(MATT BAUME) Arguing About Kim Davis at the GOP Debate!

Naturally, Kim Davis came up at the second GOP debate, but the candidates' sound bites were fumbling, contradictory, and just outright gibberish. Here's what a few of the presidential hopefuls had to say about LGBTs, and how they got it wrong.

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(DEFINING MARRIAGE) Can Clerks Refuse to Marry Couples They Disapprove Of?

What happens if a clerk doesn't approve of a couple that wants to get married? Can a clerk keep their job AND follow their conscience?

(DEFINING MARRIAGE) Know who your Enemies Are!

 

by Matt Baume

“Marriage felt impossible for so long. This impossible thing you’re never going to get, so don’t bother asking for it,” said Dan Savage. But: “it doesn’t get better for us in a vacuum. It gets better FOR us because straight people get better ABOUT us.”

I chatted with Dan and with Fred Karger about what life was like for gays in the 1970s, and their two very different ways of dealing with it: for Fred, a gay Republican, there was safety in hiding. But Dan, despite being raised in a Roman Catholic household, came emphatically out of the closet at an early age and let the straight world know that any discomfort they felt was their own doing.

From within the belly of the beast, Fred was able to rally opposition to homophobic legislator John Briggs long before it was safe for him to do so publicly. But ultimately, hiding proved far more destructive than coming out.

After all, if queers were ever going to demand full equality, first they’d have to reveal themselves. They’d have to exist. Then they could get down to the work of making things better.

HEAR THE PODCAST HERE

DEBUT! (Defining Marriage) To be Let in, not Just Left Alone!

 

It was the mid-1970s in Seattle when a twenty-something radical named Faygele Ben Miriam dragged his boyfriend Paul to a King County office to demand a marriage license. They never managed to get one, but if they'd walked into the office of Boulder county clerk Clela Rorex, she'd have defiantly handed one to them on the spot.

These pioneers were the first vanguard of a new post-Stonewall marriage equality movement, and the overwhelming consensus was that they were nuts. Marriage for homosexuals was too ludicrous an idea to take seriously, and those few activists who spoke out for the cause were shunned and ridiculed.

Decades later, the auditor who rejected Faygele Ben Miriam’s license later became one of the state’s leading voices for marriage equality (on behalf of his lesbian daughter). Clela Rorex’s successor, forty years later, led the charge for equality across all of Colorado.

Everyone thought that early vanguard was crazy. It turns out they were visionaries.

Listen to Matt Baume's Podcast HERE