So I was at my job, helping to set out the tables for tonight’s event, which was a benefit concert and dessert buffet for a scholarship fund. The fund helps law students who have agreed to work as lawyers towards equality for lesbians and gays.

Anyhow, one of the organizers asked me for a table and then told “Tom,” a middle-aged man who was busily laying out desserts, to help me. I’m fine, I told him, but he went with me anyway and helped me lug out a table. Later on, I needed help putting a table upright and rudely called out “Tom, grab the other end of this,” which Tom did cheerfully.

Later on, I noticed that one of the event organizers was wearing a “Tom Potter for Mayor” button. I said something nice about the button, and she said, “oh, haven’t you met Tom?” You can guess how the rest went. And that’s how I met Portland’s Next Mayor (or at least, the guy currently favored to win the election).

For what it’s worth, I like that Potter does a little volunteer work for a gay rights organization, and that he doesn’t think gruntwork is beneath him. I was going to vote for Tom Potter anyway (his opponent has tried to win by outspending ten to one, a tactic that I - and a lot of Portland - find insulting), but I’m a bit more enthusiastic about it now than I was yesterday.

From 365Gay.com:

Assuming the story is accurate, that something like this occurred is disgusting and unacceptable.

And from later in the article….

Reports of homophobic and sexist abuses by Palestinian authorities have greatly cooled my enthusiasm for “free Palestine” politics (you may have noticed I’ve posted a lot less about Israel lately). It’s become increasingly clear, I think, that a free Palestine will not provide freedom for Palestinian lesbians, gays, and other sexual minorities; and will not provide freedom for many Palestinian women. So what do we mean, when we say we want to “free Palestine”? Is all this effort just to free straight, male Palestinians, while other Palestinians will have to be content with having one fewer boot upon their necks?

This is one reason I’m attracted to the “one Israel” solution some radical leftists are advocating - the idea that Israel should accept that it now effectively owns and rules the West Bank and Gaza, and give everyone living there full citizenship and equal rights, including the right to vote in Israeli elections. Unlike the two-state solution, the one-state solution promises some degree of freedom for even lesbian and gay Palestinians, freedom they’d be unlikely to experience under a government derived from the PLO.

For the time being, however, the PLO is desperately dependant on support from Western liberals. That support should be contingent on the PLO ceasing to violate the rights of its gay citizens.

If you haven’t heard about it yet, Google will soon be launching its own free internet e-mail service along the lines of Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail but, ostensibly, better. As part of my having recently signed up for an account with Blogger, I was offered an opportunity to test Google’s Beta version of Gmail. (A side note about that: I read a news item this evening about how Gmail accounts are being sold on eBay for around $70. Why are people scrambling to buy Gmail accounts? Why not just stop by Blogger? Or, for once, am I actually special?) As I’m still looking for a good e-mail service provider, I thought that this would be a good opportunity to experiment with the new service.

So, here’s how you can help: Send me e-mail at pink.dream.poppies - at - gmail.com. Also, comment on this thread as all comments to posts I’ve written automatically get kicked over to my mailbox. I don’t mean to mail bomb me with a million two word messages, just send me little notes to tell me how wonderful I am. It’ll make my day. Also, supposedly, GMail has a 1,000 MB storage capacity per account, so why don’t a few of you send along you favourite MP3 of the moment. I don’t know if I’ll actually receive any 3-5 MB messages, but it’s worth a shot.

Happy mailing. I’ll post comments and observations on their mail system as they occur to me.
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Recently, Jennifer Morse wrote an interesting article discussing the central purpose of marriage. I agree with her premise about the purpose of marriage; I believe this purpose guides us to legalize same sex marriage.

First, what are marriage, sex and love? According to Ms. Morse, marriage is a lifelong mutual gift of self. Spouses entrust their bodies completely to each other during the sexual act. Love is a selfless decision to benefit the other spouse, and children in the family. Motivated by love, parents are willing to give up some of their personal needs for their children. Finally, this gift of self requires a life long commitment which cannot be set aside because one has fallen in love with another.

Ms. Morse notes that most heterosexual couples do not share this view. Or if they share it, they act as though they do not share it. That may be true. Whether heterosexuals share this view, or take another, we permit them to marry.

Ms. Morse assumes most gay activists, like most heterosexual couples, do not share this view of marriage. Because they do not, we should not permit same sex marriage.

I support legalized gay marriage. Like many supporters of same sex marriage, I agree with Ms. Morse view of lifelong commitment to marriage. I read of many gays who dream of making just this type of the lifelong loving commitment, wishing to love and support their partner and children completely. Such partnerships are legally banned.

