Helen Boyd Kramer's journal on gender and stuff
Ah, good news!
The Washington, D.C., City Council voted Tuesday to legalize gay marriage in the nation’s capital, handing supporters a victory after a string of recent defeats in Maine, New York and New Jersey.
Mayor Adrian Fenty has promised to sign the bill, which passed 11-2, and gay couples could begin marrying as early as March. Congress, which has final say over Washington’s laws, could reject it, but Democratic leaders have suggested they are reluctant to do so.
& for those who like to group all Catholics into one huge monolith, I will put money on Senator Savino being Catholic.
(h/t to Megan for this one)
New York is supposed to be hip & progressive, people! I mean, honestly: this is pathetic.
This is a chart that shows the support for same-sex marriage by age group — which, in a nutshell, means we’ve got a waiting game on our hands if nothing else. There’s a nice analysis of the chart where I found it, too.
Other charts about same sex marriage issues can be found here.
The judge who denied the interracial couple their marriage just resigned. That’s something, at least. Now we just need 52% of Maine to resign.
We’re still waiting on Maine and Washington as I get ready for bed. Washington state will expand the rights of domestic partners, but it looks like Maine will reject their same sex marriage law.
I am sick to death of people being able to vote on my marriage, my citizenship, my humanity.
I want the right to bring every heterosexual couple to the steps of the courthouse in Maine and have the rest of us vote on whether they should or can be married.
This is bullshit. It’s embarassing as an American that we are so far behind most of Europe on civil rights. We used to take the lead – with suffrage, with child labor, with all sorts of shit. And now… it’s just embarassing.
I want freedom from their religion, their stupidity, & their prejudice.
I have been on both sides of this issues – having been a legally married heterosexual, and in some ways, still being that – and it makes me fucking sick that people who don’t know me get to decide if I get to be married, and whether my legal marriage will be recognized or not.
I’m just fucking fed up.
I’m tired of spending Election Days worrying about my friends, their spouses, their families, their kids.
When do we get to vote on whether heterosexual marriage is acceptable? When do we get to apply some arbitrary and hypocrital set of moral standards to everyone else’s relationships?
(h/t to queerunity)
We’re with some friends today who are getting married, and with other friends, friends of friends, family of friends. It’s lovely to be around all these people celebrating the love & commitment of two fantastic people.
There are two poems that will be part of their ceremony below the break.
I received a missive from Fair Wisconsin Thursday morning about the lawsuit three board members of Wisconsin Family Action filed to challenge the constitutionality of the recently enacted domestic partnership protections.
Here’s the wording that blew my mind:
Fair Wisconsin is currently reviewing this lawsuit with our legal counsel, and we are prepared to defend domestic partnerships. We are hopeful that the State Supreme Court will recognize that domestic partnerships are not substantially similar to marriage, and will arrive at a fair and just decision that upholds these crucial protections for caring, committed couples.
Please read the boldfaced bit over. Basically, you want marriage protections for same-sex couples, but the bigots in your state are against that & have put an amendment into your state constitution saying that not only can same-sex marriage never be legal, but that no other law in the state can give those same people any benefits/legal standing that *looks anything like* marriage. As a result, same-sex people are hoping the State Supreme Court doesn’t view the partner benefits as anything like marriage — which, ironically for all the same sex couples – they are not. Not even close, actually, but it’s still like something out of Kafka.
Suddenly I don’t feel so welcome in Wisconsin, and while I know, in my heart, that it was ignorance and a lot of legwork by bigots that lead to these state constitutions, it shames me as an American that more people have not stood up & said ENOUGH. (I really do believe that most people want me & Rachel to be able to share each other’s health insurance, and mostly I do. )