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7 Things List: June 26, 2015
Our entertainment and events highlights this week include NYC pride on the 46th anniversary of Stonewall, the sound of kissing boys in the street, and the magic men of that XXL sequel.
Advocate.com Editors
www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/2015/06/26/7-things-list-june-26-2015
Ted Cruz Wants To Be Able To Vote Out Supreme Court Justices
After calling the last day “some of the darkest 24 hours in our nation’s history,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is now calling for Supreme Court justices to face elections.
In a National Review op-ed published Friday, Cruz chastised the high court for its decisions to reject a major challenge to Obamacare and to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide.
“Both decisions were judicial activism, plain and simple,” Cruz writes. “Both were lawless.”
To challenge that “judicial activism,” Cruz said he is proposing a constitutional amendment to require Supreme Court justices to face retention elections every eight years.
“The decisions that have deformed our constitutional order and have debased our culture are but symptoms of the disease of liberal judicial activism that has infected our judiciary,” Cruz writes. “A remedy is needed that will restore health to the sick man in our constitutional system. Rendering the justices directly accountable to the people would provide such a remedy.”
Under Cruz’s proposed amendment, justices would have to be approved by a majority of American voters as well as by the majority of voters in least half of the states. If they failed to reach the required approval rating, they would be removed from office and barred from serving on the Supreme Court in the future.
Cruz, who is running for president in 2016, was among many Republican candidates criticizing the justices after a strong week for liberals at the court.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), who is expected to jump in the presidential race soon, also offered up a proposed constitutional fix to combat the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision. In a statement, Walker argued for an amendment to define marriage as between one man and one woman — a proposal Cruz has also floated.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
News: Kansas City, Harry Potter, Mars, Tom Daley
Kansas City elects its first LGBT city council member.
32 of the best brand tweets celebrating marriage equality.
Adam Lambert stuns on the red carpet for Logo TV’s 2015 Trailblazer Honors.
J.K. Rowling announces that a Harry Potter stage play will debut next year.
Celebrate marriage equality and #FlashbackFriday with Queen’s “We Are The Champions”
Will Catholic Republican side with the Pope on climate change?
Poll finds Hillary Clinton’s lead over New Hampshire Democrats dwindling.
Tom Daley says he wants to get married and have children someday.
Andrew Sullivan: It Is Accomplished. “I think of the gay kids in the future who, when they figure out they are different, will never know the deep wound my generation—and every one before mine—lived through: the pain of knowing they could never be fully part of their own family. I think, more acutely, of the decades and centuries of human shame and darkness and waste and terror that defined gay people’s lives for so long. I think of all those who supported this movement who never lived to see this day, who died in the ashes from which this phoenix of a movement emerged. This momentous achievement is their victory too—for marriage, as Kennedy argued, endures past death.”
Channing Tatum and the other Magic Mike XXL men kick off the film’s premiere in Hollywood
Bristol Palin gets knocked up again.
NASA ponders where to land astronauts on Mars.
Gunman disguised as tourist opens fire at Tunisian hotel, killing 37.
Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson is building his own private Middle Earth with a live-in Hobbit hole inside his New Zealand mansion.
A brief history of Chicago’s Pride parade. “Before diving in, it’s important to note that the gay community in Chicago took root long before Stonewall. Way back in 1924, Chicago’s Henry Gerber formed “the nation’s first chartered LGBT rights organization.” (Just last week, the U.S. Department of Interior declared the Henry Gerber House in Old Town a National Historic Landmark, the second-ever LGBT-related property to earn such a distinction.) But while Chicago would continue to see gay activists rise to prominence in the coming decades, the first gay pride parade wouldn’t be until June 27, 1970.”
And in case you haven’t noticed, you can add a rainbow filter to your Facebook profile photo now.
The post News: Kansas City, Harry Potter, Mars, Tom Daley appeared first on Towleroad.
Kyler Geoffroy
Bobby Jindal Blocking Marriages in Louisiana
The arch-conservative governor and GOP presidential candidate is doing what he can to stop same-sex weddings in his state.
Neal Broverman
www.advocate.com/politics/politicians/2015/06/26/bobby-jindal-blocking-marriages-louisiana
Today, #LoveWins Along With the 14th Amendment
June 26th, 2015: Gay marriage ended — suddenly, in a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling, it became just marriage.
I remember arguing so publicly 11 years ago on CNN and every other news network. Let’s revisit those arguments.
And now, it’s law, and nothing that man from Concerned Women was worried about is happening, will happen, has happened. Just the opposite. For most people in America, nothing really changed as each state legalized, and the patchwork of marriage began.
And now, that fight is over for good.
I remember its real beginnings. AIDS. I was there during the 1980s when a president wouldn’t mention the word, and a world turned its back on the sick. I remember ambulances not taking patients, doctors not touching people, nurses turning away and ultimately, funeral homes refusing bodies. In the 20th century, no less.
