Someone I'd like to introduce...

Andrew Sullivan...

He's gay. He's British. He's a Catholic. He's a conservative (nobody's perfect).

He's also a helluva writer.

To-wit:

Restoring Federalism In Marriage Law

The issue behind the new challenge to DOMA is a pretty simple one, as Kenji Yoshino explains. On what grounds does the federal government not simply recognize the marriage laws of the various states? By what reasoning does the federal government recognize all the civil marriages legal in, say, Alabama, but not all of the civil marriages legal in Massachusetts? We know the real reason: a view that homosexuals need to be discriminated against in the law in order to "protect" society from their wicked attempts to live with and care for one another. But the reason on federalist grounds is non-existent.

My own marriage license, for example, is not distinguishable from any other license issued at the same time in Massachusetts. And yet some of those other licenses allow a spouse to get social security benefits and to sponsor a non-citizen for citizenship. I'm legally married in Massachusetts and yet have no right to citizenship on those grounds. Someone who showed up on the Ptown ferry a month ago, and fell in love with an opposite-sex spouse would be eligible to become a citizen relatively soon. I've been here for 25 years and still have no right to stay here indefinitely. The clear meaning of DOMA, of course, is that a gay relationship, however long-lasting or real, is always inferior to even the most temporary straight hook-up. Or to put it another way: the reason we grant citizenship to good faith non-American spouses is because we recognize the human cruelty of forcing a human being to pick between their country and the person they love. But gays, according to DOMA, deserve the cruelty - and many are indeed forced to live abroad or leave their relationships behind.

But leave the inhumanity aside for a moment. On what conservative, federalist grounds do the feds refuse to acknowledge state autonomy in the area of family law? And why should the federal government not do what it always did in these matters: just accept the differing judgments of the states? As long as a civil marriage is valid in a state, it should be recognized by the feds. Why would a real conservative object to that?

To answer that last question, I hate to break it to Mr. Sullivan, but he's the last "real" conservative left.

Scratch that. Mr. Sullivan doesn't realize it, but he's a closet liberal at heart.

And In Case You Forgot About The Mormons....

Think things were getting too quiet in LDS land when it comes to their homophobic agenda? Think again, cupcake.

Mormon Machine Cranking Up Against Illinois Civil Unions Bill
Jim Burroway
March 3rd, 2009
Note: When this was first published yesterday, the post title indicated that this was a BTB “exclusive.” This morning (March 4), I’m now seeing other versions of the email on the web with the sender’s name and email included. Since I had originally redacted that name and email, it’s clear that others have independently received copies of the same email. I am therefore restoring the email to its original form with the info included.

***

The Illinois House will begin considering another Civil Unions bill this week. Introduced by Rep. Greg Harris on February 20, HB 2234 has been assigned to the Youth and Family Committee, which will hold a hearing on Thursday. We’ve received word that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has engaged its private communications network to bombard state legislators with phone calls in opposition to the bill.

In a private email sent out to LDS members of at least one ward in Illinois, church members are being encouraged to call their representative to voice their opposition to the bill, which would provide same-sex couples with recognition and limited protections under Illinois law. But the official LDS-sanctioned email to members is loaded with much of the same misinformation that was present in the campaign against California’s Proposition 8.

***
From: Kristy Combs
Date: March 3, 2009 12:27:59 PM CST
Subject: Civil Union bill scheduled for a hearing Thursday - calls needed

This message has been authorized for sending by Bishop Church.
The Civil Union Bill (HB 2234) has been scheduled for a hearing in the Youth and Family Committee this week on Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 9:00 a.m. in Springfield. If the bill is voted out of committee, it becomes eligible for a vote before the full Illinois House of Representatives. This bill will legalize civil unions in the state of Illinois, and will treat such civil unions with the same legal obligations, responsibilities, protections and benefits as are afforded within marriage. In other words, civil unions will be different in name only from marriage. As has already been seen in Massachusetts, this will empower the public schools to begin teaching this lifestyle to our young children regardless of parental requests otherwise. It will also create grounds for rewriting all social mores; the current push in Massachusetts is to recognize and legalize all transgender rights (An individual in Massachusetts can now change their drivers license to the gender they believe themselves to be, regardless of actual gender, which means that confused men and women are now legally entering one another’s bathrooms and locker rooms. What kind of a safety issue is this for our children?). Furthermore, while the bill legalizes civil unions, it will be used in the courts to show discrimination and will ultimately lead to court mandated same-sex marriages.

