This is cross-posted at Cool Beans, however, due to the time issues and my desire to get word of this out to as many people as possible, I’m also posting it here, rather than just hoping others will link to it

At ReZoom.com, they are collecting votes for “A Better World” Awards. You can vote once a day (every day) until March 31, 2007. More than 20 charities will win $5,000, with the grand prize winner winning $100,000. You can check to see if your favorite charity is already nominated and vote for them. If it’s not, you can nominate them by filling out the on-line submission form and writing an essay that states why that charity is making the world “A Better World.”

At this point, I will take the time to try and persuade you to vote for the charity of my choice. Why should you vote for this one over all of the other deserving charities? Well, besides the fact that it could actually help me out, personally (ahem), The American Domestic Violence Crisis Line is the only crisis line of its type in the world. It is the only service available to US women, men, and children, living in foreign countries who are trying to escape domestic violence and child abuse. US crisis lines, including the National Domestic Violence Crisis Line, can only help those currently living in the US. And DV agencies in other countries (if they exist at all) can only help in very limited ways (if at all), and probably have no way of helping these women (and men) relocate back to the US (and the financial assistance is only one aspect — the legal issues are even more complex). The US Embassies may be of some help, but that will partially depend on the particular workers that are currently working in that location and how much they know or care about domestic violence.

From the essay posted on ReZoom:

The American Domestic Violence Crisis Line, (ADVCL), 866-USWOMEN, operates the only international toll free domestic violence hotline serving abused American women and children living in foreign countries. The line is currently toll free from 175 countries. Our target population is the estimated 6 - 7 million American civilians and military living in foreign countries. Officially 4.2 million civilians are registered with American Embassies along with ½ million military personnel and their families. To give a perspective of the size of the civilian population we serve, if the number of Americans registered with embassies were placed in one state, it would be the 25th most populous state in the nation. Although no statistics exist for abuse in this population, applying abuse statistics in the USA to our target population, an estimated 57,000 women and 45,000 children are abused annually.

ADVCL began crisis line operations in April 2001 just two years after Paula Lucas, Founder and Executive Director, finally escaped a foreign country with her three children to flee 12 years of domestic violence and child abuse. Frustrated at the absence of services for her and her children while overseas, and shocked at the legal obstacles she encountered upon her return home to be able to keep her American children in their own country, Paula was determined that other American women & children would not need to suffer the same fate. Paula first founded the non-profit organization as an online resource for abused Americans living in foreign countries in September 1999. At that time, she and her children were still homeless themselves, living in a domestic violence shelter.

Since 2001, the organization’s crisis line advocates have served an estimated 1,000 families on the crisis line providing crisis intervention, domestic violence advocacy, case management, safety planning, information & referral. Also since 2001 the organization has provided danger to safety trans-national relocation to 26 families back to the USA, paid 13 legal retainers to enable battered mothers to file for custody of their children in the USA, provided professional counseling to 19 abuse survivors and placed 3 families into a one-year transitional housing program.

In 2006 alone, crisis advocates received 1158 crisis calls and emails, providing services to 248 families in 47 countries. Collectively volunteer advocates volunteered 3,849 hours on the crisis line in 2006. The crisis line currently operates continuously from 9am Monday PST through Friday 11pm PST.

And here’s something else to consider, something that separates the needs of this charity from just about every other charity on this list. This valuable and much needed service takes significant amounts of funding (the phone bills alone can cost thousands of dollars every month). At this point in time, due to the inability to provide a concrete “population” (many of the numbers are estimates — and the exact percentages of DV may vary from county to country), we are unable to gain access to government grants and funds. All of our funding comes from private grants and donations.

If you already have a local charity that you believe is truly deserving of this award, by all means, vote for them. But, please consider voting instead for the ADVCL. Or, perhaps you could switch back and forth each day (again, you can vote once a day, everyday, until March 31).

On Friday, May 12, 2006 at 12:27pm CDT, Markku Frederick Laukkanen — nephew of sometimes-co-blogger bean — arrived after what many moms would probably consider an envy-enducingly short and relatively painless delivery. Markku weighed in at 7 lbs. 14 oz. and 20.5 inches long.

Mom Casey and Dad Heikki are both doing well, and enjoying the new addition to their family.

