Author: Cathy Harding

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Opinion

A-list: Virginia’s GOP legislators stay NRA strong

U.S. Senate hopeful Corey Stewart’s campaign stunts included giving away an AR-15 at a gun range in 2016. In February 2017, he held a rally in Charlottesville in support of keeping the Robert E. Lee statue in Emancipation Park. EZE AMOS

It’s disappointing that the Virginia legislature didn’t see fit to advance even a sliver of new restrictions on guns, militias and racist, reactionary mayhem during the current session. Not a single bill drafted in response to August 12 made it through for consideration in the other chamber, nor did some 60 gun control-related bills.

Plainly, GOP loyalty to the gun lobby trumps outrage over the terrifying presence of self-described militias on Charlottesville’s streets last summer. Certainly, the NRA appreciates it that way, expressing late last month its thanks to the House and Senate committees and NRA members “who voiced opposition to these dangerous attempts to restrict our Second Amendment rights and right to self-defense.”

Disappointing, for sure, but unsurprising considering the near-victor in the Republican gubernatorial primary last year included an AR-15 giveaway in his arsenal of campaign stunts. Yes, Virginia, with the slaughter at Virginia Tech only a decade in the past, Corey Stewart was giving away a semi-automatic weapon to a lucky supporter at the end of 2016.

Leaving aside whether Stewart lacks empathy for the families of those victims and the survivors of the Tech trauma, the chair of the Prince William Board of Supervisors and 2018 U.S. Senate hopeful is certainly tuned in to the values of some Virginia voters. Recall that Stewart lost the Republican nomination to Ed Gillespie by a slim 4,537 votes.

Still, even a gun guy like Stewart, similar to his former boss Donald Trump, can’t ignore the mounting public pressure to do something real about the scourge of gun violence across the United States. “I think teachers and students are sitting ducks right now,” he told a Norfolk TV station after Parkland. His proposal? It’s straight out of the NRA playbook: arm teachers. Not any teachers—just the ones with good dispositions. Feel better now?

(By way of contrast, note that Tim Kaine, the Democratic incumbent senator who was Virginia’s governor at the time of the Blacksburg massacre that left 32 dead and 17 injured, is openly emotional about what he calls “the worst day of his life.” The NRA grades him an F.)

Stewart, who earns an A rating, is not the only NRA darling running for office this year. The 5th District’s own Tom Garrett has has taken a couple of Gs from gun lobbyists. He too is an A student of the Second Amendment.

The thing about Virginia’s lax gun laws is this: They don’t affect Virginians alone. Inconsistent regulations on background checks and ownership across the country leave everyone vulnerable to gun violence. As my colleague Scott Weaver described in this paper 10 years ago, Virginia is a leading source for guns in New York City, for example, where firearms restrictions are much tougher. In turn, New York City is a leading source for drugs in Virginia. Well known in law enforcement circles for decades, this channel of illicit transaction has earned I-95 the moniker Iron Pipeline.

Maybe it’s a reach to hope that Corey Stewart and Tom Garrett will give a flying pickle about the perils of Virginia’s gun laws for people in other parts of the country since they seem unmoved by the dangers closer to home. But as the students in Parkland are demonstrating, there’s a reckoning a-coming for any lawmaker who denies the interconnectedness of the gun violence. The question in Virginia and across the country is: How long will it be before voters teach politicians a lesson about school shootings?

Yes, Virginia is a monthly opinion column.

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Opinion

Power to the people: Getting off on the hero myth

Six of the top 10 highest grossing movies in the U.S. last year were superhero fantasies, earning a tremendous sum of $2.29 billion in box office receipts. We’re desperate to live in these simply drawn stories, eager to watch a powerful guardian—no! the most powerful guardian of all!—rise from the rubble and set things right. But as Roxane Gay has put it so bluntly, in truth no one is coming to save us. Photo credit: Warner Bros

“Catnip for reporters.” That’s how Metallica fan and Democratic newcomer Danica Roem described her winning campaign in Virginia’s 13th District last November. She is, after all, the transgender woman who defeated the anti-LGBT incumbent Bob Marshall.

