As usual all blame goes to the Democrats.
Tired, very tired.

P.S. Dont let the chickenhawk-in-chief hear you doing that, he's not into the "blame game."

You want examples?
He vetoed an increase in minimum wage. Most minimum wage workers are women. He uses the exprssion "girly" to express contempt. He has focused his attacks on teachers and nurses, as well as home health aids, all jobs that are primarily female.
Gays? He vetoed a bill to allow marriage equality today.
Marijuana? He has used cops to enforce "drug laws" against medical marijuana. Although the population voted to allow medical marijuana, the gropernator only supports "the will of the people" some times.
Free speech? He had cops run undercover investigations, which supposedly became illegal decades ago, against very peaceful antiwar groups, against groups that oppose him, and had dissenters forcibly removed from his appearances.
BTW, I don't say all gays support legalized marijuana.
Comparable worth is far left? It makes me laugh how the mainstream Republican party has gone so far to the right that centrist Democrats (whom I consider to be pretty damn conservative) are now the "far left". That is where the comparable worth idea came from. And BTW some Republicans support it, or at least used to before it became the party of god.
BTW, I'd be pretty comfortable with equal pay as well, too bad it doesn't exist.
But aren't you changing the subject? And isn't that the idea? Your boy does something indefensible but the real problem is far left ideas like comparable worth?

I thought Republicans were the ones always calling for things to be decided in legislatures, NOT by courts. Why is Arnold stating he wants to let the courts decide this issue? Didn't the people's elected reps speak?

Sort of like their states' rights argument. Sure didn't apply it to medical marijuana, did they?

They have no allegiance to their supposed beliefs.

And I'm sorry, have to add: Electing actors to be governors (or Presidents) is kind of like appointing an Arabian horse association lawyer to be the head of FEMA.

But didn't the People of CA. already speak on this issue, passing a proposition for which the People of the state voted? If so, why is the legislature sticking its nose into something the People already decided? Just wondering.

Okay, so why even have a California legislature, then if the legislature is only to advance bills based on referenda or positions that will not "embarass" the Governator? If everything is to be decided either by courts--which is problematic for conservatives, isn't it?--or by referenda, which runs counter to the REPUBLICAN system of governance that has existed in this country since its founding, then why even have elected representatives, either in a lower or upper house?

Oh yeah, okay, the US constitution requires every state to have a republican form of government, but given how W & Co, and their Austrian actor-friend in Sacramento/Hollywood could not care less about our constitutional procedures, why not just dissolve the California legislature and rule by fiat and referenda? Isn't this what Republicans have accused Hugo Chávez of?

Talking about the iceberg calling the snowcap white...

Perhaps because the courts have ruled that proposition unConstitutional?

I wonder, if Arnie is against gay marriage, does he still hang around with Jamie Lee Curtis? After all "she" is genetically male - albeit without the ability to produce testosterone and therefore appears female - and married to another man. What Arnie and the anti-gay hate movement don't seem to understand is that laws such as the one they are pushing in California prevent people like Curtis - the intersexed - from marrying at all. If you have XY chromosones, but no penis or testes, and a vagina but no ovaries, are you male or female? What if you have some cells with XY chromosones and some with only X - what gender are you then?

As far as I am concerned, in every state where a DOMA-type law is passed, the ACLU should be contesting EVERY single marriage license handed out, until the two people involved can prove their gender.

Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job

Widely considered to be an Urban Legend
X? Why?

I am one of those who heard this from a Psych professor - but the point is still valid. The Intersexed exist, they live among us, they are human beings. Under "one man, one woman" marriage laws, they are barred, completely, from marriage. As they are neither male nor female, they cannot fit into either role, and therefore should not be married.

I mean, what gender is a kid born with an ovary, a fallopian tube, a testicle and a small penis (saw this for myself when the child's family was profiled on a cable special about intersexed)?

I have thought and continue to think the gay and lesbian community is missing a HUGE legal argument against DOMA laws by not bringing up the intersexed. There are an estimated 100,000 - 300,000 in the US alone. Why should they be completely barred from marriage?

MdB, thanks for the examples; they clue me in to how you think. It's no surprise that we don't think the same, but here are the reasons behind that conclusion:

Minimum wage increase - you're arguing disparate impact theory, which is a sketchy legal proposition to begin with and stretches credibility as well as causation when you argue it amounts to discrimination against women. It's just bad economics; not everything is directed against the collective "you" (f.).

