College Freshmen Give a Damn

Apr 13th, 2010 09:51 AM By Admin

The times they are a-chagin’. The Chronicle of Higher Education recently reported that “according to new data released by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles,” college freshman support marriage for gay couples at a higher rate than Americans at large.

The article highlights some interesting findings:

“Over all, 65 percent of the college freshmen surveyed last fall supported same-sex marriage, compared with 58 percent of Americans 18 to 29 years old and 39 percent of the population nationwide, according to the Pew research groups’ study.

“Support for gay marriage has increased generally in the past decade. In 2000, 56 percent of entering college students backed it. Four years later, freshmen were 57 percent supportive at the time they enrolled, and by graduation, 69 percent of that entering class supported gay marriage, according to the UCLA research institute.

“The freshman and national surveys both asked people to place themselves in one of five categories along the political spectrum. In comparisons across those categories, which were roughly similar but not identical, college students showed significantly more support for same-sex marriage than the population at large in four groups, including a 24-percentage-point difference in the center: “Middle of the road” freshmen were 68 percent supportive, while independents nationally were 44 supportive.”

Read the full Chronicle of Higher Education article >>

GET INFORMED, GET INVOLVED

• Learn more about Marriage and how you can help in the Damn Issues section.

Majority in California Give a Damn!

Apr 06th, 2010 03:07 PM By Admin

As reported by the Los Angeles Times:

“Same-sex marriage got majority support in the latest Los Angeles Times/USC poll — much like a similar poll by the Public Policy Institute of California earlier this spring.

“But does that mean that a measure to repeal Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in the state, would have smooth sailing?

“Not necessarily.

“First, the numbers: Registered voters surveyed in the latest poll said 52% to 40% that “same-sex couples should be allowed to become legally married in the state of California.”

“That’s the latest in a string of surveys that have found similar results. A PPIC poll released March 25 found respondents backing gay marriage 50% to 45%. And a Times/USC poll last November found a 51% to 43% split on the issue. As with the previous surveys, the latest Times/USC poll showed a sharp polarization by political party and ideology, with Democrats and liberals supporting same-sex marriage by large margins and Republicans and conservatives opposing it by equally lopsided margins.”

Read the full Los Angeles Times story >>

GET INFORMED, GET INVOLVED

• Learn more about marriage in the Damn Issues section.
• Read and share Personal Stories about marriage.

For the Love of My Children

Apr 04th, 2010 12:35 PM By Cheryl

I am a straight mother of three. I have a thirteen year old straight son who plays tuba and guitar,and wants to work in the tech field when he grows up. I have a seventeen year old straight daughter who plays baritone, has a beautiful singing voice, and wants to go to college to become a psychologist. I have a nineteen year old gay son who is broadly musically gifted, attends college, and wants to be a teacher. While my younger son and daughter will very possibly achieve their dreams, my oldest son may not. So, I give a damn.

Where we live, and where my son wants to teach, being openly gay will likely cost him his job. While my two younger children’s teacher’s can share stories of their husbands, wives, children and lives, if my son does so, parents will complain to the school board that my son is teaching their children immorality. But he hasn’t given up on his dream. He’ll be attending his second year of college next year to become a teacher, in hopes that when he begins teaching, his sexuality won’t matter to his students and their parents as much as his qualifications do. So, I give a damn.

My oldest son is in a committed relaionship with a wonderful boy who spent years in R.O.T.C., in hopes of becoming a flight engineer. He felt it would be not only wrong, but incredibly difficult to keep their relaionship a secret due to D.A.D.T., so unfortunately he chose to leave the R.O.T.C. This young man should have NEVER had to make such a choice. His sexual orientation shouldn’t have had to play a part in what he wanted to do with his education, and his life. So, I give a damn.

My children talk of the day they will be parents. I have no doubt that all three will be excellent at parenting. My younger son and daughter will be able to do so with no trouble. While if my oldest son and his committed partner want to adopt, they will likely be denied that right. So, I give a damn.

I want the opportunities my two straight children have, to be available for my gay child. I want to not have to worry that my son might be a victim of a hate crime. When my son chooses to commit his life to someone, I want to know that he’ll have the same rights and protection as a straight couple would. Most of all, I want my children to see and believe what I have taught them their entire lives; that you can grow up to be anything and anyone you want to be.

