Dallas County Judge Tonya Parker’s comments about not performing marriages until same-sex couples can legally wed in Texas have made national headlines this week. Parker’s speech at Tuesday’s monthly meeting of Stonewall Democrats of Dallas has been featured in The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, WFAA’s Thursday newscast and on the front page of today’s Dallas Morning News.
Media outlets that picked up the story highlighted Parker’s strong support for the LGBT community, with the only negative comments mixed in with the hundreds of thankful and encouraging comments on the various sites, including Dallas Voice’s original post.
Parker emailed a statement in response to a Dallas Voice interview request Friday, writing “I faithfully and fully perform all of my duties as the Presiding Judge of the 116th Civil District Court, where it is my honor to serve the citizens of Dallas County and the parties who have matters before the Court.
“Performing marriage ceremonies is not a duty that I have as the Presiding Judge of a civil district court. It is a right and privilege invested in me under the Family Code. I choose not to exercise it, as many other Judges do not exercise it. Because it is not part of our duties, some Judges even charge a fee to perform the ceremonies.
“I do not, and would never, impede any person’s right to get married. In fact, when people wander into my courtroom, usually while I am presiding over other matters, I direct them to the Judges in the courthouse who do perform marriage ceremonies. If my deputy is not busy, I will even ask him to escort or help these individuals find another Judge who performs the ceremonies. I do this because I believe in the right of people to marry and pursue happiness.”
According to Chapter 3 of the Texas Family Code, a county judge is among the judges and religious leaders allowed to perform marriages and “may conduct the marriage ceremony.”
The term “may” is defined in the terminology section of the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct as a term that “denotes permissible discretion or, depending on the context, refers to action that is not covered by specific proscriptions.”
Parker said Tuesday that she chooses not to conduct the ceremony and refers couples to other judges with the explanation of why she will not preside over the union.
“I use it as my opportunity to give them a lesson about marriage inequality in this state because I feel like I have to tell them why I’m turning them away. So I usually will offer them something along the lines of ‘I’m sorry. I don’t perform marriage ceremonies because we are in a state that does not have marriage equality, and until it does, I am not going to partially apply the law to one group of people that doesn’t apply to another group of people.’ And it’s kind of oxymoronic for me to perform ceremonies that can’t be performed for me, so I’m not going to do it.”
I was at Capital Pride last weekend for marching band…BEST parade I’ve done in years. Lesbians threw stuff at me, I was groped, and was cheered on the entire way from step off to the end. We played Mama Mia, Hawaii 5-0, some Lady Gaga, music for the straight white people who came, and more! I saw this guy while I was there.
I am stoked for Capital Pride next year!
Ashley, I hope you enjoy this…and I hope we make it west of the Appalachians sometime (since we’re the National GLBT marching band, you’d think we’d have a more expansive territory *shrugs*) But you can see me @ 7:56ish, so it’s like we saw each other at Pride…yes? (and 11:52ish should provide you with a laugh…we ‘dance’ in a lot of our routines.) Go ‘head and geek out… :-)
Last week, Rebekah, Emily, and I went out and stumbled upon this posted sign…
Step 1 was something stupid, like ‘watch the victim choke’. But the rest of the poster was inappropriate for children…as it displays insinuating/suggestive sexual undertones. Here are the highlights…
Step 2: Lady dry humping:
Step 4: Oral finger-blasting:
Step 6: Nipple play (post erotic asphyxiation):
Step 9 (the final step): Please pick up your lesbian tracking number at the local GLBT Center. There will be a gift basket waiting for you. Included: your new softball uniform, albums of Tegan and Sara and/or Melissa Etheridge’s greatest hits, a gift certificate to Home Depot, tickets for two for a whale watching voyage, keys to a new U-haul, adoption papers for your rescued cat, and a phone number to your new best gay male friend who will guide you towards the best flannel plaid button downs and pant suits the fashion world has to offer.
You’s a lesbian now…welcome!
