The Tin Man » 2007

Sunday, February 4, 2007

From the “Weddings & Celebrations” section of today’s New York Times:

Catherine Morrison and William T. Golden were married last evening at their home in Manhattan…

Ms. Morrison, 72, will continue to use her name professionally. She is a board member of New Yorkers for Parks, an advocacy group, and of the Greenbelt Conservancy, a preservation organization on Staten Island. She also writes a gardening column in The Staten Island Advance…

Mr. Golden, 97, is a former Wall Street analyst…

Wow.

Ninety-seven.

I can’t imagine it will be a very long marriage, but hats off to Mr. Golden. I hope I’m still living it up at 97.

That’s fricking awesome.

4:53 PM | 2 drops of oil

Monday, February 5, 2007

What a clusterfuck.

(And I can’t believe I just learned about this today.)

It begins with a lawsuit and leads to the resignation of the newly-elected president of LeGal (The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Law Association of Greater New York).

Last month, Aaron Charney, a young gay lawyer at the prestigious New York City law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, sued the firm for alleged harrasment based on his sexual orientation. (Here’s the original complaint.) Among other things, he claims that one of the firm’s partners tossed a document at his feet and said, “Bend over and pick it up — I’m sure you like that.” The day after that incident, the same partner handed him another document and said, “I just took a shit while reading this, and some might still be on there for you.”

When Charney complained to the appropriate people, he allegedly experienced retaliation. According to a New York Times article last month, “Members of the firm suggested that he move to a foreign office and then fabricated reviews to accuse him of overbilling clients, among other things.”

Mr. Charney, who joined the firm in the fall of 2003 after graduating from Columbia University Law School, contends that hostility toward him because of his sexual orientation began in the fall of 2005.

In his complaint, Mr. Charney claims that a partner in the mergers practice, Eric M. Krautheimer, began to make lewd sexual remarks to him based on his sexual orientation.

The next month, he said, James C. Morphy, the managing partner of the merger group, gave Mr. Charney his semiannual review, in which he conveyed outstanding work evaluations that had been written by several partners and clients on Mr. Charney’s behalf.

At the conclusion of the evaluation, however, Mr. Charney asserts that Mr. Morphy said that several partners had complained about seeing Mr. Charney and another male associate in the group “walking the halls together” and “eating lunch together” and that this “needs to stop.” In his complaint, Mr. Charney said it was a thinly veiled and false accusation that the two were engaged in a gay relationship.

In May 2006, Mr. Charney lodged a formal complaint with David B. Harms, a co-managing partner of the firm’s general practice. A few days later, Mr. Harms said that Mr. Krauthemier and another partner whom Mr. Charney asserted had made inappropriate remarks denied doing so.

Mr. Harms assured Mr. Charney that making the complaint would not result in any change to his employment status at the firm.

But a few hours later, Mr. Charney said he learned he was not included on a mentoring list for the 2006 summer associate program.

Okay. So that’s where it begins.

The next part of the story is that an ABC News article appears in which John Scheich, the First Vice President of the LeGal, says the following:

“Sullivan Cromwell is far from prejudiced in any way,” says [Scheich], adding that the firm often buys a table at his group’s annual fundraising dinner dance. “I don’t know Aaron Charney or the details of his case, but if I had to line up on one side or the other, I would have to line up with David H. Braff [an openly gay partner at the firm] and Sullivan Cromwell.”

It gets worse.

First of all, it was irresponsible of Scheich to make such a comment to the press when he had no firsthand knowledge of the facts of the case. This is particularly true when LeGal’s mission statement includes, in part, “[p]romoting the expertise and advancement of LGBT legal professionals,” “[e]liminating homophobia and transphobia in the justice system,” “[e]ncouraging lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and people of transgendered experience to choose law as a career, and “[p]romoting solidarity among LGBT in the law.” Belittling a lawsuit alleging anti-gay discrimination seems like something that runs counter to LeGal’s mission.

But Scheich dug a deeper hole for himself. Several people e-mailed Scheich in response to his comments, criticizing him for his statements. And he responded by e-mail. Here’s one of his responses:

Who are we to believe? Mr. Charney who has never shown any interest in the gay legal community before this incident (he is not a member of LeGaL) or contributed to any of our programs as far as we know, OR Dave Braff, a member of LeGaL for over 20 years, also gay, and a big contributor to LeGaL in more ways than just money and buying a table at our annual dinner/dance.