Nevermind that her platform was all about lines of stalled traffic and not lines outside bathroom stalls. The simple narrative of vindication, course correction, redemption—whatever you want to call it—proved irresistible to many observing that race. Good vs. evil, progress vs. tradition, insider vs. outsider, rebel vs. authority? Those are fun stories to write.

Such was the undercurrent for Nikuyah Walker’s visit to “The View,” too. Nazis and Klansmen march on Charlottesville and just a few months later a black woman is named mayor?  Why that’s enough to get Whoopi and the gals feeling better about the state of the world. Enjoy the buzz, viewers at home, and meanwhile let’s sidestep the part about how mayor is a ceremonial post in this town.

Yep, there’s no shortage of simple narratives, and their appeal crosses every divide.

A couple of weeks ago, I worked security for one of the women’s marches, and doing so put me directly up against a reporting crew from Alex Jones’ Infowars. Positioning my body between InfoWarriors and the marchers as per non-violent training protocols, I heard nearly an hour of nonstop right-wing commentary from behind me.

The terms reporter Owen Shroyer used to describe the scene didn’t match the assembly I saw before me, yet his vocabulary was familiar. At first I recognized his talk of things that were the “greatest” or the “best” as being the lexicon of the 45th president.

Indeed, when he wasn’t comparing the marchers to Satan and decrying their obviously slavish devotion to fake news, he was talking about the “massive success” of the administration, with “record high” thises and “record low” thats. Bestest, worstest, beautiful… Sounding like nothing so much as Donald Trump himself when he’s dishing the base a simplistic world view that’s two parts stimulant and three parts red meat, Shroyer could have been a “Daily Show” regular from the Jon Stewart days.

Yet his schtick was more comic book than comical. These days, it’s Marvel’s world, we just live in it. And pay for the privilege while we’re at it. Six of the top 10 highest grossing movies in the U.S. last year were superhero fantasies, earning a tremendous sum of $2.29 billion in box office receipts. We’re desperate to live in these simply drawn stories, eager to watch a powerful guardian—no! the most powerful guardian of all!—rise from the rubble and set things right. After the credits roll, we hope we’ll find her or him out in the parking lot kicking ass and taking names. But as Roxane Gay has put it so bluntly, in truth no one is coming to save us.

Not Oprah. Not Mark Warner. Not Elizabeth Guzman, the new Virginia delegate who was tapped to give the Democratic response to the State of the Union address in Spanish, not Robert Mueller, Devin Nunes nor any of the folks at the Riverside who want to oust three Charlottesville City Councilors.

It’s time to remind each other that when we get high off simple delicious rhetoric, we can’t do the painstaking work that lies ahead. As a great master named Ben Kenobi once put it, “The truth is often what we make of it; you heard what you wanted to hear, believed what you wanted to believe.” In other words, mind the catnip, Padawan.

Yes, Virginia is a monthly opinion column.

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Opinion

Can we have a word? Year-end doublespeak from state leaders

The Martin Agency, the originator of the state’s famous “Virginia is for Lovers” campaign, was awarded two contracts from the Virginia Tourism Corporation the same day the Richmond Times-Dispatch published allegations of sexual harassment from 17 former Martin employees.

Three weeks ago on December 15, the Virginia Tourism Corporation awarded two contracts totaling $600,000 annually to the Martin Agency. The big dog of Richmond ad shops will be VA Tourism’s advertising agency of record.

On the same day, the Richmond Times-Dispatch published allegations of sexual harassment and other workplace abuses at Martin from 17 former employees. The long-standing macho culture was so overt at least one employee likened Martin to “Mad Men.” By the time Virginia Tourism announced the contracts, the agency’s longtime chief creative officer was already one week out of a job for what the company called accusations of “inexcusable” behavior.

