Archive for October, 2010
Update on fair housing and federal employee benefits
There’s little happening in Congress these days – everyone is waiting for the outcome of the election. [PLEASE don't forget to VOTE on Tuesday November 2nd, if not earlier!]
Nonetheless, this week I found interesting tidbits about two federal bills we’re tracking. Both hint that the bills could start moving again soon.
First, our friends at the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force sent their members an email calling for “federal fair housing protections for marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression.” It’s very exciting to see the Task Force including marital status in their list, and we look forward to working with them to amend and pass HR 4820, the Fair and Inclusive Housing Rights Act.
Second, a kerfuffle over pet insurance for federal employees led the Office of Personnel Management to cite “the President’s strong support of the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act, which will provide full benefits to same-sex partners of federal workers.” Maybe that means HR 2517, the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act, will get moving again. Here’s what I posted on a discussion site. If you’re a federal employee, please weigh in!
What we all have in common is our ability to care for others and our desire to be respected for our caring relationships. Employers really don’t want to know whom we’re caring for; rather, they want to know that we’ll be productive on the job. Sometimes that means helping us fulfill our caring responsibilities so we’re not distracted, absent, or looking for extra money to cover costs. Like all employers, the federal government should seek a solution to helping employees care for *whomever* they define as family. It is not an employer’s place to say that some families are better than others.
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Oct 28th, 2010 by Nicky
Meet an AtMP board member: Ann Schranz
A few years ago, I attended the wedding of a co-worker. Every word of the service was in the Vietnamese language. The service was beautiful, but I missed most of its meaning because I do not speak Vietnamese.
It seems to me that within a particular culture, marriage is like a language, having its own vocabulary, grammar, and dialects. There are people whose “first language” is the language of marriage. They learn it at a young age. The way the “marriage language” is organized makes sense to them — sequences of marriage, divorce, marriage, divorce, and so on.
As a Unitarian Universalist minister, I am delighted to officiate at marriage ceremonies or at union ceremonies for members of the congregation I serve. That role is important as an expression of the relationship between congregant and minister. However, when I am outside the role of minister, my “first language” is that of friendship, not of marriage. The way that friendships begin, evolve, sometimes end, but more often shift into another kind of friendship – that way of relating makes sense to me.
The vocabulary, grammar, and dialects of friendship have shaped my world view for decades. In particular, I am an advocate for singles, for people in non-traditional relationships, and for people who identify as bisexual. I am proud and honored to serve on the Alternatives to Marriage Project Board of Directors.
I live in southern California and enjoy bird watching and photography. I have recently started gardening with drought-tolerant plants. My formal education includes a B.A. in journalism from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, an MBA from Pepperdine University, and a Master of Divinity from Starr King School for the Ministry.
Ann Schranz is a contributing editor for the Unmarried Blog and a leader of AtMP’s strategic communications team.
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Oct 25th, 2010 by Ann
Beyond freedom for black families
Book Review: Freedom Is Not Enough: The Moynihan Report and America’s Struggle over Black Family Life—from LBJ to Obama by James T. Patterson
BY EMMA ROSENBERG
Freedom Is Not Enough: The Moynihan Report and America’s Struggle over Black Family Life—from LBJ to Obama is a verbose title with a revealing indication of what is to come. James T. Patterson, a Professor of History Emeritus at Brown University, offers a rigorous 288 page account of the Moynihan Report and its aftermath. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a politician-academic and an Assistant Secretary of Labor, wrote a report in March 1965 summarizing the poor conditions of the black community in America. The Moynihan Report, officially titled “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” highlights the destructive forces of unemployment and poverty for black Americans. Moynihan emphasizes the deterioration of black family life and the retarding nature of the matriarchal structure. Moynihan criticizes the structure of the welfare system, which preferentially assists families with absentee fathers and therefore encourages broken homes. Moynihan’s groundbreaking discovery, which Patterson fondly refers to as ‘Moynihan’s Scissors’, details the puzzling correlation between the fall of unemployment rate and the rise in the number of new welfare cases. In other words, a growth in the economy does not necessarily decrease poverty. At the center of Moynihan’s findings is the detrimental rise of non-martial births, a trend that he claims will push the black community further into poverty and create a “tangle of pathologies.” Patterson emphasizes that the report “was diagnostic, not prescriptive,” merely outlining the societal issues in the hopes of turning the heads of government officials and directing the political agenda. In June, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson relied on the report for his commencement address at Howard University, in which he spoke the famous line “freedom is not enough.” While the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act granted equality as a right, Johnson called for equality as a result.