This last Saturday was the annual HRC Gala in New York City. Achordial Brio was asked to play and then to partake with other presenters and event organizers to volunteer for the live auction. I was wide set (and having a heavy flow) appearance day, but I did my best to look nice:
The gala was at the Waldorf Astoria. I knew when I walked in, with Tim Gunn (who I actually see at B-Bar on the regs) right behind me in the revolving door, the night was going to be fun as last year’s. This is what the ballroom looked like before it was open to the attendees:
We were given a map and layout of ‘where is what’, for us to find the piano/stalk people. Ali was pleased with this, as it was her mission to find Julianne Moore:
We found her table setting:
Afterwards (I swapped out shoes, and bow for straight neck tie- long story), for the volunteer portion, we were broken up into smaller groups for the live auction part of the night. Pete, Laura, Ali, and myself were a little team. We were given giant glowsticks, which were AMAZE-BALLS! They were just over a foot long…and brought out the child in us as we used them as light-savers briefly. We were then asked to hide them and walk into the ballroom. We did a good job hiding them I thought:
As I was walking out to the floor with the attempted hidden glowstick, I was stopped by one of the attendees.
Woman sitting at table with 9 gay men: Excuse me, gay boy
Me: Yes, can I help you with something?
WSATW9GM: May I touch your glowstick?
Me: Absolutely!
WSATW9GM: *strokes my glowstick firm but sensually* Thank you for letting me stroke your glowstick.
Me: Ya know, it’s been a long time since I’ve had a woman stroke my glowstick.
WSATW9GM: Was it good for you?
Me: There are no words to properly thank you for how good that was.
WSATW9GM: Do you know where I could get one of these for me to take home to my girlfriend?
Me: These are for event staff, but I’ll see what I can do. *reminded of how effortless it was to eye seduce and verbal flirt with a lesbian*
This is what it looked like. A basically dark ballroom, and me swinging this thing in the air…I felt like an air traffic controller directing in gay men for landing…
The way the four of us were stationed in our section of the room, I was in the front a few tables back from the stage…Ali was behind to the right (at Julianne Moore’s table)…Laura was behind to the left…and Pete was directly behind me. Periodically I would look to everyone, just to visually check in. At one point there was this drunk old creeper clearly hitting on Pete…and I was oddly protective of him. Later, he and I would be conversing and in a classic Pete statement…he would say something so basic and simple, yet profound to me at the same time…and me admiring the friend I have within him.
Me: Do you get uncomfortable when gay men hit on you?
Pete: Probably no moreso than you do when women hit on you.
Miss Peppermint was the auctioneer. (Achordial Brio has been to a few of the same events as Miss Peppermint…including an HIV variety show at Splash this past summer. Yes…gay dance club, formal gala, hetero dive bar, dinner benefit, black box theatre, etc…AB does not discriminate on performance venue spaces (or causes).) …I first met her at the NYC Marriage Equality March this summer while at one of my pride marching band events.
She was entertaining (per the usual), looked fierce, and was on it like blue bonnet with the bidding. At one point, an unscripted moment came when she taunted Nick Adams (starring in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) to come to the stage, stripped his shirt off, and auctioned him (3,500$).
Once the auction was done, I worked my way out of the ballroom, past the table with my favorite black lesbian of the night. I slide my glowstick on her table and told her, ‘you found this’. She laughed and insisted she give me a hug. I got a huge smile…because it’s the simple things that enthrall me.
Ali then bonded enough with Julianna at this point in the night to ask for photos in the ballroom, not just back stage/off in the wings somewhere. So this happened:
We also saw or minimally interacted with:
Who I did not see:
This last weekend, I took Rebekah husband hunting. I just had to rinse off from the gym previously, throw something on, and then complain as she went through approximately a dozen wardrobe changes. Obviously the way to properly deal with this situation was to fill up my school thermos and get drunk as I took the dogs on their nightly walk. Finally when I returned, we were ready to go/finally felt alright enough to leave the building looking like this: 
As we walked from our intersection on 7th Ave, down to 8th for a cab uptown…I got a text from one of the very few gay guy friends I have (one of my D.C. boys, Adam). His text read, ‘We’re at some place called XES’. I read this aloud and we laughed…since it’s the bar literally across the street from our building. We walked back to XES, long enough for me to walk in, sneak hug attack him, Rebekah and I get snarky judgement looks from the 6 gays who joined him in NYC for the Robyn concert, us not engage with any of it at all, talk about all the Real Housewives’ drama, make brunch plans, and leave.
