Try to think of every Far Right fantasy the wingnuts desire:
An absolute ban on abortion AND birth control, to the point where the criminalization of miscarrying will be allowed
Shoving Christian Prayer back into schools and making secular law more religious
Harsher immigration bans
Curtailing every legal gain that Gays, Lesbians and Transgender people have received in the last 5-10 years. Rights of gays to marry, gone. Rights to serve in the military, gone
Outright elimination of the Voting Rights Act
Gutting of the Civil Rights Act
Bringing back legalized segregation and other Jim Crow laws
Making gun ownership not only easier to obtain but making gun ownership mandatory (for everyone not an ethnic minority)
Denying equal pay for women, maybe even curtailing women's rights to work
Granting more corporate control of our economy and our lives
Pissing away any anti-trust powers our government has left
Flushing our environmental protection laws down the toilet
I dread the possibility that I will lose the right to say FUCK FUCK FUCK and FUCK THAT SHIT on my blog.
All of that will be possible under a Supreme Court that will lean six Republican votes to three Democratic ones.
I am starting to think Obama should have gone to the Senate floor and beaten McConnell over the head with a 2-by-4 until the Republicans agreed to vote on Merrick Garland.
To every Progressive, Far Left, Democratic-leaning voter who failed to show up for the 2010 and 2014 midterms, and who failed to show up to vote for Hillary in 2016, go fuck yourselves. The Judiciary Branch of the United States is now going to lean Far Right on every issue for the next 20-30 years. There's gonna be at least two trump appointees on the high bench, ruining our lives for half of the 21st Century. GODDAMN YOU.
And to Mitch McConnell (and your fellow Republican lackeys in the Senate) THE DEEPEST PIT OF HELL IS NOT ENOUGH FOR YOU.
Given the Far Right Christian viewpoint opposed to gay marriage being a civil right now, it was inevitable that someone in a position of government - county clerks who are responsible for issuing marriage licenses in particular - would make a damn circus out of refusing to issue such licenses in order to stop gays from marrying.
And so we've got a County Clerk in Kentucky sitting in jail for Contempt of Court, gleefully and happily playing the role of martyred victim for all the world to see.
This is giving the Far Right Christians every opportunity to host themselves an endless series of pity parties, of oh "Woe is us, we are being hated and persecuted for our beliefs."
Problem is, the reality is different from their fantasy Persecution Complex.
Just kidding. We’re totally fine. And anyone who says otherwise is a great big crybaby...
...It’s a familiar refrain, this sob story that letting other people exercise their constitutional rights is an assault on their religious freedom. Last month, when actress Ellen Page confronted GOP presidential contender Ted Cruz at a state fair, Cruz asserted, “At the end of the day, what we should not be doing is persecuting people who follow their faith.”
It would helpful to remember here that Davis is not being “punished” for her beliefs. Davis was found in contempt for refusing to abide by a federal court order to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. She is being appropriately dealt with for not doing the taxpayer-funded job the citizens of Rowan County elected her to do, for not upholding the Constitution she took an oath to abide by. I know that lots of Christians are used to cherry picking their Bible verses to make their points, but you’re not allowed to be quite so selective with the Constitution. Certainly not if you’re someone whose job involves issuing marriage licenses...
...And as a Catholic, I can quite honestly report that I have yet to be persecuted for my religious beliefs. I get a fair amount of pushback from secular friends who think I’m delusional, and conservatives who say I’m not a real Christian because I support reproductive choice and marriage equality, but I’ll say this — I am not writing these words from a jail cell. You know why? Because American Christians are not being persecuted. And considering that there are places in the world where Christians really are, this boo hoo hooing from people who are astonished that they’re not being given a free pass to discriminate against gay people is pretty damn enraging.
This is all true. We are not seeing a massive wave of arrests of Christians for going to their churches, we are not documenting the numbers of street preachers getting dragged off in handcuffs for disturbing the peace, we are not engaged in any open warfare between faiths.
Number of churches under assault: several, but they all happen to be Black churches with the attacks aimed at them over race - such as the tragedy of Charleston - not faith.
We've had attacks on Unitarian churches for being targets of conservative hatred towards liberals. I'm trying to think of a time when a liberal-leaning person did the same against a hard-core conservative church.
