As of the last tally, 38% of the votes are in and there is a 200 vote lead to save gay marriage. It is too close to call. 200 votes out of 225,000 are all that are saving civil rights.
I am furious.
Civil rights are not something that we should be voting on. It disgusts me to my core that we are allowing people to decide that some people get to be more equal than others.
I feel like I'm living in a George Orwell novel and I am frightened to go to bed because I don't know if I want to know what world I'm going to wake up to in the morning.
I'm going to make this a fast one as the pet drama is still occupying the majority of my emotional energy. We've made the hard call to put the cat to sleep later this week, and while it's the right call that doesn't mean it isn't one of the hardest things I've ever had to decide.
So...
National Coming Out Day was Saturday....big hugs and kisses to all my lgbt friends. As someone who identifies as bi, I consider myself a member of the community, and I'm with you in the fight for equality. I'm hoping for the repeal of don't ask don't tell, doma, and the passage of gay marriage in Maine this fall. I was sad that I couldn't be in DC for the march with you, but I was there in spirit. Coming out is often one of the scariest and most difficult things a person can go through, and I hope that the LM grows up in a world where that isn't true...where it is merely accepted as one more aspect of what makes a person who they are. I promise that no matter who she grows up to love or what gender she identifies as, Sexyhusband and I will love LM.
Sexyhusband's birthday was this past weekend. I send him big hugs, kisses, and naughty sexual acts once I have the energy. You get to pick who ties who up ;) Thank you for being a far more patient and understanding lover than I often deserve on any given day.
OK took their abortion legislation one step further and is now trying to pass a bill that says all abortion providers need to provide info about all abortions they perform, under the guise of preventing sex-selective abortions (where a woman aborts a baby based upon their sex).
Marge Simpson is on this month's Playboy cover. Apparently it's only a lingerie spread, and it celebrates the Simpson's 20th anniversary...it occurs to me that it would have been more appropriate next year...for the 21rst anniversary? That it's a lingerie spread is a bit plebian...I've seen far more of Marge Simpson than a lingerie spread on some fairly naughty cartoon porn sites, thanks to an ex who was into cartoon porn...
Question of the week, although it's been months since I've asked...
What's the most interesting sex story (broad definition of sex--sexual politics, sex scandal, whatever) you've seen in the news lately?
Anyone who follows the gay marriage debate has probably already heard this, but...
Massachusetts is challenging DOMA!!!!!!!!
DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act), for my non US readers, is the federal mandate that on a Federal Level only marriages between a man and a woman will be recognized in matters that the Federal Government deals in, such as Social Security benefits, federal taxes, etc. States like MA, who have granted equal marriage under state law will tax a married gay couple as a married couple, but then they must file their federal tax refunds as singles, not as a married couple. They are also denied over 1000 benefits at the federal level.
But the AG for Massachusetts, Martha Coakley thinks she has found a way to overtun it....
The suit filed by state Attorney
General Martha Coakley says the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996
violates the US Constitution by interfering with the state’s right to
define the marital status of residents. The suit also says the law
forces the state to discriminate against same-sex married couples - on
certain health benefits and burial rights - or risk losing federal
funding.
“Congress
overstepped its authority, undermined states’ efforts to recognize
marriages between same-sex couples, and codified an animus towards gay
and lesbian people,’’ said the complaint filed in US District Court in
Boston.
The California Supreme Court, upheld prop 8 today. At the same time, it also ruled that all the gay couples that wed during the short window it was legal can stay married.
I'm so saddened by this.
On one hand, there is no legal precedent in this case to overrule the people, and unfortunately the CA constitution is ridiculously easy to amend. But on the other, I truly believe that our children will look back at us and judge in the same way we judge those states that dragged their feet on interracial marriage.
As someone who is in an interracial marriage, and as someone who identifies (when I have to identify my sexuality at all) as bi, I feel angry and betrayed by the people and the courts of California. Yes, the person I fell in love with happens to be a man...so everything is hunky dory...go me for conforming to stereotype. But it just as easily COULD have been a woman...in which case, California says that my love and my relationship would not be as good as those of a straight couple. There are those bigots who would hate us and hate our daughter as a product of an interracial marriage, but at least they can't do anything to strip my husband of his rights. If we were gay, that wouldn't be the case in 45 states.