Some 23 agencies bid for the tourism bureau contracts. Presumably, as the originator of the state’s most famous campaign, “Virginia is for Lovers,” Martin had a sizable advantage going in. I can see that. The iconic heart was a game-changer for the state.

But among the many lessons imparted by the #MeToo movement is this: Sexual harassment and mistreatment that drives women out of the workplace, as was reported at Martin, robs everyone involved of potential. One way or another, the product on the outside reflects what’s present—or missing—on the inside.

Evidently, Rita McClenny, Virginia Tourism president and CEO, didn’t get the memo. McClenny told the RTD she had “no concerns whatsoever” about the sexual harassment claims. “That was environmental to the agency and really has no impact on the business,” she said. SMH.

And McClenny wasn’t the only one sticking her foot in it at that moment. I write, of course, of Ralph “Bipartisan” Northam, whose blatant disregard for the issues that carried him to victory was on full display in his December 16 interview with the Washington Post.

While the rest of the nation understood his rout of Ed Gillespie as a referendum on Trump’s policies, Virginia’s new Democratic governor, who twice voted for George W. Bush, saw something else. Campaign advertising notwithstanding, Medicaid expansion wasn’t the imperative he’d made it out to be as a candidate, he revealed to the Post. Controlling costs and making allies of Republicans—those were the big objectives, he said, sounding not at all like a man who’d won the governor’s mansion by nine points thanks to energized liberal voters. So much for rallying the base. SMDH.

All the double-talk in Virginia and elsewhere in these United States reminds me of the great George Carlin. He did a set at the Paramount in January 2007 about a year before he died at age 71. He was working on new material for what would be his final HBO special. The counter-cultural social critic and comedian had served in the Air Force and started his career as a straight-laced, clean-shaven jokemeister until Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor woke him up. From the 1960s onward, clad in jeans, he kept vigil on the absurdities of politics and language. The view never improved.

By the time he got to Charlottesville, Carlin’s had become the comedy of exhaustion. Doublespeak, complicity, blind spots, abuse of privilege—that’s some rough terrain to mine for a punchline. Tempting though it might have been, Carlin didn’t let himself become enchanted by the promise of one party over another, either. Hypocrisy is the ultimate act of bipartisanship, he’d say.

“Government,” Carlin warned from the Downtown Mall on that strangely warm winter night, “is interested in its own power, keeping it and expanding it wherever possible.” LMAO.

Yes, Virginia is a monthly opinion column.

 

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Opinion

Pussy riot: Women find their voice. Get used to it.

The global Women’s March in January 2017 set the tone for women refusing to sit by any longer while their bodies were insulted and their rights hijacked.Photo by: Karen Ballard via ZUMA Wire)

The high-profile sexual harassment cases continue to pile up and I’m reminded of the Emerson String Quartet. The world-renowned musicians can hold audiences rapt with the passion and delicacy of their playing. And yet without fail, when they rest their bows between movements the concert hall will erupt in a chorus of coughing and sputtering of near-tubercular intensity. It’s as if the concertgoers are reading from a score marking the precise moment when their noises will be most impactful.

The women who are speaking out now have seized a powerful moment, too. The tone has been building since January 21 when almost 3 million of them descended on Washington, D.C., and hundreds of U.S. and foreign cities for the Women’s March. The stunned silence of November 8 was quickly answered by a crescendo of fed-up women who refused to sit by any longer while their bodies were insulted and their rights hijacked.

And it hasn’t been about just calling out sexual misconduct by powerful men—though it’s not not about that either, thank you “Access Hollywood.” In Virginia, a record number of women—51—competed in House of Delegates primaries. Moreover, last July USA Today, citing Emily’s List, the nonprofit that helps elect pro-choice Democratic females, reported that 16,000 women had expressed an interest in running for office. As the Charlottesville City Council race demonstrated, women will no longer wait their turn to speak.

