= new reply since forum marked as read
I posted #1 in this thread at 8:09; your post is time-stamped 7:55. I had not seen your post at that time.
It was about the person who called me out BY NAME - misspelled as it was. And made a not true statement about me. (Did any of my statements in #1 apply to you? I don't know you; I have no idea whether you have ever spoken about me at this site before.) While the insulting call-out was allowed to stand by a jury, my post calling it what it was was deleted.
You have explained to me that you were addressing the people who actually DID take the matter to that forum, i.e. NOT me. I did not gather that anyone else understood your post that way either -- and you subsequently did not clarify what you were saying in any meaningful way; I fail to see how your subsequent reply would not be interpreted as referring to me and others who took the same positions in the original GD thread.
I do appreciate your clarification. There were shit-stirrers and they were not me. I was the victim, no more and no less, and my objections to being victimized were silenced.
I was away from the computer after that email and found out this morning I had been banned from the group. The only other emails exchanged were with a host, who appears not to have shared your concerns.
I suggest that anyone interested go to old DU, where there is a search function worthy of the price paid for it, and search for my posts in the GLBT group or forum or whatever it is there. Do a google search for iverglas "same-sex marriage". Find out exactly who these shit-stirrers have alienated and managed to get banned.
You'll find a few threads started by me and pretty much studiously ignored -- I had taken this to be the GLBT group exhibiting the same US-centrism as anybody else. I have since realized from reading the old thread in this group that my name had been muddied long since by the charming "pro-sex feminists" or whatever the fuck they're styling themselves as these days.
I'm going to quote just one of my posts there, below.
Last night I was going over all the things I could say that would doubtless be dismissed as "some of my best friends": 35 years ago, I was legal counsel for the first gay and lesbian rights organization in my city, and for years was one of only two, and then a couple more, legal referrals given by that group. I represented gay and lesbian immigration applicants and refugee claimants (before our immigration laws were changed to treat same-sex couples, married or not, just like opposite-sex couples). I mentored the gay lawyer who succeeded me in my professional role. Since 1969, I have belonged to, and three times been a candidate for, the political party that has championed GLBT rights, including same-sex marriage; I supported the (unsuccessful) candidacy for party leader of Canada's first openly gay MP, advocated ousting our one MP who opposed the same-sex marriage legislation from caucus, and mentored the gay candidate who succeeded me in our constituency. For fuck's sake, I once cancelled my order for a hamburger from a Presbyterian church group doing a fundraising barbecue outside my grocery store because when I idly asked whether their congregation would now be performing same-sex marriages (it's one of the churches who leave it to local option), they looked aghast and said of course not. What I completely forgot is that after 35 years of working as a lone wolf in my second profession, I entered into a partnership last year with a fellow contractor ... who is gay, and who commented, when we exchanged c.v.s by email (he lives outside Canada), that he was pleased to see I had done my bit for his community.
Oh, and I also forgot my favourite bit, the one I boast about incessantly. The basis for the expansive equality rights we enjoy in Canada, other than our inherent niceness, is a 1929 decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in England, overruling a Supreme Court of Canada decision (as it could until shortly thereafter) and holding that women are indeed "persons" under the 1867 constitution for the purpose of appointment to the Senate. In it, Viscount Sankey wrote that the Canadian constitution is a "living tree" that must be interpreted to reflect the society it governs. That decision has been referred to in all equality rights decisions ever since, including the SCC's same-sex marriage reference decision. Viscount Sankey was my second cousin four times removed. (Also, he was a "class traitor" politically -- a Tory who joined Labour, and was a Labour life peer and Lord Chancellor in a Labour government.)
When I learned of our relationship a few years ago (and how I could have dined out on that in law school had I known then), I told my nephew's mother about it at the first opportunity. I thought she'd be kind of thrilled to know that her son's greatx5 grandmother's brother's grandchild was the root of the living tree that had enabled her to marry the woman of her dreams. She wasn't impressed for some reason, but then she's just kind of annoying generally.
I told that tale at DU:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=190x21654
And this is why we have, oh, same-sex marriage and minority language rights.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_tree_doctrine
... I think ancestry is like nationality, or ethnicity, or sexual orientation group -- it's what one is, so it's good to be "proud" of it -- amounting, really, to taking an interest in it and also having a vested interest in it, so one judges it by high standards for its own good -- just as long as one isn't being proud not to be something else.
Yes, I am exactly the kind of person that the community wants to alienate.
I think that's something that really calls for discussion.
Is the LGBT group at DU to be hijacked by a little gang of people bent on vilifying feminists because feminists don't buy into their self-absorbed, anti-intellectual malarky?
(continued below the quoted post)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=221&topic_id=45713#45777
thread: "Obama not on board with gay marriage"
iverglas
Wed Dec-06-06 03:23 PM
Response to Reply #21
28. now that's a funny idea worthy of elaboration!
