Sunday, November 9, 2008

Check Out This Site

Change.Gov is the best sign of good things to come. I found this link at Big Yellow Forehead's place.

What Stella Said

Stella said...

On behalf of California, I apologize. We have a lot of non-Californians in our state that don't understand our culture and values. Of course I voted against banning gay marriage.

Attorney General Jerry Brown, who was our governor and may be running again in 2010, said that he would stand by the voters' choice, but anyone who got married when the California Supreme Court sanctioned gay marriage would continue to be recognized married. He was against the measure.

Ghost dancing is absolutely correct perhaps the issue of Church-State separation is what truly needs to be examined here. What got voted in were Christian values. Our Founding Fathers were Deists, particularly Thomas Paine, George Washington, and James Madison.

So, I am particularly angered by this proposition and consider the entire matter unconstitutional in violating the Fourth Amendment. The wonderful Margaret Cho stated: I am totally disgusted and furious that now there is a ban on gay marriage in California. So my happiness about Obama is tempered by my anger about Prop 8. Still, we cannot give up on the struggle. This is just a reason to fight harder to make gay marriage legal again. We can overturn the ban. We lost this by such a narrow margin. It was only a few votes. We could take it back.

I feel the same way.

There is already a lawsuit pending by the ACLU and LAMBDA, among others, appealing the vote. Last night, there were 3,000 people in the streets protesting the Yes on 8 win and strong support to overturn this mess: Numerous public figures have spoken out against Proposition 8, including President-elect Barack Obama, Vice President-elect Joseph Biden... It's not over.

And then Stella said this...


Blogger Stella said...

Last decent Republican:

At 85, after a life in politics spanning five decades (he retired from the Senate in 1987), Mr. Conservative has found himself an unlikely new career: as a gay rights activist. While that's not his sole pursuit – he returned to Capitol Hill yesterday to testify in favor of scenic overflights of the Grand Canyon – in recent years he's championed homosexuals serving in the military and has worked locally to stop businesses in Phoenix from hiring on the basis of sexual orientation. This month he signed on as honorary co-chairman of a drive to pass a federal law preventing job discrimination against homosexuals. The effort, dubbed Americans Against Discrimination, is being spearheaded by the Human Rights Campaign Fund, the influential gay lobbying organization.

"The big thing is to make this country, along with every other country in the world with a few exceptions, quit discriminating against people just because they're gay," Goldwater asserts. "You don't have to agree with it, but they have a constitutional right to be gay. And that's what brings me into it."

Her comments were in response to this post by me:


I'm furious that in a moment when we made history by proving to ourselves and the world that we have overcome our racism enough to elect a black President, we want to rescind the civil rights of gay Americans who live in California, a state we like to think of as progressive. I know there were several other states that passed similar measures to prohibit the marriage of gay couples, but they are not states with the reputation for tolerance and inclusion that Californian has. Rachel Maddow pointed out that there were also measures on many states ballots that made the use and possession of small amounts of marijuana legal. But not gay marriage. We are now more afraid of "the gays" having the same civil rights as the rest of America's citizens than we are of the pot smokers. We have a long way to go baby.

I remember a time when it was not legal for a black person to marry a white person in many states. This is no different an issue. It is an embarrassment and shame to all of us that we tolerate this kind of intolerance in our state constitutions.

Marv Fleming Now

Marv might be single.

The Sheltering Tree Is Bare


Only a couple of weeks ago the leaves on the green ash tree were brilliant gold. It is now a bare and fragile looking skeleton of a tree, towering over the big house. It takes several days to get all those leaves raked and bagged and carried to the curb for the city leaf pick-up. So we have one tree bare and cleaned up after, and about thirty to go.