Same for the "girly men" line - there's more humor than philosophy in a jug of punch and I wish you folks on the left would imbibe more often. I don't view his humorous remark with the same grim-faced, Stalinist somberness you do - and trumping up a claim of sexism on this is silly, if you can see the humor in that.

Teachers and nurses, huh? - Sorry, this one's about unions and their extractions, not women and their occupations. You're buying the unions' political ads hook, line and sinking economy. Who will be the next sympathetic Posterkind? Why, "the kids," of course! Sorry, my Dad was a teacher for over 40 years, my sister's a RN, and I had the unfortunate experience of having to belong to the USW when working in the steel mills Summers in college; I know whereof I speak.

Gays - yes, he'll veto Leno's stealth bill, just as Leno hoped he would. But that was after we first posted here, so don't argue I'm changing the subject when I replied before the fact - or replying to these other matters you raised. Am I disappointed he did so? Of course! But as Sen. Feinstein said, maybe we did push too far, too fast. If we did so naively, that's a LOT different from the calculated moves Leno has been making to embarass the Governor in order to lessen his popularity among gays and lesbians since Arnold ousted Gray Davis and signed all the other gay-friendly legislation he did, a fact now conveniently forgotten except by Leno and all the other gay Demos who couldn't handle the thought that someone else would take away their claim to fame and work for the same equal rights but in a different party and in a different way that would give the lie to their bizarre beliefs and tactics and send them back to the fringe where they belong.

I've known Mark Leno for over 25 years and he's just the kind of opportunistic SF politician to do this kind of stuff. He learned at Willie Brown's feet, don't forget, and recall his little charade at the state GOP convention a year ago when he showed up uninvited to ham it up for the press and was escorted off the property by hotel security. Funny how this great champion of gay causes couldn't find the time or courtesy to meet with Log Cabin while he was there, or at least drop by our hospitality suite; he wouldn't have been thrown out had he done so, though he'd probably have talked himself out of our company given time. Same for his bill; maybe if he had sat down and talked with the Governor and tried to work something out his efforts wouldn't have amounted to the full-circle jerk they're about to become. But he didn't even try to; confrontation, not cooperation is the SF way. Besides, there'd have been no advantage for Leno and the Demos, personal or political, in giving the Governor a share of whatever success might have been achieved.

Marijuana - sorry it's the law, "compassionate (ab)use" notwithstanding. If the law is changed at the federal as well as at the state level, it won't be illegal any more, but until then it is. You don't advocate selective lawlessness, do you? Take a drive down East 14th Street sometime to see that in action.

Free speech - don't confuse private spaces, like the aforementioned hotel that Leno crashed, with public ones. IF anyone is "investigating 'very peaceful antiwar groups'," to ensure they're not fronting for terrorists, ecoterrorists or lawbreakers of any kind, I'm all for it. I've seen and heard firsthand when I lived near SF's Mission Dolores Park how "peaceful" these demonstrators can be - like when they're throwing their weight around the 'hood vandalizing and trashing it. Sorry, I've seen and know better and I'm not afraid to tell what I know.

Comparable worth - this didn't originate with mainstream Demos - even in the heyday of 1984 - but with radical feminists and was a strained concept even then. Sure, a lot of Demos were cowed into supporting it but thankfully it's had its 15 minutes of infamy and no one in their right mind need be embarassed by kow-towing to it anymore.

To repeat: I'm disappointed Arnold will veto the legislation, but I'm more disappointed that so many refuse to understand and accept that this whole expensive and time-consuming little exercise in futility could have been avoided if REAL progress, not partisan politics, was the ultimate goal of Messrs. Leno, Kors & Co.

I agree with you, but I also wonder if the intersexed make private arrangements with their partners to facilitate marriages where each adopt a different gender in order to "pass." Surely not all these people go thru life alone.

Not one single "GOPer" voted for the bill,
his GOP gov is going to veto it and
gmg
rails against the Democrats.

That sounds about right.

"Delusion wins!"

Too funny Raze. wink

That's the whole point - actually the intersexed marry the "regular" people, not each other (at least not that often) because the person typically favors one gender or another mentally.

What we have not demanded, and should, is a specific definition of what is "male" and what is "female" when these laws are passed. As every single human being is, in fact, the product of a male and female pairing, we all have aspects of each gender, to varying degrees, the intersexed are simply the most obvious example of that mixture. If we forced the anti-gay right to define their terms, we could prove that there is no way to include all Americans in any man/woman marriage acts.

