Heartbreaking

I don't know why, but right now I am more affected emotionally by the Prop 8 goings-on than I have been at least since the election.

There's so much anger on the other side about the possibility of an overturn, and I feel that so much of this anger comes from misinformation and ignorance... People don't understand how our political system works, people don't understand that gay people are just like everyone else, people don't understand that same-sex-headed families deserve access to the same civil protections as others.

This just breaks my heart. It is sometimes very difficult to feel happy about any little thing when there are whole segments of society operating to deny me and mine rights that they believe are fundamental and innate! By that kind of logic, yes, we are second-class citizens. I try very hard not to feel victimized by any of this nonsense, and just to live my life, but some days it's really hard, and today is one of those days.

I'm sure some people are thinking, "Hey, you're in Massachusetts now, so why not go ahead and get married?" And I do want to speak to that... We really do want to, but it's just so complicated! The only way I think it makes sense for us to do it is if we stay here in MA for school. Even so, despite the fact that there is full equal marriage here, it will be very, very complicated. We will have to file our state taxes as "Married filing separately", but our federal taxes will still be filed under "Single". For the purposes of anything administered by the state, we will be a married couple; for all federal purposes, we will have no legal standing whatsoever towards each other... Additionally, it will be our responsibility to keep track of what's what, and where.

We would also lose the opportunity to draw up the kinds of legal contracts that would protect us more generally, since those contracts are filed with localities and would be redundant to the marriage compact. However, it is the practice of most other localities and states to honor those kinds of general civil agreements, such as power of attorney or medical-decision agency, no matter which state they originate in. Many states either have laws specifically preventing the recognition of gay marriages from other states, or no specific legal obligation to uphold them. Technically speaking, standard contracts would protect us better in these cases than a proper marriage would, since there are few standing legal precedents for denying the validity of civil contracts on account of the sexuality of the people involved. Unless, of course, there are children involved, in which case lots and lots of places will deny the validity of legal same-sex civil agreements.

So as a married couple in Massachusetts, all our legal rights and obligations toward each other will dissolve every time we leave the state. For example, here in MA, our health insurance would be administered based on our status as a married couple; due to that, there's really no guarantee that it would have to be recognized as valid in other states. Just one example. Say we had kids... here in MA, our kids would belong to both of us under our marriage. Every damn time we left the state, say we wanted to take our kids to Disney World, we'd have to worry about whether the place we traveled to would recognize our shared parentage. People who are parents should consider this.... it hits home. And the opposition says that they want to protect families?

Even worse would be if we get married here and end up moving elsewhere for school. New York's public entities are under executive order to recognize gay marriages from other locales, but private entities (like some insurers, for example, but not others-it depends on how much New York state law regulates their business) are under no such obligation. That seems like a whole new can of worms. And DC has pretty strong domestic partnership law, but it's possible we'd have to dissolve our marriage (i.e. get a divorce!) in order to register as domestic partners in DC. It's also possible that we'd have to live in Maryland, where the domestic partner laws are very limited and where gay marriages from other places are expressly not recognized.

So, I'm just so disheartened about this today. Which is sad, because the opportunity to be legally married to my wife should be a thing of happiness, not sorrow.

What a crazy, wonderful, and very sad day.

Today, November 15th, 2008, was:

The day I sent my first law school applications in for review.

The day I got my components back in working order.

The day I saw hundreds of thousands around the US and the world take to the streets in the hope that people like me will eventually be able to be legally married to the ones we love.

The day I saw up close all the different kinds of people engaged in that fight, and knew two things for certain - there is nothing dividing us, not race, religion, or anything else, that can't be overcome; and yes, it really is just a matter of time, and the clock, history, and now the momentum are all on our side.

Today was the day I felt so proud of Katie for marching alone in Phoenix. I mean, she didn't go by herself, she was with friends. but nobody dragged her there. She got up early and went because she wanted to go and thought it was important, and she marched from the City Hall to the Capitol and back (if you know Phoenix, that's hella far). That's my girl. :)

Today was my good friend's 30th birthday. She's accomplished so much, I hope she's proud of herself, though I know those warm fuzzies are in short supply these days. Anyways, I'm proud of her.

