To Love and Be Loved

 

Today the Respect For Marriage Act passed the House, and it's not perfect, but given that DOMA wasn't so long ago, it does mean things have changed. The "defense" of marriage then meant defending straight marriages--which never had been threatened by same-sex marriage at all. The weird hue and cry against marriage equality was that by some evil voodoo, queer people gaining some measure of security and happiness would take it away from straight people. 

This was always dumb. How? How would it do that? Why would anyone argue something so irrelevant? 

But let's dwell for a minute on the tears of Frau Hartzler. 

As I presided over the debate for the Respect for Marriage Act, I had to remind Republicans like Vicky Hartzler their time for debate expired.

For too long, Republicans have tried to stop a full vision of marriage equality in America.

Their time has expired. pic.twitter.com/gDNgsbWWXj

— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) December 8, 2022

This woman had the nerve to be verklempt that other people would have their right to pursue happiness protected because it made her feel less safe to be a bigot, and she shed real tears begging others to show the courage of their bigotry, too. She felt like her religion and worldview were damaged by others' acceptance of queer relationships in defiance of whatever she thinks "the true meaning of marriage" is.  The thought of it cramps her privilege--to be married according to whatever her biblical view says and also to deny that security to others. 

Speaking Ill of the Ill-Starred Dead

 

There are people who find themselves appointed to unpleasant tasks and are called upon to serve, even in difficult circumstances, with zealous attention and exacting rectitude, to achieve a necessary goal with persistence and above all, honor. Ken Starr was not that guy.  And while one shouldn't speak ill specifically of the dead, I am not sure why I should stop a necessary conversation started while he was yet living.

He was, charitably, a nasty piece of work. 

He's most famous for dogging President Clinton and family and associates up until he came across an affair and dragged both the president and the 25-year-old intern through the most salacious interpretations of human interaction imaginable for partisan reasons. But he also defended Prop 8 and Jeffrey Epstein and ignored rape allegations at Baylor when he was president of the University.  He unironically defended Trump against impeachment in a way about as hypocritical as former impeachment manager Lindsey Graham. 

It's hard to imagine a person who took up for more horrendous things and yet (obviously) retained the respect of the larval creeps who managed to do stuff like get on the SCOTUS bench with his tutelage.  You know, like Brett Kavanaugh. 

If any of that sounds disrespectful to the dead, you should have heard what I would have said about him, alive. Probably even to his face with the appropriate lubrication. He had the opportunity to do an awful lot, and what he did was, well, awful. And a lot. 

Who Cares About Your Feelings, Ted?

 

Sen. Ted Cruz says the Supreme Court was “clearly wrong” and “overreaching” when it legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. https://t.co/OvGEsxKP1n

— NBC News (@NBCNews) July 17, 2022

So, if two consenting adults of the same sex have exactly the same rights as two consenting adults as the opposite sex do to form a contract that forms the foundation of a lifelong commitment to one another or the start of a family, that is materially different how, I wonder. It seems like perfectly acceptable equal treatment under the law to me. Ted Cruz thinks he knows how this is different in some substantial way. But he's the same guy who let Trump call his wife out as fugly. He's the same guy whose very pointedly Seven Mountains supporting dad probably did not kill JFK, who is expected by loyal Qanon idiots to show up in Dealey Plaza any moment now. He's very much a Dominionist himself.

What We Have To Lose

 

First day of the SCOTUS term and Alito & Thomas call for the overturning of Obergefell. pic.twitter.com/IwejJL6dGX

— Chase Strangio (@chasestrangio) October 5, 2020

Disregarding, for a moment, the highly-staged antics of the little man on the big balcony, I'd like to visit the enormity of the SCOTUS nomination that said little man staged the super-spreader event for (now being called by some the "Rose Garden Massacre"), Amy Coney Barrett, who could very well be a vote in favor of overturning marriage equality, which very much still is a plank in the Republican platform.  

Justices Scalia and Thomas view the right to marriage equality as "novel". I would like to direct them to the Loving v. Virginia. I'm not saying I know the law better than them, but I will say that the "novel right" to marriage of persons of different races (in so much as race is a social construct having no value with regards to human relationships) as a throw-down against white supremacy, is matched by Obergefell in regards to the idea that gender is a social construct and Christian supremacy should not dictate to the business of whether grown people can enter into a marriage contract. 