We would welcome you into membership at LeGaL and any contributions both financial and otherwise you might choose to make. Shall I have our Administrator send you a membership application?

That whole response is just wrongheaded. (These law students agree. And that last part is just tacky.

Here’s an excerpt from another response he e-mailed to someone:

Let me explain the dilemma LeGaL finds itself.

We are constantly struggling at LeGaL to become better known and more respected in the Legal community, amongst the Judiciary, and City Council etc. Accordingly it is imperative that when the media seeks us out, it is important that we make comment, as we did in the Court of Appeals decision recently on gay marriage. People see we are part of the respected legal community just by speaking out…

So I had to comment. Of course, I could have said a very uninteresting thing like , let’s wait and see how the facts turn out. Or it’s too early to know what actually happened. Those comments probably would bot [sic] have been printed.

So I tippy toed through the issue as gingerly as I could, but made it interesting enough and accurate enough to reach print.

So he could have said, “let’s wait and see how the facts turn out,” but it didn’t seem interesting enough, so instead he decided to publicly prejudge the case in a way that makes it seem like if you buy tables at LeGal events, you’ll be insulated from criticism.

Scheich was recently elected the president of LeGal. But LeGal’s board of directors disavowed his comments:

Given the gravity of the allegations and the early stage of legal proceedings, we sincerely regret that an officer of our organization has been quoted as essentially prejudging the merits of the lawsuit and the veracity of Mr. Charney, and that the officer also made subsequent comments. That was wrong - plain and simple…

We are deeply sorry that an officer of our organization, which aims in part to eliminate discrimination and to encourage LGBT individuals to choose law as a career, made public comments dismissive of Mr. Charney’s claims. The views expressed by that officer do not represent the views of our Board, nor, we suspect, the views of our members…

In light of all this, Scheich resigned from the presidency last week.

Oh, and that’s not all. Apparently, Sullivan & Cromwell has filed a countersuit against Charney, alleging that he leaked confidential documents to the press.

This is getting uglier.

7:37 PM | 4 drops of oil

Saturday, February 10, 2007

While digging around in some of my old files this afternoon, I found two $25 savings bonds that were issued to me when I was a baby. They’re from January 1974 and November 1975, so they’ve both reached their 30-year maturity.

According to here, they’re worth a total of $262.94.

And according to the savings bonds, I used to live here and here.

I always feel so weird that I lived in Queens when I was an infant and toddler. I don’t feel like a Queens boy.

Anyway, the savings bonds windfall will be wiped out by the new pair of glasses I bought today…

5:18 PM | oil me

Monday, February 19, 2007

I went to the wedding of a college friend over the weekend. Most of my core group of friends from college was there.

And everyone has kids.

Okay, not everyone. I don’t have kids. My lesbian friend and her partner don’t have kids. The couple that just got married doesn’t have kids.

But one of my friends and his wife brought their 6-month-old, and another friend and his wife also have an infant, and another friend and his wife have an 18-month-old and a newborn. And the two couples who weren’t there also have kids.

Another classmate has a 7-year-old and a 4-year-old.

After the reception, I anticipated a long night of drinking and card-playing in someone’s hotel room, because that’s what we’ve done in the past when we’ve all gotten together. But nobody brought cards. By 11:30, most of our group had gone to bed. It was left to four of us (including the groom) to play pool in the hotel bar, drinking a couple of beers, until the bar closed at approximately 12:45 in the morning. By 1 a.m. I was back in my extraordinarily comfy hotel bed.

The next morning at brunch we all sat around and I listened to everyone talk about kids. Should babies watch television? How much attention should you give kids? Little kids in restaurants all play electronic games today! Even the lesbians, who live near Park Slope, were able to chime in with a story about liberal Park Slope parents bringing their babies to bars and how sometimes people can’t into the bars because there are too many strollers in the way.

Who are all these people and what the hell have they done with my friends?

Sigh. Suddenly everyone’s in their early 30s and married with growing families. I look back on all the years I’ve known these people. There was college, when we all lived in the same dorm and saw each other every day and worried about mid-terms and extracurricular activities. There were the chaotic years after college, when we (well, they, not me) were young and making money and living in the big city — we’d all get together in New York or D.C. every year or two and spend lots of money on long nights of drinking at noisy bars, and my friend Doug (R.I.P.) would try to pick up girls.

And now it’s all about babies.