Suburban female voters were the deciding factor in last month’s statewide races in Virginia, too. Many who handed Ralph Northam the governor’s office said they were responding to the president’s equivocations after the killing and mayhem of August 12. But past that, plenty of women had had enough of assemblymen, yes men, who vote to defund Planned Parenthood, discriminate against transgender people and mandate transvaginal probing.

Returning for a moment to sexual harassment, another form of unwanted transvaginal probing, if you will: Like at a classical music concert, there remains the question of why those affected didn’t do something earlier. Must that guy wait until the cello solo to unwrap his lozenge, and why couldn’t the victims of Roger/Bill/Harvey/Charlie/Louis/Mark/Matt/etc./etc./etc. have spoken out sooner?

Answer: They did speak up. The accounts that make it into the reputable press are corroborated by folks the victims spoke to at the time (even if not the human resources manager).

In my own media career, I can count at least three instances when I informed managers at the highest level about sexual harassment incidents others had shared with me. In one instance, the perpetrator didn’t deny the claim when confronted. Instead he teared up and lamented that perhaps he wasn’t the leader he professed to be. His punctured ego was his biggest concern. Today he remains a high-ranking local media executive. The woman left the business long ago. But if she came forward with her account, I could back her up.

Yes, Virginia, it’s a big noise—like a long-stoppered steam valve being released—but not necessarily a new sound. In the past weeks, we’ve learned of some agitation in the Oval Office about who was or wasn’t approached to be Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. At press time the issue was still under wraps (pub date is December 6*), but I know who I would’ve nominated: 2017 Women’s March organizers Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory, Carmen Perez and Bob Bland. They were early conductors in this symphony of outrage. Sadly, we’re a long way from hearing the final note.

*On December 6, Time announced the Silence Breakers as its person of the year.

Yes, Virginia is a monthly opinion column.

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Opinion

Animal instinct: Why do we protect sexual predators?

Harvey Weinstein didn’t act alone: Several men in Weinstein’s orbit admit they’d heard about Weinstein’s actions from women he allegedly victimized.

‘‘You’re expecting too much from people,” my friend Lisa explained to me. “We’re mere animals.” I had been pacing the sidewalk rehearsing the details of the Harvey Weinstein story—at press time, following investigative reports in the New York Times and the New Yorker, more than 50 women have alleged he sexually harassed, abused and in some cases raped them over the three decades that Weinstein topped Hollywood’s ruling class. It was evidently an open secret that he preyed on assistants and aspiring actresses; several men in his orbit have since come forth to admit they’d heard about Weinstein’s actions from women he allegedly victimized. Yet these fellas, apparently believing that relationship status is a factor in sexual harassment, played the boyfriend card and figured Weinstein would stop. Never mind the unknown, unsuspecting women likely to be hurt by an unchastened Weinstein: Self-policing would set things right, or right enough for these guys.

In a New York Times interview, Quentin Tarantino, the filmmaker most closely associated with Weinstein, confessed with breathtaking narcissism that he figured once Weinstein realized actress Mira Sorvino was Tarantino’s new girlfriend, he would stop groping her. (A tone deaf Tarantino also expressed hope that folks would keep watching his movies even though we now know he ignored rumors of Weinstein’s continued sexual assaults in the post-Sorvino years.)

What is with these people?! I cursed on the street. Grown men old enough to remember Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas convince themselves the victim’s sex appeal rather than the predator’s power is at the root of the abuse? That’s just one more scent in the Blame the Victim perfume collection. It stinks!

But Lisa’s point was that many people, facing a hard truth and the possibility of confrontation or inconvenience, will take the easy way out.

Which is where our democratic system of laws and regulations is supposed to come in—to protect everybody and ensure your body is respected whether you’re an Oscar-winner’s GF or not. But what happens when those policies fall short, giving more comfort to the perpetrator than the victim?

With sexual assault, the most obvious effect is under-reporting. Lacking trust in the system to uphold their rights above the abuser’s, victims hold back. That can leave their own trauma unresolved and increases the likelihood the perpetrator will strike again. Examples of this abound. Here’s but one: Last year the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a remarkable investigation into the legal gaps that leave patients vulnerable to sexually abusive doctors, including in Virginia, which earned a grade of C. Using public data to size up the legal situation state by state, the AJC reporters gave the state medical board a score of 64 out of 100.

