Each week on Defining Marriage, hosts Matt Baume and James Morris chat about what’s happening with marriage equality, featuring frequent digressions into pop culture, silly banter, and the jokes and quibbles that have kept them together as a couple for over a decade. The first eighteen episodes of the podcast contain the complete audiobook version of the book Defining Marriage, which traces the decades-long evolution of marriage through the personal stories of those who lived through it, featuring personal insights from the lives of Evan Wolfson, Dan Savage, Ken Mehlman, Dustin Lance Black, and many more.
The Pope and a Pig in a Poke
Apr 11, 2016
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The Pope and a Pig in a Poke
Matt Baume
This week on the podcast, James and I talk about the pope's recent declaration that same-sex couples reeeeeeeally shouldn't be allowed to marry. James knows a thing or two about this pope business, and explains exactly how the church justifies some of its wacky rules about who gets special treatment and also the strange terrifying alternate universe where all the unbaptised babies go. We also address a Puerto Rico judge's ruling that the US Constitution doesn't apply to them; and the subsequent appellate ruling that yes of course it does, don't be ridiculous.
Music: In Your Arms Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Young Men Foaming for Gay Marriage in the Florida Heat
Apr 04, 2016
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Young Men Foaming for Gay Marriage in the Florida Heat
Matt Baume
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On this week's episode of the Defining Marriage podcast: Spring has sprung, when a young man's heart turns to fancy. Who's the young man, and what's so fancy about him? These and other mysteries remain unsolved on this week's episode, but we do talk about Florida's achievement of finally legalizing gay marriage, nearly a year after the Supreme Court already did it for them.
Also, various state governors are vetoing religious-freedom bills that cloak anti-queer animus, but those vetoes might not save us.
And once again, James tortures me with a name that I can't remember. We also quote Meatloaf, and whoever wrote the Bumblebee Tuna song. What a shame those two musical icons never teamed up.
Music: In Your Arms Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Georgia On Our Minds
Mar 28, 2016
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Georgia on our Minds
Matt Baume
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You've no doubt heard about North Carolina's unpleasant dabbling with anti-gay and anti-trans laws. On this week's episode, we're talking about the implications, as well as the traditional method of celebrating Easter: with a delicious Easter sundae. Also, did you know Mississippi has a robot that does the filibustering for you? What marvels we enjoy in this modern world!
Also, here's a little video I made about trans bathroom panic and why it's a bunch of nonsense:
Music: In Your Arms Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
President Chicken
Mar 21, 2016
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President Chicken
Matt Baume
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We've traveled to San Francisco this week, and our SF friends Andy and Long join us to talk about what Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court would mean for LGBT folks. Is there a chance that Obama's nominee could actually make it onto the court, and what sort of queer cases could he hear? We make some wild guesses, and also talk about a gay pirate broadcaster that we've tastefully decided should be called Butt Pirate Radio. Further digressions involve the time Sandra Day O'Connor played against a boy's volleyball team, and a chicken that would be president. Also, who would be a better president: Donald Trump or PewDiePie?
Music: In Your Arms Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
A Marriage Encounter
Mar 14, 2016
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A Marriage Encounter
Matt Baume
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This week Missouri had a filibuster and Australia talked about a plebiscite. Both of these sound like made-up words but it's all too true.
Missouri Democrats did their best to stop an anti-gay law, but Republicans were able to force a vote. We talk about the real-world implications of this law on witches and mule-owned monster truck dealerships. Then we sing.
Photo: Greg Westfall/Mule
Music: In Your Arms Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
No Mas, Roy Moore
Mar 07, 2016
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No Mas, Roy Moore
Matt Baume
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Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore has come to resolve an attack on our sovereignty now! He's very upset that homosexuals are getting married, and he's written hundreds of pages to explain his feelings. So very many feelings.
This particular bout of impotent rage was touched off by a ruling that Alabama does indeed have to obey rulings from the Supreme Court of the United States, for a variety of reasons including and not limited to the fact that Alabama is a part of this country. Gays can get married, even in states where people do not like them.
And so, Roy Moore has written a hundred and something pages about why that is a bad thing. Some highlights:
The opinion appeals more to emotion than law, reminding one of the 1974 song "Feelings" by Morris Albert, which begins: "Feelings, nothing more than feelings ...."
