Straight Privilege and Double-Dipping in Illinois

The Illinois legislature passed a civil unions bill earlier this week that gives same-sex couples all of the same rights the state accords opposite-married people. Medical access and decisions, inheritance, immunity from testifying, pension survivors benefits, the whole deal. And there was much rejoicing.

When it became apparent that the legislation would sail through Governor Pat Quinn's office, barely stopping on his desk long enough for him to scrawl his signature on the giddy bill, the what's-next discussion turned to whether civil unions will be a stepping stone to full marriage rights in Illinois or a final, second-class destination, although, absent changes to the federal DOMA, it looks like semantics at this point. As in, about the only change you could make to the Illinois civil unions to advance them into the "marriage" sphere is to go ahead and start using the word "marriage;" the state-level rights are in place--although whether insurance companies or benefit managers might try to be dicks about it like they did, for example, in New Jersey after that state enacted their own civil unions--remains to be seen.

However, what's next is something I didn't quite anticipate: straight people, and old straight people in particular, want in on the action.

While celebrated as a historic step forward for gay rights in Illinois, the new civil union bill that awaits Gov. Pat Quinn's signature also offers opportunities for heterosexual couples who don't want to wed but seek many of the legal protections of marriage.

Granted, this is likely to be a narrow swath of the population, but those who drafted the law felt it important to be inclusive, particularly given that the bill's intent was to open up rights that had long been denied to a demographic group.

"It just seemed wrong to me to write a law that would be discriminatory," said state Rep. Greg Harris, D-Chicago, the bill's chief sponsor in the House.

He said some senior citizens lobbied for the bill. Seniors with survivor's benefits from Social Security or a pension could lose that income if they remarry. A civil union allows them to keep that benefit while providing the same state-level rights as a marriage.

"If you go to a senior building, you'll find a lot of people who face this dilemma," Harris said. "They may be the largest single group of beneficiaries by number."

In other words, a demographic that (1) spent much of their lives benefiting from their (and their parents') ability to marry and (2) historically has opposed extending those same benefits to gay people now (3) want to keep the benefits they accrued by being in a state-sanctioned opposite-sex relationship while simultaneously (4) glomming onto benefits that are now being extended to people in same-sex relationships who historically have been denied the exact kind of financial security the oldsters are loathe to give up now that they've met someone new.

I understand why it is important that a law about inclusion appear to be as inclusive as possible, even including groups who, at first blush, do not seem to need the protections extended by the new law because they are already covered by existing laws. And I understand that some straight people don't want to get federally married for realz until equality is extended to everyone. That's lovely, y'all, really, thanks.

But it wears on my very last nerve when one of the loudest responses to this legislation is BUT WHAT ABOUT THE STRAIGHT PEOPLE. But what about the straight people who want this new, lesser-than status? What about the straight people who want health benefits without having to get married first? What about the straight people who don't want to give up a Social Security survivor's benefit?

Well, what about them? If you're in Illinois and you trip-trap down to the courthouse for a shiny new civil union because you've been going out with this guy for a few months and really need health insurance, well, surprise, when you decide to dump him after you land a job that gives you your own coverage, you're going to find that CUs don't just approximate marriage fairly well. The process of getting out of one also approximates divorce to a T. If you're in a CU, you're married without the feds and federal programs being involved. There is no advantage if you're a straight couple. And then there's this:

Courtney Greve, spokeswoman for Cook County Clerk David Orr, said the clerk's office gets weekly calls from heterosexual couples who don't want to marry but are interested in some sort of domestic partnership. Some, she said, are young couples facing a loss of health insurance, who want to wait to get married until they can plan a more elaborate wedding.

Yeah, fuck that. Civil unions, flawed as they are by being limited to state-level legislation, are still closer to the brass ring than anything in Illinois has been before. People have fought for this stuff for years and years. They fought for domestic partnerships and the small set of protections those brought. Now they finally won civil unions, the culmination of decades of struggle, and... young straight people want to use them as a stopgap measure until, you know, they can have the real wedding of their dreams, and old straight people want to use them as a double-ended scoop that gives them the benefits of both their former marriage and their new relationship.