Virginia ranked particularly poorly in the areas of criminalization and legal notification: The medical board is not required to report allegations of criminal conduct to law enforcement, nor has Virginia criminalized sexual misconduct involving doctors and patients. Knowing that a physician faces little lasting consequence if found guilty of a sex crime (and the evidentiary standard is uncommonly high in Virginia), a patient would think twice about enduring the ordeal of reporting an incident. Indeed, the Journal-Constitution series highlights a Virginia doctor whose license was reinstated three times though he was known to the state medical board and legal authorities as a serial sexual assaulter. Yuck.

Yes, Virginia, Harvey Weinstein is a beast. And effectively he didn’t act alone. When it comes to enabling sexual predators, it’s high time more of us rise above and stop acting like mere animals.

Yes, Virginia is a monthly opinion column.

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Opinion

Some assembly required: UN warns of state efforts to limit protest

Many protesters at the July KKK rally covered their faces after police used tear gas. photo Eze Amos

How did Richard Stuart, trustee of the Westmoreland County Volunteer Fire Department since 1999, father of three, and 2014 Virginia chapter winner of the American Academy of Pediatrics Child Advocate Award earn the attention of two United Nations Special Rapporteurs concerned with the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly? As Virginia state senator for the 28th District, the Republican introduced a bill during the 2017 legislative session that was “incompatible with human rights laws and would unduly restrict the possibility for individuals to freely exercise their rights to freedom of opinion and expression, and peaceful assembly.”

Yes, Virginia, the august body of the UN itself is worried about your right to assemble —and the rights of citizens in 17 additional states where restrictions on free speech or assembly were either proposed or passed. Stuart’s bill, which was defeated 14-26 with not a single Democrat supporting it, in the words of last spring’s UN report would have “dramatically increased penalties for protesters engaged in assemblies considered ‘unlawful.’”

Specifically, failure to disperse after an assembly is declared unlawful would have moved up to a Class 1 misdemeanor from Class 3 under Stuart’s bill. About SB1055 the UN rapporteurs concluded, “any law that would chill protesting also threatens the right to freedom of expression.”

That means the two protesters arrested after Charlottesville’s July 8 KKK rally and the August 12 Unite the Right convergence would be facing up to a year in jail and a fine of up to $2,500 rather than the current maximum $500 fine with no jail time.

Addressed to the United States’ permanent mission to the UN, the report asks what measures the federal government intends to ensure state legislation accords with international standards of free expression and assembly. If that wasn’t a rhetorical question six months ago when the report was filed, it surely is now.

Ask Jemele Hill or Colin Kaepernick about the Trump administration’s position on free expression. Or, closer to home, recall the lies uttered by the president himself to discredit the August 12 counterprotesters. What’s the Department of Justice going to do to uphold freedom of expression and assembly at the state level, UN? I’ll bet very little.

Which means you’ve got to fend for yourself, Old Dominion. Don’t wait for Jeff Sessions to stand up for your rights and don’t expect a UN intervention. Richmond’s new legislative session begins on January 10, 2018, with committee meetings scheduled between now and then. Pay attention to what’s being drafted and passed through those committees using the General Assembly website. Respond, resist, and get a permit before you protest.

**

Speaking of the mirthless U.S. attorney general, the Code Pink activist whose conviction for laughing during Sessions’ confirmation hearing in January was overturned, will be back in court next month.

Desiree Fairooz, of Loudoun County, refused a plea deal and is scheduled for retrial on November 13, according to her Twitter feed. (“I still cannot believe the government refuses to drop this,” she tweeted. “Vindictive!”)

It’s quaint, if nothing else, to think of the UN raising the question of how free speech and free assembly will be protected on the federal level, while the government goes out of its way to punish a 61-year-old activist for chortling. Quaint, maybe even ironic, but it’s definitely not a laughing matter.

