North Carolina residents Charles Merrill and his partner Kevin Boyle, founders of a group called Citizens Against Discrimination, are refusing to pay state and federal income taxes on their 2004 income, and stock sales totaling over 2 million dollars, because they cannot get married and receive the tax benefits available to married couples.

“By not paying taxes, this is a deliberate act of civil disobedience towards a President that wants to make an amendment to the Constitution to only allow marriage between a man and woman, rather than two people who love each other, and that discriminates against us as full citizens of the United States,” said Merrill.

Read “N.C. Couple Refuse To Pay Taxes To Protest Gay Marriage Ban”

I previously linked to an article about Kansas Senator Jean Schodorf introducing a bill which included specific times and locations when protesting at funerals would be banned here.

Today the Washington Post reports that “at least five Midwestern states are considering legislation to ban protests at funerals in response to demonstrations by the Rev. Fred Phelps and members of his Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church, who have been protesting at funerals of Iraq war casualties because they say the deaths are God’s punishment for U.S. tolerance toward gays.” I hope to see more states that do not already have a similar ban (does anyone know if any do?) join them.

Anti-gay bullying is one of the motives being considered by the Sunrise, Florida Police Department in the January 10th Bair Middle School incident in which a student allegedly cut a classmate with a razor blade after the classmate punched him (both students are seventh graders). This article at NewYorkBlade.com points out that should an anti-gay bullying motive fit in this case, it wouldn’t be the first link we’ve seen between anti-gay harassment and violence at school.

For example, in the April 20, 1999, shooting rampage at Columbine High School that left 15 dead in Littleton, Colo., classmates of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold said the two killers were often called “gay” by school athletes and other students.

“The whole school would call them homos,” a Columbine football player told Time Magazine.

On Feb. 2, 1996, 14-year-old Barry Loukaitis allegedly gunned down classmate Manuel Vela in Moses Lake, Wash. At the trial, students testified that Loukaitis pledged to kill Vela after Vela repeatedly taunted him by calling him a “faggot.”

Fourteen-year-old Michael Carneal, who killed three classmates at his West Paducah, Ky., school, was enraged by a rumor printed in a school newspaper that he was gay and had a crush on another male student, according to the psychological evaluation of Carneal prepared by Diane Schetky, a child psychologist, before Carneal’s trial.

Dani Eyer, executive director of the ACLU of Utah, tells The Southern Voice that she answers the question “Will gay marriage lead to legalized group weddings?” with the following response each time it is asked: “The ACLU of Utah has traditionally advocated that personal relationships between consenting adults are protected by the Constitution, and that freedom of religion and freedom of expression are fundamental rights.”

Some, like Harlan White, a heterosexual man who has been in polyamorous relationships with female and male “co-lovers” for many years now, applaud her response.

“I notice when people of one minority group try to relate to the mainstream, there’s an unfortunate tendency to point to another minority group and say, ‘We may be different from the mainstream, but we’re not like them,’” White adds. “… we shouldn’t have to sell ourselves to society by being better than other people.”

Others, like Mathew Staver, president of the conservative legal group Liberty Counsel, use Eyer’s statement as another reason to oppose gay marriage.

Mathew Staver, president of the conservative legal group Liberty Counsel, agrees that there is “an easy transition” from allowing marriage for gay and lesbian couples to legalized polygamy. But instead of considering them fundamental rights, Staver says neither gay marriage nor polygamy should be recognized by states.

“If you convert marriage to merely the placing of a license on consenting adults that are in a committed relationship, or who love each other, then there is no logical line that can be drawn between gay marriage and polygamy,” Staver says. “Gay marriage clearly opens the door to polygamy.”

What do you think of Eyer’s response? Would anyone want to see it replaced with a no?

I just saw How to Fuck a Tranny listed as a forthcoming book including writing from Trish Kelly in a short bio for her over at Arsenal Pulp. I’ve never heard of this book before, but I was able to find this call for submissions from 2003.

How to Fuck a Tranny is also mentioned in this piece in the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Proof that Ana Marie Cox could have worse taste in shoes:

Happy Birthday, Ralphie Poo!

(If you think he won’t see this post, you’re wrong. Ralph reads this blog every day - right after he checks his email.)

TransGender Michigan is in need of donations to to fund the the T.J. Jourian Scholarship (named after T.J. of Transgeneration - its first recipient), a scholarship for Michigan students who are actively working to counter transgender oppression.

For more info, or to make a donation, visit TransgenderMichigan.org.

But it looks like the blog keeps going.

NBC has cancelled The Book of Daniel because of “weak ratings.” Did you get to see it, or did you blink?

Previous posts here, here and here.

I’m sure this has nothing to do with their male partners choice of partners. Nothing at all.

news.com.au: In the study of more than 500 men and women aged between 16 and 91, most men said they felt kissing was “more of a duty and obligation”. But 56 per cent of women said they “enjoyed kissing and willingly kissed”. Sixty per cent of women felt kissing was better than sex.