It's a badly kept secret that in my own home state (Colorado) there's a rather large LDS community, and I have to confess that I know quite a few members of the LDS church, some of whom I can honestly say I know like they're family.

Having made that confession, I'd like to say that the Mormons I know reject this mindless, homophobic bigotry, that they're embarrassed by the machinations of the LDS church to persecute homosexuals and interfere with marriage equality and the sex lives of consenting adults whom they don't even know, and that they're by and large a tolerant, respectful, non-dogmatic, non-judgmental, nice group of people who give the term "Christian" a good name.

I'd LIKE to say that, anyway...

Prop 8...LET'S GET READY TO RUMBLLLLE!!!!!

Something tells me this is going to start evolving into a "Sex And Law" blog...not that I mind, it just sounds kinda geeky in a sex-fiend kinda way...

Anyhoo...

First, the NY Times piece on the big Prop 8 showdown in the California Supreme Court...

California Court to Weigh Gay Marriage Ban
By JESSE McKINLEY and JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: March 4, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO — Under intense pressure from both sides in the debate over same-sex marriage, the California Supreme Court will hear arguments Thursday on the ballot initiative passed by voters last November that outlawed such unions.

***
And for all the passion surrounding the issue of same-sex marriage, the question before the court is one that may seem technical, even dry: Does the initiative approved by Californians merely amend the State Constitution or, as gay rights groups hope the court will rule, revise it?

Under California law, an amendment is a matter that the state’s longstanding initiative process deals with routinely. A revision, however, entails a fundamental change to the Constitution, and requires approval of either two-thirds of each house in the Legislature or a constitutional convention. That could be much harder to achieve than passage in a referendum.

What elevates the ban on same-sex marriage to the level of a fundamental rewriting of the Constitution, opponents of Proposition 8 argue, is that it denies a right — the ability to marry — that the California Supreme Court earlier last year called inalienable. To take away that right now, they argue, would violate federal and state constitutional guarantees of equal treatment.

Secondly, I found a good piece in Salon interviewing Dennis Herrera, one of the anti-Prop 8 lawyers who brought the suit.

What are the key arguments that will be made in the legal challenge to Proposition 8?

Well, for us, it's really quite simple. We're saying that the process for putting Prop. 8 on the ballot was fundamentally flawed; the proper procedure was not a constitutional "amendment" but a constitutional "revision." For the electorate to change the nature of the equal protections clause of the California Constitution, it would require a constitutional revision. That means that you need a two-thirds vote of the Legislature before you can even put it on the ballot -- that's not what happened in November. Prop. 8 was instead treated as a constitutional amendment and brought directly to the voters.

Prop. 8 also drastically altered the structure of state government; it stopped the courts from applying the equal protection clause of the California Constitution to a protected class of citizens, those being gay folks.

The whole article is really worth reading.

The upshot is that for the forseeable future, marriage equality will not be won at the ballot box. It's got to be mandated by the court system through the Equal Protection Clauses of the U.S. Constitution and of the various state constitutions. It's not simply a matter of "choice" as the Holy Terrors like to argue, that people opt to be gay and that therefore, it's okay to discriminate against them.

(As a side note, what if people's choices with regard to ...say...religious faith were subject to the same analysis? Oh, that's right. There's a Constitutional amendment protecting THAT sort of choice. But I digress).

The upshot is that even if it were a matter of choice (which it isn't, nor should it be), certain choices must nevertheless be made free from the threat of discrimination by the majority. It was the same when it came to the equal rights of women, of the civil rights of non-white citizens.

I hate to sound like I'm promising boredom for non-law geeks out there, but this is something else to which close attention must be made.

Something for the Law Geeks...

THIS is ultimately what's going to kill the homophobic anti-marriage equality movement.

GLAD challenges federal DOMA
by Ethan Jacobs
associate editor
Tuesday Mar 3, 2009
***
GLAD plans to file suit March 3 in the Federal District Court of Massachusetts, challenging provisions in section three of DOMA that bar the federal government from granting certain protections to legally married same-sex couples.