Whenever we all get together I feel so different. I feel like they’ve been travelling through the conventional stages of adult life while I suffer from retarded development. As the years pass it seems that my life diverges from theirs more and more. I live in a different world than they do. I’m a gay man in New York City, and although I have a partner like them, my life is not the same as theirs and it never will be. Straight people in their early 30s are not the same as gay people in their early 30s. I wonder if we’ll grow even more different as the years pass.

This isn’t good or bad and I don’t have any judgments to make about it. All I mean to say is that it’s, well, profound.

We’re three-dimensional creatures, we human beings, but sometimes it’s that fourth dimension, the one we can’t see - time - that causes the most wonderment.

1:48 PM | 2 drops of oil

Congratulations to all the gay couples in New Jersey who are finally able to get married today!

(And wow - my family’s rabbi helped officiate the first ceremony just after midnight.)

What’s that, you say? It’s not actually marriage, but just a civil union, grumble grumble spineless New Jersey legislators grumble grumble?

Well actually, it is marriage - state marriage, not federal marriage, but marriage nonetheless - no matter what the statutes and the licenses say. Gay couples in New Jersey, as of today, are entitled to all the rights and responsibilities that straight couples can have. All the exact same ones. You can take your spouse’s name, you can adopt your spouse’s biological children, your children are “legitimate,” you can’t be forced to testify against your spouse in court, you can leave your property to your spouse, you have automatic hospital visitation rights, and so on. It’s marriage.

While the technical term is “civil union,” gay couples who are civil-unioned need to begin referring to themselves as married - which they are legally allowed to do. (The New Jersey Supreme Court stated in its opinion last fall that after the new law goes into effect, “same-sex couples will be free to call their relationships by the name they choose” no matter what name the legislators give to the unions.) Only by referring to themselves as married - only by referring to their relationships as marriages - will gay couples help their fellow New Jerseyans realize that civil unions and marriages must be treated the same way legally. And it will help those relationships become more accepted socially as well.

I’m tired of hearing people complain that all they can get is this civil union thing and it’s not really marriage. If you keep up that attitude, other people are going to start believing it. So stop it.

Yes, the legislature stopped short of using the word marriage. So what? You’re married. Make sure everyone knows what that means.

Congratulations!

2:54 PM | 5 drops of oil

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

It’s amazing how fast the weeks have been passing since I started my new job. Every other Monday night I go to a trivia contest with friends; Tuesday night is chorus rehearsal; then it’s Humpday, then Thursday and then it’s the weekend - which zooms by - and then it’s Monday again.

And I have a job that I actually kinda like.

Someday I’ll wake up and suddenly be 65, won’t I. Scary.

12:04 AM | 1 drop of oil

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Okay, here’s a case where legally defining same-sex relationships as “marriages” instead of “civil unions” makes a difference. According to today’s NY Times:

The Rhode Island attorney general said Wednesday that same-sex marriages performed in Massachusetts, the sole state where they are legal, should be recognized in Rhode Island. …“This is about Rhode Island citizens who entered into a valid, legally recognized same-sex marriage and returned here to live and work,” [Rhode Island’s attorney general said]. “There is no way, no law, no constitutional provision and, in my estimation, no right to allow the denial of basic human rights.”

Here’s the full text of the attorney general’s letter. (Here’s the request that prompted the letter.) A legal opinion of the state’s attorney general has no legal force on its own, but it’s likely to be followed by state agencies nevertheless.

The letter mentions only same-sex marriage, which today is legal only in Massachusetts. It says nothing about civil unions. If the New Jersey legislature had just gone ahead and granted the M-word to New Jersey same-sex couples, their marriages could be recognized in Rhode Island, too. But it didn’t. So they can’t. It’s up in the air.

It could be argued that the New Jersey legislature didn’t follow the New Jersey Supreme Court’s order to create marriage equivalence for same-sex couples, because there will be no equivalence if those couples move to Rhode Island. This is an iffy argument, though, because it’s Rhode Island’s fault for not extending its recognition to other states’ civil unions as well as marriages. The right place to contest or try to expand the Rhode Island policy is Rhode Island. Also, this seems to come into effect only when a couple moves to Rhode Island, at which point the couple would, for the most part, be outside of New Jersey’s jurisdiction.

It’s possible, of course, that Rhode Island could extend its recognition to civil-unioned couples from other states. But the AG’s letter doesn’t say that.

So the point is driven home: there’s no status truly equivalent to marriage. There’s just marriage.