Can we just have our nice thing, please? Or as nice a thing as we can get until civil marriage simply means civil marriage across the board?

Extra Time

I much prefer sports metaphors that open a little window of understanding life over sports metaphors that, well, define life.

Time is fluid in soccer. The match is supposed to last 90 minutes, but the referee may add time and allow play to continue if numerous injuries, substitutions, or other interruptions have conspired to prevent a fair full 90 minutes of competition. This makes for an agonizing experience when, say, your team has dominated possession and outplayed the other side and finally put a shot in the back of the net in the 89th minute. The clock rolls over 90:00 and you think the game's over, but because somebody's head got split open and had to be tended for a while, and somebody else needed lecturing after a yellow card, and the guys being substituted strolled off the field instead of sprinting, the referee says no, the game's not over yet. So you play on and wait and die every time the other team puts a shot on goal that takes a weird hop or deflects off a defender and you think goddammit, we had this thing won and you try to hold on until the whistle finally blows.

So now, after watching Vaughn Walker chest the ball off his own goal line and dribble circles around Prop 8 for the length of the field and fire an unstoppable shot into the top corner for a sure winner, we have extra time. Yeah, Walker put the first extra two minutes on the clock himself--the metaphor breaks down here a bit, but still--but now the 9th Circuit has added what feels like an entire additional half.

A federal appeals court decided Monday to put same-sex marriage in California on hold at least until December, interrupting the wedding plans of scores of gay couples who were hoping to exchange vows later this week.

We are told this is actually a good thing from a strategic standpoint, since it prevents the case from being prematurely kicked up to a Supreme Court that might not rule in our favor.

Loyola Law School professor Richard Hasen said Monday's order was strategically advantageous for supporters of same-sex marriage, no matter how disappointed many couples may be. If the panel had refused to place a hold on Walker's ruling, the supporters of Proposition 8 were prepared to seek a stay from the Supreme Court. The court is believed to be divided on the question of gay marriage, with Justice Anthony Kennedy considered a swing vote. A vote on a hold might have pushed the justices into taking an early position on the question.

"I think there are strategic reasons why even the most ardent supporter of gay marriage could opt for a stay," said Hasen, an expert on federal court stays. "The concern is that rushing things to the Supreme Court could lead to an adverse result [for supporters of gay marriage.] If this case takes another year to get to the U.S. Supreme Court, there could be more states that adopt same-sex marriage and more judicial opinions that reach that conclusion."

Hasen said the hold "takes the heat" off Kennedy and takes the case "off the front burner for a while."

I'm not sure how a year's extra time makes Judge Walker's findings of fact any more or less compelling to Justice Kennedy, nor am I sure how many more states are poised to adopt marriage equality instead of strengthening its prohibition. And I'm really not sure how the scoreboard showing states approving and states opposing any civil rights legislation is relevant to the Supreme Court's evaluation of the legislation's constitutionality. As much as I would love to see, say, 45 more states adopt marriage equality in the next year, that shouldn't be a necessary or even contributing condition to Anthony Kennedy deciding that the 14th Amendment really does still count, and that equality is not negotiable.

Yet again we are being told to just wait a little longer, to be patient, to let the dust settle and not pressure people in power, to see if maybe somebody somewhere in some other state will pick up the slack and do something, because if enough states do something, maybe it won't be so hard for the people who can do something federally binding to actually do it.

Hey, you've already played 90 minutes plus two, so what's two more, and two more, and two more after that? And if the other team manages to poke one in because you're exhausted and your keeper's screened? Well, you're used to losing, so no big deal, right? Right.

I Know What I Want for My Birthday

Specifically, what I want at 5 pm PDT on my birthday. To hear the California bells ringing all the way over here in the desert.

Final Stay Order

My current favorite four words in the English language, second only to here, have another beer: IT IS SO ORDERED.

I'm Just Sayin'

If anybody should appreciate that basic human decency requires marriage equality, it should be a guy whose own parents could not legally marry in 26 of the states in the union when he was born. Somebody like, say, Barack Obama. I'm just sayin'.

