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You are here: Home / Justice / LGBTQ Rights / Gay Rights are Human Rights / Saturday Morning Open Thread: We {Heart} America

Saturday Morning Open Thread: We {Heart} America

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Journalist Masha Gessen, in the Washington Post:

… When I talk to LGBT refugees from Russia about what it’s like to live in New York, the first thing they mention is the safety. Which is funny and awful, because they are talking about the most basic kind: physical safety. People are no longer afraid of being beaten or killed, or having their kids taken from them. Other than that, they have no safety net: no job, nor the right to look for one; no friends, other than those they met at the Russian LGBT refugee support group; no papers. This last one becomes the biggest missing piece. “Bez bumazhki ty bukashka,” an old Soviet song goes: “Without a piece of paper you are but a tiny bug.”

And a tiny bug is exactly what you feel like if you live in New York City, speak with an accent, look like you’re under 40 and have no papers. No rental apartment, no alcoholic drinks, no Costco card for you. One of the most prized recipes exchanged among new refugees, second perhaps to securing a good immigration lawyer, is how to get a New York state ID. It involves opening bank accounts, engaging in a certain number of financial transactions and traveling to the outer boroughs on a regular basis — because not all bank branches will open an account for someone with a foreign passport and without a Social Security number. Refugees also coach one another on how to get an apartment through a co-signer, how to get your emergency-room bill adjusted down and where to find free English classes.

And then there’s the one place in New York City where you can get a gorgeous bumazhka — a piece of paper — recognizing you and a partner as a married couple. You can use your Russian passport with its tourist visa. Hell, the visa can even be expired. You need one witness. Pay $25, and a city official will say to you: “By the powers vested in me by the State of New York, I now pronounce you married. You can seal your union with a kiss.” Then you kiss. In public, safely…

And I do not even believe in marriage. I’m opposed to it as an institution, and I’ve spoken about it publicly often enough that the Kremlin youth movement has declared me the No. 1 enemy of the traditional Russian family. But it turned out that getting settled in the United States with my partner and our three kids would be a lot easier if we got married. When Darya and I wed in late March, we frustrated our chosen minister by trying to refuse to say vows as part of the ceremony. In the end, each of us ended up writing our own vows. In hers, Darya said she was not so much wedding me as she was marrying the United States of America.

“We are still in the honeymoon period,” she said of her new country. “I’m sure we will have our ups and downs. But I will always love her for enabling me to marry the woman I love.”…

Reader Interactions

61Comments

  1. 1.

    raven

    So how come my friends who got married in NYC can’t come back from down under?

  5. 5.

    Baud

    WaPo

    The Obama administration on Friday ended a 33-year ban on Medicare coverage for gender reassignment surgery — a major victory for transgender rights and a decision that is likely to put pressure on more insurers to provide coverage for such services.

    The ruling by a Department of Health and Human Services board was in response to a lawsuit filed last year on behalf of Denee Mallon, 74, a transgender woman and army veteran from Albuquerque.

  6. 6.

    raven

    @Baud: One is American the other an Aussie. They were legally married in NYC but the feds don’t recognize that for a green card.

  8. 8.

    Baud

    @raven:

    feds don’t recognize that for a green card.

    Oh, that is strange. I thought the feds had eliminated all discriminatory policies.

  9. 9.

    Baud

    I am a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident in a same-sex marriage to a foreign national. Can I now sponsor my spouse for a family-based immigrant visa?

    A1: Yes, you can file the petition. You may file a Form I-130 (and any applicable accompanying application). Your eligibility to petition for your spouse, and your spouse’s admissibility as an immigrant at the immigration visa application or adjustment of status stage, will be determined according to applicable immigration law and will not be denied as a result of the same-sex nature of your marriage.

    uscis.gov/family/same-sex-marriages

  13. 13.

    Steeplejack (tablet)

    @Baud:

    Yes. My brother’s partner (married in Maryland a year ago) was finally able to get his green card in December.

