Many Things Go

February 29, 2016 Matthew Baume

This week we're soothing our burning hot Oscar Fever with a study that, according to researchers, somehow suggests that people oppose gay marriage because they think it makes their partners more likely to cheat. Or something like that.

It's confusing, which is why we get so distracted by conversation about Mary Tyler Moore, Kirk Cameron, and wieners.

Music:
In Your Arms Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Manny Pacquiao and the Bonobo Showboat

February 22, 2016 Matthew Baume

This week we're puzzling over Manny Pacquiao, a boxer/politician who's had some particularly unpleasant things to say about marriage equality. He's running for office in the Philippines and told an interviewer that same-sex couples shouldn't have the freedom to marry. And then he went much further, with Instagram posts about how LGBTs should be put to death, yikes.

Somehow, we also get on the topic of kangaroos (because they're all boxers), fetish nights, and as always, Star Wars. The episode concludes with me having a minor stroke.

Music:
In Your Arms Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

How do you Solve a Problem Like Scalia?

February 15, 2016 Matthew Baume

For the last few episodes, I've been revisiting the marriage work that I did as an reporter and activist over the last decade. And this week we'll be talking about some surprise changes coming to the US Supreme Court.

Here are a few things Antonin Scalia had to say about LGBTs:

"[S]uppose all the States had laws against flagpole sitting at one time, you know, there was a time when it was a popular thing and probably annoyed a lot of communities, and then almost all of them repealed those laws," Scalia asked the attorney fighting the Texas law. "Does that make flagpole sitting a fundamental right?"
"Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children's schools, or as boarders in their home," he wrote. "They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive."
"But I had thought that one could consider certain conduct reprehensible—murder, for example, or polygamy, or cruelty to animals—and could exhibit even 'animus' toward such conduct. Surely that is the only sort of 'animus' at issue here: moral disapproval of homosexual conduct[.]"
"[A job] interviewer may refuse to offer a job because the applicant is a Republican; because he is an adulterer; because he went to the wrong prep school or belongs to the wrong country club; because he eats snails; because he is a womanizer; because she wears real animal fur; or even because he hates the Chicago Cubs."
"It doesn't say you can't have—you can't have any sexual intimacy. It says you cannot have sexual intimacy with a person of the same sex."

Photo: CC BY 2.0 Stephen Masker - Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

Music:
In Your Arms Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Behind the Scenes at the Star-Studded Prop 8 Play

February 8, 2016 Matthew Baume

For the last few episodes, I've been revisiting the marriage work that I did as an reporter and activist over the last decade. And this week we'll be talking about 8 the play, the dramatic interpretation of the prop 8 trial. I worked behind the scenes on mounting the star-studded premieres in New York and LA, and here to talk about it with me this week is the delightful James.

Music:
In Your Arms Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Anti-Marriage Pledge Punishes Straight Fornicators

February 1, 2016 Matthew Baume

CC BY-SA 3.0
Donald Trump by Gage Skidmore 3.jpg

Believe it or not, there are still some people trying to undo marriage equality, and generally make life unpleasant for gay people. And also, it turns out, for straight people.

I'm joined once again by my very special guest, James, to talk about this weird situation.

In Oklahoma, there are 26 bills -- possibly a record -- jostling to chip away at protections for LGBT people. Among them: a bill to legitimize "sexual orientation change" treatments. The bill specifically calls out some protected practices, and they're amazing: "physical pain, such as electroshock or electroconvulsive therapy, touch therapy, pornography exposure or vomit-induction therapy."

Federally, six candidates have endorsed the "First Amendment Defense Act," which doesn't just say that marriage should be between a man and a woman; but that only married heterosexuals should be allowed to have sex. Sorry, single straight people! Sorry, single moms! This proposed bills is really about controlling peoples' bodies -- gay and straight, and particularly women.

Oddly enough, Trump is one of the only candidates who hasn't pledged to sign the bill. (He said he supported it in a letter, but declined to sign the pledge.) So we have a strange situation here where the GOP is making Donald Trump look like the reasonable guy in the room.

Music:
In Your Arms Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

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