Walking back to 8th Ave, I slipped and flew into these stacks of boxes outside the storage entrance to CVS. I felt bad and took the time to re-stack them…as depicted Rebekah yelled at me to leave them because she was not waiting for dawdlers. I was thankful these boxes which I crashed into/fell on top of me were just Quilted Northern, and not boxes of bricks…because you know how CVS sells bricks and has them shipped in boxes…
We got to Mercury Bar- fun…but all the men of interest were into the appalling B&T girls. This bar has the potential to be better on a nonFriday/Saturday night…so it got mixed reviews.
The next place we went to was The Pony Bar. This place was loaded with nerds…which are sorta cute…but she was not hunting for a nerd-themed husband this night. Thumbs up for the beer choice and vibe, thumbs down for the hetero nerds.
We then were noticing our inner conflict for demanding Britney, Whitney, Madonna, or really any song (which cut out the midrange, cranked the bass line, and played it faster than the original tempo) blaring from speakers too big for the space they are in. Lucky for us, googling ‘gay dance clubs,’ there was one literally across the street from The Pony Bar. So we went and enjoyed ourselves:
While there…the ONLY lesbian I could see or notice (keeping in mind of my internal GPS system to find lesbians) was dancing all up on my grill. She unbuttoned my shirt…and oddly made Rebekah jealous. It was funny/not funny when she could not back up off me (why can’t they let me live, I’m gonna do it my way, take this for just what it is, etc). Bartini got two thumbs up- one for dance venue, and another for having a resident lesbian who will strip you down without then trying to put a bun in your oven.
I don’t remember leaving…or getting home…which I will chalk up to having a splendid night out!
Last week, I went to two book readings. One was for an acquaintance, Nathan Manske. He is currently in the middle of a 50 state tour to find LGBTA people from the smallest of towns to bigger tristate areas, and them share their most meaningful stories and lessons to date from being a member of our community. He was swamped with people after the reading and presentation on what they have accomplished so far…so I sent him a FB note as I left.
I am glad to know him beyond just his name and cause.
Check out his website: here
Follow his 50 state journey: here
Almost every night I pass this venue.
And on these nights, I want to read the sign as ‘Lesbian’…of which I would interpret as a personal invite directed at me to come in and be a dyke tyke bar fly.
Unfortunately on these nights AND the ones I don’t walk by, it continues to read ‘Lebain’.
…this reality is just simply wretched.
By the CNN Wire Staff
October 27, 2010 7:09 a.m. EDT
A federal judge has ordered a Mississippi school district to pay about $81,000 in legal fees and expenses in a lawsuit filed by a lesbian student who was told she would be ejected from a prom if she brought her girlfriend.
The decision Tuesday by a federal judge may be the final chapter in the well-publicized legal battle between a lesbian teenager and the Mississippi school district.
The lawsuit against the school district in Fulton, Mississippi, was filed by the ACLU on behalf of Constance McMillen. The lawsuit was settled in July, and the school district agreed to pay McMillen $35,000 in damages and adopt a policy prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. The July settlement was not part of the $81,000 payment ordered by the judge Tuesday.
The issue made national news after McMillen, the lesbian teen, was told by Itawamba Agricultural High School officials she and her girlfriend would be barred from attending the school-sponsored prom.
The prom was eventually canceled by school board officials.
At the time, support poured in for the teen. She served as the grand marshal for New York’s Gay Pride Parade, got a $30,000 college scholarship from an anonymous donor and a Facebook page called “Let Constance Take Her Girlfriend to Prom!” attracted more than 400,000 fans.
***My high school was sexist on this topic. Girls were allowed to go together as same sex couples (granted they also had to sit in a specific of the hall), but the boys were not to have same sex dates to prom. I am glad Constance McMillen stepped out to be an activist on this topic, and set a great precedent/standard for lesbian and gay students who want to bring whoever they are dating to their proms. I went to prom…actually I went to a 5 proms my junior and senior year of high school…and each school had a policy on this. I never got what the ‘big deal’ was about same sex couples…what I also did not get was how nobody else was caught off guard by how unfair this was.***
Israel’s Dancing With the Stars will include a female couple among its upcoming season’s contestants.
Gilli Shem Tov, an out lesbian and television presenter, told the BBC that dancing with a female partner felt natural to her anyway.
“I have realized that dance is about coordination and energy between two people, whether female or male,” Tov said in the article. “Because I share my life with a woman and have a family with her, to me this is the most natural thing to do.”
