Here are four GLBT news stories to warm your heart:
An iconic kiss – take that, DADT:
“Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta, left, kisses her girlfriend of two years, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek in Virginia Beach, Va., Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2011 after Gaeta’s ship returned from 80 days at sea. It ís a time-honored tradition at Navy homecomings – one lucky sailor is chosen to be first off the ship for the long-awaited kiss with a loved one. On Wednesday, for the first time, the happily reunited couple was gay.”
This is how strangers are reacting to public gay marriages:
Twenty-four gay and lesbian couples were wed Saturday under two “pop-up” chapels designed to celebrate the first full weekend of same-sex marriage in New York. With every “I do,” jubilant whoops and cheers burst from the crowd, a mix of friends, family and passers-by. The weddings, although held adjacent to the commotion of New York City’s Columbus Circle, felt comfortably ensconced in Central Park. The event’s organizers reported no protests or disturbances throughout the day.
And public gay flash-mob wedding proposals:
And this warms my way in a giddy, sticking it to the hypocrites way:
The gay and lesbian community of Minnesota has issued a letter of apology to recently resigned Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch for ruining the institution of marriage and causing her to stray from her husband and engage in an “inappropriate relationship.”
“On behalf of all gays and lesbians living in Minnesota, I would like to wholeheartedly apologize for our community’s successful efforts to threaten your traditional marriage,” reads the letter from John Medeiros. “We apologize that our selfish requests to marry those we love has cheapened and degraded traditional marriage so much that we caused you to stray from your own holy union for something more cheap and tawdry.”
The letter comes on the heels of Koch’s own apology, released yesterday, in which she expressed her deep regret for “engaging in a relationship with a Senate staffer.” Although the letter did not specify the identity of the other participant in the “inappropriate relationship,” it is widely rumored to be former communications chief Michael Brodkorb, who lost several positions with the GOP in the wake of the scandal.
Zing.
This is fraternization! I demand this marriage be looked into to ensure no conflicts of interest have arisen!
Joking of course.
I wish all couples the best. It’s taking a minute but we’re getting there.
Iowa’s resident anti-gay bigot is also hitting up Rick Santorum for money, although not in so many words. Nope, it’s all to “promote his endorsement.” Read all about it.
In short, he’s as much as admitting he’s only in the bigot business for the money. And people are catching on, which makes my heart glad. Happy holidays, everyone!
One of the articles I read about the “first kiss” story explained how the luck first kiss sailor is chosen:
And how were they chosen for the first kiss?
As is usually the case, it was decided in a raffle. Gaeta bought 50 tickets at a dollar a piece. While she suspects her division may have bought a few more on her behalf, she says she knows of sailors who bought more than a hundred, so she was surprised to learn Monday that one of hers had been drawn as the winner.
Snell looks at Gaeta and shrugs.
“I think it was meant to be,” she says.
==========================
She suspects that her division may have bought a few more on her behalf!
Wow! And this is what is going to ruin the military??? Really?
Happy holidays, indeed!
Ha ha! Joy!
Love the flash mob.
Bravo Zulu to her division.
Note: In the Navy there’s a series of flag signals where certain combinations of lettered flags have various meanings. The two letter flag hoist BZ (or bravo zulu in the phonetic alphabet) means “well done”.
Honesty requires me to point out that, if her division did buy more tickets on her behalf, their motives may not have been entirely noble and selfless.
And honesty requires me to point out, most sailors really aren’t that creepy.
Marines on the other hand…
She suspects that her division may have bought a few more on her behalf!
Of course they would. Lesbians are hot!
Watched the flash-mob video and now I’m crying. That was awesome.
Isn’t it kind of thoughtless to downplay the historic, personal, and social-justice significance of this event in favor of its effect on your penis?
I love the sarcastic apology letter, beautiful. I remember Dan Savage making the point that it use to be acceptable to have segregations on mainstream radio and TV shows to talk about black/white marriage, and then at some point it just wasn’t. I think we are rapidly approaching that point with gay marriage. If you are denying civil rights you are a bigot, and your vapid smoke screen of an argument is so absurd that it is only worthy of mockery and ridicule.
It’s so… sweet. *wipes tear from eye*.
Merry Festivus!
The first thing that went through my mind was that scene from the intro sequence of Watchmen.
Isn’t it sort of judgmental to read a comment and take it purely at face value, despite it being very obviously tongue-in-cheek?
I was there for the flash mob. It was great. This is in North Bay, Ontario, Canada. I was looking for my son, we where at the mall doing a little Christmas shopping when this started. At first I thought it was just a regular flash mob. Just about everyone watching cheered when we realized it was a proposal. I checked the crowd quickly for reactions, all seemed genuinely happy and excited. This made my day. Pretty cool. Turns out my son was watching from the other side of the crowd and enjoyed it too.
P.S. I make a cameo at the end walking across the screen.
Somewhat OT, but as a card carrying “Old Codger”, I love the phrase “regular flash mob”. How quickly our culture can change!
What I can never wrap my head around is the idea that the marriages of less than 10% of the population (last time I read about it, 10% was the upper limit of estimates) will somehow affect other people. Oh look, gays can marry! Better go cheat on my wife/husband and molest kids. It’s like people who say if there was no God, we wouldn’t behave; effectively suggesting that the only thing keeping those who believe in the sky police from robbing banks and killing is the surveillance of afforementioned sky police.
Merry Christmas and Hannukah and any other holiday you chose to celebrate! Get drunk, be merry, and frolic around!
Glad I’m not the only one! I’m such a sap…
It being a joke isn’t relevant to the fact that there’s a very active and very unfortunate sentiment in our culture that the importance of women and their relationships is determined primarily by their appeal to men. Even “just joking” comments serve to reinforce tropes like this, a phenomenon that’s pretty well documented.
Openly advertising that your going to commit a federal felony is not career enhancing….
It had the same effect on me. Beautiful!
I was suggesting that this might have been one of the factors that motivated some of her shipmates to buy tickets and boost her chances in the lottery.
Perhaps you’ll appreciate it more when you take that stick out of your ass.
All of that… wow. It’s so nice to see good news for once. A lesbian getting the first kiss is such stark contrast to don’t ask don’t tell, and I’m kind of shocked that there weren’t any protests at the marriages. In a very good way, of course.
And I’m going to second that jokes about “Well duh, lesbians are hot!” are really just unfunny. It’s not exactly fun to know that your rights only matters to people if they can get off on them, and on a blog post filled with so much good it kind of sucks to be reminded of the bad, even in a joke.
From what I read they serve on different ships, so that should be ok, right ?
Thank you. :/
They could serve on the same ship, simply the senior can not be in a position of authority over the junior.
At least that was the regulation for male/female couples in the 60s.
What.
I was actually referring to the sodomy UCMJ violations but fraternization could of course be an issue also.
Am I the only atheist/skeptic to ask. Why should I rejoice in the happiness of two people that are members of an organisation that actively supports torture, detention without trial, illegal wars and the wholesale slaughter of untold thousands of civilians.
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