The dogs, Taylor and Tilly, are also doing well, and, as you can see, already know their place. The cats are still a bit weirded out.

Considering the ever increasing popularity of meetup.com, I’m sure that I don’t have to spend much time explaining it. But, for those who are not aware of it, essentially it is a website where you can find groups to join in your city on just about any subject one could possibly think of. Like the Amelia Peabody books and live in Orlando? Join the Orlando area Amelia Peabody Meetup. Tired of dealing with bad customer service? Want to vent to like-minded people? Live in Dilli, India? No problem!! Join the Dilli Bad Customer Service Meetup Group.

So, that’s what meetup.com is all about. With that said, I’d like to invite any Portland area feminists to tonight’s feminist meetup which will be held at In Other Words bookstore (3734 SE Hawthorne) from 7 - 9 pm.

It would be best to sign up on meetup.com and RSVP. But, if you don’t want to or are unable to, don’t worry about it — just show up.

I’ve spent the last 24 hours trying like hell to figure out why some of the posts here will say they have “29 comments” but you can only read 24 of them. I couldn’t find the missing comments in my e-mail or anywhere else. It was very confusing.

Well, I finally figured it out…I think. It turns out that some of the comments sit there until they are “approved” (while others are automatically approved). I have no idea why this is happening, and Amp isn’t around right now for me to ask. It seems that in some cases, this is a good thing (a couple of the unapproved ones were spam). In other cases, however, they were legitimate posts. One was by a frequent Alas commenter (although, this may be the first time she commented since the move to WordPress). Others were by someone who had been commenting in that thread already. So, I have no idea why they weren’t approved.

So, anyway, I will make more of a point to check out the threads to see if there are any “unapproved” messages and go ahead and approve them. But, if you notice that your comment has not shown up, go ahead and e-mail me to let me know.

Tis the season for holiday angst… about just how many calories we’ve all consumed over said holiday. Isn’t it? I mean, after all, my company found it necessary to remind all of us of the dangers of holiday poundage. CNN wrote up a whole little news story about the ::gasp:: link between consuming excess booze and inhaling excess calories. My favorite line from the CNN article?

“A drink now and then probably won’t leave you with a holiday belly, but knocking back too many six-packs can do a number on your six-pack abs.”

As if someone with six-pack abs doesn’t know how many calories are in their beer.

Looking at all of these “you’re fat” articles and the dieting craze that’s making a lot of people (most of them white men, but a lot of white female dieting gurus as well) really, really rich, I can’t help but notice the language they use: the American people are deeply stupid adolescents. They don’t know how to take care of their bodies. Everybody who isn’t a size 2 just isn’t trying hard enough. Let’s pat them on the head and tell them how stupid they are.

And this kind of language doesn’t get any of us anywhere.

First, I want to say that I agree with pretty much all of what Amp’s had to say about the Fear of Fat controversy in the US (and the bias against enormous Americans overseas). But after spending another holiday with my enormous, depressed family discussing the pros and cons of that latest rage - gastric bypass surgery - I’ve got something else to say about the weight controversy that’s really been bugging me.

I come from a family of big people who put on weight and retain it pretty easily. There’s nothing wrong with that. Twenty extra pounds is actually better for you than being five pounds underweight. The problem is, my family struggled with those twently pounds for so long that they eventually got depressed and gave up, and twenty became fifty, became eighty, became one hundred, and now we’re in some trouble, because they’re having trouble getting up the stairs, they can’t walk around the block, and listening to some of my family members gasping for breath is really scary.

I have an aunt who just got gastric bypass surgery. My dad’s scheduled for it in February. My sister’s “mother-in-law” is currently recovering. Everyone’s very excited at the idea that if you starve yourself because you’re stomach is so small, you suffer from malnutrition and lose weight. It’s like magic. ha ha

So what’s wrong with suffering from malnutrition and losing weight? It’ll make `um feel better, right?

Wrong.

You know why?

Cause most of these people don’t have any hobbies. They don’t know any other way to live. They’ve relied on food as entertainment for so long that now that they don’t eat, they have no idea what to do with all of their time.

