Thursday, June 19, 2008

Amen

From my favourite lawyer, Dahlia Lithwick. She is so right.

If we manage to erase one hideously bad idea from our collective memories of the law in the war on terror, please, please let it be this one: Legal questions are neither "hard," nor "novel," nor "open" merely because someone at the White House didn't like the legal answer that followed them. Easy questions don't morph into tough ones just because you can find some guy willing to argue the other side. And if—as both Sands and Lederman have observed—Haynes and his colleagues shut down efforts by Jane Dalton, the legal adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to review the techniques, then we truly are witnessing something astonishing: Haynes turned an easy legal question into a hard one by avoiding it altogether.

Let them tell us

That this is not right and not real:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1407952648/bctid1614766169

If we could broadcast these videos across the state, and people could see that it isn't just a 'lifestyle' and we're not aberrations and that love is love is love is love, I hope I have enough faith in the goodness of people that we would crush this attempt to amend our constitution.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Marriage in West Hollywood

This video made me all teary.



It speaks for itself, and I'll say nothing more, save to contrast it to the negative message of all those idiot protesters out there.

Monday, June 16, 2008

Help make Christians broke

Gay marriage has been legal for just over an hour. The Family Resource Council has an ad out, the typical scare people with non facts kinda ad. And they have a "Marriage Protection Kit" that you can send for, for free.

So I say let's all order them and burn them. Their web site says that resources are "limited," and each one they send to us is one bite in those resources (they're free). So order them here.

And, of course, I used a porn star name to sign up.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Pioneer of Full Equality, II

Following up on yesterday's post re Sullivan's stupid statement, June 10 was the 5 year anniversary of Halpern v. Ontario, which affirmed the 2001 trial court ruling permitting gay marriage. That legalized gay marriage in Canada, and effectively led to the federal government passing the same sex marriage bill. And given it was in Ontario, it opened up gay marriage to a far greater percentage of the population than California did.

And, for all Sullivan's "pioneer of equality" horseshit, Halpern came almost a year before the Massachusetts decision.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

"Pioneer of Liberty"

Andrew Sullivan is truly on crack.

In commenting on Norway becoming the sixth country to legalize gay marriage (Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, South Africa, Spain being the others), he makes this stupid statement:
Next week, California - only marginally smaller in population than Spain and South Africa - will join the list. Added to Massachusetts, more gay people will be able to marry in the US than in any other country in the world. In the end, America still came through as the pioneer of full equality.
Whaaaaaat? In what way is that statement even marginally correct?

First, the absolute numbers don't matter. What matters is the percentage of the population. Ever last gay person in The Six can get married. In the US, it's a tiny fraction of the population.

Second, "pioneer of full equality"? Such nonsense. For every state that has legalized gay marriage, there are 11 with constitutional bans (23 total) and 8 that ban it by statute (17 total).

It might well get banned in California. And it's not getting better any time soon.

The US holds itself out as a role model for freedom but it's a johnny-come-lately most of the time. Think slavery, interracial marriage, women's suffrage, and letting black people vote.

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Black President--but never us

I'm happy that Obama won the nomination; I do think it is a good thing.

But we are decades from where we 'mos have a chance at anything.

Tory tyranny (and closeted ministers aside, that's you John Baird) aside, at least in civilization have we had gay cabinet ministers (yes, Scott, we knew you were staring at my and Mike's shirtless asses) and candidates for premierships that were on our team.

The simple fact is it's not okay to be racist but homophobia--under many guises (family values, tradition, etc)--is still okay.

We are still not safe. I said to a friend tonight that I lack understanding because urban people are on our side, rural hicks NSM, but at home we are far more urbanized than here.

Liberation came in California, on one front, but we are not safe, and we are not free, yet.