Eideard

Maryland governor Martin O’Malley after supporting same-sex marriage
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

The Maryland Senate voted Thursday evening to legalize same-sex marriage, the latest sign of growing national recognition of such unions among gay and lesbian couples.

Gov. Martin O’Malley has pledged to sign the bill into law. “All children deserve the opportunity to live in a loving, caring, committed, and stable home, protected equally under the law,” O’Malley said in a statement after the vote.

New Jersey lawmakers approved same-sex marriage this month, but Gov. Chris Christie vetoed the legislation. He has said voters should decide the issue in a statewide referendum…

Proving once again what cowards Republican politicians may be.

…Lawsuits seeking to expand civil unions or turn back laws banning same-sex marriages are working through the courts in at least 12 states, including Hawaii, Minnesota and California, the organization said.

The flurry of activity is a stark change from two decades ago, when the issue of same-sex marriage first gained national attention. Just a decade ago, no states allowed such unions…

In November, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press reported a more divided public — 46% in favor of same-sex marriages and 44% opposed. But Pew also said the uptick in support seems to be gaining steam, having jumped 9 percentage points in two years.

The shifting attitudes have emboldened proponents of same-sex marriage.

“There’s no question that with so many Americans having changed their minds and opened their hearts as they’ve heard the stories of real couples and thought about why marriage matters, we now have tremendous momentum towards ending marriage discrimination,” said Evan Wolfson, president of Freedom to Marry, which favors recognizing a right to marriage for gay couples.

“We could see a nationwide victory as soon as one to two years. It could also take as much as 10 years.”

The homophobic Right will dedicate their money to referenda in parallel with the history of racists losing control of legal segregation in the United States during the rise of civil rights movements, civil rights legislation respecting the Constitution. Part of their dedication to green power rather than a constitutional dedication to civilization will be the bucks they will continue to spend on trying to save DOMA, the so-called Defense Of Marriage Act which took another just hit, today.

Watching the Republican Party struggling to agree on a presidential candidate, one wonders whether the G.O.P. shouldn’t just sit this election out — just give 2012 a pass…

…The party has let itself become the captive of conflicting ideological bases: anti-abortion advocates, anti-immigration activists, social conservatives worried about the sanctity of marriage, libertarians who want to shrink government, and anti-tax advocates who want to drown government in a bathtub.

Sorry, but you can’t address the great challenges America faces today with that incoherent mix of hardened positions. I’ve argued that maybe we need a third party to break open our political system. But that’s a long shot. What we definitely and urgently need is a second party — a coherent Republican opposition that is offering constructive conservative proposals on the key issues and is ready for strategic compromises to advance its interests and those of the country.

Without that, the best of the Democrats — who have been willing to compromise — have no partners and the worst have a free pass for their own magical thinking. Since such a transformed Republican Party is highly unlikely, maybe the best thing would be for it to get crushed in this election and forced into a fundamental rethink…

Because when I look at America’s three greatest challenges today, I don’t see the Republican candidates offering realistic answers to any of them.

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Turning their backs on Catholic women
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Seeking to allay the concerns of Catholic leaders and head off an escalating political storm, President Obama on Friday announced an adjustment to the administration’s health-care rule requiring religiously affiliated employers to provide contraceptive coverage to women.

Women still will be guaranteed coverage for contraceptive services without any out-of-pocket cost, but will have to seek the coverage directly from their insurance companies if their employers object to birth control on religious grounds…

Religiously-affiliated non-profit employers such as schools, charities, universities, and hospitals will be able to provide their workers with plans that exclude such coverage. However, the insurance companies that provide the plans will have to offer those workers the opportunity to obtain additional contraceptive coverage directly, at no additional charge.

Churches remain exempt from the birth-control coverage requirement. And their workers will not have the option of obtaining separate contraceptive coverage under the new arrangement.

The administration’s decision to make an adjustment reflected the high political stakes of an issue that had generated intense criticism in recent days from a growing chorus of Catholic and Republicans leaders, as well as some Democrats. In Congress and on the campaign trail, leading Republicans attacked the Obama administration’s position as a war on religion.

The article carries on with the usual blather about even-handedness, reflection, blah, blah, blah.

I thought I was only being pressed to vote against the evil of two lessers in the coming election. It appears I haven’t even that much of a choice. If I only get to choose between a reactionary politician and an opportunist who won’t stand up to reactionary politicians – I can refuse to vote for either one.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission
Frank and his husband Joe Kapley-Alfano embrace

An appeals court on Tuesday found California’s gay marriage ban unconstitutional in a case that may lead to a showdown in the Supreme Court.

Supporters of the ban said they would appeal the judgment…Their appeal is likely to keep gay marriage in the state on hold pending future proceedings. But the lawyers who won the appeals court round called the decision a milestone, and outside City Hall in San Francisco, a center for gay rights, dozens of same-sex couples hugged and kissed in public, cheering the ruling.

