One Moment In History

March 30th was the 10th wedding aniversary of the world's first legally married same-sex couple. They are two Dutch women, married a decade ago and they're still together and still in love.

I rant and rave a lot on this blog and that's because there's a lot of injustice in the world. As far as gay rights go, we have promises to keep and miles to go before we sleep but just for once, let's take a moment to warm our hearts with a love that has endured.

Congratulations, you two. May it be only one of many happy aniversaries.

http://www.news.com.au/world/worlds-first-legally-wed-lesbian-couple-celebrates-their-10th-wedding-anniversary/story-e6frfkyi-1226030866529

Things We Should Have Learned By Now

Earlier this evening, I was having a conversation on one of Scott's posts with a nice chap called Lars who I don't think I've met before. And we ended up talking about the need to put some decent funding into space research so we can get off this damn rock. Not everyone, just the vaguely sane people (I realise that a mentally ill guy calling himself part of the "sane people" is just dripping with irony). And the new society we'll set up. Our new society will have it's problems, as any society does but in contrast to what we have right now, we'll have learned from our mistakes. The mistakes we've made in this society, mistakes that are now so embedded as to be near-impossible to correct, we'll already know to avoid them. Oh, for sure we'll find all new mistakes to make but we'll know to...

Keep carbon emissions below 350 ppm.

Three hundred and fifty parts per million is the scientifically established safe level of carbon emissions. Above that level, the earth gets warmer and we're all in trouble. Below that, the temprature stays the same or, just possibly, even drops. Granted, the new planet we set up house on will have a slightly different safe level but we don't know what that will be yet so I've just used the earth's limit. We'll have to do this on our new planet because this one is already fucked. The very concept of climate change is now so politicised that it's impossible to do anything about it. In the halls of power, they're not talking about how to deal with this problem, they're talking about whether the problem even exists. The cap-and-trade program that Obama's endorsed won't help the problem and might even make it worse and even THAT is too much for too many. And that's something else we'll have learned:

Don't let politicians decide science by vote.

Science is done by scientists. The second politicians start discussing science,. it becomes politicised and that inevitibly means it becomes a matter of party affiliation. The politicians we have now refuse to do a damn thing about the fact that our planet is melting. Abstinence-only sex-ed clearly and provably doesn't work but politicians keep funding it because they think it should work. Stem-cell research, which could save or improve countless lives, doesn't get funded because politicians know shit about the science involved. A basic rule of humanity is that humans are, by and large, fucking dense. We have this really cute idea that one side makes their decisions by emotion and the other side makes theirs by cold, hard reason. It's a cute theory and, like most cute theories, it's bollocks. Research done with people who actually can't feel any emotion (mainly due to brain damage) shows them to be utterly indecisive and that's because humans rarely make decisions by reason. We use reason to rationalise decisions we make by emotion. And one of these days, I'll write one of these essays about how terrifyingly easy it is to manipulate the human mind. Point I'm making is that most people make their decisions by emotion and politicians, who have very well-paid staff who know that, know how to manipulate those emotions. And nowhere is that more apparent than with science. Because most people don't understand science and don't really want to.

Don't let everyone think they're an expert on everything.

I might catch some flack for this one but I studied law and I'm currently studying criminology with psychology. Law is a subject where everyone instantly considers themselves expert. Some case comes before the SCOTUS and everyone thinks they understand the issues at stake. Plain truth is, law uses specialist language and principles and most people don't have the experiance or training to understand them (or why "activist judge" is a nonsense phrase). Medicine is the same way. I'm mentally ill, I have been for some time. As soon as you admit that, especially on the internet, you get a bazillion orders from everyone and their dog that you should take vitamins, take excercise, stop taking your meds. Advice like this gets people killed. Among my many other problems, I have Major Depressive Disorder. Telling someone with MDD to stop taking their meds drops their life expectancy to a matter of weeks. The climate change "debate" is the same way; people without a day's training or experiance in climate science who instantly think they know better than trained professionals who have devoted their lives to studying the subject. Biblical literalists (they like to call themseloves "Bible-believing" like literalism is the only form of belief) who think they know better than paleontologists who've spent their whole lives immersed in study and will still tell you that they don't know everything about the subject. And it's because we've eliminated the concept of expertise. We've gone from "your opinion is valuable" (which it is) to "your opinion counts as much as anyone else's" (which it doesn't). Yes, the experts in a subject can occasionally be flat wrong, no arguments there, but they are a damn sight more likely to be right than muggins off the street who thinks Glenn Beck is a prophet and The Sun is a newspaper. When people who have studied the subject are talking, either ask some sensible questions or shut the fuck up. If Gordon Ramsay is trying to teach you how to cook, shut the fuck up and listen. If John Dicey is trying to teach you law, shut the fuck up and listen. If Kurt Angle is trying to teach you how to wrestle, shut the fuck up and listen. Asking intelligent questions and taking notes is also encouraged. Our society has become terrified of telling people that they don't know what they're fucking talking about. It's said that the more you know about a subject, the more you become aware of how little you know. I'm sure that's true but I think someone needs to add the caveat: The less you know about a subject, the more likely you are to think yourself an expert in it.

People are people are people.

This one really should be a no-brainer but our society still has problems with it: Treating everyone the same, giving everyone the same rights. And yes, I'm talking partly about letting gay people get hitched. Now personally, I don't see why anyone would want to marry but that's besides the point. Usually, at this point, some dickhead starts saying that gay people have the same right to marry someone of the opposite sex as everyone else but that's bullshit, that's playing fucking word games. If that worked, we could shut down every church except mine. You still have the freedom to be a Satanist like any rational person after all. There is a reason the phrase "one size fits all" appears in no known Constitution or Bill of Rights anywhere and that's because you don't have freedom if the state bans everything else. Loving V. Virginia defined marriage as a "fundemental human right" and sorry, wingers, there is nothing so extraordinary about same-sex marriage that the ruling has to add "this includes the queers too" (yes, I believe in reclaiming unpleasent words. I also believe in hitting people who use them unironically). Likewise, I can't see why any gay person would want to join the military especially right now but if straight people have the option of getting their nuts shot off, gay people should have that option too. Gay people are exactly the same as straight people in almost every regard; same plumbing, different wiring. That's the only difference. Some guys want to shag Johnny Depp, some girls want to shag Angelina Jolie. I'm bi so I'll take both (because I'M HARDCORE! and only fans of old-school ECW will get that joke). Look, humans are pretty simple and we're mostly much the same. We almost all want the same things. We want shelter, food and drink and we want someone to share our lives with. Yeah, I'm talking about love. Love is what redeems us, it's what makes us something more than just a super-evolved ape and love, real love, is so rare in this world. Every seer and visionary down through the ages has told us the same thing. Buddha, Mahatma Gandhi, Jesus; all of them said the same thing, the same thing John Lennon said: Love is the answer and you know that for sure. Are we really stupid enough, petty enough and spiteful enough that we would shut off someone's chance at happiness (or permanency, depending on your experiance of marriage) just because a guy likes cock or a girl likes pussy? A lot of us are that petty and that spiteful and that baffles me. I'm not a very nice guy (despite this rep I've bafflingly acquired) but even I'm not that much of a bastard.

Don't let megacorporations buy news providers

Another one that should be a no-brainer but has become so deeply embedded that we'll never get it out. Wingers love to trot out that survey where most reporters admit to having liberal social views (although they always ignore the part of that same survey that shows reporters generally have conservative economic views). Thing is, reporters don't decide what goes into news media, editors do and editors tend to be conservative and part of the reason editors tend to be conservative is because they're the ones accountable to media owners and the corporations that generally own the media tend to be conservative. In fact, corporations generally tend to be conservative and that's entirely logical. To be conservative means to be opposed to, or at least wary of, change and corporations that are successful enough to own media outlets don't want change, they've already got the world arranged just the way they like it. In fact, corporations generally want change rolled back, preferably to the Gilded Age when workers were desperate and had zero protections (see, Scott Walker). That anyone could actually believe that the US media is predominantly liberal simply proves what I was saying earlier about how easy it is to manipulate humans because the US has the most conservative media in the free world. Even the channel considered most liberal, MSNBC, has a Republican former elected official for three honkin' hours every morning.

Don't let them buy politicians either

Oh boy, the Citizen's United decision was a fucking catastrophe. The US system of funding political campigns is perilously close to outright bribery. The politicians would have us believe that the millions fuinnelled to them by corporate donors doesn't affect their votes. You have got to be kidding. Look, basic human nature dictates that if someone plays a big part in placing you in a position of power and priviledge, a position that if you're careful, you can extend into a lifelong gravy train (see Gingrich, Newt; see also "crook"), you are at least going to feel warmly about that person. And politicians are no different. If Exxon helps get a pol elected, he is, at very least, going to give Exxon more of a hearing than he would of a company that hadn't given him millions of dollars. Now, Republicans have given up any pretence of being anything other than the political arm of Big Business but the Democrats aren't a great deal better (although there are a few notable exceptions, take a bow Dennis Kucinich). We are asked to believe that politicians are both "just like you" and also such a rarified breed that basic human emotional drives don't apply to them. Of course, if they didn't apply, they would be psychopaths which is scarcely more reassuring. And speaking of psychopaths...

No Ayn Rand.

Do I even need to justify this one?

Corporations are not people.

