test blog 8

At last, it has happened . With Obergefell v. Hodges , same-sex marriage has been declared legal and constitutional in the United States. Same-sex couples can legally marry, just as opposite-sex couples have always had the right to do. Most importantly, laws prohibiting same-sex marriage are now unconstitutional.* For some years on this blog, I used to note every country that joined the equal marriage club, but about two years ago, I stopped counting . More than 20 countries now recognize same-sex marriage as a right, and that number continues to climb. This issue has always been, is, and always should be a complete no-brainer. Equality is equality. Rights are rights. We can't have rights for some and not others. That couldn't be more obvious. The debate in the US, especially the displays of extreme homophobia and bigotry from the other side, has helped the vast middle of the road to adjust to the idea. That's why yesterday's SCOTUS decision, although incredibly wonderf...

This is so beautiful! New Zealand, we thank you! We love you!

The wingnut media continues to redefine irony. Yesterday Fox News ran a piece called "To be happy, we must admit women and men aren't 'equal'". (Sorry, no link. Linking to bigots is a violation of wmtc policy.) To illustrate their homophobic, anti-woman twaddle, they used a picture of a wedding atop the Empire State Building, apparently not realizing it was... the wedding of two women! What a riot. Read the story: you'll come for the laughs, and stay for the wisdom. From Feministing. Yesterday the feminist internet collectively lol’d at Fox News when Jessica Valenti realized that the “wedding kiss” picture they’re using to accompany a piece about traditional gender roles is actually of a same sex couple. Turns out, the two women whose love was mistakenly highlighted by the tirelessly homophobic news outlet are no strangers to the spotlight. Lela Mc Arthur and Stephanie Figarelle of Anchorage, Alaska won a contest last year to have their dream wedding in New ...

Menino: "Chick-fil-A would be an insult to the city's long history of expanding freedom." Rob Ford , please take note.

We can say two things about Congress in the wake of the news that Rep. Barney Frank is retiring after this term: It’s about to get a little dumber, and a lot duller. So here, in appreciation for his years of service and entertainment, are some of Frank’s best YouTube-accessible moments Thanks to Ezra Klein, via James. They're short and sweet. Enjoy. (But excuse me, Mr. Frank, you made a boo-boo in that last vid. The US invaded Iraq with your party's enthusiastic blessing, and then continued to occupy that country after your party promised otherwise in 2006. Other than that, thanks for the memories.)

The recent BC Supreme Court decision upholding Canadian laws criminalizing polygamy is disappointing and dangerous. The much-quoted summary paragraph of Chief Justice Robert Bauman's decision contained a surprising clause: the protection of marriage as an institution. I have concluded that this case is essentially about harm; more specifically, Parliament's reasoned apprehension of harm arising out of the practice of polygamy. This includes harm to women, to children, to society and to the institution of monogamous marriage. As we all know, harm to women and children has been the stated basis behind anti-polygamy laws, but in contemporary society, this makes no sense. Forced marriage, spousal abuse, child abuse, and child sexual abuse are already crimes, whether they occur in the context of legal marriage or any other context. Laws curtailing women's freedom have always been rationalized as necessary for women's protection. Women weren't allowed to work, vote, smok...

Today in New York City, some families will celebrate their love and commitment, because the law has finally caught up with reality. 2 Dads, 2 Daughters, 1 Big Day by Frank Bruni Even in a city as diverse as New York and a neighborhood as progressive as the West Village, a little kid knows that having two dads is different. Eight-year-old Maeve certainly did. She knew, too, that the world didn’t see her family exactly the way it saw others. Her dads, Jonathan Mintz and John Feinblatt, could tell. “She understood that there was something, for lack of a better word, second-class about her family,” Mintz said. And, as she wrestled with that, her frustration was distilled in a question that she and then her sister, Georgia, 6, began to ask more and more often. Why aren’t you two married like our friends’ parents? For a long time Mintz and Feinblatt avoided an answer because, while they didn’t want to lie, they also didn’t want to focus their daughters’ attention on the blunt truth: that New...