“It means we are included in the American Dream,” said Joe Capley-Alfano, who married his husband, Frank, in the summer of 2008, a window of legal same-sex marriage in California.

The majority in the 2-1 decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that California’s Proposition 8 ban did not further “responsible procreation,” which was at the heart of the argument by the ban’s supporters.

“Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples,” the ruling reads.

Can you imagine these idiots who bankrolled Prop 8 trying to convince anyone other than some spooky True Believer that the only function of sex is responsible procreation. Their own children must laugh at them hiding reality in the bedroom.

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Folks in the state Senate gallery applauding passage of the bill

Washington appeared almost certain to become the seventh state to allow same-sex marriage after the State Senate voted late Wednesday for a measure that would allow gay and lesbian couples to marry beginning this summer.

Supporters had considered the Senate to be the more challenging chamber in which to pass the bill, but it was approved easily, by a vote of 28 to 21, after less than 90 minutes of debate. The measure now moves to the House, where it has wide support and could be voted on as soon as next week. Gov. Christine Gregoire has urged the bill’s approval. The governor is a Democrat, and both legislative chambers are controlled by Democrats.

“Regardless of how you vote on this bill, an invitation will be in the mail,” Senator Ed Murray of Seattle, the prime sponsor in the Senate, said in his final remarks before the vote. Mr. Murray, who is gay, has noted many times publicly that he and his longtime partner hope to marry in their home state.

The measure, echoing one passed in New York last June, includes language assuring religious groups that they would not be required to marry same-sex couples or allow them to marry in their facilities. Washington would join New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont and Iowa as states where same-sex couples can marry. Washington, D.C., also allows same-sex marriage…

The floor debate late Wednesday was civil and relatively succinct… A wonder in American politics.

A few Republicans joined Democrats in support of the bill.

In general, the reactionary wing of America’s artificial political division into two parties continues to come down against civil rights and civil liberties – our Constitution and Bill of Rights notwithstanding.

Predictable. I retain theoretical hope for true multiple-party electoral politics in this nation. One of these centuries.

Is your mayor in the picture?
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Mayors of about 80 U.S. cities from New York to Los Angeles to Houston are backing a campaign to remove legal barriers to same-sex marriage nationwide.

“The more support we build in our cities and states, the stronger case we can make for extending the freedom to marry to loving couples no matter where they live,” Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles said…at a news briefing on the issue. Same-sex marriage is illegal under California law.

Legislators in Washington, New Jersey and Maryland are pushing measures to permit the practice, while voters in North Carolina and Minnesota will face ballot questions this year on banning it. Federal law doesn’t recognize same-sex marriages, which are legal in New York, Iowa, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.

“Law-abiding, tax-paying families and their children deserve the same opportunities, the same rights and the same responsibilities afforded to every other family,” said Villaraigosa, a Democrat, at the briefing in Washington, where the U.S. Conference of Mayors is meeting. He spoke in support of Freedom to Marry, a New York-based advocacy group that says bans discriminate against homosexuals and infringe on their rights…

“On average in New York City, 700 gay and lesbian couples are now getting married at the city clerk’s offices” each month, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. “That means every month, hundreds of more parents and children are gaining the economic stability and protections that come with being a formal family unit.”

The mayor added that the change has been an economic boon for the largest U.S. city. He has said that the new law helps companies attract top talent and draws same-sex couples as tourists, including some who intend to marry while in New York…

Efforts to make the practice legal gained momentum in 2003, when the top Massachusetts court ruled 4-3 that a ban was unconstitutional. In 2004, the city of San Francisco initiated a court battle by letting gay couples wed. Massachusetts became the first state to permit same-sex marriage in May of that year.

Like so many civil rights struggles, though religious fundamentalists form the bastion of reactionary opposition, the issue of marriage equality encourages many more people to rethink the bigotry that props up the intellectual dishonesty and fear that denies equal opportunities to all citizens of this nation.

I think I’ll write a little bit about this photo. You see, I’m standing just to the right of the field of vision – politely nudged aside by the news photographer who wanted to get a good close-up of Dr. King speaking in one of the toughest neighborhoods in Black Chicago. Out in front of the Robert Taylor Projects.

Looking around for a photo and a news piece to reflect upon on this holiday, I bumped into this news photo from the summer of 1965 in Chicago. I spent that summer as a community activist working with other like-minded folks from the then fairly-new W.E.B.DuBois Clubs. Radicals, communist and non-communist, religious and atheist, all colors and creeds; but, convinced that it would take more than band-aids to patch up the effect of centuries of racism in America.

I met some wonderful people that summer. Not the least of whom was Dr. King. Though he wasn’t the biggest influence on my feelings, understanding of what the movement needed to do, where to go next. Most influential was Ismael Flory, founder of the African American Heritage Association, editor and stalwart in his dedication to producing an encyclopedia of African American studies. Ish could turn traffic directions into a discussion of history, turn lunch into the science of gastronomy – could make you laugh or cry over silly humanity.

