Since California legalized same-sex marriage, as LizardOC just mentioned in her guest post, the state has been issuing gender-neutral marriage licenses reading "Party A" and "Party B." Seems a perfectly reasonable way to accommodate both couples of opposite sexes and couples of the same sex (and, frankly, Iain and I can't be the only straight couple who thinks "bride" and "groom" are such loaded terms that they feel antiquated and vaguely oppressive). Anyway…
Naturally it doesn't matter how perfectly reasonable this minor adjustment to the California marriage license is—because if straight people only have their precious shiny heterosexuality honored on their engagement announcements, on their wedding invitations, at their wedding, at their reception, and everywhere else for the rest of their lives but not on their marriage license, then it's totally discriminatory and someone's gotta cause a stink."We are traditionalists – we just want to be called bride and groom," said [Rachel Bird], 25, who works part time for her father's church. "Those words have been used for generations and now they just changed them."
Yeah, well, they haven't been. There's no "right to have your heterosexuality publicly recognized."
…"We just feel that our rights have been violated," she said.
Bird and her "groom" Gideon Codding feel like their rights have been violated because they can't distinguish between "rights" and "privilege." Their right to get married is wholly intact; their privilege of being conferred that right while it is denied to others based on sexual orientation is gone. What "feels" like a loss of "rights" is actually just a desperapte insecurity about their super-special relationship losing the shimmering, golden glow that only denying marriage equality to same-sex couples conveys upon their gloriously gilded union.
Marriage really is just a contract after all. Boo hoo.
And now that it's a contract into which all couples can enter, Bird and Codding want no part of it.Bird and Codding have refused to complete the new forms, a stand that has already cost them. Because their marriage is not registered with the state, Bird cannot sign up for Codding's medical benefits or legally take his name. They are now exploring their options, she said.
Yeah, this is the time to stand up and be heard. Not when we started dropping bombs on a country that hadn't attacked us or planned to, not when we started torturing people, not when the economic policies of this administration started leaving millions of people with food insecurity, not when the government let an entire American city drown—but when California started calling the two people entering into a marriage contract "Party A" and "Party B." ¡Viva la Revolución!
Bird's father, Doug Bird, pastor of Roseville's Abundant Life Fellowship, said he is urging couples not to sign the new marriage forms, and that he is getting some support from congregants and colleagues at local churches.
"I would encourage you to refuse to sign marriage licenses with 'Party A' and 'Party B,' " he wrote in a letter that he sent to them. "If ever there was a time for the people of the United States to stand up and let their voices be heard – this is that time."
In a just world, this would put paid the lie that it's gays who are after the "special rights."
[H/T to Shaker ScottRS, who got it from PZ.]
We Have a Right to Feel Special!
Teaspoons for California
by Shaker LizardOC
California's Supreme Court, as Shakers probably know, gave a tremendous boost to the cause of LGBT equality with its May ruling legalizing same-sex marriage. Predictably, the backlash came swiftly, in the form of 1.2 million signatures that guaranteed Proposition 8—which, if passed, would add the words "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California" to the state's constitution—a place on the November ballot.
Below are a few resources for anyone who wants to be more involved with, or informed about, the fight against Proposition 8. There is, of course, plenty of room to debate the desirability of the state-by-state approach to marriage equality, and there are thousands of causes that need our time and our funds; the purpose of this post is not to prioritize this issue above any other. But it's crucial that we not allow this vile bit of bigotry to become law—and there's good reason to believe that a resounding defeat of this proposition would have positive repercussions nationwide.
At this moment, the polls look cautiously promising for the pro-equality forces, but the opposition is amassing funds and planning to ratchet up its barrage of anti-gay scaremongering in the weeks ahead. If you're a local, follow the links below, and carve out a few hours to staff a phone bank, write a Letter to the Editor, or attend a rally or event. If you're not, pass these resources to anyone you know who lives here, and consider sending a donation to one of the organizations working around the clock to ensure that Californians don't enshrine inequality in their constitution.