And that was really the issue all along, wasn’t it? Finding something else to do besides eating. Picking themselves up from depression (usually incited by the fact that they had twenty “extra” pounds that were actually perfectly healthy for their size and body composition) and building model airplanes, or taking up some Jazzercise classes, or even joining a scrapbooking class. Something besides eating.

And they don’t have anything.

That’s my biggest worry about all of our quick fixes, all of those “lose those twenty pounds and suddenly your life will all work out” myths. It’s a bunch of crap. Sure, there are going to be those who find that starving themselves and being thin(ner) is a good kickstart to get them exercising and eating right (two of the biggest factors in combating depression) and may give them the self confidence to start other hobbies, to get their shit together.

But there are going to be a lot more people who find that at the end of the day, there’s less of them, and they’re still empty.

We’re stuck so much in the weight loss = happiness dialogue that we’re not interested in encouraging people to be better, to be smarter, to make the most of their talents. We’re telling them that the entirety of thier selfworth is based on their body size.

And I think that’s dangerous.

The new issue of EM is available on-line now.

The new issue includes articles by some already familiar names, such as

Echidne of the Snakes:

Flea of One Good Thing:

There are also articles on:

From HipHop and Black Participation by Shauntrice Martin:

The “Babe” Culture by regular EM columnist, David Scott:

From War and AIDS by frequent EM writer, Kamala Sarup:

Separtism: Are We Limiting Ourselves? by Hannah Austin:

And much, much more.

What, you didn’t think I’d go there?

Amanda over at Mousewords pointed to a Bitch Magazine article about the controversy among pro-choice women regarding the “I Had An Abortion” T-shirts.

Like sex, pregnancy in general, and lesbianism, it appears that abortions should stay in the bedroom (preferably the bedroom closet), too.

That way, we can pretend they don’t exist.

Makes them easier to pass legislation against.

In South Africa, on the U of Natal campus, they had the “HIV Positive” shirts. In the province I lived in, Kwa-Zulu Natal, the HIV infection rate was about 1 in 3, and there’s a huge stigma around going to get tested, getting treatment, asking a partner to wear a condom or wearing a condom, and some very real fears that the whole HIV thing was actually just a mythical disease made up by white people to discourage black people from having sex - sad to say, the latter was an understandable fear from people who’d had an entire government trying to contain and regulate their sexuality for the better part of the century.

AIDS awareness day meant breaking out the HIV positive shirts - whether you were HIV positive or not - and the day I walked onto campus and saw the shirts was the day I started to really understand just how hard-hitting AIDS was in Southern Africa. No, all of these people likely didn’t have AIDS, but there were some who did walking around with the shirts on, and statistically speaking, many, many more who knew they were but didn’t talk about it.

Because those who had HIV were ostracized and looked down on. Having HIV was seen as something shameful, and not to be talked about.

Wearing the HIV shirts wasn’t about identity, or oversharing one’s personal life: it was about raising awareness.

We are human beings. We have sex. We do human things, and those choices have very real ramifications. Look. See. I have HIV, and I’m still alive.

I had an abortion.

Look. See. I’m still here. I’m happy. Life goes one. That’s what choice is all about.

If you don’t scream things from the rafters: abortion, HIV, “those lesbians”/”those gays,” “those Jews,” are always “other people.”

Never “us.”

And it needs to be “us.”

It’s a lot tougher to tell your sister, or Susie down the street, what to do with her body than it is to tell some mythical half-imagined “desperate” woman who you imagine shouldn’t have been engaging in very real human sex anyway.

Silence is scary. Silence makes all of us “the other.”

If you want to read a book that just might piss you off, pick up Colette Dowling’s The Frailty Myth, an excellent examination of social expectations for women regarding sport, fitness & strength.

I’ve been forwarded a couple of sites from some well-meaning biological determinists and some out-right wingnuts, and their cozy talk about how naturally weak and nurturing all women are (implying that all men are strong and non-nurturing) really started to get to me. Now that I’m pursuing martial arts, and sometimes fighting in mixed-sex pairs with guys who are my same height, weight and belt rank: I can tell you right now, arguing vast biological difference is just another way to beat women over the head with how weak they have to be so they can make men feel better about being men.

The biggest biological difference between men and women?

Most women can bear children. Men can’t.

The end.