Today was, sadly, also the day I lost my sweet, funny little birdie. She died sometime this evening and Katie just found her a bit ago. I'm still all weepy over it and probably will be for days. If any of you all out there are thinking to yourselves, "What the heck? A bird? Who cares?" let me tell you her story. Try not to get all weepy yourself! :)

Her name was Saavik, (after the Star Trek character. Thanks, mom) and she was a beautiful blue-fronted Amazon parrot. My mom got her when I was 6 or 7 years old, and boy, was she a talker... she had quite the vocabulary in those days. I think the previous owner said she was somewhere between 3 and 5, so, let's say she was a little bit younger than me today, probably close to 30. If you don't know, those sorts of birds can live to be 60 and older if they don't have any health problems.

Unfortunately, Saavik did have health problems. When I was 10, and I'll say she was about 7 or 8, she got lead poisoning from chewing on her cage. She had seizures and was foaming at the mouth, and my mom and I rushed her to the vet, where she was diagnosed as very near death. We were told that she could probably be saved, but the treatment would be extremely expensive. My mom was beside herself and somehow talked my grandparents into coughing up many thousands of dollars for the treatment and medication that she required. She stayed at the vet for two weeks, got a little better (out of the woods anyways) and we were finally allowed to take her home.

She was never the same again, however. The poisoning had crippled her for life, and stripped her of her vocabulary. When we got her back, she was so weak. She couldn't even stand and learned to drag herself forward with her beak. For a long time, she lived in a little kennel in my mom's bedroom, because she was too weak to climb or move her wings or do any of the stuff that permits birds to get around in a cage. For months, we had to give her physical therapy: we would lay her on her little bird back and massage her twisted little feet and work her little bird legs for her. We had to hand feed her, bathe her, do everything for her. In those days, we took her everywhere. Sweet little soul. She took it all in stride.

As time passed, she improved a lot. She could never flap her wings again, but she eventually could sort of shrug them and that was really cute. Her little feet were twisted and gnarled for life from the paralysis, but eventually she stood upright just fine and could walk around on the ugly little things, in time gaining enough balance to stand on a perch. The amazing thing about her was her toughness and brightness, she just kept going, and every single thing that made her weak, she compensated for in some other way. Since her feet didn't really work, she used her beak to climb, to balance, and to steady her movements, and after a while got a nice muscular neck going, so she could do everything pretty much as well as any normal (less special) bird. :)

She never got her vocabulary back, but in time she created a whole new lexicon of sounds and would whistle a whole song for you if you gave her the chance. Her favorite was the wolf whistle, which she was just showing off for Katie's mom the other day. She loved all kinds of music, and more than anything, she loved to dance. Her favorite thing in the whole world was if you'd come up to her cage and whistle or hum, and sway back and forth from side to side. She would just dance and dance, swaying right along with you, doing this crazy thing where she turned her head back at a most improbable angle over and over again, shrugging her little shoulders. Aw hell, I miss her so much already. I'm totally crying now.

Saavik lived with my grandma for a long time after my mom died, until my grandma died in fact, and the two of them just brought each other such joy. Now that is a memory that makes me smile. My grandma loved the crap out of that bird, pretty much everyone did who spent any time around her. Just ask Katie if she was any kind of bird lover before, or would've described a bird as having any kind of bird personality, much less an incredible one. LOL! Katie remarked on how much joy and fun we all had together, and how the bird is probably now reunited with my grandma and my cousin Virginia who just passed away, squawking while they try to play cards.

I have a million memories of the bird that make me want to bawl right now, but that will no doubt make me laugh my head off one day. I won't bore you with all of them, but I will share just one. One night, Katie and I are making dinner, and I start singing the guitar riff from "Wipe-out" to the bird (one of her favorites). The bird loves this stuff and starts to dance like a crazy bird. I get a big kick out of this and go sing to her and dance with her at the edge of the kitchen, where her cage stands. She loves this and starts singing along, and she and I are just singin' and dancin' up a blue streak. Then our fat cat Cecil gets jealous and decides she wants in on the action, jumps up on the table next to me and starts standing on her hind legs and pawing at the air and mewling along with us. The three of us are dancing and singing our asses off, Katie and I are dying laughing, and Katie just says, "I love you guys".

