Cross-posted from two-diaries over at Calitics. And if you feel like really doing something proactive, how about giving some money to Equality for All, to fight against the Anti-Marriage initiative in November.
A friend of mine emailed me a PDF foretelling a ruling in In Re Marriage Cases from the Supreme Court's website. So, tomorrow is the day we will learn if, in California, we all have equal rights.
The decision is scheduled to come out at 10am. The Supreme Court has all sorts of interesting documents, audio, and other stuff related to the case at a special "High Profile Cases" page. If you are in SF, you can attend a post-decision rally at City Hall at noon. More details at Calitics.
But, over the flip, I have some bad news about this. I won't stoop to putting "BREAKING" in my title, but it is something of a bombshell. Flip...
Larry Handerhan is an employee of the California Democratic Party who runs Chairman Art Torres’s San Francisco office. This weekend, he and some friends decided that it was time to take the fight for equality to Sacramento. Larry wanted to share his experiences from the weekend, and we thought the folks at Daily Kos would be interested.
By Monday, April 21st, organizers of a discriminatory anti-marriage initiative must submit enough valid signatures to qualify for the November ballot. By most reports, they are within reach of that goal.
That was sufficient motivation for me and three fellow members of the San Francisco based Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club to brave I-80 early Saturday morning and join Equality for All’s "Decline to Sign" Campaign in Sacramento.
L to R: Larry and his friends, David, Jason and Cecilia
Where is the leadership? Where are our leaders? Why aren't there any leaders?
How many times have you heard those questions being asked in your life...especially around here.
I've heard "leadership" being thrown around a lot. In a matter of fifteen minutes, I've heard different people make contridictory arguments as to what constitutes leadership;
1.) Someone who stands up for what the people want
2.) Someone who stands up for what's right even when the people are against it.
Well, aren't those contriictions?
I'm beginning to think what Americans want isn't leadership, they want people who think the way they think and do what they want to do, prioritized the way they want them to be. Can we really have leaders if what we're looking for is 300 million different types of leadership. Can Americans really be "led?"
The military has the "DADT" (don't ask, don't tell) policy and state and federal governments have DOMA amendments and laws. Anyway, these have lead to some sad and frustrating inequalities for military heroeswho die in battle and same-sex couples trying to live their lives.
As the GOP hate machine starts to ply the voters with new rounds of state level "Marriage Protection" amendments. It is time to once again speak to the choir, and those not yet converted, about the reality of marriage.
And it is completely irrelevant to the discussion. This construct is strictly a legal & civil contract with the government as its backer. Laws and the government care little about love, and who loves whom...Again, until recently. Therein lays the need for discussion and revelation. We live in a land drowning in her own Puritan heritage while swimming joyfully in a selective recollection of faith and marriage and a blinding ignorance of the rules of law and what it means to be an American.
Four years ago, when Del Martin, Phyllis Lyon and more than 4,000 other couples said "I Do" this country took an irrevocable step toward securing equality for every American.
While many feel what we did was too much, too fast, too soon – we stand firm in the belief that our actions were not only just, but legal and constitutional. The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the pursuit of happiness.
Today, the California Supreme Court is hearing arguments on whether excluding gay couples from marriage violates the state constitution. Today, these Justices have a unique chance to follow in the proud tradition of California's high court, which took a courageous stand on marriage equality in 1948 when it ruled that the state's ban on inter-racial marriage was unconstitutional.
A few years ago, my spouse (known around here as Packrat) woke up at 4 a.m. Christmas morning with chest pains. We didn't know if it was a heart attack. I called an ambulance and she was rushed to the hospital. We were lucky: it was just a bad reaction to mixing medications.
We were lucky in another way. We live in California, where we can register as domestic partners. Because of that, Packrat was on my insurance. Even more importantly, I was allowed to be with her during those frightening hours at the hospital, and they included me in all discussions.
So, other legal protections are just as good as marriage, right? Wrong.
I want to preface this by saying I'm not a one-issue voter. Gay issues are important, but I have no problem voting for the best candidate for the presidency in any given year, regardless of their position on this one specific issue. I realize that it's divisive, and, as we saw in 2004, can be successfully used as a campaign wedge issue.
Now that that's out of the way, I want to write about gay issues in the campaign in 2004 versus 2008.
UPDATE: WINNER!! Moments after posting this, the Oscar went to Freeheld! Congratulations Cynthia, and all those fighting for equality and the freedom to marry!
Nominated for Best Documentary Short, Freeheld, for those who don't know, chronicles one of the most courageous struggles we have ever witnessed, one that galvanized the progressive GLBT and straight communities in New Jersey.
Alternating from packed public demonstrations at the county courthouse to quiet, tender moments of Laurel and Stacie at home, "Freeheld" combines tension-filled political drama with personal detail, creating a nuanced study of a grassroots fight for justice.
Yesterday, my co-host and I on Blue Jersey Radio had the chance to interview the film's director, Cynthia Wade. For an insider's peak at how politics and film can be intertwined, have a listen.
One of the current fashions emanating from Inside the Beltway is the declaration that the "culture war is over," and in the case of E.J. Dionne, that it is the wrong war to be fought. The currency of such proclamations may not last long. They are variations on the old saw that the religious right is dead, dying, over the hill, and so on. There are analyses to be made about the State of the Religious Right, which is certainly in a state of turmoil and transition, in the wake of the passing of the founding generation from public life. But any analysis whose central premise is any of the above, is probably wishful thinking, at best.
