Massachusetts Supreme Court Delays Ruling

Read all about it: http://www.planetout.com/pno/news/article.html?2003/07/16/3.

Synopsis

Some gay couples in Massachusetts sued, demanding the right to get married. The court is about to decide whether or not to shoot them down, do a Vermont-style wimp-out, or be as cool as Canada. The court was expected to issue a ruling today, something which caused me to obsessively hit reload on Google news, but they did not and nobody knows when they will. Probably during this summer. Might be two days from now. Might be two months from now.

Analysis

This is exciting because states have to recognize marriages performed in other states. It also strengthens the legal position of those of us who are eloping to Canada. Clinton, the big jerk, signed something called the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which stated that the federal government would not recognize same sex marriages (SSM) performed here or abroad and that states need not recognize SSMs done in other states. DOMA doesn’t hold legal water. At least it shouldn’t. Who can predict the rulings of the supreme court of the US? So right-wing assholes (RWA) are running scared and want to ammend the constitution to outlaw SSMs. Ammend the constituion. It’s not true that the constitution has never been amended to take away rights. It has been, during that wonderful and highly successful (note: irony) social experiment called prohibition. And it was repealed. But the constitution has never been ammended to take away rights from a special class of peple before. This is equivalent to responding to Brown vs. the Borad of Education or Loving vs. Virginia by ammending the constitution to re-legalize discrimination.

Going Negative

Dean, highly popular democrat, is opossed to gay marriage. Why? I dunno. Maybe gay people are icky. Maybe he doesn’t want his daughter marrying one. Maybe we just don’t deserve equal rights. Is he in favor of the proposed amendment? Who knows. His stated position certainly agrees with it. Maybe, like Clinton, intern-banging weasel, he would sign on to placate RWAs.

Stumping

Kucinich, however, supports gay marriage rights. He came in number two in MoveOn.org’s primary poll, which had more participation than is expected in the real primaies of several states. Kucinich could win. He should win. “Anybody but Bush” is possibly a nice slogan, but . . . no, it’s a stupid slogan. There’s nothing good about that idea. It means that it would be a good idea to vote for anyone one micron to the left of Bush. Bloated plutocrats are laughing all the way to the bank at the idea. If you have ideals, you should vote those ideals. If you beleive in equal rights, then you should vote for equal rights. If you think that it’s nice that Christi and I are getting married, then you should not vote for someone who wants to take away our marriage liscence and stomp on it. You should vote for Kucinich.

I would vote for Hillary Clinton

I know. Just yesterday I said that I wouldn’t vote for somebody who thought that s/he should have more rights than me. And I would only vote for a progressive. But those Clintons! They’re charismatic! They make you feel all warm and fuzzy when they sign the Defense of Marriage Act and Welfare Reform and NAFTA and the WTO and when they open large pristine tracts of wilderness for oil exploration and they bomb third world countries based on shaky (and ultimately false) “intelligence” reports. Why is it that the left still loves Bill ater he did all those bad things? Why do we love Hillary? Why would I vote for her? It doesn’t make any sense. Yet, for some reason, I would. So would a lot of people. If the election were held tomorrow and she was running against Bush, surveys show that she would win. Maybe she could have Kucinich as her running mate.

No More Politics

A band that I like, The Disposable Heros of Hiphoprisy, have a song where the refrain is a guy singing, “All I ever think about is music and politics.” This song often gets stuck in my head.

My life

In personal news, um, not much has happened. I had band practice today from 1:00 to 6:30. A couple of songs got cut from our Vegas set list cuz I can’t play them. One of them I spent a couple of hours practicing last night. Bleah. It may have the hardest bassline out of all the songs. I still feel sniffly. I read a book about the history of non-synthetic dyes and paints. All those crayola colors make sense now. Sienna was the name of a color manufactured in Sienna, Italy. Burnt Sienna is that same color after heating. Midnight blue used to be called Prussian blue and was invented by some guy in Prussia. Err, you can see that all of the data absorbed into my thick skull and now I can give detailed histories. Or not. It’s what comes of reading while sick.
There used to be codes for “first mourning” and “second mourning.” All this is myserious to me. People are/were suppossed to refrain from certain activities and wearing certain colors while mourning. This knowledge, tucked among tales about how Britian fought a war to get Belize as a colony so they could use logwood to dye fabrics black, has made me feel defensive. One is probably not suppossed to get married less than year after one’s mother passes on. Vince told me that people sepnd up to 75% of their time trying to justify decisions that they’ve already made. So here is my justification: I’ve wanted to marry Christi for many years. In 1998, we went to Hawaii right before the November election so we could get married there in case the Hawaiian supreme court overturned gay marriage bans. There was an amendment on the ballot that would undo this court action. So it could have been the case that the supreme court would have legalized gay marriage and then, only a few days later, Hawaiians would have amended their constitioun to make it illegal again. But the people who got married in between would be married. So we went to Hawaii and sat on the beach and got a newspaper every day. The supreme court backed down and the amendment passed and the window of opportunity never opened. But if it had, we would already be married now.
Well, now, five years later, we can get married. We will get married. (Although the location might change if Massachusetts’ supreme court rules next tuesday to legalize same sex marriage there. We would be in a better legal position if we get married in a US state.) We’ve waited a long time.
I used to worry, five years ago, what to say to my grandmother. You’re supossed to tell your grandma (obviously) if you get married, but I thought she might not understand. But she died. And my cousin died. And my mom died. and the number of family members to be distressed about this marriage things is constantly declining. I’m digressing.
Now might not be the time to get married and throw a big party. It’s past the time I would have picked. Look, I’m about to leave. There’s a lot of folks I might not see for a long while. It seems like the right thing to do. But I dunno. Hamlet said something about the funeral meats coldly furnishing the wedding banquet, but that was a dead spouse, not a dead parent. If people weren’t so biggotted and stupid, Christi and I could have gotten married in 1998 and my mom could have come to the wedding.

