corianderstem
Blue Crack Distributor
I lost you at the second Americans ...
This might be a dumb question, but I'm curious: around the globe, is America seen as more or less accepting of gay marriage?
Woo to Washington state and New Jersey .
This is starting to feel like a guessing game: What state will be next?
Most laws apply to a general sense and are not necessarily applied in a fair fashion.why must the right of some americans to discriminate against other americans be crushed by the people all those americans elected to make laws to govern said americans?
Maryland and Maine and Illinois.
Gubernatorial activism.
INDY500 said:The executive branch vetoing an act of the legislative branch = a republic
The governor asking that the law be decided by a vote of the people = direct democracy
The courts assuming to be above all of that = judicial activism
I'd like to know what people do and do not get to vote on directly. Seems awfully arbitrary.
I'd also like to know where the Right is going to move the goalposts next.
‘Do you write for The Comment?’ She said, ‘yes’. ‘Did you write this piece?’ ‘Yes,’”
Then it got violent. “She was hit on the side of the head with a punch.”
"I have been just as adamant that same-sex couples in a civil union deserve the very same rights and benefits enjoyed by married couples – as well as the strict enforcement of those rights and benefits," the statement continued. "Discrimination should not be tolerated and any complaint alleging a violation of a citizen's right should be investigated and, if appropriate, remedied. To that end, I include in my conditional veto the creation of a strong Ombudsman for Civil Unions to carry on New Jersey's strong tradition of tolerance and fairness."
21 Feb 2012 02:58 PM
Like A Natural Woman
I happened to meet Peter Tatchell, the legendary and vocal international gay rights activist, last week in London. In the 1990s, he had publicly challenged my book, "Virtually Normal," and its advocacy of marriage equality, from the vantage point of the gay left. A decade and a half later, we are on the same page. But he was always an "outer" and I wasn't; and that kept us somewhat at odds. But just as you cannot libel the dead, I don't think you can out them either. And Peter's reminiscence of younger Whitney's closest friend, Robyn Crawford, is a touching one, and I see no reason to disbelieve it:
When I met them, it was obvious they were madly in love. Their intimacy and affection was so sweet and romantic. They held hands in the back of the car like teenage sweethearts. Clearly more than just friends, they were a gorgeous couple and so happy together. To see their love was infectious and uplifting.
Whitney was happiest and at the peak of her career when she was with Robyn. Sadly, she suffered family and church pressure to end her greatest love of all. She was fearful of the effects that lesbian rumours might have on her family, reputation and career. Eventually she succumbed.
The sudden and horribly self-destructive marriage to Bobby Brown surprised many. But until reading Peter's piece, I did not realize that Brown had himself said that Whitney married him in part to put behind rumors of her love for Robyn, to whom she dedicated her albums. He wrote that the marriage was
"doomed from the very beginning. I think we got married for all the wrong reasons. Now, I realize Whitney had a different agenda than I did when we got married. I believe her agenda was to clean up her image, while mine was to be loved and have children. The media was accusing her of having a bisexual relationship with her assistant, Robin [sic] Crawford. Since she was the American Sweetheart and all, that didn’t go too well with her image. In Whitney’s situation, the only solution was to get married and have kids. That would kill all speculation, whether it was true or not."
Robyn wrote a moving tribute after Houston's death, reflecting on its happening around Valentine's Day. These paragraphs leapt out at me:
People thought they had to protect her. She hated that. And that’s what people don’t understand: She was always the one doing the driving ... She was working hard to keep herself together, and I think she felt that if she admitted any feeling of sadness or weakness she would crumble. One time, back when we were young, we were out, we were partying, and I said, "Listen, I have to go. I’m tired. I can’t make it." And she looked at me with her eyes wide and said, “I’ve got to make it.”
And that was Whitney. She could not pick up the phone, and that meant it was too painful. I have never spoken about her until now. And she knew I wouldn’t. She was a loyal friend, and she knew I was never going to be disloyal to her. I was never going to betray her. Now I can’t believe that I’m never going to hug her or hear her laughter again.
We can never know what's in someone's heart. I hope for her sake that Houston wasn't gay and didn't suffer because she couldn't face it - for religious or professional or social reasons, or for reasons within her even she could not understand. Robyn, her assistant, describes a love that could just as well have been profound intimate friendship, rather than full intimacy. But these barriers are more porous for women than many men, and if she was at heart a naturally lesbian woman - as her ex-husband claims - it makes her suffering so much deeper and more important to understand. It reveals the deep toll of suppressing your core emotional identity for the sake of "making it" or simply because of social pressure and shame. Many men and women caught in this vise suffer for it, sometimes unconsciously seek punishment for it, or try to numb it with the pursuit of professional perfection, or rigid religious fundamentalism, or alcohol, or drugs, or pure, unrelenting, soul-punishing denial. It's a horrible way to live - enough, at some level, to make you want to die.
Deep down, I think this was the core tragedy of Michael Jackson. He never felt the validation of unconditional love as a child, as is the case with so many gay kids (whether he was gay or not). I hope Whitney didn't endure the same agony - or worse, once did experience unconditional love and then ran away to punish herself for it for life. Both Jackson and Houston were musical geniuses. But what came through their voices, to me at least, was not just those near-divine moments of joy, but the sincerity of the visceral pain that laced every note.
I pray their pain is over now; and that their wounded souls are being healed by their Father's unconditional love for ever.
The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan - The Daily Beast
I do vaguely remember (from my highschool years, late 80s) that she was one of those celebrities there were "rumors" about. I was never a fan, mostly because that kind of music never interested me but I suppose also to some degree because of the princess-y image, which may or may not have been fully of her choosing. But certainly at that time it would've been virtually impossible to maintain that kind of image while also being an out lesbian or bisexual woman, above and beyond the question of how friends and family might respond. (Not that marrying Bobby Brown is likely to help that image either...) Tragic dimension to an already sad story, if true.
Another court finds Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional
Comments (56) By JOSH GERSTEIN | 2/22/12 5:03 PM EST
Another federal judge has found unconstitutional a key part of the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal law which forbids providing federal government benefits to same-sex spouses.
U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White, who sits in San Francisco and was appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, issued the ruling Wednesday afternoon in a case involving federal judicial law clerk Karen Golinski's request for benefits for her female spouse. White said the stated goals of DOMA, passed in 1996 and signed by President Bill Clinton, could not pass muster under a so-called "heightened scrutiny" test or even a lower "rational basis" threshhold.
"The imposition of subjective moral beliefs of a majority upon a minority cannot provide a justification for the legislation. The obligation of the Court is 'to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code,'" White wrote. "Tradition alone, however, cannot form an adequate justification for a law....The 'ancient lineage” of a classification does not render it legitimate....Instead, the government must have an interest separate and apart from the fact of tradition itself."
White's 43-page decision (posted here) is similar to a ruling from a federal judge in Massachusetts in 2010, who also struck down an aspect of DOMA.
In White's ruling, he also gave an unusual back of the hand to the Chief Judge of the Ninth Circuit, Alex Kozinski, who ruled at an earlier administrative stage of the dispute that federal personnel managers had authority to cover Golinski's spouse as a non-spousal member of her family. White called that reasoning "unpersuasive."
The case is one of those that lawyers hired by Congress defended after President Barack Obama and the Justice Department declined to do so, stating that they believed the statute to be unconstitutional.
Another court finds Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional - POLITICO.com