Meh Culpa: On Medved and full civil unions, sort of

After thoroughly considering Elton John’s declaration against marriage, Michael Medved says he’s willing to accept civil unions with all the rights of marriage, both civil and federal,  and Andrew Sullivan asks:

So if the far right now favors comprehensive civil unions at the state and federal level, why won’t Obama propose a federal civil unions bill? Or will the Human Rights Campaign try to dissuade him?

::dies laughing::

That was a good one.  The HRC has been criticized for all sorts of things after its pitiful Prop 8 fund raising effort, but Sullivan’s remark is priceless.

In any case,

A) Elton John is a British citizen so he doesn’t get to say

and

B) The UK has had civil partnerships, with full marriage benefits, since 2004.

Sheesh.

Meh Culpa: On heartbreak

I’ve saved Andrew Sullivan’s post, “The Mormon War on Gay People,” for a few days:

I do not intend in any way to remove a single right from Mormons. I do intend to protest their imposition of their own religious dogma – that marriage is always between a man and a woman and it is eternal and will be replicated in heaven by the couple physically present – on civil rights protections vested in a civil constitution.

I should add that I dated a Mormon man for a few months a while back. What he told me about the LDS church’s psychological warfare on their gay members, the brutality and viciousness and intolerance with which they attack and hound and police the gay children of Mormon families, would make anyone shudder.

They hounded my ex for having HIV and for being gay. They followed him secretly, outed him to his family and persecuted him for his illness. When he was diagnosed with HIV at Brigham Young, he had to run out of the college clinic to escape those who wanted to sequester and punish him. He died a few years ago. Most of his Mormon family didn’t show up for his funeral. You want me to love these people? Let me say it’s my Christian duty to try.

I know a young lesbian who grew up Mormon.  She hasn’t spoke much about her family’s rejection of her–they didn’t attend her wedding to another woman and I don’t believe most of them speak to her–but I have a feeling her experience has been just as traumatic.