Tag: gay marriage

Sausage making done right – Gay marriage will be legal in NYS

“Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made.” – apparently misattributed to Otto von Bismarck. But every once in a while, you fry some sausage in the pan and it tastes great.

I was home watching YNN, the Time Warner cable news station, during an extended session of Capital Tonight Friday evening, when Steve Saland, a Republican state senator from the Mid-Hudson, started speaking about an amendment to the marriage equality bill. There’s an overlay on the screen indicating that Saland had not yet indicated which way he would vote on the bill.

But minutes later, it was obvious that he would be the 32nd vote necessary for the passage of the legislation. It was, among other things, a great television moment.

And after he spoke, I set the DVR and went to bed, satisfied that there would be a rainbow over New York; the state legislature would pass marriage equality, and the governor would sure sign it.

Then I woke up very early in the morning, and it was so. Yay.
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Arthur’s observation.

 

Roger Answers Your Questions, Eclipse and Uthaclena

My long-standing rejection of polygamy has largely based on the sense that it is much more likely to have aspects of exploitation that is even greater than a relationship between two people.

Eclipse, who I have visited through ABC Wednesday, asks:
Regarding the “music playing in the head” I’ve just thought….Have you ever try to write poetry?
Would you?

Before I answer that question, I’ll answer a question you didn’t ask.

When I was roughly 15 to about 23, I had made some effort to try to write songs. I should rephrase; I wasn’t TRYING so much as tunes and lyrics came to me. I kept them in a notebook, which, unfortunately, I’ve since lost.

But as I think back on them, most of them weren’t very good. Oh, a couple of them might have potential in the right setting. And one, in particular, isn’t bad at all but expresses values I no longer have: David Lee Roth should have recorded it. But most of them, I recognize, are cribbed in the way George Harrison unintentionally purloined He’s So Fine for My Sweet Lord. Because I literally grew up with music, I feel I can clear-mindedly evaluate them.

I had a girlfriend in the late 1970s who was a published poet. I would attend some of the poetry workshops she helped organize. Naturally, I decided to try to write some poems myself. But I just never got a feel for it, what was good, what was schlock, what was “honest”. When I go to the poetry sites, such as yours, I can only comment on what resonates with me. But writing poetry again would be like blogging in Ukrainian; it’s too foreign. So commenting on poetry tends to fall into the “I don’t know if it’s good, but I know when it resonates” philosophy. And even when it does, I don’t always have the language to comment. “Good” or “nice” seems lackluster.
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Uthaclena, who I’ve only known for 39 3/4 years, so I can say, “Dude, it’s been seven months since you blogged; WRITE something!”, poses this:
Anything? Okay, how about a sociopolitical-philosophical question. You’ve supported marriage equality (“Gay Marriage”), how do you feel about alternative marital arrangements like polygamy, polyandry, or group marriages? Should they be considered for legal legitimacy? The former, of course, was tried by the Mormons and is by no means unusual or “untraditional” in many international cultures. Just curious.

My long-standing rejection of polygamy has largely based on the sense that it is much more likely to have aspects of exploitation that are even greater than in a relationship between two people. The few modern examples in this country seem to bear that out. I assume, but frankly don’t know, that it’s true re polyandry as well.

This means, by logical extension, that I should favor group marriage since it would seem to be more equitable. That I don’t probably has something to do with my basic conventionality. Or maybe it’s because I think it’s just too messy societally when dealing with children, property, and the like. Guess I’m just an old-fashioned guy.
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I’m still taking your questions here, so have at it.

Gay rights QUESTION

Winning the Future: President Obama and LGBT Americans

It’s Gay Pride Month. Here is the schedule of events in Albany [PDF]. Also, check out Libby Post’s blog. And I’ve been encouraged by several things:

ITEM: Home Depot to American Family Association: take a hike, we support gay causes. It wasn’t that long ago that corporate America would cower under threat of a boycott by anti-gay forces.

ITEM: A prominent billboard urging a local politician to vote for same-sex marriage has a restaurant source: Bombers Burrito Bar. Bombers owner Matt Baumgartner owns Bombers in Albany and Schenectady, Wolff’s Biergarten in Albany, and a forthcoming Albany pub called The Olde English. He’s trying to sway state senator Roy McDonald, who voted no in 2009, but is perceived to be persuadable.

ITEM: Kicking off Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month, the Office of Public Engagement has launched a new webpage, Winning the Future: President Obama and LGBT Americans. People complain, not entirely without merit, that the Obama administration has been cautious about gay rights. But you would not see this type of initiative from President McCain or either President Bush.

So I’m feeling encouraged that, in the cliched language of the pollsters, the country is “moving in the right direction” on gay rights. What says you?