This is the United States. The last time we had open warfare between religious sects was the fighting between Mormons and Protestants during the 1800s (neither side can claim the high moral ground by the by).
One of the genius moves by our Founders was to establish a No Religious Test in our Constitution to prevent one church-going group from gaining majority control of government and using our legal institutions to persecute non-Believers. The First Amendment's point of confirming Congress not placing one religion over another encourages peaceful co-existence of faiths, and placed secular law separate from spiritual law.
Davis' argument is that is answering "God's Authority" to deny gays to marry. Using Leviticus and Romans and other cherry-picked parts of the Bible to back her argument.
When you get elected to a public office, you are serving the Will of the People, of the citizens of your county and your state. When you are a public official you serve the laws of the land, and if those laws conflict with your beliefs then by the Grace of God quit and find a better job for yourself. If you want to fight those laws as unjust you have the courts (and they tend to be pretty supportive of church rights and faith in general): if the courts argue that the laws ARE just - and allowing gays the same rights in the law as straight people counts - you STILL have the freedom of your faith to believe as you do... to yourself and to your God.
There is a place for civil disobedience against unjust laws, true: there is still the expectation that those being disobedient still answer to the law and prepare themselves for jail (Thoreau, Rev. King, et al). The end-game for those disobedience movements were reforms and freedoms for the many who were suffering unjustly. What suffering was Kim Davis and the other anti-gay forces enduring that requires them to act this way? Again, as Williams pointed out in her article, there isn't any suffering of the Christian Far Right: they're still free to move about, go to church, pray to God, commit adultery, etc. even as gays - a significant minority of people - are able to enjoy the same legal protections over marriage as heteros.
You do not have the right to impose that faith on others when serving the public trust. That makes you the bully, the corrupt power in high places. That's Sharia Law. That's the sign of the Imposter, the one who does not have the self-confidence of a true religion.
In other news, gay people in that Kentucky county can now get married.
Marriage is supposed to be a good thing: stability, community, love, commitment, and celebration. Good things.
We just basically had a crazy week just now, from the Charleston shooting until today. And while there was tragedy, there was also inspiration, and reflection and awareness, and justice, and drive, and emotional cleansing, and hope, and above all love. Especially love, today, tonight, this weekend. It was a week to remember.
Hundreds gather out front, holding aloft their smartphones
so they can document the celebration.
Last week Wednesday night started us off with the tragic breaking news of the shooting at the Emanuel AME Charleston church. It sparked a round of angry calls across the nation, over the intent of the shooter, the signs of racism that surrounded the city and the state of South Carolina (and the Deep South) itself, and the horror of gun violence visited again on another sanctuary where should not imagine such a happening.
The Far Right, led by their political figures especially the Republican candidates for the 2016 Presidency, tried to avoid talking about the shooting altogether. Worse, some tried to claim that "nobody could tell what the shooter's intent was," even though survivors reported the shooter explained himself as he pulled the trigger. Having spent 40 years pushing a Southern Strategy of White Male resentment, Republicans suddenly realized the bill was coming due.
By Monday after the police interrogation went public - proving exactly what happened and why - and after more photos surfaced of the shooter reveling in displays of the Stars and Bars, calls to have the Confederate Battle Flag - the key symbol of the Lost Cause, the symbol of race hatred for 150 years - taken down from public buildings multiplied to the point where the South Carolina governor Nikki Haley had to go public herself, calling for legislation to take the damn thing down off of her state's public forums (in a mockery of law, the state made it mandatory that the Confederate flag remains flying at all costs: when the American flag was lowered in honor of the dead, it just made the contrast more stark and shameful). In other states like Alabama, they just quietly lowered the damn flag and looked away.
Much of the week ended up with a back-and-forth battle on the media channels and the Internet over the "heritage" of the flag, over the right of free speech vs. the actuality of hate speech that flag represented. It was becoming clear that everything that battle flag represented - Jim Crow, racial oppression, a section of our population obsessed with a violent and bloody past - was and still is in risk of imploding on itself (which is, you know, a good thing).
And then Thursday we get good news, with the Supreme Court ruling - and a strong one at that - affirming the core point of Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) was to provide affordable healthcare to most Americans. A lot of celebration about how this was a huge victory for Obama, a huge win for Americans needing that healthcare coverage.