First off, a corportion is not a person. The basic definition of a human being can be found in any encyclopaedia, while a corporation is a piece of shorthand we use purely for legal convienience. Now, "personhood" is, to some extent, also a legal construct but from it's very beginnings, it has had a specific meaning: A (born, although that came later) human being. Not an automaton, not an animal and not a legal construct. A corporation has all the advantages of being human but none of the drawbacks. A corporation cannot starve, feel cold or wet or have it's heart broken. A corporation doesn't have to worry about paying the rent or keeping the electricity turned on. In a lot of ways, a corporation is closer to a vampire (the traditional folk tale version) than a human; it's sole reason for existing is to generate profit which it then uses to generate even more profit. Indeed, legally, that is the only duty of the corporation and it's directors. Humans are not so simple. Humans have numerous competing needs and desires. If you could look inside the head of even a mentally healthy person, you would see a constant struggle between desires for basic survival needs, for status, for companionship, for a hundred things. Not the corporation. It has only one desire.

Secondly and politically, an individual is limited to a campaign contribution of (I believe) $2,400 per cycle. A corporation may, however, make limitless donations in kind (another legal construct, in kind means that the receiver enjoys the benefit even though no cash changes hands) by buying tv time. Since tv time is likely to be a, if not the, major outlay for campaigning politicians, that amounts, in effect, to unlimited campaign contributions. And because a corporation is an automaton (lacking self-direction), those contributions will be made at the behest of the board of directors. By filtering the contribution through the corporation, the limit on contributions has effectively been abolished for directors. The US system of campaign financing is already perilously close to outright bribery. Whether we wish to alleviate that complaint rather depends on whether you plan your future to include elections or auctions.

Thirdly, this creates an unholy mess of legal principles. A human may commit crimes and, if caught, may be fined. Fair enough, a corporation may be fined as well (although they rarely are and never enough to make a difference). However, a human may also be imprisoned or, if the crimes are severe enough, executed. A corporation cannot be imprisoned and while it can be executed after a fashion by being wound up, those responsible for the crimes of the corporation walk away, free and clear and quite possibly to commit the same crimes at another corporation. Further, the law depends on a balance of rights and responsibilities. The responsibilities are usually implicit but they are there nonetheless. For example, your right to keep and bear arms carries the responsibly to do so responsibly. We might quibble over precisely what "responsibly" means but we do not deny that we have that obligation. Your right to free speech carries the rsponsibility to excercise that right with some care (the "yelling FIRE! in a crowded theatre example) and so on. Well, if a corporation is a legal person and has rights, what are it's responsibilities? It has only one responsibility: To gorge itself, to profit just as much as it can. That is it's only consideration. Legally, that can be it's only consideration. This is roughly equivelent to raising a child to believe that his only responsibility is to satisfy himself, come what may. We call people like that psycho or sociopaths. Ambrose Bierce once remarked that a corporation was "an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility".

Fourth, a corporation is a psychopath. I touched on this above but it needs spelling out. Some humans have, for reasons we do not yet fully understand, a conscience and sense of empathy which is either extremely minimised or absent entirely. These people are called psychopaths ("sociopath" means the same thing, both are covered by Antisocial Personality Disorder). Contrary to popular belief, they are not automatically violent but because they lack conscience, because they feel no empathy or remorse, if one decides that his personal desires will be best satisfied through violence, he will act to satiate those desires as soon as is practical. A corporation also has no conscience, no sense of empathy or remorse. The people in charge of that corporation may do (or may not, a surprising amount of business leaders test out as psychopaths) but because decisions are made at a distance from the subject, that conscience may well not be sufficient to prevent a decision from causing damage. When you see your customers every day, when it's actual people coming into your store (for example), your subconscious marks them down as human, like you, and therefore beings you can feel empathy toward. However, if your only contact with your customers is as numbers in a book, account names on a profit and loss record, you don't think of them as entirely "real". That's not a unique thing, it's a perfectly normal human trait. It's the same reason why Americans were more emotionally affected by 9/11 than the London Tube bombings, it's the same reason I was more emotionally affected by the Tube bombings than by 9/11. Because I've visited London many times and used the Tube frequently, it was more emotionally real to me than the destruction of a landmark on another continent that I'd never visited or seen or known anyone who was there. That reduction of emotional impact for things with which you are not personally familiar is entirely normal. It is also entirely normal for humans to feel less concerned about the plight of someone distant from them (among others, it was observed by Milgram in his famous experiment). That's absolutely textbook human normal (note: "normal" does not mean "nice". Humans are a lot less psychologically pleasant than we like to believe) but when you combine those two perfectly normal psychological mechanisms, you end up with teh simple fact that, for the CEO atop his ivory tower, most of his employees and customers barely emotionally exist for him. It doesn't take a psychopath to poison the Gulf or dump hexavalient chromium into the water supply, all it takes is those two psychological mechanisms and the constant pressure to profit. If you are only barely emotionally aware of your employees and customers, why not drive them harder, why not slash their benefits and wages (real wages have been mostly stagnant for years), why not skip the safety testing?

I haven't brought you on this little journey to rant about the evils of corporations (although I could do that too). Rather, I am making the point that the corporation insulates it's controllers from the consquences of their actions to a great extent and thus, the corporation is able to take tremendously harmful actions without the soul-searching which a (mentally normal) human would be subject to. And thus, it can buy politicians to enable it without any second thoughts. And that's when politicians (especially Republicans) are not already doing it's bidding under the common misaprehension that being pro-capitalist necessarily means being pro-corporatist.

Fifth, and finally: If corporations are persons, why can't they vote? No, I'm serious. If corporations are legal persons, then they are covered by the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment. That makes them citizens and that entitles them to vote.

And I haven't even gotten into the politicisation of the courts yet...

DADT Goes Down For The Three-Count

So, Don't-Ask, Don't-Tell is officially dead. Gay/bisexual people already in the military and those looking to enlist in the future can now be honest about who they are and who they love and poor Dan Choi can re-enlist. And that's great. Really, it is. I can't see why anyone, gay or straight, would want to elist under current circumstances but that's besides the point. I can't help but be suspicious that real political effort to repeal DADT only came when the US was stuck in a seemingly intractable war and having trouble recruiting people like translators. "Enlist your gays for we need the cannon fodder"?

Still, a step forward for equality. And everyone who pushed for, proposed and agitated for this change deserves congratulation. Congrats guys, have a drink and take a short holiday.




There, did you enjoy it? I don't want to rain on anyone's parade but the fact is, getting gay people their right to risk life and limb for the Stars & Stripes was only part of the battle and, given the USA's near worship of the military, probably one of the easier parts. The Department of Defence (and really, what are they defending? The US has been on the offensive for years) wants warm bodies in uniform, and at a certain level, they're not overly picky about who they are. The military has accepted neo-Nazis, assorted racists and a slightly worrying amount of organised fundementalist Christians (small note: Christians in general, no problem. Christians who want to remake the military into a crusading force for Christendom, that's a problem) so why not gay people?

But don't think everything is wine and roses now. There are still going to be problems integrating the military in the same way as there were with racial integration and the larger war for full equality still goes on. Gay people still don't have equality in marriage rights, hospital visitation, taxation, employment and a bazillion other things I don't have space to list right now. This is a start, a step in the right direction.

That's not to take away from the importance of this step. The good guys won one for a change, enjoy that, revel in it for a little while. But only for a little while because we won a battle but the war goes on.

That's It, I Give Up On Humanity

I've been working on an article for a while now on how the BDFL (my fictional me-as-dictator flight of fancy) would handle the US's current state but what grabbed my attention today was this article from PinkPaper.com ( http://news.pinkpaper.com/NewsStory/4319/18/11/2010/countries-vote-to-accept-execution-of-gays.aspx ). In case you're not aware, the UN has a list of things people should not be executed for, what it lists as "discriminatory reasons" for execution and for about a decade, sexual orientation has been included on that list. Makes sense, right? Well, a few days ago, the UN narrowly voted to REMOVE sexual orientation from that list. There are still 76 countries that criminalise homosexuality and five that treat it as a capitol offence (not counting Uganda's kill-the-gays bill which hasn't been ratified yet) and the world can't even agree that this is a moral outrage?

That's it. I give up on humanity. We officially lose any right to be the dominant species after this. Seventy-nine countries voted to remove the ban (actually a condemnation, since the UN has bugger all actual power). Seventeen abstained. Abstained? How the fuck do you abstain from that vote? Killing guys just because they like to suck cock (or girls who like to eat pussy) isn't something you can be undecided on. This isn't an issue where you can say "Hey, to each his own" because we are talking about fucking killing people for who they fall in love (or, at least, into bed) with. "Beef or chicken?" is something you get to not have an opinion on, killing gay folks isn't.

Now, I'm not opposed to the death penalty in principle (my views on it in practice are in flux right now) but when I think of people who deserve to be executed, I think of people like Richard Rameirez, Jeffrey Dahmer or Robin Gecht, not Freddie Mercury, Elton John and Graham fucking Norton (and I can't stand Graham Norton). The fact that there even needs to be a list in the first place is depressing enough but the fact that better than half the world's countries voted to remove homosexuality from it, to say killing people for being queer is acceptable? There's a bullet through the heart of any sense of pride in the human species. I mean, Jesus fucking Christ, if we can't at least agree that executing people for being gay is a moral outrage, what fucking hope is there for humanity?