That's the kind of joy she brought into our home. I will probably write more about her later (believe it or not), but for now I'm honestly just exhausted and heartbroken. She was so sweet, so personable and funny, a tough little cookie, and just a bundle of happiness for the cost of a peanut. And that's why she will forever be missed.



In honor of Saavik, who was much loved and made us so happy, here's the close of a poem Percy Shelley wrote in honor of another happy bird:

We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet, if we could scorn
Hate and pride and fear,
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know;
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

What's the Best Way to Interrogate a Kid? Juliet Lapidos | Slate.com

Whew.... been following this case with something of a heavy heart and thinking about this article will just rock you. At least it has done so to me. WTF!

An 8-year-old Arizona boy charged with murdering his father and another man appeared in court on Monday. Police say the boy confessed to shooting the two men with a .22-caliber gun, but his defense attorneys told reporters that "there could have been improper interview techniques done." What's the "proper" way to interrogate a kid?

Read the full article here.

>: / Language Alert! Anger Alert! Prop 8 and GLBT Betrayal.

All this talk about Prop 8 is really just making me sad and angry. Yes, there's hope, it's only a matter of time, it is an inevitability, the legal arguments are all there, eventually our cause will win even in the harsher courts of public opinion, yada yada yada. So why do I feel so fucked up? Why do I feel so damned betrayed when I hear my well-intentioned gay brethren say that we have to stop suing and make nice with the public before we can win the courts? That's just ignorant. That's mere denial. Change of this caliber never begins with the public, though it is important to note that it is eventually cemented and flourishes inside public opinion. To be frank, I don't really care if we piss people off by being litigious, because the court is where things happen! If it were up to the public at large to change things, we would all be screwed. It requires leadership for a nation of this size and diversity to change fundamentally. The herd, unfortunately, will not lead itself to the pasture.

Look... It does me no good to walk down the street and get 20 people to agree that I am a perfectly nice lesbian and a decent American who has the right to marry my partner of many years. There are another 20 (at least) waiting around the corner to try to ex-gay me, to physically assault me, to call me a fat dyke, to tell me I'm confused, to explain why their deity has compelled them to vote away my rights again and again, to shriek that I am taking something special away from them, to shield their children from my gaze, to openly express distaste, and to impose their personal beliefs on my civil life. Somewhere, my gay brethren assert, there are another ten lurking about in the shadows, another ten who are ambivalent, or on the fence, or don't really care what anybody does, or sort of think that being gay is gross but don't really mind if we want to get married, or think that marriage is kind of stupid and that it's odd we would desire it, or "have some gay friends" and are sympathetic but kind of think that marriage is a hetero thing. These ten, my comrades assert, are the prizes. Whoever wins their support will have the ever-so-treasured majority of public opinion.

Um, fuckin' ridiculous. I reject that completely. It's supposed to be my job to convince people who don't really give a shit about anything, or whose distaste for me is merely mild or generic or solely secular in nature, that I'm a whole person and an equal American citizen? Hell with that. My optimistic brethren assert that simply by living long enough among these 10 people, and even among some of the nastier 20, that American gays will win hearts and minds, like the nice and funny gays on Will and Grace did. We're harmless, we're normal, we're jolly, we sweetly and docilely wait on the sidelines for our fair shake. We would never sue you. Come see us in our natural habitats, from WeHo, the Village, and the Castro, on into the suburbs and rural America. Gosh, we're just like you!

This may sound terrible... but I don't need any of those 50 people to be OK with my sexuality, my relationships, my personal "choices", or my "lifestyle". Granted, it can be surprising, encouraging, and make a great difference in my day, or my life, when I encounter the supportive ones; however, that support neither solely nor primarily endows me with the freedom to live my life as I see fit, no matter how it alleviates my burden and lifts my spirits. Only the rule of law can guarantee that, and when it comes to minority rights, that rule is not up to the majority; thank goodness, because the majority rarely espouses the rights of the minority, particularly in the case where as pervasive an influence as the Church has convinced them that we are taking something away from them that God gave especially to them. I do not blame all believers, and I have been personally buoyed by many who gave their time, money, and understanding to our cause. In fact, I don't much tend to blame the people themselves, even the nasty ones. They are only repeating what they have been taught, on the behalf of an Authority that they believe is absolute.