I think we should permit all who dream of a life long commitment to marriage, whether gay or straight, the chance to fulfill their dreams.

It’s Thursday, so the third page of my Girlamatic comic book, Hereville, is up.

I would have had today’s cartoon up hours earlier, but I kept on falling asleep at the computer while coloring the page, which really slowed me down. Oy.

From 356gay.com

Need I say more?

Well, I can’t help myself. They won’t wear their robes. Maybe even the KKK realizes that people equate the KKK with intolerance?

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, “Alas” is loading very slowly nowadays (since the sidebar is the last thing to load, that in particular may take forever to show up). Our host is working on the problem, and I hope it’ll be solved soon.

Recently, Eve Tushnet at MD.com asked people to comment on the Abolition of marriage; many people have. Reading the responses, I was struck by something posted by Ryan Janus. It was this:

Evidently, Ryan believes that as long as he, his wife and God know they are married, that’s enough.

I have been married for 20 years. It does matter to me whether people believe my husband and I are married.

It mattered whether the bank believed us when we applied for a mortgage. It mattered whether our employers believed us when they paid to move spouses across country. It mattered when my husband requested personal leave to stay with me while I was hospitalized.

What people believed about my marriage would matter if:

• either of us were in an life threatening accident and we wanted the hospital to inform our next of kin.
• the IRS disputed our marital status during an audit.
• we wished to leave our assets tax free to each other when we died.
• either of us decided to violate our marriage vows and run off with someone else.

I could probably make this list nearly endless just including reasons why it matters whether people recognize my legal marriage. Some religions also take the point of view that it matters if people know you are share a sacramental bond. The Catholic Church has long thought it mattered whether other people know you are married; secret marriages are not permitted.

So, what do you think? Does it matter?

On his own blog and reprinted on Marriage Debate, Justin Katz suggests that gay-friendly laws are associated with high abortion rates.

Justin doesn’t give his source, so perhaps I’m missing something. But as far as I can tell the USA only has a lower abortion rate than Sweden’s using the CDC’s numbers, which undercount abortions significantly. The Alan Guttmacher Institute (which surveys abortion providers directly, for a more accurate count) reports that the USA had an abortion rate of 21 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44 in 2000. In contrast, Sweden’s abortion rate in 1999 was 18 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44.

So unless we use a statistical source known for undercounting US abortions, Sweden has a lower abortion rate than the USA.

Even if Justin were correct about Sweden (perhaps he has a more recent data source that I don’t know about), that would only make Sweden the exception to the rule. The Netherlands - which are also very gay-friendly - has the lowest abortion rate of any country in the world (6.5 per 1,000) - much, much lower than in the USA. Belgium has extremely pro-gay laws and an abortion rate nearly as low as The Netherlands (6.8 per 1,000). The other countries in the world with gay-marriage or marriage-lite laws - Germany (7.6), Denmark (16.1), Norway (15.6), France (12.4), and Canada (15.5) - all have significantly lower abortion rates than the USA (and also lower than most countries in the world).

Meanwhile, Eastern Europe - the least gay-friendly place in the developed world - has an incredibly high abortion rate: 90 abortions per 1,000 women age 15-44. Overall, it’s clear that gay-friendly countries have fewer abortions.

Of course, correlation is not causation; it seems unlikely that gay-friendly laws cause lower abortion rates. My theory is that more sexually liberal attitudes are associated with both gay-friendly laws and widespread use of contraceptives, which would account for the correlation. (A relatively generous safety net for unwed mothers probably also lowers demand for abortion in Belgium, Germany, France and the Netherlands).

It’s also notable that in recent years, as the laws in the USA have become significantly more gay-friendly, abortion rates here have declined.

My felicitations to all, gay or straight, who marry on this historic day.

I blogged about the Liberty Council’s “Hail Mary Pass” case filed on behalf of the Catholic Action League here. So far, their last ditch efforts to block same sex marriages in Massachussetts on Monday have failed.

Galois provides details, accompanied by much a better persectives than I can supply.

Barry previously blogged about some members of the Roman Catholic Church proposing to deny holy communion to prochoice politicians. Today, the associated press reports that Bishop Sheridan of Colorado Springs proposes denying holy communion to individual Catholics who vote for politicians who support abortion rights, stem-cell research, euthenasia or same sex marriage.

Evidently, some Catholics requested Bishop Sheridan add the death penalty and support for the war in Iraq to his list, but he did not. I can’t help but ask myself, if Sheridan had added those two items, as a practical matter, could Catholics in Colorado Springs vote for anyone?