When you start talking about equal participation of women in sport - and I’m not just talking about women’s same-sex teams, I’m talking about allowing women to compete with men - you end up confronting, again, those old biological “truths”:

Men are stronger than women. Men are faster than women. Men are better than women.

Say it long enough and loud enough, you just might believe.

A little like the litany: White people are better than black people. White people are smarter than black people.

It’s biological truth. Right?

Women were kept out of institutions of higher learning because “science” said that women had smaller, weaker brains than men did. All women were incapable of “higher thought.”

That was biological truth. That was fact.

Then you sat women down in a classroom, taught them how to read and produce scholarly work, and oh, shit… wait. Women who use those little brains don’t perform half bad. In fact, they perform better than lots of men, and each other. Human differences, and all.

I hate the way we talk about strength.

Some men can throw a better punch than some women. And likely, the men can do it because they have more experience in it. But you start teaching women how to fight, how to duck, you start encouraging women to be loud, and roughhouse, and climb trees and throw ball, and you know what? Women catch up pretty quickly, to the point where those “differences” in overall strength and fitness is a difference of 2%.

How much more can we narrow that gap by encouraging women to take pride in their bodies, in movement, at an earlier age, and teach them that puberty doesn’t mean they become an object, it means they can take control of their body and their sexuality?

The first woman to swim the English Channel did it faster than the five men who’d gone before her.

When women started winning against men in the Olympic archery competitions, the yardage for men and women was staggered, so no woman could say she shot with more accuracy at the same exact range as a male competitor.

The one time a man posed as a woman at the Olympic games in 1936 (this is the Deep Fear all of those Olympic officials give when they say they’ve gotta “sex test” female participants. Could you imagine the outrage if a male boxer was made to “scientifically prove” his sex before every match?), the guy set a new world-record in pole-vaulting.

The next year, three women beat his old record, and a woman took home the gold.

The WNBA plays with different rules: a smaller ball, a shorter 3-point distance, and halves instead of quarters.

Why?

A shorter 3-point distance no doubt means that more women get 3-pointers. It would also mean more men would get them, too.

WTF?

It’s not that women topping out at over 6ft tall don’t have big enough hands. It’s not that women over 6ft tall aren’t tall enough to hit 3-pointers. Women could just as easily play a game in quarters as halves.

The deal is, no man wants to be compared to a woman. No guy in the NBA wants some hot young female player to play the same game and come out looking better than him. If she’s got a better scoring record than him, so what? They have a smaller ball and a shorter 3-point range. Of course she outscored him.

It’s a woman thing. It’s different. She’s not a real person. She can’t compete.

Why should women have different fitness standards than men, in high school, in combat?

My buddy Jenn says fit tests are a problem because men are so protective of reserving sports and combat as man-defining activities that they’ll raise the bar high enough to disqualify 60-70% of men just to prove a point: women can’t compete.

Problem would be, most men couldn’t compete either.

The army recently changed it’s PT standards, so men and women are required to do the same number of situps. In fact, the PT standards for women have risen in the last two decades as it became clear that women coming into training were performing wildly better than the previous generations - we’ve got a functioning title IX, and a growing acceptance and encouragement of women in sports. And, wow, hey, look at that: all the sudden, women are performing better.

I don’t think women “evolved” in twenty years to increase their biological capacity to kick ass.

But that’s just me.

I’m Kameron Hurley of Brutal Women, and like Lauren, am very pleased to be here.

I’m originally from Washington State, but I’ve been living in Uptown Chicago for over a year now, where I relocated after completing an MA at the University of Natal, in Durban, South Africa where I lived for a year and a half. My concentration was in the history of armed resistance against apartheid, and my MA looked at the propaganda put out by the African National Congress aimed at the recruitment of female guerilla fighters.

My areas of interest cover women in combat, war & gender, guerilla war and “terrorism” in general. You’ll also find that I have a personal interest in body acceptance, the power dynamics of abusive relationships, and a desire to take apart and examine both biological “sex” and gender, which I often do in my fiction work.

I’m a sporadically-seen spec. fiction writer (that’s science fiction & fantasy), and my stories spend a lot of time exploring the above themes in wildly different settings with wildly different rules… I have a couple of stories up here and here.

