NEWSBYCRISTIAN ASHER

The times, they are a’changing. And so is marriage. This isn’t the work of gays and lesbians — as I've been shouting for awhile now — it’s a result of the ways society is changing overall. Now the Washington Post has chimed in with a similar message, while two articles in the New York Times detail that process and even indicate that the way gays and lesbians approach marriage may be happier and more sustainable than all those “traditions” the far right keeps harping on about.

The Post editorial gives the basics: marriage used to be about property and enforcing a strict male-female hierarchy, but now it’s about love and partnership. That property question was not just about land and inheritance, incidentally — women and children were, for many centuries, legally counted as possessions, too, so marriages were literally business transactions between fathers and fiancés. The structure and legal underpinnings of marriage perpetuated this, specifically working to keep women in a secondary, powerless position.

Here’s why it matters that Daniel Hernandez, the intern who helped save Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ life after an assassin opened fire at a Tucson Safeway, is gay. It matters because his behavior throws the whole religious (mostly Christian) anti-LGBT argument into the dumpster once and for all — on their own terms and according to Scripture.

We’ve all heard the story: when Daniel heard shots he didn’t run away but instead ran toward them to try to help the Congresswoman and the other victims. He performed triage, directed other bystanders in administering simple first aid and then held Giffords, stanching her bleeding as well as he could, until an ambulance arrived. He didn’t know, in the beginning, whether the shooter had been caught or how much danger he was running into. But he made the conscious choice to do what he could.

Where would we LGBT folks be without our straight supporters? From Hollywood stars who refuse to get married until everyone can (thank you, Brangelina) to politicians who buck the trend and do the right thing even when it’s not popular, we’ve had some outstanding heroes in the past few years. Here’s my list of nominees for the Hall of Fame.

Daniel Radcliffe

Who would have expected Harry Potter to be so concerned about gay issues? Daniel Radcliffe, who certainly carries some weight among kids and teens, has recorded PSAs and spoken out repeatedly about the Trevor Project and to publicize the crisis of LGBT youth suicide. While adults may get all tied up in knots debating JK Rowling's announcement that Dumbledore is gay, Radcliffe has avoided getting mired in controversy and instead spoken directly to those who need support and help most.

Keith Olbermann

In November 2008, MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann set aside several minutes of his nightly show to speak out about the tragedy of Prop 8’s passage. He had no friends who were directly affected by the proposition, but the very thought of denying gay people the right to marry struck him as so horrible and pointless that he could not remain silent. His passion was undeniable, and his message could not have been more on-target. By bringing the gay marriage argument sensitively and respectfully to both the mainstream media and the heterosexual world, Keith Olbermann gave us a huge and enduring gift.

"Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" is dead. Shout it from the rooftops, dance in the streets, and marvel at the prospect of gays, lesbians and bisexuals finally being able to serve our country openly and without shame someday very soon.

And when you’ve finished celebrating, come back in and roll up your sleeves, because there’s another group still suffering discrimination in the military, and their situation may be much more complicated and difficult to resolve than the question of gays and lesbians.

The group in question? Transgender soldiers. The military still practices extreme prejudice against transgender people, and considers any expression of non-normative gender behavior — anything, in other words, from cross-dressing to complete sex reassignment — to be evidence of a sickness. Even if you dress up in drag on your own time, off-base, if the military finds out about it, you can expect to be discharged. And even after you’ve completed your tour of duty and been honorably discharged, if you seek out help for transition therapy or medical benefits from the VA, you may run into brick walls of prejudice and even be refused service. Sometimes, if you do transition, you can even lose your status with the military, because they will consider you a different person from the one in their records.

Shocking, huh? Even as the Pentagon has made such great strides in its attitudes about gay and lesbian soldiers, and while some of our allies (including Canada and Australia) are actually looking for ways to revamp their policies and support their transgender soldiers, in the U.S. this is still a taboo subject.

If you’re anything like me, you remember your teen years as something like one of the closer-in circles of Hell. The teasing, the fear and boredom, the embarrassment over, well, pretty much everything — being a teenager can suck, and now it turns out that a lot of us LGBT types had it even worse than we realized.

A new study by researchers at Yale, which was published this week in Pediatrics and reported by the Washington Post, indicates that gay and lesbian teens are more likely to be punished than their straight peers. Schools, police, and the courts all treat LGBT kids differently than they do straight ones, especially girls, who are two to three times as likely to be disciplined.

“Discipline” in this context can include getting expelled from school, police stops, court convictions, or a variety of other negative consequences for crimes as simple as lying or drinking or as serious as theft or violence. LGBT kids are not more likely to commit offenses, the study is careful to document — but for the ones who do, the consequences are much more serious than for non-LGBT offenders.

One of my favorite email buddies, Michelle Obama, sent me a message on Veteran’s Day. I’m a big fan of the First Lady — being a hardworking professional spouse myself, she’s one of my top role models. But I think she missed something with yesterday’s email.

Michelle wrote about her great admiration for the men and women who serve in our military, and also for their families, who support and love them while they’re doing it. This is a big issue for Ms. Obama, one that she speaks on frequently. But there are some military families who don’t get to bask in the First Lady’s public admiration. They don’t even get to talk about their military loved ones for fear of ending their careers.

