Gay men and women serve openly in the Canadian military. They serve openly in the British military. They serve openly in the Australian military, the Israeli military, the Brazilian military, the Spanish military, the South African military - they serve openly in thirty-one countries around the world. (Thirty-two if you count Russia, where only ‘well adjusted’ homosexuals are allowed to serve, but one hopes that the heterosexual recruits are also ‘well adjusted’.) In all of these countries, from Lithuania to Argentina, the military personnel are disciplined enough to conduct themselves with utmost professionalism.

So what’s wrong with the US military? Why is it so inferior? The US spends more than any other country on its armed forces. It boasts the greatest military strength in the world. It prides itself on being the best in the world. So why is the US military only the 33rd most disciplined?

This is not my judgement, mind you. This is the judgement of the defenders of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, who don’t think the US can be held to meet the expectation set by those other countries. It’s the judgement of California congressman Duncan D Hunter, a former US marine who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, who told NPR that repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell would be “bad for the cohesiveness and the unity in the military, especially those that are in close combat”. It’s the judgement of Hunter’s colleague ‘Buck’ McKeon, who wants evidence that repeal “would not degrade wartime military readiness”. It’s the judgement of Senator John McCain, who is concerned about the impact of repeal on the “readiness and effectiveness of the military”. It’s a judgement echoed by Bill Kristol, the conservative columnist and star of City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly’s Gold, who is intitimidated by the “organizational complexity” of repeal.

Estonia dealt with the “organizational complexity” of allowing gays the equal right to get shot at in service to their country. Why isn’t the US up to the task? Where is the rigour? Where is the commitment? What’s wrong with the US military?

Crankypants McCain is so unsure of the abilities of the men and women in the forces that he used to serve in that he’s famously flip-flopped on his commitment to follow the military leadership on the policy. Only four years ago, he said, “the day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, ‘Senator, we ought to change the policy,’ then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it”. Now that he faces a more conservative tea-bagger opponent in his upcoming Arizona primary, the senator is no longer persuaded by the opinions of either the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael McMullen, or the retired chairman who originated the policy, Colin Powell, both of whom have said, ‘Senator, we ought to change the policy’.

Representative Hunter (who is quite the pretty young thing) told Wolf Blitzer that the difference between the US and other countries - countries that the US serves and fights alongside - is that “their military is much smaller than ours, it’s much more specialized”. The US military is too big for cohesion, readiness, effectiveness. That’s why they keep shooting their own allies.

Wolf pointed out that Israel faces some quite significant military challenges of its own. “[B]ut the Israelis have mandatory service,” said Hunter. “So in Israel, it doesn’t matter if you’d like it or not.” So in Israel they have to tolerate gays in the military, and that means… that the problem… just goes away.

To be fair to Rep Hunter, what he’s really saying is that recruits will be scared away if they know there are gays in the military. This didn’t happen in any of these other countries, but maybe Rep Hunter believes that Americans are less patriotic than people in other countries? Maybe Rep Hunter thinks that America isn’t a very good country, and its citizens aren’t proud of it the way that, say, Norwegians are proud of their country? (I think it’s Norway.) Maybe Americans know that their military isn’t very good, so they’re looking for any excuse not to be part of it?

US forces already serve alongside allies that allow gays to serve openly, of course, and Rep Hunter was in Afghanistan with NATO, so he may already have served alongside gay soldiers, but he claims otherwise. “I didn’t run into any open homosexual men or women with … the Brits, Canadians, Germans, French, the other people that I served with over there.” How would he know? Don’t Americans think that all Continentals are a little bit gay? And that Canadian practically means ‘gay American’? But, as I said, Duncan D Hunter is rather pretty, with quite the loveliest blue eyes, and anyway he was in the Marines, so, he’d know.

Except, the policy he seeks to defend is based on the presumption that he wouldn’t know. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell does not bar gay men and women from serving. It just bars them from pursuing or engaging in homosexual behaviour while in service - gays have to remain celibate, on duty or off, in uniform or out of it, from the day they sign up until the day they are discharged.

Gays don’t have to not be gay. Plenty of men and women in the US military are gay, and Rep Hunter served right alongside them in Afghanistan, and he didn’t know. And if the ban were lifted, he still probably wouldn’t know. First of all, he probably wasn’t the most observant guy in the corps. Second, whether gay or straight, you can’t go around shagging your fellow soldiers when you’re on duty. There’s a whole other set of rules against that. As strapping as he is, Rep Hunter had no reason to believe he’d know he was serving alongside homos, unless he thinks they all wear floral camo. Or little pink triangles.

Gays and lesbians serve in the US military today. Having them do so with honesty, honour and integrity should not be a threat to operational efficiency. Not in any military organisation of any worth, anyway. So what’s wrong with America’s military? Why isn’t it as good as Peru’s?

Duncan D Hunter (right). Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Mind If I Do.

Today was the third day of the Proposition 8 trial, which looks set to be a landmark case in US legal history. At issue is the question of whether Proposition 8, which banned marriage equality for same-sex couples in California, was constitutional.

The California constitution states, “A person may not be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law or denied equal protection of the laws”. The plaintiffs argue that denying gays the right to marry clearly violates the equal protection doctrine. Proposition 8 was discriminatory.

I am not a lawyer, but on the face of it I’d say this seems clear cut. The right to marry one’s partner should apply equally to gays as to straights because the constitution says so. The reason there’s any controversy at all is not because the issue is unclear, but because the majority consensus has always opposed applying the constitution fairly to this traditionally maligned minority. If this were just about what’s right, what’s fair, what’s humane, this would be over already; but it’s not about any of that. It’s about protecting the conservative status quo from erosion by the civil rights movement.

Extraordinarily, the central question of the case today appeared to be, ‘are gays still discriminated against?’ The anti-gay Prop 8 lawyers want to argue that gays are no longer discriminated against, therefore gays in California were stripped of their right to marry for non-discriminatory reasons. They actually cited Brokeback Mountain and Will & Grace as evidence that everything is just A-OK for gays today. They also pointed out that gays no longer get locked up in asylums. That’s the warm embrace of social acceptance right there!