Now Here's Something I Can Really Get Behind

I think I have a problem with the campaign for same-sex marriage / marriage equality. No, not that it exists or is "going too far", that the movement is being far too civilised. Don't misunderstand, trying to get your human rights recognised through the courts and public opinion is very noble, very admirable. It speaks to the inherent civility of the movement that it is still being so restrained. But there's something about humanity that seems to only recognise a right when it's torn from the bloodied fist of the oppressor. Would Martin Luther King (whom I have the utmost respect for) have been so convincing if white society hadn't been so terrified of Malcolm X? I don't know. But I do know that when your other option is Magneto, kindly old Professor Xavier starts to look a lot more reasonable.

In other words, I think getting in people's faces can achieve a valuable goal. That's easy for me to say; I'm a big guy, trained to fight and confrontational by nature but let's be honest, a good firm smack in the mouth ends a lot of arguments. Occasionally, when discussing gay rights, I make the call to have some fucking riots. Usually, I'm not serious about that but I do think there's a lot to be said for standing and saying "this is who I am, this is what I do and fuck you if you can't take it". Why should gay guys be allowed to marry other guys? Because fuck you, that's why.

See, the public awareness campaign and the lawsuits, they do a nice job of reaching the undecided but some people, you're never going to reach. You're never going to be able to reason with them because they left reason behind years ago. And for people like that, something a little stronger is needed. Maybe I'm just not as nice a guy as some people think but my urge to yell "we're here, they're queer and if you got a problem with that, let's step outside" peaked a few years ago.

With that in mind:

Today Was A Good Day

So, did you hear? Prop 8 got overturned in California. Isn't that awesome? Equality and the rule of law win out over the momentary whim of the mob, fantastic stuff. Still, this would be a pretty dull entry if all I did was praise the ruling so instead, I thought I'd vivisect Michael "Savage" Weiner's article on the ruling (no link to hate sites, find it yourself). For context, Weiner is a notorious closet case who's semi-autobiography included his literary avatar being beaten for "acting like a sissy". This is pretty obviously what turned him into the self-loathing closet case we all know and, well, know. For several years now, my holiday wish for Mikey has been a course of extra-strength therapy to convince him that being gay really is ok and a subscription to Gay Times so he has something to do with his sexuality. Essentially, Weiner is about two steps from being an outright fascist and one of those steps is getting over his attraction to strong men in uniform. Oh, and he posted his tirade in full CAPS, sorry.

Title: FROM BLACK SHIRTS
TO BLACK ROBES

Instantly, the association with fascists. The fascists were on the political right but Weiner, like many ultraconservatives, maintains the sick lie that they were leftists.

TODAY, A LEFT-WING JUDGE IN A BLACK ROBE RULED THAT YOU HAVE NO VOTE. JUDGE VAUGHN WALKER WHO WAS APPOINTED BY GEORGE BUSH SR

First off, he didn't rule that at all. He ruled that no amount of votes can override the federal Constitution. Secondly, if he's "left-wing", why was he appointed by Bush Sr and nominated by Reagan?

IN A 138-PAGE DECISION, HE ASSAULTED AND INSULTED THE VOTERS OF THIS STATE.

That's a complete and utter lie which Weiner pulls straight from his ample backside.

THIS LITTLE CAESAR CLAIMED THAT PROPOSITION 8 PLACES THE FORCE OF LAW BEHIND STIGMAS AGAINST GAYS AND LESBIANS.

Which it did, blatantly.

THIS LITTLE CAESAR CLAIMED THAT THE RIGHT TO MARRY PROTECTS AN INDIVIDUAL’S CHOICE OF MARITAL PARTNER REGARDLESS OF GENDER.

Which it does. Marriage is a "fundemental right" according to Loving.

THIS LITTLE CAESAR CLAIMED DOMESTIC PARTNERSHIPS DO NOT SATISFY CALIFORNIA’S OBLIGATION TO ALLOW PLAINTIFFS TO MARRY.

Dude, what's with the "little Caesar" thing?

ALL OF THIS IS WRONG. BUT WHAT’S MORE IMPORTANT TO KNOW IS THAT JUDGE VAUGHN WALKER HAS STOLEN THE VOTES OF 7 MILLION PEOPLE.

All of this was absolutely correct except in the upside-down, black-is-white world of Savage Weiner. And again, he didn't steal their votes at all, he ruled that those votes cannot overrule the federal Constitution.

NOW LITTLE CAESAR JUDGE WALKER, THIS HAPPENS TO BE GAY. THIS IS A FACT THAT THE MEDIA REFUSES TO REPORT TO YOU.

Because it is utterly and entirely irrelevent. If Weiner is making the argument that a gay judge cannot be impartial in this case (which he is), then he is also arguing that black judges should be recused from cases involving black people and white judges should be recused from cases involving white people.

AND HE HAPPENS TO BE A RADICAL LEFTIST.

Who was nominated by Ronald Reagan, re-nominated and appointed by Bush Sr. But why bother with that, Weiner (like Bill Orally) declares everyone who disagrees with him a "radical leftist".

IN 1999, HE REJECTED ARGUMENTS FROM THE PARENTS OF A BOY WHO CLAIMED THEIR RELIGIOUS RIGHTS WERE VIOLATED BY PRO-GAY COMMENTS THEIR SON'S TEACHER HAD MADE IN THE CLASSROOM.

And he was right to do so because their religious rights hadn't been violated.

IN 2005, HE SIDED WITH THE CITY OF OAKLAND AGAINST TWO EMPLOYEES WHO PLACED FLIERS PROMOTING "NATURAL FAMILY, MARRIAGE AND FAMILY VALUES."

And since the city took issue with it, you know damn well there was more to the case that Weiner gives you here.

THIS IN NOT AN IMPARTIAL JUDGE. THIS IS AN DICTATOR IN BLACK ROBES.

This is an entirely impartial judge who made a decision that closet case Weiner dislikes.

IN THE 1920S AND 30S, MUSSOLINI, THE FASCIST DICTATOR OF ITALY, SENT THUGS IN BLACK SHIRTS OUT INTO THE STREETS TO BEAT UP ANYONE WHO MIGHT OPPOSE HIS TYRANNICAL REGIME.

Mussolini, like all fascists, was a right-winger. And while the history lesson is welcome (if unnecessary), how is it relevent?

BUT NOT EVEN HE HAD THE AUDACITY TO STEAL 7 MILLION VOTES TO ACHIEVE HIS ENDS.

Weiner is obsessed with this idea. The judge, of course, did nothing of the sort. He just said that those votes could not overrule the federal Constitution. Interestingly though, Weiner had absolutely no problem when Bush's 2000 election team actually did steal loads of votes or when the SCOTUS installed Bush in the most activist decision in history.

PROPOSITION 8 WAS PASSED BY THE VOTERS OF CALIFORNIA IN 2008.

Which is entirely irrelevent. Lots of states had anti-miscegeny laws too.

EVEN THOUGH THE STATE VOTED FOR OBAMA

Also irrelevent.

ON OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF CALIFORNIANS SAID THAT MARRIAGE WAS JUST BETWEEN A MAN AND A WOMAN

1) Five percent is not "overwhelmingly" unless you consider Bush's two percent 2004 victory a "mandate". 2) Many of those Californians would now vote differently. 3) Still irrelevent because no amount of votes can overrule the federal Constitution.

7 MILLION CALIFORNIA VOTERS SAID THAT. AND NOW, ONE BITTER, LITTLE CAESAR HAS VOTED TO THROW ALL THOSE VOTES OUT THE WINDOW.

He's obsessed with this "little Caesar" thing. And, yet again, Judge Walker has done nothing of the sort, he has, blah, blah, you know the rest by now.

SO THE QUESTION IS THIS – IS JUDGE VAUGHN WALKER 7 MILLION TIMES MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOU ARE?

1) Yes, that's how the law works. 2) He's at least seven million times as important as Michael Weiner.

ONE JUDGE HAS NULLIFIED THE VOTES OF MILLIONS: IS THIS CONSTITUTIONAL?

Yes, entirely.

MICHAEL SAVAGE SAYS NO.

Actually, Michael "Savage" Weiner says "RARGH, dribble, dribble, LIBERALS, buro, PUDDING!" because he's absolutely out of his mind.

Here's the thing: It is not a judge's job to enforce the tyranny of the majority. The whim of the braying mob is utterly irrelevent to the law. All 300 million odd Americans could have voted for Prop 8 and it would still be irrelevent to the law. A judge's one and only duty is to interpret that law (and anyone about to say one word about "activist judges making law" can go fuck themselves, the principle of stare decisis means judge's can't avoid making law). Judge Walker observed the letter and spirit of every legal principle and procedure from beginning to end. His lengthy written decision is a textbook shinging example of judicial reasoning. See, what people like Weiner don't get is that judges do not just pull their opinions from somewhere under their robes (apart from Clarence Thomas, who does and Antonin Scalia, who has them dictated by the ghost of Adolf Hitler). Judicial reasoning is a very specific mode of logic; it has it's own rules, principles and assumptions and it takes law students months, if not years, to fully understand it. Judge Walker made no less than EIGHTY findings of fact in his decision. This decision will go down in history, not just for it's role in what will (hopefully) be the legalisation of same-sex marriage but as a teachable example of how to write a judicial ruling.

Contrary to Weiner's ranting, the US is not an Athenian democracy, you do not vote on every issue. Your Founders, who were actually rather wary of democracy, set up a very careful system to ensure that the whom of the mob could not take away the rights of the people. According to teh decision rendered in Loving, marriage is a "fundemental right" (and no, morons, there is nothing so special about same-sex marriage that the ruling has to say "this includes the queers too"). Article XIV of the Constitution says, in effect, that the rights of the people cannot be abridged by popular vote. If an Amendment to the federal Constitution was formulated, passed and ratified in the described manner, then that would be a different matter but thus far, it hasn't and the chances of that happening are fairly slim.