And I remember families shutting out loved ones. Couples that had been together 20 years — one would get sick and the other was locked out of the hospital room, and ultimately locked out of their own house by family who had claims. You see, no marriage, no claims to property, to visitation — nothing. Suddenly, when one got sick, the other lost their life and often their belongings. And it was legal.
The only way to rectify that was marriage, period, end of story. And the fight began.
Now, in the age of barebacking and PrEP therapies, younger gay men don’t remember the root of the struggle, how it came to a head, finally, in the 1980s with the advent of that terrible disease that still had no cure and no really effective, safe, long-term treatment.
We owe this day, those on the side of marriage equality, to the Republicans in more ways than one. First, there is the beautifully drafted 14th Amendment to the Constitution; one written at time of reconstruction, after slavery. It states:
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
In other words, equal equals equal, and since marriage is contract law, you can’t discriminate based on gender, sexual orientation, race, or any other reason. Period.
Five of the justices got that. The other four, not so much, but like dinosaurs, they are falling in the tar pit of the wrong side of history, screaming and flailing about as they go. But going they are.
In one week the court has said yes, you can keep your health care America. Then the people said that a 150 year old flag was, in fact, bigotry and hatred. And now, the court again has said that gay people can marry in all 50 states. Not a bad week for Americans.
Reaction all day has been tears, hugs from strangers, congratulatory remarks. Finally.
I will save the nay-saying about gays in other countries and the atrocities that still exists. I will spare the fact that ENDA, which guarantees I can’t be fired for being gay, still isn’t the law of all 50 states.
Because today it wasn’t #LoveWins. Today #WeAllWon because that fabulous document and that great amendment did its job.
Justice Kennedy, bless you. May joy find you and may your family be blessed. Because today, you created so many families in one fell stroke.
To all of you out there that have fought, straight, gay, whatever, I love you. Thank you. Today you didn’t slap us down or make us feel second class. Today, we are Americans, one and all.
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From David Beckham To Russell Tovey, Celebs Can’t Contain Their Excitement For Marriage Equality
With today’s historic ruling that every American is equal and we can get married in all fifty states, many of our favorite celebrities were as quick to celebrate as we were. Gay entertainers such as Ricky Martin, Sir Ian McKellen and Sean Hayes, as well as our icons like Madonna and Jennifer Hudson and supportive athletes like David Beckham congratulated each of us for the long struggle that led to today’s victory.
Scroll down to see some of our favorite notes, photos and videos.
David Beckham let his rainbow flag fly.
A photo posted by David Beckham (@davidbeckham) on Jun 26, 2015 at 12:00pm PDT
Jennifer Hudson’s heart has always been in the right place.
I am so emotional & overjoyed with this amazing step in our country’s move toward equality #LoveWins #MarriageEquality A photo posted by Jennifer Hudson (@iamjhud) on Jun 26, 2015 at 11:05am PDT
Frankie J. Alvarez got particularly animated about today’s victory.
A photo posted by Frankie J. Alvarez (@sexytosomeppl) on Jun 26, 2015 at 9:48am PDT
Tyson Beckford didn’t post a nearly nude pic for once, but we’re OK with it…this time.
A photo posted by Tyson C. Beckford (@tysoncbeckford) on Jun 26, 2015 at 9:44am PDT
Nev Schulman got caught expressing himself.
A photo posted by Nev Schulman (@nevschulman) on Jun 26, 2015 at 9:46am PDT
Madonna is living for love today.
Finally And at Last! The Revolution Of Love has Begun! ??????????#livingforlove ??#rebelheartsunite A photo posted by Madonna (@madonna) on Jun 26, 2015 at 9:23am PDT
Ricky Martin spelled it out.
#JusticeFORALL thank you #scotus
A photo posted by Ricky (@ricky_martin) on Jun 26, 2015 at 9:21am PDT
Donnie Wahlberg became one with Jordan Knight.
#LoveWins #LoveAlwaysWins A photo posted by DONNIE WAHLBERG (@donniewahlberg) on Jun 26, 2015 at 8:44am PDT
Russell Tovey is extra magnetic today.
#ugorondinone truth! X #artstar #lovewins #lovesavestheday
A photo posted by Russelltovey (@russelltovey) on Jun 26, 2015 at 8:22am PDT
Andy Cohen thought back to the Stonewall Uprising.
A photo posted by Andy Cohen (@bravoandy) on Jun 26, 2015 at 7:38am PDT
Joe Jonas showed his true stripes.
???????? GO AMERICA! A photo posted by J O E J O N A S (@joejonas) on Jun 26, 2015 at 7:38am PDT
Darren Criss knows where to find a good party.
A photo posted by Darren Criss (@darrencriss) on Jun 26, 2015 at 12:49pm PDT
Vicious stars and NY Pride grand marshals Sir Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi blasted some Queen.
And perhaps our favorite is Sean Hayes and hubby Scott Icenogle, who indulged us with an old-school musical salute.
