Tag Archives: Frank Bruni

“It’s about time. The leader of the Roman Catholic Church has surveyed the haughty scolds in its ranks, noted their fixation on matters of sexual morality above all others and said enough is enough. I’m not being cheeky with this one-word response. Hallelujah. [snip] He didn’t right past wrongs. Let’s be clear about that. Didn’t call for substantive change to …

“After all the education that we Americans have had and all the relished progress we’ve made, being gay does mean feeling constrained in situations where most people aren’t, scared in circumstances that wouldn’t frighten others in the least, self-conscious when you shouldn’t have to be. Like when you’re holding someone’s hand. It’s the sweetest, most innocent and most natural of …

Via press release from Queer Nation: Gilbert Baker, the creator of the Rainbow Flag and a member of Queer Nation made the following statement to New York Times columnist Frank Bruni: “Olympic flag waving gave a stamp of approval to Nazi atrocities in 1936. Please don’t use the Rainbow Flag to cover up Russian atrocities in 2014. The Rainbow Flag …

“Imagine this: it’s the opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. A huge television event, watched the world over. The American Olympians join the proud march of nations. They’re our emissaries, our exemplars. And as the television cameras zoom in on Team U.S.A., one of its members quietly pulls out a rainbow flag, no bigger than a …

“For the four and a half years that we’ve been together, we’ve been apart, me in Manhattan, Tom in Brooklyn, at least most of the workweek, and during chunks of the weekend, too. We tell our friends that it’s a borough standoff, a game of Big Apple chicken, but that’s just a line and a lie, a deflection of the …

“I have many questions for and about the ‘gay lobby’ in the Vatican, but I’ll start with this: How can you be so spectacularly ineffective? You wouldn’t last a minute on K Street; the Karl Roves of the capital would have you for lunch. Despite your presence in, and presumed influence on, the upper reaches of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, …

“The Episcopal Church wants all aspects of the ban lifted, as does the National Jewish Committee on Scouting, whose former chairman, a Baltimore lawyer named Jay Lenrow, told me that while no troop should be forced to choose a gay leader, no troop should be prevented from doing so, either. “He noted that our country was founded on a principle …

“Many of us want to, and will: when a gay, lesbian or transgendered kid isn’t at special risk of being brutalized or committing suicide. When the federal government outlaws discrimination against people based on sexual orientation, which it still hasn’t done. “When immigration laws give same-sex couples the same consideration that they do heterosexual ones. When the Defense of Marriage …

“The Supreme Court cases and their resolutions indeed matter. If the court doesn’t dismantle the Defense of Marriage Act, there’s no telling how many more years will pass before this repugnant 1996 law tumbles in some other way and before gay and lesbian couples married in states that allow such weddings are treated equally under federal law.  “And the court …

“It’s time for the church to stop talking so much about sex. It’s the perfect time, in fact.  It’s on matters of sexual morality that the church has lost much of its authority. And it’s on matters of sexual morality that it largely wastes its breath. By insisting on mandatory celibacy for a priesthood winnowed and sometimes warped by that, …

“Seneca Falls, Selma, Stonewall. The alliteration of that litany made it seem obvious and inevitable, a bit of poetry just there for the taking. Just waiting to happen. But it has waited a long time. And President Obama’s use of it in his speech on Monday — his grouping of those three places and moments in one grand and musical …

“Among voters who saw the desire by gays and lesbians to be legally wedded as a bid primarily for the rights and protections that heterosexual couples have, same-sex marriage was a loser. Only 26 percent of them voted for its legalization, while 74 percent voted against. But among voters who believed that gays and lesbians were chiefly interested in being …

On Sunday I excerpted a few paragraphs from Frank Bruni’s New York Times column in which he demanded that Bill Clinton apologize from his role in the passage of DOMA.  (That JMG post generated quite the heated conversation.) Today Bruni joined an MSNBC panel to discuss his essay and where both Clintons stand regarding same-sex marriage.

“Dear President Clinton,  What a year you’ve had, the kind that really burnishes a legend. At the Democratic National Convention, on the campaign trail, in speeches aplenty and during interviews galore, you spoke eloquently about what this country should value, and you spoke unequivocally about where it should head. Such a bounty of convictions, such a harvest of words, except …

“As for anti-gay crusaders’ fixation with indoctrination, I’d like them to explain how so many of us turned out gay or lesbian despite having straight parents and, in my day, being exposed to movies, TV shows and Top 40 songs that portrayed an almost exclusively heterosexual world. I’d also like them to meet Jeff DeGroot, 27, a law student here …

“Silence does nothing for gay and lesbian teenagers racked with self-doubt and anxiety about what the world has in store. Or for committed same-sex couples who lack the legal protections that their straight counterparts have. Silence is a stalling tactic, and silence is a cop-out. “On the convention stage in Tampa, where estrogen was platinum and melanin was gold, Republicans …