A Meandering Rant About Sexuality

Today, I'd like to talk about sexuality a little.

I am a bisexual man. For those lacking a high-school education, that means that I am sexually and romantically attracted to both men and women. My current (and hopefully, last) partner is female. Unlike most bisexual people, I don't have a gender preference. Most bisexuals have a preference for one gender or the other so it's pretty common to see bisexual people describe themselves as a quarter hetero or seventy percent gay or whatever, that's very common. I'm slightly unusual in that I'm a pretty straight-up (forgive the pun) 50-50 who doesn't noticeably skew toward either gender. If I list the people I am sexually or romantically attracted to, it contains a roughly even number of men and women including a few (such as Clea Duvall) who are themselves gay.

Being bisexual is not the same as being gay. It's not the same as being straight either. I think a lot of people who are gay or straight forget that. It's not the same as being a gay man who occasionally likes pussy (forgive the vulgarity) or a straight man who sometimes like cock. I'm a part of both worlds but, like the half-native kid in the fable, not truly a part of either because our society places so much emphasis on who you sleep with that neither side entirely "gets" the bisexual person. And that causes all kinds of misunderstandings and preconceptions.

We are not just greedy. Yes, as Woodly Allen said, being bisexual automatically increases your chances of getting a date on Saturday night (although really, not even that since gay men are rarer than straight women). Yes, I have a lot more options for porn than most people but human desires are not controllable. I can choose whether I act on those desires but the actual desires themselves aren't somethign I can control. More to the point, nor can anyone else. In our society, it's still something of a stigma to be gay (although, granted, things have improved a lot in recent years). Up until a few years ago, it was still illegal in Texas to be gay. Since this didn't make any notable difference in the number of gay people from Texas, we have to assume that our desires are in-born and, to some extent which we don't entirely understand yet, inate. Looking at that world, why on earth would anyone choose to be gay or bisexual? They wouldn't. Unless that desire was something inate about them. And just like gay people, my attraction to both genders is inate.

However, that doesn't mean that I must have a mate of both genders to be satisfied, that really would be greedy. Straight men and gay women, I'm sure you see dozens of girls every day that you find sexually attractive; straight women and gay men, you must see dozens of shaggable guys every day, right? Well, it's the same for us. Yes, men and women feel different, having sex with each is a completely different experiance but newsflash, that's true of individuals as well. Thinking back on the women I've slept with, each of them felt completely different and utterly unique and the same is true of the men I've slept with. If you can manage to avoid sleeping with the unique and attractive girl at the office, why should it be any different for us? Being attracted to the guy in the bookstore doesn't mean I am any more inclined to cheat on my partner than anyone else (although Johnny Depp, if you're reading this, you're on my list so gimme a call). And while we're on the subject of different tactile sensations, there are these things called sex toys which people can buy and simulate a whole range of sexual experiances. It's not like the days where the only way to simulate gay sex was to buy your girlfriend a fake moustache, there's a cornucopia of dildos, vibrators and costumes in a rainbow of colours. Seriously. Some of them even ejaculate. And for the phonomenally paranoid: No, a liking for taking it up the ass, fabulous though it is, does not mean you're gay anymore than a liking for blowjobs does. If you like shagging people with tits, no matter how you like shagging or being shagged by them, you're either a straight man, bisexual or a gay woman and a quick look down in the shower should enable you to figure out which. Unless you're into tranny porn. In which case, hey, whatever floats your boat, no judgements here.

No, I'm not confused about my sexuality and I'm not going to quietly place myself in a checkbox as I get older. I used to be confused about my sexuality. When I was a small child, I was sexually molested by a male relative. No, that didn't cause me to be bisexual but it did make me very screwed up about my sexuality for years. Because I associated guy-guy sex with being molested, I buried that attraction for many years. It was only when I got to university in my mid-twenties that I felt able to start dealing with that. It took some years to sort the attraction that I felt toward guys from the rage and humiliation I felt as a result of the molestation but you didn't read this to plumb the depths of my psyche so all you need to know is that I eventually dealt with it. Now, doubtless there's someone reading this and asking themselves why I couldn't have stayed repressed about guylove all my life, why I had to sort out my attraction to guys. Because fuck you, that's why. Something anyone acquinted with me should know by now is that I think sexuality is incredibly overcomplicated by our culture and that I have a pretty combatative nature (I worship the original rebel, for goodness's sakes). I won't be repressed, not by faux-morality, not by self-appointed moral guardians and not by the infirmities of my psyche either. More to the point, love is a rare thing, transcendent and pure. Love is what makes us more than just a super-evolved ape. Every spiritual visionary worth his or her salt has said the same thing from the dawn of time. Ghandhi said it, Martin luther King said it, even Jesus said it. The same message every time: As John Lennon put it "Love is the answer and you know that for sure". Nothing dignifies humanity like love, nothing else makes the shit of this world, the war, death, hatred and pineapple on pizza, worthwhile like love does. And it is so rare, so vanishingly unusual, to find that one person. That person who can celebrate your triumphs and comfort your tragedies. I don't believe in "you complete me" because I don't believe that being alone necessarily makes you incomplete but it is so rare in this universe to find that one person who feels like home that if there was any chance of finding that person in your own gender (and I'm not talking about completely straight or gay people, they're incapable of being romantically interested in their own or the opposite gender, that's just understood), wouldn't your response to those saying you shouldn't even look be "fuck you" as well?

Personally, I think sexuality is mainly about what feels good anyway. That's not a value judgement, it's a suggestion that the human sex drive is inately hedonistic and that's not a bad thing. For some people, girls feel right and that's good. For others, guys hit their sweet spot and that's good too. Look, if you're a straight guy, you're not going to enjoy having sex with another guy. It's won't feel good to you, no matter how good he is at sucking cock because you're straight. Likewise, a straight woman is not going to enjoy having sex with another woman, no matter how firmly she straps her boobs down or how skilfully she pilots a strap-on. It's about what feels good and that's fine. The only rules worth any notice about sex are so obvious that rational people usually just take them as read (but, for the terminally dense: No kids, no animals, make sure everyone's consenting and if you're even slightly unsure of anyone's sexual history, use rubbers. Oh, and the host picks the music). Beyond those aforementioned guidelines that should be so obvious anyone of age automatically assumes them, it's not like there are rules. Somewhere in the myriad complexity of human chemistry, there's some kind of switch that says if you're gay, straight or somewhere in-between. Most people end up being straight because humanity needs them to be straight to ensure the continuation of the species (the evolutionary process is dumb and doesn't understand things like IVF), somewhere between eight and twelve percent of people turn out to be gay and an unknown percentage turn out to be bisexual and it's all ok. But most of our views of sexuality date from the Victorians and a time before we learned to control our fertility. We feel we have to justify our sexual choices constantly. An example is the debate about whether being gay is a choice. Now, all the research (which is not entirely conclusive yet but very nearly so) says it's not a choice but why should that fucking matter anyway? Yes, I know the idiots use it to beat you over the head with a stick of "choosing to be immoral" but the idea depends on the preconception that there is something less desireable about being gay than there is about being straight, it's a justification for something that doesn't need a justification.

Why some people are gay is a question of only academic interest. It's an interesting question for biologists, psychologists and geneticists but beyond the halls of academia, it doesn't matter, it's irrelevent. If you start from the viewpoint that being gay or being straight is as morally neutral as having green or blue or brown eyes, then who cares why some people are gay? Even if being gay is a choice (and, again, it's not), why should we discriminate against it? I'm not discriminated against because I choose to have a beard (with the exception of a very radical feminist I once knew who said I was "aggressively asserting" my masculinity and thereby reinforcing the patriarchy), my partner isn't discriminated against because she chooses to dye her hair so why the hell should we discriminate against someone because of why they like to have sex with even if it was a choice (yet again, it's not)? It's stupid, an irrelevent distinction that should only be of interest to the individual and the person they're sleeping with. Now, some idiot Crusader (and boy, are you on the wrong blog) could make some noise here about being gay damning you to stinky hellfire but that's a threat only convincing to people in the rowboat with you. My chosen holy book says that some will love the same sex and some will love the opposite sex and it's all good. You have to assume that being gay is immoral in order to make the case that being gay is immoral. That's called circular reasoning, buddy, and it's not welcome here (although Conservapedia will love you). No-one is offering to legislate the moral precepts of my faith, nor should they and I would fight them if they did. A few obsessed morons might say here that some people might choose to fuck kids and if I think all choices are acceptable, how can I discriminate against them? Well, firstly, look up the phrase "informed consent" and learn why children (and animals for that matter) are incapable of giving it and secondly, fuck off to another blog and be thankful we aren't having this discussion in person.

