News for the Week Ended August 1, 2012
BY ANN ROSTOW
Prop 8 Finally Appealed to High Court
Another week, another petition to the Supreme Court. On Tuesday, the proponents of Prop 8 asked the justices to review the 2-1 ruling from a Ninth Circuit panel that struck the California marriage ban on narrow terms last February.
In their lengthy brief, which I decided not to read (it’s summer!) the Evil Ones reportedly asked the High Court to take on the fundamental question of whether a state has the right to define marriage as a heterosexual union. The Ninth Circuit’s opinion left that question unanswered, ruling simply that a state may not offer all the benefits of marriage to gay couples while denying them the designation “marriage.” To do so, absent a legitimate reason, was unconstitutional.
Since California is the only state that has legalized marriage and then taken away the right to use the word, the Ninth Circuit’s ruling technically is limited to the Golden State. But other states in the Circuit’s jurisdiction come close to violating the ruling by offering the rights of marriage under a different name.
Because the Ninth Circuit’s opinion was so closely crafted, the High Court has the option of rejecting the petition and postponing an inevitable day of reckoning when indeed the justices will be obliged to rule on the core question of same-sex marriage.
But if the Court were to accept review, the scope of their inquiry would be at the discretion of the justices. And since many observers fear the time is not yet right for an opinion that would legalize gay unions throughout the country, the prospect of allowing the Court to sort everything out on its own is frightening. With the Court expected to review the several challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act in its next term, quite a few activists hope that the justices will decline to open the Pandora’s box of the Prop 8 case.
Speaking of challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act, a Connecticut judge has become the latest federal jurist to rule that DOMA is unconstitutional. Bush Two appointee Vanessa L. Bryant issued a 100-plus page ruling that called for sexual orientation to be subjected to heightened legal scrutiny like cases which involve race or gender bias. That said, Judge Bryant proceeded to rule that DOMA violated the Constitution under the easiest legal test.
No, I didn’t read her ruling either. Perhaps I have gotten lazy in my old age. Perhaps I have read so many court opinions that I could dream of a gay marriage decision and read sixty coherent pages in my sleep. Perhaps it’s the Olympics. Perhaps it’s summer.
The Olympics, by the way, sound more exciting in theory than in actuality. I’ve been looking forward to the Games, but now that they’re here I’m having a hard time paying attention. I have two TVs on at present, one with men’s beach volleyball and another with women’s water polo. Wake me for the gold medal match please.
And is it my imagination, or didn’t we once see more international athletes? As far as I can tell, NBC is offering an all-American program where we only care about our own team. And please get rid of that stupid commercial starring a giant green humanoid bush that lumbers around the Olympic campus shutting off water and lights in an attempt to save the planet. What’s that about anyway?
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Isabella Has a Crazy Mommy
I read a fascinating article in (wait for it) the New York Times, recapping the bizarre saga of little Isabella and her two mommies, Janet and Lisa. These are the women who contested custody in repeated court battles between the states of Vermont and Virginia. After the Good Mommy (Janet) finally won custody of their daughter, Bad Mommy (Lisa) kidnapped Isabella and ran off to Nicaragua to live with a group of Mennonites. In a disturbing detail, the Times reports that Lisa left a cage full of pet hamsters to die when she made her escape.
Why does that bother me even more than the kidnapping itself? It shouldn’t, right?
Couldn’t she have at least let the little creatures loose to forage in the back yard? Or else, she could have left them at large in the living room with a bag full of hamster food and tons of water. Surely they would have survived long enough for someone to come checking up on Lisa.
Moving on, the man who arranged for Lisa’s escape has been charged with, um, helping a kidnap I suppose, and will go to trial on August 7 in Burlington, Vermont. According to the Times, even the Mennonites in Nicaragua are getting nervous, and hadn’t realized that they were violating international law by welcoming a criminal into their midst. Lisa and Isabella have since left the Mennonite community and are now thought to be hiding out in an even more remote Central American location.
I won’t rehash the multi-year litigation that pitted Janet against her born again Christian ex-partner. But I will say that Lisa has seemed more and more unhinged as the years have gone by. According to the Times article, she and Isabella have been unhappy in Nicaragua and one of Lisa’s allies, Timo Miller (no relation), says Lisa tends to see the world in “black and white.” Coming from a supporter, that sounds to me like a euphemism for derangement.
