Natale Davis over at All Facts points me to a post over at the Christian Science Monitor "Patchwork Nation" blog about recent events on the same-sex marriage front.  Patchwork Nation is an interesting project…

About the Patchwork Nation project

The United States is a vast, diverse place – more than 300 million people spread over 3.5 million square miles. Yet our understanding of its complexities is limited. We think of demographic slices or broad regions, or we fall back on the overused, oversimplified ideas of red and blue America.

Patchwork Nation, funded by the Knight Foundation, a nonprofit philanthropic organization based in Miami, is designed to help us get past those views and understand how different communities and cultures within the US experience different realities – and shape the whole.

So the blog post in question grabs snapshots of opinions from each of their representative communities thusly…

In Los Alamos, N.M., our wealthy and educated “Monied ’Burb,” there doesn’t seem to be much of a gay marriage “issue.”

“Our legislature introduced a bill allowing gay marriage. It died in committee,” says Bill Enloe, chairman and CEO of Los Alamos National Bank, in an e-mail. But he also writes, “The majority of individuals in the state are in favor of allowing gay marriage. It might pass next year.”

Kevin Holsapple, executive director of the Los Alamos Chamber of Commerce, e-mailed that he had “never perceived it to be an issue” in the city.

In Lincoln City, Ore., our small-town “Service Worker Center,” some in the community are focused on the topic, according to Patchwork Nation blogger Kip Ward, who runs a local hotel. However, “For most of us, we have bigger fish to fry,” he says in an e-mail. “We just don’t bother with it one way or the other.”

In Ann Arbor, Mich., our liberal “Campus and Careers” community, one correspondent succinctly e-mailed, “Gay marriage should be a nonissue.”

And in Nixa, Mo., our socially conservative “Evangelical Epicenter,” local retiree Betty Ann Rogers wrote that she hadn’t really heard about the issue or read about it in the newspaper.

…but what gets my attention is a comment left by a reader from Massachusetts:

Here in Massachusetts, so little is different that you’d not know that we were the first state to legalize gay marriage, if you didn’t make an effort to ‘turn the rocks over’ or ‘kick the logs’ a bit. Those gay and lesbian couples who wanted to marry have done so…and settled down into quiet, integrated parts of the communities in which they live. They pay taxes, support churches, do community service work, and just generally help their areas be better places. You’d never know that there had been a ‘country-shaking’, ‘ground-breaking’ event here by the quietness of it all. My marriage fell apart not because some of my gay and lesbian friends married their partners, but because of my own failings (or those of my ex). I think that as things march forward, people will come to see that that their own relationships are not, in any way, controlled or affected by those around them, gay or straight, and that tolerance and quiet, friendly support for happy couples is much, much better for our society overall than is angry divisiveness. 

Emphasis mine.  This is why Every Single Battle in this fight has been to the death.  Because once people see they’ve been lied to about the Homosexual Menace, the whole house of cards falls apart.  It isn’t society sliding into sexual anarchy the homophobes have been afraid of.  It’s the see-it-with-your-own-two-eyes realization that bringing same sex couples into the fold actually strengthens communities that they never, at any cost, wanted people to behold.

For generations they have put knives into our hearts so they could feel righteous.  For generations they have taken what should be one of this life’s most perfect joys…falling in love, and being loved in return…and turned it into a nightmare for this one small portion of the human family.  They did it so they wouldn’t have to look at the barren wasteland they’d made of their own stone cold hearts.  They did it so they could have scapegoats for every cheapshit character flaw of their own.  They turned their gay neighbors into monsters, so they wouldn’t have to confront the monsters staring back at them in the bathroom mirror.  Andrew Sullivan and Damon Linker have been staring in wonder at the depth of the fear in Rod Dreher’s writing on the subject of same-sex marriage.  But they have it all wrong.  It isn’t change Dreher is afraid of.  It isn’t the fear that civilization may slide into sexual anarchy that grips him.  It’s being held responsible for all those thousands upon thousands of broken hearts and murdered hopes and dreams.  Why did they do it?  Why?  Why was it necessary to put a knife into the hearts of so many innocent people?  Ultimately, we may never know precisely why.  Why do people hate?  Why does hate have such power over some of us, and not others?  Can we ever really answer that question?  But you need to understand what Dreher and his kind fear isn’t the Homosexual Menace, or Sexual Anarchy or The Fall Of Western Civilization, but that common, decent people will stop seeing monsters when they look at their gay neighbors, and instead see who the real monsters were in this unmitigated human tragedy.