Selected organizations working to defeat Proposition 8:
• No on Prop. 8 is a coalition of dozens of diverse pro-equality organizations. Their downloadable FAQ from the Los Angeles Times is a particularly useful guide to the legalities and logistics of same-sex marriage and of the proposed amendment.
• Equality California is one of the state's largest organizations dedicated to defeating the amendment, and one of the most complete sources of information about legislation—beyond Prop 8—that affects LGBT people.
• Let California Ring has produced dozens of videos, print ads, and other materials designed to speak to a broad audience and help start conversations about marriage equality. Many of their resources are available in Spanish, and they've created print ads in English, Spanish, Korean, Mandarin, and Cantonese.
• California Faith for Equality works with churches, synagogues, and other places of worship to support and encourage LGBT-friendly clergy and congregations. On their website, you'll find two new videos featuring religious leaders speaking about how their faith has informed their positions against Proposition 8.
Quick links:
• Buy "No on Prop. 8" signs, buttons, and other merchandise.
• Download a "No on Prop. 8: Equality for All" sign, sticker, or website widget.
• Download a "Civil Marriage is a Civil Right" sign (courtesy of the Unitarians).
If you're running low on syrup of Ipecac, watch this revolting video from our opposition and get a taste of what we're up against.
Thanks for your support, in whatever shape it takes.
Question of the Day
In light of today, I thought this one would be appropriate: What's the best birthday present you've gotten?
Now, having asked it, I'm going to chicken out, seeing as how a lot of people who read this blog have also given me birthday presents and I don't want to offend them. But a couple of really meaningful ones come to mind, including my first typewriter when I was 12. But one that really stands out was my 40th birthday. I was living in northern Michigan and my father and I went dry-fly fishing on the Au Sauble River near Grayling. We started out early in the morning of a glorious late-summer day and drifted on the current as my father taught me the fine art of dry-fly casting. I must admit that I was a lousy student, and all we caught that day was several tree branches and my hat. But just as we rounded the final bend before getting off the river I caught a small trout. Since it was a catch-and-release trip, it was a win for both me and the trout. But what made it the most meaningful was spending time with my dad doing something that he loved and wanted to share with me, and that's a gift that I cherish.
Important Announcement
When writing, make sure to save often, just in case a small kitten-type person accidentally steps on the power switch of your surge protector. Twice.
"Who me? No, no—I've, uh, been in this box all day."
Quote of the Day
"America's working families no longer recognize you, nor does your own."—John McCain's cousin Adam Vaulx Boles, lamenting the disappearance of a man he once respected.
I can relate.
[Via.]
NOW Endorses Obama-Biden
"NOW supported Sen. Hillary Clinton in the primary, and now we join with her in saying 'NO'—No Way, No How, No McCain! And we proudly stand arm-in-arm with her in putting our hopes and our dreams, our hard work and our hard-earned money, behind the next President of the United States—Barack Obama, and his running mate, longtime friend and ally of women, Sen. Joe Biden."—Kim Gandy, President of the National Organization for Women and Chair of NOWPAC, endorsing the Obama-Biden ticket on behalf of NOW. Though NOW rarely endorses in general election, "the addition of Sarah Palin gave us a new sense of urgency," according to Gandy.
I'm not thrilled. Any male running mate McCain could have selected would have condoned anti-choice and anti-woman policies as deeply mired in retrofuckery as Palin's are; that NOW is only explicitly rejecting the ticket because of Palin whiffs strongly of a double standard.
Mind you, I'm keenly aware it was the McCain campaign who's created the double standard, shielding his anti-choice and anti-woman policies behind a woman. And Gandy does try to make that point: "She is being portrayed as a supporter of women's rights ... as a feminist when in fact her positions on so many of the issues are really anathema to ours." But I don't like the implicit suggestion, then, that women aren't smart enough to figure out that Palin's an imposter without NOW's help. Some aren't—but those women are willfully obtuse, and don't give a fuck about NOW.