I'm glad the LM is only 6 months old...I don't know how to explain hate. I don't know how to explain how a group of bigots decided what rights a group of people should have. I'm just at a loss...and I hope that when the time comes, I'll be able to point to California and say that some people made a bad decision, but they changed their minds.
Time to start the new ballot iniative...the one that will repeal Prop 8...or as it's better known, prop H8
As a resident of Massachusetts, I have long viewed Connecticut as a 2+ hour traffic jam between me and New York City. I have found very little to recommend it beyond the existence of the VIP and Penthouse stores, and the Electric Blue strip club. I suppose the IKEA there was worth a thumbs up, at least until my state got one. I have also lost my keys in Connecticut.
I'm not a huge fan of Connecticut.
So I was pretty shocked on Friday when I found out they just became the third state to legalize gay marriage.
Because now I have to re-think this whole hatred of CT thing.
I admire the Supreme Court for taking a good long look at the state constitution, contemplating the legalized civil unions, and realizing that separate is not equal.
Let me say that again...SEPARATE IS NOT EQUAL.
Civil unions are not marriage--they're better than nothing, but they create a second class of marriages somehow inferior to my own because I happened to marry a person of the opposite biological sex.
I have never understood any of the arguments against gay marriage.
-It's about procreation
Under that argument, a friend of mine and her husband's marriage is invalid because they can't have children. So are the marriages of all straight couples who chose not have kids or who biologically couldn't.
-It threatens straight marriage
How? It's been legal in MA for 4 years and nothing bad has happened. No increase in divorce rates. No burning bushes. No vengeful god hurling bad things at us. No plagues of frogs. Just life, as normal. Except that my students who's parents are gay are legally married too.
-Marriage is about religion
Firstly marriage is a civil right, not a religious one. No one gets a marriage license from their church--you get it at city hall. Your marriage is documented by your city government and validated by the same.
Secondly, what about the religions that have no prohibitions against gay marriage?
Fighting against gay marriage today is like fighting against interracial marriage 100 years ago, and I truly believe that 100 years from now people will shake their heads in frustration at us.
Congratulations and welcome to the fold, Connecticut.
I was lucky enough to have been present in both Massachusetts and California on the day that same sex marriage became legal in each. I happen to live in Massachusetts (which I know makes me a godless liberal, but let's move on from that for a moment, hmmm?) so being here wasn't any sort of stroke of luck-it was just being in my home state on a momentous day. It was pretty cool that Sexyhusband and I were in California on June 17th-in fact it was the day before we came home. We didn't extend our stay to be there on purpose, but by a confluence of lucky events, there we were.
In 2004, when gay marriage became legal here, I was a single girl who had not even met Sexyhusband. I was an overworked first year teacher just trying to survive the last 6 or so weeks of school, but I took the time to watch the coverage and do a little celebrating. The following year I met Sexyhusband and....gay marriage did not stop us from falling in love, creating a solid relationship, and getting engaged. In 2006, the thousands of legally married gays did not impact my wedding (except perhaps to help determine the date--I'm sure I was competing with a few couples to get my first choice location), nor did they impact the love and support my husband provided as I went through the hell of back surgery. My marriage will be two years old this summer and it is no less strong because a gay friend of mine has been married for two years longer than me.
I am furious that some Californians (and many non-residents of CA) are trying to start a ballot iniative to end gay marriage this fall. With one pull of the lever they get to sit in judgment over other's marriages. For people who say that GOD is the only one who can judge if we are good or wicked, this seems a lot like they're staging a coup d'etat on GOD. Who are they to make this sort of judgment? What reasons could they possibly have to destroy families?
The reason I've heard most often is that marriage is for procreation and propagation of the species.