***
"Our legal argument is that [the portions of section three targeted in the lawsuit are] a violation of our federal government’s guarantee to treat citizens equally by refusing to recognize the marriages only of same-sex couples, and that principle of equality should apply in other contexts if we’re successful," said Wu.

In a nutshell, the plaintiffs will be challenging the Federal Defense Of Marriage Act on the grounds that while their marriages are legal in Massachusetts, the Federal law blocks their rights to government benefits because DOMA deprives them of equal protection under the laws.

At last! I've been ranting about this issue for years. No matter how badly the marriage equality movement wants majority support, it's not going to come via the ballot box.

1. It's got to be through the court system, the same way Brown v. Board of Education was necessary to free up the logjam when it came to civil rights on the basis of race.

2. It can't be done on a state-by-state level. True equality has to come through the Federal legal system.

My only concern is that by the time the case makes its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, will President Obama have had enough time to appoint truly progressive justices to hear the case?

Watch this one.

The Evil, The Mean, The Stupid

Nice to know Colorado doesn't have a monopoly on asshole legislators...

Their rhetoric is ramping up...

Buttars broke vow of silence, senator claims
By Ben Winslow and Clayton Norlen

Deseret News

Published: Sunday, Feb. 22, 2009 1:19 a.m. MST

Controversial Sen. Chris Buttars was stripped of his Senate committee posts not because he went on an anti-gay tirade in an interview with a documentary filmmaker but because the West Jordan Republican broke a deal with Senate leaders not to talk about gay issues.

That's what a Senate colleague revealed on a conservative radio program Saturday.

"I have to tell you publicly that most of what Sen. Buttars said — I agree with," Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, said on the weekly radio program "Inside Utah Politics" on KTKK-AM

***
Buttars was stripped of his leadership posts in the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Judicial Confirmation Committee on Friday, in response to a storm of controversy surrounding the outspoken senator. In an interview with documentary filmmaker Reed Cowan about California's Proposition 8 on gay marriage, Buttars compared gay-rights activists to Muslim terrorists and called them "the greatest threat to America going down."

Terrorists, Nazis, the worst of the worst. In a way, this is good news, as it's an indication these homophobic assholes are getting desperate. They've got to demonize their opponents, but when it comes right down to it, it's going to fail. Why? Because the enormous majority of people who know gay people know they're not anything remotely resembling evil. So when these homophobic assholes keep shooting off their mouths about the evils of homosexuality, most folks are going to see them for the bigots that they are.

Hope so, anyway.

Who Watches The Most Porn?

I laughed so hard at this item I damn near pissed my pants!!

Porn in the USA: Conservatives are biggest consumers
16:18 27 February 2009 by Ewen Callaway

Americans may paint themselves in increasingly bright shades of red and blue, but new research finds one thing that varies little across the nation: the liking for online pornography.

A new nationwide study (pdf) of anonymised credit-card receipts from a major online adult entertainment provider finds little variation in consumption between states.

"When it comes to adult entertainment, it seems people are more the same than different," says Benjamin Edelman at Harvard Business School.

However, there are some trends to be seen in the data. Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds.
***
The biggest consumer, Utah, averaged 5.47 adult content subscriptions per 1000 home broadband users; Montana bought the least with 1.92 per 1000. "The differences here are not so stark," Edelman says.

Number 10 on the list was West Virginia at 2.94 subscriptions per 1000, while number 41, Michigan, averaged 2.32.

Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year's presidential election – Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama.

Old-fashioned values
Church-goers bought less online porn on Sundays – a 1% increase in a postal code's religious attendance was associated with a 0.1% drop in subscriptions that day. However, expenditures on other days of the week brought them in line with the rest of the country, Edelman finds.

Residents of 27 states that passed laws banning gay marriages boasted 11% more porn subscribers than states that don't explicitly restrict gay marriage.

To get a better handle on other associations between social attitudes and pornography consumption, Edelman melded his data with a previous study on public attitudes toward religion.

States where a majority of residents agreed with the statement "I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage," bought 3.6 more subscriptions per thousand people than states where a majority disagreed. A similar difference emerged for the statement "AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behaviour."

"One natural hypothesis is something like repression: if you're told you can't have this, then you want it more," Edelman says.

What really cracks me up is the fact that these conservative states, (ignorant about most things, especially about things related to sex), are just as ignorant about online porn! With sites like RedTube, PornHub and Youporn, you don't even have to pay anymore!