  14. 14.

    geg6

    OT, but it’s 125 years since the Great Johnstown Flood. I have relatives who died in the flood. They found my great-great-grandmother hanging from a telegraph pole after the waters receded. We have old pics of her in her coffin, surrounded by the family still living in one of those old weird funeral photos that were common at the time. The flood was caused by the steel oligarchs wanting to have a playground for themselves and stupidly building a subpar dam to create their private lake. It’s the reason my mom’s family were forevermore liberals (with some real socialists sprinkled in). It’s what made my grandfather a huge union man, striking for union representation and getting beaten up and threatened by the thugs at J&L Steel in Aliquippa, PA. And it’s what made my mom an activist during the Civil Rights era here. It was a tragedy, but it changed my family forever, creating our own little army of liberals within our family. I always mark the date because it was such a central event for us.

  16. 16.

    Baud

    @geg6:

    Today, the Village would spend all their time lamenting the poor oligarchs who lost their favorite private lake when the dam collapsed.

  17. 17.

    geg6

    @Baud:

    True, but it wasn’t much different then either. It was the Gilded Age, after all and the Mellons and Fricks and their ilk were the Kochs of their day.

  19. 19.

    Botsplainer

    @geg6:

    jaha.org/FloodMuseum/clubanddam.html

    The club did engage in periodic maintenance of the dam, but made some harmful modifications to it. They installed fish screens across the spillway to keep the expensive game fish from escaping, which had the unfortunate effect of capturing debris and keeping the spillway from draining the lake’s overflow. They also lowered the dam by a few feet in order to make it possible for two carriages to pass at the same time, so the dam was only about four feet higher than the spillway. The club never reinstalled the drainage pipes so that the reservoir could be drained.

    When the dam broke on May 31, 1889, only about a half-dozen members were on the premises, as it was early in the summer season. They left immediately following the disaster, and the club members were largely silent about the tragedy. A small crowd of angry flood survivors went up to the club and broke into some of the buildings, breaking windows and destroying furniture, but no major damage was done.

    No other disaster prior to 1900 was so fully described. Writing for the masses, journalists exaggerated, repeated unfounded myths, and denounced the South Fork Club. As coverage of the horror of the event began to recede, the media began to look at the causes of the disaster. Residents of Johnstown, and Americans in general, began to turn their wrath toward the members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. Newspapers all across the country denounced the sportsmen’s lake. The Chicago Herald’s editorial on the responsibility of the South Fork Club was entitled “Manslaughter or Murder?” On June 9, the Herald carried a cartoon that showed the members of the club drinking champagne on the porch of the clubhouse while, in the valley beneath them, the Flood is destroying Johnstown. In Johnstown, the Tribune resumed publication on June 14. In the first edition following the disaster, the Tribune’s editor George Swank placed blame for the disaster clearly on the Club: “We think we know what struck us, and it was not the work of Providence. Our misery is the work of man.” A New York Times headline read, ” An Engineering Crime – The Dam of Inferior Construction, According to the Experts,” A New York World headline on June 7 declared “The Club Is Guilty.” However, most news articles did not mention club members by name.

    Of course, there are never any genuine expressions or true sacrifice – “shared sacrifice” is always for the little guy.

    In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, the club contributed 1,000 blankets to the relief effort. A few of the club members, most notably Robert Pitcairn, served on relief committees. About half of the club members also contributed to the disaster relief effort, including Andrew Carnegie, whose company contributed $10,000. Later, he would rebuild Johnstown’s library – that library building today houses the Johnstown Flood Museum (read more about Carnegie, the building and its history here). However, no club member ever expressed a sense of personal responsibility for the disaster.

    The club had very few assets aside from the clubhouse, but a few lawsuits were brought against the club anyway. Legal action against individual club members was difficult if not impossible, as it would have been necessary to prove personal negligence – and the power and influence of the club members is hard to overestimate. In the end, no lawsuit against the club was successful.