There’s the fear.  There’s the bottomless fear.  Right there.

The process of constitutional referendum in Iowa takes more time then in California, apparently.  Before an anti same-sex marriage amendment can be sent to the voters, it has to be approved by the legislature in two consecutive sessions.  The republicans in Iowa are complaining that democrats are being obstructionist for not taking up the matter Right Now, instead of next year.  The Senate majority leader fired back…

One of my daughters was in the workplace one day, and her particular workplace at that moment in time, there were a whole bunch of conservative, older men. And those guys were talking about gay marriage. They were talking about discussions going on across the country. And my daughter Kate, after listening for about 20 minutes, said to them: ‘You guys don’t understand. You’ve already lost. My generation doesn’t care.’ I think I learned something from my daughter that day, when she said that. And I’ve talked with other people about it and that’s what I see, Senator McKinley. I see a bunch of people that merely want to profess their love for each other, and want state law to recognize that. Is that so wrong? I don’t think that’s so wrong. As a matter of fact, last Friday night, I hugged my wife. You know I’ve been married for 37 years. I hugged my wife. I felt like our love was just a little more meaningful last Friday night because thousands of other Iowa citizens could hug each other and have the state recognize their love for each other. No, Senator McKinley, I will not co-sponsor a leadership bill with you.

I don’t think this is simply a matter of people now reading the tea leaves and deciding it’s safe to support gay Americans in their desire to get married, settle down and make lives together.  It’s people, slowly, one-by-one, getting sick and tired at long last of all the venom and hate.  People are getting tired of the culture war.  They just want to live with their neighbors in peace and good will.  Newsweek has an article up titled, The End Of Christian America, which argues thusly…

While we remain a nation decisively shaped by religious faith, our politics and our culture are, in the main, less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were even five years ago. I think this is a good thing—good for our political culture, which, as the American Founders saw, is complex and charged enough without attempting to compel or coerce religious belief or observance. It is good for Christianity, too, in that many Christians are rediscovering the virtues of a separation of church and state that protects what Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island as a haven for religious dissenters, called "the garden of the church" from "the wilderness of the world." As crucial as religion has been and is to the life of the nation, America’s unifying force has never been a specific faith, but a commitment to freedom—not least freedom of conscience. At our best, we single religion out for neither particular help nor particular harm; we have historically treated faith-based arguments as one element among many in the republican sphere of debate and decision. The decline and fall of the modern religious right’s notion of a Christian America creates a calmer political environment and, for many believers, may help open the way for a more theologically serious religious life.

Emphasis mine.   You could argue that the religious right’s notion of a Christian America is about as authentic as its notion of Christianity.  But this is not the twilight of American Christianity.  If anything is coming to an end now, and I am not yet convinced it is, it’s the culture war.  Maybe.  Hopefully.  This is not a Christian nation.  It is a nation where Christians are free to worship according to their conscience.  But that is only because everyone else is too.  President Kennedy in 1960, when it was being asked openly whether or not a Catholic could be president of the United States, said "For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew—or a Quaker—or a Unitarian—or a Baptist… Today I may be the victim – but tomorrow it may be you – until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped."

Divide the nation, and we’ll have the bigger half, said Nixon’s aid Pat Buchannan, signaling the start of the culture war that has gone on to this day.  So the southern strategy was put into motion, to divide northern from southern democrats and working people from the democratic party.  So the Southern Baptist Convention began tearing their more liberal brothers and sisters from the fabric of the faith.  So the Episcopalians began to schism, rather then treat their gay neighbors as fellow human beings.  So the more liberal and diverse cities and states of the nation were told they weren’t the true America after all.  So gay people were made into demons and scapegoats for every social ill that the culture warriors brought down upon themselves.  For the glory of God the fabric of America was torn asunder and the glory that was America, its promise to all the peoples of the world of liberty and justice, was condemned as evil.  Only the righteous could have rights.  Only the elect could be full citizens.  The American Dream isn’t yours heathen…

No, Senator McKinley, I will not co-sponsor a leadership bill with you…

What’s happening is that people are sick of it now.  We want to be Americans again.

First time I left Disney World and walked back into the real one it was to headlines screaming at me that over 170 people had been killed in coordinated terrorist attacks in India.   This time:

Binghamton Rampage Leaves 14 Dead, Police Don’t Know Motive

By 10:33 a.m., the shooting was over and 14 people — including the gunman — lay dead, the chief said.