If anybody should appreciate that separate does not mean equal, it should be a guy whose skin color would have relegated him to separate, crap accommodations and train cars and water fountains and bathrooms and hotel rooms, if he would have been allowed into one at all, a scant few years before he was born. And it should really be that guy if he grows up to be a fucking constitutional scholar. Somebody like, say, Barack Obama. I'm just sayin'.

If anybody promises to be a fierce advocate for a specific segment of society should that segment elect him to the presidency, he really ought to spend more energy fulfilling promises to the people who actually voted for him than placating people who did not and never will vote for him in the first place. He should not tepidly announce that he didn't really like Proposition 8 because it was sooooo divisive, and then trot out an aide to assure the conservative wing that he really really really doesn't think anybody afflicted by The Ghey should be allowed to get married, but should settle for a bargain-bin generic package with some of the same benefits--if individual states decide to do that; heavens, this can't be a federal matter--and be grateful for it.

If anybody pulls that kind of bullshit once, let alone over and over, he can forget about my money and my vote. I won't support someone who's happy to make me a second-class citizen.

I'm just sayin'.

More.

Loving v. Virginia was decided two months before I was born. Marriage equality continues to evolve on a timeline that parallels my own; California's Proposition 8 was ruled unconstitutional today, twenty years on the dot--and almost to the hour--from my own state-sanctioned opposite wedding. It was a long time ago and I was young and clueless.

Tonight I'm sifting through the reaction online and watching Maddow while nursing my stitched-up elbow. Judge Walker's findings of fact echo every argument for equality made on this blog and countless others. It's a dream ruling, written in dream language--fuck, I could have written big chunks of it, save for the inability to use the word fuck in judicial documents--and it appears to be watertight at a level I never dared hope for. In a judicial equivalent of holding the playground bully at arm's length with a hand on the forehead while he flails away impotently with fists that won't hit the mark, Walker issued a stay on his ruling that gives the H8ers until Friday to take their best shot at filing their appeals. Given the laughable lack of coherence the defense exhibited in his courtroom during testimony, I don't think he's very worried about what will happen when the case hits the Ninth Circuit.

Walker's ruling was heavily based on the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, the same 14th that Sens. McConnell, Graham, McCain, and Kyl are so anxious to overturn that they can't help hopping from foot to foot. So boom, in one fell swoop the 14th becomes a rally point for attacking fecund Latinas and domestic-minded gays. The more interesting things get, well, the more interesting they get.

Ted Olson, one half of the team that argued against Prop 8, on Maddow tonight:

We've got to stop thinking about equality in terms of conservative or liberal. We need to start thinking about the fact that gay and lesbian citizens are our brothers and our sisters; they're entitled to equal places in our society. That should be a conservative value, it is also a liberal value, it is not something that should split us.

Von dein Mund, etc. And on we go.

And the Moral Arc of the Universe Bends a Touch Closer to Justice

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California constitution the notion that opposite sex couples are superior to same sex couples.

Details and commentary will be everywhere soon. The full decision is here.

NOM Descends on Tucson

Oh, this is exciting. The National Organization for Marriage's own hellhound-in-chief and all-around horrible person Maggie Gallagher is coming to Tucson tomorrow night.

What: Same-Gender Marriage and Religious Freedom: A conversation with Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, president of Interfaith Alliance and Maggie Gallagher, founder of the National Organization for Marriage. Rev. Gaddy is the author of Same-Gender Marriage & Religious Freedom, which argues that discussion of this issue should be rooted in the Constitution rather than in scripture. Maggie Gallagher has been a longtime and vocal opponent of legalizing same-gender marriage.

When: Tuesday, May 11, 2010
7:00 P.M. – 9:00 P.M.