See, another area where we overcomplicate sex is when we talk about explaining it to teenagers. Conservatives love to play this card, "if you allow gay people, you'll have to explain sodomy to kiddiewinks". Talk about begging the question. Since you already explain to them that mummy and daddy love each other very much, where's the problem in telling them that some boys love other boys and some girls love other girls? And as for the ones who don't even want their kids to know gay people exist; well, firstly, they're going to find out eventually, no matter what you do. My mother owned lesbian cats, gay people are openly in media these days and if they've got an internet connection, five seconds is going to teach them way more than they were ever curious about. Secondly, fuck you, you shouldn't even be allowed to raise kids. No, I'm not being hyperbolic. You can raise your kids to have any kind of values you'd like but when you want to selectively edit reality because of it? Yeah, I think Child Services is justified in taking your kids away at that point because you're no different than the bigot who said they didn't want their kids to know black people existed (and if you're going to use the word "choice", see above and fuck you too). You get to have your own opinions and your own values but you don't get to have your own facts and the fact is, gay people exist, they are only different from you in irrelevent details and you don't get to make a shitstorm about that.

And while we're on the subject of the sacred little bastards (yeah, I don't like kids, does it show?), if your kids are even interested in sex at that age, they have bigger problems than the existance of gay people. Fact is, the reaction of small children to seeing naked people is much the same as their reaction to seeing a parrot for the first time: "Mummy, what's that?". Dirty jokes sail completely over their heads until they hit puberty so unless you set out to make it something shameful, your kid is not going to be damaged by knowing that Brian and Tom love one another. By the time they do hit puberty, Google and Playboy have already taught them the basics anyway. Parents tend to think that kids are way more innocent than they actually were anyway. They like to think their darling little bundle of joy convieniently discovers sex when they get to the age of consent and they don't even like to consider that their kid masturbates underage. They can't fool themselves completely with boys since the basket full of soiled Kleenex is a dead giveaway but, hey parents, little Fiona is probably rubbing one off right now, you better rush off and stop her! See, this is such a stupid waste of time and it's largely because we've internalised the idea that sex is something to be ashamed of. We try to train kids to think that giving themselves pleasure is a terrible thing. Hell, when I was at the age when I was discovering masturbation, my parents moved me into a room without a door. Seriously, normal room, open doorway with no door there. I'm not trying to turn this into a rant about the various ways my parents did their level best to mentally cripple me (and, in fairness, they were pretty screwed up themselves and didn't have a clue what they were doing) but the fact is, masturbation is normal, it's part of the pleasurecruise of self-discovery we all go on during our teens and it should be. Masturbation is sex without the dangers. You can't get pregnant, catch an STD or even get stood up by your hand at the prom. It's sexual pleasure with literally no drawbacks. Way I figure it, parents should be singing the praises of masturbation to their kids. OK, you're within the bounds of reason to ask Tommy to shut the door but at least he's not fucking in there. In fact, if you want to delay your teenagers first full coital bonk, you might want to extoll the virtues of mutual masturbation while you're at it. You'd be surprised what teenage boys will settle for. Your kid would literally sell his soul for a quick feel of boob through clothing and you think he's going to turn down a quick handjob? No, he's going to agree very enthuasiastically, enjoy it enormously and be exceedingly grateful. If he's got any brains, he'll also keep his mouth shut about it (teenage girls, the single best threat is "If you tell anyone, you'll never get another one"). Full blown sex can lead to pregnancy, STDs and complicated family gatherings, mutual masturbation just leads to Kleenex, snuggling and a desire to raid the fridge. There's a shitload of things people can do to get their rocks off without actual penetrative sex and I would suggest mentioning all of them. When you should start singing the virtues of handjobs and dryhumping is a question I'll leave to your discretion, you know your kids better than I do. Just make sure it's not too late and be sure to point out, repeatedly if necessary, that just because you can doesn't mean you have to. If you don't like them, don't want to go that far or even if you're just not in the mood, saying "no" is not only acceptable but required (and if you're an adult, "no" is your only acceptable response). Sex play, even the kind that stops short of penetration, is a game for two or more players and it's a lousy game unless everyone is enthuasiastic about playing. And if you find a copy of Hustler in your kid's room (either gender), just quietly put it under their pillow and forget about it.

A lot of conservatives like to imagine some golden age (almost always, the Fifties or earlier) where sexuality was something that seemingly didn't exist. If you're into that kind of thing, it might be a reassuring fantasy but it's a fantasy nonetheless. Fact is, our attitudes toward sexuality are actually pretty recent. And I don't mean "recent" as in the Sixties either. the sexual revolution of the Sixties was actually very dependent on class. If you were middle-class, not much changed for you. You still fucked at drive-ins but you were still quiet about it. In the counter-culture, we've actually gone backwards since then. According to the recollections of some of those who were around at the time, the liberalisation that the birth control pill allowed was such that for many women, it would be as simple as seeing someone they liked the look of and asking "Do you want to fuck?" (small note, I am applauding the women who were that up-front with their sexuality). Our attitudes toward teenage sexuality are no more than a century old and, in many cases, much younger. Shakespeare made Juliet all of thirteen years old (another note, that play is about the short-sightedness of young love, stop holding it up as a romance when it's a tragedy). The accounts of coppers from Victorian London are full of reports of having to move along children as young as elevn or twelve from copulating in gutters and yes, child molestation is as old as humanity as well. We are unique not because we are the first generation to have such things happen but because we are the first generation to be aware of it, we are the first generation to both know the extent of the problem and be in a position to do something about it and prevent it. Porn is as old as humanity too. In fact, our porn is relatively tame compared to that of ancient peoples which included incest (Egyptians), pederasty (Greeks), bondage (Romans) and bi or homosexuality (absolutely everyone). Again, it was really only in Victorian times that we even bothered trying to control porn. The sexually adventurous woman of the Sixties mentioned above wasn't really doing anything which men haven't done since the beginning of time (and the only reason women haven't done it just as long is because of the danger of pregnancy which the pill liberated them from). Hopefully, the generation of girls now being raised will understand that men love sexually direct women, it removes all the guesswork. The old system of putting out subtle signals if you were interested in screwing? Yeah, some men (including me) are absolutely hopeless at reading them. So we don't dare make a move, Either we are entirely oblivious to those subtle signals you put out or we don't trust ourselves not to be misinterpreting them. She just put her hand on my knee, is that a green light? No, maybe she's just being friendly. No, don't chance it. And we talk ourselves out of intimacy that way for years. So the advent of women who were clear and unambiguous that they liked sex and they would like to enjoy it with you, women like that were a miracle to me and men like me and not just for those reasons. The idea that someone would actually want to have sex with us, would find us sexually attractive and be prepared to say so, unambiguously, with no room for misinterpretation... The women who did so live forever in our memories, not just as masturbation material (although sometimes as that too) but because, when we have been rejected far more often than we have been accepted, punched far more often than we have been kissed, when the reaction of virtually everyone to you has been one of mockery or disgust, to be able to summon up a memory of someone in your head who clearly, vocally wanted you is something that lives forever in your mind.

We're going to back away from that subject now because I've realised that I'm revealing rather more about myself than I feel comfortable revealing or subjecting my readers to.

I'm not just looking to save sanity here but adjusting our attitude to sexuality to be less royally fucked up might literally save lives too. See, 99.9% of us have sexual desires (a miniscule number of people, for hormonal reasons, have no sexual desires at all) and every single last one of those people will find some way of releasing those desires. No exceptions, this is a biological impeartive engraved deep in our lizard brains. Some way, sometime, everyone will find a way to release those desires, even if they're celibate. Hell, especially if they're celibate. Even priests and nuns will masturbate and even if they've got Batman's willpower and don't, tough shit, your brain will give you sexy dreams and pretend to fuck while you're asleep anyway. Surpressing your sexuality your whole life is simply not an option and guess what happens when people try? Yeah, they get fucked up. Seriously fucked up. In my meatworld life, I'm partway through studying for a degree in Criminology. It's slow going and I have to do it by distance learning because of my mental problems but it's fascinating stuff in a horrifying way. Here's a little snippet: Did you know serial killers are subdivided by motivation? And did you know what the single largest subcategory of serial killers is? Yeah, it's sexual sadists. Now, we don't entirely understand the psychology of serial killers yet but there are certain things that sexual sadists have in common. They all exhibited the "unholy trinity" of bedwetting beyond the age where that's common, animal abuse and arson. Traumatic head injuries during chilhood or adolescence aren't present in every case but they crop up more often than coincidence would allow and there's one more thing which every last one of them has: Their sexuality was warped beyond recognition. Some were sexualised very early in life, some were raped by family members continually (Fred & Rose West, a highly unusual case of true folie a deux serial killers, both came from families where incest was common) and, in many cases, their sex drive was surpressed as it developed. I could go into why surpressing the sex drive would lead to sexual sadism (and I may do so in a future essay) but for simplicity, it's like trying to force a wedge into a rock; either the wedge gets warped or the rock breaks. If you don't let a sexuality develop on it's own and in it's own time, it will either warp the person's sexuality or it will break their mind altogether. Human sexuality is an incredibly powerful force and it is near-enough relentless. Sometimes it drives us to distraction, sometimes it drives us to crime (look up the psychology of arsonists sometime) but it cannot be denied.

And it doesn't need to be denied, not really. We've been doing this since before we were really humans, it's just sex, not launching a space shuttle.Sex isn't a matter of debate, it's not something you need an instruction manual for (although you might need an instruction manual for good sex). We needn't be ashamed of doing what makes us feel good (yes, annoying conservative, subject to the guidelines above obviously) and I think that's something an awful lot of people need to learn: Just because it feels good doesn't make it wrong.

Huckabee Is A Moran

OK, we already knew that. But in a recent interview with a College of New Jersey student publication called "the Perspective", he described same-sex marriage and civil unions as "not necessary". The full quote is even worse:

"You don't go ahead and accommodate every behavioral pattern that is against the ideal. That would be like saying, well, there are a lot of people who like to use drugs, so let's go ahead and accommodate those who want who use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, so we should accommodate them."