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Chick Flicks
So here’s a question; Do you think it’s OK for politicians to take action against Chick-fil-A on account of the company’s antigay positions? I’m not talking about us, the GLBT activists who swear off the franchise and are planning a kiss-in at Chick-fil-A stores this week. (I’ll boycott, but Mel and I are not going to make fools of ourselves making out in a public protest. We’ll leave that to the under-30 crowd.)
Writing in the Washington Blade, Kevin Naff made the critical point that public officials cannot deny business licenses or strong-arm a corporation as punishment for political views. At the same time, politicians are free to dissent and express their disapproval of bigotry, wherever it may raise its ugly head. In fact, the support of local leaders, including mayors and aldermen, is a welcome buttress for our movement.
Where’s the thin line? It might be the one drawn by New York Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who asked NYU to evict Chick-fil-A outlets from its campus. Quinn, who appeared to be writing on behalf of the council or the city itself, backtracked last week and made clear that she was writing as a private citizen.
Quinn just married her partner last month, by the way.
I couldn’t help but notice that Georgia just refused to let the KKK adopt a section of highway, a move that would appear to be a First Amendment violation similar to denying a business license to Chick-fil-A. In fact, several years ago the Klan went to court to force Missouri to allow them to adopt part of a Show Me highway, a successful case that sort of reminded us all of the Nazi rally in Skokie back in the day.
I gather that Georgia claims that a KKK sign in the middle of the road would be a distraction to drivers, but I don’t think they’ll be successful in court with that public safety argument. Naturally, our First Amendment heroes from the ACLU will be representing the white supremacists when the time comes.
Look, if I can support Fred Phelps, the Nazi party and the Klan, I suppose I can support the First Amendment rights of Chick-fil-A. But that doesn’t mean any of us have to be silent in our opposition, and that includes politicians speaking on their own behalf.
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Longhorns Diss Study
I see that the American team won their beach volleyball contest while we were talking about Chick-fil-A. Yay! Go USA! Whatever. Did any of you agree with me that the Russian gymnasts were a bunch of crybabies? I know it’s tough to lose, but a silver medal’s nothing to sneeze at. Show a little poise, ladies.
What else is new, you wonder? Well, it looks as if the Democrats may put a marriage equality plank in the party platform. That would be very nice. Considering the sort of extremism we read about in the GOP platform, I don’t even think it would be a particular stretch to come out in support of gay unions. If I’m not mistaken, the Republicans are even in favor of letting hamsters starve to death.
And do you remember that gay parenting study that emerged from the sociology department of my own hometown University of Texas? The study, funded by rightwing sources, was to a large extent based on an examination of households in which a parent had come out of the closet and abandoned the family. Not surprisingly, the kids in those households were not as successful as other cohorts.
Now, a university investigation has called the study into question, calling the peer review process biased and flawed. Only two of the households investigated by Professor Mark Regnerus included kids who were actually raised by a same-sex couple.
Oh, there’s also a homophobic bakery in Colorado that refuses to make a wedding cake for two men. Bad bakery. And Gore Vidal is dead. But you knew that.
Forgive me dear readers if I abandon you early this week. I was going to talk about a Title VII case out of the Fifth Circuit, which ruled last week that homophobic trash talk by a bunch of construction workers did not amount to sex discrimination under the federal statute. All the men involved were straight, and the verbal abuse was reportedly spread around, ergo the situation did not involve sex stereotyping or discrimination.
I’d have to read the opinion in order to comment further. But you know how I feel about reading opinions this week. Not. Going. To. Happen. Plus, I have women’s volleyball ahead and I’m going to make veal shanks which takes three hours. There’s not a moment to waste. (And I don’t want to hear about the veal.)
But before I go, I have to say that Mitt Romney’s feigned indifference to his wife’s Olympic dressage horse struck me as one of the most disingenuous postures we’ve yet seen from this posturing pol. I guess someone asked him if he was following the competition or something, and instead of saying “of course” like a normal person who has a close tie to an Olympic athlete, he made a point of saying that the horse was Ann’s business, adding that he didn’t even know when the dressage event was scheduled. That’s either bullshit or incredibly self-centered.
Oh, and I heard that the horse dined on watermelon during his or her flight over to London. I thought that was sort of cool.