Unfortunately, the United States did not reach Johnson’s goals for racial equality. Patterson largely connects this failure to the accidental leak of the report to the press and the “tortuous trail of misunderstandings, misrepresentations, and destructive controversies” that followed. With utmost craft, Patterson interweaves the racial, political, cultural, and social issues and events that contributed to the creation of the report, its unfavorable reception, and the present-day repercussions. His sweeping collection of academic and media sources, from W.E.B. Du Bois and Malcolm X, to Bill Cosby, provides a much-needed chronicle of a crucial document in civil rights history and a scrupulous survey of black family life in America from the 1960’s to the present. His depiction of black family life, while wide in scope, feels light in weight, merely serving as a backdrop for his defense of the Moynihan Report. Patterson’s ultimate (and limited) goal is to lament the misinterpretation of the report and prove its prophetic nature, especially in regards to the dangerous rise in out-of-wedlock births and overall deterioration of traditional black family life. At the time of the report, 23.6 percent of black births were out of wedlock; by 1984, 60 percent. In 2008, the rate reached 72.3%, with the white out-of-wedlock birthrate at 28.6%. Any innovative findings, however, are watered down by a profusion of tedious statistics strung together by poorly constructed sentences. Patterson is ambitious in tackling such a large time span, but does so at the expense of the reader’s interest, making the book a mind-numbing read.
Surprisingly, Patterson does not dedicate much space to the report itself, leaving the reader in suspense for nearly 50 pages, but does provide ample and unnecessary ink on the life of Patrick Moynihan. The structure of the book may feel perplexing, but Patterson’s point is clear; the Moynihan Report deserves more attention than it was previously given and is still relevant today given the U.S. government’s continual failure in dealing with the growing ills of the black lower class. However, Patterson’s full-fledged endorsement of the 1965 report feels uncomfortably outdated for the present times, given the evolving notion of family structure in American society. His brief smattering of modern-day references–the cultural influence of the Cosby Show, the threat of hip-hop culture, and the presence of sexually-transmitted diseases—are intriguing at best, yet together build a sparse representation of the current times. Freedom Is Not Enough is a substantial and benign read in understanding “the story of a great missed opportunity in American history”, but the reader is left to wonder, what now?
Emma Rosenberg is a senior at Barnard College-Columbia University studying English Literature and Religious Studies.
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book reviews, economics & poverty, race & ethnicity
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Oct 15th, 2010 by Jess
Common ground
While 45% of adults in the U.S. are unmarried, marital status is not distributed evenly throughout the population. One figure that always stands out for me is that 70% of African American adults are not married. To me that makes reducing marital status discrimination part of advancing racial justice.
It would seem logical that giving everyone access to health care and other basics regardless of marital or relationship status would be important common ground for the African American and LGBT communities. But a new report by the Arcus Operating Foundation shows the two groups haven’t fully recognized their shared interests, yet.
Here are a few highlights from the report:
- 60% of African Americans favor health care and pension benefits for unmarried couples.
- 66% said that “Access to health care and pension benefits for unmarried couples” is a big or very big problem for African Americans, while a smaller majority (57%) said it is the same level of problem for gays and lesbians.
- Surprisingly, when both LGBT and African American communities were surveyed, “participants did not draw a comparison between African Americans and LGBT people being two groups with high levels of domestic partnership or unmarried partners, which could lead to common goals on health care and pension benefits, or on hospital visitation rights.” (emphasis added)
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Oct 8th, 2010 by Nicky