  21. 21.

    PurpleGirl

    @geg6: Wow, that is some family history. Thank you for telling us.

    I read a novel about the flood (In Sunlight, in a Beautiful Garden by Kathleen Cambor; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003). It went into detail about the dam and the lake it created at the private camp grounds. The description of the flood was horrific.

  22. 22.

    Baud

    @Botsplainer:

    We think we know what struck us, and it was not the work of Providence. Our misery is the work of man Obama.

    Updated for modern times.

  23. 23.

    geg6

    @PurpleGirl:

    David McCullough wrote a pretty good history of the flood that I read a few years ago. He’s a native of Pittsburgh, so he grew up with the history and knows it well. I recommend it.

  25. 25.

    JPL

    Stories that make me go hmmm…

    The divergent lives of a championship golfer, a high-rolling gambler and a billionaire investor have collided in a federal insider trading investigation…………………………………………….
    Federal authorities are examining a series of well-timed trades made by the golfer Phil Mickelson and the gambler William T. Walters, people briefed on the investigation said, focusing on trading in two different stock

    Poor Phil whined about paying too much money in taxes, so maybe he felt entitled to a little insider trading. link to the NYTimes

    @geg6: Thank you for sharing your family history with us. What a horrific event.

  26. 26.

    Ramalama

    @Baud: Weird. I thought when DOMA was lifted (almost a year ago now) the feds could / would be able to recognize same sex marriage that is legal in whatever state. The thing with me is that I have to prove I can financially support my spouse (french and canadian but not french canadian) first before she can get a green card.

  28. 28.

    PsiFighter37

    At the airport in New Orleans operating on less than 2 hours of sleep. NO is a helluva place to throw a bachelor party, but it would help if a few guys were more interested in having fun with the bachelor and less interested in getting themselves laid.

    I will be very, very happy to get some sleep tonight…after the wedding I am going to in Philly tonight is over. I’m also happy I will no longer be subjected to drinking Miller Lite and Bud Light…forgot how weak-ass those beers are.

    PF37 +needs to sleep

  29. 29.

    Baud

    @PsiFighter37:

    it would help if a few guys were more interested in having fun with the bachelor and less interested in getting themselves laid.

    Help whom?

  30. 30.

    PsiFighter37

    @Baud: The general vibe. Literally the only thing 3 of the loudest guys there were interested in talking about was their Tinder strategies (which I had never used and feels minorly appalling) and what their favorite sex positions were. It was mildly pleasing to see that none of these guys had enough game to pull anything off and ended up at the casino with the rest of us.

  33. 33.

    Chyron HR

    @Baud:

    It must be hard to be a True Progressive, knowing in one’s heart that Obama hates LGBT folks while watching helplessly as he presides over the largest expansion of LGBT rights in American history.

  34. 34.

    NotMax

    @PsiFighter37

    Those aren’t beers, those are bottled water with some beer flavoring.

    Got a cute (and true) bachelor party story, but arthritis too prominently stage center tonight to type that much.

  36. 36.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    I liked Bert Cooper’s dancing so much I wanted to post a tribute from a few years earlier in his career. By BC of course I mean Robert Morse.

    Bonus: From the album that first got me interested in jazz as a teenager, OP trio with the incredibly soulful and playful Clark Terry.

  37. 37.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @geg6: I was on the road years ago all over PA and elsewhere and the stop in Johnstown and seeing and learning the history there remains one of my most vivid memories. Places all begin to blur together on those tours but that stop really stood out. You really have to see it, just the geography involved, to get it viscerally. Amazing and moving saga.

  38. 38.

    Baud

    Gov. Christie on Friday defended his decision to award raises to more than two dozen staffers this year, saying he had trimmed the overall Governor’s Office budget by $240,000 since the start of his second term in January.