As part of my work for the video surveillance project, I was wandering around the Square One mall, when I saw this sign in the window of Lush. I went inside to ask for more information: there was a petition, a postcard drive, and an excellent pamphlet from Freedom To Marry . The manager told me about some of the company's past political actions, including Stop The Tar Sands and anti seal hunting campaigns. I am very impressed! Most corporate chains define their social responsbility in the blandest and least controversial way possible. With Stop The Tar Sands, Save Our Seals, and Freedom To Marry, Lush is bound to take a lot of static in both Canada and the US. They'll certainly gain some business, too, but corporate social responsbility is usually all about middle-of-the-road. Lush sells beautiful handmade soaps, all cruelty-free and ethically sourced. As much as it pains me to plug a competitor of my friend Stella Marie Soaps , shipping charges from Rhode Island may be prohi...

New York State, thank you for doing the right thing ! Forty-two years after Stonewall, same-sex couples have the legal right to marry in New York State. Whoo-hoo! New York is the state of birth, of my parents' birth and even one grandparent's, my home for 44 years (minus my time in Philadelphia), and in so many ways, the place of my heart. At one point, it looked like I'd be ashamed of my home state, but now I am proud of it. A special shout-out must go to Jason West, the former mayor of New Paltz, New York, a straight guy who said, this is ridiculous, and married same-sex couples in a parking lot. When I Googled "New Paltz mayor married same sex couples" to find West's name, this turned up: Awaiting a Big Day, and Recalling One in New Paltz . I remembered this because I feel a personal connection to New Paltz and nearby Minnewaska State Park, related to our trips upstate with our dogs . I love that this happened in that same little college town. We're ge...

This is reaching whole new levels of awesomeoness. Go go go!

It comes as no surprise that NBA great - and peace-loving Canadian - Steve Nash supports same-sex marriage. But it's damn great to hear him say it. Does anyone know of a list or compilation of all the New Yorkers for Marriage Equality videos? Human Rights Campaign , the organization that's producing the videos, doesn't seem to have them archived. I've Googled the daylights out of it and can't find anything.

Thank you to this Canadian for taking this public stand! Since September, advocates for same-sex marriage in New York have released 30-second videos of celebrities endorsing their cause. More than 30 have taken part, including the actors Julianne Moore and Sam Waterston , Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the former first daughter Barbara Bush . On Thursday, former President Bill Clinton released a written statement of support, too. Until now, supporters have come mostly from the worlds of politics, entertainment, theater and fashion. One type of New York celebrity was conspicuously absent: the athlete. Enter Rangers forward Sean Avery. He recently recorded a video, becoming one of only a few active athletes in American team sports to voice support for gay rights, and is believed to be the first in New York to publicly advocate for same-sex marriage. No active male player in a major American team sport has declared his homosexuality, and homosexual slurs remain in use to insult opponen...

Let it not be said that the Harper Government™ does not support equality! Why, there's an entire sentence about gay rights in the new version of the Citizenship Guide! And that's a full sentence more than when the guide was published . See?? Progress!! (Thanks to West End Bob for alerting me to this.)

A few weeks ago, when Human Resources Minister Diane Finley made some horribly offensive comments about working parents, I noted: I find it shocking how this discussion in Canada focuses almost exclusively on working mothers . I was so accustomed to hearing "working parents" in the US that when I moved here, I was really taken aback by the difference. To me, this is akin to seeing the choice of "Miss" on Canadian forms, or "Dear Sir or Madam" instead of "To whom it may concern". But those phrases, although important, are largely symbolic. The unquestioned assumption that women choose between staying home or earning income, while men do not make similar choices, should have been retired at least 30 years ago. Little did I know, these assumptions about gender and child care are actually written into Canadian law! Perhaps Canadian readers already know this, but when I inadvertently discovered it a few weeks ago, I was shocked. In my Research Method...