So I'm left feeling like NOW's done something exceptional for the express purpose of advocating against a female candidate, when they wouldn't have done so for a male candidate with the exact same positions. Giving up their neutrality effectively signals they're holding Palin to a different standard—and even though it can be argued the McCain campaign provoked it, it's a complete betrayal of what NOW ought to be about.
I would have preferred to see NOW stay neutral.
Wev.
Meanwhile…
From a Times columnist who actually knows his asshole from a hole in the ground, which is more than I can say for some of his colleagues, here's some more McCainery that will terrify you:
A study coming out Tuesday from scholars at Columbia, Harvard, Purdue and Michigan projects that 20 million Americans who have employment-based health insurance would lose it under the McCain plan.Brought to you by a person who has had his healthcare paid for by the United States government his entire life—first as the son of a Navy man, then as a Navy man himself, then as a veteran, then as a US Representative, then as a US Senator. And now, even if he loses the election and retires, he is qualified to be covered by Medicare because he turned 65 in 2001.
…According to the study: "The McCain plan will force millions of Americans into the weakest segment of the private insurance system — the nongroup market — where cost-sharing is high, covered services are limited and people will lose access to benefits they have now."
The net effect of the plan, the study said, "almost certainly will be to increase family costs for medical care."
…The whole idea of the McCain plan is to get families out of employer-paid health coverage and into the health insurance marketplace, where naked competition is supposed to take care of all ills. (We're seeing in the Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch fiascos just how well the unfettered marketplace has been working.)
Taxing employer-paid health benefits is the first step in this transition, the equivalent of injecting poison into the system. It's the beginning of the end.
Must be nice.
Grumble
Saying David Brooks is the worst is like showing people pictures you took of the Eiffel Tower on your Parisian holiday—it's a little trite and obvious, and more talented people than you have done the thing better justice already.
And even knowing that, I cannot resist: David Brooks is the worst.
Only someone who is Totally The Worst would write the line:
The feminists declare that [Sarah Palin]'s not a real woman because she doesn't hew to their rigid categories.—and try to pass it off as anything other than a joke, a ridiculous caricature of authentic feminism drawn for giggles.
I would like David Brooks to produce five, just five, examples of prominent feminists arguing that Sarak Palin is "not a real woman." After all, if "the feminists" have "declared" it, all ninety gajillion of us, then finding five examples from actual feminists shouldn't be a problem at all.
I would also like the New York Times to give the same amount of space to a living, breathing feminist for one year as they give to Brooks and his pal MoDo. If those two jackasses are going to have free rein to invoke strawfeminists whenever the fuck they want, giving space to a flesh feminist is the bloody least the Times can do.
More Troopergate and Palin's Apathy to Sex Crimes
Yesterday, I noted the bitter irony that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin had punished Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan by firing him and shelving the "ambitious, multi-million-dollar initiative to seriously tackle sex crimes in the state" of which he was the chief proponent and champion because he refused to re-open an investigation of a man alleged to be a threat to her own sister.
It almost seems impossible that someone could be so vindictive that they would sacrifice thousands of women to sexual assault out of spite, though that's certainly what appears to have happened.
But the McCain campaign now says nope—it wasn't because Palin was being vengefully malicious; it's because she just doesn't give a fuck about victims of sex crimes.The last straw, the McCain campaign said, was in July, when Monegan planned to travel to Washington to seek federal money for a plan to assign troopers, judges and prosecutors who could exclusively handle sexual assault cases — one of the state's most intractable crime problems.
Did you get that? Governor Sarah Palin was so resolutely apathetic to dealing with a sex crime problem even she agreed was epidemic that her Public Safety Commissioner made a trip to Washington on his own to try to secure funds to combat it. And instead of praising his initiative or thanking him for his service, she shitcanned him—because she didn't want that money, and because it might have damaged her relationship with the corrupt Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, whom Palin had previously publicly criticized because she's all mavericky and shit. So why on earth would her relationship with Ted Stevens be more important than securing funds to combat a sex crime epidemic?