Homosexuals who seek the dignity of marriage must first forsake the sexual habits that disqualify them from admission to that hallowed institution. Surely more dignity attaches to participation in a fundamental institution on the terms it prescribes than to an attempt to wrest its definition to serve inordinate lusts that demean its historic dignity. A "disgrace to human nature" cannot be cured by stripping the institution of holy matrimony of its inherent dignity and redefining it to give social approval to behaviors unsuited to its high station. Sodomy has never been and never will be an act by which a marriage can be consummated.
But the human being, as a dependent creature, is not at liberty to redefine reality; instead, as the Declaration of Independence states, a human being is bound to recognize that the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are endowed by God. Those rights are not subject to a redefinition that rejects the natural order God has created.
"Man, considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws of his creator, for he is entirely a dependent being." 1 Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England *39. Part of that natural order is the institution of marriage as the union of a man and a woman. "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." Genesis 2:24.
The great sufferers will be the children -- deprived of either a paternal or a maternal presence -- who are raised in unnatural families that contradict the created order.
Venturing beyond "the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms," Griswold, 381 U.S. at 485, the Court anointed with constitutional protection the use of contraceptive devices by the unmarried, setting its seal of approval upon fornication.
Obergefell is but the latest example of the Court's creation of constitutional rights out of thin air in service of the immorality of the sexual revolution.
Music: In Your Arms Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Many Things Go
Feb 29, 2016
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Many Things Go
Matt Baume
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This week we're soothing our burning hot Oscar Fever with a study that, according to researchers, somehow suggests that people oppose gay marriage because they think it makes their partners more likely to cheat. Or something like that.
It's confusing, which is why we get so distracted by conversation about Mary Tyler Moore, Kirk Cameron, and wieners.
Music: In Your Arms Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Manny Pacquiao and the Bonobo Showboat
Feb 22, 2016
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Manny Pacquiao and the Bonobo Showboat
Matt Baume
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This week we're puzzling over Manny Pacquiao, a boxer/politician who's had some particularly unpleasant things to say about marriage equality. He's running for office in the Philippines and told an interviewer that same-sex couples shouldn't have the freedom to marry. And then he went much further, with Instagram posts about how LGBTs should be put to death, yikes.
Somehow, we also get on the topic of kangaroos (because they're all boxers), fetish nights, and as always, Star Wars. The episode concludes with me having a minor stroke.
Music: In Your Arms Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
How do you Solve a Problem Like Scalia?
Feb 15, 2016
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How to you Solve a Problem Like Scalia?
Matt Baume
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For the last few episodes, I've been revisiting the marriage work that I did as an reporter and activist over the last decade. And this week we'll be talking about some surprise changes coming to the US Supreme Court.
Here are a few things Antonin Scalia had to say about LGBTs:
"[S]uppose all the States had laws against flagpole sitting at one time, you know, there was a time when it was a popular thing and probably annoyed a lot of communities, and then almost all of them repealed those laws," Scalia asked the attorney fighting the Texas law. "Does that make flagpole sitting a fundamental right?"
"Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children's schools, or as boarders in their home," he wrote. "They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive."
"But I had thought that one could consider certain conduct reprehensible—murder, for example, or polygamy, or cruelty to animals—and could exhibit even 'animus' toward such conduct. Surely that is the only sort of 'animus' at issue here: moral disapproval of homosexual conduct[.]"
"[A job] interviewer may refuse to offer a job because the applicant is a Republican; because he is an adulterer; because he went to the wrong prep school or belongs to the wrong country club; because he eats snails; because he is a womanizer; because she wears real animal fur; or even because he hates the Chicago Cubs."
"It doesn't say you can't have—you can't have any sexual intimacy. It says you cannot have sexual intimacy with a person of the same sex."
Music: In Your Arms Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Behind the Scenes at the Star-Studded Prop 8 Play
Feb 08, 2016
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Behind the Scenes at the Star-Studded Prop 8 Play
Matt Baume
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For the last few episodes, I've been revisiting the marriage work that I did as an reporter and activist over the last decade. And this week we'll be talking about 8 the play, the dramatic interpretation of the prop 8 trial. I worked behind the scenes on mounting the star-studded premieres in New York and LA, and here to talk about it with me this week is the delightful James.
Music: In Your Arms Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
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