Major congratulations are in order! Our friends and fellow expatriates "Gito and Mrtew" are now Canadian citizens! Or soon will be: they've passed their test and are scheduled to take their oath. These guys have been through a lot to be together. Because Gito is not a US citizen, they couldn't live together in the US, since their relationship is not legally recognized. They stayed together through deportation and then the long wait of immigration. In Canada, they were able to get married, buy an adorable house in Windsor, and make their life together. Gito is now attending university. We finally met in person for the first time a few years ago , and I'm sure we'll all see each other again. The Red Sox in Detroit are a great excuse to visit friends in Windsor. You can see Gito's amazing and unusual photography at eggfactory and Arte is Foto . Becoming Canadian means a lot to me, and our journey from that first thought - "Maybe we should move to Canad...

Via Andrew Sullivan, Chart Of The Day: What is a family? , from the Pew Research Center . A majority of respondents don't consider my family a family. Although I actually don't care, because I know we are a family. (Which may make you wonder why I posted this.) Even more interesting, 18% of respondents judged an unmarried male-female couple with children as not a family. And 12% thought a single parent with children is not a family! How do we wrap our heads around that one? It may be bigotry, but it also may be a failure of the imagination. People cannot imagine a type of family other than the kind in which they were raised. Their minds are very small. Another interesting chart : percentage of people who think the changes in marriage and family types are a good thing, a bad thing or neither. The summary of the report is very interesting: here . I'd like to see future surveys include polyamorous, multiple-adult households - just to piss off the bigots.

Stephen Harper and his merry band of Canadian Conservatives suffered a trio of defeats in the past week - which is another way of saying that we, the people who want to reverse the damage the Harper government has done to Canada, enjoyed a series of significant victories. First, the world said no to the Harper foreign policy agenda when the UN denied Canada a seat on the UN Security Council. Haroon Siddiqui has an excellent round-up of why the UN very rightly said no to Canada, and how the Conservatives are typically and lamely trying to spin their defeat. It’s not just his pro-Israeli stance that made Canada a pariah at the UN. He: • Sabotaged the UN climate accord. • Decried the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. • Downgraded UN peacekeeping — to 160 Canadian soldiers out of 105,500 worldwide, placing Canada 57th, behind Yemen and Uganda. (Tuesday, the day we lost the vote, was the anniversary of Lester B. Pearson’s Nobel Peace Prize for inventing peacekeeping.) • ...

I'm thinking most wmtc readers have seen this by now, but if even one of you hasn't, it's worth posting. There has been a rash of suicides of of gay teens in the US. All of the young people were bullied in high school, because they were gay. Columnist Dan Savage and his partner Terry Miller made this video in response. Nick is the first friend I met through wmtc. He's Canadian now, having left the US for a better life in Toronto. Here's his contribution to "It Gets Better". Sarah Silverman puts the bullying and the suicides in context. This is short; please be sure to watch it. Bullying isn't limited to queer kids, nor is teen suicide. The deaths of those six young people is not a "gay problem". It's our problem - all of us. It's up to each of us to create a safe world where each and every one of us can be ourselves, and can live without fear. We have a long way to go. "When you're sure you've had enough of this life......

Just as we were leaving California, an astute federal judge struck down Proposition 8, marking a big victory for equality and a significant defeat for the forces of bigotry and hatred. As New York magazine put it , quoting the ruling, this is "what history sounds like": Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California constitution the notion that opposite sex couples are superior to same sex couples. The ruling has many excellent parts, but I particularly like this one, addressing the overturning of a vote in referendum-happy California: . . . fundamental rights may not be submitted to [a] vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections. HuffPo has good analysis . Then, as you know, the bigots, facing defeat, denounced the ruling because US District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker is openly gay. Recuse, they cry! Con...

Argentina has become the first Latin American country to legalize same-sex marriage. Way cool! The same law also allows same-sex couples to adopt children. BBC story here.