Which brings me to my point... there will be plenty of people who can never be convinced that we deserve equality, just as surely as there are blatant racists in our country today, even after all of the progress that has been made. The black man sitting at the lunch counter didn't need the white patrons to feel great about him sitting there, though it surely couldn't have hurt; he needed the power of the law, the edicts of the court behind him, to make certain they knew that no matter what they felt about it, he had the right to sit there just as they did. The black girl ascending the steps into the school filled with white students didn't need the other students or their parents to be okay with her presence, although if they had been, maybe she wouldn't have needed the armed detail; she needed only for them to understand that the law was on her side, and she was acting as it was her right to do. This was her right, which many would say was "God-given"; this was her right, in fact hers by birth as an American citizen, anyone's religious beliefs notwithstanding.

Just as relevant, if perhaps less palatable to many: John Lawrence and Tyron Gardner didn't need the Texas cops who barged into the apartment to be happy about catching them entwined; they simply needed the court to make it perfectly clear that what they were doing was no crime. Remember this, if you start to feel too optimistic about our current situation; these men were arrested ten years ago, and the case was decided a touch over five years ago. Up until that point, it was still illegal to engage in homosexual activity in several states. FIVE YEARS AGO. In fact, the 2000 measure to ban gay marriage in the California civil code, with the much-touted 61%-39% result, took place when the federal legal precedent was that gay folks had no particular rights to privacy or anything else that others enjoyed. Not terribly surprising, right? What I do find surprising is that now, eight years later, gays are no longer on trial in the legal sense, even if they remain so in the sociocultural sense, and yet, in eight years, even with our personal lives decriminalized, we've only managed to convince 9% of Californians that gay marriage is OK? Even with us "living amongst them" in domestic partnerships, first the "lite" variety, then the full-blown sort established in 2005? And even including the unknown, but possibly significant, percentage of Californians who had no problem adjusting the civil code but balked at amending the Constitution?

These people, the Californians, as a whole possibly some of the most tolerant and socially moderate people in the country, are the ones I'm supposed to trust with the basic expressions of my humanity? Can I vote to only trust half of them? The other half, or just a bit more in fact, will plainly not be reliable in that regard. But I'm supposed to break 'em down and convince them, of what, that I'm cool? Not gonna prey on their daughters? My gay male friends are OK to teach their children? And.... you want me to shout louder than the preachers in their pulpits? Because no matter how long we "live next door" or "work at the same place" or "send our kids to the same school", that sound of entitlement coming from their faiths is one I can not drown out, no matter how normal and adorable I become.

Know what? Thanks to the ACLU and friends, I won't have to, because the rule of law is on my side... and that means that someday, being accepted for who I am can go back to being a simple joy, as opposed to an obnoxious and burdensome agenda.

Oh, the irony.

Tom Toles at the Washington Post

The 6-4 Black Guy | HuffPost

This story breaks my heart, because I know it to be true.

For those who think racism is dead in this country and everyone now gets the same fair shake, run your eyes over this. Feel the fear, dread, and uncertainty. Think about "loving the bogeyman", the generic man of whom everyone is afraid, and who is everyone's target.

Ashley Todd

Ugh, I don't even know what to say. Racial, political, cuckoo, or just a desperate plea for attention?

UPDATE: cuckoo.

This is just gross, dude...

Michigan GOP Using Foreclosures To Block Black Voters | HuffPost

Because, you know, they were foreclosed on, so their addresses of record aren't good anymore.

Angry-Making, Part II

Just gotta say, this is getting to be a kee-razy election in these last few weeks....

People are PO'd all over the place. Did you see these clips of the Repubs' rally today in Wisconsin, where the odds are now in Obama's favor?

