DOVER, Del. (AP) — A divided Delaware state Senate voted Tuesday to make their state the 11th in the nation to allow same-sex marriage, after hearing hours of passionate testimony from supporters and opponents.
The Senate’s 12-9 vote sends the bill to Democratic Gov. Jack Markell, who supports the measure and planned to sign it later in the day. It would go into effect July 1.
“I think this is the right thing for Delaware,” the governor said after the vote, while posing for pictures with supporters outside his legislative office.
“It took an incredible team effort.” Gay rights activists and their supporters in the chamber erupted in cheers and applause following the Senate vote.
Another state recognizes equal protection under the law! And Delaware joins the inexorable march toward equality for all. Good going Delaware! We're proud of you.
Next up, we're watching Minnesota and Illinois:
Minnesota appears poised to legalize gay marriage
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - Minnesota appears poised to legalize gay marriage, as the Democratic speaker of the state House said Tuesday that a gay marriage bill endorsed by the governor and likely to pass in the state Senate also now has enough backing in his chamber. The House will vote on the measure Thursday, and if it passes, the Democratic-led Senate could vote on it as soon as Saturday.
Pat Brady Resigns: Illinois GOP Chair Steps Down Amid Gay Marriage Support Controversy
"Illinois GOP Chairman Pat Brady has stepped down from his post amid controversy over his public support for same-sex marriage.
Brady is citing personal reasons for his resignation, announced Tuesday in a letter sent to the state party's central committee. According to the Associated Press, his wife is battling "serious cancer" and he wants to spend more time with her and their family.
Social conservatives within the state party had targeted Brady and called for his resignation after he announced that he personally supported same-sex marriage equality early this year.
One member of the party's central committee previously described him as "a total disgrace" in supporting marriage equality and other issues that were contrary to both the national and state GOP's policy platforms."
Ah, yes. The "Central Committee" calls a man who supports equality under the Constitution of the United States of America a "total disgrace."
Your modern Republican Party. Equality = Disgrace
26 comments:
The republicans will be dragged into the twenty-first century whether they like it or not.
That is almost as exciting as Stanford winning SC. Although it is great for the leftists to have a plan to divert attention away from the incompetent incumbent, the economy and jobs remain the number one issue with the American public. I know JC always provides references so here it is.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.aspx
The administration's focus remains on attacking the 4 million member NRA, raising taxes on everyone, and adding to the demise of small businesses. They gave up three years ago on trying do do anything about creating jobs.
The Divide the nation and divert attention is not playing all that well for His leaderless.
I am glad to hear this, but I have never understood why this issue should raise such a hullaballoo with so many from each of the political poles.
I still feel making it a political football s more about gaining increased political power than any sincere interest in "equality."
Having been exposed, however, to an abundance of ignorant, waspish, putrid, hideously unkind rhetoric on this issue -- which I have always regarded as nobody's business but that of the people directly involved -- from many who regard themselves as Christians, I have to admit I've been persuaded to take the liberal position here, albeit with certain reservations.
I just hope it won't mean that Screaming Queens, Simpering Sissies, Hostile Femininazis and Thundering Diesel Dykes -- who comprise a very small, but highly vocal minority in the homosexual population -- won't be constantly in our faces all the time now.
Such people may get drunk on power and make public spectacles of themselves -- a situation that will only serve to hurt, embarrass and humiliate the much larger number of homosexuals who much prefer to live their lives quietly outside the glare of the searchlight.
In my experience [please don't forget I was born and raised in and around New York City, and got to see things a lot people in places like Kalamazoo, Paducah, Peoria and Parump -- or even Providence -- never got a chance to know anything about].
I'm sorry to have to say it, but fewer things are more obnoxious than a certain type of Aggressive Effeminacy indulged in by spiteful, inconsiderate, generally low-class gay men or it's counterpart Aggressive Faux-Masculinity on the part of certain lesbians who seem to savor a perverse enjoyment in being obnoxious.
Aside from that, HURRAY and HALLELUJAH! BRAVO! And all good wishes for a happier future for homosexuals, though frankly I doubt it's going to make all that much difference, since it's very much a surface thing.
skudrunner, I don't appreciate your habit of coming here and changing the subject.
This post is about Delaware and equality under the law. This is not your blog. If you have the need to broadcast your political opinions that have nothing to do with my blog posts, I suggest you start your own blog to do so.
Mkay?
FT, I have absolutely no experience of the sort of people you describe in your comment. None whatsoever.
However, a good many of people who exhibit those qualities(Aggressive Faux-Masculinity...who seem to savor a perverse enjoyment in being obnoxious.)are enjoying your "Hate Week" festival.