Their view privileges people to get away with any discrimination so long as they add the magic words "because of my religion". In just this way, someone else might decide couples of different races are "unequally yoked" and refuse their marriage, because some, although by no means all, adherents of any particular religion might think so. 

We've already been sold a load of unchecked goods regarding whether Barrett is a likely vote to strike down Roe v. Wade, who has signed onto an extreme view of life "from fertilization to natural death" which would also render illegal such practices as IVF, and may even create the conditions where miscarriages or therapeutic abortions are viewed as suspect. 

There is no good reason to rush to approve such a backwards nomination. I would rather she withdraw herself, what with all that is happening at the fraught time so near an election, but if she hasn't such judgment, I put it to the entire Senate--is this extreme a position worth the future of your party? 

And since I know the answer of so many Republicans is "yes", this is why I feel every Republican must be removed from office. Also, they don't care about your right to vote, or your right to have your vote be counted. Your democracy counts on you to defend it. 

Farewell, Justice

Ruth Bader Ginsburg later in life acquired the nickname "Notorious RBG" (which had to be explained to her as being a take-off on the deceased rapper, Christopher Wallace, AKA Biggie Smalls or Notorious B.I.G.) because she was gangster in her dissents. In her dissent to Shelby vs. Holder, she lit up the premise of the decision, rephrasing MLK Jr.'s comment that the arc of the universe was long but inclined towards justice with the addendum that there must be a steadfast commitment to do the bending. In other words, it inclined towards justice because good people worked to do that. And had to keep doing that work. (And she was right, and that decision was wrong.)

Ruth Bader Ginsburg did that work. When she was one of the very few female law students at Harvard in the 1950's, the Dean asked her what she was doing there, taking a man's place. That same man, Erwin Griswold, later described her work on gender equality by comparing her to Thurgood Marshall. She was a champion of equal protection under the law.

Her business was justice: even when dealing, as she did for decades, with the disease of cancer that took her mother from her when she was still young, and her husband after many years. She kept her spirit and her drive to do the right thing up to the end.

I don't care to blog right now about her replacement, because there are some people who in reality are not replaceable. She supported the rights of people whose marginalization made their rights subject to being disappeared. Her belief in equality under the law for everyone made her a champion for the disabled and for minorities, for women and LGBT people. She stood in the gap for folks to keep the idea of equality alive. She wanted the feet of government off the necks of people living their lives.  Her career and her life need to speak for themselves, without the spotlight of electoral politics for the moment coloring her magnificent career.

She was a person so deserving of the title "Justice". May her memory be a blessing.

Rowan County Schadenfreude

It appears that the Westboro Baptist Church, last seen picketing the US Weather Service for thinking they know better than God what makes weather (hint: it's queers), have a brand new target:

Kim Davis, because she is "lukewarm".

On one hand, I think it is a damn shame for anyone to be judged for their personal decisions and told that those very things that made their life what it is are in fact, sinful and cut them off from the love of God, and make it so they can not reconcile their lives with a healthy spiritual relationship. On the other hand, if Kim Davis ever wanted to know what queer couples felt like being spurned by a self-righteous ass in their attempt to just live their lives, welp. Welcome to this very valuable experience. Please try to understand they are only exercising their deeply held religious beliefs.

And that the First Amendment guarantees them this very thing.

Nota bene: they are not picketing people who complied with issuing same sex marriage licenses at once, because there are too many of those folks. They are picketing the most publicized person to ultimately agree to allowing same-sex marriage licenses to come out of her office because she rejected them at first. The only thing that singled her out was the suggestion that she was almost going to take this fight all the way.  I'm not telling you the moral of the story, because I trust you are grown and will get it for yourself.

Are they Listening to Him, Now?

I know, coming just a couple days after dragging Carson for his comments on what he would do if faced with a gunman, it might seem like I'm enjoying one of my OCD phases--but the story told on, by, and about Ben Carson about what really (maybe) happened when he was confronted with a gunman is pretty fascinating. In the legend, when a stickup artist put a gun in Carson's ribs, he directed the felon's attention to the person behind the register. Har har har. Not exactly the tale of derring-do of an attempt at physical force to compel a potential shooter to comply, but still a thing one would have to have a certain presence of mind to say. The Daily Beast article is skeptical. I'm skeptical. One might point out that deflecting the assailant's attention from his (valuable) self to the (perceived-less-valuable) fast food cashier's self is sheer classism.

