Who'd want to be oppressed?

Well, those people with full legal rights and privileges who'd like also a little bit of the sympathy that sometimes comes with being associated with that word.

There's a story up at the Bay Area Reporter about this family that's suing the Santa Rosa school district because they think that the school administrators oppressed her for being a heterosexual supremacist. She said "That's so gay" and got sent to the principal's office, a lesbian student "threatened" her, and her backpack was searched (the school said that it was an accident - someone else with the same name was the one who should have been in trouble). By any rational calculus, queer people are not politically powerful. We don't control a majority of the wealth (not even a proportionate amount of it), we don't have full equality under the law, we're small in numbers, and our allies, if they choose to, can completely ignore us with impunity. But somehow in this family's mind, we're so politically powerful that we're forcing our agenda on them and threatening them with violence without anyone caring. That's pretty warped and paranoid, but how did they get there?

I think it's telling that they're accusing another lesbian student of threatening to beat up their daughter at a rally:

But, after interviewing the rally speaker, an honor student with no history of causing trouble in school, [principal] Klick said he concluded that there was no real threat of physical danger to Rebekah Rice. Because the Rices were so concerned, however, he said he elected to "shadow" Rebekah, a process by which school administrators and security officers kept continual watch over the girl to protect her.

"Nicky [the lesbian student] said she didn't remember her exact words, or making a threat to any student on campus," Klick testified.

For social conservatives it's obvious that their daughter is the one who's right. The other girl's a lesbian, right? That means she's violent and a liar. Duh. The narrative's already been established, and they selectively see the facts that fall into it.

The Eagle Forum themselves, though, should know better. But, of course, for money and power, they've created and perpetuated such a narrative. Who would otherwise donate to the politically powerful class along an axis of identity so that they could further oppress the less powerful class?

(Crossposted to bilerico)

Lesbians allowed to golf as a couple

A settlement was reached in the Koebke and French case. 365gay has details:

The lawsuit California's Supreme Court ruled in August 2005 that that Bernardo Heights Country Club discriminated against B. Birgit Koebke and Kendall French. Bernardo Heights' membership policy allows a spouse to be included in membership. Koebke had joined the club in 2001 and sought to have French added as a spouse. Although Koebke and French have been together since 1993 and registered partners since 1998, Bernardo Heights Country Club refused to recognize the couple's relationship, limited how frequently they could use the course together, and forced them to pay additional greens fees whenever French seeks to play golf as Koebke's "guest." Lambda Legal argued that the club's rules violated California's civil rights laws. Lawyers for the club argued that the rules do not amount to discrimination because they apply to all unmarried people. The high court, in its ruling, said that allowing the families of married members to golf gratis while charging the partners of gay members who are legally not permitted to marry constituted "impermissible marital status discrimination."

It's interesting that the Court rejected that this isn't discrimination because all unmarried couples are discriminated against equally. I wonder if courts are going to start rejecting that whole it's-not-anti-gay-discrimination-because-the-gays-can-just-marry-heterosexually meme when it comes to marriage equality, because it's pretty much the same thing.

While I'll never get why some people have to join country clubs, I do enjoy the symbolism of the country club itself not just having to allow lesbians to join, but having to acknowledge the fact that a lesbian relationship exists. And not just acknowledge it, but respect it. It's so easy to let GLBT people do pretty much anything and pretend that you're not heterosexist when you condition rights on pretending to be heterosexual or asexual.