Now personally, I have no problem with polygamy but I can see practical reasons for banning it but more to the point, Huck is just jumping on the old slippery-slope fallacy here. Incest and polygamy have nothing to do with homosexuality or same-sex marriage. Incestuous relationships are (almost) always unequal, for a start. When idiots like Huck say "where does it end?", every nation that has legalised same-sex marriage or some comparable arrangement has said it ends at two consenting unrelated adults. This isn't rocket science. People like Huck like to that if you accept one thing, you must automatically accept everything which he says must come after (most of the right does this with socialism too) but reality and legislation don't work like that. It is perfectly possible to say "yes" to same-sex marriage and then, when the sister-fuckers turn up asking to legalise incest, tell them to go to hell.

His views on same-sex raising of children are scarcely more sensible: "Children are not puppies. This is not a time to see if we can experiment and find out, how does this work?". Oh, Mikey, the ship has long since sailed on this one. See, there's this miraculous resarch tool available called "Google" and if you used it, you would discover that there has already been an awful lot of research done into the effects on kids of being raised by same-gender parents. That research says that kids of same-sex couples grow up just as healthy and happy as kids of opposite-sex couples. Besides, if you were really concerned about kids, you would be doing more to promote the raising of children by extended families. Researchers have known for years that the single best arrangement for child-rearing, the one most likely to result in a happy, wall-adjusted child, is the extended family of parents, grantparents, aunts, uncles and cousins who all pitch in to help. There are a number of ways to encourage that. But I don't see Huck pushing them.

In the end, it's becoming increasingly obvious that one simply cannot be both Republican and pro-family. The stagnation (and in many sectors, actual lowering) of real wages has had a devastating effect on families, forcing both parents to work every hour available. I'm not a fifties-nostalgia guy, I don't think a woman's place is in the kitchen but I do think that it's pretty important to have a parent (or other member of the extended family above) at home with the kids. Exactly which parent or family member is for them to work out but yeah, I think it's important that when a kid comes home from school, there's actually someone there. A lot of conservatives claim to think the same thing but they seem incapable of taking the logical next step: That the reason both parents work these days isn't some metaphysical "career woman" demon, it's because the decent working/middle class wages of the fifties which allowed parents to stay home with their kids are a thing of the past. Since the Sixties, unions have been demonised and wages (in constant dollars) have, on average, dropped by around 13% (much more in some sectors) while prices have zoomed upward (utility bills, in constant dollars, verge on outright extortion). You think THAT might have something to do with the growing number of latchkey kids? Here, the state tried to handle that by instituting Child Tax Credit and naturally, the media have now invented the myth of women who make a career out of having babies.

Where was that concern for families during the Prop 8 campaign? Gay people married, formed families and the right campaigned to prevent more families being formed. Some even campaigned to forcibly divorce those who had already married (which would have been a legal nightmare if it had passed). Here where a bunch of morans trying to split families up in the name of being pro-family. And these morans accuse the left of being anti-family.

You cannot claim to be pro-family while also acting as a pawn of a corporate class which is raping the modern family. There exists this prevailing mythology that if you give the corporate class a tax break, they'll expand their business and hire more workers, thus aiding families. It's bollocks, a complete myth. The corporation employs the exact number of people it needs to do the work it needs, at the lowest wage it can get away with paying. If it chooses to expand, it will do so by using the existing business as security and leveraging assets and that's discounting the VAST sector of the economy that doesn't actually make anything physical in the first place. Tax breaks make no difference to what the corporation chooses to do with their business. They're nice, sure and the corporation would like to have as many as possible but they don't actually affect the way it does business. But I digress.

My point is that supporting the destruction of the working and middle class simply cannot be reconciled with a claim to being pro-family. Being pro-family means supporting a decent wage and healthcare. Corporations will not give those things if they can avoid it. They will not comply with the safety regulations which ensure the breadwinner's safety if they can avoid it (and they often can, as the disaster at Big Branch demonstrated).

More lies from Prop 8 trial.

The majority of this article was written way back when same-sex marriage was initially legalised in California. With the current court battle over the constitutionality of the ban on same-sex marriage and the anti-marriage side's odd decision to drag homosexuality itself into the dock, it seemed like a good time to revise and reprint this article.

“The judges overturned the will of the people” ~ It is not the job of the judicial branch to uphold the wishes of the majority. There is a very good reason why very few states and virtually no civilised nations elect judges and that is because it would open them to the same pressures as politicians face. Judges are deliberately insulated from the political process to ensure that they don’t have to follow “the will of the people”. The judges were asked to rule on whether the state’s ban on same-sex marriage conflicted with the state constitution’s ban on discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation. They decided it did. making that decision was their only responsibility. Not enforcing the will of the people, not following the prevailing political winds, simply stating the law as they understood it. If the judiciary’s only function was to rubber-stamp “the will of the people”, there would be little point having them. The judicial branch is independent to guard against the tyranny of the majority, not to enable it. UPDATE: If the current case leads to the decision that the ban is unconstitutional, then we can expect to see this argument and the one below used ad infinitum by the right but it still doesn't change the fact that it is not the judiciary's job to enforce the will of the people. Not least because "will of the people" is so often so close to "whim of the mob".

“Activist judges / legislating from the bench” ~ The phrase “activist judges” has only ever meant “a decision I disagree with”. Of the seven judges who made this decision, six were appointed by Republicans and California currently has a Republican governor, not the kind of people normally slandered with cries of judicial activism. As anyone who has ever studied law knows, it is utterly impossible for a judge to avoid legislating from the bench. In any case at all (except Bush V. Gore), the decision establishes a legal precedent. By the principle of stare decisis (roughly “the court stands on it’s previous decisions”), that precedent then has the force of law to all lower courts unless and until it is overturned, thus establishing law and thus, legislating from the bench. That is how the legal process is supposed to work. It is, in a very real sense, the essence of what judges do. Further, the cry of activism can only ever have any weight (beyond the previously mentioned “decision I dislike”) if a decision is made without firm legal reasoning. In this case, the legal reasoning was entirely sound. The wording of both the State Constitution and the marriage act were exceedingly clear and the court also drew on the decision made in Loving which established the right to marriage as a fundamental right. That is a well-reasoned, well-thought out judicial opinion. UPDATE: Not much to add to this one as the above comments still hold true but an additional point should be made. Laypeople often believe that judges have a great deal more lattitude in their decisions than they actually do. In fact, judicial decisions are constrained by a legal doctrine called stare decisis. Stare decisis is legal shorthand for the principle that similar cases will be decided in a similar manner (mutatis mutandis, obviously). What that means is that courts are divided into strict heirarchy. If, say, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals renders a decision, every court in that jurisdiction below them is obliged to render the same decision in same circumstances. This was part of what caused the Ricci case which got Justice Sotomayor in such trouble. Standing precedent (i.e. a case which established the policy of how a particular point of law is treated) said that tests which produced a disproportionate response could be thrown out, even if the disproportionate response was unintentional. Justice Sotomayor rightly applied the existing precedent in that case and kicked the case up to the SCOTUS so they could revise the precedent (which they duly did). The point here is that judges do not make their decisions by consulting a Magic 8-Ball. The law is a complex system of competing precedents, rules of procedure and presumptions. When the layman doesn't understand how that system works, the correct response is to ask for an explanation, not scream "ACTIVIST JUDGE!".

“Now people will be able to marry children/dogs/box turtles” ~ First off, there is no evidence whatsoever that gay people abuse children any more frequently than hetero people and a certain amount of evidence suggesting exactly the opposite. Secondly and more importantly, marriage is (shorn of the religious connotations) a state-sanctioned contract. Children cannot consent to a contract, nor to sexual intercourse so when one is asked “where do we draw the line?”, the appropriate answer would probably be “at people who are able to give consent”. While we’re on the subject, animals are also judged unable to give consent so leave that one at home too. UPDATE: This one is still true as well. Despite the pro-8 side's constant attempts to hammer it into the public mind, there is still no credible evidence that gay people abuse children any more than straight people.



“They’re free to marry someone of the opposite sex, like anyone else so same-sex marriage is a special right” ~ There is a reason the phrase “one size fits all” appears in no known constitution or bill of laws anywhere. If you wish to apply that argument, one can as easily shut down every church except the Satanists, not our fault if you choose to be something different or we could enforce vegetarianism, not our fault if you like a steak. Quite apart from the absurdity of the argument, it becomes rather more sinister when you flip it around: If the government can say I only have the right to marry a woman, why can it not say I only have the right to marry some women? Or this woman? Or this aardvark? A reasonable argument can be made for limiting marriage to two people out of sheer practicality and the need to maintain a tax base but beyond that, allowing the state to decide which people can marry sets a dangerous precedent. UPDATE: This one is still around, although people are becoming more aware of how absurd it is. The "special rights" argument is still ridiculous. If same-sex couples get the right to marry, it won't be limited to gay people. You, average straight person, will have the right to marry Bob from the office if you want to as well. What, that's still a special right because you wouldn't want to? Welcome to the gay couple's current position.