That kind of thinking, that there is a quality of some citizens being lesser-than, is pretty much a trend. He states that some "lifestyles are more valuable than others". Lifestyles, schmifestyles, I come from a country that made the point that all men are created equal (except for the slavery business, and that "men" at the time sort of excluded women). One exceptionally curious bit of reasoning along those lines comes from his assertion that "gay marriage" (we call it marriage equality around here) is like child seats for conjoined twins.

Wow. There is a kind of ableism about that, isn't there? People who grasp the idea that marriage is a state that human beings enjoy and means the same thing for straight or gay couples see marriage as an individual right that confers certain securities to the persons involved in that state of matrimony. It's the same thing because the same needs exist. But take what he's saying--marriage, like car seats, is an accommodation. We can accommodate "normal" people, but if you "don't fit" our definition of "normal", you don't deserve any accommodation because of your differences. A car seat is intended for the purposes of safety for an infant. What this grotesque analogy is saying is that no accommodation should be made to protect the life of infants who are conjoined by arranging some kind of safety mechanism because the accommodation itself is commodified. I realize one of his major achievements was separating conjoined twins, but there are cases where this is not possible, or where some other congenital issue might make accommodating physical differences such that standard measures don't really apply--but the children would still need to be safe if their life is valued right?  Aren't they still people, even if they are different? I'm past objecting to the dismissal of LGBT people's basic enjoyment of equal rights, but the assumption that we shouldn't or wouldn't take extraordinary measures for the "different" among us.

Kim Davis and a Horse of a Different Color

When Kim Clerk Il first started denying marriage licenses to people who wanted to get married, her shtick was quaint, but she sort of had a point--she swore an oath to do a job under terms she agreed with, but then all of a sudden, the Constitution she thought she could uphold gave a place to gay people. And she wroth wrath-ish. I wasn't keen on her enterprise, believing that resignation was better than breaking the oath she took to uphold the Constitution, and generally assuming that most counsel would advise that the Supreme Court was more authoritative than her own self-determination, anyway.

But her latest in altering forms so that the deputy clerks have possibly issued invalid licenses is on a new level of fuckery.--it becomes clear that she doesn't care about other people's exercise of their own personal moral code. Consider whether anyone already had marriage vows performed with the understanding that the license issued was valid--how is this not fraud for them? They believed they obtained a legal document they were entitled to under the law, and went before an officiant of their choosing on the basis of an assumption that this document was legal--and along comes fraudulent Kim Davis. What if some couples receiving this news that their marriage was not legally-binding, were under the impression that their own legal and moral right to cohabitate and consummate their vows depended upon this legal documentation?

This is a perpetration of a fraud on these couples, and this is an abuse of her office. She can not possibly claim that her religion has a right over these citizens' reasonable expectation that the law of the land applies to them, because of a fallacious justification that any one person's bias abrogates that right. She is up shit creek with this nonsense. And her counsel is horrendous.

Songs are Sung to Kim Davis in Wingnut Valhalla

She was deliver'd from her prison on account of, I think, Judge Bunning not wanting more spectacle than two presidential primary candidates might allow. As it was, Ted Cruz's presence was in part elbowed out by Huckabee staffer(s).

I could care less. What I really actually love about this, is that after Kim Davis was told she was let out of jail on the condition of not interfering with marriage licenses for same-sex couples, Mike Huckabee boldly suggested he might be willing to go to jail in her place. Sen. Lindsey Graham was asked about that and said "We'll miss Mike." I can't find a solid link for this attribution but I kind of hope he said it. Somebody had to.

Anyhow, this confluence of Davismania resulted in this picture:

Kim's old boy has a best wife-out-of-jail overall and a being-in-the-middling-big-city straw hat. I don't know if I'm just too much a NE espresso-sipping coastal out of touch liberal to recognize that's just folks outside my lane, or if we's bein' had (me being redneck by proxy at least on my mother's side). And that get-up is too country. Seems like meeting a presidential candidate or two at least merits one's church clothes, even the funeral/wedding/baptism ones.