In a July 7 e-mail, John Katz, the governor's special counsel, noted two problems with the trip: The governor hadn't agreed the money should be sought, and the request was "out of sequence with our other appropriations requests and could put a strain on the evolving relationship between the Governor and Sen. (Ted) Stevens."
Four days later, Monegan was fired. He said he had kept others in the administration fully apprised of his plans to go to Washington.
That stinks like 7,000 acres of cow shit.
And even if it were true, it still means that Palin is shockingly indifferent to rape and domestic violence in her own state and contemptuous of the people who don't share her indifference—and, weirdly, the McCain campaign appears to believe that's somehow more palatable than Palin having simply fired Monegan for insubordination because she wasn't getting what she wanted from a public servant on her personal family matter.
That's quite an amazing calculation.
Of course, given how little attention has been paid to her policy of making rape victims pay for their own rape kits, it might be a calculation that pays off in the end.
[H/T to Shaker Lena.]
Where in the World is Bridget McCain?
Shaker Redstar emails:
I don't know if you've seen the most recent cover of People. It's the McCain family. Thing is, in at least my CVS here in Boston, the family is situated such that Bridget is the only one who is not visible above the magazine holder that says "People" on it on which the mag sits. That is, there's a plastic barricade that coincidentally covers here while the rest of the white family beams out at me while I wait to pay for my allergy meds.If it's a coincidence—and it could be one only insomuch as Bridget was the specific family member to be masked by the proprietary "People" display rack, which has been in use for ages and will therefore certainly be considered during cover composition—it's quite an unfortunate one.
I don't know how People is displayed elsewhere, and I have never really noticed the racks it sits in before (and I often buy the mag), but after the whole Jolie/Pitt twin debut, and past conversation on the seeming lack of coverage of Bridget, I immediately noticed today that she was the only one initially missing from the cover, until I was able to get close enough to pick it up and look it.
To be quite clear, I don't think the McCains have anything to do with this editorial decision—nor with, as Redstar mentions, the relative lack of coverage of Bridget on the campaign trail this election. In this Scholastic article, she says she's glad to have the opportunity to stay home this time: "Bridget said she enjoys supporting her Dad, but is thankful she gets to stay in Phoenix going to high school with her friends." That doesn't strike me as particularly outrageous; I would have felt the same as a teenager. And if the McCains are keeping her out of the spotlight because, last time around, she was was at the centre of a despicable Karl Rove-orchestrated push polling operation about McCain's "illegitimate black child," I'm inclined to believe their concern is less about his career than protecting their daughter from more such ugliness.
This one lays squarely in People's lap. There's no doubt they've got a color problem—and they need to do something about it tout de suite. It doesn't matter whether they intended to diminish Bridget on their cover, or merely failed to consider what message that would send. Either way, it's a mess. Get it together, People.
I Blog, Therefore I Am
In which a hairy-legged, saggy-titted, fat-arsed feminist responds to a writer who thinks she doesn't exist, and another hairy-legged, saggy-titted, fat-arsed feminist directs you to the scene.
Happy Birthday, Mustang Bobby!
Happy Birthday to youuuuuuuuu!
Happy Birthday to youuuuuuuuu!
You're as gay as a pink pair of shoe-oooooos!
And I love you as much as pink shoes, too!
Happy Birthday, doll!
*mwah*
Question of the Day
Nicked from Chris: What's your favorite short story?
Part of the reason I liked his question is because I agree with his answer: Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" is my favorite, too. (If you haven't read it, it's here.) There are a lot of others I really enjoy, but my close second honor goes to Kafka's "In the Penal Colony." (That one, you can find here.)