FT: "Aside from that, HURRAY and HALLELUJAH! BRAVO! And all good wishes for a happier future for homosexuals, though frankly I doubt it's going to make all that much difference, since it's very much a surface thing.."
I doubt anyone who is barred by law from marrying the person he or she loves would call that a "surface thing."
Ask any hetero if he or she would find it a "surface thing" if the government said their marriage is not valid under the law.
Please. Do.
Excellent news. State after state is coming round on this issue. The fundies, who are so freaked out about gay marriage that they're threatening to divide the Republican party over it, can't be having a good week.
I'm less concerned about FT's "Screaming Queens, Simpering Sissies, Hostile Femininazis and Thundering Diesel Dykes" than about the kind of bashers who murdered Matthew Shepard and so many others, the venom-dripping preachers, the people who kick their own teenagers out of the house when they find out they're gay (yes, that still happens) -- they're a small but highly vocal minority in the heterosexual population, but not nearly small enough.
Well, Ma'am, as I said, I was born and raised in and around NYC. Because of that I'm sure my personal experiences confronting "Life" have probably been a bit different from yours. I have seen and heard it all with my very own eyes and ears.
Did you ever Mart Crowley's play The Boys in the Band -- or the movie made of it? Unfortunately, from what I've observed it's a stunning, depressing, chillingly accurate portrayal of what "Urban Gay Social Life" really was like at least at the time it was written. I have no idea what gay life is like today urban or otherwise.
I'm a firm believer in being a good sport and playing whatever hand of cards life deals you as well as you can. It may be sad, but not everyone is cut out to be a winner. Along the same lines I long ago realized that Reality and The Law rarely coincided.
I have little respect for The Law, because it is written by people no more -- and many times far less -- intelligent that I.
I do believe in acting decently, fairly and amiably towards others -- i.e,following The Golden Rule. But most of all I believe that REALITY is where we all wind up living like it or not, and in the end there is NOTHING to do but make the BEST of it.
Whining, accusing and blaming others for our plight, whatever it may be, is a complete waste of time -- or so I have found, because I've fared a great deal better since I quit living that way.
If my parents had never married but had otherwise lived together exactly as they did, I would still be who I am, even though considered a bastard in the eyes of the law. But Heaven knows I've been called a bastard many times despite my legitimate status, and it hasn't warped my character or changed my outlook in any way that I've noticed. So to me it's unimportant.
What IS important is that my parents loved each other and stayed together through numerous threats and challenges. The legal status of their union really had little or nothing to do with the quality of their respect and affection for each other.
I support homosexual marriage, because of the MONETARY considerations, why two people who live in a DE FACTO marriage and put up with each other for decades should face discriminatory policies pro OR con in the Tax Code makes no sense to me. But then I am generally anti-Tax on nearly everything you can think of.
Well, that's my honest opinion. I hope you take it as a gift and not an argument or an insult.
FT brings up an interesting point when he says,
"If my parents had never married but had otherwise lived together exactly as they did, I would still be who I am, even though considered a bastard in the eyes of the law."
I am not sure that the law has any eyes in this instance. While a child born out of wedlock is often call illegitimate, I don't believe the law makes any distinction. The mother is still the mother and the father is still the father and the child is still the child.
Can't imagine this doesn't put a little pressure on SCOTUS to block DOMA and possibly not interfere with the California striking of Prop 8.
This is going to make "Tough Tony" Scalia really sad.
@FT --- Did you ever Mart Crowley's play The Boys in the Band -- or the movie made of it?
----
I was the only straight member of the tech crew in a production.
I recommend that experience of really being a minority to anyone.
Yes, Jerry, and I like to think of that as NATURAL LAW -- the only law that really counts, because WE can't CHANGE it.
I think, however, that as an official "bastard," I might not have been allowed to inherit as generous a portion of my parents' estate as I did. I'm not sure about that, and I imagine it varies from state to state.
Do you know for sure?
I do know that "natural" parents have a legal obligation to provide for their offspring, but how well that works in a society that has grown as generally amoral as ours I don't know.
Many of the younger waitresses I know (I eat out lots!) have babies and toddlers to care for, but no husband to help share the load. They're all very brave, cheerful and unashamed about it, but I know they've got a tough row to hoe. All I can do to help is tip well, and I do.
It's a good thing people don't look down their long noses at girls like that anymore, but it's still not a good situation.
An older person we used to know way back (1940's and she was old then) was so warped in her thinking she always referred to her first grandchild as "that goddam little bastard," because her daughter got pregnant before she married the boy's father.
Talk about idiotic! She MARRIED the father BEFORE the baby was born, and STILL this ugly fool of a woman thought of her own grandchild as "that goddam bastard" -- as if the poor kid had anything to do with it.
