LGBTQ news and entertainment
All-around smart guy Matt Baume recaps LGBT issues at last night’s 1st 2016 GOP debate:
You can see the fear in the GOP candidates’ faces when LGBT issues come up in a debate.
Only a few years ago, bashing LGBTs was red meat for fundraising. Now, their sound bites are fumbling, contradictory, and just outright gibberish.
Here’s what three candidates had to say about LGBTs, and how all three got it wrong.
From the always informative Matt Baume.
It seems the new trailer for the upcoming movie STONEWALL caused some negative reactions since the movie “glosses over” some of the folks who were historically important to the events being chronicled.
What was life like before Stonewall? Why did Stonewall happen? Who was really there? And what were they fighting for?
Matt answers these questions and more. Hit the video below.
Matt Baume explains the new rule change at the Boy Scouts of America allowing gay scout leaders, and whether that means any young scouts are now at more risk.
(Here’s a hint: nope)
While 79% of the National Executive Board of The Boy Scouts of America voted to lift its nation-wide ban on gay adult scout leaders, local chapters are still allowed to decide whether they will discriminate against gay scout leaders.
“The Boy Scouts are a private group, and they’re free to decide who can be a member. In fact, individual chapters are still allowed to deny access to LGBT leaders. Non-discrimination laws just don’t apply here, like they do for public facilities and businesses.”
Got that? Private and religious organizations are NOT under attack. Sorry to disappoint you there, Bryan Fischer.
A former scout himself, Baume explains why having openly gay scout leaders will make a difference in the lives of LGBT youth:
“I didn’t know that I was gay when I was a 7 year-old Boy Scout. I just knew that I was different. And nothing would have been more important to me than to know that I wasn’t alone. And when I got a little older to have seen that people like me aren’t a threat and are just as trustworthy, and helpful and loyal as anyone else.”
Matt Baume debunks myths being touted about the recently introduced-in-Congress Equality Act:
There’s a Big Gay Loophole in the Civil Rights Act that doesn’t cover LGBTs.
The proposed Equality Act would patch it up, but of course, opponents of equality are making up all kinds of crazy claims about why the Big Gay Loophole should stay open forever.
Fortunately, their reasons are completely absurd, so it shouldn’t be too hard to knock ‘em down.
Matt Baume, who for years kept LGBTs and their allies up to date on the state of marriage equality with his weekly Marriage News Watch videos, shares the good news that he has published an e-book titled Defining Marriage.
From the description on Amazon:
Defining Marriage traces the decades-long evolution of marriage through the personal stories of those who lived through it. Writer Matt Baume provides an intimate glimpse into the private lives of those who dreamed of marriage in the 1970s, the survivors of the 1980s, the audacious pioneers of the 1990s, the tireless soldiers of the 2000s, and the champions who won marriage today.
Along the way, he explores the individual stories of the people who participated in this revolution, examines what marriage has become, and shows with vivid, compelling personal narratives how the act of defining marriage forever changed the lives and loves of the people who fought to define the institution. As the journey to equality unfolds over the years, Baume finds himself unexpectedly evaluating his own self-contradictory life as a marriage activist with no plans to marry his longtime partner.
From decades past to this moment in history, from halls of power to private bedrooms, from the political to the personal, Defining Marriage is the story of how people from all walks of life fought to change marriage — and how fighting for marriage, in turn, changed them.
You can download the book right now from Amazon, and Baume is making the tome free for this first week of availability.
Click here for more info at Amazon.
Matt Baume gives his final wrap up of the weekly Marriage News Watch from the American Foundation for Equal Rights.
Only a few isolated locations in the country remain where same-sex couples can’t get married.
Those opposed to equality are getting increasingly desperate, with stall tactics and long-shot legal games.
We’re also likely to see renewed attacks on other civil rights, so there’s still going to be a lot of work to do in order to protect equality.
But the story of marriage is changing from something we’re fighting to achieve to something we’re actually living. That’s why as of this week I’m wrapping up Marriage News Watch.
Big thanks to AFER and Matt for the quick 2 minutes updates on the marriage equality fight these last few years. I know my readers have found the bullet point reports easy to watch, take in and pass along. As Matt says, even just the simple act of watching, commenting and sharing these videos has helped raise visibility of LGBTs, which is key to achieving equal rights.
Yes, it’s true that four Supreme Court justices dissented from Justice Kennedy’s ruling that granted the freedom to marry nationwide.
But that doesn’t mean that everything those in the minority wrote makes complete sense.
Matt Baume takes a look at the reasons they gave for objecting to marriage equality — and why their reasoning really does not hold up.
Matt Baume breaks down the actual reality & definition(s) of so-called “traditional marriage.”
Traditional marriage isn’t the “one man, one woman” story you’ve always heard. It’s changed countless times over the last 4,000 years, almost always for the better.
Let’s take a look at all the different things that marriage has been, and the one thing that has remained constant about marriage over all those millennia.
Baume sums it up well like this: “Letting same-sex couples get married is actually completely traditional. It’s part of the tradition of constantly improving the institution of marriage.”
Matt Baume addresses Ben Carson and the other trolls who keep asking: “If we let gay couples get married, won’t we have to let polygamous couples get married too?”
It’s the question that just keeps coming up, even from the Supreme Court.
So let’s answer it once and for all: why is gay marriage different from polygamous marriage?
And is Ben Carson REALLY running for president? OR just having an extended audition for Fox News?
From Matt Baume for the American Foundation for Equal Rights:
• Texas lawmakers vote this week on whether the state should officially defy the Supreme Court’s ruling on marriage.
• Alabama and Minnesota are debating bills to undermine marriage equality.
• At least one presidential candidate seems to think that if elected he could veto the Supreme Court. But a new survey shows that Americans are getting tired of these anti-gay shenanigans.