 

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Opinion

Germ of an idea: How to disinfect dirty politics

John Adams and Mark Herring. Courtesy photos

False equivalence makes me sick. Likely it does the same to you, too, even if you don’t recognize the symptoms. It’s rhetorical MRSA, an indestructible super-bug that infects the mind and body politic. And as has been widely reported, a new strain of contagion took hold on August 15 when the 2016 Electoral College Winner declared that yes, Virginia, Nazi-resisters are as bad as Nazis. With his toxic words about the “very fine people” standing up for white supremacy, Trump attacked civic decency, democratic values and American history.

Sadly, it was a familiar pain. Last time I felt it this bad was when members down at the Church of Privileged Self-Righteousness declared there was “no difference” between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Way back then, such folks had the media to lean on for some of their claims.

Plenty of so-called liberal-leaning pundits equated the computing issues and defensive personality of one candidate with the vulgarities and incompetence of the other, a known sexual predator, racist, liar and cheat who was entirely unqualified to run a local street cleaning crew, let alone the United States. Chanting “they’re all the same,” a critical number of true believers sat out the election, leaving the rest of us, but especially the nation’s most vulnerable, with a raging staph infection.

If, after all that has happened since, you still think skipping out on Election Day is inconsequential, you’re not paying attention. And yet, a recent study from the Washington, D.C.-based research firm Lake Research Partners, released by the Voter Participation Center, predicts that about 40 million fewer people will vote in 2018 compared to 2016. The biggest drop-off is projected to be among millennials and unmarried women, crucial members of what’s called the “rising American electorate,” which also includes blacks and Latinos.

In Virginia, the center projects, roughly 1.1 million of those voters will stay away from the polls next year. The study, based on census data, does not sample why non-voters and non-registered voters would choose to stay home. We can only guess.

But you had to travel only as far as the MLK Performing Arts Center for the August 27 “recovery” town hall and the August 21 Charlottesville City Council meeting before that to understand how little trust Virginians have in government these days—and why.

And yet, local voting is the best way to throw the bums out, if that’s your goal.

Leading up the federal elections in 2018, here’s another reason to get in practice and vote on November 7: the race for state attorney general. Democratic incumbent Mark Herring is running against Republican John Adams, a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who opposes reproductive choice and marriage equality and vows to roll back Obama-era environmental regulations. Herring, among other things, supports Obama’s Clean Power Plan and has the endorsement of gay rights groups. Perhaps even more crucially at this moment, Herring is inclined to let localities manage their own statuary and Adams is not.

No doubt, false equivalence is toxic. The same can be true for malaise. Maybe you can’t do anything about the sputum coming out of Trump’s mouth. But you can beat back the spread of malaise. The center that commissioned the voting study noted it’s likely more effective to register new voters than to try to persuade disaffected registered voters to give a damn. When left unchecked, no difference-ism can be as harmful as false equivalence.

So get your rest, Virginia, and then take your medicine: Register two voters and call me in the morning.

Yes, Virginia is a monthly op-ed column.

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Opinion

Extra time and your kiss: New tunes for the resistance

If Desiree Fairooz’s arrest for laughing during Jeff Sessions’ attorney general confirmation hearing demonstrates anything, it’s that law enforcement is irritated by humor. File photo

It’s one thing to seek refuge on Twitter if you’re the sort of the sour-toothed administration official who can’t take a joke. It’s another to drag someone through the courts for the offense of laughing at you. And yet, that is exactly what happened to Loudoun County resident Desiree Fairooz after she chortled during Jeff Sessions’ attorney general confirmation hearing. Back then, Sessions couldn’t have imagined that his issue—a history of unreconstructed homophobia and bigotry that brought activists out on January 10—would rapidly pale next to the public flogging by his boss. Strange days!