“Marriage has always been between a man and a woman” ~ So was child labour, so was miscegenation, so was slavery. Everything is “always” until we decide it’s something else. The satirist Terry Pratchett once described tradition as “the name we give to something daft we’ve been doing a long time”. His point was not that tradition is inherently a bad thing but that holding a tradition simply because it had always been a tradition was absurd. Until quite (shamefully) recently, it had “always” been legal to force sex upon one’s wife. And then the world grew up and realised that was foul and changed it. Humanity is not static, what was done does not have to continue to be done. If humanity had stuck with what it had “always” done, we would be eating our meat raw and living in a tree. Respect the last by all means but don’t be a slave to it and, when necessary, be willing to learn from it’s mistakes. UPDATE: Since Rick Warren was stupid enough to insist that marriage had been "one man, one woman" for "five thousand years", it's worth debunking that. For most of human history, polygamy was the rule, largely to cope with epidemic child mortality rates. In certain cultures, polygamy is still the rule. For example, Islam allows a man to take four wives (many Muslims do not do so but the option is clearly allowed by the Qu'ran). Then, in the western world, marriage became an exchange of property. The groom purchased the bride from the bride's father. In ancient Egypt, incest was common among the ruling class. In fact, the current arrangement of one-man and one-woman as relative equals is quite recent. Further, many cultures have or had same-sex marriage or local equivelant. Same-sex unions were recognised in ancient Greece and Rome at various times, parts of China and various parts of Europe. The emperors Nero (who was admittedly insane) and Elagabalus (who wasn't) both married men. While records from this period are patchy, the practice was evidently widespread enough that the Roman emperor Constantinius II felt the need to outlaw same-sex unions in 342ad. Finally, one only needs to look at the Sacred Band of Thebes (who also destroy the argument against gays in the military). The Sacred Band were an elite force of around 300 men in the 4th century Theban army. What made them unique was that the entire force consisted of around 150 bonded gay couples. The rationale was that, while a man may abandon his comrade, he would fight through hell to protect his love. It worked. The Sacred Band defeated a Spartan army three times their size at the battle of Tegyra. The one time they were defeated, at the battle of Chaeronea, they had to be massacred almost to a man. The Theban army, outmatched by Macedonia's invention of the phalanx, broke and fled the field with it's allies but the Sacred Band refused to surrender. They held their ground and fell where they stood. The only members of the Sacred Band taken as prisoners were those too injured to fight on. When Phillip II encountered the corpses of the Sacred Band (virtually the entire company, remember), "piled one upon another", he said "perish any man who suspects that these men did or suffered anything unseemly".

“God says it’s immoral” ~ Got God’s fax number? Willing to share it? Then it’s just your opinion. You may have an elderly book that says your god feels this way but I have a book which says otherwise and since neither of us can prove our case or disprove the others, let’s just leave everyone’s gods out of the equation. Or, to quote Sir Francis Walsingham: “Is your god such a worldly god that he must play at politics?”. UPDATE: As "Prop 8: The Musical" reminds us, the Bible also codemns homosexuality in exactly the same language as it condemns eating shellfish. The Bible also allows stoning one's wife, selling one's daughter into slavery and slavery in general.

“It’s unnatural” ~ So is wearing clothes, driving cars, modern medicine, corporations and American Idol. The life of man in a state of nature is nasty, brutish and short. The entirety of human existence has been a flight away from nature, a drive to modify nature to our own ends. That is what has made us the dominant species on the planet and, because we never know when to stop, is killing the planet. Homosexuality has been observed in at least a hundred species (last time I checked, it may be even more now). If animals in the state of nature do it, it is natural by definition. UPDATE: At time of writing, homosexual behaviour (that is, choosing to engage in same-sex coupling even when a mate of the opposite sex was available) has been observed in around 1500 species. In about a third of those, homosexuality is both common and well-documented. It's not difficult to find examples of this. From the German penguins who formed same-sex couples to near-uniformly bisexual bonobos to gay bison so common that Native American peoples have distinct names for them, homosexuality is natural. Case closed.

“It will encourage homosexuality” ~ You can’t encourage an inborn trait. All the
evidence, while not entirely conclusive yet, indicates that homosexuality is almost certainly innate. More to the point, what do you think is going to happen? Are otherwise hetero kids going to notice two guys getting married and think “I’m cured, I want the boys!”. If gay people have been being gay and living as gay and coming out as gay despite the ban on same-sex marriage and despite the phenomenal pressures to be straight and conform and despite the (decreasing but still very prevalent) threat of physical violence, we can safely assume that suppressing gay people hasn’t worked. UPDATE: Still true.

“It will destroy the sanctity of marriage” ~ OK, first off, let’s talk about that sanctity. Last time I checked, the divorce rate was around fifty percent and around eighty percent of married people (men and women) will cheat at some point in their married life so marriage doesn’t currently seem to be very sanctified anyway. Secondly, do you honestly believe that gay people getting married will have any effect on hetero marriages (beyond the minuscule effect on tax revenues)? Straight people are not going to stop getting married purely because marriage is no longer exclusive to them, the human mind doesn’t work that way. UPDATE: This one seems to be what the pro-8 forces are basing their argument on. Hilariously, they've run into a judge who seems determined to make them prove it. There are an increasing number of nations which have legalised same-sex marriage or (as my own UK has) an indentical-in-everything-but-name arrangement. Surprise, straight people in those nations are still getting married. The world keeps turning.

"If gay people can marry, they'll be raising children" ~ This one's a new entry with the prop-8 trial. And the only rational response is "So?". There's quite a lot of research on the effects that being raised by a same-sex couple has on children (just Google it, it's fascinating stuff) and, while the nature of sociological research means that uniform agreement is impossible, the vast preponderence of the research says that children raised by same-sex couples do just as well in every way as kids raised by hetero couples. In certain areas, they actually do slightly better (for example, kids raised by lesbian parents are less likely to develop mental illnesses). There's a tendancy among anti-gay people to claim that children need role models of both genders and that part's true, kids really do need role models of both male and female genders. Where they screw up is assuming that those roles have to be filled by parents, they don't. The child of a lesbian couple (for example) can just as easily gain a male role model from an elder sibling or relative, an involved teacher or coach or their parent's friends (few couples have friends exclusively of one gender). I was raised by my grandmother for most of my formative years and turned out fairly masculine, I even have a beard (the kind that grows on one's face). Moreover, if such people were honestly concerned about a child's wellbeing (rather than just having a convient excuse to be anti-gay), they would pay more attention to the plethora of research which says that the single best model for childrearing is the extended family. It has been proven time and again that the extended family, the traditional close-knit collection of parents, aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents where everyone pitches in to help raise a child, turns out the most well-adjusted children. That was the normal method of raising children for most of human history although now, as families now live apart more often, it's becoming rarer. Of course, one could also point out how much this argument is based on socially constructed gender roles but I have no desire to turn this into an essay on gender roles and societal expectations.
Further still, one could point out that, due to biology, most gay couples who have children choose to have them. Unlike a straight couple who can concieve a child by accident, a gay couple either has children from a previous relationship who they have chosen (and normally, had to fight) to keep with them or have gone through a very long and trying process to adopt or concieve a child. Thus, that child is very much wanted and loved. A child who feels loved, regardless of the gender of his/her parents will always turn out better adjusted emotionally than one who does not.

What The Hell, Maine?

I was going to use today's column to have some fun poking Rush Limbaugh over the sycophantic "interview" he preached on Fox news. But then, I heard that same-sex marriage has been overturned in Maine. Maine of all places. There are three areas that any bookie would have expected same-sex marriage to be uncontroversial: Southern California, Washington DC and New England. Well, Prop H8 took away same-sex marriage in Cali and left the couples that got married in that brief period it was legal (including my friend Buffy of The Gaytheist Agenda and her partner) in a kind of limbo. DC passed Ref 71 which, as I read the law, gives same-sex couples everything except the word "marriage". I can live with that, that's the same arrangement we have here in Britain. And then came the other result.

Et tu, Maine?

Let me get this straight: New England is one of the more reliably liberal areas of the country, the rest of New England has legalised same-sex marriage or something equivelent and 58% voted to decriminalise pot. Were all the potheads freakin' stoned and thought their "yes" meant they were affirming gay rights? Because the numbers I'm seeing (58% for decriminalising pot, 52% for screwing over gay people) means that at least some of the stoners must have voted for this abomination. Did we all take a big dose of hypocracy today, kiddies? Were you guys so high that you couldn't distinguish lies from facts? Could you not have waiting until after voting to take a half-dozen bong hits?

And don't think I'm exclusively picking on the stoners either. Everyone who voted for this absurdity needs to get clocked with a clue-by-four. I mean, you look at any open forum on gay marriage and lo, doth the bullshit wax forth. We've heard everything from teaching your kids sodomy (horseshit) to some weird guy on HuffPo who seemed to be under the impression that gay people could have offspring genetically engineered to actually be the biological children of two men or two women (which won't be a problem for at least twenty years and genetic engineering on that level was banned under Clinton anyway) to teaching your kids that gay people exist. I hate to tell that last group but they're going to find out sometime. It's weird how obsessed these people are with the sex act. They act like kids knowing gay people exist means having to explain the technicalities of gay sex to them. What's wrong with "some boys love other boys"?