She will dance with Dorit Milman, a heterosexual professional dancer, and each will take turns leading the dance, a traditionally male role in partner dancing.
The show, known as Rokdim Im Kokhavim in Israel, will launch its sixth season November 1.
***I’m really excited about this. (I admittedly would love to learn how to ballroom dance with my boyfriend/husband one day. It’s fun, sensual, and we’d look good doing it too. Okay…back to the lesbians.) The last time I saw hot decent lesbian dancing was sadly, from ‘L Word- Bette and Tina’ at some fundraiser in the last season to that Bitter:Sweet song, “Mating Game”. What I am MOST excited about, is looking back on this post one day thinking, ‘remember when this was a big deal?! Now it’s just commonplace’.
Recruiters to Accept Gay Applicants
Posted on Advocate.com October 19, 2010
By Kerry Eleveld
A Pentagon spokeswoman says recruiters have been told they must accept gay applicants, following a federal court decision striking down the ban on gays serving openly in the military, theAssociated Press reported Tuesday.
As The Advocate reported last Thursday, the Department of Defense issued new orders via e-mail late Thursday afternoon informing all five branches of the military that they must comply with an injunction ordered by a federal judge on enforcement of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” according to Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith.
“The Department of Defense will of course obey the law, and the email noted that, in the meantime, the Department will abide by the terms in the court’s ruling, effective as of the time and date of the ruling,” Cynthia Smith said in an e-mail. “Earlier today, the Staff Judge Advocate Generals [J.A.G.] from the Military Services, in consultation with the OSD Office of General Counsel, sent to their Service Staff Judge Advocate counterparts in the field an email informing them of the ruling by Judge Virginia Phillips of the Central District of California.”
The guidance came more than 48 hours after Judge Phillips initially placed the injunction on the policy — too late for gay veterans, like Omar Lopez, who were anxious to reenlist when they first got wind of the policy’s suspension.
“I got overly excited about the ruling,” said Lopez, a 29-year-old Navy veteran who had been discharged under the policy and is now in his second year at Austin Community College in Texas. “I decided I’m already in college, I might as we well go and enlist in the ROTC program.”
Just after noon on Wednesday, Lopez went to an Army recruiting office at 2025 Guadalupe Street in Austin with a videographer in tow and talked to a recruiter but was turned away.
The recruiter, who asked to not be filmed but is audible in the video, told Lopez of the injunction, “But you got to understand — the news, I mean that’s just publicity, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the change has happened. That’s just something that they’re talking about, right? And they’ve been talking about that for months now.” (Video of his attempt, taken by Michael Diviesti and provided by the LGBT civil rights group GetEQUAL, can be viewed here.)
Lopez later told The Advocate that the recruiters didn’t seem to know of the injunction.
“Any changes in policy hadn’t been disclosed to them, so they had to turn me away,” Lopez said, adding that they suggested he shouldn’t trust everything he reads in the media. “They said, you should wait for an actual order form the president saying the policy’s been lifted.”
Lopez’s case, first reported in The New York Times Thursday morning, prompted Log Cabin Republicans attorney Dan Woods to send a letter to the Department of Justice just before 2 p.m. Eastern time Thursday.
“Please let us know immediately what steps the government has taken to communicate the terms and requirements of the Court’s order to military personnel, including field commanders and military recruiting offices, who are in a position to violate the requirements of the injunction under the cover of ignorance of its terms of existence,” he wrote.
If the reports were true, Woods continued, “the Department of Defense would appear to be in violation of the Court’s injunction and subject to citation for contempt.”
Around 2:30 p.m., White House press secretary Robert Gibbs assured reporters at the briefing that the Pentagon would be addressing the matter of DOD compliance with the injunction shortly.
“The Department of Defense is working on the guidance for the entire chain of command that should be out soon,” he said.
Pentagon spokespeople informed the press just before 4 p.m. Eastern that the staff JAG had sent an e-mail to all service branches informing them that the military would “abide by the terms in the court’s ruling.”
***This is exciting! I hope there is a little homo somewhere, not hesitating to enlist to be a corpsman in the Marines now that DADT is progressing towards a shut down.***
I'm Pätrick. I quadruple majored in undergrad while living in Pittsburgh. I did my first two years of medical school in Boston. Now I'm doing my last two (or more) here in New York.
