good - Newly elected SF mayor Newsom is doing this, despite the fact that he's a married heterosexual Irish Catholic, specifically because he was at Bush's 2004 State of the Union address, and was so offended that Bush would even bring this up during the State of the Union that he was determined to defy him.
- For symbolic and emotional reasons, the first couple married were a pair of lesbian activists who'd just celebrated their 51st anniversary together.
- Newsom's legal justification is that he is predicting that since the California state constitution also guarantees equal rights to all citizens under the law, just like Massachusetts does, that a state supreme court challenge to the ban on gay and lesbian marriage would have the same result as has happened in Massachusetts.
- Senator Barney Frank (D. Mass) called Newsom up - not the other way around, so presumably somebody tipped Frank off. (For those of you who don't recognize him, Barney Frank was the first openly-gay member of Congress.) He was not calling to say thank you or congratulations, he was calling to tell Newsom to knock it off, to not do this, because "the time wasn't right."
(Presumably what he meant by that is, "For God's sake, man, don't do this, it pretty much guarantees that Bush will be re-elected." And it will; the polls are pretty clear and unambiguous on this. If this country continues to slide towards a militarist single-party police state with canceled elections, one that may well end up putting gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transsexuals, and transvestites among others into concentration camps, it will almost certainly end up doing so because GLBTT activists misread the public and therefore chose the exactly wrong moment to provoke a backlash.) - The first wedding was done in near absolute secrecy. Once it was announced, opponents tried to get a court order to stop any more such marriage licenses from being issued, but the only judge available told them he wouldn't hear their case before Tuesday. So at the very least, this is going to go on through Tuesday.
Another amusing detail from that story: to protest her decision, one man brought his horse to the courthouse and asked for a marriage license. She declined, not on bestiality grounds, oh no, she didn't have to do anything that simple. She went for an elegant solution. She pointed out that at the age of 8, the horse was under age. Good thing the guy didn't bring a parrot, eh?
All of the recent legal good news for gays and lesbians -- and it is good news, however temporary -- has some people, both in the polyamorous communities and in the Utah polygamous communities, thinking that finally, their day has come. To that end, back on January 12th a Utah couple filed for a marriage certificant for a third adult, (more on this later), hoping that theirs would be the test case that would legalize plural marriage between adults, hoping to base their appeal on the recent Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v Texas, #02-102 (2003) that overturned state sodomy laws.
With absolute 100% confidence I predict that this will not work. Whether you call it polygamous, polyamorous, or polyfidelitous, plural marriage is illegal in the United States and unless at least two more very liberal Supreme Court justices are appointed, it's going to stay that way. And I just don't see that happening any time soon. If you don't agree with me, you just don't understand the law. ( Read more...Collapse )
Personal update: I give up, I can't go without the pay any longer. It's going to hurt like slow steady torture to go to work tonight and tomorrow, but I really don't have any choice in the matter. Oh, well. As the Dread Pirate Roberts said in The Princess Bride, "Life is pain, Princess. Anybody who says otherwise is selling something." Or as Gina Davis hissed at her character's kid in The Long Kiss Goodnight, "Life is pain. You just get used to it."