Where: Berger Performing Arts Center
1200 West Speedway Blvd.
Tucson, AZ 85745
(located on the campus of the Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and Blind)

I can't go to the "conversation," unfortunately, due to a prior commitment, but my friend Homer will be there in full force, and I will be very anxious to hear about the evening and her responses to the questions he plans to ask. Gaddy should mop the floor with her, although, as I mentioned to Homer, the woman wouldn't recognize a rational thought if it bit her in the ass. And, frankly, being both deaf and blind is about the only way I would be able to spend an hour in her presence without ending up in a holding cell.

Continued Moments in WTF-ery

It's cold and dark when I have to get out of bed in the morning now, which I do not want to do in general and not at all now that we put the flannel sheets and extra blankets on, making the bed more of a giant warm marshmallow wrapped in a flannelly cloud cocoon that I DO NOT WANT TO CRAWL OUT OF EVER, plus judging from the interesting odor in here something appears to have died in my office overnight and it wasn't just dreams of weddings and rings and fabulous parties in New York.

Humph.

So I'm spending my smoking breaks today--since I don't smoke--finding bits of marriage-related right-wing fuckery and posting them here. No fumar aqui, pero fumo cueste lo que cueste. Forthwith, courtesy of Joe.My.God.:

In a Christian Post article about an upcoming biography of Saddleback megachurch Pastor Rick Warren, we learn that Warren freely admits that when he married his wife, he didn't love her, was not attracted to her, and had "no feelings" for her at all. But he married her anyway because the marriage had been arranged. By God.

Good for you, Rick! Congratulations on your loveless arranged marriage! Fucking hell.

My New Hero

Nicked from Jezebel, promulgated here. Thank you, Diane Savino.

Just in Case You Were at all Unclear on Where This is Going

This citizen's initiative is going to be on the ballot in Maine next November (via a commenter at Pam's House Blend):

An Act to Remove Protections Based on Sexual Orientation from the Maine Human Rights Act, Eliminate Funding of Civil Rights Teams in Public Schools, Prohibit Adoptions by Unmarried Couples, Add a Definition of Marriage, and Declare Civil Unions Unlawful

Michael S.Heath
70 Sewall Street
Augusta, ME 04330

To be sure, it was filed in May of 2008, so it's not exactly new news. And it was filed by Mike Heath, of the Maine Christian Civic League, so it's not exactly a surprise. But it's a pertinent reminder that no matter how they swear up and down that it's only about the super secret special word marriage, it's never just about marriage. It's about taking every opportunity to strip away hard-won protections and basic affirmations of our humanity, to legitimize those who would shove us back into the closet and possibly leave a few lumps on our heads, or worse, in the process.

No marriage for you! And no adopted children for you. And no protection from bullying in school for you. How else will you learn your place in society? Because, really, that place also involves no job or housing protections, and if you try to simulate marriage by spending thousands of dollars on lawyers and notarized documents and wills and powers of attorney the way we always tell you to do, well, that's going to be against the law too. We probably can't throw you in jail, but maybe we can fine you.

Did we say it was only about marriage? Yes? Did you not understand at the time that all this other stuff was implicit in that? No? Well, you do now.

0-32.

The advantage to being a lifelong Cubs fan is an apparently genetic propensity for not getting overly bent out of shape over absurdly long losing streaks. Be that as it may--and despite being rich with metaphors--baseball is not life, and my reaction to Maine voters last night overturning their state's nascent marriage equality law (making such ballot measures voted on by my fellow citizens 0-for-32 now) is about as far from wait 'til next year as you can get. It is more along the lines of if you voted for this latest round of bigotry, fuck you.

That's it. It's not a constructive reaction, nor is it polite, and I am utterly unapologetic. There is so much this morning I find disingenuous about this election, this campaign, this issue every goddamn time it comes up and "the people" slap it down. We patiently point out logical inconsistencies in the usual litany of arguments the anti-equality camp trots out like clockwork, parrying every sacred rite invented by God bleating with the availability of religion-free weddings in a courtroom, every procreation yelp with newlywed senior citizens and young but sterile folks, every marriage is a holy union you faggots can't handle with the high divorce rates among evangelicals, and it doesn't matter. When the organized bigotry industry can draw on the no-limit ATM that is the Mormon-Catholic alliance (second collection, anyone? before we have to sell the church, that is? last one out, shut off the lights, 'k?) and produce TV spot after TV spot hammering the same lies over and over to a population with the collective critical thinking abilities of a turnip on a five-day bender, nothing we do matters. Nothing.