I guess we’ll see whether other Catholic Bishops follow Bishop Sheridan’s lead. We’ll also see how politicians and the laity respond.
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It really could. But it’s really cool - or, to be more precise, trippy - anyway.

Recently, some have claimed that marriage should not extend to same sex couples because the potential for procreation, not the union of two into one, has always been the central core of marriage. (1)

I ask myself, can this true? If true, why is there no evidence to suggest the potential for procreation is the core of civil marriage? Can we find positive sources to learn what people thought to be the core of marriage? Although non-religious, I was raised Catholic, so I turn to popular Catholic texts, limiting my search to those that predate the SSM political controversy.

In 1929, Dietrich von Hildebrand wrote his very popular book “MARRIAGE: the mystery of faithful love”. Many will not have heard of Professor von Hildebrand, but his writings were held in quite high esteem by Pope Pius XII who called him “the 20th century Doctor of the Church.”

In “MARRIAGE” we find the chapter: “Love is the core of marriage” which begins:

Love and giving of each other fully are the core of marriage. As to children: they are the end, result or blessing of marriage. Von Hildenbrand also asks:

In his book he answers: marriage exists for its own sake, and not that of the children it may produce.

Many readers who have followed the argument about procreation and marriage know that the potential to procreate is not required for civil marriage; it is not a traditional ground for divorce. Some answer: this is not evidence to counter the premise that procreation is the core of marriage, it is simply too difficult to test for inability to procreate.

But is the difficulty to detect infertility the reason we permit post menopausal women or castrated men to marry? According to von Hildenbrand, it is not the reason.

Let us examine what he thought about infertile couples. He asks:

So, childless couples are not a pale imitations of procreative models; we do not accept them because it is too difficult to screen them out. They represent the true meaning of marriage by displaying marital fidelity and loyalty even when they are not blessed by children.

Like Lot of the Old Testament, the ideal exists in loyalty and fidelity even when God withholds children, his blessings.

Moving away from von Hildenbrand, what of Pope Pius XI? Were he alive today, he would surely oppose same sex marriages, as he opposed divorce and birth control; he held procreation in high esteem. However, I do not believe his opposition to SSM would be based based on the belief that procreation is chief reason or central purpose of marriage. His opposition SSM would be based on something else.

Let us seek Pope Pius XI’s opinion on the purpose of marriage in CASTI CONNUBII:

Reading these words and others in his Encyclical, there is no doubt that Pope Pius XI thought children important; they are a blessing to and benefit of marriage. Children should be welcomed and embraced by parents. Certainly marriage benefits children; a fact he notes.

Nevertheless, neither children nor procreation are the chief reason or purpose of marriage. The chief reason for marriage is the mutual molding of husband and wife. Matrimony is not to be looked on narrowly as existing solely to conceive and educate children.

The central core, purpose and meaning of marriage was the loving, loyal, faithful and committed bond between partners, not procreation or even the potential for procreation.

If the Catholic Church did not believe procreation was the central purpose of marriage, what of others? Might legislators, or the public at large have agreed with the teachings in these texts? Might this not be the reason marriage and divorce laws reflect the idea that marriage is a loving sexually faithful and supportive commitment between two people?
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From the January/February issue of Dollars and Sense…

The second page of my Girlamatic comic book, Hereville, is up. There’s a new page every Thursday! (Assuming I don’t mess things up.)

I’m contemplating switching to a two-pages-a-week schedule. I’m very deadline-driven, so it’s possible that I won’t be able to produce two pages a week unless I have two deadlines a week. We’ll see.

There ought to be some rule against what I’m doing. Bloggers should write original lead articles but I can’t help myself. Everyone should read A Dystopian Definition by Jason at positiveliberty.com.

His blog begins:

marriage - n. - A sacred governmental union entered into by one man and one woman. Marriage is singular in that it is the last remaining act of God that still requires permission from the government.

I’d tell you how it ends… but I disapprove of that sort of thing.

Here is yet another volley in the court cases in Massachusetts: Groups Challenge Same-Sex Marriage in Mass.

It seems the Liberty Council and a few other groups have filed a case on behalf of Robert Largess of Boston, VP of Catholic Action League. The claim is the SJC of Mass. usurped executive and legislative powers when it ruled in Goodrich. Evidently, permitting the Massachusetts SJC to interpret the Massachusetts constitution violates the US constitution. In fairness, the claim seems to be the SJC amended, rather than interpreted, the Mass. constitution.

Given some past rhetoric, it seems ironic that some conservatives appear to think the activist federal courts do get to decide whether or not a state has violated the US constitution and impose their interpretation of the US constitution on states. Meanwhile, the same conservatives appear to believe states courts may not interpret their states’ constitution or impose their interpretation on their own state.