Video selections from the rally DailyKos

Jeez, man, you'd think that the political ascent of a liberal was the end of the world. Oh, wait, I used to belong to the group that thought that was true, and that was over fifteen years ago. Looks like the rhetoric hasn't changed. Whatever.

I'm just a tad freaked out over the tone this all has taken on... fear and anger over the economy are gonna hike up the stakes for everyone on both sides, and open up opportunities to twist the hearts of the voter in either direction. Gross. Nobody wins when things are this keyed-up.

Speaking of being PO'd: Dammit, ACORN, WTF? I hope that it turns out that these apparent commissions of fraud are the work of rogue activists, and not something that the organization or the local offices condoned. Quite frankly, the allegations and investigations are becoming kind of widespread to be nothing more than isolated chicanery, but that could be panic or political backlash, or so I'd like to believe. Anyway the name of the organization may have been irreparably tarnished... I've been so proud of my long work with ACORN in new voter registration and rebuilding in New Orleans. Now what? Do I take those credentials off of my law school applications? Thanks for making the rest of us look like a bunch of dirty cheaters, whomever you may be, you schmucks.

Angry-Making

It's driving me nuts that everyone can suddenly see just far enough to blame the sub-prime mortgage crisis for the current financial situation, but not any farther to the factors of greedy inflation and lack of regulation that truly created the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the first place. They point the finger at the lenders and buyers and governmental mandates and "good intentions" involved in purchases of less-than-affordable housing by less-than-affluent buyers, but NOT all the way back to the simple importance of housing, and to the house-flippers and other investors who, let me make this very clear, artificially drove up home prices in the first place.

News flash - housing is just not meant to be an easy short-term investment for people who never intend to occupy. It is meant to be a good long-term investment for people who take shelter there, for people who call the place home. One could even say that the tendency to look at housing as anything more than shelter is the immediate cause of most housing-related problems in America today. I mean, I get it. If you're rich, you deserve access to cooler housing than us po'folk. Right on. But should that mean that if you're poor, you deserve no access to any kind of housing? Or, worse yet, if you are solidly middle class, you should not be able to afford to buy a home for yourself & your family merely because others (most of whom already own their family homes) were "smart" (greedy) enough to buy second, third and fourth "investment homes" when they were affordable for normal folks?

Stay with me here - this kind of activity reduces supply AND drives up demand. It creates, from thin air, a housing bubble. And it drives regular people out of the housing marketplace, which is then filled with vacant houses for sale at inflated prices. Regular people wait this kind of market out if they can; if they can't, because (duh) housing is something that some people actually need, they get themselves into mortgages where they will be upside-down in a heartbeat once the bubble bursts. They do this because, they are told, housing is always a good investment. They believe that the value can only go up. But like so many other investments, this is only incontrovertibly true in the long term. And who in their right mind would want to hang on to a house for 10 or 20 years? Maybe only a family who'd want to live there.

Those folks, the ones who deserve access to reasonably-priced housing and happened into the market at the wrong time, are the ones who are getting thoroughly screwed at this point. They bought into the system way too high and their lives are getting yanked out from under them. I don't feel too sorry for people who had their homes before all this mess and are seeing the value fall; the value should fall. The market is just correcting itself after the hideous, artificially-produced bubble. Very few, if any, of this group should see their home values fall below what they were prior to this wicked boom, unless they live on a foreclosure-riddled block. Too, I may feel bad for them on account of other crappy economic factors, but I think they're gonna be okay when it comes to home values.

So all these conservative pundits today are smugly deriding the "good intentions" of "liberal" lawmakers who wanted affordable housing options for sub-prime buyers. It goes something like this....

