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07/24/2012
Video: 'Massachusetts is a Gay-Decimated Wasteland' w/ Kalley Yanta
Kalley Yanta's latest video for the Minnesota for Marriage is so filled with untruth, spin, and deception, it's hard to know here to begin:
1. There has been *NO* record of Massachusetts town clerks who have complained. Have there been some? Probably. But in the near-decade since marriages began in the state, not even the usual anti-LGBT groups have tried to make this a thing. Because they can't.
2. Catholic Charities *CHOSE* to close its doors. They were not forced. Many involved with the organization wanted the adoption services to stay open and to simply comply with nondiscrimination ordinances. But no—the organization wanted to have its tax breaks and eat our rights too, so the powers that be chose to close the doors rather than fairly accommodate. That's on them!
3. David Parker was taken to jail because he was causing a disruption at the school. According to on-site reports, Parker would not leave, thus the reason he was arrested.
4. That second grade class that Kalley tries to make sound like a separate incident is actually the same David Parker case (though joined by the Wirthlins). And yes, the courts did determine that the public school was within its rights to include an pro-LGBT book within a diversity book bag because, well—the public school was within its rights to include an pro-LGBT book within a diversity book bag! The book was an option; its mere existence was not a threat!
5. Transgender people are sometimes acknowledged? Probably. Hopefully.
6. Public school libraries include books about reality? Probably. Hopefully.
7. LGBT people are appreciated, cutting through the continued attempts to stigmatize us? YAY!!!! Go Massachusetts! Minnesota should be so lucky.
8. Marriage forms use gender neutral terminology that doesn't force a legally-eligible marriage partner to misidentify? Why I'd say that's a pretty straightforward change. Or actually not "straight" forward. Well, you know what I mean.
9. As for sex education—well, we of course have to remember that people on Ms. Yanta's side of the "culture war" fence (see: Yanta chastising Cecile Richards) want little more than abstinence addressed in schools, so you have to take the SexEd outrage in the spirit by which it is delivered. But yes, if there is to be sex education, then it should be inclusive. Because give me a break—it's reality.
Massachusetts is so behind the idea of marriage equality and is so fully adjusted to the benign normalcy in the state's midst that even the most ardent foes of basic fairness for LGBT people rarely turn to the state these days. In the almost ten years since marriages began, hundreds of thousands of school children have gone through the system, countless people of faith have carried out their convictions without any hassling, heterosexual couples have continued to march through the civil marriage licensing offices in daily droves, and the state continues to enjoy the lowest divorce rate in the U.S. For the social conservatives, there is simply no "there" there, no matter what Ms. Yanta and her teleprompter might want you to believe.
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