BY ANN ROSTOW
Prop 8 Finally Appealed to High Court
Another week, another petition to the Supreme Court. On Tuesday, the proponents of Prop 8 asked the justices to review the 2-1 ruling from a Ninth Circuit panel that struck the California marriage ban on narrow terms last February.
In their lengthy brief, which I decided not to read (it’s summer!) the Evil Ones reportedly asked the High Court to take on the fundamental question of whether a state has the right to define marriage as a heterosexual union. The Ninth Circuit’s opinion left that question unanswered, ruling simply that a state may not offer all the benefits of marriage to gay couples while denying them the designation “marriage.” To do so, absent a legitimate reason, was unconstitutional.
Since California is the only state that has legalized marriage and then taken away the right to use the word, the Ninth Circuit’s ruling technically is limited to the Golden State. But other states in the Circuit’s jurisdiction come close to violating the ruling by offering the rights of marriage under a different name.
Because the Ninth Circuit’s opinion was so closely crafted, the High Court has the option of rejecting the petition and postponing an inevitable day of reckoning when indeed the justices will be obliged to rule on the core question of same-sex marriage.
But if the Court were to accept review, the scope of their inquiry would be at the discretion of the justices. And since many observers fear the time is not yet right for an opinion that would legalize gay unions throughout the country, the prospect of allowing the Court to sort everything out on its own is frightening. With the Court expected to review the several challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act in its next term, quite a few activists hope that the justices will decline to open the Pandora’s box of the Prop 8 case.
Speaking of challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act, a Connecticut judge has become the latest federal jurist to rule that DOMA is unconstitutional. Bush Two appointee Vanessa L. Bryant issued a 100-plus page ruling that called for sexual orientation to be subjected to heightened legal scrutiny like cases which involve race or gender bias. That said, Judge Bryant proceeded to rule that DOMA violated the Constitution under the easiest legal test.
No, I didn’t read her ruling either. Perhaps I have gotten lazy in my old age. Perhaps I have read so many court opinions that I could dream of a gay marriage decision and read sixty coherent pages in my sleep. Perhaps it’s the Olympics. Perhaps it’s summer.
The Olympics, by the way, sound more exciting in theory than in actuality. I’ve been looking forward to the Games, but now that they’re here I’m having a hard time paying attention. I have two TVs on at present, one with men’s beach volleyball and another with women’s water polo. Wake me for the gold medal match please.
And is it my imagination, or didn’t we once see more international athletes? As far as I can tell, NBC is offering an all-American program where we only care about our own team. And please get rid of that stupid commercial starring a giant green humanoid bush that lumbers around the Olympic campus shutting off water and lights in an attempt to save the planet. What’s that about anyway?
--
Isabella Has a Crazy Mommy
I read a fascinating article in (wait for it) the New York Times, recapping the bizarre saga of little Isabella and her two mommies, Janet and Lisa. These are the women who contested custody in repeated court battles between the states of Vermont and Virginia. After the Good Mommy (Janet) finally won custody of their daughter, Bad Mommy (Lisa) kidnapped Isabella and ran off to Nicaragua to live with a group of Mennonites. In a disturbing detail, the Times reports that Lisa left a cage full of pet hamsters to die when she made her escape.
Why does that bother me even more than the kidnapping itself? It shouldn’t, right?
Couldn’t she have at least let the little creatures loose to forage in the back yard? Or else, she could have left them at large in the living room with a bag full of hamster food and tons of water. Surely they would have survived long enough for someone to come checking up on Lisa.
Moving on, the man who arranged for Lisa’s escape has been charged with, um, helping a kidnap I suppose, and will go to trial on August 7 in Burlington, Vermont. According to the Times, even the Mennonites in Nicaragua are getting nervous, and hadn’t realized that they were violating international law by welcoming a criminal into their midst. Lisa and Isabella have since left the Mennonite community and are now thought to be hiding out in an even more remote Central American location.
I won’t rehash the multi-year litigation that pitted Janet against her born again Christian ex-partner. But I will say that Lisa has seemed more and more unhinged as the years have gone by. According to the Times article, she and Isabella have been unhappy in Nicaragua and one of Lisa’s allies, Timo Miller (no relation), says Lisa tends to see the world in “black and white.” Coming from a supporter, that sounds to me like a euphemism for derangement.
