Comparing the words of two famous garblemeisters in the Chicago Sun-Times (2/19/04) —Mayor Daley on gay marriages seems to have reformed his speech patterns and is perfectly clear: 'Some people have a difference of opinion—that only a man and a woman can get married. But in the long run, we have to understand what they're saying. They love each other just as much as anyone else. ... Marriage has been undermined for a number of years if you look at the facts and figures on it. Don't blame the gay and lesbian, transgender and transsexual community.'
And here's Mr. Bush from 'Quick Takes,' the Zay N. Smith column of the same paper, same day: 'People need to be involved with this decision. Marriage ought to be defined by the people, not by the courts.' (Zay says, 'The president is right. Any of you people out there, if you want to define your relationship as a marriage, go right ahead.')
From the NY Times (2/18/), a new documentary Lost boys of Sudan, about African orphans coming to this country mentions the sad fact that part of two of the boys' alienation comes from the problems arising from their culture's familiar touching which they can't do here because it's considered homosexual behavior.
A political cartoon from the NY Times (2/15): An electronic sign projecting from a U.S. government office giving the time, temperature and today's war rationale which is—invaded Iraq to prevent gay marriages.
The Chicago Sun-Times (2/16) reports at least one of the 9/11 firefighters after posing nude for a beefcake charity calendar is now moonlighting as a stripper.
African-American columnist Derrick Z. Jackson in the Chicago Tribune (2/16) reports on the linkage of gay rights to the Black civil-rights movement. Says Jackson, the anti-gay African-American ministers in Massachusetts who '… want to stuff today's gay and lesbian couples into separate and unequal compartments of commitment have forgotten how the civil-rights movement forced Bayard Rustin, one of the movement's greatest theorists, to make himself invisible because he was gay.' In fact at one point Martin Luther King, Jr. was blackmailed by Adam Clayton Powell who said he wanted some picketing called off or he would tell the media King was having an affair with Rustin. It was called off.
The History file: the last member of the very gay British literary Bloomsbury Group died at 103 according to The NY Times (2/15). Frances Partridge was married to Ralph Partridge, the (unreciprocated) love object of biographer Lytton Strachey. She also was a friend of Virginia and Leonard Woolf. It was said of Partridge that she lived 'her life in complete sentences.'
