By Lorna Bracewell
PoHo contributor

In a presidential proclamation issued on Monday, President Barack Obama officially recognized the month of June as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month.

LGBT Americans have made, and continue to make, great and lasting contributions that continue to strengthen the fabric of American society. During LGBT Pride Month, I call upon the LGBT community, the Congress, and the American people to work together to promote equal rights for all, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.

The president’s call for equality and his acknowledgment of the many contributions LGBT people have made to America’s culture, society and politics despite being culturally, socially and politically marginalized are truly moving. However, I can’t help feeling slightly ambivalent about the whole thing. Here’s why:

Unlike many in the big gay blogosphere, the root of my ambivalence is not the excruciatingly slow pace at which the president has pursued formal equality for LGBT people. Rather, it’s the order in which things seem to be happening. It seems wrong to me that LGBT people have been given a month before we’ve been given civil rights.

That’s not the way things happened for African Americans. They officially got their duly deserved month in 1986 when Congress passed Public Law 99-244. This law required the president to issue a proclamation recognizing Black History Month, which had been privately observed since 1915. Then President Ronald Reagan obliged with a document that reads quite similarly to Obama’s LGBT Pride Month proclamation.

All of this happened some 116 years after the passages of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, the amendments to the federal Constitution that abolished slavery, guaranteed equal protection of the laws, and enfranchised all males regardless of race, and 22 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, a federal law that went a long way toward making the abstract legal rights guaranteed by those amendments substantively meaningful for African Americans.

In short, African Americans got their rights first and their month second. It is almost Orwellian that the many achievements of the LGBT civil rights movement are being extolled while LGBT people are still being denied the most basic civil right of marriage and are still prevented from serving openly in the military.  Let’s hope history-turned-on-its-head doesn’t repeat itself and force us to wait 116 years for formal equality.

Cross-posted from the Daily Loaf blog.

I have a secret I can no longer keep. It burns my soul and pains my conscience. I had an affair. I loved a man powerful in Florida politics, and he loved me back. I cannot reveal his name. My honor and his lawyers do not permit me. I will refer to him only as C. He currently seeks more power, and I know that rumors will begin to fly, so I submit my story publicly to save us both, and our love, from the public’s harsh scrutiny.

It all began in the winter of 2008. I was a 19-year-old USF student, wandering through my studies with no real direction, still trying to find myself among the textbooks and study halls. My life did not live up to my name – Destiny St. Clair – and my bright red hair spoke of an excitement I could not claim. I was, I must say, average in every way, certainly not the type you might soon expect to be sipping champagne on yachts with the most powerful man in the state.

I can remember the exact moment my life changed forever. Jan. 30, 2008, the day John McCain won the Florida Republican primaries. “That man is such a silver fox,” my older sister, Fate, said as we watched the announcement on TV. C. was standing at a podium behind John McCain, looking pleased as they announced the elderly senator’s victory. “How is that man even still a bachelor.”

At 51, C. had remained unmarried, and our state of Florida had received that rarest anomaly, a bachelor politician. Most public servants had the constant support of a beautiful and loving wife standing by their side, but not he. But every political accomplishment C. achieved was without the usual cheerleader and confidant of a first lady, that well dressed and perfectly coifed silent figure standing behind her man and nodding in agreement with every word he said. For every public appearance he stood alone with no charming trophy wife quietly by his side. And after his long hard day of governing, he would retire to his wing in the Governor’s Mansion alone, finding no freshly made up southern lady to give him a blowjob and beer while he watched sports to unwind. Such was the tough life of a single governor–harder than one could imagine.

“He can govern my state anytime he wants!” Fate said, unable to find any more significance in the moment than the chiseled lines of C.’s features.

“I heard he lives near us,” I said. “If we ever met him, he’d be so into you. I bet you’re so his type.”

If anyone could tame the bachelor governor, it was Fate. She was feminine and charming with hair that always seemed to be perfectly styled no matter what she was doing. Fate had competed in beauty pageants as a child, so, naturally, she would make the perfect politician’s wife.

“Seriously?” she chortled. “He’s gay, Destiny. I mean, he’s still in the closet because you can’t be a gay Republican, but it’s everywhere that he is.”

I was shocked to hear Fate put it so bluntly, but I had remembered hearing gay rumors. Malicious whispers during campaign season. They never said it out loud, but his rivals would insinuate there was something “not quite right” about a man in his fifties being a lifelong bachelor. And when his penchant for brightly colored shirts and ties that brought out the warmth of his bronzed tan was added to the equation, the bloggers would do the math, and every time it would add up to gay.

If C. had been a single dad or an eligible divorcee, the rumors would have been laid to rest. And if he had been a widower, too loyal to his dead wife to let himself fall in love again, he would have been a hero, the media painting a glamorous picture of his beautiful romance, and how tragically it ended, killed by a drunk driver. C.’s unmarried status would have been spun as something honorable and noble, and possibly even a piece of legislation. But he would never have exploited it. In fact, he would have gone out of his way to make that point several, several times whenever he brought it up out of the blue during a campaign speech. Nobody would even have thought of calling him gay.

But despite C.’s moderate politics and affable personality, and his optimism in improving the quality of life in Florida, he was trailed by whispers all along the campaign trail, nasty rumors used to try to drive voters away from the popular candidate. They clearly failed, since the election results showed a large number of both Republicans and Democrats pulling the lever for C. In fact, for some mysterious reason I was certain might be explained later, the rumors seemed to work in his favor.