The main Prop 8 lawyer also pointed out that Barack Obama opposes gay marriage. Well, yes. Barack Obama is not our friend. We need to come to terms with the fact that anyone who supports civil unions over marriage equality is an opponent of equal rights. Those who support civil unions are part of our opposition.

My favourite exchange of the day was between the Prop 8 lawyer and Yale historian Professor George Chauncey:

Evil Lawyer: “Isn’t it true that people voted for Prop 8 based upon their sincere moral values?”
Clever Historian: “Many people opposed desegregation and interracial marriage based upon their sincere moral values.”

The strangest part of the proceedings must have been the video testimony of Hak-Shing William Tam of the Traditional Families Coalition. Tam was one of the initial proponents of Prop 8, and he notably tried to remove himself from this trial because he was concerned about the attention it would bring him. As Rachel Maddow remarked on her show earlier this week, “Where is the anti-gay pride?”

Tam distributed literature claiming that San Francisco was ruled by a secret enclave of homosexual activists who saw gay marriage as a step towards their ultimate agenda of legalised prostitution and sex with children. It is extraordinary fringe tin-hattery, and the Prop 8 lawyer ardently objected to the airing of the video because it so clearly demonstrated the irrationality of the hatred directed towards gays.

Today’s proceedings seem encouraging, but there was a heavy cloud on the day, because the US Supreme Court - where this case is surely ultimately headed - ruled 5-4 that the Prop 8 case could not be televised or shown on YouTube because the judge failed to follow the proper procedures.

The Prop 8 side knows that, the more people are exposed to their arguments, the less they will be convinced by their position, so they really didn’t want this trial on YouTube. They are cowards who know their position is absurd and irrational.

This boon of public exposure has been denied us due to a technicality, and the fact that the Supreme Court split along ideological grounds bodes ill for this case’s chances in America’s highest court. The Supreme Court are likely to be as hidebound by their prejudices as every other conservative body in America, however discriminatory those prejudices may be.

The upside, however, is that we’re certain to get some hilarious YouTube reconstructions from the court transcripts.

“I just like how he touches kids all around this world.”

No, this is not a reference to Simon Cowell. This is one American Idol contestant’s verdict on singer and domestic abuser Chris Brown. Truly, he is the new king of pop.

But Cowell is the one who has truly touched kids all around the world, often in cruel and harrowing ways, and now he’s touching us all again with his announcement that he’s leaving American Idol to bring the X-Factor to America.

Some pundits are saying that this surely makes this the last season of Idol, but it won’t be. Idol still brings in better audiences than… well, everything else on Fox. If Fox can make Idol and X-Factor work side-by-side, they’ll do it; you know they’re at least going to try.

And Idol will probably fail without Simon Cowell, because although he’s not the whole show, he is key to the formula. Strong personalities and strong performances can provide some entertainment value, but there’s never any guarantee that those things will turn up. Cowell provides quality control, context, and the approval that contestants crave. The winner gets a record contract, but a kind word from Simon Cowell is the crucial milestone on that journey.

So this won’t be the last season of American Idol, but it’s probably the second-to-last season of American Idol.

(American audiences may wonder what the differences are between Idol and X-Factor. First, anyone above the age limit can audition for X-Factor, and that includes groups. Second, performers are split into girls, boys, over 25s and groups. Third, the judges each mentor one of the categories. It may also involve live audience auditions, as the X-Factor now does.)

Cowell has said he hopes to use this new show to find an American Susan Boyle. It’s worth noting, however, that a weirdo like Susan Boyle probably wouldn’t have got through on the X-Factor; she was on Britain’s Got Talent, and America already has a version of that and hasn’t found an American Susan Boyle.

Simon is going. Paula is already gone. Paula wasn’t a good judge, but her addled loop-de-loo happy ragdoll act will be missed. Her replacement, Ellen, doesn’t start until the live shows, so in the meantime we get a conveyor belt of music industry legends with time on their hands, like Mary J Blige, Katy Perry, one of the Jonas brothers, and Dame Victoria Beckham, who has come dressed as Po from Kung Fu Panda. Seacrest scrapes around for a relevant job description to give to Beckham, but never quite comes up with a reason why she would be a judge on a singing competition.

Speaking of singing, how is this season looking, based on the Boston auditions? Did any of those strong personalities show up? Did they bring any strong performances with them?

Justin Williams (above) must be an obvious early favourite, at least in my house; he’s glowingly healthy and handsome, he sings like he’s taking your knickers off, and he fought cancer and won, so he even has a story. We last saw him last year, where he was in the same Hollywood Week group as Kris Allen and Matt Giraud, but he wasn’t as good then, because he forgot to tell anyone about the cancer.

Other performers with potential include Maddy Curtis, the sunny, farm-built girl with a muscular voice and heartstring-plucking Downs syndrome brothers; Katie Stevens, who sings Etta James quaver-for-quaver and slightly over-chews it, but does it better for her grandmother with Alzheimer’s; and Tyler Grady, slick, confident, and stylish in his retro skinny jeans – but he only has two broken wrists, so he needs to up the life-is-hard ante if he wants votes.

Another of my favourites is Mike Davis, who says he’s an actor on a speedboat. That’s a job, apparently. Mike seems like a blue collar working class Boston boy, and is thus adorable, though ‘actor on a speedboat’ is not a blue collar working class job. He’s only an average singer, but he has lots of charm. I want to hear Mike say ‘retahded’. It’s a terrible word, but I love how Bostonians say it. (Simon inexplicably throws a strop when Kara flirts with him, and like a good lapdog, Randy follows him out of the room.)