Won't someone think of the children? Seriously? This still works? How does this still work? It works when someone agrees to pimp out his five-year-old to stare into the camera with Puss-n-Boots eyes and say daddy, the teacher told me in kindergarten today I have to marry a man. The children will be taught gay marriage. Oh, the vapors. Kindergarten will turn into Kindergaytown. It will be an all gay all the time curriculum. No reading or math or naptime. Just gay. Gay, gay, gay kindergarten and first grade and third grade. Because that would totally happen.

And it works. Every. Goddamn. Time.

Yeah, I think of the little kids. I think of the fact that all those grownup gay folks who want to get married in Maine were little kids themselves once, and they all turned out gay despite not hearing one peep about gays, married or otherwise, when they were in kindergarten. I think about the gay kids who are still killing themselves at a rate that is horrifyingly higher than their straight peers and wonder if hearing gay=normal in elementary school might have created an environment for them where they wouldn't feel so hopeless. Shit, I wonder if I had learned the first thing about lesbians in school that was more extensive and accurate than the single sentence if you're infatuated with another girl it's just a phase that will pass, I might not have spent my entire middle school and high school career feeling like an outsider without knowing why, never quite fitting in, always just different enough from everyone else to not be counted as anyone's best friend. It might not have taken me 31 years to figure out what my deal was, all the while noticing other women similar to myself and thinking wow, she looks a lot like me, I wonder if she catches a lot of shit too. And the perfectly nice guy I was married to for a while as a result would have been spared a world of hurt.

So I think of the children, and I think of the adults they've grown into, and I wonder how otherwise intelligent people like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton can stand there with a straight face and say marriage is a question that should be left to the states. Because it is never just "left to the states" when a national organization based in another state pulls in piles of money from even other states and buys airtime and flies their mouthpieces from yet other states into the target state to spread as many lies and as much fear as necessary to change laws to their liking and leave their muddy footprints on the lives of people they have never met and will never see, in a state they will likely never set foot in again once their meddling is complete and their crowing is over.

So please, spare me this morning the too-familiar platitudes about how these votes are just getting closer and closer, as if losing by six percentage points instead of sixty makes it a lower-case loss instead of an upper-case LOSS, as if it makes a bit of difference in the real legislative world or in the lives of couples who apparently are supposed to shrug and smile and say well, honey, we're not quite as second-class citizens as we used to be! Maybe next year!

Fuck next year. Bring on the ban-divorce ballot measures, because I will totally vote for that shit to protect sacred marriage and guarantee every child a mother and father at home. Hey, I got mine, so fuck y'all. That's the American way.

Another Election Night Nail-Biter

UPDATED: just to add that if you're keeping score at home, we would really like No on 1 in Maine, Yes on 71 in Washington. The updates on the Maine numbers are showing no more than a couple hundred votes separating the yes and no sides at any given time.

Stuff is scrolling by on the Tucson TV, but I'm far more riveted by the neck-and-neck race in Maine between the leave-marriage-equality-well-enough-alone folks and the bigots. There's a liveblog on Pam's House Blend, which you can follow tonight if you're so inclined, or check in tomorrow for what I hope isn't a sad story. The numbers-in-progress are almost more of a roller coaster ride than I have the stomach for; I cannot imagine what it is like to be a gay couple in Maine tonight, waiting to find out if your fellow citizens have decided to take one of your civil rights away from you. Been there and done that, a year ago in Arizona.

A Marriage Parable for Our Time

Keith Bardwell is a justice of the peace in a state where, despite contentious debate and strong public sentiment opposing such pairings, a formerly banned type of marriage is now legal. He recently refused to issue a marriage license to a local couple, the law be damned, citing concerns for any children the couple might wish to raise and his certainty that their kinds of marriages don't last. In fact, he's done this four times in the past two and a half years.

