Gay Rights

by

Idaho and Nevada join the 21st century

Thanks to the recent Supreme Court decision not to take the appeals, 30 states now have marriage equality.

Oops, make that 32.

Yesterday, Idaho and Nevada’s bans were struck down as well. MarriageEqualityMap_GIF2

That means that the majority of states, containing over 60% of the population of the United States, have finally entered the 21st century.

It’s not all smooth sailing, of course. Some Republican governors are refusing to follow the court’s orders, despite the fact that such a thing is, you know, a violation of their oath of office and basically a form of treason. Like George Wallace standing in front of the schoolhouse blocking black children, they will serve as a reminder to future generations of how mean-spirited bigotry can be.

by

Breaking: Supreme Court Does Something Right!

The U.S. Supreme Court today just announced that it would not accept appeals from states fighting to keep gay marriages from happening.

This means that in those states where a Federal Court (or highest State Court) held that the state could not deny marriage equality, their decision stands.  Supreme Court

The Supreme Court gets thousands of appeals, and can decide which cases to accept. By refusing to accept these cases, the court has said that the lower decision stays, and that’s the end of it.  There’s no where else to appeal to.

So Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin will have to start allowing gays to get married as soon as possible.

Let’s hope this sends about as clear of a signal as possible to all those other states that are still fighting this.  Give up. History is not on your side.  Justice has won.

EDIT:  Apparently, the court did not take a position on other cases that are similar and pending.  I am not sure exactly where they are, but it is likely that the appeals from North Carolina, West Virginia, South Carolina, Wyoming, Kansas and Colorado will also either die because they will be withdrawn or will be similarly decided soon.

That means that the number of states with gay marriage is likely to quickly jump from 19 to 30, for more than half of the country.

by

Louisiana stays in the 20th Century

Good ol’ Louisiana!  Judge Feldman, perhaps inspired by the Dred Scott decision, has held that all them faggots don’t got no rights at all in Nawleans.

Judge Feldman. I think.

Judge Feldman. I think.

Breaking a streak of 21 previous decisions, Judge Feldman tied together state’s rights and a complete lack of empathy and understanding to determine that marriage is for straight people only because tradition. Or babies. Or something. You know, the standard garbage that every other judge laughs out of court.

It gets worse. He says the state has an interest in preventing gay marriage so there won’t be incest. Got it? You understand that? See the connection? Well, you might be a redneck if…

Look, we all knew this was getting to the Supreme Court sooner or later. I would have liked all courts to have been unanimous when the case arrived, but this is just a minor hump.

Or as Judge Feldman would say, “What hump?”

by

Florida joins the 21st century

The craziest state in the union just did something sane.florida

A Federal judge has ruled, like all 18 cases that came before this, that prohibiting gays and lesbians from getting married is unconstitutional.

That’s a 100% success rate, for those of you keeping score.

Admittedly, some of these are on hold because they are on appeal, and eventually the US Supreme Court will have to deal with it.  Yes, that scares me a little bit, because there members of that body that literally think that the honest-to-God devil is influencing people to support gay marriage.  I am not making this up.  Fortunately, since all of these decisions have been based on the Supreme Court decision knocking down  the Defense of Marriage Act, I am hopeful that the same majority will hold.

 

 

by

I’m against “gay marriage”

A couple I know announced this weekend that they’re getting married.  (Congratulations Kris and Emily!)  They’ve discussed how happy they are that they can do so now in Pennsylvania and how weird it will be to have a gay marriage in Amish country.

But I still am against “gay marriage.”  gay+marriage+generic081612

I don’t want them to get “gay married.”  I want them to get “married.”

When Heidi and I got married, we didn’t say “Hey, we’re getting straight married, everyone!”   Other friends of mine didn’t announce, “Guess what!  We’re getting inter-racially married!”

So what I’m really looking forward to is when people stop using the phrase “gay marriage.”  It’s just “marriage.”  I know it may take a while until we stop hearing that phrase, and that will be when it’s no longer news or different — and that’s what I’m looking forward to.

You’re getting married, and I couldn’t be happier for you!

 

by

Virginia joins the 21st Century (Again)

Nice to see my old home state of Virginia discovering that marriage should not be a privilege for heterosexuals.  100% of all the cases that have come before the courts have decided similarly, and it’s really taking the wind out of those who want to discriminate.  valovers

I’m happy that Virginia’s Attorney General, like the one we have here in Pennsylvania, refused to defend a law he knew was unconstitutional.  And better yet that the federal courts upheld the ruling of a lower court earlier this year.

What is even better is how the courts are using reactionary Supreme Court “Justice” Scalia’s own words against him.  Scalia, who literally believes any decision that goes against him is because the actual Devil is behind it, argued in a previous decision that struck down laws that discriminated against gays and lesbians based on their sex practices that logically, if you agree with that, then you’d have to allow gay marriage too!  He wrote that to shock people into realizing how terrible it was that we no longer discriminated, but many current judges have used those very words to agree with him and strike down anti-gay marriage laws.   (Scalia also said that this is a decision that should be left to the majority to decide democratically, but he has been very silent now that the majority of Americans are in favor of gay marriage.)

