Maybe Covid is in its last throes. Maybe we’ll pull a legislative victory out of our hats. Maybe the economy will rebound, the midterms will be a pleasant surprise and 2022 will turn out to be an annus mirabilis… A girl can dream.
EVERYTHING WAS COMING UP ROSES
2021 was kind of a strange year, don’t you think? It was supposed to be a wonderful recovery from Donald Trump, from Covid, from nastiness in politics, from loneliness, from anti-gay rules and regulations, from everything we don’t like. It was supposed to be a renewal. Biden was coming. The progressive agenda was within reach. Vaccines were rolling out. Everything was coming up roses.
But what happened here? Vaccines aren’t quite enough. Our progressive agenda is too cumbersome to get through Congress. Trump is still making waves. Biden looks weak. Omicron is surging. No one knows what’s going to happen. Inflation seems to be an unexpected problem for the economy. And what’s with the “great resignation?”
I suppose it goes to show that we never know what’s around the corner. So with that in mind, maybe next year will be an unforeseen sensational leap forward. Maybe Covid is in its last throes. Maybe we’ll pull a legislative victory out of our hats. Maybe the economy will rebound, the midterms will be a pleasant surprise and 2022 will turn out to be an annus mirabilis.
A girl can dream.
COLLEGE MEN
I’m not seeing any big exciting news headlines as our first 2022 issue goes to press. Gay men earn more undergraduate degrees than their straight counterparts, with 52 percent finishing college versus 35 percent of heterosexual men. That’s according to a Notre Dame study that also showed gay men outpacing straight women in this department.
Okay, I just spent a full fifteen minutes trying to find out what percentage of gay women graduated from college in the hopes that I could highlight my cohort’s superiority. But strangely, I had to give up. (I’m not going to read a 99-page academic paper for this factoid.)
According to one of the authors, “women’s rising academic advantages are largely confined to straight women.”
“Although lesbian women historically outpaced straight women, in contemporary cohorts, lesbian and bisexual women face significant academic disadvantages,” wrote Joel Mittleman mysteriously. “Second, boys’ well-documented underperformance obscures one group with remarkably high levels of school success: gay boys.”
So, good for you, smartypants. Whatever. Oh you know I love you.
THE RITE STUFF
And here’s a thing. You may have read that Ted Cruz managed to hold up Senate confirmation for a whole bunch of American diplomats for sad mean little reasons of his own. Now that the confirmations are green lit, the Senate has confirmed an openly gay man as ambassador to Cameroon, where homosexuality is a crime. I kind of love it, but it might be tough for Christopher Lamora, who formerly served as the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Ghana. His husband, Eric, will presumably join him on duty. Actually, it sounds as if he’ll be just fine.
In random other news, a diocese in Marquette, Michigan, announced that gays and transgender congregants may not have communion unless they repent. The guidance was issued in July, but just went viral, however that happens. Transgender church goers can participate if they revert to their gender at birth, although they will not be required to reverse any transition surgery they may have had. Wow, thanks Father Simon! The gay men and women just have to promise to stay celibate. I guess this is considered unusual, which is good news for the GLBT Catholic churchgoers elsewhere in the country.
I would make fun of this restriction, but I understand that not all of you find it amusing. When I was a child, I went to Episcopal schools, chapel and cathedral services and I always lined up for communion, just because everyone else did and when you’re that age you get used to following people into lines and doing what the crowd does. Once a few of my friends got “confirmed,” I learned that they were then officially eligible to take communion, which made me wonder whether or not it was meant for all comers in the first place. Anyway, I stopped doing it.
I always thought it was kind of creepy. Drinking out of the same cup. Blood and body of Christ. Um, no thanks.
SPOILER ALERT
A Kansas City school district was just tagged for $4 million in damages for refusing to let a transgender student use the boys’ rooms on campus. A jury ruled against the Delta Woods Middle School, which will appeal the decision.
That’s from the local NBC affiliate, which did not give many details. I could look them up, but you get the idea. This year, we are in for a major court case on this subject when the full bench of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit weighs in on a transgender high school rights case. In the summer of 2020, a split three-judge panel ruled in favor of Andrew Adams, a transboy who sued his Ponte Vedra, Florida high school in 2017. The panel revised its ruling a year later, narrowing the rationale in an effort to avoid full court review. But the full court went ahead and struck that trans rights victory, sending the case to what’s called en banc review. Since the full Eleventh Circuit is conservative, we can expect, ahem, an unfortunate outcome.
And then? Normally, we’d look to the composition of the High Court and say that transgender rights in public schools were basically doomed. Then again, the Court has let stand one major pro-transgender appellate court decision, from the Fourth Circuit. Another Seventh Circuit victory was settled after the panel ruling. Also, the High Court has ruled that transgender discrimination is a form of sex discrimination in the context of the workplace. Why not in the context of public schools? We’ll see.
In other High Court news, we’ll look for the Court to take action on the Tenth Circuit case that pits an antigay website designer against the State of Colorado’s gay rights law. We won that case against Lorie Smith and “303 Creative” at the appellate court, but she is asking the Supreme Court to rehear the matter. Smith’s case brings the full range of the First Amendment’s guarantee against forced speech into the picture, so it’s dicey. That said, this Court did reject review of an antigay wedding florist earlier this year, so that was nice.