A longtime Code Pink activist, Fairooz, 61, had been arrested previously—she famously confronted Condeleezza Rice in 2007 with “blood” painted on her hands—but going to trial for involuntary laughter was a first. Last month, a D.C. Superior Court judge overturned Fairooz’s guilty verdict on charges of disorderly and disruptive conduct and ordered a retrial. Laughing does not alone constitute grounds for a conviction, he said.

It takes fortitude to be an activist, let alone a laughing resister—especially in the face of the current administration’s obscenities and its appetite for punishment. But if Fairooz’s example demonstrates anything, it’s that law enforcement and government are irritated, if not downright befuddled, by humor. The president long ago established his inability to take a joke. Perhaps that’s true of his base, too.

In the spirit of pussy hats, it’s fitting to consider the soft arts of counter-protest as August 12 approaches. The KKK, the alt-right and apparently the local and state police forces come to a demonstration expecting to meet anger and recrimination. They are literally armed for it. But what if they encounter instead humor, theater, even song and dance? Talk about disrupting the gears!

Look at, for example, Gays Against Guns. Following the Pulse nightclub massacre, they tackled a deadly serious issue with facts, figures and persistence. And, when necessary, sing-alongs.

In February, I ran into GaG for the first time when a gorgeous assembly of drag queens, majorettes, mothers, brothers, sisters and fathers fell together in Greenwich Village to protest the new administration. Following along in the GaG Reflex Songbook, hundreds of folks sang this to the tune of Frosty, the Snowman:

Donny the con man / Was a nasty, hateful soul / Just an angry man with a spray-on tan / Telling lies about clean coal / Donny the con man / Did a job Election Day / Telling old white men / They’d be great again / If they’d let him have his way.

As far as I know, no one was arrested for singing. But imagine the courtroom absurdities that could unfold if someone had been.

Going a step further, activists can take inspiration from No. 45’s hateful statement last week that transgender Americans are unwelcome in the military. Given the conservative right’s immediate embrace of that position, the next protest is clear: Kiss-in! Yes, Virginia, it’s time to stage a radical, everyone’s invited, bring-your-ChapStick kiss-in. Is Richard Spencer coming to town? Wave and blow him a juicy one! Grab your Nana, your yogi, your National Guardsman, your dog-walker and pucker up! Let’s see boys on boys, girls on girls, queers on straights, Latinos on whites, Muslims on Jews, cats on dogs—you get the picture.

These are dark days, yes, and it’s up to those who care about small-L liberal values of justice, harmony and free expression to keep the lights on. Illuminate the dangers, we certainly must. Let’s find ways to do that without dampening our spirits. Laughing, singing, smooching—it’s a start.

Yes, Virginia is a monthly op-ed column.

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News

Yes, Virginia, gay marriage is legal

André Hakes and Catherine Gillespie, pictured with their son, received their marriage license from Charlottesville Circuit Court Clerk Llezelle Dugger at about 1:05pm Monday, October 6, making them the first same-sex couple in the city—and most likely the state—to be authorized to wed. They were married minutes later on the courthouse steps. Photo: Brianna LaRocca

Reporting from this previous article contributed to the following story. 

Charlottesville Circuit Court Clerk Llezelle Dugger is used to hectic mornings, but this Monday delivered something out of the ordinary. Dozens of cheering locals toting flowers, rainbow flags, and, in a few cases, birth certificates descended on her office around noon, ready to be part of history in the making. At about 1:05pm, minutes after the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals gave the green light, Dugger issued a marriage license to Catherine Gillespie and André Hakes. They were the first same-sex couple to get one in Charlottesville—and most likely in the state of Virginia, based on reports out of other cities.

“How bizarre to wake up one morning and not know that you’re getting married,” said a beaming Gillespie less than half an hour later on the courthouse steps, where she and Hakes had proceeded to say their vows before retired judge Jannene Shannon and an entourage of friends and supporters.

“I’m exuberant,” Gillespie said. “It’s a beautiful and wonderful day.”

