Go California
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The California Supreme Court (dominated, incidentally, by Republicans) says discrimination is icky.
A few years ago, I was in the camp that believed that, in a perfect world, there would be a distinction between civil unions and marriages. You get your civil union (with all the legal benefits) from the state, after jumping through the applicable hoops. You get your marriage (with all the religious benefits) from your religious institution of choice, after jumping through the applicable hoops. Some people would have both. Some people would have only one.
I still think that would exist in a perfect world (e.g. one where we actually respect a separation between church and state). It might be workable in a less than completely perfect world (e.g. one in which things like civil unions exist as a meaningful analog to marriage), even if it gave bigots a semantic victory. But in a much less than perfect world (e.g. this one), it’s not a first step; it’s less than half a loaf. I am personally embarrassed that I ever thought it could be otherwise.
The California Supreme Court sums it up nicely:
Furthermore, because of the historic disparagement of gay persons, the retention of a distinction in nomenclature by which the term “marriage” is withheld only from the family relationship of same-sex couples is all the more likely to cause the new parallel institution that has been established for same-sex couples to be considered a mark of second-class citizenship.
Finally, in addition to the potential harm flowing from the lesser stature that is likely to be afforded to the family relationships of same-sex couples by designating them domestic partnerships, there exists a substantial risk that a judicial decision upholding the differential treatment of opposite-sex and same-sex couples would be understood as validating a more general proposition that our state by now has repudiated: that it is permissible, under the law, for society to treat gay individuals and same-sex couples differently from, and less favorably than, heterosexual individuals and opposite-sex couples.
At the polls
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I voted at about 8:20 this morning. There was a staff of three, with no lines, no waiting, and no other voters; I was the twenty-ninth person to vote in my precinct. I was asked for my party affiliation, but unless one of the other poll workers was being surreptitious about it, my assertion wasn’t verified.
There’s a big meeting at work, so I am away from my desk for the bulk of the day, so I cannot keep on top of exit polling and such. Which is probably just as well.
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That was embarrassing
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I watch very little network TV, and essentially no network news. I’ll be watching even less in the future.
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This doesn’t bode well
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A few weeks ago I started reading PolitiFact after hearing a bit on NPR. I like fact-checking—an important journalistic skill quite different from refereeing volleys of unexamined claims from representatives on both sides of an issue—and I love the existence of the Pants-on-Fire rating. I periodically check out Barry Eisler’s blog. Then Christa pointed out Robert Reich’s blog, and I’ve poked around through the archives a bit.
But today I started reading Daily Kos, something I have specifically avoided doing up until now. I sort of feel like the others are gateway blogs, and now I’m getting into the hard stuff.
I really don’t need more online time sinks. Or reasons to get pissed off. Nor do I have any desire to be a political blog junkie. I need to believe I can stop any time I want.
Gaming and politics
There have been a lot of tributes to Gary Gygax. But in some ways I think Charlie Stross’s D&D-based analysis of the presidential race is most telling, because it illustrates the flexibility, ongoing usefulness, and real-world applications of the system.
Wait a second. My vote might count?
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Living in Pennsylvania, I typically consider primaries spectator sports. Not this year, I guess.
Which only sort of surprises me. I didn’t think Clinton would be able to get Texas, but I figured she would still be in the race until she was mathematically eliminated, and therefore campaigning would happen in Pennsylvania.
I have a definite, if non-dramatic, preference for Obama (little things like authorizing the war in Iraq, and missing every vote on telecom immunity, make it impossible for me to muster enthusiasm for Clinton, except as the lesser evil candidate against any Republican). On a cynical practical level I think he’s probably got an edge in the general (I think misogyny is a stronger force than racism; see respective dates for the 15th and 19th amendments, as well as the casting of Star Trek commanders).
But I find the idea of voting for a candidate very alien. Candidates disappoint once in office, if not before. None of them are ever socially liberal enough for my taste. (Note that I hate saying things like “socially liberal,” because it implies that my stance is radical. But the alternative is classifying most candidates as bigots, to a greater or lesser degree—which is accurate, but when you say things like that people tend to dismiss your opinions out of hand.) Thus I am always voting for the lesser evil. I didn’t have any problem with that, until the greater evils became so dramatically and consistently frightening.
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Following a little bit of the money
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FundRace: Find out if your neighbors are evil! And celebrities! Some of them are evil, too!
And find out where the evil people live. Um…yeah. I like transparency, but isn’t it funny how it always looks like this and doesn’t extend to, say, our energy policy?
And no, I’m not sending money to anybody. I did in 2004, and we all know how that went. Call me superstitious.
Also, it warms my heart to know Viggo Mortensen donated money to Kucinich, who is completely unelectable (and even if he weren’t I’d have more than a few reservations). But he’s a Democrat who’s not moderate-to-right, and I therefore approve of his campaign lasting a while. (Extra points to Mark “doesn’t know how to hedge his bets” Ruffalo for sending money to Gravel, too. But, no offense to the talented and not unattractive Mr. Ruffalo, there are reasons why the LotR movies have re-watch value.)
Another tick in the “truth is stranger than fiction” column
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A tale of George W. Bush’s affection for “A Charge to Keep” and how things don’t always mean what one thinks they mean.
Flubbed headline
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CNN gives this article the buzz-worthy headline “Ex-CIA agent: Waterboarding ’saved lives’”…but I think they got it wrong.
“Allah disapproves of terrorists” would be more accurate, since the information didn’t come during the waterboarding session, but later, after a divine revelation.
“Definitive proof of God’s existence” would also be a good headline. Because as we all know, torture always leads to accurate intelligence; so if the prisoner said he chatted with a deity, then that must’ve happened.
Too bad we don’t have the tape to document this revelation. Religious scholars would have a field day.
Turn out
One of our neighbors works the polls for our precinct (we see her reliably there, but never really in the neighborhood, which says a lot about how often we wander around our immediate environs). She also had fewer trick-or-treaters than expected this year, so I don’t feel quite so bad. The downtick of a light year may simply be a statistical blip, rather than a sign of a dying tradition. And I do have to remind myself that we had a fairly good turn out. At our last house we really should have had a lot of kids, but never really did. We lived in a condo unit on a cul-de sac: lots of houses close to one another, no traffic to worry about, easy pickings. Much like my paternal grandparents’, where my sister and I would trick-or-treat every year, because it really does not work in a rural setting.
And speaking of the polls, I checked the unofficial results; county, municipal, and school board numbers aren’t out, but judicial results are. People like retaining judges, even with the pay raise kerfuffle; the suburbs are generally pretty red, but it looks like there’s a bit of blue at the Supreme and Superior Court level. This year I was a responsible citizen and did a bit more research into candidates, largely via Smart Voter. Kudos to candidates who actually had useful information available…although in this case, while there were some telling endorsements, “useful” often meant “coded.” (Use of the phrase “legislating from the bench” = “hates fags” and so forth.) Still, I dug up what I could, and I was once more open-minded regarding the red candidates; if I voted against them, it was for reasons other than guilt by association. I voted straight party line last November, which I normally consider the default position of the uneducated voter, and I don’t like being that person; but I really wanted to press that button last year, even though it meant voting for a Senator I would never otherwise support.