What’s better than a supreme taco from Taco Bell? The Supreme Court of the United States. Thank you for making marriage legal for EVERYONE today. Best birthday gift ever. Here’s a celebration video from my legal husband and me. #MarriageEqualityForAll #LoveWins #SCOTUS
Posted by Sean Hayes on Friday, 26 June 2015
Jeremy Kinser
Vivian Gornick’s ‘The Odd Woman and the City: A Memoir’: Book Review
There’s an astonishing moment about halfway through Vivian Gornick’s moving, trenchant new book about life in New York. Rushing onto the subway at 14th Street, late for an appointment, she notices a man with a seven- or eight-year-old boy sitting across from her. The boy is deaf—he and the man sign to each other—and “grotesquely deformed,” with “the face of a gargoyle.” But as the stations pass and the man and the boy become absorbed in their conversation, “fingers flying, both nodding and laughing…I find myself thinking, These two are humanizing each other at a very high level.” Soon she finds her perception has changed: “the boy looks beautiful to me, and the man beatific.”
It isn’t really the boy or the man who are changed, of course, but the writer who watches them, and the humanizing potential of urban life is the theme that binds together this “collage” of vignettes, images, overheard conversation, musings, and excursions into literature and history. For years Gornick has walked the streets of Manhattan almost every day, and she finds her “sore and angry heart” eased by what she finds there, “the fifty different ways people struggle to remain human,” “the urgency of life.” At night, looking at the buildings surrounding her, she feels herself “embraced by the anonymous ingathering of city dwellers.”
Such moments offer a respite from a persistent sense of discontent Gornick anatomizes in these pages. She takes her title from George Gissing’s 1893 novel ‘The Odd Women’, in whose portrayal of feminists Gornick recognizes herself. Throughout her career Gornick has pursued what she calls a “politics of damage,” impelled by “an impassioned sense of having been born into preordained social equity.”
But Gornick realizes that her discontent has become something she cherishes. “It was then that I understood the fairy tale about the princess and the pea,” she writes. “She wasn’t after the prince, she was after the pea. That moment when she feels the pea beneath the twenty mattresses, that is her moment of definition.” For Gornick, too, grievance is an important, maybe an inalienable, part of her identity.
For Gornick’s mother, “to find love was not simply to have sexual happiness, it was to achieve a place in the universe.” There’s plenty of “sexual happiness” in these pages, but Gornick’s romantic relationships are always short and often fraught with tension. From adolescence Gornick has had the intuition that the romantic connection she sometimes longs for is at odds with the “revolution” she envisions. At times, she says, “I consciously felt men to be members of a species separate from myself. Separate and foreign.”
Not romantic love, then, but friendship is at the center of Gornick’s life. One of the most affecting threads of the book concerns her friendship with Leonard, a gay man she meets with every week over the course of many years, her most enduring relationship. “The fact is, ours is the most satisfying conversation either of us has,” Gornick writes; “our subject is the unlived life.” Leonard appears irregularly through these pages, often vying with Gornick for the most disaffected commentary. “I’m not the right person for this life,” Gornick sighs at one point. “Who is?” Leonard replies.
Gornick’s love for Leonard is evident and undeniable. “The self-image each of us projects to the other is the one we carry around in our heads,” she writes, “the one that makes us feel coherent.” But even here she keeps a distance. But, while she was tempted in the beginning of their friendship to make grand pronouncements—“You are me, I am you, it is our obligation to save each other”—she soon recognizes that their friendship doesn’t displace her essential sense of solitude. “What we are, in fact,” she realizes, “is a pair of solitary travelers slogging through the country of our lives, meeting up from time to time at the outer limit to give each other border reports.”
For Gornick, no one could be as constant or sustaining a companion as the city itself, and her memoir is at its most beautiful when it rhapsodizes about New York City. Gornick frequently turns to poets as she meditates on urban life—Frank O’Hara, Hart Crane, Samuel Johnson, Charles Reznikoff—but one of this book’s greatest virtues is the pleasure she takes in the voices she encounters on the street. She hears poetry in everyday speech, which isn’t just a medium for communication but a constant source of surprise, delight, beauty. This is why “most people are in New York,” she writes: “because they need evidence—in large quantities—of human expressiveness.”
‘The Odd Woman and the City’ is a rich and compelling store of such evidence. It’s destined to be an enduring volume in the literature of urban life—and required reading for anyone who loves New York.
Previous reviews…
David Crabb’s ‘Bad Kid: A Memoir’
Mark Merlis’ ‘JD’
Helen Humphreys’ ‘The Evening Chorus’
Kim Fu’s ‘For Today I Am A Boy’
Connect with Garth Greenwell on Facebook and Twitter.
The post Vivian Gornick’s ‘The Odd Woman and the City: A Memoir’: Book Review appeared first on Towleroad.
Garth Greenwell
Vivian Gornick’s ‘The Odd Woman and the City: A Memoir’: Book Review
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