Those liberal bastards! They wanted people to have shelter, and to gain some equity on that shelter! Those bleeding-heart rats! Didn't they know that all the good real-estate was snatched up early by those smart house-flipping investors? Maybe we did go ahead and sell some of our $100k houses to those po'folk for $200k, and the $200k houses to the regular folk for $350k. But we made a tidy profit! That's our right in the free market! And we stand by as those homeowners continue to get thrown out on the street, en masse, across the country, blowing their brains out, weeping, and praying, telling their children it'll be OK. When the market collapses as a result, we adapt quickly, learn to ignore our cherished free-market principles, and cry foul. Not on behalf of those regular folks, or those formerly and newly poor folks, who have lost everything; on behalf of our wallets, bruised as a result of their vital losses. After all, who could have predicted that the bubble would burst? Who could have predicted that mortgage-backed securities would someday reflect so little value? There's no way we would have undertaken that kind of risk. Never mind that the market is all about risk, that we love risk when it profits us; we despise it when it bankrupts us. That's when the government should step in, to save us from economic crisis once it's already too late, not to regulate the nature of the profits and prevent the crisis in the first place!

I have never seen such an infestation of red-tie, free-market suits crawling to the teat of socialist government controls. John McCain wants to nationalize mortgages and subsidize the ridiculously inflated principal amounts that caused this mess???? Are you fucking kidding me? That is the most socialist thing I've ever heard, you pinko commie. How about if you had simply allowed the regulations that would have prevented outrageous home value inflation and thereby steered us clear of this bullshit in the first place? You hypocrite. You want to swipe up that suggestion of the "most liberal" Senators you constantly deride, who would have been perfectly happy to regulate the housing market when it was needed, and claim it as your own "new idea" because you think it will sound good to the voters, even though it stands in grave opposition to every goddamn thing you stand for? You swine. How very "bi-partisan" it is of you to lay claim to the ideas of your opposition, you bloated, arrogant, bloviating shell of the man you once were.

So. I'm mad. I'm just a dumb kid, really, and I saw this coming. Just like the fucking war... No one in their right mind believed that Saddam had crafted WMD from thin air in the decade following the first Gulf War. How is it our ennobled leaders can't see this crap coming when regular folks who simply pay attention can? And when, oh when, will we stop this madness of letting the profiteers get away with murder when the markets are bouncing and then breaking the fall once their safely-banked profits have vampirically drained the value from everything? Will the enormity of this situation finally teach Americans the lesson that there is so much more value in regulating long-term stability than in permitting the short-term opportunity for the rich to get richer? Can we use this golden opportunity to make it clear, at last, that the chance for some to own the whole damned pie is not more important than the need for everyone to get, and hang onto, their own little crumbs of the crust?

Oh, God.
I think I know the answer.

News of the Day: W....T....F Edition

These are all stories I read today.

Los Angeles man kills family, then self, despondent over financial difficulties

Ohio woman, 90, attempts suicide after foreclosure

Eastern Mass. woman shoots self as mortgage company forecloses on house

And, just for good measure...
Lehman sought millions for execs while seeking aid

Revisiting our textbooks

Why are so many Americans clueless about American history and civics?

Casual efforts to administer to regular citizens the exact same exam questions that a naturalized citizen must take yield dismal results. Lots and lots of people, even people who vote in every election, don't realize that the President is not elected by popular vote. Most of these people can not name who would ascend to the Presidency if both the Pres and VP died, and some of those who can name the position are unsure who currently fills it. From all I can tell, a majority of Americans do not know how many Justices make up the Supreme Court.

These are just the civic issues... the historical issues may be even worse. Do you know who was President during World War I? The naturalized citizen up the street, who gave up their life in another place because they believed in the promise of America, does. Ask an American to list the Presidents in order and many will fall off after #1. Most will quit or be dead wrong after 2, 3, or 4. Better yet, ask them to give the Presidents in reverse order, starting with George W. Bush. An occasional American does not know the name of the current President, and many do not know the name of the current VP. Again, the further along you get, the quicker they start dropping. Here's a fun one: who did America fight in the war for our independence? IF you'd answered France, you'd be so very wrong, or funny, but you'd also be very far from alone.

Why is it we as Americans do not feel compelled to understand these basic things about our own country? When we say that America is the greatest nation on earth, is it just because we were lucky enough to be born here, or do we stand for something more, for our own common ideals? To claim the exceptionalism of America without understanding what makes our country great is bald nationalism, which has a long history of turning great countries to piles of rubble. Let's not do that, hmmm?