I just put up a review on the research on the causes of homosexuality, here. It may need some editing help.

After such a tiring run through of all that research, the take home message is that the reason you’re gay is, well, complicated…

Any suggestions to make this clearer?  More accurate?

An intersexual person is defined in my dictionary as: intermediate in sexual characters between a typical male and a typical female. Intersexuals can be genetically male and anatomically female, or genetically female and apparently male, or about anything in between.  Some people may even be a mosaic of male and female cells throughout their body and even have both testicular and ovarian tissue.  Check out, for example this picture of a intersexed mosaic zebra finch from PNAS, split right down the middle in male and female cells, as seen in its plumage.  (Also, see this area of our library for references to related research articles, or the topic is discussed a bit here in an unfinished article).

Now, goodness only knows who these people are supposed to marry under all these marriage amendments, or how they fit into the supernatural beliefs built up around sex in some religions.  Not only may the intersexed be biologically, anatomically and genetically a mix of the typical sexes, they may not even self identify as exclusively male or female and may be bisexual.  I think the intersexed are an often overlooked and even forgotten target of gender discrimination.

Anyway, to the point, I just finished compiling a bunch of research on the physical and mental differences gays and lesbians show with regards to their heterosexual counterparts, here.  The most striking aspect of the research is that gay men are a lot like heterosexual women, in the ways they are different from heterosexual men; the reverse holds true for the average lesbian.  A gay man’s timing of puberty, parts of their brain anatomy, and their cognitive abilities are all female, in a way.  From the properties of her inner ear to her gambling habits, a lesbian is, partially, a typical male. By definition, gay men and women have, at least, the sexual orientation in their genetic sex that typically shows up in another genetic sex, and a same-genetic sex orientation is much more common in what we generally call intersexed individuals (see here).

So, I’ve been wondering, can gays and lesbians be accurately described as intersexed people as well?  If to be intersexed is to be “intermediate in sexual characters between a typical male and a typical female” then much research shows that gays and lesbians hold that property, in part, and in more areas, both physical and mental, than merely sexual orientation.  Is homosexuality then just a degree of intersexuality?  If not, how much of a anatomical, brain, or mental difference does one need to be considered intersexed?

What do you think?

On an aside of this topic, isn’t it also kind of odd?  Gay women are masculine in some clear physical and mental measurements, the greatest of which, orientation, is quite important to a marriage.  So all those people fighting against marriage for same-sex couples in flesh are, in part, fighting for gay marriage of minds.  Odd that :-).

I am disrespectful and uncivil. When people characterize my marriage as inspired by Satan, tell me our children should have other parents, and tell me my children have social defects, I don’t just accept it for the loving words of truth that they are.  When a person characterizes my family as a threat to all that is good and the very fabric of society, I actually tell them they are wrong, and often compound the insult by citing data.  Our opponents, they totally love us, a lot, and look how I treat them.  Why can’t we just leave them alone?

I am intolerant. Sure, on the plus side I had no issue with groups until they start advocating harm to my family in law.  I’ll still fight for their right to believe what they want about my family or teach or do what they want in their churches, but I just can’t tolerate it when they don’t tolerate people with our anatomy sharing equal legal status with them.  I get all intolerant when people act to exclude my family; it’s no wonder they get confused at my strange behavior.  And get this: I even have a hard time maintaining friendships with people who act to hurt my family!  Why the Gods of tolerance don’t just strike me down is anybody’s guess.

I am religiously intolerant. When a human, like so many others throughout history, tells me he has The Truth and God speaks to him, and he just knows that the most sacred institution in my life is a perversion, I have the unmitigated gaul to tell him that I’d think God would find such a characterization and treatment of love to be the perversion.  I’m a regular Marxist that way.  It’s just fortunate that all those world religions show true tolerance and respect towards each other.

I am contemptuous of the rights of others. When people treat my family in a way they’d not want their family treated, take legal rights they enjoy away from us, and toss out the equal protection clauses in our constitutions as meaningless trash, I just get these weird urges.  I may even go so far as to tell them to knock it off in a public street, and with, of all things, words!  I just have no respect for the ideals in our constitution, so much so that people have to weaken those ideals in order to protect them from our families.