I looked back at the TV as C. grinned and clapped in support of Senator McCain the very same way a wife would have done for C. in November two years prior. I noticed C. possessed a certain magnetism I was never aware of before. He was good looking. Very tan, as you’d expect any governor to be, and incredibly well put together, like something cut out of a menswear catalogue. I wondered what that man standing in the back and to the left of John McCain was like. Was he really gay as Fate, along with every gay man in the southern peninsula, claimed?

As I sat on the couch of our middle class Tampa apartment, pondering our governor on a TV that wasn’t even a flat screen, I had no idea that my life, and the state of Florida, would soon be changed forever…

By Lorna Bracewell
PoHo contributor

eQuality Giving, an online community that provides strategic advice for philanthropists interested in legal equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Americans, has ranked all 50 states according to the number of Equality Goals each has achieved. On this States of Equality list, Florida ranks an embarrassing 37th with a score of 1.5 out of a possible 6 points barely beating out Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and other shining beacons of progressivism.

What hurt the Sunshine State’s score?

First, its lack of any law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. That’s right. In Florida, it is perfectly legal to fire or deny employment to someone because you think they’re gay or because you don’t think they perform their gender in the most appropriate way according to you. (Interview tip for female job seekers in Florida: Shave your pits and ensure your shoes appear to be adequately uncomfortable.)

Second, Florida is the only state in the entire country with a law on the books banning homosexuals from adopting children. Other states, like Utah and Arkansas, have laws which prohibit unmarried couples from adopting, but only Florida explicitly singles out “homosexuals” as ineligible. (We have Miss America contestant turned orange juice spokeswoman turned anti-gay activist Anita Bryant to thank for this one.)

Third, Amendment 2 (added to Florida’s Constitution this past November) guarantees that marriage equality (or anything vaguely resembling it) will be a long time coming to the people of the great state of Florida.

While this list gives Floridians an additional topic to grumble about, there is a sunny side to our abysmal showing. Perhaps the fair-minded philanthropists of the world will look at this list and take pity on us. After all, we do have a U.S. Senate seat and a Governor’s mansion to fill…

Ben Luongo is a USF political science graduate student. He will be graduating this spring.

Several hundred protesters took to the streets in San Francisco last week during a court hearing on Proposition 8, the amendment to the California Constitution that restricts same-sex marriage. Prop 8 was voted on in Nov. 2008 and followed a ruling in May that overturned restrictions on same-sex marriage. After that, California was in the business of marrying same-sex couples. This of course changed when California voted on Proposition 8 with 52 percent in favor of banning same-sex marriages. Now the court will have to rule on the validity of Prop 8.

The debate over same-sex marriage has a clear line between its opponents, who view maintaining heterosexual marriages as a moral issue, and its proponents, who want equal rights for all. The arguments for and against are diametrically opposed to each other, which makes the prospects of satisfying both sides seem near impossible. However, this simply isn’t true.

It’s typical for both sides to stop talking and start shouting when we can’t reach consensus. We frame the issue into a debate where one side must win and the other must lose rather than work towards understanding each other. This is utterly tragic for a society that champions freedom of speech, which our founding fathers saw as necessary for actually resolving conflict and discovering truth. However, freedom of speech is only as valuable as those willing to listen. Therefore, both sides need to work toward understanding each other.

Proponents of same-sex marriage should not overlook the role that traditional values play in American society, while at the same time those against same-sex marriage should understand that equal rights for all is a moral issue as well. Securing the sanctity of marriage (if that’s what a certain religious doctrine wants to do) and providing equal legal rights for all citizens is possible, though this escapes us because we have framed the argument incorrectly. We shouldn’t ask whether same-sex marriage should be legal; we should ask whether there is anything inherently flawed with the legal marriage system itself? There is – the fact that it’s a legal system. We set in motion an inevitable conflict between civil rights and religious values once the state recognized the legality of a religious institution.

How do we solve this problem? It depends on the measures we are willing to take to create a moral society that recognizes everyone legally. The simple solution is that the state should leave the business of marriage. If the religious constraints of marriage cannot accommodate equal access for all citizens, then it should assume no legal authority at all. America places much value on the religious spheres of life and that’s where marriage should remain. This is not to say that marriage has not served any functional purpose for the state because it has as far as providing benefits and civil liberties between two people. This should not be ignored because Americans have built their families, homes, and jobs around this. These benefits and liberties should still be celebrated and enjoyed by all but in a purely legal way which could easily be done through a form of civil union or partnership.

This is not to suggest that the issue could be solved simply by changing the language of things. Rather this is an important understanding of the distinction between religious and legal institutions. Marriage is a sacrament and has a very personal meaning to married couples. Any new form of civil union that serves as a function to provide couples with the benefits of our current marriage system would not attempt to replace the sanctity of marriage or undermine the meaning of it in any way. However, it would serve as a new universal legal measure that provides all citizens with the opportunity to build their lives around the shared benefits that the current system offers.

If a couple wants marriage, than they must turn to only their religious community because the state should no longer be in the business of marrying anyone, gay or straight. Instead, the state can assure everyone equal legal recognition of unions or partnerships where all can enjoy and share benefits and civil liberties. The fact that there are still parts of society that a democratic government fails to recognize is appalling. It is time that we recognize a clear distinction between the religious and the legal so that religion no longer has the legal right to discriminate.