Palin: Unserious About Sex Crimes and Domestic Violence
So, Alaska has a pretty serious sexual assault and domestic violence program.
How serious? "Alaska leads the nation in reported forcible rapes per capita, according to the FBI, with a rate two and a half times the national average—a ranking it has held for many years."
How serious? "The rate of Alaskan women being killed by a partner is 1.5 times the national average. … Alaska has 6 times the national average of reported child sexual assault."
How serious? "74.7% [of Alaskans] have experienced or know someone who has experienced domestic violence or sexual assault."
How serious? So serious that the state has had to pass a specific law to require that "all assaults involving strangulation or suffocation will be prosecuted as felonies" because many cases were being tried as misdemeanors. Ya know, because strangulation is, like, so run of the mill shit.
Blink.
So why is it, do you think, that "Despite the governor's pro-family image, public safety experts and advocates for women and children struggled when asked to explain how Palin's leadership has helped address the crisis" and why is it that "an ambitious, multi-million-dollar initiative to seriously tackle sex crimes in the state" was put on hold in July by Palin's office?
It all leads back to Troopergate. Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan was the chief proponent and champion of the initiative—and, within days of the project being shelved, he was fired after declining to re-open an old investigation against State Trooper Mike Wooten, who was at the time immersed in a bitter divorce and custody battle with Palin's sister Molly McCann.
Now let's see if we can wrap our heads around this expansive irony: Palin punished Monegan by firing him and tanking his anti-sex crime and violence initiative because he refused to re-open an investigation of a man alleged to be a threat to her own sister.
Wow.
The status of the plan, which would have "fast-tracked" sex crime cases via a dedicated group that included specially-trained investigators, judges and prosecutors, is unknown. "I'd ask the governor," said one official with knowledge of the plan. Numerous inquiries to Palin's campaign spokeswoman went unreturned.Of course they did.
Hockey Moms for Truth
Remember the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" ads from the 2004 campaign? Well, okay, it's time to put the skates on the ice. Some folks put together this little lampoon thereof, so this is for all the real hockey moms out there... or the older brothers who had to drag their ass out of bed at 6:00 a.m. on cold winter Saturday mornings to take his little brother to hockey practice in a scary part of town...
Unleash the Cuteness!
[My apologies to those who aren't following the Sophie Saga and/or don't give a fuck about cats.]
Ms. Sophie Moon, who has been segregated for several weeks from big sisters Matilda and Olivia Twist, until she was old enough to be tested for feline leukemia and FIV, had a trip to the vet on Saturday and she was all clear—so she was out of solitary confinement and into the general population. Which meant it was time for Mad Cats: Beyond Thunderdome.
Hisssssssssssss!!!!!!!!!11!!eleventy-one!!!!!
Livsy isn't actually half-Joker, half-cobra, although you wouldn't know it from that picture.
…and Matilda was so pissed, that her eyes turned into lasers:
No, seriously. Frickin' lasers:
(I couldn't Photoshop something that cool if I tried!)
Camaraderie was facilitated by some well-played tuna:
(Even David and Goliath gots to eat, yo.)
Naturally, Tilsy had to have her own dish, outside the kitchen:
Mmm, tuna:
Tilsy could not be bought:
"I still hate you."
There was much stalking going on, although it was not always clear…
…who was stalking whom.
And there were occasional breaks from Thunderdome:
Playing video games with Daddy and Uncle Space Cowboy.
Napping with Mum.
This afternoon, Livsy and Sophs were totally playing with each other, sans hissing. Sophs would run after and jump on Livsy, and Livsy would turn and thump Sophs with her paw and knock her over. Then she'd turn and walk away, as if disgusted with the whole thing, prompting Sophs to run after her and get herself pummeled again.
And Tilsy just sat nearby, watching the whole scene and hissing if either one of them got near her, lol.
Generally, everyone seems pretty satisfied at this point that there's still food, water, and plenty of attention to go around.
"All this fuss for moi?"