I am selfish. I spend a great number of my waking hours (some when I should be sleeping) trying to figure out how to protect children and spouses in law from the selfless folks fighting for children and families.  Why can’t I just see that it’s good for kids to, say, not have access to their parent’s health insurance?  Why must I think I know the best person with whom I should build a family?  Why must I be so self-centered as to think it’s not good for gay couples to be able to break their vows without legal consequence?  I disgust myself sometimes.

I am a bigot. I am.  I have some pretty nasty preconceptions of people who practice bigotry, and sometimes I’ll even get angry at them.  I’m so low that I teach that bigotry against bigotry to my children!

I am anti-family. In fact, just to spite The Family, I’ve practiced life-long monogamy, am raising two amazing children, and am deeply in love with the man I’ve been married to for well over a decade.  To top off the insult, my children have a stay-at-home parent, and their parents never fight.  We all know (around this suburb of Utah at least) that’s not what real family is about.  Why, if I had my way, the modern family wouldn’t be nearly as exciting for children or couples as it is today.

I am anti-marriage. That’s why I want legal marriage so badly, because I just hate it so much it hurts.  Won’t it be a great day when, after the gays have their way, children are raised by robot nursemaids in socialist communes, and couples will (by mandate from commandant Obama) finally separate and live the swinging lifestyle in gay bars all night?  Boy, that’ll be great.

I am anti-traditional marriage. It’s wrong for me and it would mean splitting up my child’s home and courting a person with whom I’d find the idea of physical, emotional, and familial intimacy wrong at it’s core, and so that, of course, means I’m against man-woman marriage for everyone.  It doesn’t matter that I think traditional marriage is wonderful, miraculous, and one of the most precious institutions on earth, one that I dearly respect in everyone from my parent to friends.  I’m still against it, just like people who use braille to read are anti-reading and anti-seeing.  We just can’t have different ways of doing things for different people, and pro-gay marriage logically means anti-traditional marriage, and I guess that’s what I am.

Lastly, I am a sore loser. I just can’t get it thought my thick skull that a fight for equal rights is like some competition of sport.  When my family is hurt by others I simply lack even a sliver of the moral character needed to lay down and take it quietly.  Yep, I whine, even fight back.  But what do you expect from fags like us? I come from a long line of sore losers, from the protesting sodomite prepped for torture on the inquisitioner’s slab, to the drag queens who had enough of police harassment at the Stonewall Inn.  We just don’t know when the game is over, when the human race has stopped moving forward; we just don’t know when it’s time to give up hope.

I guess I’m just a really bad person.

…but I was actually holding out hope.

When the LDS came out in force for Proposition 8 they claimed the LDS church “does not object to rights for same-sex couples regarding hospitalization and medical care, fair housing and employment rights, or probate rights.”  Equality Utah hoped they would stand by those words, that they weren’t just some PR move to get well-intentioned members to follow in voting against their conscience and their neighbors.

I was disheartened to read in the paper today that they’re now saying:

“The Church is not planning on commenting on civil unions for the time being.”

and

…spokesman Michael Otterson suggested a few days ago to a Washington Post reporter that the church’s post-election remarks were “based on civil unions in California and that no decision has been made regarding similar rights in Utah,” the paper said. “‘I don’t want to give the impression that the church is saying civil unions in all cases are OK,’” Otterson was quoted as saying.

Those rights are okay for our families in Ca but not for our families in Ut?  Morality changes in a matter of miles?

I kind of feel stupid for thinking they were actually softening their hearts on the rights of those gay-headed families outside their church.  And sure, I still hope… a bit.  But It seems they were just wanting to be able to say they weren’t “anti-gay” and say that they weren’t hoping to take away rights from and harm our homes, as they did anyway with Prop 8.  It’s the same old problem of wanting to do something to another that you’d not want done to yourself and yet still find a way to still feel good about it.

I’m hoping that, in time, that’s not possible, that a man can’t do that to another without it eventually wearing him down.  For now, though, this doesn’t look good for our families here in Utah.  If the LDS church won’t move out of the way of granting our homes even these meager rights, we will not get them here unless they come from the federal government.  I guess then my hope now lies in the new presidential administration.

In one of the many arguments I had about Prop 8 over the past few months, a white middle class woman got indignant at my comparing marriage equality to racial equality. “Gay people have never been slaves!” she proclaimed. The response that came immediately to mind was “Well black people have never been denied the right to marry!” But of course, as Keith Olbermann points out, that’s not true.