But she's likely off again to the pokey because she needs to meddle.

We've no word on when Huckabee starts serving her sentence.

Also, Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" was played as she came out, and they never did approve that.

Kim Davis Chose Jail

It's probably easy to tell that I don't exactly have a vast appreciation for the decision of Kim Davis to fail to do the job she was elected to do and swore an oath to do, which was uphold, among other things, the Constitution of the United States. It strikes me as simply a failure to follow her oath--if she can't treat all citizens of her county that come to her for government-provided services equally as the 14th Amendment says that all citizens of the US should be treated the same under the law, then she needs to understand she can't do her job and quit it. Because to fail to do her job as understood by the Supreme Court's ruling based on the 14th Amendment is breaking an oath. Swear to God.

Being faced with the possibility that she could resign or just continue to hold office whilst failing to do her job, she chose jail. Chose it. Civil disobedience means you sometimes get arrested for things. This is not a news flash for social justice people. She willfully violated a law on purpose because she is trying to prove a point. I don't agree with her point, mind you, but I can appreciate that the choice to go to jail over it is a measure of her beliefs, and blaming the government for her going to jail just seems like some crazy idea that the rule of law doesn't mean anything. There were many ways that her refusal to issue marriage licenses could be gamed out, she had, we must presume, competent legal counsel who advised her of the potential repercussions of her actions (or inactions, as the case may be), and faced with resignation, and not collecting a government paycheck anymore, she violated the court order and let herself be taken into custody because this is how civil disobedience is done.

Henry David Thoreau went to jail for not paying taxes because they paid for a war he didn't believe in. Martin Luther King Jr went to jail for protesting in Birmingham. Civil disobedience means recognizing that you are in violation of the government's laws and you face them down in court, and the court of public opinion, but you don't whine like a baby that of all of a sudden, you don't know the laws you are protesting against or misrepresent history over it.

Adventures in Civics with Mike Huckabee

When Gov. Mike Huckabee referred to President Obama's declaration of a name change for a certain Alaskan peak as proof that Obama doesn't think he has any limits, I was going to just take it for granted. Huh, so a guy running in a GOP Presidential primary disagrees with something the President did with a little backspin of hyperbole, whet else is new? And of course he went out of his way to compare the President to a spoiled child because after all, this is the same jackass who compared Jay-Z and Beyoncé to a pimp and a prostitute, so I think I've got a pretty good feel for where Huckabee is coming from.

When I thought a little more about it though, it seemed rather rich. This is the Mike Huckabee who was going to end abortion by fiat and use the military against health clinics that provide abortion services. I'm going to go ahead and say that sounds an awful lot more like overreach than restoring the name of a mountain. I'm not sure what authority Huckabee thinks he would have to do that--but I'm sure, like Kim Davis, his answer would be "God's authority".

It so happens that Huckabee had a nice chat with Kim Davis recently and provided words of support. Regarding her refusal to issue marriage licenses to gay couples (or straight ones at this point, which is part of her job), he had this to say:

"Kim is asking the perfect question: 'Under what law am I authorized to issue homosexual couples a marriage license?' That simple question is giving many in Congress a civics lesson that they never got in grade school,” Huckabee added. "The Supreme Court cannot and did not make a law. They only made a ruling on a law. Congress makes the laws. Because Congress has made no law allowing for same sex marriage, Kim does not have the constitutional authority to issue a marriage license to homosexual couples. "

Well, what authority did she have to issue licenses to straight couples? It's the same one. The idea of judicial review means that laws can be invalidated that are found to be unconstitutional. So they removed the barrier preventing same sex couples from getting married--marriage being an institution that already exists.

I don't think you can call something a civics lesson if it misses the point entirely.

Does God Authorize her Paycheck?

Refusing to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples may feel like a "heaven or hell" issue for Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis and something she's doing under "God's authority", but at the end of the day, I think the issue really is, if she can't do her job, then in might be in the best interest of her conscience if she simply step down. I tend to agree with this Slate piece that suggests that her lawyers are driving this thing to a "martyrdom" for their client.

