Ireland did it. The country said “yes” to gay marriage over the weekend.

Needless to say, it was a happy, celebratory occasion. We couldn’t be more happy about this big shift and hope more countries do this soon, too. Watch some footage after the gay marriage vote came in below.

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Children of same sex marriage are happier and healthier than their peers, according to new research out of Australia.

Researchers have found that children fare better in terms of physical health and social wellbeing than children in the general population, according to a study at the University of Melbourne.

“It’s often suggested that children with same-sex parents have poorer outcomes because they’re missing a parent of a particular sex. But research my colleagues and I published in the journal BMC Public Health shows this isn’t the case,” lead researcher Simon Crouch wrote on the Conversation.

Researchers surveyed 315 same sex parents with a total of 500 children across Australia. In all, about 80 percent were female parents and 18 percent were male parents. Children of same sex marriage had higher scores in terms of general health and family cohesion. The study controlled for socioeconomic factors like education and income level.

The results could be due to equal distribution of household duties when compared to heterosexual couples. In other categories like emotional behavior and physical function, homosexual and heterosexual couples fared the same.

The study did have some shortcomings: it wasn’t randomized and it was small because there just aren’t that many same sex couples with kids yet.

“Many studies have demonstrated that children’s well-being is affected much more by their relationships with their parents, their parents’ sense of competence and security, and the presence of social and economic support for the family than by the gender or the sexual orientation of their parents,” said Siegel, co-author of the American Academy of Pediatrics report in The Washington Post.

Approximately 594,000 same sex couples currently live in the U.S., according to a 2010 U.S. census report. The percentage ranged from .29 percent in Wyoming to 4.01 percent in D.C. Currently, 19 states have legal same sex marriage and 31 states still have a ban in place. The most restrictive states in terms of same sex marriage adoption include Mississippi and Utah.

Related on EcoSalon

Gay Marriage Finally Passes in Illinois

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The Economics of Same Sex Marriage Bans

Image: Trent Kelley

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Gay marriage is legal in Illinois, and I couldn’t be happier.

This week, a bill legalizing gay marriage passed in Illinois. Despite growing up with parents who stayed married because they love each other (44 years and counting—go parents!), marriage was never a goal of mine. I didn’t stage mock weddings with my 20 Barbies and one Ken. I didn’t know that putting a pillowcase on your head and playing “bride” was a thing.

Getting married was never something I thought about, in part, because it wasn’t on the table. For more than 10 years I identified as a lesbian—the longest relationship I had before getting married to a man was with a woman.

In my mid-20s, my realization that I was actually bisexual—just like Lady Gaga!—totally freaked me out. Without my lesbian identity, who was I? I asked myself: Is bisexual a real identity?

As I became more comfortable with myself as a bisexual, I weeded out those who didn’t support me (just like I had to when I came out as gay), thanked my parents for their perpetually amazing acceptance of me as me, and just kind of did my thing when it came to dating. Ultimately, my thing led me to one really awesome man. A man that I could, and did, marry.

When I started dating men, simple privileges like the ability to hold hands in public totally blew my mind. I felt guilty that I could do that. I felt guilty for liking it. I felt like a sellout and a phony.

I didn’t yet understand that falling in love with a man didn’t negate my place in the LGBT community. A community that shaped who I am down to my core. A community that I haven’t left, despite the fact that I married a man. All of this explains why I’m going “like” crazy all over Facebook since gay marriage passed in Illinois!

Getting married didn’t matter to me until it did. And when it did, it became more important than ever for me to fight for marriage equality. That might seem counter-intuitive, but as someone who never had a marriage agenda (though I totally have a gay agenda), I understood and supported the legal and cultural importance of gay marriage as essential to living in a just society—but I didn’t get the emotional part.

Marriage is a declaration that you have chosen to be a family. You can’t choose who you love, but you sure can choose who you build a family with.

Civil unions were a nice start and remain a good choice for both gay and straight couples looking for an alternative to traditional marraige while securing some legal protection. But, in our society, marriage carries cultural heft, so classifying civil union as a gay thing and marriage as a straight thing lends far more importance to one than the other. With both open to all couples, civil unions can carry the same weight because the couple is choosing how to celebrate giving legal status to the relationship, not picking the only available option.

There have been a lot of haters out there since, well, forever, and the anti-gays have gotten more vocal since gay marriage passed in Illinois. Some of them will eventually catch up and get it, others will not.