I may be a "Conservative," on many levels, but I am very very glad that SOME things have changed for the better. Its hard to believe how hidebound -- and STUPID -- some people used to be.
ya, what Infidel said! Kudos. Progress may be slow.....but it is always ongoing, thank goodness.
With all due respect, Infidel, I don't think you really KNOW what you're talking about, whereas I do. I speak from actual life experience, and I've lived for 72 years.
I am in harmony with your views on "fundies," though I never call them that.
I knew the moment the then-called "Christian Coalition" became an integral part of the GOP that it boded ill for the long term, and I was right.
However, the tragic case of Matthew Shepard was an isolated incident. Horrible in the extreme, but like Timothy McVeigh -- the left wing's favorite terrorist -- an isolated case. I'd say the same for that poor black man who was chained to a pickup truck and dragged to his death over stony, thorny ground -- one of the most despicable cases ever recorded. I feel ashamed I can't remember the man's name. But AGAIN it was a tragic ISOLATED case, and those who try to say that behavior like that is indicative of the mentality of the entire state of Texas royally piss me off.
The embarrassing phenomena I described, while a distinct minority of the homosexual population, are hundreds of thousands strong, and unfortunately the most visible face of the so-called Gay Community. Therefore, these elements are doing great HARM to the cause of homosexual liberation and the hope of winning full acceptance. Instead, they get peoples' backs up and alienate a preponderance of the non-gay majority - and rightly so.
FT However, the tragic case of Matthew Shepard was an isolated incident.
Bullshit. Violence against homosexuals, including violence severe enough to leave the victim dead or hospitalized, has been an ever-present part of gay life for generations. It's become considerably less common in the last couple of decades because it's less tolerated, but it still happens far too much.
It's not possible that you are actually unaware of these things. You're a liar, and people like you and the kind of values you promote have enabled violence and murder for generations. So don't act genteel with me. You are filth and I hate your fucking guts.
Although it has sometimes taken a very long time to kick in and plenty more time to prevail, Americans' preference for tolerance and fairness asserts itself in the end. The history of societal, institutionalized and, especially, law-backed discrimination shows this clearly.
Those Republican reactionaries in Illinois could probably save themselves a lot of frustration by reading the handwriting on the wall, heeding what it clearly says, and then go along with good grace.
But those Illinois Republicans and many other Republicans across the country won't do that. They will go on being blind to the facts because they prefer that. They will support one another's bigotry and refusal to face facts, and refusal to embrace justice, until, like the incoming tide, it surrounds and swamps them. They will then, as with civil rights for people of color and women's right to choose, embark on never-ending, resentment-fueled crusades that seek to turn back the clock, deny reality and impose their beliefs and preferences -- which typically amount to bigotry and injustice -- on everyone else.
We've seen this movie before. Fortunately, we can take comfort in how it ends.
--
For a long time I had a regular right-wing commenter at Oh!pinion who called himself "rightsaidfred." He regularly did what Sudrunner did above. I wonder if there's an online school for rightwing Netizens where they're taught the strategy and tactics of trollery. Koch funded, perhaps. Nothing would surprise me.
Thanks, Infidel, you don't know it yet, but you just made a GREAT contribution to HATE WEEK over at my blog.
I'm importing your remark with YOUR name on it.
THANKS! I really appreciate it.
You're more than welcome to come over and tell me -- in PERSON -- just how MUCH you hate my guts as many times as you wish. I assure you it won't faze me a bit, and it's sure to amuse the kids. ;-)
I do wish you'd quote sources when you make extravagant claims, however. How many cases comparable to poor Matt Shepard have YOU known, personally, or even know OF specifically? As I've said, I'm 72 years old. I was born and lived in New York City for many years, and have lived in several far flung locations since including Chicagoland, I've had many gay friends, and I never knew of a SINGLE case even remotely like that of Matthew Shepard.
I DID know one fellow who, as you said, was thrown out by his father after his homosexual identity came to light. It was a very sad and frankly despicable thing, but certainly rare in my experience which I'm willing to bet has been far more extensive than yours.
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Anderson, I am living proof that much of what you just said is simply not true.
I'm doing my best to try to break this bitter partisan divide that, I believe, is doing great harm to our society.
We just must stop being so habitually angry and distrustful of each other. I don't think we have to capitulate to one another, but surely we could stop assuming that anyone of a different part just HAS to be a miserable excuse for a human being, and at least try see that there might be some merit in a different point of view once in a while.
We may never agree, but we don't have to DISLIKE each other, do we? I certainly hope not.
Take care.
And yet, FT, you will be THE FIRST to get on somebody for being a Marxist or a follower of the Frankfurt School when your understanding of either is limited.
The reconciliation will come when we try to understand each others world view and evaluate whether there beliefs are going to advance that view and at what cost.