Sigh. We've heard this plenty of times in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and California, haven't we?

Except that we haven't. The couple in question is straight and male-female, and the state in question is Louisiana. So what about these two people triggered JP Bardwell's won't-someone-think-of-the-children lobe, with a touch of you-people-can't-stay-married palsy? Oh. The woman is white. The man is black. And no way in hell are they getting married under Justice of the Peace Keith Bardwell's watch.

But don't get the wrong idea about Bardwell! He's not a racist! Look, he says so himself:

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told The Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

See? He has piles of black friends! He even lets them use his bathroom! How can you call him racist?

Bardwell clarified that conversations with both black and white people, and his own observations, have led him to conclude that mixed-race children aren't accepted by either blacks or whites. And that their parents don't stay married for long. The only thing lacking in his argument is the citation of the passages from Leviticus forbidding interracial marriage; otherwise, it's a spot-on simulation of arguments we've heard from other people--including, sadly, county clerks and other people whose job descriptions include "issue marriage licenses to qualified couples"--who rail against gay folk seeking marriage equality.

Hey, I have gay friends. I just don't want them to be allowed to get married because gays screw everything that moves so they'd probably just get divorced anyway and oh dear god people will make fun of their kids.

Beth Humphrey and Terence McKay, the most recent couple to be denied by Bardwell, plan to file a discrimination suit. I suspect the repercussions will be very, very interesting should the court find that perceptions about a certain class of people's ability to form lasting pair-bonds, and predictions about society's treatment of any children they might raise, have no bearing on those people's rights to enter into a marriage contract. I only wish Bardwell had tossed in a religious objection as well, but we can't have everything.

Love!

Calling Cafe Press

Contemplating putting this on a t-shirt. Found on Joe.My.God, who nicked it from Dan Savage. When they get serious about protecting the sanctity of biblically defined marriage--with the prescribed stones, at the village gate--I'll get serious about thinking about not defiling it by wishing to participate in it.

More Love from Ben & Jerry

'Nuff said.

Wait, actually, not enough said, except I can't figure out how to work a girl-girl reference into my personal favorite Vermonty Python.

On, Wisconsin

A friend helpfully alerted me to goings-on in Wisconsin, a state I love for its fishing, camping, Butterburgers^TM, kringle, tongue-twisting place names, and all-consuming passion for Packers and cheese, but which passed a particularly nasty marriage amendment forbidding official recognition of any same-sex marriage or approximation thereof in 2006. In response to the amendment, the state legislature passed a domestic partnership law that went into effect this morning. The full details are available here, but the highlights include inheritance from a deceased partner, certain protections against creditors, immunity from testifying against a partner, transfer of boat titles without a fee (very important in Wisconsin!), and the all-important hospital visitation, admissions, record access, and consent rights.

Predictably, the Alliance Defense Fund has their cheese curds in a knot.

"You can’t dispute that the state is creating a legal status. The state is creating an institution which is similar in its design to marriage, and that is exactly what the people of Wisconsin voted on and intended to prevent by passing the Wisconsin Marriage Amendment,” [ADF senior legal counsel Brian] Raum said.

Because gay people should die alone and afraid, and then have their blood relatives split up all their stuff. Just like Jesus wants. Or something.

Opponents say that the new domestic partnership classification offers nothing that can’t be accomplished by some other legal means. If couples want to, for instance, make sure that their property is transferred, they can create a will, Raum said.

No word on the ADF's stance on requiring all partnered couples, including straight ones, to draw up their own contracts specifying rights and responsibilities rather than forcing the state to grant them under the blanket status "married." Their argument would seem to fairly apparently boil down to forcing all people to structure the specifics of their relationships by "some other legal means" when those legal means are available. Because if they're going to shrug and tell the gays to just go off and draw up contracts covering every possible contingency, it can't be that big a deal, can it?

Tell you what, Brian--go out and hire lawyers to write and file the paperwork simulating as many of the 200 state and 1,100 federal rights and responsibilities you got the second your marriage license was notarized, and get back to me with how much that costs in money and time. I'm betting that even with the Lawyer Club discount, it's pretty steep. Then try to tell me with a straight face that a DP classification doesn't make any difference at all. No, really, go ahead. I've got all day here.