But I am hopeful—in part because of this video of kids talking about gay marriage—that as we progress as a society, the biggest issues around same-sex weddings will be whether Cyndi Lauper’s “True Colors” gets over-played. I for one hope that it does.

Related on EcoSalon:

Until We All Can: Why I Won’t Marry My Baby Daddy

Sex by the Numbers: Happy and Gay Edition

North Carolina Pastor Advises Fencing Gays to Watch them Die

Image: The New Civil Rights Movement

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What does marriage even mean anymore?

When I tell people I’m having a baby in September, I notice a lot of them glance almost automatically at my left-hand, presumably looking for a wedding ring. Some have even outright asked me if I am- or going to be- getting married. My answer is always the same: “No. Not yet, anyway.”

It’s not that I don’t believe in the commitment. I love my partner dearly. After all, I’m having his child. When I was a young girl, I dreamed of that handsome prince from just about every Disney movie that I was told I was entitled to. Even though I wasn’t technically a princess, I couldn’t escape the belief that I deserved a knight in shining armor just as much as Snow White.

Modern men are many things wonderful. But most of them aren’t princes. It was easy to let relationships fail, citing the lack of true fairy tale love. But mostly, it was probably my fear. Or, like they say, the timing just wasn’t right. The glass slipper didn’t fit.

After I spent a lot of time alone, and a good bit of that relationshipless time with a male friend, we soon found ourselves falling in love. It’s hard now to even remember us just as friends, but it is that friendship that lies at the core of our love, and why we are starting a family together.

It’s not because both of us endured our parents’ ugly divorces that we’re choosing not to get married. It’s not that we’re scared, or don’t love each other enough to make that kind of commitment. We love a good gathering. And lord knows, we could use a new toaster. It’s our discomfort in the way our country now views marriage that has us feeling so disenchanted by one of the world’s oldest, and most beautiful rituals.

How could we have a wedding and invite our friends—many of whom are homosexuals and lesbians—to celebrate our heterosexual right to marry while they’re denied that same right just because of who they love?

A baby is certainly an incentive for us to get married, but the injustice for people whom we already know and love dearly is an even bigger reason for us not to, no matter the difficulties we’ll be faced with as unmarried parents. We have friends who’ve been in much longer relationships than ours who are unable to marry. And even though ten eleven states (go Delaware!) now allow gay marriage, the Supreme Court has yet to rule on the issue. More than that, there are those narrow-minded individuals who somehow feel threatened by same-sex couples. We allow these people their first amendment right to speak their shallow minds, of course, and they throw our Constitution right back at us, saying our forefathers would have never approved of same-sex marriage. (I won’t even go into the religious hypocrisy of the we’re-not-gay-we’re-just-serial-pedophiliac-sex-offenders aka the Catholic Church.)

It’s not like we won the lottery, and our unrich friends have to adjust to us now being millionaires. And it’s nowhere near the unbelievable comparisons homophobes make suggesting gay marriage is the same as marrying a relative or (sigh) a dog. I didn’t live through the Civil Rights movement. My parents weren’t even born when Hitler was rounding up our relatives and executing them by the trainload. So I can only look back at the mistakes my fellow Earthlings have made with hindsight and melancholy. It hurts to think about those millions of people who suffered at the hands of fear and entitlement. It hurts to know that it took so long to correct, and in some cases, we’re still battling those same issues. Gay people aren’t slaves. They’re not forced to live in the ghetto wearing yellow stars before their families are ripped apart, tortured and murdered. But they’ve certainly been unjustly treated. They’ve been demoralized, attacked, ridiculed. Before anyone is a homosexual, a lesbian or a heterosexual, we’re all human beings first.

The real issue here is we have a lot of issues around sexuality. We allow abuse and objectification to proliferate. We don’t stand up for victims of sexual abuse–regardless of their gender. We suppress our own feelings for fear of what others will say or do. That’s what this issue is about. It’s not about what our forefathers envisioned for America. It’s obvious they envisioned progressive leadership, compassion and an ability to grow as a nation as our needs and wants changed with the times.

I don’t believe that any of our gay friends would criticize us for marrying. They are friends, after all, and want to see us happy, just as much as we want the same for them. And many of them are probably going to be shocked to read this. But until we can all enjoy the same recognition of our love—regardless of our sexual orientation—I can’t possibly see marriage as an option anymore. And I know my daughter will understand. Perhaps one day, she’ll even get to attend her parents wedding.