Received an e-mail from HRC last night requesting that all citizens (not just Californians) call Governor Schwarzenegger directly at (916) 445-2841 and urge him to sign AB849 (California's passage of the Civil Marriage and Religious Protection Act) or fax him a letter at (916) 445-4633.

~Joe

I went out to dinner with a friend of mine who was visiting from Boston. She's straight, married, has two kids, is very gay-friendly. She was telling me that right after the Massachusetts judges okayed gay marriage, her hetero, Catholic, conservative married state senator came out in favor of gay marriage. She said that she wrote him an e-mail to thank him for standing on the side of equality, and he wrote her back to say that he'd gotten death threats, lots of hate mail, and so on. He actually wondered if he'd taken the right stand. Well, flash forward to recently. Her state rep, who was strongly against gay marriage, recently said publicly that he was backing off his earlier stance. She said he claimed he'd studied the issue, noticed all the gay couples with kids who seemed to be happy, and also realized that the threat to hetero marriage came from heteros. (Massachusetts has the lowest divorce levels and rate in the country.) So he was now not for gay marriage but also not against it, and wasn't going to oppose it. My friend said she told him he was doing the right thing. Then she said that several conservative (by Massachusetts terms) Republicans who had been strongly against gay marriage were now taking a laissez-faire approach (which is really more libertarian, isn't it, or classically liberal?) because they observed no harm in gay marriages and in fact thought it contributed to societal stability to have people coupling up, within the framework of the law. I told my friend eventually this view would spread across the country, and if California were to enact gay marriage, in 10 years I could see the rest of New England, as well as New Jersey, New York, Washington, Oregon, Maryland, and maybe a few midwestern states like Minnesota and Illinois enacting it. In 25 years, it would probably spread to other midwestern states, and I couldn't see Hawaii and Nevada not going along with the tide. Slowly it would inch down into the rest of the country, though I'd bet Mississippi would be the last state to enact it. And the people who claim it destroys straight marriage would be refuted time and time again by reality.

[ September 20, 2005, 08:52 PM: Message edited by: fantomas ]

Fantomas, thanks for the information.
The fact is that the world has not ended in Massachusetts, let alone Canada, Spain, etc.
Because when it is realized that marriage equality does not threaten national security or the public good and that the only economic impact is minor and positive (gays and lesbians paying for weddings and honeymoons), then the only reason left to oppose marriage equality is hatred for gays and lesbians.
And all indications are that that hatred is diminishing. Not gone, sadly, but diminishing. Among youth opposition to marriage equality is now a minority position.

Hey, you're not giving us enough credit here in Massachusetts. When gay marriage is safe (which it is for now, maybe when it's safer ) and established (in a few more years) here in Massachusetts, I think you'll see a few other states in the east enacting gay marriage. I could see Rhode Island and New Jersey and maybe Connecticut joining us. Maybe Delaware. I don't see New York (upstate can be very conservative) or Maryland (too close to the federal government).

I agree, though, that when California finally gets on board, it will represent a seismic shift. But California, as the largest state, also represents the greatest chance of an epic battle over the issue. The conservatives know that gay marriage in California is the equivalent of taking a torpedo mid-ship.

Actually, the "the sky didn't fall" attitude was so prevalent here and the buzz was so strong that the amendment would fail, that it was a remarkable contrast to last year's events. Last year, conservative church groups from Kentucky and similar places were shouting with bullhorns outside the state house. (Seriously, go home. :mad: )

This year, things were so civil and tame. And most of the public here just didn't care. It was so not a big deal for gay people to be married anymore for the majority of residents here. The last poll I saw said that something like 50+% of the public supports gay marriage.

A word of caution, though, virtually every Republicans and many of the conservative Democrats who voted down the amendment this year did so in order to vote in support of a citizens' petition amendment which will bar both gay marriage and civil unions. Since that amendment is proposed by citizen initiative, it need only pass the legislature with 25% support in two successive legislative sessions in order to be placed on the ballot. Even if it gets 25% legislative support, and I think it will, the soonest voters would have their say would be in 2008, a major election year. By then, gay people will have been getting married for 4 and 1/2 years and passage would strip all those people of their legal standing and give them no civil unions as a recourse. I can't imagine that the voting public here would approve such a draconian measure.