Gay and lesbian partners of military personnel live out a "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" hell all their own. As I wrote in the very first blog I ever posted on Change.org, when a gay or lesbian soldier is injured or killed on the battlefield, their partner will not receive a call from the military to let them know what happened. Those partners, some of whom are the legal wives or husbands of a soldier, cannot access any of the support groups or other resources which the military and private organizations provide for straight families. They get no help, they tell lies to their neighbors about where their spouse is so that no one will suspect and out the soldier. They cannot even say the word “love” in a phone call or email for fear someone else might hear or read it.

President Obama has stated that his position on marriage equality may be evolving. If that's true, then we in the LGBT community have something to say about how it should happen.

Up to this point, the President has refused to support full marriage rights for gays and lesbians, favoring civil unions instead. He's clung to this position even as he celebrates steps toward equality like Judge Walker’s ruling that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. This attempt at a tightrope walk between favoring equality and supporting an unequal legislative alternative frustrates both sides: anti-equality forces don’t see the difference and condemn the President as kowtowing to gays and lesbians, while the LGBT community wonders when his advocacy is going to become truly fierce, as opposed to just wordy.

But, as reported here a few days ago, Obama has now stated to a group of bloggers that his views and his position may be changing. He stopped short of announcing what that change might be, but that doesn’t matter. If the leader of the free world is finding himself teetering at a tipping point around the issue of equality, now is the moment for us to give him a push.

The question, “is gay a choice?” is rearing its ugly, ignorant head again, as Andrew Belonsky has already posted. Anti-equality activists love this one, because it fits perfectly into their fairy tale about gays and lesbians being privileged evildoers who demand special rights. It also fuels their fights to refuse us any kind of equality and to convince our youth that Jesus really will change them into perfect little straight boys and girls if they just try harder.

If you think you detect a certain note of fury in my words here, you're absolutely right. After the recent spate of suicides among young people, and smarmy protestations from anti-equality organizations that really, they didn't mean that to happen at all and they love gay and lesbian young people, really they do, I am furious. And I am getting pretty annoyed that our advocates are failing to shoot this debate down once and for all. In fact, they're engaging and perpetuating it.

The important thing to understand here is, belief doesn't matter in this instance. No one's belief, pro or con, matters in the slightest. Those who hate gays can believe it’s a chosen lifestyle all they want, but that doesn’t change the scientific evidence, which increasingly points to genetic factors (the most savvy of our opponents now admit to “a predisposition” toward homosexuality — but they’re quick to compare this “predisposition” to  alcoholism and declare that no one really needs to suffer from its effects if they don't want to). Your beliefs don't make a thing true, and they're certainly no basis for public policy. That's the route the Ku Klux Klan and the Taliban take — they're convinced their beliefs trump reason or science or the common good, and they dedicate themselves to imposing their personal, subjective worldview on everyone else. This is very specifically what the U.S. Constitution was crafted to prevent.

As we wrote on Change.org earlier today, a school district in California has gotten into trouble for showing an acclaimed anti-bullying film to students. Why? Because the film includes gay and lesbian kids (or those perceived to be gay or lesbian) among the groups who deserve respect from their peers in the classroom.

In spite of the importance of this message, a group of parents has objected, with one woman declaring that her parental rights had been trampled and that the district was trying to usurp her parental role by exposing her child to what she considers an unhealthy lifestyle.

The offensiveness of this mother's position is infuriating, and the fact that she considers it better for children to be driven to suicide than for their possible gender identities to even be discussed in school is a moral outrage. But all that is beside the point in this case.

The real point is this: schools are not the proper venue for teaching morality, but they do have a responsibility to train their students in the rules and requirements of a civilized society. This separation of what's appropriate for schools and what's appropriate for parents seems to be completely confused in the minds of many extreme conservatives, who believe that all social institutions should be forced to mirror their own personal morality.

Like many LGBT people, I had some very dark days in middle school and high school. For three years I never picked up a knife without imagining slitting my wrists with it. I spent many nights sitting up alone, wishing I could die right then and there and feeling much darker inside than the black night outside my window.

I am many years past those times now. My life has been good and bad, easy and difficult, lonely and filled with friends and family. It’s been great. And here are some of my favorite things I never would have done or experienced if I had actually died when I was 16.

1. Gone to Europe, Africa, or the Caribbean.
   I worked as a dancer all over the world, and have also been a tourist through the south of France, around London, and lots of other places. I’ve made love in a vineyard at midnight. I’ve climbed up to the cave where Mary Magdalene spent her last years. I’ve sailed next to icebergs in the Arctic Circle and sat out on a ship’s deck in bright daylight at 11:00 pm.
2. Partied with the cream of Old Hollywood.
   I can’t claim to have met Beyonce or Britney, but when I worked in Vegas I did share drinks with Debbie Reynolds, Liza Minnelli, and Sammy Davis Jr., among others.
3. Written three novels.
   All right, so they’re not published yet. But when I was 16, I never would have believed I could even find that many words, or create a whole story with interesting characters from beginning to end. And one or more of them will be published. Someday.