(there was an image here but it had been removed so... working on a replacement image)
And then Friday, two things. The Supreme Court issued the key ruling on gay marriage - on marriage itself - as a self-evident right to all under the 14th Amendment. Twitter and social media exploded. Haters raged. Lovers danced. The United States officially became Pro-People.
In the midst of all this, our nation returned its attention to Charleston once more, as President Obama showed up to perform the eulogy for the fallen pastor Reverend Clementa Pinckney. In that moment, in that place, Obama offered the most stirring, most profoundspeech he's ever given. (link here to full speech)
He openly condemned the flying of the Confederate Battle Flag. He openly condemned the shameful rate of gun violence in our nation, harking back to the tragedies of Sandy Hook and so many other mass shootings. He openly condemned the fear-mongering and the hate poisoning the national forum.
And Obama spoke of love. Obama spoke of faith, and forgiveness, and family. Obama spoke of grace. Human, Christian Grace.
...Blinded by hatred, the alleged killer could not see the grace surrounding Reverend Pinckney and that Bible study group: the light of love that shone as they opened the church doors and invited a stranger to join in their prayer circle. The alleged killer could have never anticipated the way the families of the fallen would respond when they saw him in court: in the midst of unspeakable grief, with words of forgiveness. He couldn’t imagine that...
The alleged killer could not imagine how the city of Charleston, under the good and wise leadership of Mayor Riley - how the state of South Carolina, how the United States of America would respond: not merely with revulsion at his evil act, but with big-hearted generosity and, more importantly, with a thoughtful introspection and self-examination that we so rarely see in public life...
Blinded by hatred, he failed to comprehend what Reverend Pinckney so well understood: the power of God’s grace.
This whole week, I’ve been reflecting on this idea of grace.
The grace of the families who lost loved ones. The grace that Reverend Pinckney would preach about in his sermons. The grace described in one of my favorite hymnals, the one we all know: Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me... I once was lost, but now I’m found; was blind but now I see...
According to the Christian tradition, grace is not earned. Grace is not merited. It’s not something we deserve. Rather, grace is the free and benevolent favor of God as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowal of blessings. Grace.
As a nation, out of this terrible tragedy, God has visited grace upon us, for he has allowed us to see where we’ve been blind. He has given us the chance, where we’ve been lost, to find our best selves. We may not have earned it, this grace, with our rancor and complacency, and short-sightedness and fear of each other... but we got it all the same. He gave it to us anyway. He’s once more given us grace. But it is up to us now to make the most of it, to receive it with gratitude, and to prove ourselves worthy of this gift.
And then Obama tried - bless him, but he was a bit off-key - to sing Amazing Grace, the Christian hymn above all other hymnals.
The speech, the presence, the words and the faith: all inspiring. Closing out a day of grace and good-will. We're still fighting - the haters are still railing against the tide of history and that long arc towards justice - but now there's a sense of real hope, that we're growing wiser, that we're seeing the problems for real this time, that there's something to fight FOR and a future worth keeping our promises.
This was a crazy week. But even with the pain of loss it was a good crazy.
Obergefell v Hodges: basically the court case about whether or not gays have the same right to marry as heterosexuals. There was a previous Supreme Court ruling in 2013, but that essentially said civil unions were possible but did not go further into marriage legal rights. That was akin to a prelude: this case went straight to the heart of the matter. On this, let's refer to SCOTUSblog's summary in Plain English by Amy Howe:
The Supreme Court, Kennedy’s opinion explains, has long recognized the right to marry as a fundamental right. And although until today it has always done so in the context of opposite-sex couples, he continues, all of the same principles on which the Court has relied in cases involving opposite-sex couples apply equally to same-sex marriage and the recognition of out-of-state same-sex marriages. For example, being able to decide whether to get married is an important part of an individual’s autonomy regardless whether you are the same sex as your intended spouse. Along much the same lines, marriage is a unique way for two individuals – in both same- and opposite-sex partnerships – to demonstrate their commitment to one another.