At least four people were listed in critical condition. Earlier, sources said as many as 26 people were wounded.

3 Pittsburgh officers killed; suspect taken after standoff

An ambush that resulted in the shooting deaths of three Pittsburgh policemen was precipitated by an emergency call from the gunman’s mother over a dog urinating in the house.

…later identified as Richard “Pop” Poplawski, 22. A dishonorably charged Marine, he adhered to a number of right-wing conspiracy theories and expressed fears of a “Zionist nation” revoking his right to own guns.

Breakup ignited dad’s deadly rage in Graham

He jumped in a car with oldest daughter Maxine, 16, who tracked her mother through a cellphone global-positioning system.

They homed in on a convenience store 20 miles away in Auburn, north of the Muckleshoot Casino. James confronted his wife, who was with another man. He wanted her home. She said she wasn’t coming back.

He stormed home, consulted relatives and calmed down. Maxine went to bed about 11 p.m. with her four younger siblings. She sent a classmate a text message from her cellphone: “I’m tired of crying. I’m going to bed.”

Within hours, James Harrison, 34, grabbed a rifle and shot each child multiple times. Four were found in bed. One of the girls died in the bathroom after a violent struggle.

Armed with a second rifle, he returned to Auburn on Saturday morning, perhaps in hopes of finding his wife. Perhaps to kill again. Instead, sitting inside his running SUV, he turned the rifle on himself. His body was discovered about 8 a.m. by children playing in the area.

Welcome back to Realityland Bruce…

Oh…and the Iowa Supreme Court Unanimously decided that not letting same sex couples marry was an unconstitutional denial of equal protection.   I should be happy about that and I am, but I dread reading the news accounts because inevitably they have to give the gutter a chance to spit on gay people, happy couples, and all their hopes and dreams.   But more and more I’m seeing words like these, finally…

There was a time, not that long ago, when it was possible to imagine, however inaccurately, that gay sex was in and of itself a self-destructive pathology, something no happy, healthy person would willingly engage in. That time is past. The evidence of stable, loving relationships between well-adjusted, successful people is all around us. Indeed, this abundant evidence–and not the tides of the sexual revolution, which peaked more than three decades ago and have since receded–is the reason that gay rights, and in particular the question of gay marriage, have moved so quickly in recent years.

That time is past…   Yes, for the people willing to let reality speak for itself.   I am of a generation of Americans who were taught all kinds of horrible, filthy lies about gay people, and not simply in school, but in church, in the movies, in magazines and newspapers, and on TV.   Where we were not dangerous sexual psychopaths we were contemptible faggots.   When I was 17, and just beginning to grasp that I was gay myself, I got the message about how people felt about homosexuals from just about every direction I looked…

Mad #145, Sept ‘71, from “Greeting Cards For The
Sexual Revolution” – “To A Gay Liberationist”

At the beginning of James Burke’s PBS series The Day The Universe Changed, he tells a story of some students of philosophy, bragging to the teacher about how ignorant people were to think that the earth was the center of the universe, and that the sun orbited around the earth rather then the other way around.   How ignorant, said the students, when all they had to do was just look up and observe the sun rising as the earth turned.   Yes, said the teacher, but I wonder how it would have looked to them had the sun actually been orbiting the earth?   The point being that it would have looked the same.   Sometimes what we see is what our knowledge tells us we’re seeing.   And for generation upon generation, people have been taught to see gay people as monsters…sick, perverted, disgusting, pathological monsters.

Which was how we saw ourselves for so very long.   That time is past.   And years of living openly and proudly are having their effect on anyone open to the evidence.   But there’s one more movement to go in this civil rights dance…

Gay Bashing Suspect: ‘The Faggot Deserved It’

A 62-year-old man assaulted in an alleged hate crime in a Vancouver gay bar remains in hospital care.

In the wake of the attack, the local GLBT community has mounted protests against the attack, as well as a string of earlier incidents that may also have been anti-gay hate crimes.

On March 17, Xtra.ca reported that a witness described how the suspect, 35-year-old Shawn Woodward, declared, “He’s a faggot. He deserved it” after allegedly striking Richie Dowrey in the face, knocking him down.

The suspect also reportedly declared, “I’m not a fag. The faggot touched me. He deserved it.”

