Sorry, it’s a very gay morning.

Miss California USA Carrie Prejean  opened her clap trap and this B.S. came out of her head.

Keith Lewis, the executive director of Miss California USA, responded:

“As co-executive director of Miss CA USA and one of the leaders of the Miss CA family, I am personally saddened and hurt that Miss CA USA 2009 believes marriage rights belong only to a man and a woman. Although I believe all religions should be able to ordain what unions they see fit, I do not believe our government should be able to discriminate against anyone. Religious beliefs have no place in politics in the Miss CA family.”

Firstly I want to show the other 49 states the reason Prop 8 passed — not everyone in California is all crazy and liberal hippy-dippy. In fact, you’d be surprised how many conservative, church-going people there are here, despite people’s fear of “San Francisco” or “California” values infiltrating the rest of the country.

I’ll be honest, I don’t know why some people are so surprised she said that. I would suspect that a majority of women who still participate in these types of pageants probably come from conservative backgrounds — I imagine most women with feminist (therefore probably liberal or libertarian) sensibilities wouldn’t subject themselves to such baseless, superficial scrutiny. Then again, I KNOW that isn’t necessarily true for everyone.

It just seems to me that the conservative movement tends to bolster the traditional (ie: pretty, blonde, trophy-wife) view of women, which is so archaically on display during the Miss USA and Miss America pageants, and the countless others that more or less sell women as though we’re slabs of meat, eventually given 30 seconds to skirt a political issue by hoping for world peace.

Now I won’t deny that these contests can be good — the winners tend to engage in community service activities and other do-gooder projects throughout the year of their reign. And honestly, it’s nice to prance around in a big pretty dress, and get your hair done every once in a while — I call those occasions “Wednesdays.” But it’s clear that the types of women who participate in these pageants, and the family that supports them through the process from the time they’re embryos until they’re too old (age 25), and the culture that they perpetuate are outdated.

After a tumultuous legislative session in Vermont, and a tons of legal rigmarole in Iowa, each of those states have added to the handful that grant full marriage equality to its citizens. All consenting adult citizens.

Freaking awesome.

Vermont was the first state to do so using the legislative route — Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts and ill-fated California were all mandated by state supreme courts.What’s phenomenal is the crazy majority that supported this in the senate (23-5) and house (100-49).

So gay Iowans will be able to get married by the end of April. Vermonters will have to wait until September, but New England in the fall is beautiful, so yay.

And if you didn’t know, Vermont has already been a pioneer in this arena: in 2000, it became the first state to grant civil unions to gay and lesbian couples. Booyah.

Apparently an organization in West Virginia is pushing to set up a ballot initiative this year to ban same-sex marriage in the state by a constitutional amendment. That was an informational video from the campaign… oy…

Please note, I’m writing this, so there’s some sarcasm infused all up in this:

1. Those crazy non-heteros, actually attempting to have families!! Don’t they know that families can only have one semi-attractive woman as the mom, and a portly guy who looks like he spends most of his day in a coal mine for a dad?! Families can’t have a grandmother or an aunt raising the kids. A woman can’t head a household by herself if her husband died or left her. That’s clearly impossible. Gay couples? FORGET it!!

2. Obviously, there are no black, Latino, or Asian people in West Virginia that are in actual nuclear families. In fact, the only person in West Virginia with some racial pigment is the black boy who was photoshopped (aka adopted) into some white family [around the 2:12 mark].

3. God forbid your kid finds out that there are people in this world different than them. I knew from Sesame Street and growing up in a city, that all families are different and that’s actually OK! Some parents get divorced. Sometimes grandmothers raise their grandchildren. Sometimes Cambodian kids are adopted by white families. The point is that  we’re all different, and that’s what makes this country awesome — we’re allowed to be different, and embrace our differences. I didn’t know what happened in my dance teacher Stanley’s bedroom when I was 8 years old, but I knew he had a male partner and they loved each other. Frankly, that’s all kids need to know at that age, anyway. I knew what gay meant for years, but I didn’t even think there was anything “wrong” with gay people until Ellen DeGeneres came out in 1997 and the world turned upside down.

It just makes me mad that there are still people who think like this. Maybe they should actually get to know some real gay people. Maybe then, they’ll realize no matter how different our politics, or races, or beliefs are, we all want to be treated in the same manner: fairly.

I write about gay news. Alot. It’s actually my job.

This morning I came across this website, which a bunch of people from Maine set up to counter the pending marriage bill that is about to make its way through the state’s legislative system.

Here’s the message on their front page:

Yeah, it’s not about fairness. Let’s eschew fairness.

Well, if legislators decided to stop working on the basis of fairness of all people, we would have

• institutionalized racial segregation
• women and poor men, especially those of color, couldn’t vote
• discriminatory pay practices
• no interracial marriage
• say bye bye to those wheelchair ramps: no ADA

So basically, doing what’s right is ALSO doing what’s fair. It makes me so angry and sad that we allow groups like this to separate the two concepts.

Photo by Puja

I grew up in New York, and one of the things you do as a New Yorker is make fun of the states around you, particularly Connecticut and New Jersey (especially New Jersey). But, as it turns out, Connecticut has become the third state to legalize same-sex marriage, sort of ahead of New York. I say sort of because Governor Patterson issued an order in May to recognize gay and lesbian marriages performed outside of the state, though same-sex couples still can’t actually, legally get married there (there are domestic partnership benefits, though).

So here’s the breakdown on statewide recognition of same-sex relationships. Some states with laws (not constitutional amendments) restricting marriage to heterosexual couples do offer domestic partnership and civil unions. Because of this, there are 17 states where the constitutional amendment’s language does not allow for even domestic partnerships or civil unions in lieu of marriage.

Full-on Marriage:
Massachusetts, California (pending Proposition 8 fails in November 8), Connecticut

Civil Unions:
New Jersey, Vermont, Washington D.C., Oregon, New Hampshire

Domestic Partnership Registry:
Hawaii, Maine, Washington

New York:
Recognizes marriages from different states and countries.

States that ban same-sex marriage by law or Constitutional Amendment:
Alabama, Alaska, Arizona (current law; Constitutional Amendment proposed for Nov. 4) Arkansas, Colorado, Florida (current law; Constitutional Amendment proposed for Nov. 4), Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming

Source: Human Rights Campaign.