    “People who take on more responsibilities deserve more pay,” Christie told reporters at a restaurant in Nashville before he was to deliver a keynote speech at the Tennessee Republican Party’s 2014 Statesmen’s Dinner.
    ……
    Christie said four senior staffers had left the Governor’s Office in recent months, allowing lower-level staff to take on greater responsibility and increased pay.

  39. 39.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @PsiFighter37: I have been to many bachelor parties, as best man I even threw a couple. I found most of them to be so tiresome that I bailed when they headed for the stripper bars. The first one I threw had a hot tub on a gravel bar of the Meramec River, GFs and wives invited. Lots of good food and plenty of cheap beer.

    The 2nd one I threw was an epic event, a night of true drunken derangement and debauchery in the wilds of Crawford Co near the Courtois Creek. Everyone had to come in drag. The groom didn’t know. His first hint was when they pulled up as I was crossing the dirt drive in front of the cabin in a black mini-skirt with thigh highs and stiletto heels (can you say sssssssssmokin!!!! I was so hot I sizzled) yelling “Where’s my purse? I can’t find my purse!” He said I was the ugliest thing he had ever seen. ;-(

    Then I held up the red teddy we had for him and he realized he “ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”

    It went down hill from there.

  40. 40.

    Poopyman

    @geg6: My great-grandfather crewed the first relief train that got in after the flood. Before moving to Pgh he’d grown up in Portage, so he knew the geography. We don’t have any stories handed down because he never talked about what they found.

    Our family worked the railroads, but ditto regarding unions. One favorite old story was about the Pinkerton who came calling on my grandmother’s sister in ’98. Her brothers chased him into the Mon. Good thing too, or they’d have killed him.

  41. 41.

    Cacti

    I just can’t believe that anyone would be a refugee from the great progressive paradise that is Vladimir Putin’s Russian Federation.

  42. 42.

    Botsplainer

    @Cacti:

    I just can’t believe that anyone would be a refugee from the great progressive paradise that is Vladimir Putin’s Russian Federation.

    I can almost hear the balalaika intro to Lev Zelenuiles’ Bog blagoslovit Rossiyu.

  43. 43.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Botsplainer: Well, that segue lets me post this, although far too obscure for probably anyone here. A rewording of the Soviet anthem, in an, uhm, anti-Russian manner, in Ukrainian, sung by a reasonably large and good choir. When the refrain begins with the line “Die, empire, o kingdom of the anti-Christ” you know it isn’t very subtle.

  44. 44.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Steeplejack (tablet): The US government recognises marriages between citizens and non-citizens carried out in the US and abroad but marriage doesn’t guarantee permanent resident status and/or right to work (green card) for the non-citizen in question. I don’t think anything ordered by the Executive, passed by Congress or by assorted State legislatures changes that. Right to reside and green cards are dealt with case by case.

  46. 46.

    Kay

    I had my first personally hostile Obamacare encounter. I had to go to a trophy shop here. It’s a one-man shop and he buys blank trophies and engraves them and youth sport groups and schools award the trophies in various contests.
    So I’m a publicly-identified Democrat in a majority GOP area because I’ve been in the newspaper and things and anyway he and I know each other slightly.
    I order the quiz bowl trophy the school needs and he says “I may have to shut down because of a little thing called Obamacare”
    I ask a couple of questions and Obamacare doesn’t have anything to do with it, he “may have to shut down” because he tires of filing federal income tax – not paying federal income tax, he doesn’t make enough to pay, just filing. Sick of that, he is, and the additional “paperwork” required for Obamacare will force him to shut down what is his failing trophy shop.
    So now we have a joke in this house, “because of a little thing called Obamacare” is our all-purpose excuse for failure of any kind. My 11 year old loves it. Cracks him right up.

  47. 47.

    rikyrah

    this biyotch here:

    …………………..

    Michelle Obama’s ‘Let’s Move!’ goes too far

    By Kathleen Parker,

    Published: May 30

    To hear tell, the mean ol’ GOP is waging war on Michelle Obama and, brace yourself, America’s children.