“Over the decades, the Supreme Court has demonstrated that the right to marry is an expansive liberty interest that may stretch to accommodate changing societal norms,” wrote one of the judges in the majority.  This is something some people just cannot abide.

The dissenting judge (appointed by GWB) once more made the ridiculous claim that the government has the duty to prohibit same sex marriages because they do not promote society’s goal of procreation.  You know — the argument that gets you laughed at when said in intelligent company.

by

Tyrannical Obama tyrannically uses his tyrannical power to tyrannically force gays not to be discriminated against

He’s done it again.  Obama has once more used his Super Powers granted to him to ignore the Constitution and tyrannically declare in an Executive Order that anyone doing business with the US government is not allowed to fire people for being gay.   dictatorobama

He’s taking away the God-given right of business owners who want to get our taxpayer money for their business to be able to fire taxpayers who just happen to have been born in a way they don’t like for reasons that cannot quite be explained using logic.  How tyrannical!

Why, it’s unprecedented that a President would issue an order limiting who the government gives business to!  Except of course for all the other times Presidents have done it (such as Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon).  Yes, it’s true — we’ve been living in a tyranny for at least 50 years, don’t ya know.  Even under Reagan!

This only affects businesses that do business with the federal government so if you want to hate fellow Americans and discriminate against them, you’re just going to have to do that on your own, buddy — because this is a tyranny.

by

“Straight Pride” deserves our attacks

I’ve seen this posted around on Facebook by those poor, straight people.  Will the discrimination against them ever end?

straight

 

I’ve yet to see anyone who is in favor of gay rights post a “straight pride” icon.  So maybe there is a reason that people who post this get “attacked viciously.”

This goes along with all those other proclamations like “Why isn’t there White History Month?” — which is always said by a white person.

Personally, I would love to live in a world where we wouldn’t need Gay Pride parades or Black Pride marches or anything like that.  But as long as there are a group of people who want to make others ashamed of what they are, then there will be people saying, “No, I am not ashamed.  I am proud.  You cannot shame me.”

If we lived in a society where it was absolutely fine to discriminate against people with blue eyes, I would encourage blue-eyed people to have their own “Blue-Eyed Pride” parades.  They would need them, to establish that they will not bend to the will of those who would take away their rights for no good reason.

Is there a need whatsoever for “Straight Pride”?  No, of course not.  No one is preventing straight people from getting married.  No one is firing straight people for that reason.  And absolutely no one is trying to shame straight people for being straight.

But what I and others will do is shame straight people who act like their way of life is under attack by posting stupid “Straight Pride” banners on their Facebook pages.  These people always are against gay rights, and are posting these things because they think they are under attack because they can no longer force their way of life on everyone else.*

*This also applies to religious fundamentalists who think anyone who defends themselves against their attacks is declaring a “war on religion.”

 

by

Colorado joins the 21st Century

District Judge C. Scott Crabtree ruled yesterday in Colorado that the arguments for keeping the ban against same-sex marriage (that marriage is about the “protection of families” and “procreation of children”) are “recently fabricated” arguments for the purpose of denying that discrimination is occurring.  gay-marriage-generic-jpeg

“It is merely a pretext for discriminating against same-sex marriages,” he wrote.

And that’s what we’ve been saying for years.  If marriage was just for having children, then why do we allow elderly couples and infertile couples to get married?  Would my wife and I, childless by choice, be forced to give up our 31-year marriage?

It’s so nice to be able to post these things every few weeks, and so reassuring to see even conservative Republican judges shaking their heads and saying, “Yeah, that’s ridiculous.”

by

Kentucky joins the 21st Century

“Sometimes, by upholding equal rights for a few, courts necessarily must require others to forebear some prior conduct or restrain some personal instinct,” Heyburn wrote. “Here, that would not seem to be the case. Assuring equal protection for same-sex couples does not diminish the freedom of others to any degree.”  

Federal Judge Heyburn hit the nail on the head with his decision striking down Kentucky’s anti-marriage law.

Judge Heyburn (approximation)

Judge Heyburn (approximation)

 “Even assuming the state has a legitimate interest in promoting procreation, the Court fails to see, and Defendant never explains, how the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage has any effect whatsoever on procreation among heterosexual spouses. Excluding same-sex couples from marriage does not change the number of heterosexual couples who choose to get married, the number who choose to have children, or the number of children they have … The Court finds no rational relation between the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage and the Commonwealth’s asserted interest in promoting naturally procreative marriages.”

Sadly, the Governor of Kentucky has vowed to appeal the decision.  It’s sad because he’s a Democrat.  Kentucky’s Democratic Attorney General refused to defend the law in court (because, as any lawyer who understands the law will tell you, it is legally indefensible), like our own AG here in Pennsylvania.

However, given that the anti-marriage folks have won exactly zero appeals makes me pretty optimistic that this appeal will also be a failure.