There’s no denying that throughout history sexual minorities have been treated poorly. If we haven’t been enslaved, denied basic human rights, and otherwise excluded from society, it’s because unlike most racial minorities we have the ability to hide who we are and blend in. This self-denial has not come without its own cost, though, and the fact that gays were exterminated alongside Jews and blacks in Nazi Germany is evidence of the fact that historically there’s been no more love for us than for anyone who’s not a straight white man.

The point is not for minorities to tally up damages and decide who has it worse, though. It’s much more fruitful for us to recognize what we have in common and to work together toward societal change that will benefit us all. Which is why when I read this article in which a black lesbian explains why a large portion of the black community voted for Prop 8, I immediately felt defensive. I’d already heard all the divisive arguments and by this point I was just sick of it.

As I read on, though, perhaps a little less defensive because this was a lesbian and not a straight person (which reveals some of my own biases), I began to see her point:

Why? Because I don’t see why the right to marry should be a priority for me or other black people. Gay marriage? Please. At a time when blacks are still more likely than whites to be pulled over for no reason, more likely to be unemployed than whites, more likely to live at or below the poverty line, I was too busy trying to get black people registered to vote, period; I wasn’t about to focus my attention on what couldn’t help but feel like a secondary issue.

She went on to talk about how perhaps white gays [and their white allies] can afford to invest millions of dollars to fight for “the luxury of same-sex marriage,” but marriage won’t solve the problems that plague black gays and straights alike. Perhaps I felt this sting most strongly because as much as I like to think of myself as someone who cares about poverty and racial equality, the only time in my life I’ve donated a significant amount of money and time to any cause has been for gay marriage. I can afford to care about marriage equality because I’m educated, I have a reasonable income, because I don’t live in a community overrun by drugs and gang warfare. To be clear, the differences we’re talking about here are not so much of race as of social and economic class, but in America that all too often amounts to the same thing.

The author of this article also mentions another big stumbling block to getting black support for gay civil rights: To black people the concept of “civil rights” is closely connected to religion and up to now the fight for marriage equality has largely been framed as a fight against religion.

If we’re going to win the fight for marriage equality–and we will, sooner or later, but if we want that to be sooner than later–we need to find allies among other minorities and among people of faith. We need to remember and remind others, first of all, that among LGBT people there are a great number of racial minorities and people of faith. We need to take steps like that taken by Equality Utah to invite religions, even those we currently see as enemies, to fight with us rather than against us. We need to follow the model Scot described, to make racial minorities our allies by first becoming their allies. But beware: as a former Mormon missionary and a current project of Mormon missionaries who are trying to get me back to church, I am keenly aware of the difference between genuine friendship and superficial displays of friendship that mask ulterior motives. As we reach out to potential allies, let’s not do it only because we need them, but also because they need us. Despite the fact that blacks have been fighting for equality for far longer than gays have, I think there’s a good chance that we’ll win our battle long before they truly win theirs; it would be a tragedy for us to stop fighting once we get what we want.

Or, in the words of president-elect Barack Obama:

It’s not enough for just some of us to prosper, for alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga: a belief that we’re all connected as one people. If there is a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me. If there is a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for their prescription drugs and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandparent. If there is an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberty. It is that fundamental belief–I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper–that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family. E pluribus unum: Out of many, one.

It seems someone has sent to the LDS church and the Knights of Columbus envelops filled with white powder.

Details are sparse but this, of course, would most likely seem to be a response to Proposition 8.  Nevertheless, we should keep in mind that such incidents of terrorism often come from within the targeted group, or can be the work of people using the politics of others as cover.

The reason, though, such acts do often come from within the targeted group is that they garnish sympathy for that group, and rightly so.  If this turns out to be the work of some gay nut job, well, you’ve just harmed my family and every other family headed by same-sex couples every bit as effectively as the lies propagated by the organizations you targeted.  Throwing their rights out of the window because they did the same to ours will only give them an excuse for their original breach of ethics; it certainly won’t stop them from doing it again.  And worse, I know we’ll all be judged by this action.  The perpetrator should know every minority is judged by the best excuse in their midst to treat them as second-class citizens.  That’s the nature of prejudice and bigotry, both in our opponents and in you, the person who sent this powdery threat.