Image: CarbonNYC

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Drawing Inspiration for the future from the corn belt.

Q: In what town can you visit a facility that maintains and preserves thousands of varieties of open-pollinated heirloom garden seeds, leave your bike unlocked all night, eat locally grown foods, and marry your same sex partner?

A: Decorah, Iowa pop. 8,118

I’ve got news for the coasts. You’re not all that. Well, ok Portland, Oakland, and Brooklyn, you really are all that, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t unassuming towns in the middle of this great nation of ours developing local economies, creating progressive communities, preserving the best of the past, and busting stereotypes.

What I did on my summer vacation was take a road trip through about two-thirds of the country. I saw some great scenery, burned too much gas, camped, swam, hiked, and visited countless gas station restrooms. But not once did I dine in a chain restaurant or shop in a conventional grocery store. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, the country is a-changin’ everywhere.

Demonstration Gardens

One of my favorite stops of all was the sweet little Northeast Iowa town of Decorah. The draw was Seed Savers Exchange, an organization that works to preserve biological diversity in our food supply by maintaining, regenerating, storing, and distributing heirloom garden seeds that have been passed down for generations.

Their carefully catalogued vaults preserve treasures such as Turkey Craw beans, a brown bean with snowy white speckles whose seed is said to have been first found in a wild turkey’s craw; Bloody Butcher corn, a drought resistant variety with blood red kernels dating back to 1845 Virginia; and Udumalapet eggplant, a stunning golden and lavender striped variety from India.

Demonstration Gardens

To understand why preserving these varieties matters to all of us (not just gardeners) consider that, according to the FAO (Food and Agriculture Association of the United Nations), about 75% of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops has been lost since the beginning of the 1900s. For example, in China, nearly 10,000 wheat varieties were cultivated in 1949, but by the 1970s, only about 1,000 varieties were in use.

For an example closer to home, in 1900 there were about 8,000 varieties of apples grown in the U.S. Today only about 100 varieties are grown commercially, with just 11 making up 90% of all apples sold in chain grocery stores (source: Seed Savers). This lack of genetic diversity leaves our food supply vulnerable to pests, climate change, and disease. Remember the great potato famine of Ireland was a result of a disease that decimated the one variety of potato grown in Ireland at the time.

Orchard Pig

In addition to the seed vaults, the 890 acre heritage farm boasts demonstration gardens where the seeds are regenerated, hiking trails, a trout stream, a herd of rare Ancient White Park Cattle,  and a few Gloucestershire Old Spot Pigs, who feed on the windfall in the historic apple orchard. (diversity is important for animals too!) There’s also a vineyard, with grapes particularly suited to the Iowa climate. It’s a magical place and well worth a visit. You can also order seeds from their online catalog.

Decorah’s Courthouse

One thing you might not expect to find in a small Midwestern town is a thriving gay wedding industry, but Decorah’s got that too. Remember in 2009 Iowa became the third state (after Massachusetts and Connecticut) to legalize same-sex marriage. Shortly thereafter, local resident, Amalia Vagts, Executive Director of Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries (elm.org), an organization whose mission is to expand ministry opportunities for publicly-identified LGBTQ Lutherans, her sister Rachel, a Decorah City Council member, and some friends launched the website Welcome in Decorah, to provide resources for gay couples hoping to marry in the town.

Though the site lists caterers, lodging, wedding venues, restaurants, and shops that welcome gay couples and their families, it’s a wedding resource for ALL couples wishing to marry in Decorah.

“My sister and I hatched the idea for this site the very day the decision came down,” said Vagts. “We were having coffee and talking about what a great place Decorah is for weddings, and I said, you know, we should create a destination wedding website. Finding the name was easy because it embodies what we wanted with the whole project…we just wanted everyone to know they are welcome in Decorah.”

Thus far 178 same sex couples have married in Decorah, all but 15 from outside the state, with the bulk coming from nearby Minnesota.

True to my heart, Decorah is also a place that supports its local farmers. Not only is there a farmers market downtown every Wednesday and Saturday May through October, but there’s a rockin’ food co-op. Oneota Co-op offers a great selection of local, organic produce, organic packaged foods, bulk foods, an extensive health and wellness section, and even a good selection of local meats, eggs, dairy, and sustainable seafood.