Finally – after much build-up – there’s Leah Laurenti (above), billed by Seacrest as, “Astonishing talent like we’ve never seen before”. The second coming of Christ would struggle to live up to the hype lumped on her shoulders, and the audition doesn’t quite electrify through the television screen, but one can guess at what the judges saw in her. Her voice must have filled the room they were sitting in; she has a big, powerful Broadway voice. She could be a young Barbra Streisand – she has the look, the speaking voice, the singing voice, and even the nose (though she appears to be Catholic). I’d vote for her just to increase the chances of hearing her do ‘Don’t Rain On My Parade’.

Tonight’s show was just the first of seven audition shows (the second is tomorrow), and you can rest assured that I won’t be blogging every one of them. The Hollywood rounds start in early February; we won’t get to the real show until late February, when it’s back to 24 semi-finalists and no wild card, because everyone now knows that was a shambles. They’ll find new ways to be shambolic, though. They always do.

It’s the end of the year and I haven’t done any ‘best of’ posts at all. And not because I don’t have any ‘best ofs’ to post. I’m a blogger! An erratic blogger, but a blogger none the less. Lists of stuff is what we do! If you don’t have year-end best-ofs, you’re nothing! And it’s the end of the decade as well! Surely I have some end-of-decade lists to post?

Well, maybe we’ll get to all that, and maybe we won’t, but I’d be no kind of blogger at all if I didn’t mark the end of the year with something. So, for your delectation, I present three of the highlights of the gay pop culture year, in video form.

From February of this year we have Dustin Lance Black’s Oscar acceptance speech for ‘Best Original Screenplay’ for Milk, the biography of San Francisco gay rights activist Harvey Milk. Oscar won’t allow embedding, so you’ll have to click the link to view it.

The movie itself was a terrific clarion call at a time when we really need it, but the speech was just as brilliant, and more immediate, and may have reached more people with the needed message; “to all of the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told that they are less than, by their churches or by the government or by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value and that no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you”. Sean Penn’s acceptance speech was equally vital;  ”I think that it is a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect, and anticipate their great shame, and the shame in their grandchildren’s eyes if they continue that way of support.”

Next up; Adam Lambert. This time last year, there was no Adam Lambert as far as the world is concerned. Some of you may wish to go back to that other time, but whatever you think of his talent, his style or his story, or of American Idol itself, the arrival on the US entertainment scene of such an unapologetically gay man who actually sells records is a breakthrough. The recent Video Music Awards ‘controversy’, in which Lambert did the sort of thing Madonna has been doing for years on TV and was swiftly dropped from a bunch of other TV appearances, shows that we really do need someone like Adam Lambert around to shake things up in this way.

With this video you can hear (but not see) his best performance from Idol, ‘Tracks of My Tears’, showcasing the range, pathos and blessed restraint that the man is capable of:

Finally, a TV clip from just yesterday, and it’s an odd one; it’s a sex scene from a daytime soap opera. You’re probably wondering why the hell I would bother you with such a thing, but this is a daytime soap scene with a difference; it’s the first love scene between two gay men on daytime.

Only as recently as last year, fans of As The World Turns actually had to lobby that soap’s network to get them to show a kiss between two men in a committed relationship. The makers of the soap featured above, One Life To Live, have been more courageous. The scene is cheesy, a little clunky, and very much what you’d expect from a love scene in a daytime soap, except that it’s a first, and it’s rewarding to see that the show’s makers have treated a gay couple exactly as they would a straight couple. (The blond, incidentally, is Scott Evans, the openly gay brother of actor Chris Evans.)

The best way to open people’s minds about sexuality is to introduce them to a gay person - a friend, or a family member, who can challenge their lazy, prejudiced views. The next best thing we can do is show them gay people in their music, their movies, their TV shows. All three of these clips are important, because they are all about bringing homosexuality out into the everyday. 2009 has been a banner year for gay visibility. My hope is that the trend continues into 2010.

In an opinion piece for the Star Tribune this past weekend, columnist Katherine Kersten posed the question, “How will same-sex marriage harm the institution of marriage — and in the long run, all of us?”

As Ms Kersten rightly points out in her piece, gay marriage won’t make your marriage any weaker, John and Mary. Some opponents of marriage equality have seriously posited that, if we let men marry other men, they’ll all leave their wives, but that speaks to issues that those folks are just going to have to work out in their own lives. Like Ms Kersten, most conservatives concede that gay marriage will not cancel, weaken or destroy any specific straight marriages. (Mrs Haggard, your husband is gay whether he can marry his masseur or not.)

No, the danger is not to individual marriages, but to the whole institution of marriage. As Ms Kersten tells us, “Marriage is a universal human institution. Across the world and throughout history, it’s been exclusively male-female.”

Well, actually, that’s not true. Just as they used to say that there are no gay animals because no-one had bothered to check, so they say there’s no historical record of gay marriage because no-one’s doing their homework. The first recorded incidence of gay marriage goes back to the early days of the Roman Empire, but it almost certainly occurred throughout the ancient world, from China to America. It’s only our modern post-Christian bias that makes us think otherwise.

Just as we now find gay animals everywhere we look for them, so we find evidence of gay marriage wherever the historical record allows us to look, except where it has been outlawed by zealots. The Christian laws of the Theodosian Code of the fourth and fifth centuries AD give us perhaps the earliest known record of someone banning same-sex marriage, which had until that time been legal in the Roman Empire. It was the DOMA of Roma.

Then there’s the small matter of gay marriage having existed in the Netherlands since 2001, Belgium since 2003, Spain and Canada since 2005, South Africa since 2006, and Sweden and Norway since earlier this year. Those are all places in the world, and those are all years in history, so on that basis alone, even discounting more ancient records, I think we can say that marriage has not in fact been “exclusively male-female” across the world and throughout history, unless we’re also discounting recent history, in which case there has never been an internet.

But, Katherine, do please carry on.