I have not yet found a link to the actual motion, any detailed comments on the legal premise or any other discussion. So, for all I know, the claim will have some internal consistency. Fox news does carry this quote:

We will all have to wait for more news and read what the federal court’s response.

So here’s how it works: Let’s imagine two cops spot a negro driving a flashy car (one of the cops later testified that he was made suspicious by seeing a “luxury” car which “stood out a great deal in the area”). The negro then made a turn but activated his turn signal only 30 feet in advance, rather than 100 feet, so the cops decided to pull him over. (I’m sure white people get pulled over for things like that all the time.)

Once pulled over, the negro (who may have been on drugs, which justifies everything the cops did) is acting weird and is slow to respond to orders. One cop opens the car door and grabs him. Then, the negro jams his hand into his pocket. The other cop orders him to take his hand out of his pocket. But when the negro starts taking his hand out of his pocket, the cop panics and shoots. From Willamette Week:

So he shot the negro three times in the chest from six feet away, and then his partner tasered the corpse. But then it turns out that the now-dead negro was unarmed.

So then the cop enters our justice system. And now the DA’s office has a problem. The last thing Portland DAs want is to prosecute hardworking, honest cops for shooting unarmed negros to death - cops won’t be able to do their jobs if they’re punished for every little thing, after all.

Of course, the DA could refuse to press charges, but that would mean admitting in public that he favors cops shooting unarmed negros, and that sort of openly taking responsibility might piss off voters. It’s the 21st century; politicians aren’t allowed to obviously favor killing negros, like they could in the good old days.

No problem! A smart DA can just play games with the judicial system to protect a cop’s god-given right to shoot unarmed negros to death. So the DA goes to the grand jury. Normally, a DA presents his best case against the defendant to the grand jury, which then decides if there’s enough evidence to justify a trial. But if you’re a Portland DA, and if the victim is only an unarmed negro, then what you do is present the case for the defense.

(Mike Schrunk, by the way, also doesn’t appear to take statutory rape very seriously - at least, not when it’s committed by one of his pals. Jack Bog has the details.)

Since the grand jury hears only the evidence the DA chooses to present, a DA who presents the defense case to the grand jury is guaranteeing that the cop will get off. And best of all, the DA gets a free pass from the public for his whitewashing the shooting of an unarmed negro, since no one really gives a fuck. Sure, it’s a perversion of justice and a severe abuse of the grand jury system, but that’s not worth reporting on. It’s only a dead negro, for God’s sake! No need to make a fuss.

* * *

God damn it. You know, I’m not sure if the flip tone of this post is appropriate, but the truth is I’m trembling with fury about this, and if I try to write about it without being flip I’d just end up posting a string of swear words, so deal with it.

I did a nexus search; no major paper in Oregon even reported on the rather astounding fact that the DAs put an expert witness for the defense in front of the grand jury.

There’s no way a white person would have been shot the way James Perez (or Kendra James before him, or Jose Poot before her) was shot. And if by some miracle a white person was shot on a pretext pull-over, there’s no way the Portland DA’s office would cheat the grand jury system to make sure that the cops were spared the discomfort of a trial. And if that did happen, the mainstream papers would at least report it.

Mike Schrunk and his boss John Bradley looked at the color of the victim’s skin and said, “screw it! Blacks aren’t human; the shooting of an unarmed black person doesn’t require a trial, because black lives aren’t worth that much.” A hundred years ago Schrunk and Bradley would have gotten their rocks off participating in lynch mobs, but since they can’t have that pleasure nowadays, they have to settle for gaming the justice system to make it legal for cops to shoot blacks.

It drives me up a wall that Schrunk and Bradley are still being treated with respect. Why aren’t they spit on by every decent person, everywhere they go? Why aren’t they turned away from restaurants and stores? Why aren’t their houses and cars vandalized every day? Why isn’t the mayor - or any of the folks running for mayor - calling for them to resign or be thrown out of office?

Because, truth be known, the mayor and the Oregonian and everyone else hates black people just as much as Schrunk and Bradley themselves do. Because, in the final analysis, the dead guy was only a negro, and that means that his life has no value in our society. Why make a fuss?

Politically, I’m against the idea that people should be for peace “as mothers”; I don’t beleive that women have some innate liking of peace that men lack. (The best essay on this is Katha Pollitt’s “Marooned on Gilligan’s Island,” which - alas - doesn’t seem to be available online). Nonetheless, it’s good to remember that Mother’s Day actually stood for something, once upon a time.