Not to mention surprising. The Supreme Court had announced just hours before that it was turning away appeals from five states seeking to uphold gay marriage bans. One of those appeals was in the case of Bostic v. Schaefer, a suit brought by a gay couple in the Eastern District of Virginia against court officials who refused to marry them. The Fourth Circuit ruled on that case in July, striking down Virginia’s gay marriage ban in a 2-1 ruling. But legal unions were put on hold when the Supreme Court issued a stay of the ruling pending an appeal. The wait ended Monday, thanks to the justices’ decision not to hear that appeal—or appeals from similar cases in Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wisconsin.

The country’s highest court may yet hear future gay marriage cases, and the outcome of such a case is far from certain. Some are hailing today’s non-decision decision a tacit victory, underscoring the fact that there has been no Supreme Court ruling that expressly grants gay couples the right to marry in the U.S.

And not everybody was celebrating the justice’s refusal to hear existing appeals. Victoria Cobb, president of the Richmond-based Family Foundation of Virginia said in a statement that the organization was “disappointed” that the court “sidestepped this important issue, at least for now, and left Virginians without a definitive answer.” She said that the more than one million voters who voted in favor of the state’s gay marriage ban had been disenfranchised by the move.

“Until the Supreme Court makes a final determination, we will continue to advocate for natural marriage because children deserve, whenever possible, to have both a mom and a dad,” Cobb said. “And we will work with the General Assembly to ensure that, while same-sex marriage is legal in Virginia, the rights and freedoms of those who disagree with the redefinition of marriage are treated equally and are not discriminated against in their religious practice, education, business or employment.”

But in a conference call with reporters from around the country, Ted Olson, lead counsel in the Bostic case, called Monday an exciting and historic day in Virginia, and one that’s been on the way since the Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act in June of last year.

Since then, he said, “federal judge after federal judge, district trial judges and appellate judges, have almost uniformly struck down bans on marriage equality.” It’s a legal victory that feels personal, he said. “To see the justices recognize in this way the love of these individuals and the happiness they’re soon going to be able to express—it’s the highlight of my life.”

For several of the half-dozen couples who received marriage licenses from the Charlottesville court Monday, it also meant the promise of a security they’d previously been denied.

“It means a lot for us,” said Landon Wilkins, who was in the clerk’s office with his partner Jaime Justice to watch the issuance of the first license and get their own questions answered. He and Justice had already been married in Washington, D.C. But Wilkins, who is transgendered, still has a birth certificate that says he’s female, which meant their marriage wasn’t recognized by Virginia. Now, the couple said, Wilkins will be able to adopt Justice’s son.

Second-parent adoption was a big part of why Meridith Wolnick and Debra Guy made a point of being next in line for a marriage license after Hakes and Gillespie. They had a commitment ceremony in 2005, but made a point of waiting to get married until their home state legalized gay unions. They wanted their daughter, Ruby, now 4, to have two legal parents.

After getting their hopes dashed earlier this summer, the announcement that they could get married was “a complete surprise,” said Wolnick. Knowing that the Supreme Court’s denial of petitions opens the door to same-sex unions in 30 states made the day even more special, she said. And the fact that there’s still a chance the court could rule against them in future cases didn’t stop them from pulling Ruby from school, putting on the wedding clothes they’d bought for the eventual occasion, and rallying family and friends.

“I’m not going to let that looming possibility take the wind out of our sails,” said Guy.

The milestone came sooner than expected for Gillespie and Hakes, too. For years, they have visited the Circuit Court Clerk’s office on Valentine’s Day to request a marriage license—a symbolic act they came to see as increasingly important as the marriage equality debate heated up across the country.

“I can remember the time when we had the conversation, that we were quite convinced that people would have to wheel us down the aisle by the time Virginia made this legal,” Gillespie told a pack of reporters in the moments after their ceremony, “so I’m quite pleased to still be able to walk to my own wedding.”

Hakes nodded in agreement as people around them laughed. “It might have been you I told,” she said, turning to her wife, “that I was going to be slurping Jell-O off a tray, but I was going to get married.”