“The primary purpose of marriage is to ensure the best environment for rearing the children born of male-female sexual acts,” she claims. “Marriage channels men’s and women’s sexual attraction into productive ends, and harnesses the male sex drive by binding men to the mothers of their children. The evidence is overwhelming: Boys and girls flourish best with a married mother and father, who perform different and complementary roles in preparing them to deal with the world and the opposite sex.”

And here’s the rub. Actually, there’s quite a lot of rubbing going on here (and she rubs rather furiously), but in this one paragraph, Ms Kersten neatly encapsulates most of the myths of the ‘protect marriage’ argument into a bitesize nugget of bile. Let’s look at them one by one.

“The primary purpose of marriage is to ensure the best environment for rearing the children born of male-female sexual acts”. I suppose this isn’t a lie so much as an evasion. You’ll note she says, ‘primary purpose’, so she’s cognizant of there being other purposes to marriage. She is perhaps aware that some people get married with no intention of rearing children, and that some people rear children without any intention of getting married. There can be no absolute presumption that all unmarried parents are creating a worse environment for their children than all married parents. (In fact, looked at statistically, the divorce rate for unmarried parents is nil!)

Marriage and childrearing are demonstrably separate concepts, so there is no need for a law to ‘protect’ the false presumption of an indivisible link between them. You might as plausibly argue for a law that says girls should not eat bread crusts because eating crusts puts hairs on your chest.

The advantage of marriage in childrearing comes not from the fact of marriage, but from the rights and benefits that the contract of marriage allows. If our concern is for the children, then those rights and benefits should of course be extended to children being raised by gay couples, so that they are not disadvantaged. Ms Kersten, won’t you please think of the children?

(Incidentally, the children of gay parents are also frequently born of male-female sexual acts, though I see no reason to treat children conceived artificially as second-class citizens.)

Next. “Marriage channels men’s and women’s sexual attraction into productive ends, and harnesses the male sex drive by binding men to the mothers of their children.” I’m not sure, but I think the argument here is that, without marriage, all men are rapists. How does gay marriage undermine the need to shackle straight men to their wives? It doesn’t. If gays can get married, Ms Kersten, it will not make anyone’s husband more rapey.

Sidenote: If marriage is a binding harness, an awful lot of marriages end in escapology.

And then: “Boys and girls flourish best with a married mother and father, who perform different and complementary roles in preparing them to deal with the world and the opposite sex.”

Children must have a mother and a father! If a boy is raised by two women, how will he learn to wire a plug? We all know lesbians can’t handle home maintenance! And if a girl is raised by two men, where will she learn to cook? It is established fact that you can’t trust a gay man with a soufflé!

No, I’ve got this backwards. If a boy is raised by two men, how will he learn to wire a plug? True fact: In gay households, all light is provided by candles, because when a fuse goes, gay men run around flapping their arms and squealing until finally fatigue overcomes them and they collapse into a heap of warm male sodomite flesh. In the morning, there is sunlight, and that’s when they go out and buy candles. The fuse is never replaced. Their children will never learn how to change a tyre, whittle a stick, or shoot a caribou, but they will know all the words to Don’t Rain On My Parade, and you will just die when you see what they’ve done to the guest bedroom.

Or, Ms Kersten got it wrong again, because she can hardly think with all those stereotypes swishing around in her head. Boys and girls flourish best when they are loved and supported by their parents, regardless of how many parents they have or what their sexual proclivities are. Fathers and mothers do not slot into pre-set roles, any more than their sons and daughters do. Anyone who tries to impose quota-based parenting models is concerned about tradition to the detriment of the children’s welfare and development.

As for the children’s ability to deal with the opposite sex (or with the same sex - we gays are mostly created from out of straight people’s bodies, you know), I think that can best be supported by parents who don’t impose outmoded sexual hang-ups on their kids.

Straight parenting ain’t all that anyway. Look how many messed up children it’s managed to produce so far! By the ‘one man, one woman’ standard, serial killers Fred and Rose West are exemplary parents. And it’s pure supposition on my part, but I really do think that Adolf Hitler would have turned out better if he’d been raised by Alois and Klaus instead of Alois and Klara.

Straight parenting.

Our friend KK isn’t done yet. “Same-sex marriage would not — as advocates claim — merely extend the benefits of marriage to more people,” she says. That’s an interesting bit of perspective. From where she’s sitting, that’s a “merely”. When you don’t have those benefits, that’s not really a “merely”. That merely is sought rather dearly by those feeling queerly. The fact that same-sex marriage would extend additional benefits is kind of a big deal. It’s kind of the whole deal. You’d think so too, if you didn’t have those rights.

But, go on.

“It would gut marriage of its fundamental meaning and transform it from an institution centered on children and the mother/father nuclear family to one centered on adults. Marriage would become an artificial institution, bestowing state approval on any adult relationship based on affection and interdependence.”

I hate to have to go here, but; Ms Kersten, I do not think that word means what you think it means. Marriage is an artificial institution bestowing state approval on adult relationships based on affection and interdependence. That’s why marriages need to be validated by state officials.

Ms Kersten’s ‘fundamental’ definition of marriage is not the legal definition of marriage, and as such it should not be used to dictate the law on marriage. We do not decide property laws by reading the inside of a Monopoly box.

Ms Kersten continues; “Once marriage is stripped of its organic purpose, why restrict it to two people? Two lesbians and the sperm donor for their child, polygamists, bisexuals: All will want society to recognize and respect their relationships.”

Quite apart from the fact that she hasn’t grasped how bisexuality works (have the traditional marriage side really not worked out that their gay-proofed holy institution has already been infiltrated by the bisexuals?), and that she seems a little shaky on lesbianism as well (I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, but I think most lesbians would rather not have to see a sperm donor at breakfast every morning), this panicky paragraph shows Ms Kersten’s misapprehension in a nutshell. “Once marriage is stripped of its organic purpose”? If reproduction was ever fundamental to the institution of marriage, it isn’t now. She’s locking the stable door after the groom has bolted.