After much thought, I’ve decided to continue my posts in the same vein as those at Brutal Women. I was hoping I’d be able to do some more research-heavy posts this week… and then I realized I’m a day away from holiday madness. So we’ll save the purely academic hat for those days I have some breathing space.

All said, it’s good to be here, and I look forward to seeing in the holidays at Alas.

…on both sides
Read the rest of this entry »

After all, there are some scary possibilities. :p

Thursday, Lawyers representing San Francisco and 12 same sex couples submitted legal arguments in a case requesting a judge strike down the state statue limiting marriage to one man one woman. Law.com highlights the following arguments:

The case in California is evidently stronger than it might be in other states. This is because in Perez vs. Sharp, the California Supreme Court struck down a statute prohibiting marriage between people of different racial background, reasoning:

I happen to agree with that idea. The right to marry seems meaningless if the law prevents one from marrying a person of their choice.

Other legal arguments submitted in favor of same sex marriage include the facts that California laws do not limit marriage to couples who intend to have children, and the state permits same sex couples to adopt children and act as foster parents. These factors tend to undermine the argument that the one man- one woman criterion is motivated by any intention to benefit children. In specific cases, the law prevents people with dependent children from marrying.

Lawyers also presented evidence that extending marriage to same sex couples will save the State of California money, since same sex couples and their partners will be able to obtain benefits for their partners and children through programs currently available to heterosexual married couples.

Although saving the state money may not be the strongest legal argument to persuade a court, it’s something I always appreciate. My political inclination is to empower adults to help themselves and their dependent children through their own labors whenever possible. At a minimum, the government should never create laws that block any minority groups’ access to methods of providing for themselves when these methods are available to the majority.

Criminal rape charges against Kobe Bryant were dropped after the accuser refused to go forward. The civil case continues.

I find this case, like most acquaintance rape cases, infinitely sad. This quote from Bryant’s apology to his accuser captures the “He thinks-she thinks” aspect often buried beneath the easily recognized “he said-she said” aspect:

We will never know what either he or she really thought, said or did.

Amp posted on this issue in the past, and likely will have more thoughtful reflections than I could post. [1 & 2] Meanwhile, Feministing provides a round up, Feministe provides a round up and analysis.

While reading about the current friction between Spain’s Socialist Government and the Roman Catholic Church, I came across this tidbit:

The article doesn’t provide any additional information about the poll. Nevertheless, 70% support is impressive in a country where 90% report they are Roman Catholic. Interestingly, the Socialist government is moving quickly to enact same sex marriage, but more cautiously on abortion. The government is also slowly moving to get out of the business of financing the Roman Catholic Church, which would require it to collect its own funds, (as churches do in the US).

For more read the article by Reuters.

Janet Peck and Carol Conklin have been together 29 years. Now, along with six other couples, they are asking the Connecticut courts to permit them to marry. When asked why they are going to court now, rather than waiting for the legislature, the 53 year old Peck responds:

Why does that make me recall Martin Martin Luther King’s words: “Justice deferred is justice denied”?

Both women are hoping the court rules in their favor before their 30th anniversary. Lawyers advise this wish is optimistic; likely Connecticut courts will not rule for several years. Meanwhile, there is the possibility of a nationwide amendment to ban same sex marriage could be introduced and, ultimately, ratified.

Unlike other some plaintiffs in the Connecticut case, Conklin and Peck are childless. The wish to marry for the same reasons most heterosexual couples wish to marry. The most important reason? Love.

For more, visit The Day

Alan Keyes’s antics seems to have created a new political strategy for at least one GOP leader. Hiding behind ficus plants!

The Chicago Tribune describes this recent encounter between Illinois GOP party chairwoman Judy Barr Topinka and Alan Keyes:

Based on his more recent rhetoric, I predict we will soon see national leaders ducking behind ficus plants to avoid Keyes. Why? Keyes seems to be intent of publicly criticizing the Vice President’s daughter. The Chicago Tribune reports:

Keyes’s rhetoric is likely causing some consternation at the GOP convention, where the leaders have been struggling to convince voters that they are inclusive and welcome gays. 365Gay.com provides OutQ radio host, Michaelangelo Signorile’s, thoughts after the interview:

As any seasoned candidate might predict, Keyes’s frank statements spawned a flurry of questions. Although for all we know, McCain might have preferred to vanish behind a ficus tree, he did answer questions. The Chicago Tribune reports:

That sounds like the sort of understated non-endorsement one expects from a seasoned politician like McCain.

