santos said they don’t think it’s enough. They were among more than two dozen gay and lesbian couples who filed lawsuits on Wednesday against the Cook County Clerk’s Office, arguing the state unconstitutionally denied them the right to marry. The two lawsuits were filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois and Lambda Legal, a law firm dedicated to protecting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Volpe and Santos, who have two young children, said they hope the lawsuits will eventually allow them to marry in Illinois. Although a civil union provides the same legal protections as same-sex marriage, they said, is not a substitute. “Marriage means never having to explain that you are just like everyone else,” Santos said. “My kids have to explain our relationship all the time and they shouldn’t have to.”

The Illinois legislature is considering a measure that would overturn the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, but it likely will not be voted on before the legislative session is scheduled to end this week. Six states and the District of Columbia have legalized same-sex marriage, either through legislation or court decisions. In 2009, the Iowa Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, following a lawsuit brought by Lambda Legal. In California, similar suits led to a state Supreme Court ruling that declared the ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. The state’s voters approved Proposition 8 in 2008, restoring the ban on same-sex marriage.

The Illinois suits come just weeks after President Barack Obama and Illinois Gov. Quinn voiced support for same-sex marriage. The Illinois ACLU has for more than a decade been in contact with same-sex couples in the state who wish to marry. John King, the director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Project of the ACLU of Illinois, said he thinks that the timing for the lawsuits is right — given rapidly shifting public sentiment and the support of powerful elected officials — and that the impact of a successful suit in Illinois could be powerful. “Wins in big, important states like Illinois are huge for this country,” King said.

Peter Breen, executive director of the Thomas More Society, a law firm that advocates against same-sex marriage, said his organization plans to support the defense of the lawsuits. “Going to the courts to strike down Illinois’s longstanding law that declares marriage between one man and one woman is thwarting the will of the people, and doing an end run around the legislature,” he said.

Cook County Clerk David Orr said in a statement that the time was “long past due” for Illinois to allow county clerks to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

“In Cook County alone, we have issued more than 2,500 civil union licenses since June 1, 2011,” Cook wrote in a statement to The Huffington Post. “This outpouring is a testament to the thousands of families who are denied legal protections, which opposite-sex couples take for granted.”

It wasn’t immediately clear whether the state will fight the lawsuits. The governor’s office did not respond to request for comment, and both the Illinois Attorney General’s Office and the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office declined to comment. A Cook County Clerk’s Office spokeswoman suggested the clerk, David Orr, would not oppose legalizing same-sex marriage.

“We’d really like the outcome of the lawsuit to be our ability to issue marriage licenses regardless of gender or sexual orientation,” said Gail Siegel, the spokeswoman.

For many African-Americans, views about same-sex marriage are evolving.

If you asked them, most would insist that they fiercely stand against any form of discrimination. Yet many blacks whose roots are planted in the once-segregated Deep South cringe when people refer to gay marriage as the biggest civil rights issue of the 21st century.

How can that be, they ask, when blacks are still disproportionately impacted by many of the economic and social conditions that helped launch the civil rights movement a half-century ago?

While some blacks accept their gay friends and relatives without question, many believe that the privilege of exchanging wedding vows should be afforded only to a man and a woman.

Gay marriage has not been a subject that most black families talked about at the dinner table. Often when it comes up now, some find it difficult to articulate why they oppose it. But a seed was planted early on, most likely while they sat in a pew of a black church.

Since President Barack Obama voiced his support for gay marriage earlier this month, many blacks have begun a journey of soul searching. For some, it has come down to weighing their opposition to gay marriage against another long-held belief in the black community — that people should have the right to make their own choices.

That was the lesson of the voting rights movement and the struggle to desegregate public schools in the South.

Already, there is reason to believe that African-American views on gay marriage are shifting. ABC News/Washington Post polls last spring and summer showed about 40 percent of blacks supported same-sex marriage. Two weeks ago, after Obama’s announcement, an ABC/Post poll found 59 percent support among blacks.

It is true that, regardless of race, most people who oppose gay marriage do so on religious grounds. But when it comes to sexuality, African-Americans tend to take it to a whole different level.

Jason Shelton, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Arlington, says that is because African-Americans, most of whom have historical links to the Southern Christian culture, take a more literal interpretation of the Bible than many of their white counterparts. It doesn’t matter whether they’re in Birmingham, Ala., Atlanta, Cleveland or Chicago.

“We have relied on a very strict interpretation of the Bible to get us through our experiences of slavery and segregation,” says Shelton, co-author of “Blacks and Whites in Christian America: How Racial Discrimination Shapes Religious Convictions,” to be released in October. “Faith that God will make a way out of no way has been critical to our survival.”

So, to many African-Americans, the King James version of Leviticus 18:22 sends a clear message: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination”means homosexuality is a sin.

Some might wonder how that differs from whites who used the Bible to justify segregation. Most Southerners couldn’t fathom themselves spraying a fire hose on a group of protesters or burning a cross in someone’s front yard, but they likely would not have hesitated to vote against civil rights in a statewide referendum.

You might also ask how is it different from the South’s anti-miscegenation laws, which made it illegal for interracial couples such as Mildred and Richard Loving to marry in states like Virginia in the 1960s?

And how is it different from what happened a decade later in my hometown when a white woman turned off the water at her laundromat after, in an act of civil disobedience, my best friend tried to wash a load of clothes?

While visiting the South recently, I posed that question to a few people. They gave a vague explanation that segregation was man’s rule. Prohibition against gay marriage, on the other hand, is God’s will.

Using that rationale, some blacks have no problem with civil unions or with gay couples adopting children and living together as a family. But they believe it would be their Christian duty to vote against a statewide referendum allowing same-sex couples to legally marry.

In the months leading up to the presidential election, many blacks will be forced to choose a path.

Some will follow the road of the NAACP and the civil rights leaders who have embraced the idea. Others will take the path of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and the black ministers who oppose it.

Some will find themselves headed one way before deciding it is time to turn around and go in another direction.

African-Americans may never agree that same-sex marriage is the No. 1 civil rights issue of our day. But as they increasingly confront that fork in the road, the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. may loom larger:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”