Justice Kennedy writing for the majority uses the 14th Amendment, arguably the most key civil rights amendment outside of the Bill of Rights, to argue that marriage as a fundamental right needed to apply to all:
These considerations lead to the conclusion that the right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person, and under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment couples of the same-sex may not be deprived of that right and that liberty. The Court now holds that same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry. No longer may this liberty be denied to them. Baker v. Nelson must be and now is overruled, and the State laws challenged by Petitioners in these cases are now held invalid to the extent they exclude same-sex couples from civil marriage on the same terms and conditions as opposite sex couples.
No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reversed. It is so ordered.
This is a moment where a right that should be viewed as universal finally is: much like the right to be free as a person regardless of ethnicity, much like the right to vote for women as well as men, much like the right to be protected before the law, there is a right to marriage that covers so many aspects of our world - of property, of community, of relationships between ourselves, of the simple identity of humanity - that ought to be protected and confirmed by our Constitution. This ruling makes it so.
This is not the end of the fight. The Haters who rail against gays will continue to do so. But now they have one less weapon in their arsenal. The Constitution - the law of the land - is no longer on their side. All they have is their stringent religious dogma, stuck forever in Rage mode quoting Leviticus or Romans as though they were the only passages that matter.
Never mind they cherry-pick such quotes, ignoring all other bans of Leviticus and the Bible. Never mind their cries about gay marriage harming families conveniently overlooking the Biblical warnings against Adultery, which more Americans commit than there are gays in our nation (our Far Right leadership and fear-mongers in the media refuse to punish adulterers like Gingrich or Trump or half their male membership, shame on them). Never mind the passages in the Bible that speak to Grace, Acceptance, Good Will. The Haters gonna hate. That battle will not end today.
But today is a day to feel good. To feel good about being an American. To feel good about being Pro-People. To feel good about being on the right side of history on the right arc bending towards justice. Like this guy Rich Juwziak at Gawker says, this ruling feels so good:
...All of that fills my heart beyond what I understood to be its capacity. It’s why my mother called me crying happy tears this morning. It’s a beautiful thing to have experienced in my lifetime. I’m so thankful for today.
I can’t help but be happiest, though, about the defeat of the anti-marriage equality crusaders. The defeat of people who signed up to lose, who wasted their time and ours on a platform of animus and contempt. The defeat of people who put principle over the practical, who fought to preserve their limited understanding of an already imperfect institution over the actual human lives that would benefit from it. The defeat of people who did what bigots do: discriminate, vilify, fear-monger, argue irrationally and without respect to human dignity, and then bristle when they’re called out for what they are (bigots).
The jig is up. The world has turned and left you fuming, seething, weeping...
Really should not dance or strut before the Haters. That's not what Christian Grace should be about.
Better to dance and strut with the Lovers. With the People who love for the sake of grace and humanity and happiness. The Four Loves that the Greeks defined for us, love like Agape (for the love of others, for the love of God), Storge (love of family, between parents and children and siblings), Philia (for the love of friends, for companions), and yes Eros (for the love of passion between two people).
"Today Ireland has made history - the first country in the world to vote for equal marriage," Prime Minister Enda Kenny told reporters.
"With today's vote we have disclosed who we are: a generous, compassionate, bold and joyful people. Yes to inclusion, yes to generosity, yes to love, yes to equal marriage," he said.
The voter turnout was 60 percent - much higher than in other recent referendums.
This is huge because it's proving that most people do not want to go out of their way to discriminate or hate upon a significant minority within their own nation. This is the first time a nation opened up to equal rights to getting married - a major cultural, economic, and legal right - by the will of the people rather than a legislative or judicial decree.
This is what being Pro-People looks like.
This is huge because Ireland is famously - almost notoriously - Catholic in their religious faith. The power and sway of the Catholic Church and the papacy (used to be) greater here than in most other nations (including Italy where the Church originated and still houses its seat of power). Ireland infamously has one of the harshest anti-abortion restrictions in all of Europe, and it only decriminalized homosexuality itself merely 23 years ago.
This is huge because the Irish vote was not only a sizable majority of available voters, and because the vote itself was a solid majority, the polling numbers suggested this wasn't a generational issue. Whereas the younger voters will trend liberal-leaning (read: open-minded), older voters tend not to. Except they didn't: polling showed "the support cut across age and gender, geography and income..."
This is huge because it shows to the rest of the world we don't have to hate or discriminate on the basis of our "fears", that we don't have the excuse of religion or faith to discriminate.