--
Chick Flicks
So here’s a question; Do you think it’s OK for politicians to take action against Chick-fil-A on account of the company’s antigay positions? I’m not talking about us, the GLBT activists who swear off the franchise and are planning a kiss-in at Chick-fil-A stores this week. (I’ll boycott, but Mel and I are not going to make fools of ourselves making out in a public protest. We’ll leave that to the under-30 crowd.)
Writing in the Washington Blade, Kevin Naff made the critical point that public officials cannot deny business licenses or strong-arm a corporation as punishment for political views. At the same time, politicians are free to dissent and express their disapproval of bigotry, wherever it may raise its ugly head. In fact, the support of local leaders, including mayors and aldermen, is a welcome buttress for our movement.
Where’s the thin line? It might be the one drawn by New York Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who asked NYU to evict Chick-fil-A outlets from its campus. Quinn, who appeared to be writing on behalf of the council or the city itself, backtracked last week and made clear that she was writing as a private citizen.
Quinn just married her partner last month, by the way.
I couldn’t help but notice that Georgia just refused to let the KKK adopt a section of highway, a move that would appear to be a First Amendment violation similar to denying a business license to Chick-fil-A. In fact, several years ago the Klan went to court to force Missouri to allow them to adopt part of a Show Me highway, a successful case that sort of reminded us all of the Nazi rally in Skokie back in the day.
I gather that Georgia claims that a KKK sign in the middle of the road would be a distraction to drivers, but I don’t think they’ll be successful in court with that public safety argument. Naturally, our First Amendment heroes from the ACLU will be representing the white supremacists when the time comes.
Look, if I can support Fred Phelps, the Nazi party and the Klan, I suppose I can support the First Amendment rights of Chick-fil-A. But that doesn’t mean any of us have to be silent in our opposition, and that includes politicians speaking on their own behalf.
--
Longhorns Diss Study
I see that the American team won their beach volleyball contest while we were talking about Chick-fil-A. Yay! Go USA! Whatever. Did any of you agree with me that the Russian gymnasts were a bunch of crybabies? I know it’s tough to lose, but a silver medal’s nothing to sneeze at. Show a little poise, ladies.
What else is new, you wonder? Well, it looks as if the Democrats may put a marriage equality plank in the party platform. That would be very nice. Considering the sort of extremism we read about in the GOP platform, I don’t even think it would be a particular stretch to come out in support of gay unions. If I’m not mistaken, the Republicans are even in favor of letting hamsters starve to death.
And do you remember that gay parenting study that emerged from the sociology department of my own hometown University of Texas? The study, funded by rightwing sources, was to a large extent based on an examination of households in which a parent had come out of the closet and abandoned the family. Not surprisingly, the kids in those households were not as successful as other cohorts.
Now, a university investigation has called the study into question, calling the peer review process biased and flawed. Only two of the households investigated by Professor Mark Regnerus included kids who were actually raised by a same-sex couple.
Oh, there’s also a homophobic bakery in Colorado that refuses to make a wedding cake for two men. Bad bakery. And Gore Vidal is dead. But you knew that.
Forgive me dear readers if I abandon you early this week. I was going to talk about a Title VII case out of the Fifth Circuit, which ruled last week that homophobic trash talk by a bunch of construction workers did not amount to sex discrimination under the federal statute. All the men involved were straight, and the verbal abuse was reportedly spread around, ergo the situation did not involve sex stereotyping or discrimination.
I’d have to read the opinion in order to comment further. But you know how I feel about reading opinions this week. Not. Going. To. Happen. Plus, I have women’s volleyball ahead and I’m going to make veal shanks which takes three hours. There’s not a moment to waste. (And I don’t want to hear about the veal.)
But before I go, I have to say that Mitt Romney’s feigned indifference to his wife’s Olympic dressage horse struck me as one of the most disingenuous postures we’ve yet seen from this posturing pol. I guess someone asked him if he was following the competition or something, and instead of saying “of course” like a normal person who has a close tie to an Olympic athlete, he made a point of saying that the horse was Ann’s business, adding that he didn’t even know when the dressage event was scheduled. That’s either bullshit or incredibly self-centered.
Oh, and I heard that the horse dined on watermelon during his or her flight over to London. I thought that was sort of cool.
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