New Paltz mayor Jason West (Green Party) is taking a major stand for marriage equality. He has announced that he will marry four same-sex couples over the weekend, calling it his “‘moral obligation.’”
West is stepping out on a limb as he takes this stand. Officials who are taking the (correct) step and allowing same-sex couples to marry are under strong fire from conservative groups who are dead set against allowing homosexuals to marry. West has a great quote - I must share it here - about those against gay marriage: “‘The people who would forbid gays from marrying in this country are those who would have made Rosa Parks sit in the back of the bus.’”
That’s a very strong statement, but it is also correct. The difference is that people feel they don’t have to worry about discriminating against someone who is the same color as they are. People who would never discriminate based on race have no moral problems discriminating based on sexual orientation. Many are proud of it, calling themselves righteous to do so. This is discrimination based on religion. And it is sickening.
Who would’ve guessed that the sunset on Mars would be a different color than here on Earth? Instead of our normal pinks and oranges, Mars has a beautiful blue sunset.
Arapahoe County Clerk Tracy Baker, infamous for giving his girlfriend a huge raise, exchanging sexually-explicit email at work, and apparently having sex with her at work - was recalled from office on February 24th. This wasn’t a big surprise - Baker fought hard against allowing the recall election because he knew that he would get ousted in an election. And he was correct: the final tally had 87% of people voting for his recall.
The sad part of this story is that the Green party did not run a candidate in the recall election. This would’ve been a winnable election - Libertarian candidate Travis Nicks pulled in 14.2% of the votes, and a write-in Democrat pulled in 13.7%.
It looks like more groups than just anti-war groups are open targets for the Bush administration as the election draws nearer. “Education Secretary Rod Paige called the nation’s largest teachers union a ‘terrorist organization’ Monday…” Paige supposedly apologized, saying “‘a bad joke; it was an inappropriate choice of words.’” But then Paige went on to try and excuse his comments, saying “he was referring to the Washington-based union organization, not the teachers it represents.”
National Education Association president Reg Weaver was rightly offended, and fired back with, “‘We are the teachers, there is no distinction.’”
Pressed again to see if he was truly apologizing, Paige said, “‘Well, I’m saying that I’m sorry I said it, yeah.’” Ummm… that doesn’t exactly sound sincere to me.
If you are the president of the United States, you are up for re-election, and you have a slight problem - 2.6 million manufacturing jobs have been lost during your first term in office - what do you do? Well, if you are President Bush, you try to re-classify fast-food jobs as “manufacturing” jobs.
Yes, unfortunately, this is a true story. I don’t think anyone could make up something this stupid! According to Newsday, Bush’s chief economic adviser N. Gregory Mankiw “asked whether it should be changed. ‘When a fast-food restaurant sells a hamburger, for example, is it providing a ’service’ or is it combining inputs to ‘manufacture’ a product?’”
I smell a whiff of desparation coming from the Bush camp here.
On a lighter note, Newsday sneaks in a funny Bill Clinton mention in this article: “The White House McDonald’s, whose customers include many White House staffers, though no president since Bill Clinton…”
Sorry about the un-announced break this past week. Due to illness, I have not been able to keep up on the news nor post anything here. Fortunately, I am mostly back up on my feet, and I am ready to get back to work. Get ready for some more wackiness!
I am in love with Apple’s iTunes music player. Between the simplistic interface, the incredibly powerful music library and playlist management features, simple audio CD burning feature and the iTunes Music Store, there was almost nothing for me to complain about.
Well, there was one thing: it is impossible to save iTunes playlist as standard .m3u playlists which programs like WinAMP and Zinf recognize. I searched and searched for a program to convert iTunes playlists to .m3u. Finally, my search has turned up solid results. This web page is a PHP application which converts iTunes playlists to .m3u.
There’s been a flurry of news stories about gay marriage in the last 24 hours. Most deal with the city of San Francisco giving marriage licenses to same-sex couples. San Francisco’s Mayor Gavin Newsom is giving his blessing to the marriage licenses being given, saying, “‘I’m not interested as a mayor in moving forward with a separate but unequal process for people to engage in marriages [...] I think the people of this city and certainly around the state are feeling that separate but unequal doesn’t make sense.’”
A large part of San Francisco’s impetus to grant the marriage certificates is the ruling by Massachusetts Supreme Court’s ruling that banning gay marriage is unconstitutional. Since California’s constitution contains even more non-discrimination protection than Massucsetts’ constitution, odds are that the ban on gay marriage will also be ruled unconstitutional in California.
While this sounds promising, it does have conservatives clamoring even louder for constitutional amendments banning gay marriage. It is going to be hard to get these amendments passed, but it’s always a possibility. So I am heartened to hear political figures coming out against these amendments. The most surprising so far: Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper.
Hickenlooper continues to surprise me - he’s turning out to be quite progressive in his actions. Witness his stand on this issue - a stand he did not have to take. Politically, it might have been wisest for him not to say anything about gay marriage or the proposed amendment to ban it. Instead, Hickenlooper openly joined demonstrations against this amendment. Hickenlooper said, “‘in the context of government, same-sex couples in committed relationships should be entitled to equal rights such as the ability to visit a loved one in the emergency room.’”
This has been a good, promising couple of days for proponents of gay marriage. However, it is inevitable that conservatives will regroup, and will intensify the fight. This is turning into a critical year for this issue. While the majority of people favor legally recognizing gay unions (52% in most polls), only a small minority favor allowing gays to marry (24% in most polls). There is still a lot of work to be done.
Understatement of the week is from York Pennsylvania “prosecutor Bill Graff said you can’t take the law into your own hands, but it’s likely that they’d get parents who’d say that’s what they’d do if it was their daughter.” The incident he is referring to is a father who punched a man in the face after the man offered the father’s daughter money for sex. I don’t see any way that a dad wouldn’t punch someone after doing that! There’s a difference between taking the law into your own hands and protecting your daughter.
Not finding weapons of mass destruction might just be the undoing of the current administration. First, George Bush makes a fool out of himself with an appearance on “Meet the Press.” Next up: conservative talk show host Bill O’Reilly is “skeptical” about the current adminstration. “O’Reilly said he was ‘much more skeptical about the Bush administration now’ since former weapons inspector David Kay said he did not think Saddam had any weapons of mass destruction.”
Rats usually don’t start abandoning a ship ’til it starts sinking. O’Reilly’s public remarks about the Bush administration may just be a sign that the rats are getting restless.