This is huge because the more other nations show us that allowing gay marriage does not mean the end of the world, the easier it will get in this "Land of the Free and Home of the Brave" to open up to gay marriage across all states. Here, it's happening mostly by judicial decision and court order, and yet we're still getting politicians and conservative religious leaders standing up screaming "family values" and "religious liberty" as excuses to hate.
There are no other arguments against gay marriage. The argument against being gay relies entirely on passages of the Hebrew (Leviticus is prominently mentioned) and Christian Testaments (Romans and other Pauline letters). There are no scientific arguments against gay, where biology and psychology over the decades has revealed reasons why being gay happens (homosexuality is not a choice), and that being gay isn't really special it's just...a thing.
This is huge because more people are refusing to use religion as an excuse to hate. Because more people are seeing the hypocrisy of religious leaders railing against gays using Leviticus while allowing EVERYTHING else banned in Leviticusand the Bible to happen.
This is huge, having more people being Pro-People.
Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. - 1 John 2:9
My personal experience with Indiana is fleeting. I drove through the state on a road trip to Chicago ages ago. All I can say is that was the flattest piece of land I had ever seen in my life. And I've driven through the Everglades on a regular basis, which is basically sawgrass as far as the eye can see.
I dunno if the flat unending bland landscape does something to the mindset of the locals, because I can't think of many other excuses that the state's residents can offer to explain how they elected a bunch of self-satisfied haters to run their government.
This is a historical thing. People may well remember that Indiana was one of the major Union states of the Civil War and fought to end slavery and all that, but they need to remember that Indiana was one of the most redneck-y haters-gonna-hate state north of the Ohio River. When the Klu Klux Klan, dear God, became a massive political movement that threatened to run its own candidate for the White House back in the 1920s, Indiana was the state with the largest membership at 250,000 men. That was three out of ten white guys.
This is a historical debacle. Indiana just passed and signed into law a bill that allows, in some ways encourages, private businesses to discriminate people even on the supposition those people are gay/lesbian. There's actually laws similar to this one on the books in other states and even in the federal code, but as Garrett Epps points out at The Atlantic none of them do this:
...That becomes clear when you read and compare those tedious state statutes. If you do that, you will find that the Indiana statute has two features the federal RFRA—and most state RFRAs—do not. First, the Indiana law explicitly allows any for-profit business to assert a right to “the free exercise of religion.” The federal RFRA doesn’t contain such language, and neither does any of the state RFRAs except South Carolina’s; in fact, Louisiana and Pennsylvania, explicitly exclude for-profit businesses from the protection of their RFRAs.
The new Indiana statute also contains this odd language: “A person whose exercise of religion has been substantially burdened, or is likely to be substantially burdened, by a violation of this chapter may assert the violation or impending violation as a claim or defense in a judicial or administrative proceeding, regardless of whether the state or any other governmental entity is a party to the proceeding...” Neither the federal RFRA, nor 18 of the 19 state statutes cited by the Post, says anything like this...
...Of all the state “religious freedom” laws I have read, this new statute hints most strongly that it is there to be used as a means of excluding gays and same-sex couples from accessing employment, housing, and public accommodations on the same terms as other people. True, there is no actual language that says, All businesses wishing to discriminate in employment, housing, and public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation, please check this “religious objection” box. But, as Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk...”
The governor who signed this, Mike Pence, has spent the past few days trying to defend this law. He keeps saying that the law is about "protecting religious liberty," but when asked about whether the law discriminates, or asked if it's wrong to discriminate, he avoids giving a straight answer.
It's telling that this "great and wonderful and Christian law" for religious liberty had to be signed behind closed doors and with only a handful of religious leaders - some of them known for their rabid brand of hate - rather than a broad range of church pastors and fellowships. That's probably because a lot of the larger Christian denominations - Presbyterians, Episcopalians and most Lutheran churches in particular - support gay rights. And a lot of other Christian churches such as the Methodists may oppose homosexuality on principle due to Leviticus and other books, but they refuse to make it a public stance to openly discriminate.
The thing is: this law does not protect religious freedom at all. It has nothing to do with ensuring our churches stay open, it has nothing to do with protecting people who gather in public to pray, it has nothing to do with making sure that God remains in Heaven while the flock tend to their affairs within the world.