“And why should marriage be open only to people with a sexual relationship?” she adds. “That discriminates against two female friends who want to share the burdens of rearing their kids, or a disabled brother and sister who live together.”

Yes. Why should it? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could allow those people in those situations to choose to enjoy certain legal benefits with each other? That Ms Kersten thinks we should respond to this suggestion with spluttering outrage shows us the sickly pallor of her soul. These ultra-liberal marriage laws she posits would allow people to help each other in difficult situations. We must nip this in the bud at once!

On she goes.

“It’s ironic that in other realms of life, Americans are very aware of the risks of tampering excessively with nature.”

Here we learn that Ms Kersten thinks that marriage grows on trees. Marriage is the vegetable lamb of Tartary, and it blossom with little three-tier cakes that imbue the eater with fidelity, parenting skills, and the ability to change a fuse. The problem, it seems, is that Ms Kersten genuinely believes that marriage and reproduction are interchangeable concepts. She must think all rabbits are Mormons.

Ms Kersten ends with a flourish. “We understand little about how marriage has undergirded the order and prosperity we take for granted. We tamper with marriage at our peril.”

I have no idea what this is supposed to mean, except that I think it was lifted from a 1953 issue of Tales From The Crypt, and she’s put in the word ‘marriage’ where it used to say ‘the jewelled death mask of Chandragupta’.

Still, if marriage is so important in preventing the coming apocalypse, wouldn’t it be a good idea to have more of them? Even if the gay ones only count for, say, half a normal marriage, that’s still a net gain, isn’t it?

Here’s my counter-argument in favour of gay marriage. Marriage is a legal institution that confers special benefits that everyone is entitled to, and couples should be free to share those benefits as they see fit. Whether or not they intend to raise children is no-one’s business. Their religious beliefs are no-one’s business. Their sexual attitudes are no-one’s business. None of these things are a qualifying bar to marriage; they should not be treated as such, especially not for an isolated minority.

Ms Kersten; Ms Gallagher; Bishop Malone; President Obama;  There is no single model for marriage. If you insist that there is, and if you allow the people to vote out anyone who does not fit that model, then you are not protecting the institution of marriage; you are destroying it.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Give: If you are a supporter of America’s Democratic party, please consider supporting this call to suspend all donations to the DNC until they enact the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act.

I’m told that Maine has a reputation for proud independence. They don’t let outsiders tell them how to think or what to do.

Obviously that reputation is now in tatters, and the proudly independent people of Maine stand exposed as the biggest bitches in the US. In a rare turnabout, the legislature must now be ashamed of their electorate. In April and May of this year, the Maine House and Senate showed their grit and independence when they made Maine the first state in the US to introduce gay marriage through legislative process.

This week, the electorate voted to undo that laudable work, because they were bullied into it by two well-known political pressure groups from outside the state - one in Utah, the other in Rome. Interesting fact: the Mormons and the Catholics still enjoy historic tax exemptions from back when they used to be religious organisations.

The Mormons make their donations through a shell organisation, the National Organisation for Marriage, which, in direct contravention of the law, likes to hide its lists of donors, but we all know it’s those Latter Day shits. The Catholic Church is a hate group that doesn’t care who knows it; they made their $550,000 donation in their own name.

The pro-equality side ran ad campaigns showing how real Maine families would be affected by this law. They presented the people of Maine with stories from their own neighbours, families and friends. The anti-equality side took the same lying, fear-mongering ads from their Prop 8 campaign, and scratched out the word ‘California’ and wrote in ‘Maine’. And the people of Maine fell for it like the easily punked dumb hicks they are.

I know we’re supposed to note that almost 50% of people in Maine voted to preserve equal marriage rights in the state, and we shouldn’t be angry at the whole state, but I’m sick of hearing that. Marriage equality failed, which means the whole state failed. If you live in Maine and you support marriage equality, you did not do enough. That’s a fact. The same goes for California. The same goes for the other 29 states that have voted on and voted down marriage equality.

The point that always needs to be repeated regarding Maine and California is this: the majority voted to strip the rights of a minority. That’s the sort of evil that only the truly sanctimonious could ever get behind. The law ought to protect minorities from such outrageous bullying - and that’s a fact that other minorities might do well to remember, including the Mormons and the Catholics. The biggest threat to their reigious freedom is not gay marriage; it’s the precedent set by overturning it.

A couple of other notes on Maine:

First of all; in the same election that stripped gay people of their marriage rights in the state, a measure was passed that would allow medical marijuana dispensaries in Maine. That’s a progressive cause if ever there was one. Why weren’t Maine’s progressives standing behind gay marriage in the same numbers? Where were you when we needed you, dope heads?

Second; the gay rights movement needs leadership. Groups like HRC and GLAAD enjoy their White House dinner invites too much to push for an aggressive agenda. They spectacularly failed to get President Obama to weigh on on Maine. Under their watch, Obama has proven to be anything but the fierce advocate he promised he would be for gay rights. Under their watch, it looks like marriage equality won’t even be put back on the California ballot in 2010, and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell will get pushed back into Obama’s second term, should he ever get one.

Stronger voices come from bloggers like Pam Spaulding and David Mixner. This week, while arguing for civil disobedience and a closed chequebook for any politican who does not support full equality, Mixner referred to the disparity in rights for gay Americans as “gay apartheid”.

The word ‘apartheid’ entered into the political lexicon because of the policy of racial segregation in South Africa during the second half of the 20th century. Since then it has been used to refer to numerous other incidences of political segregation, including the treatment of Algerians in France, the treatment of the poor in Brazil, and the treatment of Palestinians in Israel. It’s a good term. It’s powerful. It’s the sort of language we need to be using to make our case with rhetorical force.

And as soon as Mixner used it, people started arguing that ‘apartheid’ as a term should be held in reserve, in the same way that we protect the term ‘Holocaust’. (The gays did have a holocaust, of course; we call it ‘the Holocaust’.)