QUOTE Seems to me, since the name "civil unions" draws so much more support, why not push for a federal civil unions bill, get inheritance, taxation and social security survivorship rights and all the state rights attached to marriage, and then go get married in the church of your choice? ENDQUOTE
And since it's the religious element of the whole thing that gets the right wing all fired up, wouldn't that just rot their socks?
The parties would have got their legal rights *and* their marriage. Ha, eat that.
But I'm still on the side that says it's insufficient -- although that doesn't mean that it's not an acceptable step on the road of progress. Same-sex couples did get civil unions first in Quebec, e.g., before the courts here in Canada started striking down provincial laws under which same-sex marriage was being denied.
Both the Massachusetts court and the Canadian courts that have considered the issue have said the same thing: the issue is human dignity, and the fact that denying equal treatment is a denial of the worth and dignity of the individual. Oh, and the South African constitutional court has said it too:
http://hrw.org/lgbt/pdf/s_africa_sodomy_1998.pdf
CONSTITUTIONAL COURT OF SOUTH AFRICA
... It is noteworthy how the Canadian Supreme Court has, in the development of its equality jurisprudence under section 15(1) of the Canadian Charter, come to see the central purpose of its equality guarantee as the protection and promotion of human dignity.<50>
42. In the Sodomy case this Court dealt with the seriously negative impact that societal discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation has had, and continues to have, on gays and their same-sex partnerships, concluding that gay men are a permanent minority in society and have suffered in the past from patterns of disadvantage. Although the main focus of that judgment was on the criminalisation of sodomy and on other proscriptions of erotic expression between men, the conclusions regarding the minority status of gays and the patterns of discrimination to which they have been and continue to be subject are also applicable to lesbians. Society at large has, generally, accorded far less respect to lesbians and their intimate relationships with one another than to heterosexuals and their relationships. The sting of past and continuing discrimination against both gays and lesbians is the clear message that it conveys, namely, that they, whether viewed as individuals or in their same-sex relationships, do not have the inherent dignity and are not worthy of the human respect possessed by and accorded to heterosexuals and their relationships. This discrimination occurs at a deeply intimate level of human existence and relationality. It denies to gays and lesbians that which is foundational to our Constitution and the concepts of equality and dignity, which at this point are closely intertwined, namely that all persons have the same inherent worth and dignity as human beings, whatever their other differences may be. The denial of equal dignity and worth all too quickly and insidiously degenerates into a denial of humanity and leads to inhuman treatment by the rest of society in many other ways. This is deeply demeaning and frequently has the cruel effect of undermining the confidence and sense of self-worth and self-respect of lesbians and gays.
43. Similar views, with which I agree, were expressed in Vriend v Alberta, where Cory J expressed himself thus:
“It is easy to say that everyone who is just like ‘us’ is entitled to equality. Everyone finds it more difficult to say that those who are ‘different’ from us in some way should have the same equality rights that we enjoy. Yet so soon as we say any ... group is less deserving and unworthy of equal protection and benefit of the law all minorities and all of ... society are demeaned. It is so deceptively simple and so devastatingly injurious to say that those who are handicapped or of a different race, or religion, or colour or sexual orientation are less worthy."
_______________
<50> In Law v Canada (Minister of Employment and Immigration) (1999) 170 DLR (4th) 1, Iacobucci J, writing for a unanimous Supreme Court stated the following at paras 52-4:
“... (I)n the articulation of the purpose of s. 15(1) ... a focus is quite properly placed upon the goal of assuring human dignity by the remedying of discriminatory treatment.
....
(T)he equality guarantee in s. 15(1) is concerned with the realization of personal autonomy and self-determination. Human dignity means that an individual or group feels self-respect and self-worth. It is concerned with physical and psychological integrity and empowerment. Human dignity is harmed by unfair treatment premised upon personal traits or circumstances which do not relate to individual needs, capacities, or merits. It is enhanced by laws which are sensitive to the needs, capacities, and merits of different individuals, taking into account the context underlying their differences.
....
The equality guarantee in s. 15(1) of the Charter must be understood and applied in light of the above understanding of its purpose. The overriding concern with protecting and promoting human dignity in the sense just described infuses all elements of the discrimination analysis.”
(other footnotes omitted)
In other words: separate ain't equal.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Are we all concerned with protecting and promoting human dignity?
How does misrepresenting and vilifying people who are seriously and demonstrably committed to that objective help anyone's cause?
Just curious.
Being treated that way by elements of the GLBT community at DU isn't going to lessen my commitment to that community in the real world by an iota. I don't abandon any vulnerable, disadvantaged group just because some members of the group behave badly. But one might want to consider whether others might react differently.
I have just seen that I have been called out and had false things said about me in your group once again. Charming. Absolutely charming.