I opened for Dr. King, that day in Chicago’s South Side. Back in the day, there wasn’t anyplace I sang and performed that didn’t have at least a core of the call for change in it. Newspaper articles and historic documents say this was the first time that Dr. King was booed by a Black audience. It was much, much less than that.

There were two truly tiny efforts birthing in Chicago at that time joining the early call for Black Power within the civil rights movement – and ready to exit the larger effort at the drop of a dollar bill. That day the noisiest boos came from members of the Blackstone Rangers already devolving into hustlers taking money from the Feds and using the funds to build one of the largest drug gangs in Chicago. The other silliest group was comprised of one well-known young Black man – an early advocate of separatist activism – who trotted out a line of a half-dozen or so schoolchildren, none over 6 or 7 years old, who carried anti-King signs. Dr. King chided him for his opportunism and guile.

For me, the day is remembered as the first time I met Martin Luther King, Jr.. I remember the summer sun and heat. I remember one Black teenager who liked one particular song I wrote – something I rarely did. I never wanted to be a songwriter. It was one more step away from America’s bigoted history. One more step towards a future still unrealized; but – believe me – better than it ever was.

Harper spends a lot of time in the dark
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

The government is abruptly arguing that the same-sex marriages of many foreigners who wed in Canada are not valid, a move that stunned the gay community and could affect thousands of couples.

In 2005, Canada became one of the first nations in the world to formally legalize gay marriage. Same-sex couples have been marrying in their thousands in Canada, and lenient rules on residency requirements for those seeking a marriage license mean many of them are from abroad.

Ottawa now says many, if not all, the unions involving foreign residents are invalid. It made the argument in a case where two women, one from England and the other from Florida, sought a divorce after their 2005 Canadian marriage…

“(This) is about to, if it hasn’t already, make us look like fools on the international stage,” said Martha McCarthy, a lawyer for the couple at the center of the furor…

“We’re the leaders of gay marriage … and the federal government is saying ‘Oh, yes, sorry, we forgot to mention that for the last nine years we’ve been marrying people that we didn’t think those were valid’,” she told Reuters on Thursday.

Critics blamed the right-of-center Conservative government, which they say wants to roll back social rights such as gay marriage and abortion…

Activists estimate that around 7,500 same-sex couples have married in Canada since 2003, when some provinces first allowed gay marriages. About 2,500 involved were foreigners, many from countries and U.S. states that do not recognize gay unions…

McCarthy said her clients’ message was: “We can’t get divorced in our own jurisdictions because they don’t recognize the validity of our marriage. You guys here in Canada married us so please give us a divorce because no one else will.”

RTFA to keep up on the latest folderol introduced by one more conservative who tries to back out of civil rights because his so-called morals can’t deal with them.

Unless you think Harper and his peers are only worried about convenient divorce.

Ultra-Orthodox Jewish demonstrators look at a boy (low L) wearing a cloth cap and a yellow Star of David inscribed with “Jude”, Jew, in German, sewn on his jacket as he raises his hands during a protest in Jerusalem’s Mea Shearim neighbourhood December 31, 2011. The demonstrators caused outrage on Sunday by dressing children as Holocaust victims to protest against what they see as persecution of devout Jews seeking gender separation in Israel.

Not much different from priests equating gay rights parades as equivalent to KKK marches.

Catholic Charities refused Rick Wade and Tim Kee when the couple tried to adopt 3 years ago

Roman Catholic bishops in Illinois have shuttered most of the Catholic Charities affiliates in the state rather than comply with a new requirement that says they must consider same-sex couples as potential foster-care and adoptive parents if they want to receive state money. The charities have served for more than 40 years as a major link in the state’s social service network for poor and neglected children.

The bishops have followed colleagues in Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts who had jettisoned their adoption services rather than comply with nondiscrimination laws.

So much for dedication to the needs of the people.

For the nation’s Catholic bishops, the Illinois requirement is a prime example of what they see as an escalating campaign by the government to trample on their religious freedom while expanding the rights of gay people. The idea that religious Americans are the victims of government-backed persecution is now a frequent theme not just for Catholic bishops, but also for Republican presidential candidates and conservative evangelicals…

The Illinois experience indicates that the bishops face formidable opponents who also claim to have justice and the Constitution on their side. They include not only gay rights advocates, but also many religious believers and churches that support gay equality (some Catholic legislators among them). They frame the issue as a matter of civil rights, saying that Catholic Charities was using taxpayer money to discriminate against same-sex couples…

If you are to be a responsible citizen of a country you function within the law that governs that nation. Yes, you may challenge laws within legitimate political means and methods. Picking up your marbles and running home is not responsible behavior.

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