Monroe County Circuit Judge Luis Garcia overturned Florida's 2008 constitutional gay-marriage ban on Thursday, and ordered that two Key West bartenders and other gay couples seeking to wed be allowed to marry.
"The court is aware that the majority of voters oppose same-sex marriage, but it is our country's proud history to protect the rights of the individual, the rights of the unpopular and rights of the powerless, even at the cost of offending the majority," Garcia wrote in his opinion, released about 1 p.m. Thursday.
The judge gave the Monroe County clerk's office until Tuesday before it can grant licenses for gay weddings, "in consideration of... anticipated rise in activity."
It was unclear early Thursday afternoon whether the state will appeal the ruling. A judge in Miami-Dade County has yet to rule in a similar case...
As noted, if this doesn't get delayed while waiting for the Miami-Dade courts, Monroe County's clerk on Tuesday will become a tidal wave of gay couples getting hitched. South Florida - Key West included - does have a sizable gay community.
Florida also has a sizable Bible-thumping evangelical community which is bound to set their OUTRAGE meters to 11, so expect a ton of screechy End Of the World over the next few hours, days, weeks, years...
There's been a sudden flux of Red States - first Kansas, then Arizona, lately a few others - trying to pass legislation under the guise of "religious liberty" that would allow business owners to cite their religious belief should they ever want to refuse service to anyone they believe is gay or "promoting gay marriage" in some form.
They're basically bringing back segregation. Just not for Blacks, but for Teh Gays.
There's a couple of reasons for that:
1) The simplest, most obvious reason is competition between the various Far Right groups leading each state trying to one-up each other and prove their social conservative bona fides by getting an anti-gay bill passed. If Far Right Kansas does it, so goes Far Right Arizona, Far Right Mississippi, Far Right Georgia, Far Right Texas, Far Right...
2) The growing realization among the Far Right social conservatives that they're running out of options trying to stop gay marriage from becoming a nationwide reality.
The courts at the federal level are striking down gay marriage bans one state at a time: they just struck down Texas' recently. The federal ruling against DOMA was a huge blow as well to the Religious Right. At some point, the economic, legal and social benefits of marriage will not be denied on the basis of race oh wait we solved that with Loving V. Virginia ... marriage will not be denied on the basis of gender preference.
So if the Far Right can't stop gay marriage, they'll go for their next weapon of choice: they'll want to punish people for marrying gay and they'll want to punish people for supporting gay marriage (these laws not only ban those suspected of being gay (or gay-married) but also anyone - family and friends - celebrating it). And they'll do that by "allowing" businesses to discriminate just by looking at a customer (as though spotting gays and lesbians and those celebrating Teh Gay was that easy. We do NOT wear pink triangles everywhere we go, haters).
That these Far Right legislators are arcing backwards to a world pre-1965 when businesses were "allowed" to discriminate against Blacks from eating or shopping at their venues - that they are hearkening back to the most odious elements of Jim Crow segregation - doesn't seem to register with them. Then again, these are the same jokers who never saw a problem with segregation in the first place...
The most horrifying thing about this "religious liberty" excuse is that it's not really about liberty or even expression of faith: it's about using religion as an excuse to be biased, to be hateful towards a small number of fellow humans. It's using Leviticus as an excuse to punish sexual conduct - specifically, homosexual conduct - all the while ignoring other sins and acts - tattoos, mixing of clothing fibers, working on Sabbath days, adultery - that are more common and yet left uncommented and unpunished.
You don't see anything in these "liberty" laws that allow businesses to discriminate against divorcees or people celebrating their second or third marriages. That's because they'd be discriminating against, what, half the nation. It's so much easier and more satisfying to pass moral judgment against the thousands of gays and lesbians instead of risking the wrath of millions of adulterers...
And they wonder why more young people are turning away from Christianity and faith in general in this nation? It's because they more often than not associate Christianity with the Far Right, with the political ideologues, the hypocrites, the fear-mongers, the haters. We've had thirty-plus years of the Moral Majority and their political descendants pose as the face of Christianity in this nation: thirty-plus years of evangelical hate-filled moralizers passing judgment on women and children and the poor and gays and everybody else not of their parish. This is the House they've inherited: Empty not only of our nation's youth but empty of God's love and charity and Grace.