Which makes me wonder if by their standard, my marriage was in trouble the moment I had a miscarriage. How many strikes would I get before my marriage was invalid? Three miscarriages (strikes) and then I'm annulled? Is my marriage license only filled out in pencil until I produce a healthy child this fall? And since I'm having a little girl, how many of them would consider it marriage lite until I produce the proper male heir to carry on my husband's proud last name?
Or we can talk about my friend N, who found out after a year of trying, that her husband could not father a child. Is her marriage invalid? Because they're having a child thanks to the scientific wonder that is a sperm bank plus intra-uterine-insemination does that get them a free pass, or are they breaking GOD'S LAW and thus doomed to spend eternity in hell next to Hitler and other evil persons?
What about couples that choose not to procreate. How many years do we give them the benefit of the doubt? If she reaches menopause, are they annulled/divorced automatically if there is no progeny?
If you base legitimacy of marriage on procreation, the situations I've proposed aren't that far-fetched.
I also hear that famous passage from Leviticus quoted to explain why gay marriage is bad.
Does that mean you can have gay marriage if you're Hindu, Buddhist, Atheist, or any other religion that isn't held back by the Bible? I don't know if you know this, but Hinduism has no such holy writing declaring homosexuality a sin. Atheists are perhaps the most free as we don't have any holy writings at all to tell us what to do--we have to (gasp) use our own judgment about what makes us a good person--and personally I don't think that discriminating against others is the way to do that.
If you're Christian, I think the best rebuttal comes from Season 2 of the West Wing. If you insist on following that choice rule from the Bible, what about the others?
Let's all take a step back from the hysteria and think about the following question...
Who are you to decide who I can love?
It's only been 40 years since the Supreme Court struck down a law that made it okay to ban persons of different races from marrying. That's not in my lifetime, but only by about 10 years. It's certainly within my mother's lifetime that the law changed, and she was of an age to have it affect her. She grew up in an era where it was perfectly permissible to talk about whether or not it was okay to date a person of a different race, and to be told that if she did, she didn't need to come home again. (This was not an actual scene from my family's history, but it COULD have been).
As a member of an interracial relationship, I can tell you that there are plenty of people who still don't think that it's okay for my husband and I to be together. Some of those people, sadly, are members of my extended family, who also throw around the N word and other ethnic/religious/sexuality based slurs with ease.
I can also tell you that being a mixed-race couple has some benefits--when we had to do genetic testing for any ethnic diseases, it was just to check off a box. Coming from two such different ethnic backgrounds meant our daughter (and any other future kids) are at next to zero risk for any ethnic diseases since both parents have to be carriers and my husband had next to no chance of being a carrier for Tay-Sachs and I had next to no chance of being a carrier of Sickle Cell Anemia among others. This, however, is the sort of discovery that only comes to light when you stop hiding your face in the ground. Yes, it's a benefit to our procreation, but it has made for other advantages in our marriage as well.
Because my husband and I come from different backgrounds (ethnicity is just the tip of the iceberg) our child will have a wider viewpoint of the world and growing up than they might have experienced if we came from homogenous backgrounds. My husband grew up much wealthier than I did, lived in another country as a teen, worked in other countries as adults, and had two parents in a solid long term marriage. I grew up poor (on Welfare, not to put too fine a point on it), the only child of a single mom, never got on a plane until I was 20, took out frightening loans to pay for college, and came from a family that did not historically do anything other than blue collar work. Ironically, we grew up not 30 minutes from each other.
A marriage is a combination of two disparate entities who are stronger together than they are apart. Children or no children, marriage is about being stronger, better, happier than you are apart. It comes with a plethora of legal and social benefits. There are inheritance rights, tax breaks, and other legal rights. It means you can be with your most loved one in the hospital in an emergency. And when you're sick and alone in a scary hospital room, knowing the worst could happen, do you want your most loved one barred from you?
Gay marriage doesn't make straight marriage weaker. What are you so afraid of, and why do you want to legislate hatred and discrimination?
When my daughter is old enough to ask, I won't have an answer because the truth is that I just don't understand it myself.
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