So, I GIVE A DAMN!

My Daughter Gets It – Why Doesn’t Everybody?

Apr 04th, 2010 12:15 PM By Toni

My seven-year-old daughter and her friend were listening to the soundtrack to SPAM-A-LOT in the car one day, and we got to the song about everybody getting married. The friend asked, “So who does Prince Herbert marry?”

“Lancelot,” my daughter answered.

“No, Prince Herbert.”

“Lancelot.”

“No, HERBERT.”

“Lancelot!”

“Eww!”

“They’re just gay,” my daughter said. “It’s no big deal.”

If a seven-year-old daughter of straight parents can get it, why can’t everybody?

End of Life Issues…

Apr 04th, 2010 11:47 AM By David

Our older friends Tom and Mark had been together as a couple for more than 33 years. Mark had been suffering from lung cancer for about a year, but died unexpectedly at home with his partner Tom right there with him in the same room. Tom was so shocked and grieved that he couldn’t speak, and so the police officer who came to the house after Tom’s 911 call phoned us and asked us to come over to the house. While we were there, we learned that there were no legal protections in place for Tom and Mark.

Despite sharing his life and home with Mark for more than three decades, Tom didn’t have the legal authority to make any decisions or to even to have Mark’s body removed from the house and taken to a morgue for burial preparation. The responding paramedics were already at the house, but had to wait while efforts were made to contact Mark’s somewhat estranged son for consent to deal with the body. They showed disrespect and loudly complained about having to wait. Three long hours later, Mark’s son responded and Mark’s body was taken from the house to a funeral home.

I just couldn’t imagine anything worse happening to my partner and I, and this terrible experience brought home to us the need to take immediate steps to protect our relationship. If we had been able to marry, we would have done so years before. Instead, we had to seek out a legal agency to draw up the proper documents — although at considerable personal expense to us.

Tom and Mark never had the option to marry, and as an older couple from another generation, never sought out the legal support for themselves for which most committed gay couples now are more aware, in places where marriage remains out of reach — which means most states in the U.S.

Iowa’s 1 Year Anniversary

Apr 03rd, 2010 01:02 PM By Admin

Today is the one-year anniversary of marriage becoming legal for gay couples in the great state of Iowa!   Nearly 2,000 gay couples have enjoyed the freedom to marry.

GET INFORMED:

• Learn more about marriage in the Damn Issues section.
• Read this great story about a Iowa couple from KCAU-TV in Sioux City, Iowa.
• Read this great op-ed from Evan Wolfson, Executive Director of our non-profit partner Freedom to Marry.

GET INVOLVED:

• Read and then share some Personal Stories about why people give a damn about marriage.
• Watch our Damn Videos on Marriage and then share them with the straight people in your life.
  • Jason Mraz Gives a Damn about Marriage
  • We Give a Damn Video #2
• Visit our marriage non-profit partners’ websites: Human Rights Campaign and Freedom to Marry
• Visit One Iowa’s website, they were instrumental in making sure marriage stays legal for gay couples in Iowa.

Nomads in My Own Country

Mar 30th, 2010 09:34 PM By Christopher

I give a damn about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender equality because I’ve been with my partner for over 8 years and still can’t sponsor him for immigration into the U.S.

We met cute like many college students. I was in art school studying film, he was in school studying music; we met at a rock show. (I still of course have the t-shirt I bought from the band that night.) Our first date was at a Brit Pop night at another club. It was clear rather quickly that this relationship was going to last. He moved in a year later after I returned from a summer internship in Chicago.

But something was very wrong.

His student visa was to expire, and he wasn’t able to continue with school. Now, had we been a straight couple, we would have easily married. We had already had a significant relationship over a length of time: there would have been no problems.

We made a decision to continue building our life together, hoping that the law would change. We co-signed leases; I made him my beneficiary on retirement and health directives. And time marched on. We decided to move to DC so that I could find work that would support us both. It was rough for both of us. He was particularly at a loss for a community to fit into in DC. It was incredibly hard on our relationship.

And still the law didn’t change.

In order to find a place where we both had opportunity, we finally moved to New York. Things have been better, but the older we get, the more we continue not to have stability. Well, I thank goodness he’s here, but I’m now in my mid-30s. Our peers are buying houses and settling down and starting families. My partner would like to open a restaurant.