The time is not to kid ourselves with wishful thinking, but to be clear about the current nature and capacities of the religious right; staying aware of the direction of the religious right’s issues, organizations and electoral campaigns, and making any necessary adjustments.
Either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States.
As a former John Edwards supporter, I can say these words, barely. I can get them out of my mouth without choking, even today.
But, I will submit that if they can't utter those 7 words, or back them up once they get into office, neither would actually deserve to be President of the United States.
I'll be fair, neither would John Edwards have. He equivocated, just as your candidates equivocated. But, he was the superior choice otherwise, in my view, and now he's gone, insofar as being a candidate for President.
We Americans need a Democrat as the next President of the United States. Therefore, deserving or not, when the chips are down, after some soul searching over the last few days, despite making some noises to the effect that I might not even vote for the nominee, I will, with a heavy heart if necessary, cast my ballot for the Democrat in November.
(cross-posted from Loaded Orygun, Oregon's progressive community)
I know it will shock all of you to learn this, but occasionally I peek at other blogs, and even more occasionally I find something inspirational or just plain useful there. So it was with the New York Times' Freakonomics blog a few days ago.The blog entry is called "Swimming Pools and Don't Ask, Don't Tell." The author is Yale professor Ian Ayres. He's talking about the US military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy but the underlying principles are applicable to any form of de jure discrimination. Details below the jump.
When I watched John Kerry endorse Barack Obama, I couldn’t help but think: "Here we go, again."
Kerry was the Vietnam war hero turned anti-war hero who threw gays under the bus to get elected in 2004.
And we relented, not wanting to upset Democratic Party big-whigs like Bill Clinton who made it sound like we were the ones who brought on the anti-gay marriage initiatives in eleven states that year. They passed, Kerry lost, and we were blamed. By the way, has either Bill or Hillary Clinton ever confirmed that Bill Clinton advised Kerry to support the anti-gay ballot initiatives as a way of defusing the gay issue?
So here’s Barack Obama, so fresh and new – getting his national jump-start at the 2004 Democratic National Convention where he talked about red and blue states and having gay friends. Yes – he actually used the word "gay." But no more. Both in his New Hampshire concession speech and in his thank you to Kerry, Obama reverted to the code word "equality."
(Also posted at www.loadedorygun.net, Oregon's progressive community.)
Last night I ran into Jeff Merkley at an event, and I was very pleased to be able to get a few minutes of his uninterrupted attention so I could ask him about two issues that I care a lot about: (a) marriage equality, and (b) reform of the Internal Revenue Code to tax capital gains at the same rate as wages.
In the interest of full disclosure, I told him upfront that I was supporting his primary opponent Steve Novick, but that I was also sincerely interested in his positions on those two issues specifically, yes or no.
I should say at this point that Jeff Merkley seems to be a true gentleman, bright, and a very nice guy. He didn't have to give me the time of day once I had identified myself as a Novick supporter, but he was very cordial. I had met him only once before, very briefly, more than a year ago, and there was no way he would have remembered me. He was just being kind, which I appreciated.
But after I told him I was a Novick supporter and asked him my two yes-or-no questions, what happened next was interesting. He locked those big brown puppylike eyes onto mine (also brown, somewhat smaller and less puppylike) and proceeded to tell me why in his view "those are not 'yes or no' issues."
Last week, I sat down with Assemblymember John Laird of Santa Cruz/Monterey, to talk about Prop 93, the environment, and civil rights. I'll be editing up more of the video where we talk about these issues in more detail. However, I wanted to share this video first.
John Laird has a long history of fighting as both a progressive activist and now in the Assembly. More over the flip.
As a blogger I get invited to many political events Now as a parent and scientist I can't make many of them, but I still meet more candidates and politicians than the average voter. So I hear lots of political speeches. Usually, since I am meeting similar minded people, I like the speech. But only occasionally do I find the speech to be dead on and exemplary of what ALL Democrats should be shouting from the top of every hill. Things like: Liberal IS patriotic, pro-Choice IS pro-life and marriage equality is about nothing but fairness. Oh, yeah, and how about we have to get out of Iraq. This is what I heard from Steve Harrison, a fairly traditional man running for Congress, and I would like to introduce you to him.
New York City has only one Republican Congressional Rep, Bush Lap Dog Vito Fossella. This guy opposes securing America's ports, flip flops on privatization of Social Security, and has voted to support Bush's Iraq quagmire at every opportunity. Fossella has voted the Bush Republican Party line more than 90% of the time. Hence his designation as Bush Lap Dog. Steve Harrison is the man who can defeat Lap Dog Fossella and actually represent New Yorkers.
I'm sure that (almost) everyone has heard of Thomas Jefferson's famous "wall of separation" statement to the Danbury Baptists. I'm also sure that almost no one actually knows the wherefore and the why about that statement. It's much easier to twist such a statement to mean just about anything than it is to actually do a bit of historical study and try to get inside of Jefferson's head. I'm not going to get into all the details (you can follow the links if you want to get started on that), but I am going to say that it was clear that Jefferson did not want the President to be our national clergyman and that he looked only as far as both England and France to see examples of how the excessive entanglement between politics and religion worked to the disservice of both (Jefferson took a dim view of clergy in general, as even a cursory reading of his letters will show).