    Got it?

    The newest war on women and children relates to the first
    lady’s well-intentioned but disastrous school nutrition program,
    otherwise known as the Dumpster Derby.

    First to good intentions:

    Kudos
    to Obama for recognizing and trying to address childhood obesity. If you think health care is expensive now, wait until these little human pillows reach adulthood and then, assuming their hearts hold out, advanced age. Assuming, too, that our bottom-line bureaucrats haven’t begun recycling high-maintenance humans by then. Might want to keep an eye on the Soylent Green market.

    No, I’m not suggesting death panels. I’m employing hyperbole in the service of a point, the necessary clarification of which highlights our mind-numbing politics and our nation’s diminishing sentience.

    washingtonpost.com/opinions/kathleen-parker-michelle-obamas-lets-move-goes-too-far/2014/05/30/082576…

  49. 49.

    Bex

    @rikyrah: That column makes no sense (but I repeat myself). From what I’ve seen, the brat factor is a big one. A whole lot of food kids are served at home gets tossed and they are allowed to fill up on junk. How about “get the plugs our of your ears, Kathleen, and make friends with reality.”

  50. 50.

    WaterGirl

    @rikyrah: I finished reading the article at the link. The words that come to mind are whiny, bitchy, petty and ridiculously rude. Wow, you really did yourself proud with this one, Kathleen.

    Edit: is it wrong to say that I’d kind of like to smack Kathleen Parker?

  52. 52.

    Woodrowfan

    has anyone else been getting :Google is taking too long to load” errors lately?

  53. 53.

    Gin & Tonic

    @gogol’s wife: I figured you might be one of the only people here to get it. The perpetrator of that apparently has a whole album out, called “Severe Ukrainianization.”

  54. 54.

    Marc

    @Kay: At least when his shop goes under, he’ll still be able to afford doctor visits and prescription drugs because of a little thing called Obamacare.

    …although apparently in that case, it’s the Affordable Care Act now.

  55. 55.

    J R in WV

    The more modern disaster like the Johnstown flood was the Buffalo Creek flood in West Virginia, which wiped out several small towns when a completely non-engineered dam built of rubble and solid coal waste holding back millions of cubic yards of liquid coal waste. The state, in the person of governor Arch MooreI(R), father of Shelly Moore Capito(R), candidate for U S Senate, settled with the coal company which piled up the “dam” for a total of one million dollars.

    The Gov bargained them down in a stunning job of looking out for his own self interest. The pile of rubble pushed down the hollow removed all signs of infrastructure, building foundations were gone, and many missing people were never found.

    I don’t have numbers committed to memory, but the death toll was in the hundreds. It too was a completely man-made tragedy.

    W Va still has many coal waste dams, but they are safer because of the involvement of engineers and inspectors. When heavy rains take place they will use the agency’s helicopter to survey many dams quickly for any sign of impending failure, and occasionally find that sludge must be removed from the inpoundment to relieve pressure on the “dam”, using very large pumps to spew black glop into the stream below the “dam”. Using the word dam loosely.

  58. 58.

    Ruckus

    @Cacti:
    I know that was tongue in cheek but I’ve known several and I can. Only one thought he was better off in the USSR. (That tells you how long ago that was) and did that ever set off someone else standing nearby, this person going into detail about living in both countries and how much better the USA was. Most of the surrounding crowd had lived here their entire lives and had no clue, so it was an eye opener for many.

  59. 59.

    MaryRC

    Interesting situation. Masha Gessen has self-identified strongly as being anti-marriage, both traditional and same-sex. And now she’s married. Was this article her attempt to get out in front of any controversy her marriage might cause?

  61. 61.

    Older

    @raven: I read that. Tears came to my eyes. I wanted to comment, but I found that I could not comment unless I would give fassbook access to my inbox and my address book. Not doing that. This happens more and more lately. They want the right to steal everyone’s identity. Too bad.

Comments are closed.