So far, I haven’t heard any quotes from Cheney. I have to admit, I’m sort of hoping Keyes will ramp up his rhetoric to the point where Dick Cheney gets spitting mad and is tempted to use inappropriate language. But, Cheney is a seasoned politician and he is probably guarding against this danger. I suspect, if Keyes gets anywhere near him, he will duck behind a ficus plant.

As an Illinois resident, I am having way too fun watching former Ambassador turned social conservative radio talk show host Alan Keyes run for Senate. First, he explained why it’s ok to run for Senate as an invited carpetbagger who is not nominated during a primary, while it’s not ok to runs as an uninvited carpetbagger who is nominated during a state primary. Next, he flipped on slave reparations (if you can call his change of view a real reversal.) Then, while at the very agriculturally oriented Illinois State Fair, Keyes announced “he no longer favors abolishing the U.S. Agriculture Department”. (See abc news. )

Now, for Keyes on gun control! Of course, every politician has a right to take a position, but let’s just say Keyes’s rhetoric cannot be called subtle. The Chicago Sun Times reports:

Well, Alan, I don’t know about the reporter, but, I have never been to Israel. I’ll take your word that I wouldn’t feel less safe because of the Uzis.

But Alan is not content to raise the specter of Uzis when advocating machine gun ownership in the US. What we are we to think when Keyes says things like this:

True. Permitting people to carry machine guns is not like letting them carry atom bombs.

Evidently, Keyes volunteered the “machine guns are not atom bombs” argument at a press conference he called to attack Obama as an extremist.

It must be rhetoric like this that garnered him enthusiastic words from Illinois State GOP Chairwoman Judy Barr Topinka. When questioned whether she would vote for Obama or Keyes, The Chicago Sun Times reported she answered:

But, I’m forgetting; Barr Topinka said that five days before the atom bomb reference.

With rhetoric like this, I suspect we can all understand why I hope Keyes will continue to focus on gun control . There is evidence he will begin to discuss same sex marriage.

There are a large number of interesting stories related to SSM in the news pipeline this week, many of which might be characterized as pending or continuuing stories, rather than dramatic conclusions. I’m grouping the cases into three categories for convenience. Here they are:

Court cases challenging ballot initiatives.
Because state are currently certifying ballots, there are a large number of these cases.

Arkansas: Friday, the Arkansas Supreme Court agreed to hear a Arkansas American Civil Liberties Union challenge to a proposed anti-marriage equality amendment.

Oral arguments are scheduled for Sept. 23. For additional information, visit 365Gay.com.

Connecticut: The New York Times reports a gay rights group filed a suit to legalize same sex marriage in Connecticut.

Louisiana: The final decision on whether or not the anti-marriage amendment will appear on the Sept. 18 ballot is still pending. There are at least three cases. The two most widely reported cases relate to these issues: 1) Is Sept. 18 a statewide election? 2) Does the amendment have multiple objects. (That is, does it simply ban same sex marriage, or does it do other things as well?) Opponents of the amendment also wish to remove State Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey Victory from cases as they reach the Supreme Court; this judge is said to have campaigned for office based on opposition to same sex marriage. (See 365Gay.com.)

Michigan: Yesterday, The Detroit Free Press reported the Michigan state board of elections was deadlocked over the wording of the anti-marriage equality ballot measure.

Ohio: The Toledo Blade reports Don McTigue, and attorney representing Ohioans Protecting the Constitution has filed a suit to protest signatures collected Fulton, Sandusky, Marion, Morrow, and Logan counties.

Oklahoma: The Oklahoma Civil Liberties Union filed a motion requesting the Oklahoma Supreme Court declare an anti-marriage ballot initiative illegal. They argue the amendment violates the rights of gays and lesbians, and also argue the amendment is poorly worded. As usual, the dispute revolves around how different people might interpret the precise meaning of “legal incidents of marriage”. For more, see 365Gay.com’s August 27 article.

Court cases unrelated to upcoming elections.
There are many cases arising as a result of previous state and federal legislation.