Black dye, Belize, Puritans

Puritans wanted black fabric and were willing to pay for it. But dying things a true black is difficult. The old method was to dye a piece of fabric in many shades , dipping it mutiple times, until it came out black. The it was discovered that logwood, a new world import, made a wonderful back, but it faded unless dyed over indigo. So indigo was imported from south east Asia and logwood came from Central America. For a long time, logwood was illegal in Britian (so was indigo, but that’s another story), because the Spanish had a monopoly on it. But then Britian fought a war with the Spanish and got control of Belize (formerly British Honduras). As part of the peace settlements, all the privateers were to stop hassling Spanish trade, so pirates were out of a job. They went to work in the mangrove forests of Belize harvesting logwood and were paid for their effort in rum. so the puritans were financing all sorts of debauchery and things they found morally wrong (like slavery – many current Belizeans are decended from slaves imported to harvest logwood) in order to get acessories to show their piety. America really does still have puritanical culture.

Dear Bossy

Dear Bossy,

some lesbians I know are about to get married in Canada. Should I respond by talking about how Canada is about to split apart like the Balkands and fall into war, disarray, terrosrism and famine?
confused in Cupertino

Dear Confused,

No. Grit your teeth and say, “congratualtions.”

Dear Bossy,

On the subject of lesbian marriage: when I talk to lesbians who are planning on getting legally married overseas, should I just avoid the issue by not bringing it up? I don’t want to hurt their feelings by telling them that they’re damned to hell.
Silent in Silicon Valley

Dear Silent,

No, most certainly do not tell them that they will buring in hell. They’ve obviously heard it before and it hasn’t changed their mind. The problem is that if you say nothing at all, they will assume that you think that they’re hellward bound and you’ve hurt their feelings anyway. Grit your teeth and say “Congratulations.”

Dear Bossy

I’ve been invited to the reception of a lesbian wedding. I have nothing against sodomites personally, but I beleive that marriage is only for people who aren’t disgusting perverts. These sodomites are friends of mine. Do I have to go?
Disgusted in Daly City

Dear Disgusted,

Your responsibility ends with saying, “congratulations.” You are free to skip the reception. Say that you will be in the Balkands or Canada and can’t make it. Be sure to respond to the RSVP, though. You can also skip sending a gift (in fact, your friends may not want gifts…). If you are especially close, you might send a card.

Going to the Chapel and We’re Going to get Married!

First things first: the party!

More formal invitations will be forthcoming, but since I need a headcount for food and I don’t still have postal addresses for everyone I want to invite (especially Mills folks, but anyone who has moved in the last few years, I may not have a current address for), I have created an Evite “save the date”: http://www.evite.com/celesteh@casaninja.com/aug2. If you are reading this, you are invited! (unless, like, you’re a complete stranger who has stumbled upon this blog or you once murdered my cat out of spite or something…) Please please RSVP!

Not going to Niagra Falls

Ok, so we’re going to kind of elope, since the USA is not very nice and won’t let us get married, we have to go to Canada. Earlier, we talked of going to Niagra Falls, but same sex couples can’t get married there. Technically, it’s legal, but the churches there are resisting on moral grounds (which is their right under Canadian law) and justices of the peace quit doing marriages there several years ago for some reason. So no honeymoon in Niagra Falls. We’re going to go to Toronto instead, while moving the car and the dog across the country. So the party will actually predate the wedding. We’ll probably get married on August 16th. There is a Vegas-type gay wedding chapel just opened where folks can be walked down the aisle by an Elvis impersonator. Some folks might call this “tacky,” but they aren’t very open-minded. We have no plans actually set, though. Like Vegas, you can go to Toronto and get all the paperword together in an afternoon.
I hope we can get Xena into Canada!. Anyway, the good news is that Toronto was just declared SARS-free! yay! Plans may change again if gay marriage is legalized in some east coast state, where the state supreme court is supossed to issue a ruling in a week or so. Not that we don’t love Canada (what’s not to love?), but we’d be coming from a stronger legal position (i think) if we got married in the US. Since any legal recognition of our marriage will require litigation, we’ll go with the best strategic advantage.

Oh Canada!

did you know that Canada has the only fishery in the world that is not over-fished? Perhaps the most civilized country in the world, Canada also has socialized medicine, unlike the US. In the US, for example, if your college required you to have a checkup and be declared SARS-free by July 15th, you might have to go to an urgent-care center just to get a stupid checkup if you don’t have insurance and pay more than $300. And have no idea how to track down your vaccination records from the first year of your life, even though your mom saved them someplace, cuz she can’t find them for you now and your dad wouldn’t even begin to know things like that. *cough* So I think I might go to the Cupertino walk-in clinic tomorrow, if it still exists, cuz it’s walk-in and because they might have my records someplace. It’s a long drive (and a long-shot on the records), but any walk-in clininc I can think of in the Oakland/Berkeley area is a bit more chaotic. I need the boring burbs. Or something. Maybe I should just stay home from school, as this is too much trouble.

I need to have less stuff

I’ll still have the party of course. Miss Manners says it’s impolite for about-to-be-married folks to mention gifts around a wedding, but note that is not the reason that there is no registry. Dyke Action Machine used to have these kind of anti gay marriage ads that said, “I became boring for a blender!” I was already boring. And, conviently, I already have a blender. I have a fondue pot (despite being vegan). I have a toaster. I have an electric mixer. I’m about to move across the country to a small apartment that will Christi will also be living in 2/3 of the time. Anyone who comes bearing a kitchen appliance will be beaten with it and have to take it and one other used appliance home with them.