Los Angeles Times on Gay Heroes

Today an editorial in the Los Angeles Times compares Arizona shooting hero Daniel Hernandez with Oliver Sipple, the semi-closeted gay man who in 1975 wrestled a gun away from Manson family member Sara Jane Moore, saving the life of President Gerald Ford. Sipple's outing as a gay hero, to his mind, ruined his life. Thankfully, it's a different world for Daniel Hernandez.

Sipple was known to San Francisco’s gay community, where he had taken part in some events, but he was not "out" to his family or to the larger world. News reports, including some in this paper, discussed his sexuality -- perhaps disclosed, some speculated, with a nudge from gay activist and future San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk (who would himself be assassinated in 1978).

Milk also opined that Sipple’s sexuality got him only a letter of thanks from Ford, rather than an invitation to the White House. The Times quoted Milk in 1989 about Sipple’s actions: "For once, we can show that gays do heroic things, not just all that ca-ca about molesting children and hanging out in bathrooms." Sipple sued the San Francisco Chronicle’s Herb Caen and several newspapers for invasion of privacy, but his case was dismissed. By taking the action he did, the courts found, Sipple, and thus his sexual orientation, had become news. Sipple’s mother never spoke to him again, and Sipple died in 1989.

Daniel Hernandez wasn’t even born when Oliver Sipple died. His heroism, too, is incontestable -- and this time, his sexuality is apparently uncontroversial, which may be one of the few hopeful things to come out of these murders and attempted murders. At least we won’t add character assassination to the actual ones.

While Hernandez' sexuality is indeed "uncontroversial" in 2011, to my mind it's important that we keep his gayness as an integral part of the story.

Los Angeles Times: President Obama, Enough Agonizing Over Gay Marriage

From an editorial in today's Los Angeles Times:

We can't peer into President Obama's soul, but his statement last week that he is "struggling" with whether to endorse same-sex marriage is open to an unedifying interpretation. Given the president's support of gay rights in other contexts, his opposition to marriage equality raises the question of whether the struggle Obama referred to is between politics and principle. If so, we hope principle will prevail. [snip] When he ran for the presidency in 2008, it was the conventional wisdom that supporting gay marriage would be politically fatal. With shifts in public attitudes, that probably will not be the case in 2012. According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 42% of adults now favor same-sex marriage, compared to 37% in 2009. The trend seems clear. We'd prefer to think that such considerations wouldn't be uppermost in Obama's mind. What should determine his position is logic and the fact that same-sex couples across America, not just those in his circle, yearn for recognition of their relationships. Enough agonizing, Mr. President. Support marriage equality.

LA Times: Family Research Council Rightfully Labeled A Hate Group

From an op-ed piece by Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times columnist Tim Rutten.

Exhortations against "race mixing" were commonplace pulpit messages short decades ago, though we now recognize them as hate speech. It's past time to do the same with rhetoric that denigrates gays and lesbians.

So long as even the most objectionable religious dogma stays under the church roof, it's a constitutionally protected view. People's religious beliefs — even when noxious — are a private matter. Our churches are free to order their internal affairs as they will — to set the terms of sacramental marriage as they see fit, to discriminate in the selection of their clergy, to racially segregate their membership or to separate the sexes in their schools or places of worship.

However, when a group sets out to impose its views on the rest of society by lobbying for public policies or laws, it can no longer claim special protections or an exemption from the norms of civil discourse simply because its views are formed by religious beliefs. This is precisely the dodge the Family Research Council has been running.