We can’t have any of that damn stability! That damn American dream–because we’ve been forced into being nomads in my own country.

It’s particularly upsetting as I’m very much an American. I can trace my history not only to my immigrant great-grandparents, but also to at least one American president and none other than the man who first codified the American language: Noah Webster. I grew up in the Great Middle West, my grandparents were farmers, I attended public schools, I’ve always voted. All these things that are supposedly harbingers of our American identity, and I can’t do the one thing that I want the most and that my ancestors were able to do: marry the one I love and welcome him as a citizen of the U.S. And frankly, that’s a damn outrage.

Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people are very much Americans. We’ve toiled along with the rest of you. We share your stories. We need the same rights as other Americans–including the right to sponsor our foreign-born partners to join us as Americans.

Marriage in DC

Mar 30th, 2010 03:48 AM By Bob

For nearly forty years, I have felt passionate about human rights in many ways from my youthful despair learning details about the Holocaust, to watching the nightmare of oppression faced by black citizens in Selma, Alabama where my older brother marched in 1965, to the rise of gay people and same-sex couples to achieve full equality and recognition, which connected with me personally.

In all of these stories, I see simply human beings, and how we all are connected. Everyone’s despair is mine, anyone’s second-class status is mine, and every story explains why.

Fast forward to 2010 in Washington DC. In my lifetime, here in my hometown, I have a President and his family who now are African-American, and I see the gay and lesbian couples in Washington DC now eligible for full marriage equality. That brings me to my story, or the story I am told about the day marriage licenses were first issued to same-sex couples here in our nation’s capital just a few days ago.

Our openly gay city councilmember, David Catania, and author of this long-overdue civil rights legislation, spent that first day at our city bureau as wedding licenses were formally issued to over a hundred same-sex couples. He told us how sweet, joyful and historic that occasion was for him, and most of all for the couples who had waited so long, days, weeks, months and years.

He ran into one solitary couple, a man and a woman, patiently waiting for their turn. Surrounded by jubilant same-sex couples on that unique occasion, they seemed to stand out. Catania simply joked to them that they obviously picked the wrong day to stand in line for a marriage license!

They told him, “not at all.” In fact, they disclosed that they actually had waited for 6 years to get their marriage license and to be wed, believing that it was unfair for them to have this right, if their lesbian and gay friends were denied the equal right to marry too. They made a special point that day to join everyone else to get their own license.

Of all the events and words and images that last that day, knowing that we have straight friends, allies and loved ones who “give a damn,” and in fact, pay a personal sacrifice to join us in equality — it is one of the greatest gifts I’ve witnessed in many years.

It is a reminder to us that we are not alone, and that having allies who believe as we do and as the Reverend Martin Luther King said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

My Daughters

Mar 28th, 2010 10:11 AM By Nancy

I give a DAMN about equality… ONE of my daughters is gay…

I have raised three daughters. I’ve taught them the fundamentals of life and living in this world, then went beyond this to teach tolerance, equality, independence, faith, compassion and love.

What a joy to watch three beautiful young children grow into the adults they now are! What a joy to nurture each as individuals while treating them equally. What a joy to teach them to be anything they wanted to be. What a joy to watch them learn to love and develop healthy relationships. What a joy to witness them embracing each day.

Each day brings new discoveries for all three. Along the way, my youngest daughter discovered her sexuality as a lesbian. Within our family, this discovery was recognized and acknowledged. We did not judge, and our family still lives with the values of respect and equality that we’ve always lived by.

But for me, the need for social equality outside of our family became more important than ever! I was to send my youngest daughter into the world–and she would learn that the teachings and equality in our home would not necessarily follow her.

I have raised three daughters… and as individual as they are, now they are not treated equally.

TWO of my daughters can…

• Walk safely down any street holding hands with their significant others
• Practice careers without fear of discrimination
• Marry legally (if they choose) in a courtroom – OR – in a religious environment of their choosing
• Have an open relationship with a member of our armed forces
• Practice their religious upbringing openly–not questioning their faith because of a lack of tolerance
• Reap the benefits of “joint” tax returns, health insurance, marriage law…

The list goes on and on.

I hope that someday, this will change to: “All THREE of my daughters can…”