I’d assume, if this was a GLBT person, they don’t have children or a spouse or much to loose or gain by this but a sense of revenge, else why would they put all that at risk just to cause fear in another human being?

Of course, no one has the right for their actions, particularly those aimed at taking rights form others, to be free of response in speech, protest, or boycott, and I’m not saying those are off limits, but they absolutely have the right to be free of threat of bodily harm (and the same goes for vandalism of property).  I’m not sure how the criminal may try to excuse this, but not even every beating or murder of gay men and women coming from the lunatic fringe of the anti-gay-rights side can excuse this from our lunatic fringe.  Simply, the person doing this is an amoral criminal in need of prosecution for the harm they’ve directly done to the LDS folks opening those letters (even if it is innocuous powder, meant to cause fear), but they are also guilty of indirect harm to all our families.  I hope they are found.

This is just disturbing on many levels.  It’s troubling for me to know I have to raise my kids in a place where people don’t care about the rights of others, be they for or against our families, but that is, sadly, the world we live in and it can get worse, if we let it.  Each time we show disrespect for the rights of others we encourage them to do the same and I wory this tit-for-tat will get out of hand.  Let’s all work instead to make sure that does not happen.

According to a leaked internal memo written over a decade ago, it seems the LDS church was at one point considering if and how strongly they should step into regulating our marriages using law.

I held off posting on this because it seemed the source could possibly be questionable.  However, it finally surfaced on a news site and the LDS church has said they feel it’s authentic (you can see the actual documents posted and discussed, here).

There are really two main take-home messages from it as far as I can tell.

1.  Often I’ve heard folks like LDS author and play write Carol Lynn Person express concern that their church was being used by radical, far right religions, religions that do actively promote bigotry towards both gays and Mormons.  But it seem the LDS church is involved in using other churches as well:

“…the public image of the Catholic Church is higher than our Church. In other words, if we get into this, they are the ones with which to join.”

“he (President Hinckley) also said the (LDS) Church should be in a coalition and not out front by itself.”

The LDS knew going into the marriage fight that it could not be the face, but that they had the organization and resources.  This seems to be a strategy that was tossed out the window with the very public and almost boastful involvement of the LDS organization in the Prop 8 fight.  The new LDS leadership in Monson must have disagreed with Hinckley?

Now though, after the inevitable backlash, they seem to be trying to get into the background again, and put the ownus on the “coalition” (I think Scott summed up why this isn’t going to work, here).  Simply, when you paid for those horrible ads and said the false statements you did about items such as the Catholic Charities Boston case, you can’t escape responsibility.  It’s too late.  Hinckley’s methods seemed more pragmatic and beneficial for the LDS church; though, I do more respect being out front, if you truly think the cause is the good fight.

2. It seems they are merely willing to give our families a couple scraps of rights in the hopes of placating us, not because they feel it is the morally correct thing to do:

Elder Oaks was the first to recognize that in the political process that in order to win this battle, there may have to be certain legal rights recognized for unmarried people such as hospital visitation so opponents in the legislature will come away with something.  This is proving to be the case.

I have to wonder how far from equality in law they’d tolerate LDS marriages being?  Do they really think any man would settle for anything but equal protection for his family under the law?

It’s also depressing to know they see something as clearly humane to give our families as hospital visitation as something they may “have to” concede.  That’s just sad, and hard to understand from any group who follows a man who said the Golden Rule is the supreme rule.  It also shows why separate but equal will never work in the law, and why we can’t let them give our homes a legal category they’d not want to share.

Anyway, I suppose a look at the inner workings of any political orginization might turn up somthing ugly.  It’s just kind of sad that the church of my youth is a political orginization, and has become such a big player in the lives of so many gay and lesbian headed families across the US.  I have to hope that they regret the choice made back when this supposed intermal memo was written, but it’s a slim hope.

In my inbox this afternoon:

This has been an incredibly difficult week for Californians who are disappointed in the passage of Proposition 8, which takes away the right to marry for same-sex couples in our state. We feel a profound sense of disappointment in this defeat, but know that in order to move forward we must continue to stand together as one community in order to secure full equality in California.

In working to defeat Prop 8, a profound coalition banded together to fight for equality. Faith leaders, labor, teachers, civil rights leaders and communities of color, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, public officials, local school boards and city councils, parents, corporate law firms and bar associations, businesses, and people from all walks of life joined together to stand up against discrimination. We must build on this coalition in order to achieve equal rights for all Californians.