The deli, Water Street Café, is a popular lunchtime spot for downtown workers and residents and offers catering as well. It’s an amazing store, carrying everything a giant Whole Foods Market carries, but in a footprint that fits within a small-town city block. Thanks to the co-op our travel meals included such feasts as wild salmon with organic local squash, grass-fed local rib-eye steaks with tomatoes, housemade mozzarella, and basil—all cooked on a gas stove on our tailgate. We also enjoyed pastured eggs, local multi-grain bread, yogurt, and artisanal cheeses from Wisconsin all the way home. Take that McDonalds.

The orchard at Seed Savers Exchange

On one of our nights in Decorah, we attended a birthday party in a barn, where we sipped local microbrews among the fireflies and chatted with an interesting mix of musicians, co-op folks, professors at the local university, and city council members. Later, we sauntered back to our lodging, enjoying the warm evening air and noticing all the bikes that their owners had left unlocked, leaning against poles, or the sides of garages. One bike even sported a pannier with an unopened bag of potato chips sticking out. It’s really good to get out of San Francisco once in awhile and realize there’s a whole other world out there.

Do you have a favorite flyover zone? Tell us about it in the comments below.

Images: Mrsdkrebs (main), AJ Perling (courthouse), Vanessa Barrington

The post A Flyover Zone That’s Worth a Linger appeared first on EcoSalon.

A North Carolina pastor’s plan for the gays.

After a great month of progress in gay rights, the backlash is heating up. Hate speech is starting in southern churches and making its way across the internet.

First, there’s Charles L. Worley’s rant from the pulpit. Taking a page from the recent Women as Livestock bill, the pastor of Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden, North Carolina, has a great idea: Put all gays and lesbians in an electrified pen, throw down food occasionally and wait for them to die. His theory? Without the ability to reproduce with one another, all gay and lesbian people will all die off.

Only, there are a few loose nails in this fence (not the least of which is that the plan evokes images of Nazi Germany). What about the bisexuals? Do the bisexual men go with the gay men? What if a really butch woman gets in there and, for survival’s sake, makes a bunch more gay babies? What about the gender-benders, trannies and cross-dressers? Does a man dressed in lady gear go with the girls? (If so, see earlier problem.) But wait. This still won’t solve the gay problem long-term because most gay people were made by straight people. I think he’s gonna need a bigger pen because gay isn’t going away.

And neither are the homophobes. The next generation is being trained in Indiana. Check out this video of a kid singing, Ain’t No Homos Gonna Make it to Heaven to a cheering congregation. Ain’t no kids gonna make it to high school unless the adults in their lives stop focusing on teaching their kids to hate people and start focusing on teaching them grammar. But seriously, isn’t religion supposed to be about love? Where is the love in this?

Then there’s Ron Baity, founding pastor of Winston-Salem’s Berean Baptist Church and head of the anti-marriage equality organization Return America. He suggests that we legally prosecute all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. So, kind of the same idea as the electric fence but with more cost to the taxpayer — clearly, he could have innovated more like his pal Charles if he really wanted to woo his base.

And let’s not forget Sean Harris, another North Carolina pastor. He’s also concerned about the children. In a sermon, he suggested that parents “punch” effeminate boys and “crack that [limp] wrist.” That’s right, a less subtle form of child abuse than the one displayed by the adults who stood and applauded a child’s hateful song —a song that it’s likely he didn’t understand because, I assume, his parents aren’t cool with him learning anything about homosexuality (0r evolution) in school. Oh, and Harris now says he was joking. Not sure I get it.

Despite the volume of these hateful voices, I feel fairly confident that these people do not represent the majority. But just knowing that they are out there — to quote pastor Worley himself — “makes me pukin’ sick to think about.”

Photo: FredoAlvarez

The post North Carolina Pastor Advises Fencing Gays In to Watch Them Die appeared first on EcoSalon.

Growing up in the industrial Midwest, “California Dreaming” was more than just a song. It was an homage to someplace totally “other” – a shining state on the Pacific, full of light and beauty and forward-looking promise. When it came on the radio everyone immediately forgot what they were doing and sang of being “safe and warm.” It was mild all the time there, it seemed, and they had great pot, a governor called Moonbeam, and even solar power. If I just follow the sun, I thought, I’ll end up there.

While I took a crazily circuitous route, I did, in fact, follow the sun and about 15 years ago settled in just north of San Francisco. Though I’d been coming out here since I was a kid, and had experienced firsthand the progressive gestalt of the “mellow state,” it quickly became apparent to me as a new resident that all was not what I thought it would be. In many ways, massive California functions as a nation unto itself, as divided as any, as susceptible to reactionary thinking, bigotry and good old stupidity as anyplace else. In my time here, I’ve seen some horrendous political “leadership,” antisocial anti-tax measures and, most recently, Proposition 8, banning gay marriage. I often think to myself, where is progressive California? Was it ever even real?