W is for Weddings

It appears that heterosexual marriage is doing a bang-up job of imperiling heterosexual marriage.


In November 2010, Pew Research reported that about half of all adults in the U.S. are married, down from 72 percent in 1960, while four in 10 people consider marriage obsolete. The Census Bureau added that American men and women are waiting longer before the wedding.

But from the Time magazine story concerning that Pew poll: “Americans still venerate marriage enough to want to try it. About 70% of us have been married at least once, according to the 2010 Census. The Pew poll found that although 44% of Americans under 30 believe marriage is heading for extinction, only 5% of those in that age group do not want to try to seek their own wedded bliss.

Sociologists note that Americans have a rate of marriage — and of remarriage — among the highest in the Western world.

The divorce rate, while down from its peak in the l970s, is higher in America than in most other countries. (And what IS the real divorce rate in the US?)

So I am filled with a cross between bemusement and incredulity at the notion, suggested by some, that the prospect of legalized gay marriages, or even civil unions, poses some sort of threat to heterosexual wedlock. It appears that heterosexual marriage is doing a bang-up job of imperiling heterosexual marriage.

(Arthur links here and here regarding his home state of Illinois’ new civil union law.)

Not incidentally, I got a form letter from my annuity company quite recently, adding the following proviso to my certificate:
“Pursuant to Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”), same-sex marriages currently are not recognized for purposes of federal law. Therefore, the favorable income-deferral options afforded by federal tax law to an opposite-sex spouse under Internal Revenue Code sections 72(s) and 401(a)(9) are currently NOT available to a same-sex spouse.”

So even in those states allowing same-sex marriages, those couples won’t be fully equal until DOMA is repealed.

Oh, BTW, you may be wondering whose wedding this is. It’s the nuptials for the Pakistani couple I mentioned a couple of months ago, which took place on Labor Day weekend. My daughter was in the wedding, but I pulled her photos solely for the purpose of posting them on December 26; I always write about Lydia on the 26th of the month.

ABC Wednesday – Round 7

Marriage QUESTIONS

Please someone explain to me, how does gay marriage supposedly threaten heterosexual marriage?

I went to a wedding last weekend, a lovely affair. But a couple weeks earlier, there was a party, and at least one of the guests used that “ball and chain” language that I THOUGHT went out of fashion last century.

It seems to me that marriage IS under attack, usually by people who are in it. The standard, now a cliched statement from straight people in “support” of gay marriage is something like: “Why shouldn’t they have a chance to be as miserable as we are?” Meh.

I’m curious about how this Prop 8 case will work out. If it is not appealed, then gay marriage would be permissible in California. If it IS appealed, and Prop 8 is ruled unconstitutional, then gay marriage would likely be permissible in all of the Ninth Circuit. And if the case goes to the Supreme Court, which most people think is inevitable -though I’m not sure, and Prop 8 loses, gay marriage could be legal across the country. BTW, you can read the transcript of Perry vs. Schwarzenegger HERE.

My thought about the case NOT going to SCOTUS is that if the Prop 8 supporters thought they were going to fail there, perhaps they would cut their losses earlier. Also, there’s the matter of standing; as Arthur and Jason noted in their 2Political podcast recently, only certain parties are allowed to appeal. As the named defendant, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger could appeal, but based on his support for gay marriage, that’s unlikely to happen.

In the “it would upset me if it weren’t so predictable” department, Human Rights Campaign reports that at one of their rallies on their anti-equality summer tour, the president of the far-right National Organization for Marriage (NOM) had the gall to compare their bigoted cause to that of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “What if Martin Luther King, Jr. would have listened to those who tried to silence him and tell him that his faith has no place in the public square?” he asked. He then told the crowd they were “part of a new civil rights group.”

Conversely, here’s a tongue-in-cheek literal reading of Leviticus 20:13 making gay sex Biblically OK.

So, my questions:
1) Is the culture hostile to marriage? This could be anything you have in mind, from inflexibility in the workplace to tax laws.
2) Would it be better if marriage were separated as a legal function of the church, allowing churches the ability to give their religious blessing, similar to what is being espoused here? I appreciate the point, but, as a matter of strategy, I’m very much against it. Removal of the state function of marriage – and is IS a state function, as in “By the powers invested in me by the state of New York” – runs so contrary to centuries of embedded precedent that it will inevitably be perceived as an attack on the church, even by many who are supportive of gay marriage.
3) Please someone explain to me, how does gay marriage supposedly threaten heterosexual marriage? Seriously. Not how you feel, but what the argument is. Is it that…no, I really don’t know.
4) Will the Perry case make it to the Supreme Court? If so, how will the court rule? I’ve convinced that they will rule to overturn Prop 8.

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