And let's not even get started on the moral atrocity of putting human rights to the whims of the popular vote in the first place. Have we not got the message yet that the PoliSci fiction of the informed voter carefully weighing the issues is bullshit? The average voter is not very intelligent, actively distrustful of intelligence, distrustful of change, petty and cruel. No, I'm not a big believer in democracy, I've met too many humans. If you put the option of doing the right thing to the plebians, the plebians will usually vote against it. I back democracy not because it's a good option but because it's the least bad option. If it had been left to the popular vote, slavery would have continued much longer and interracial marriage might still be illegal. And 52% of Maine voters just voted to make it illegal for gay people to have the same chance at happiness (or permanency, depending on your experiance of marriage) as straight people. Stop letting the people decide human rights, the people are frickin' morons! They believe bullshit! The ridiculously monikered NOM puts out bullshit that churches will be forced to marry gay couples and over half the public laps it up! OM NOM NOM! Gay marriage threatens the sanctity of marriage? How the fuck does that work? Do you even understand what "sanctity" means or the fact that, for most of human history, marriage was the transfer of property? And don't give me that bullshit about your religious beliefs. My religious beliefs aren't being passed into law and mine don't involve violating the fucking Constitution. Yes, the state has a vested interest in promoting families, no arguement there. But did it ever occur to your brain-trists that A) gay people form familes too and B) no families are going to break up because the gay couple down the block are suddenly the married gay couple down the block.

I often wonder if gay people aren't being far too civil about this. The movement is trying to win their rights with lawsuits and public opinion. And don't misunderstand me, that's very laudable, very civilised and noble. But the public are morons and your SCOTUS is dominated by conservatives, at least two of whom don't give a shit about the law. There is something in the human psyche that seems resistant to treating something as a right unless it's forcibly torn from teh fist of the opressor. So I often wonder if the gay rights movement wouldn't have gotten further if there'd been a bit more forceful expression involved. The most conservative estimate of the gay population is about three million and an accurate estimate is probably three or four times that so let's have a Million Queer March on the Whitehouse. Let's put a few pink triangles on poles and set fire to them, just to make the comparison obvious to the terminally dense. Ellen is apparently going to be a judge on American Idol but let's get RuPaul on Monday Night Football, let's have Chris Kanyon doing play by play on Monday Night RAW. They think marriage is a step too far, let's go a mile too far, let's shove gay people down their throats until they're so sick of the subject that everyone grows the fuck up. Forget the lawsuit, let's have some fucking riots.

Cheeses fucking christ on toast; Maine, for fuck's sake!

Ever Get The Feeling, You Just Can't Win?

It's been an interesting week in politics. First off, President Obama was awarded the Nobel Prize For Peace. While it's fair to say that the award came as a surprise to pretty much everyone except possibly Bo Obama, the right's attack on, well, everyone, went totally beyond the pale. One suggested renaming it the "Yasir Arafat Prize", many suggested Obama should turn it down (it's unclear if that was even possible); a great many made the claim that since the Nobel Committee had awarded the prize to Jimmy Carter and Al Gore, that the prize was now meaningless. The presumptions here need to be dealt with in order.

Firstly, let's deal with the "questionable" awards of the past. Yasir Arafat won the award in conjunction with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres for their attempts to find a solution to the Israel-Palestine mess. So if one is going to decry Arafat's award, one also has to decry the award going to Rabin and Peres. I could at least respect such a "pox on both their houses" approach as intellectually consistent. Jimmy Carter won the award for decades spent promoting peace and alleviating poverty. Both these concepts seem to be anathema to the right these days but those of us in the sane world tend to think they're good things. Many of the right-wing attacks on Carter pointed out that he was an ineffectual one-term president. To which, the only reasonable response is"So what?". It's an example of the kind of blinkered US-centrism that has made the American right so despised in the rest of the world, that we should be expected to disregard Carter's other achievments because he failed in the presidency. Outside the United States, Jimmy Carter enjoys near-global love and respect and has for years. The Nobel Prize, while much deserved, was only the icing on the cake. So Carter eminently deserved the award. And yet, it was interpreted as an award for being Not Bush. Then came the slams at Al Gore. Now, again, I'm aware that the US right prefers to deny the fact of global warming but in the sane world, we accept that it is happening, that humans are largely to blame and that we desperately need to do something about it. Al Gore has spent decades trying to get the world to wake the fuck up about global warming. While he never claimed to invent the internet, he did champion the legislative tools which expanded DARPAnet into the modern internet (along with the technical achievments of Tim Berners-Lee and the guys at MIT), something which has transformed life more than anything since the invention of the automobile. So again, we have someone who throughly deserved the award and again, we have someone whose award was interpreted as being Not Bush. Then there was the argument that the Nobel Committee are biased because they've awarded the prize to more liberals than conservatives. Really, this says far more about the mindset of conservatives: That they deserve equal prizes just for showing up.

Was the Peace Prize ironic, given two ongoing wars? Absolutely and that irony was lost on no-one. Was the Nobel Prize premature? Certainly. However, the intention seems to be that, by giving Obama the award at this point, he will be forced to act in a way which makes him worthy of it. Also, the hypocracy of Republicans who cheered when the US lost it's opportunity to host the Olympics and booed when the president of the USA won the Nobel Prize has been lost on no-one except them.

Then we had the ongoing healthcare clusterfuck. There is a scene in the film adaption of "Interview With The Vampire" where a helpless and naked victim is surrounded on a Paris stage by a dozen or more hungry vampires. They pause for a moment, letting us register her terror and vulnerability. Then they fall on her, a dozen vampiric rats strugging for a spare inch of flesh. That's the image that comes to mind when I think of healthcare in the USA. The free market only works when you're free to walk away from it. When walking away from the market means great risk to your life and/or health, the market isn't free. That's basic Keynesian economics. And so, when it came to reforming healthcare, we got... what? I'm still not entirely sure wher this disgusting process of sausage-making is going. For reasons best known to Obama, the single-payer option (true universal coverage, which works pretty well here in the UK) which was the genuinely left-wing option was taken off the table before negotiation even started which has allowed the right (and their Big Insurance paymasters) to paint the limited incremental Public Options as something to the left of Stalin. And I'm not just talking about the Teabag crown here (the latest is that Glenn Beck claims the Million Moron March totalled 8.2 million people and was led by Moses. Then he cried). Mainstream Conressional Republicans are arguing that a Public Option would amont to government takeover of healthcare. Oh, and Big Insurance has already effectively promised that rates will continue to skyrocket regardless. Only in the USA are the people so terrified of their government that they won't let it do anything.

Then there was Orly Taitz. The US's most high-profile racist and queen of the (racist) Birther Movement was fined twenty grand, essentially for contempt of court and wildly unethical practice in violation of all legal standards. Orly effectively told the judge to shove it and accused him of being part of a conspiracy to surpress her. I'm starting to think this woman is clinically ill, the accusation that any detractor is part of a conspiracy against them. Orly actually presents a problem to us. The problem is that, the more we point out that the Birther Movement is entirely founded on the racist assumption that a black man can't possibly be a "natural-born citizen", the more it allows the right, always eager to nail itself to the cross, to claim that we are painting any criticism as racist. It's absurd, naturally. We know that not all criticism is race-based and most of us are getting pretty adept at spotting the code words these days ("welfare", "community" and these days "ACORN").

Then there was Obama's pondering whether to put more troops into Afghanistan. Um, why are we fighting the war in Afghanistan again? Yes, I know it was a response to teh horror of 9/11, I'm actually not going to criticise Bush for that as I think any nation capable of responding militarily would have done so but what is the objective supposed to be here? Are we trying to get Al Queda or the Taliban or both? Are we going to try turning Afghanistan into a western-style democracy? Since we are fighting a war in a country which has ever been the graveyard of empires, what is the final END > IF here?

Finally, there was President Obama's address to his gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans supporters. I'm not sure what to say about this one. It was a largely form speech, the kind where you only have to change a few particulars to fit the occasion. Given the cavalcade of catastrophes dumped on Obama's lap by the previous administration, I suspect most are willing to give him a little time to get to gay issues (specifically, rather than genpop issues which also affect gay people, such as healthcare) but, at the same time, they would also like to see some movement on those issues, no matter how slow it has to be to accomodate the president's busy schedule. Personally, I want the asinine Don't-Ask, Don't-Tell policy repealed or nearly so by the New Year. That's my personal benchmark. While I know Obama is not a supporter of equal marriage rights and so a push for those rights shouldn't be expected from him, I also want DOMA repealed or overturned by the end of his first term. I suspect Obama would like to leave the choice of whether to push for DOMA's overturn until after the midterms but DC's move to legalise same-sex marriage may force his hand. The problem Obama has here is that there really is no upside for him. I can sit here and say that I believe legalising same-sex marriage to be a legal and moral imperative (yes, I think it is immoral to deny same-sex couples the rights of marriage, conservatives don't have an exclusive claim on morality) but I'm not trying to be re-elected and wouldn't stand a chance if I ever stood. For Obama, if he comes out strongly against overturning DOMA, he pisses off the LGBT activists and allies who worked so tirelessly to help elect him. They won't jump to the Republicans but they might well stay home in 2012. On the other hand, if he comes out too strongly in favour of repealing DOMA, he alienates the moderates (forget the Religious Reich, they already want him dead). In addition to that, Obama's DOJ has argued in favour of DOMA (their obligation, as I understand it) and done so in the most reprehensible terms (certainly not their obligation). How Obama intends to square this circle is anyone's guess.

And we haven't even had time to get to Oklahoma attempting to brand a scarlet A on the foreheads of those seeking abortions; the increasingly chance of war with Iran; Mike Moore's latest film; Alan Grayson's gobsmacking counter-attack on right-wing smears or Tom Delay leaving Dancing With The Stars. What a wild week!