Smarmy Bigot Refuses to Apologize

Gay activists and allies confronted Pennsylvania Senator John Eichelberger in Harrisburg yesterday. Remember him? He's the same-sex marriage foe who claimed gay Pennsylvanians like us aren't being punished by inequality, because the Commonwealth is "allowing them to exist." Oh, so our legal standing is non-existent, but we should shut up about that because at least we're not, I don't know...being stoned in the streets? Gee, thanks, Senator. "We're not trying to exterminate you, so pipe down, gays!" This is like the post-Bush GOP's version of compassionate conservatism: let the gays live. They get no rights and no protections, but at least we won't openly advocate killing them, like some people. I guess when your starting place is a point of near-absolute hatred, this is progress.

Armed with a petition demanding he apologize for those and other remarks he made earlier this month, members of Keystone Equality waited two hours for an exchange with the Senator that lasted about a minute. They caught it all on video, so check it out:



Good work, Keystone Equality! Thanks for keeping the heat (and the spotlight) on this bigot!

Existential Rant

As we reported way back in our very first post, Pennsylvania Senator John Eichelberger (left), Republican from Blair County, recently introduced a bill in Harrisburg to ban same-sex marriage. We can’t get legally married in our home state anyway, since it’s already limited to heterosexuals, but Eichelberger’s amendment would enshrine that prejudice in our state constitution.

Opposing Eichelberger is Senator Daylin Leach (right), from a part of the state that won’t make you swear you just heard the dueling banjos from Deliverance. Leach introduced a bill that would grant full, equal marriage rights to same-sex couples in Pennsylvania, and recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.

The two were in Philly Friday, and debated each other on WHYY’s Radio Times. Towleroad has excerpts of the transcript, and Eichelberger’s hate is on full display. It’s the usual stupidity; gay marriage will lead to polygamy and child molestation, that sort of thing. Predictably, Eichelberger is fixated on the sexual aspect of our relationship, reducing same-sex marriages to something he can only refer to as “that type of behavior.” Why do bigots think that the only thing that binds us as a couple is sex? People, we’re MARRIED (practically). We, like most married people, are bound by habit, comfort and a mutual fear of growing old alone. Yes, and l-o-v-e, but we’re not getting mushy on the blog.

He seems to treat our marriage as some sort of fetish, which we suppose it is in his warped mind. “They can practice whatever sexual activity they like to practice.” That’s nice, but we weren’t seeking your approval in the first place, Senator. What we’d like to do is file a joint tax return, or know that if one of us got sick or hurt, the other would be recognized as the legal partner and advocate for the patient, just like any other husband or wife. We’d like to be a family, in law as well as in deed. We’d like the same rights and privileges heterosexual couples receive when they are married. We’d like equality.

Eichelberger isn’t having any of it; in his world view, gay families, at best, are “[allowed] to exist.” Well, not as families; legal recognition of our relationship is a “special consideration.” He apparently thinks we should be content that we’re allowed to exist, free to “practice whatever sexual activity” we’d like. If we’d just wanted that, we could have stayed single!

Petty Quarrels

“Are you going to wear that?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Well, it’s striped.”

“So?”

“But I’m wearing a striped shirt.”

“So?”

“We’ll look like twins!”

You have to wonder if this is why Valerie Bertinelli and Eddie Van Halen didn’t last.

We are two gay men in the closet. Oh, no, not like that. We’re two gay men standing in our walk-in closet.

It’s not as grand as it sounds; it’s in a 100 year old rowhouse that needs a little work. The closet is one of those odd spaces left over after a previous owner’s renovations, all wooden dowels and mismatched shelving units from various big box stores. There’s a cat making a bed on a sleeping bag that fell to the floor when Alex squeezed into the cramped, overflowing space. Alex can’t let either of them leave the house without an outfit check. Not a grand scene, but definitely a gay one.

Andy assures Alex they will not look like twins. Defenses flair on both sides. Alex points out that, not only are both shirts striped, but they’re both blue with white stripes. Andy counters that Alex’s shirt also has red stripes, and that the stripes are both thinner and spaced further apart.

“They’re totally different” Andy claims.

Alex rolls his eyes and heads for the bedroom, to see if he can find a clean, solid-colored, not-blue polo shirt to change into.

Neither of us ever planned this. Without getting into too much detail, lets just say we’ve always found many types of men attractive. It’s not like either has a history of limiting himself to brown haired, blue-eyed, Irish guys with facial hair and glasses. It really did just happen this way. We were both vaguely aware that we looked like a matching set in the beginning, but in that heady period when you and your new love are getting to know one another, amid the slow realization that this one might actually have longevity, such superficial concerns seem so, well, superficial. We don’t look that much alike. Andy is three inches taller, and barely tans in the summer, unlike Alex.

After eight years, we’re so used to friends mixing us up we don’t even react to it anymore. Our friend Nick likes to have fun with this. When new acquaintances confide in him that they can’t remember which one of us is which, he tells them “Alex is the mean one” (it’s a little bit true). The time a bartender asked if we were brothers was a little awkward, though. And then it happened at the grocery store. So one of us got contacts, the other went from a goatee to a full beard, and we now share a stylist, Tina, who is well-versed in the art of making us look different. Still, we’re that cliché. The look-alike gay couple.

We know what the cynics are thinking. “It’s narcissism!” Well, we don’t see it that way, although we admit it’s a little difficult to refute such a charge through a blog post. Besides, isn’t a fair dose of narcissism present in every long term relationship? Most long term couples we know share common interests or values or beliefs or something. A passion for sports, or food, or arguing in public. We share coloring, myopia, and the same taste in clothes. You see it with straight couples, too. You just have to look a little harder.

It’s a pretty silly thing to get worked up over in the grand scheme of things, anyway. Two people are happy, why question the whys and what-fors?

Sound familiar? I hope so. Three states now recognize marriage equality, and that number could potentially double in the next few months, but in our home state of Pennsylvania, a legislator wants to amend the state constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage. It is, thankfully, not as easy to do that here as it is in California, where civil rights can be decided at the ballot box. The bill introduced by State Senator John Eichelberger, Jr. would require passage in both houses of the General Assembly for two consecutive sessions, followed by an election where a simple majority of voters can decide the rights a minority can have.

Two similar proposals have stalled in recent years. Eichelberger, a Republican from Blair County, announced his intention to introduce the bill to a crowd of about 70 supporters. According to local news reports, supporters hoped the bill would pass because gay relationships “create confusion for children,” not just those adopted by gay couples, but those who “observe” gay couples.

So we can’t get the same tax breaks or inheritance rights as straight couples, or the guarantee that we can visit one another in the hospital, because someone, somewhere, might have to have a conversation with their child that basically amounts to “some people are different”?

And what exactly are they “observing”? With the exception of occasional gay bar outings, inadvertently dressing alike is just about the gayest thing we do in public. That, and sharing a shopping cart. So we have to forgo equality, even visibility, in some people’s opinion, simply because it’s too much to explain the two men in striped shirts (who are not brothers), sharing a shopping cart?

It just seems like a silly thing to get worked up over.