The ADF's challenge to the registry law is bobbing along in the Wisconsin Supreme Court system, possibly bumping hulls with the challenge to the original marriage amendment that is somewhere in those same waters. No idea yet on what the schedule is looking like for either one.

Mental Health Breaks from the _______ Treatment Plan Continue

Good news: I no longer have a deadline of the end of the day Friday! Bad news! It's been moved up to tomorrow morning!

So here's a quick Maddow on the DOMA brief:

I may need a mental health break from my mental health breaks at this rate. In other news, the Times noticed that the brief was full of asshattery as well, so it's not just me. Yes, I understand that the DOJ does this sort of thing as a matter of course, and that the brief goes through several markups before it's released and that the final version may or may not even vaguely resemble the first draft, but goddammit, religious righty talking points and code language really have no place here. And Obama's silence on it following his silence after each advance in the Northeast speaks volumes I really don't want to have to think about.

Boggle.

The Obama administration has released a brief regarding a suit filed by a married male California couple against the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Neat! Unfortunately, the brief, in a variety of ways, tells us to STFU and marry a straight person if we want our slice of the government's precious, limited pie.

I don't often link to Aravosis, but the man is a lawyer, and he parses the brief at length and better than I could. I will just add my two log-cabin-backed pennies to the discussion, regarding this:

Loving v. Virginia is not to the contrary. There the Supreme Court rejected a contention that the assertedly "equal application" of a statute prohibiting interracial marriage immunized the statute from strict scrutiny. 388 U.S. 1, 8, 87 S.Ct. 1817, 18 L.Ed.2d 1010 (1967). The Court had little difficulty concluding that the statute, which applied only to "interracial marriages involving white persons," was "designed to maintain White Supremacy" and therefore unconstitutional. Id. at 11. No comparable purpose is present here, however, for DOMA does not seek in any way to advance the "supremacy" of men over women, or of women over men. Thus DOMA cannot be "traced to a . . . purpose" to discriminate against either men or women.

Miss the point, much? No, the purpose of DOMA is clearly not to discriminate against either men or women. That's because the purpose of DOMA, and even more so the purpose of the defense offered by the administration, is to discriminate against both men and women who happen to be gay. And when Obama's lawyers start trotting out the legalese equivalent of "you have the same right as everyone else to marry someone of the opposite sex," well, I start putting my fist through the nearest wall.

Patience, my ass. Putting off action is one thing. Actively working against a cause you pledge your support to whilst campaigning for dollars and votes is entirely another.

Maybe one of my lawyer friends can talk me down. You guys enjoy a challenge, no?

Sick Day Slacking

Discovery #1: insightful blogging is difficult when a sinus infection has displaced the blogger's brain to some space slightly outside and behind her left ear.

Discovery #2: and also when said displacement renders typing skills to somewhere below the first-grade level. My backspace key may melt at this rate.

Discovery #3: to say nothing of what happens to basic cognitive functions. Should I have applauded Darth's marginal marriage statement yesterday? I have no idea. Since in the same speech he let on that maybe he'd been knowingly lying through his ventilator about a Saddam-9/11 link for eight years solid.

Anyway. I can't think and can barely type, so let's try embedding some videos. Do we go with poignant first, or coffee-spewing? I think coffee-spewing. Forthwith, in honor of New Hampshire giving it another go this morning, mawwiage (nicked from Joe.My.God.):

Next, in the more poignant category, is this one from the Media That Matters Film Festival, promoted over at the Blend:

As I commented there, I would have done this one slightly differently, with the young man being rejected half the time and totaling up the yes and no responses until he comes to the very last house in the country, taking a deep breath, ringing the doorbell, and asking his question... and then the screen fades to "How would you feel..." before we learn which way 50% +1 comes down in his case. Be that as it may, it was still a nicely done piece that will probably preach to no one outside the choir unless people post it in comment threads at redstate.

My head, my head.