Florida: The Herald Tribune reports John Ashcroft requests a Miami judge dismiss a lawsuit challenging the legality of DOMA. He argues the four couples who filed that particular suit do not have standing because they have not married in any state. According to Justice Department spokesman Charles Miller this is the first time the federal government has directly defended the legality of DOMA in court.

Meanwhile, there are other suits in the pipeline. The
Starbanner reports Attorney Ellis Rubin has filed lawsuits in a variety of Florida jurisdictions. One suit has been filed on behalf of a lesbian couple from Bradenton who married in Massachusetts.

New Mexico: The Sandoval County Clerk Victoria Dunlap appears to have lost a round to resume issuing licenses to same sex couples. Dunlop will appeal. More at 365Gay.com.

Oregon: Today, the SeattlePI.com reports the Benton County Board of Commissioners in Washington state will resume issuing marriage licenses, but evidently not to same sex couples. Benton County had stopped issuing marriage licenses to altogether after a judge ordered them to stop issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples.

Virginia: A Frederic County, Virginia judge has ruled a Vermont marriage is irrelevant in a custody suit filed in Virginia. This ruling is criticized in a Washington Post opinion column carried at the DailyCamera, which states:

They also suggest this “decision ought to be reversed on appeal.”

Legislation
The California Legislature has approved three pro-LGBT bills and two resolutions. Governor Schwarzenegger is expected to sign at the three of the bills; the resolutions do not require signatures. To read some details about the bills and resolutions visit 365gay.com.

For a more general round up, including both older and newer stories, see StatelineOrg.com’s August 26, 2004 article.

===
I posted and later updated to add Conn. and Ohio news.

When I first read this story at Fox News, I thought: What’s with the Mayor of Muncie, Indiana? Doesn’t he have anything better to do than forbid flying the US flag to prevent “visual clutter” at an RV park? Visual clutter?!

Then this question occurred to me: Did Fox News get the full story?

I dug a little deeper. (Thank goodness for Google). It turns out smaller fries provide greater depth.

IndyStar.com suggests the mayor acted because the park had become a “taxpayer-subsidized, semi-permanent trailer park nicknamed “Springerville” after the Jerry Springer television show.”

“Springerville” sounds bad, but surely, that problem could solved by limiting rental periods to one or two weeks. So, I dug even deeper.

Voila! Flags.net reports:

It seems Wallace, who says he is called “the mayor” of the campground, has been flying his 3 ft x 5 ft flag at the campground for over a decade.

I suspect few will be surprised to learn a suit has been filed against Dan Canan, the Mayor of Muncie. Not surprisingly, Tommy “the mayor” Wallace is involved. Flags.net quotes Indiana Civil Liberties Union Lawyer, Ken Falk:

Originally, the flag flying ban restricted all flags except the US flag and POW/MIA flags. After the suit was filed, the mayor of Muncie extended the ban to include all flags. That move is expected to strengthen the city’s case.

I tend to like my first amendment rights. I think people should be able to fly flags and express political opinions; restrictions should be strongly justified. On the other hand, I prefer that publicly owned and operated parks be kept relatively free of politics so all people can enjoy them in peace. Mr. Wallace is, to my mind, obnoxious. On the third hand, I suspect if Tommy “the mayor” Wallace does lose this suit against the real mayor or Muncie, he, or someone with similar views, will find a new way to express their views. Likely, they will paint an enormous Confederate flag on their RV and the drama will continue.

On the fourth hand: Why did “Fair and Balanced”, “We report, you decide,” FoxNews drop the Confederate flag angle from this story?

In a recent Blog, I mentioned that a bankruptcy judge upheld DOMA, ruling that Lee and Ann Kandu who were married in Canada could not file for bankruptcy as a married couple. At that time, I had not read any articles describing how the couple fell into debt. Although not pertinent to the legality of DOMA, their story is particularly heart wrenching. The Ledger.com reports:

When they married in August 2003, both women believed they were recovering. As is common, the couple combined their finances after their wedding. They filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection in October when they learned Ann’s cancer had spread and doctors would be unable to save her. Ann Kandu died in April 2004.

The judge evidently sympathized with Lee Kandu’s plight, but ruled against the request to file bankruptcy as a married couple.

Kandu represented herself in the court case; she plans to appeal. I hope some generous soul steps forward to represent her.