Rick Santorum and his Grimy Oxymoron

Regarding the recent SCOTUS decision re: marriage equality, Senator Rick Santorum, as is his wont, could not be silent, and issued a bit of word-salad:

“Roe v. Wade is the cancer that is eating away at the body of American freedom and we’re turning into this oligarchy of judges who can impose their will on the American public,” Santorum said. “This is so troubling on so many levels. You have the abuse of the court and really robbing us of our republic. You have the abuse of the First Amendment and imposing their religious doctrine — You can say, ‘What do you mean, religious?’ Their sexual orthodoxy, let’s call it that, their morality — on the rest of this country and the destructive element of that. And then finally the destructive element being the impact on the nuclear family. I’ve been warning about all of these things and they’ve all come together in this one suit.”

Santorum went on to chide fellow Republicans who want to “move on” following the court’s ruling: “What is it about losing our republic, losing our First Amendment and losing the family that’s not worth fighting about?”

This is of a piece with his notions about a "secular theocracy" and he's not alone in using this idea--Mike Huckabee has used the same concept. But it's a very curious idea--secularism implies that no God is involved in a proceeding--so how could any part of government that is secular, also be a theocracy? I guess a sophisticated argument could go into how secularism places the onus for law upon materialism, and that those laws then become the ritual (the must-do's) of the secularist, making government the de facto "God" of the Godless. In a democracy, where the people elect the lawmakers who make our laws--"Vox populi vox dei."  (which is the radical concept lurking behind our American notions abut equality and "consent of the governed"). I'll admit, I like the US Constitution better than I like religion. I know who made it. But I do not worship my government, because I know people are people, and they have limits. Our government might be as good as it can be, but will often fall shades short of fully ethical and moral. It isn't to be worshipped--it is to be dealt with. That is a significant distinction.

MIke Huckabee Has A Problem With Modern Love

So, one of the fun things Mike Huckabee has stated regarding traditional marriage is that it is so emotional and that we are too romantic about it.  He thinks we're too hung up on modern love.  Things were simpler when spouses were obtained the traditional way, in exchange for livestock, and then they simply clung together from necessity and to avoid being stoned to death as adulterers. We could learn so much from the past.

The Civil War Should be About Gay Marriage Now, For Reasons

Strangely Blogged has never awarded any prizes for stupid, because, in a way, I cover the politics front, stupid is my beat. But I am breaking down and awarding the "Stupidest of the Day" award to Wisconsin's own Glenn Grothman, Bryan Fischer doppelganger and all-around schnook, who provided the actually dumbest protestation against marriage equality imaginable--because the Civil War, that's why.

“In the Civil War, some 600,000 people died in a country that was much less populated than that today, and it was a much more religious country,” the lawmaker said. “I think a lot of people who died fighting in that war felt they died fighting for a religious cause — you know, ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ and all that.”

As former slave states debate whether to remove the Confederate battle flag from government buildings, Grothman said Union troops would find the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling “particularly offensive” to their religious beliefs.

“I think it would shock those people who died in that war to find out the constitutional amendment which was ratified kind of as a culmination of their great efforts and their great deaths would be, 150 years later, a little less than 150 years later, used by these five robed, arrogant, robed people to take this constitutional amendment and say that that constitutional amendment that was drafted after the Civil War was in fact an amendment designed to say that same-sex marriage had to be legal,” Grothman said.

This Is a Pride to Remember

The great news that we (LGBTQIAAP or QUILTBAG folks) got this past Friday, that SCOTUS affirmed that same-sex marriage bans were unconstitutional, somewhat overshadowed an interesting case in New Jersey that found that conversion therapy--that snake oil peddled to desperate parents and young people who believed that gay could be prayed away, or made to go away with some obscure science--was a fraud.

I've always hated this, being just a little queer and a lot pro-science, because it's a perversion of the latter and a crime against people who are the former. The history of anti-gay conversion therapy is a very dubious one, and seems to rely an awful lot on trying to torture the sexual feelings of a healthy person away. It's been long understood to be a dangerous lie, which does more harm than good to the people who undergo such so-called "therapy"--but that doesn't mean people still aren't suffering in part because of what that type of therapy entails because we live in a society still pretty ignorant about what it means to be LGBT*. They still frame the debate in terms of actions and lifestyle choices, without seeming to understand that harmlessly loving a same-sex partner and growing old together really isn't a weird witchcraft that poisons the cattle--it's just people doing what is right for them.