11:53 AM | oil me

Regarding the debate over whether Hillary Clinton should apologize for her Iraq war vote and say that she made a mistake:

I’ve heard some people compare this situation to that of the current president. For example: “Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s inability to admit that she was wrong to support the authorization of the Iraq war is reminiscent of nothing so much as George W. Bush’s inability to admit that he was wrong in leading us into that war.”

Except that that’s total bull.

Bush’s problem isn’t that he won’t admit he was wrong in leading us to war. There are plenty of politicians who never admit mistakes. Politicians often switch sides on an issue while professing total consistency. (See Rudy Giuliani on abortion and Mitt Romney on gay rights.) Bush’s problem isn’t that he won’t admit mistakes - it’s that he won’t change his policies. It’s his actions that matter, not his words. Would people be happy if Bush admitted making a mistake but just kept to his current course?

I don’t see why it matters whether or not Hillary apologizes or admits to a mistake. First of all, she’s already said that if she knew then what she knows now, she wouldn’t have voted the way she did.

Of course, it’s totally possible that her vote was a political calculation meant to insure her against Republican accusations that she was antiwar. It’s also possible that she doesn’t really regret her war vote but just wants to win the Democratic nomination. It’s also possible that she doesn’t have strong feelings on the issue one way or another.

If she apologizes, it’s going to be seen as just another political calculation. And it probably would be one.

What matters is the future. What she would do about Iraq if she were elected president?

Unfortunately, that’s totally unclear to me. If anything, that’s the big issue - not whether or not she makes some dumb apology.

2:07 PM | 2 drops of oil

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Last night, in preparation for the Oscars, I watched “Half Nelson,” starring Ryan Gosling as a drug-addicted teacher in Brooklyn.

His nomination for Best Actor is well deserved. His performance is so subtle, so real - he doesn’t even seem like he’s acting.

But most importantly, he’s SOOOOOOO easy on the eyes.

ryan gosling

Excuse me as I collapse into a little puddle.

10:20 AM | 1 drop of oil

Monday, February 26, 2007

I had brunch with my family yesterday. My parents are going to Israel in April. My brother and his wife are going to Peru next week. As for Matt and I, we have no travel plans.

I’m trying to figure out if I’m okay with that. My dad said Matt and I should travel somewhere, and we’ve talked about it occasionally. But I don’t have the money for it. Or at least I think I don’t. I have a very little savings cushion - less than one month’s living expenses.

Travel just seems like such a pointless thing to spend money on. You spend money on a trip and then you go on the trip and all you’re left with is memories. Why travel? I’m not too interested in seeing new places when I could just read about them. The only benefit I see in traveling is that it breaks up your routine and gives you some new experiences. But is that worth hundreds of dollars?

I admit, I’m also a little scared about travelling. The unknown. I’ve lived in Japan and travelled in the Far East, but it was with my family. Most of my vacations have been with my parents.

My dad said I should “live a little.” Why does that have to mean traveling?

And yet I’m envious whenever I hear of people who have gone to the Caribbean or gone to Berlin or wherever.

But why spend, again, hundreds of dollars, just to break up your routine?

Am I right about this? I don’t feel right about it. I don’t know.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to tell me what’s so great about traveling.

4:54 PM | 4 drops of oil

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

New York Magazine has a long article this week about the gay attorney vs. big law firm lawsuit that I mentioned a few weeks ago.

This description of Aaron Charney, the plaintiff, sounds very familiar to me:

He says he’d never had a gay experience until he was 25 — “I wouldn’t call it a relationship,” he says. He wanted all his ducks in a row — the B.A., the J.D., the secure career track — before reckoning with that part of his identity. “You come to a point where you realize that issues are no longer malleable, and you know who you are, and you make a decision,” he says. “You have to really know yourself before you make a decision like that. Because you don’t want to regret it later.”

Much of the article, though, is about the crappy attitude and behavior of several of the partners at Sullivan & Cromwell. Reading the article just reaffirms for me that I would never have survived five minutes in a place like that. And I don’t understand high-stress lawyers who treat other people like shit. How do those people live with themselves? So you make a lot of money? So what? People like him and her should be ashamed of themselves.

Incidentally, I’m creeped out by David Lat’s coverage of the case. I went to Lat’s site today for the first time in a couple of weeks to see what he had to say about the New York Magazine article. It turns out that he’s visited Charney’s apartment building and blogged about it. That goes beyond obsessive.

3:25 PM | 6 drops of oil

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

R.I.P., Arthur Schlesinger.

11:53 PM | oil me