The good news is that these "religious liberty" bills aren't going very far: the immediate outraged responses to them have made the Far Right haters back down (at least for now, in public). The bad news? They're still pursuing these types of laws in other states, and are more likely going to try some other gambit to stop gay marriage from becoming the same as hetero marriage. This fight is not over, people: we are not wrestling against flesh and blood here but against the haters, the secret powers waging war against our families and friends in the name of their fear...
In truth, the SCOTUS rulings are not a final say on the matter. Overturning DOMA meant civil unions were possible and that states that passed same-sex marriage laws could uphold them, it didn't grant gay marriage rights across the nation. And the Prop 8 decision was that the persons who brought suit to the Supreme Court - third-party groups that backed the referendum, not the state of California itself - did not have legal standing to do so.
I haven't read any of my fellow writers yet, but I did want to take a moment to say how important this moment is in the war against inequality. I was tempted to say "social inequality" but in America, there simply is no real way to separate the social, the political and the economic. When the larger country decided to stand aside as South Carolina went about the business of disenfranchising half its citizenry, the weapon was political, but the implications were economic and social. With no access to the franchise, black people lacked the means to protect their wealth. The poverty of wealth which befell them then reinforced their status as social pariahs, and their status as social pariahs reified (sp?) the racist justifications for their disenfranchisement and the inglorious cycle was complete... It must never be forgotten that in America, the right to marry is the right to protect one's family. Certainly the pictures of same-sex couples embracing and hugging warm the heart and are a powerful weapon in country that prides itself on fairness... The state repossessing a couple's wealth because it finds them icky, is wholly unjust. It recalls a particularly horrible aspect of slavery--the assault on the families of people deemed to be outside the law. There is a particular war here, which better people than me can speak to. But power is at the core of the long war which began sometime in the mid-17th century with the passage of the first slave codes. The prohibitions against same-sex marriage are not simply about witholding the right to be pretty in a dress or dashing in a tux (though I would deny no one their day.) It is about ensuring that only certain kinds of people, and certain kinds of families, are able to amass power, and with that power, influence over the direction of our society... It is wrong to strip people of wealth because you are bigot. It is wrong to strip people of the right to name their caretakers because you are afraid. It is wrong to make war on people because you can not get over yourself. And though today we may say that we have advanced, through much of this country, the wrong continues unabated...
The fight's not over, I'll agree on that point. But this is akin to winning Gettysburg: there may be another two years of war but the end - marriage equality - is in sight. And as we advance on these rights, making them stronger and making our nation stronger, we can keep fighting for all the other rights - the right to vote, the right to earn a fair wage, the right to live healthy - that are self-evident (Yup, I'm enjoying that phrase).
So let the celebrating begin!
Yeah, that's right. Even the heteros can gay-marry now. Deal with it, Mr. Huckabee.
There was a video clip to the ABC News interview with President Obama, but the link is broken now and I'll have to relocate a new video. Update: Found a YouTube clip!
Money quote: "I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have
talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of
my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships,
same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think
about those soldiers or airmen or Marines or sailors who are out there
fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that 'Don't Ask
Don't Tell' is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a
marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally
it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex
couples should be able to get married."
For the most part, this doesn't change much in getting voters to switch to Obama's side come November: people who hated on Obama already were also hating on Teh Gay.
But what this does do is excite the Democratic base and independent voters (and disaffected Republicans) who are pro-civil-rights. It's one thing to be voting AGAINST someone (it's very easy to despise now-established candidate Mitt Romney and the current Republican Party as a bunch of bullying lying scumbuckets), but it's a lot more satisfying to be able to vote FOR someone.
And Obama is making it very easy to vote FOR him. It's not just for marriage equality: I've been impressed with Obama's move on women's issues such as getting the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act passed, nominating a sizable number of women to key government positions (including two women to the Supreme Court, bringing that just body to reflect our nation's actual population of men-to-women), standing up for Planned Parenthood when the GOP leadership is trying to outright kill it, getting his Obamacare to lower costs and raise coverages for women, et al.
This is something I've been saying since Obama came out for marriage equality: this isn't so much a pro-gay move as it is a pro-people move. Obama is Pro-People.