When fits of Golden State cynicism arise, I can usually stop and meditate (yes, I learned to do that in California), and do a quick Cali gut check. Let’s do one now: Three reasons California is still cool.

Medical Marijuana and Marijuana Marijuana

NYT – October 1: A month before California voters decide the fate of a ballot initiative that would legalize marijuana, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a bill that essentially puts those caught possessing small amounts of the drug on the same level as those caught speeding on the freeway.

I’ve always believed that the nation’s marijuana laws are cruel and unusual – and inane – from both the standpoint of its medical potential and its “hey, man, chill with this” benefits. I also have a bit of a libertarian streak in me that says: “Leave me the hell alone if I want to put something in my body that evidence shows is merely really not too good for me and for which basic precautions can be taken to make sure no one but me is going to get hurt.”

But in the end, it’s not about the party. It’s about sound transactional taxation policy (economic sense) and getting our arms around prosecution and incarceration abuses that are way out of hand (resource management and simple compassion). As an ex-user, I may not get there with you, but its time has come. Despite the fact the state-wide Proposition 19, which would legalize marijuana for recreational use, may go down to (perhaps narrow) defeat, it won’t be too long before the craziness around this issue will finally come to an end – and it will happen in California.

Keeping Cool on the Climate

NYT – October 5: A measure to suspend [California’s] vanguard climate change law is heading for failure, by a margin of 49 percent to 37 percent, because voters see the law doing more economic good than harm, a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday showed.

Part of what makes this so cool is another headline: “Billionaire Koch brothers back suspension of California climate law” (LA Times, September 2). The law, AB 32 or the Global Warming Solutions Act, requires that one-third of California’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2020 (less than a quarter does today). The “hold off” measure, Proposition 23, was initially brought to us courtesy of funding from two Texas refiners, who have recently been joined by these maniac brothers, Charles and David, major tea-party enablers who operate oil refineries in states, you’ve guessed it, other than California. These two love to throw wads of cash at climate change deniers and renewable energy opponents. So welcome to California, guys. Boo-yah!

Like the marijuana issue, the progressive angle here is not about some Cali-hip movement. AB 32 limits greenhouse gas emissions and is creating a massive market for renewable energy, including solar, wind and other sources. According to polls, people are getting the money/jobs angle on all this and see California’s economic redemption as inexorably tied to being the global leader in the green economy. According to the NYT, the state “won 49 percent of the sector’s U.S. venture capital funding in the most recent quarter.” Of course, let’s check back in on this after Election Day, but it seems we’re seeing the forest for the trees on this one.

I Now Pronounce You…

SF Chronicle – September 3: The outlook for the legal defense of Proposition 8, California’s ban on same-sex marriage, grew cloudier Thursday as a state appellate court refused to order Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown to appeal a federal judge’s ruling overturning the measure.

The recent record on this one is not good. The passage of Proposition 8 (52.3 percent “yes,” 47.7 percent “no”) was nothing short of a disgrace for civil rights history. But while that speaks to pervasive homophobia in our society as whole (and perhaps also to ways in which the approach of legislation by initiative is so terribly flawed), it seems that our court system, our Republican governor and our Democratic attorney general know an assault – not to mention affront – to our nation’s Constitution when they see one.

Here’s the drill on this case: The Court of Appeal “dismissed without comment” a lawsuit, filed on behalf of a Los Angeles-area minister, seeking to require the state to defend the initiative after it was struck down as unconstitutional by a U.S. District Court in August. Both Brown and Schwarzenegger refused to defend it in federal court. Next up is a federal appeals court date in December when arguments will be heard on the sponsors’ legal standing and on the measure’s constitutionality.

California’s history, though stained by the passing of Proposition 8, remains at the forefront of civil rights for homosexuals. While the courts sort it out, I’m going to go ahead and remain hopeful that this measure will meet its doom.

This concludes our one-two-three listicle for your Cali consideration. Each one of these issues has key decisions coming up in the near future (two major ballot measures and one federal court case), so we’ll be keeping the pulse on California Cool as we go. In the meantime, I remain bullish on the Cal bear. And I still smile every time I cross the Golden Gate Bridge.

Image: tibchris

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