I’ve never heard anyone suggest that we firewall the term ‘apartheid’ before. Even Desmond Tutu, former Archbishop of Cape Town, drew parallel between homophobia and South Africa’s Apartheid in an article five years ago. As far as I’m concerned,’apartheid’ is established political shorthand for any system of political segregation. But now the gays have used it - in a way that casts the USA in a very poor light that it well deserves - and suddenly it’s off limits.

Now it seems we need to calibrate the depth of gay suffering against black suffering in South Africa from 1948-1994, and if the social and economic disparity of marriage inequality laws in America are not found to be up to snuff (and they won’t be) gays can’t use the term. And this is a view being expressed by progressives! Maybe they’re the same ones who cherish medical marijuana but don’t give two toots about marriage rights?

Incidentally, do you know what happened if you were gay in South Africa during the Apartheid era? Homosexuality was illegal, so you went to prison. More gruesome than that; in a country where every white male over 16 was forced into military service, they didn’t have Don’t Ask Don’t Tell; they subjected suspected homosexuals to electric shock therapy, chemical castration and forced sexual reassignment surgery. As far as I can find, there has never been a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for this. And do you know what name we all used to describe that system of political oppression?

Oh, you big silly. Why would we have a name for something no-one ever talks about? We didn’t boycott or sanction South Africa because of their treatment of homosexuals! Mistreating homosexuals was normal.

And in the US, it still is - whereas South Africa passed same-sex marriage laws back in 2006.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Give: If you are a supporter of America’s Democratic party, please consider supporting this callto suspend all donations to the DNC until they enact the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act.

Things that happened (or started) between the first and last issues of Planetary:

• The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy
• The Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy
• The X-Men, Spider-Man, Hulk and Fantastic Four movies
• Two Pierce Brosnan Bond movies
• The first six Harry Potter movies
• The last five Harry Potter books

• The Twilight series, from conception to completion
• A Series of Unfortunate Events
• A Tom Wolfe novel
• President George W Bush
• The War on Terror
• The Euro
• Paris Hilton
• Lindsay Lohan
• The marriage of Jon and Kate, and the births of Plus 8

• Kanye West
• Pop Idol, Survivor, Big Brother UK
• Tina Fey
• CSI - all flavours
• The Wire
• Six Feet Under
• Napster
• Windows XP
• Wikipedia

• Y The Last Man, by Vaughan and Guerra (60 issues)
• 100 Bullets, by Azzarello and Risso (100 issues)
• Robert Kirkman
• Bill Jemas
• Brian Michael Bendis at Marvel
• America’s Best Comics, including The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and JH Williams III’s 32-issue run on Promethea
• 25 issues of Astonishing X-Men, with art by… John Cassaday
• Thunderbolts, Fell, The Authority, Astonishing X-Men, Gravel, and much more from… Warren Ellis
• The ’00s, basically.

Bonus! Things that happened (or started) between the releases of Planetary #26 and Planetary #27:

• President Nicolas Sarkozy
• Prime Minister Gordon Brown
• President Barack Obama (and the entire US election campaign)
• The execution of Saddam Hussein
• Governor Sarah Palin
• Former Governor Sarah Palin

• The Wii
• The PlayStation 3
• The Writers’ Guild of America Strike
• 28 issues of Buffy: Season Eight
• Lady Gaga
• Hulu

• I Can Has Cheezburger?
• The Twitter phenomenon
• Torchwood
• Two Daniel Craig Bond films
• One Harry Potter novel and two Harry Potter films
• The relaunch of Planetary’s host universe, the Wildstorm Universe.
• Twice

The first issue of Planetary hit the stands in May 1999. Planetary #26 came out in October 2006. The final issue, Planetary #27, is due out tomorrow. Fingers crossed!

It’s been a terrible year for lauded monsters, mostly because they’ve been dying. Notorious alleged nonce Michael Jackson went and got himself killed. Reckless drunken womanslaughterer Ted Kennedy died a hero’s death (he did at least let his crime inspire a lifetime of good intentions, which is the Democrats’ version of good works). And now they’ve only gone and arrested poor long-suffering child molester Roman Polanski, whose only crime was to drug and rape a 13-year-old girl and then skip the country so he wouldn’t go to jail.

The reaction to this arrest of a criminal fugitive has been extraordinary. Normally rational and intelligent people have been crying foul. Polanski’s peers - including Martin Scorsese, Pedro Almodovar, Michael Mann, Terry Gilliam and, perhaps ill-advisedly, Woody Allen - have signed a petition demanding his release. And I’ve been scratching my head and wondering why. Why do these people want Polanski to evade justice? What have I missed? And I’ve read around, looking for answers, and I haven’t found any that convince me.

Anne Applebaum at the Washington Post gives a particularly peculiar rundown of the justifications, stating that Polanski “has paid for the crime in many, many ways”. She points to notoriety, stigma, lawyers’ fees - none of which seem like an undeserved burden for a man who committed a crime and then fled from justice. Polanski’s ‘punishment’ has seen him living in the land of fine wine and finer cheeses for 30 years and swanning from villa to villa while making a living as a respected and successful director with actors like Johnny Depp, Sigourney Weaver and Harrison Ford.

Applebaum adds that the victim of Polanski’s rape, “now 45, has said more than once that she forgives him, that she can live with the memory, that she does not want him to be put back in court or in jail, and that a new trial will hurt her husband and children”. That’s interesting to note, but it’s not binding on the law, and most criminals do not get the benefit of a thirty-year time-out to give the victim the time to rebuild his or her life.

Film journalist John Farr at The Huffington Post gives his own wet defence of Polanski, pointing out that he had a tough life. He grew up in the Krakow ghetto; his mother died in a concentration camp; his wife was murdered by followers of Charles Manson. As extraordinary a life as Polanski has lead, what does that justify? It seems that Farr believes one collects pain and misery stamps through life that one can trade in against the right to inflict pain and misery on others. Farr also bizarrely claims that, as a married man of 76, Polanski is “probably reformed by now, don’t you think?” Why would I think that? Do 76-year-old men lose a child-raping instinct that Farr believes is natural and endemic to 44-year-old men? A year after fleeing the US, Polanski claimed that “everyone wants to f— little girls”. Should we take it on faith that he no longer holds this view?