Myself, I think there is a tremendous cost to the Libertarian world view which you refuse to admit. But as far as you're concerned I'm a loathsome Marxist so around we go.
But you're right, we aren't getting anywhere. We spend so little time talking about what we believe, what we find beautiful, what we'd like to pass on.
Ducky: "We spend so little time talking about what we believe, what we find beautiful, what we'd like to pass on."
Ducky, you got that right, and tomorrow I'll publish something beautiful I saw on Boylston Street on Sunday.
FT... I found your remark to Infidel extremely arrogant and condescending..
\\I don't think you really KNOW what you're talking about, whereas I do. I speak from actual life experience, and I've lived for 72 years.//
....and he has had 'no' life experience? You, ah, know him that well? Living for 72 years is not, in and of itself, a telling of qualification. Please, your hate week 'experiment' is really just a short excursion into juvenile behavior. I do believe you realize it too.
Shaw... it is refreshing to see normality and peace restored. good on you.
Infidel753 is a highly intelligent, savvy, and considerate person. I know this for a fact.
Shaw...re: Infidel. Yes, he is. I have visited his site for sometime now. His writing is articulate and spot on. I am a little disturbed that FT thought his reply...'hateful'??? I am not sure if he is 'making' a point....or delving into trollism.
FreeThinke, let me make this clear about my remarks above. I hold as a core belief that it's virtually always wrong to say of any group of people that they're all alike. I wouldn't be surprised to learn there are a few liberal Democrats who don't like blacks as a group. I'm sure some conservatives/Republicans/libertarians can be found who are as accepting as most liberals of blacks and gays. Stipulating that in every comment is cumbersome, so please take it as a given.
I'm good with the notion of disagreeing without treating those you disagree with as enemies. Unfortunately, in the political and public-policy arena, conservatives generally and Republicans especially tossed that concept out decadess ago. One example: when Ronald Reagan was running for president the second time, the word went out that Republicans were to demonize all Democrats as liberals, or better, as "tax-and-spend liberals" in every reference, so as to redefine them in the public consciousness. Later, when George H.W. Bush was running for president, he sought to add to the demonization by characterizing liberalism as "the 'L' word," making it something so awful, offensive and out of the mainstream that decent people wouldn't say the word in mixed company.
That wasn't the worst of it, though. Down in the right-wuing ranks liberals were (and at times still are) referred to as (N-word) lovers, haters of Christians and Christanity, baby killers and, at the lighter, airier end, socialists and communists. Liberals were described as America haters who were out to undermine the nation's security, ruin its society and economy.
None of that was true of liberals as a group (although there probably were individauls of whom it was true), but conservatives, with the help of billions spent building and operating their ubiquitous Right-Wing Noise Machine, got a lot of traction with it.
While I definitely cast conservatives/Republicans in a harsh light above, there are facts and history aplenty to back up everything I said.
Being too liberal is just as bad as being too conservative. Yet people trying to stay in the middle of the road are likely to get run over, figuratively speaking, since both sides pressure them to lean too far one way or the other.
To me, gay means festive. It always has and I like it that way. Homosexual means homosexual. I know that homosexuals hate being called that because it tells it how it is, but reality is reality.
Considering that most people are living together and having children outside of marriage now, with no social onus on the children for this, and that marriage is primarily for the protection of children (the old inheritance laws, mainly) it seems to me that it's time to do away with the institution of marriage altogether. It's outmoded, it no longer has meaning. Civil union has just as much.
If homosexuals want to marry, let them. It won't be long before they no longer see marriage to be such a plum, pretty much the same as most heterosexual folks feel now. Right now, they want to marry just because it's not allowed, like the cookie jar that stays out of reach.
Once that jar's in reach, those cookies will turn pretty stale after awhile.
Black Sheep: "Considering that most people are living together and having children outside of marriage now, with no social onus on the children for this..."
I consider this a good thing and a sign of humankind's maturity. Children should not bear any guilt for what their parents did.
Black Sheep: "If homosexuals want to marry, let them. It won't be long before they no longer see marriage to be such a plum, pretty much the same as most heterosexual folks feel now. Right now, they want to marry just because it's not allowed, like the cookie jar that stays out of reach."
No. You're wrong. Gay and Lesbians want to marry because they love their partners and wish to make it as much of a commitment as heteros do, and to enjoy what the federal and state laws bestow on heteros.
You supposition about why gay and lesbians want to marry is cynical and, I doubt, based on first-hand knowledge. Are you gay? If not, have you walked in a gay person's shoes. Do you know what it is like to be reviled for who you are? To be denied civil rights?
I'm interested in how you came to know so intimately how gay and lesbian people feel about these issues.
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