State Tyranny Over Marriage Equality Is Ended in US

In just the way that all people are created equal, same sex marriages will have equality under the law. The states will not have the ability to pick and choose among human adults which shall be valid to do so on the strength of gender alone. And this is a damn good day for the Constitution and for what this country was founded on, because individual states should not have the ability to invalidate the rights of individuals to do what is largely viewed as acceptable if not salutary.

The argument against marriage equality is, basically, this is a civil good when straight folks do it, but somehow it transforms into a morally abhorrent thing when gay folks do it. But the moral difference between gay and straight is nowhere established because where is the difference between male and female? Between races?  All citizens of legal age need to be treated equally under the law.

So two consenting men or two consenting women can enter the bonds of marriage because two people--those gender things being equal--will do. It doesn't invalidate laws regarding bigamy, and it doesn't suddenly sanction incest. All it does is say that there are no "gay marriage states" vs "no gay marriage states", and that there is no longer a separate but equal snobbery where  gay people can enjoy  some, but not all privileges of marriage.

yes they said yes they will yes

Ireland has become the first country to legalize same-sex marriage by popular vote.

A lot of blather will be posted about the momentous change--homosexuality was decriminalized 22 years ago there; they legalized divorce only 20 years ago, and a strong reason for the social conservatism was simply, Catholicism, and that was the end of it. It is true that, just as many people have left the Church here in the US, the pews have been emptying in Ireland.

I think there's more to it than that though. There was a high voter turnout among younger people with people actually coming home to vote from abroad--for this particular vote. It's not anti-tradition, but a deep sense that the tradition of marriage is big enough to mean marriage equality for gay couples, and that family is a right that should not be denied. There was huge grassroots support.

This was the result of a labor of love.

"The Left" is Actually Obsessed with Cake

Sen. Ted Cruz has addressed LGBT rights again, and once again the best way I can describe our differences is "cake or death."

What Cruz has to say about "the left" and our weird support of gay rights is:

"Is there something about the left — and I am going to put the media in this category — that is obsessed with sex?" Cruz asked reporters at an event in Beaumont, Texas, according to the Texas Tribune.

"ISIS is executing homosexuals — you want to talk about gay rights?" Cruz continued. "This week was a very bad week for gay rights because the expansion of ISIS, the expansion of radical, theocratic, Islamic zealots that crucify Christians, that behead children and that murder homosexuals — that ought to be concerning you far more than asking six questions all on the same topic."

Cruz railed against "mandatory same-sex marriage" and criticized a reporter for asking about his views on gay marriage, according to the Texas Tribune.

Nobody on the left gives two damns about what consenting adults (key words, "consenting" and "adults") do in their private time. What we are concerned about is a public issue--how LGBT people's rights are respected in employment, in commerce, in not being harassed in schools, workplaces, or the street, and in being able to form property contracts with the partner of their choosing. It's not the sex--after all, Lawrence v. Texas used equal treatment under the law to invalidate anti-sodomy laws that discriminated specifically against LGBT people, and the accomplished attorney Cruz should be well aware of that case. The movement for equality is about rights that extend beyond the bedroom, but do not extend beyond those that straight people already enjoy.

Jeb Bush is Like a Candidate from 2004

Think about 2004. I know. It was a while ago. But if you were thinking about litigating whether the start of the Iraq War made sense and how it was being managed and really, really, were concerned about whether traditional marriage was being protected--I think 2004 was the year for you. And that is where Jeb Bush is. Stuck in his brother's last election cycle like some kind of iteration of the movie Groundhog Day, except, unlike Bill Murray's character, Jeb Bush has not learned how to move forward. He's learned how to be really good--at being in 2004.

I don't really want to go over the past, very bad week, where Jeb Bush was trying to figure out how to respond to the simple question "Would you have gone into Iraq just as GWB had done?" I think there is some confusion about how people are viewing the responses he has given. The intelligence is besides the point. It was for his brother--why wouldn't it be for him? George Tenet got his medal for the slam-dunk case. (And so did Bremer, and so did Franks for their foul ups.) President George Bush acted on the intelligence he politically needed. He went into Iraq before the UN inspectors at the time wrapped up what they wanted to. I don't know how many people in hindsight don't find that at least dubious--