Also on Huffington Post, supposed women’s equality activist Joan Z Shore notes, “Arresting Roman Polanski the other day in Zurich, where he was to receive an honorary award at a film festival, was disgraceful and unjustifiable”. The petition strikes the same wailing chord, stating; “It seems inadmissible … that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary film-makers, is used by police to apprehend him”. Are we really meant to believe that Polanski should not have been arrested as a question of etiquette? The police should not have arrested a child abuser because it was rude?

The Polanski case is being framed by his defenders as philistine America versus art-loving Europe, and that’s scary to me. As a drippy liberal European fagola, I’m an ardent believer in the need to defend creative freedom from the censorious right. I don’t want to have to think that my side has been secretly pro-child abuse all this time. That’s exactly the sort of crazy that the right likes to paint artists as being, and it’s up to the creative community to act as its own conscience. People like Scorsese and Gilliam should not be lining up to defend a man who committed an atrocious crime. (Thank God for Luc Besson, who refused to sign the petition, pointing out that his daughter is the same age as the girl Polanski raped.) Creative freedom does not include the freedom to rape little girls and get away with it.

Inevitably with stories like this, the question is asked, should a man’s art be viewed through the filter of his conduct? I don’t think it should. I think Polanski is a gifted director who has given us many excellent films, and the value of those films is not diminished by his crimes. But if art and conduct should be treated separately, then art and justice should also be treated separately. If we do not condemn the man’s art because of his conduct, we also cannot forgive the man’s conduct because of his art.

I realise that there are complexities to the Polanski case. There are accusations of judicial misconduct. Though Polanski was never sentenced, his lawyers claim that the judge intended to renege on a plea deal that they had agreed to. Even so, if you elect to work in or even visit a country, you consent to abide by its laws and you make yourself subject to its system of justice, and if you feel there has been a miscarriage of justice, you appeal through the courts. You cannot simply elect to place yourself above the law, even if you are brilliant, wealthy and free-spirited.

Roman Polanski raped a 13-year-old girl and ran from the consequences. Now, hopefully, he will be extradited to the US and those consequences will catch up with him. If he has suffered enough, as his defenders insist he has, that will be for the courts to determine, and not Monica fricking Bellucci.

The House of Mouse is buying the House of Ideas. If you don’t speak cutesy corporate nicknames, that means Disney is buying Marvel - but you knew that already. You’re on Twitter. You’re on the internet. This is not the first blog you’ve been to today. Nerds are flopping all over the place about this one. This is big news!

There have been three main responses that I’ve seen. The first is a dropped jaw, because this has come completely out of the blue - even people working at Marvel have been taken by surprise. The second response has been to identify humorous synergies between superheroes and cartoon characters and chortle about them, because Disney produces neutered entertainment for unsophisicated audiences, and Marvel… hey now wait a minute…

The third has been to ask in shocked tones, ‘but what does this all mean?’ And because the gag reel is best left to Twitter these days, I’m going to dwell on that third option, although this is all rootless speculation on my part, and responsible people will tell you not to listen. With that caveat in place; what does this all mean?

It might mean nothing at all. At least, that was the official line this morning from Marvel editor CB Cebulski on Twitter; “We’re told it’s like when Disney bought Pixar… everything Marvel stays as is.” So, don’t worry, everybody! Disney spent four billion dollars on Marvel (four billion dollars) because they plan to leave everything exactly as it is! And, in other news, when you wish upon a star your dreams come true!

The Disney/Marvel deal is not going to be the same as the Disney/Pixar deal, wherein Pixar’s Steve Jobs became a major shareholder in Disney, and Disney’s animation arm was eaten by Pixar. (If Disney’s comics get eaten by Marvel, that won’t be quite the same shiny plum.) Disney brought Pixar in because they wanted Pixar to provide creative vision for Disney.

Marvel is not going to exercise that degree of leverage. The best Marvel can hope for is that it retains creative control over Marvel. Walt Disney President Bob Iger says that this is indeed the plan; the philosophy is, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. But who gets to say what does or doesn’t constitute ‘broke’ in the world of comics publishing today? It’s quite a broken industry.

A lot of the online speculation says that this is about movies - a field where Marvel characters have enjoyed unprecedented success in the past decade. Yet the X-Men franchise remains at Fox, the Spider-Man franchise remains at Sony, and the Avengers franchise (including Iron Man, Thor and Captain America) remains at Paramount. If Disney wants a big Marvel movie franchise, it’ll have to build one from scratch, and without any of Marvel’s biggest brands. All existing third-party licensing deals are being honoured, including video game deals.

(There is talk - from John Lasseter himself - of Marvel and Pixar doing something together, which is sort of exciting, except that it would be Pixar’s first foray into licensed properties, and that sort of isn’t exciting, that’s sort of compromising.)

The official press release says that the plan is to “significantly build” both Marvel and Disney through this acquisition. The investor call went further, stating that Disney wants to develop Marvel’s catalogue of lesser-known characters “across multiple medias and territories”. (Yes, they said “medias”, at least they did according to my datas.)

If Disney doesn’t get the hit movies and isn’t going to touch the comics, where does that growth come from? Well, it’ll come from theme park rides and consumer products, according to the PR storm. All I know about theme park rides is that I like them; I don’t know how much of a role character branding plays in convincing people to go on a rollercoaster. Do spider-webs on the car maketh the ride? Given that there are already Marvel-themed rides at Universal Studios, how much demand is there for Aunt May’s Amazing Stairlift-O-Tron?

