NY State Must Recognise Canadian Gay Marriage, says court

According to the Ohio Gay People's Chronicle, an appeals court in the state of New York has ruled that NY state must recognise a gay marriage in Canada, just as it recognises marriage for other people. The state could theoretically legislate to not recognise LGBT marriages from other countries, but it must recognise them unless and until it does so.

A good result.

A more tolerant Britain

Encouraging news from British Social Attitudes survey (reported in the Guardian and the Telegraph with rather different emphasis) that public perception of gay people's relationships has changed dramatically in the last two decades. Fools quote unqualified statistics, but apparently:

• 1/3 (or 1/5 – the Guardian article is a bit inconsistent on this) of people view homosexuality as being morally wrong (compared with 3/4 in 1987).
  
• roughly 1/3 of people believe that LGBT couples make suitable parents.

This is emphatically good progress, but the latter statistic is quite disappointing. One of the wonderful things about the sexual and gender-conforming liberation enjoyed by the LGBT community is of course the lack of a requirement to conform to the quite restrictive model of relationship that is imposed by heterosexual society. Notwithstanding that, the lack of belief that LGBT couples make suitable parents seems to suggest that old stereotypes of LGBT relationships, such as that they are somehow less secure or nurturing are still in place. Not all LGBT people want children, but those that do are usually well able to raise them in a loving environment.

Martin Luther King Day

Today is Martin Luther King Day, a Federal Holiday which needs little introduction to Americans... although nationwide observance is a recent phenomenon.

How King would have viewed the gay liberation and legitimation movements is open to question; the fact he worked with and was advised by an openly gay man, Bayard Rustin is not. For my part, I have always taken the view (incidentally that also of the King Centre) that racism, homphobia, mysogeny and class-prejudice are social phenomena that can only be tackled as a whole. Perhaps for those of us within the gay community, the MLK holiday is a useful point for us to reflect on and challenge the racism, mysogeny and classism that is still very prevalent amongst gay people. 

For how can we remain intellectually coherent in our calls for tolerance as long as these remain?