We achieve nothing if we isolate the people who did not stand with us in this fight. We only further divide our state if we attempt to blame people of faith, African American voters, rural communities and others for this loss. We know people of all faiths, races and backgrounds stand with us in our fight to end discrimination, and will continue to do so. Now more than ever it is critical that we work together and respect our differences that make us a diverse and unique society. Only with that understanding will we achieve justice and equality for all.

Dr. Delores A. Jacobs CEO Center Advocacy Project

Lorri L. Jean CEO L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center

Kate Kendell Executive Director National Center for Lesbian Rights

Geoff Kors Executive Director Equality California

I hope we can do our part here at Isocrat.org to contribute to a spirit of unity between the LGBT community and our allies, no matter their race, religion, or political affiliation.

The Salt Lake Tribune reported today:

Now that California voters have outlawed same-sex marriage, an LDS Church leader called Wednesday for members to heal rifts caused by the emotional campaign by treating each other with “civility, with respect and with love.”

“We hope that everyone would treat [each other] that way no matter which side of this issue they were on,” said Elder L. Whitney Clayton, of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Presidency of the Seventy.

One fascinating aspect of the marriage fight has become the use of words.  Not too long ago, not many, not even the LDS church had a problem calling gays satanically motivated right in the open, or worse.  They had no PR problems in openly causing our families problems, with no need to talk of respect here in Utah politics.  It should be seen as a bit of a step in the right direction that today, ostensibly, they often talk about civility respect and love for us, and even about placating us with “certain” unnamed rights while they’re taking others away.

Still, it is important for us to get them to feel the actuality of their choices. They have, in fact, been the definition of uncivil, insulting, and harmful to our families, but have done a good job of spinning it in their public rhetoric (and, yes, some of us have responded in kind; but that’s what you get for casting the first stone, right?).

“Respect”, for example.  The LDS church specifically aims to not treat our families with respect.  They specifically place us at or, really, below second class family status, if the leaders will even call us “families”.  In fact you’ll hear many in the church deride our hope for equal legal rights and responsibilities as merely a hope for their social respect, which they say they cannot give on religious grounds.  Now, they have instituted a huge legal slap in the face to our homes, but somehow have decided that, as long as they do it calmly and while merely feeling love, that it is respect; it is civil; it is love.

To move forward, though, I feel we need them to see and feel what they are doing.

If only they’d imagine their own weapons aimed at themselves.  What if the gay community successfully helped make LDS marriages illegal?  What if we did it in the spirit of love and with calm demeanor?  What if we called LDS “families” a threat to The Family?  What if we couldn’t bear to call their unions “marriages” at all?  What if we labeled LDS children deficient and prone to all sorts of social problems, in the face of science?  Why?  Well, the science must be wrong as we just know a child can’t best thrive with LDS parents.  What if we said we can’t allow the LDS to marry because marriage causes them to have children, or would somehow hurt their extant children?  What if we said LDS unions are inspired by the devil?  What if we ignored the fact the LDS parents do have children in our schools and we threatened others that our kindergartners will be “taught about Mormonism” in school if we “let” them get married?

I mean, right in that article:

As for Proposition 8, “we consider this to be a moral issue,” Clayton said. “We’re not anti-gay, we’re pro marriage between a man and a woman.”

Can they not hear themselves?  Would it be loving, civil, or respectful if we said we’re making their marriages illegal because it’s a “moral issue”?  We’re not anti-LDS; no, we’re just pro-non-LDS marriages?  How could you call us anti-LDS?  If we were Baptist, we’d lovingly say we’re just pro-christian marriages .  Simply, what if we took away their equal protection from government and we made their marriages illegal, and then called for “civility” “respect” and “love”?

Well, we’d be oblivious jerks; that’s what we’d be.  But I think they’d then understand how uncivil that is, how cruel and dehumanizing.  I think they’d understand then how shallow the words are and how much worse it is to try to sugar coat their choices.

So, without compromising our ethics and doing to them what we’d not want done to ourselves (as if we could ever have that kind of political power ), how do we get the other side to drop the curtain and look, really look at what they’re doing to us and our children?  How do we get them to see pleasant PC words don’t change the facts?

I wish I knew.