As for consumer products; a search for ‘disney consumer products’ took me to disneyconsumerproducts.com, where you can read about Disney pyjamas, Disney dolls, Disney bedding, Disney laptops, Disney Eggo waffles, Disney Princess dress-up sets, Disney furniture sets, and even Disney wedding dresses. Now imagine all of that with X-Men logos all over them, or flocks of Silver Surfers. Maybe you too will soon be able to buy the fishtail fluted wedding dress that Mary Jane Watson wore when she married… on second thought, maybe that’s not the best omen.

Even if Disney can now put Spider-Man on a hot water bottle, it presumably can’t put the movie Spider-Man on a hot water bottle, and isn’t that the one boys want? If Disney’s stategy really is to develop second-stringers into merchandisable brands, I’m fascinated to know how they’ll manage it, and to what extent it will rely on Marvel’s pool of creative talent over Disney’s. One wonders if Disney got roped in on the line about Marvel’s impressive stable of 5,000+ characters, when what that really amounts to is a lot of obscure Spider-Man villains that can’t be used because they’re Spider-Man villains.

And of course, if Disney does want to make the characters marketable, how can it not touch the comics? How can they not bring in content guidelines? The obvious parallel to the Disney/Marvel deal is Warner Brothers’ ownership of DC, and it’s no secret that Warner has been nanny-like in its protection of DC trademarks. Can we expect a lighter whip from the company that didn’t want Aladdin to have nipples because nipples are too racy? Is Emma Frost going to have to put on a coat?

Honestly, I think we might be surprised. After all, I was being unfair (for hilarious comic effect!) when I implied that Marvel and Disney only put out neutered entertainment for unsophisicated audiences. Even on Disney’s family entertainment channel, ABC Family, you can currently watch an interracial teenage male-male relationship unfolding on Greek, and that’s consdierably more progressive than anything Marvel has ever put in front of a family audience. And this was a TV channel that Disney liberated from the grisly talons of Pat Robertson! So long as Sleeping Beauty’s castle isn’t on the packaging, Disney can be quite a broad church. Dogma and Kill Bill were both produced under the Walt Disney umbrella. Disney really might leave Marvel alone to do its own thing.

Corporate ownership might even free Marvel up to be bolder than it has been in the past. The notion that you need to be indie to innovate is passé in a Pixar world, and Disney is not Warner Brothers, and Spider-Man is not Superman. The security of having a major company at its back - and the reach that such a company can provide - could actually push Marvel to flex its creative muscles more liberally than before.

CB Cebulski followed up his earlier twittering by adding, “From all I’ve heard up here these past three hours, Disney merging with Marvel is a VERY GOOD thing for us”. I hope so, and I can believe it, and not just because the editors have probably just had their health insurance upgraded, or because freelancers might finally be getting a comp box.

What Disney brings to Marvel is a media machine that vastly outstrips what they’ve been used to, and if that means the talents of folks like Skottie Young or Stuart Immonen might now be exposed to a wider audience, or that Marvel will have more money and resources to scout and develop talent, that’s terrific news.

And maybe that’s the real benefit that Disney gets out of this deal. We already know that comics have become a form of R&D for other media, but that need not only apply to stories and characters; it could apply to creators as well.

(For the record, my favourite joke from a long, grinding morning of Disney/Marvel mash-ups on Twitter, came courtesy of Andy Khouri: “No more muppets”.)

There’s a rumour going around, repeated on some news sites, that a Twilight MMO (massively multiplayer online game) is in development. Yes, a game in which you can immerse yourself in the thrilling setting of Forks, Washington, hailed as the logging capital of the world. At last, a game where kids can escape the dull trudge of small town life and all the petty stresses of high school by pretending to be high school students in a small town.

Oh, but with the addition of womb-nibbling throbbing Mormon psycho sparkle vampires. And teenage dogboys with great abs.

Exciting as this sounds, it seems that the story is a bit of a fraud. A game is being developed - but not by anyone with the rights to develop the game.

If you go to TwilightTheVideoGame.com and click ‘enter’ (because there was always a possibility you might go to a website and not want to enter), you will be treated to a tremorous school flute recital that you cannot switch off, and some happy spew about how Twilight The Video Game will “allow players to immerse themselves into a depper form of storytelling and adventure”.

The inappropriate abs of a 17-year-old.

Click on ‘Meet the Staff’, and you can read about Brandon, Bethany, Maile and Beth (all in the third person) and Steve, Gretchen and Christine (all in the first person). Apparently Steve is a “fierce friend” and was adopted as a baby; Bethany shows and grooms dogs; Maile designs packaging for snack foods (hey, I love snack foods); and Brandon regularly earns his place on the Dean’s list (which I assume is a good thing, but it sounds like ‘the naughty step’ to me). Click on the News page and you get… nothing! Click on the Links page and you get… the thrilling realisation that people still make websites with Links pages! Oh, GeoCities, how we miss you.

The stink of fancruft lingers over everything. There is no mention anywhere that author Stephanie Meyer or license-holders Summit Entertaiment are involved in any way. Further investigation reveals that this is a fan project that the creators intend to hand over to Summit for free, on the assumption that Summit will lap it up rather than, say, shut it down with a leaden and humourless cease-and-desist.

Defer your virtual gratification at Forks’  Tillicum Park.

As far as I know, it is the first fan-fiction video game. That in itself is slightly exciting - game-making technology is now so cheap and freely available that people actually can do this stuff in their garage, and while it may not be great today (I’m assuming), it could be great tomorrow. It is the continued democratisation of media. Hurray! And it’s being wasted on Twilight. Boo!

That said, I wish Brandon, Bethany et al luck with their endeavour. Working on the game will probably be a good learning experience for them all, and if they do succeed, well, think of the fun we can all have with a Twilight MMO. I expect the folks at 4chan will be first in line to get accounts.

And yes, the park in Forks, Washington, really is called ‘Tillicum Park’. No, no-one else seems to have noticed how hilarious this is.