But I do know you can’t cause a rift and then reasonably ask for it to heal without genuine repentance and accompanying actions.  You can’t ask for respect for your disrespect, and to do so would be kind of funny if it wasn’t for the fact that their first stone was aimed at our families.  I’m sure they want this to smooth over, both in and out of the LDS church.  I’m sure they want to be treated with respect, and civility, but such choice of words on their part, attempting to absolve themselves of their massive and consiquential disrespect and incivility towards our families… well, it’s just another irritant in the wound.

We lost.  We lost in Alabama, California, Florida, and Arizona.

We can afford to feel that loss today, and, sure, I’ve complained about my personal pain, but we cannot afford to indulge in that loss tomorrow.  Tomorrow is time to regroup and start again.

Consider that we lost in Ca by only a couple percentage points, far from the two to one margin 8 years ago.  Again, time is in our corner, and we need to meet it’s offer in the next election cycle.

The take home lesson is that we now know the tactics they’ll use.  I mean, who’d have thought they’d tie marriage rights to a silly book like “King and King” and use those deceptive claims about the classroom?  They got their message out there first this time, and it changed our 17 point lead into a 2 point deficit.  But now we know what they have, and we now have time to get the truth out there.  No one can stay quiet anymore, and we need more people to come out and speak up.

Also, we know where we need to focus.  According to the LA Times, Prop 8 was voted down by whites and people under 29.  The next generation is greatly a matter of time but there’s still room to approach our older citizens and start a dialogue.

More importantly, it’s sad that, on the day the black community is rightly celebrating a wonderful step on racial issues with the election of Obama, it comes out that the majority of the black community voted in favor of Prop 8 in California.  One top of that, it was another persecuted community, the LDS, that paid most of the bills for their horribly misleading ad campaign.  It was wrong for law to discriminate against such people for race or religion, and they should know it’s wrong to discriminate against us for our sexual anatomy.  Maybe it’s reflexive to feel being the equal of the first class citizen means following their example in their historical treatment of you, when you were second class; it’s a lesson the gay community should pay attention to once we are on equal footing.

Nevertheless, some of this is our fault.  I think I know why.  I have spent years involved as a volunteer with minority racial issues.  My first year or so I was met with derision from some other minority community leaders.  I was told I shouldn’t be there.  I didn’t count as a minority.  My family’s concerns weren’t important.  Some tried to push me out.  But we can’t give up, not on us and not on the moral center of others.  I know gays have shied away from putting themselves in such groups for such hostility–I’ve heard the story many times–but we have to stick it out.  Today, I’ve been made chair and co-chair of a couple minority committees which once only dealt with racial issues, and one of our holiday parties will be held at our home.  As with most gay issues, you just have to do what’s right, and stick it out until the other person stops seeing a cartoon image of a homosexual and starts seeing you, your family, starts seeing their humanity in you.  In time, I’ve made some great allies in Utah, those we didn’t have before; there are even leaders in other minority groups who have outright told me they voted for and pushed for our anti-marriage equality amendment here in Utah, and now wish they could take it back.

Simply, we need to approach our other minority brothers and sisters.  They need to know many of our issues are racial issues, being that many of our gay and lesbian parents are not the same race as their children.  We can’t do this alone.  They couldn’t have done it alone.  We can’t do them the disservice of letting them push us away, anymore than we can afford to be pushed away.

For now, we need to fight to keep the marriages that have already been performed, legal.  Of course, not being a lawyer, that is greatly in the hands of other activists.

We need to get the truth out; make sure lies about schools, Boston Catholic Charities, and so on are addressed, so next time they won’t take hold of the fears of well-meaning people.

Finally, we need to get another amendment on the Ca ballot next election to allow our marriages, but it must also include some guarantee of personal religious freedom to discriminate against our unions.  We don’t want their rights, let’s make it clear, and in the process take away one of their more effective bits of fear mongering. They won today by a slim margin; only a slim margin of those misled into changing their minds in favor of Proposition 8 need to be assured.  It can be done.  If only I had the power to influence the gay rights leaders of Ca :-).

And hey, at least this site, isocrat.org, has more reason to be here today, and I’m ready to get back to putting together extensive reviews of the research pertinent to the GLBT community and building up the site. Nothing dulls the pain of a loss more than realizing what you have and working to protect it.

We’ll get there.