The alleged bashing took place at a gay bar, The Fountainhead Pub, in Vancouver’s West End.

Said the witness, Dowrey’s friend Lindsay Wincherauk, “[Dowrey] fell like a board to the ground so hard that a hollow thud could be heard throughout the bar.”

Dowrey reportedly suffered severe brain damage.

Said Wincherauk, “There’s a chance if he survives he won’t walk again.”

The sun doesn’t just suddenly rise on a day when we are an equal and respected part of our communities.   What happens is gradually, step by step, the chains that hate put on our lives slowly loose their power over us, and we walk free.   But we are not free yet.   The simple, elegant, beautiful gesture of couples simply holding hands as they walk together, is still enough to get us beaten to death.   What happens is that as we walk out of the shadow of hate our heterosexual neighbors begin to see us, finally, as the people we really are.   What happens is that hate, greedy, envious, hungry, follows us out of the shadows also, and into the light, where it can be seen by everyone too…

Community responds to gay bashing near campus

The two men charged in the gay bashing of two University of Cincinnati students near the Main Campus will each reappear before a judge within the next week.

Ethan Kirkwood, 20, of Meadow Creek Drive in Anderson Township, and Matthew Kafagolis, 20, of Ramundo Court in Anderson Township, were arrested on two counts of felonious assault and released on bond. Since the arrest, the charges have been dropped to two counts of misdemeanor assault, according to the Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Web site. The charges were lowered on March 20 and March 19, respectively.

The maximum penalty for a misdemeanor assault charge is less than one year in jail.

…The two men are being charged with allegedly assaulting two men – both are UC students – after the men found out one of the victims was gay, around 4 a.m., Friday, March 6, in the 2500 block of Clifton Avenue.

The gay man was knocked to the ground, kicked and punched after the assailants found out he was gay, according to court records. The other victim was attempting to defend his friend when he was also beaten.

That our neighbors see us for the fellow human beings we are is good, but it is not the end of it.   They must also see the hate for what it is too.   That will be the end of it, finally.   But it is going to destroy more lives before this thing is over.

My iPhone keypad started behaving strangely yesterday afternoon. It would randomly stop responding to key hits and I assumed that was because the touch screen had become a tad smeared with many, many finger prints. So I cleaned it off with a wipe cloth. That fixed the random key miss issue, but then the bottom row of the keypad stopped working correctly. It would respond to touch, but only as if I’d pressed a key in the row above.

Maddeningly, applications such as my third party notepad app that have a landscape keyboard are immune to this. But the Facebook app doesn’t do a landscape keyboard. At least the version I have. As if to torment me, the App Store icon notified me while I was fussing with the problem, that there is a new version of the Facebook app out there. But I can’t get it because the app store asks for a password and mine is, in good practice, both alpha and numeric and the keyboard problem prevents me from accessing the numeric keyboard.

I’m reading online that the problem is not fixable via a reset or anything else you can do. It has to go back to the Apple Store. Rather then spend my time here finding and going to an Apple Store here in Orlando I’m just going to save my replies for when I get back to the hotel and my laptop computer.

Because the spacebar row on the keyboard isn’t working, I can’t do anything with most iPhone apps that use the keyboard. This includes mail, Facebook, Notepad and Notebook, Calender, SMS Text Messaging (the send row at the bottom won’t even open up the keyboard), my third party ToDo app, the Contacts app. Oddly, the bottom row works just fine in the Photo Library. I can’t even update the apps I have because I can no longer enter a password.

So until I can get it fixed…my iPhone is just a phone now, mostly. I have a feeling since it’s almost two years old now, the fix will be to buy a new one and I was hoping to skip over generation 2 to generation 3. Unless they can give me a replacement first generation phone, which I doubt.

As I said on Facebook, it’s a good thing I grew up before most of this stuff even existed…cell phones, the Internet, email, personal computers, text messaging…in that I don’t completely loose my wits when it stops working.  I’ve seen people get completely irrational when they loose their email service. 

I was wandering through Disney-MGM Hollywood Studios yesterday when I saw him again for the first time in years. I almost didn’t recognize him.  Then I knelt down and gave him a great big hug and told him it was all okay…

The Hollywood Studios park entrance way is playfully similar to the Main Street U.S.A. walkway everyone must pass though on entrance to the Magic Kingdom…only this is Main Street Hollywood, circa 1930s and it is as if you’d traveled back in time to when everything was art deco.  For someone like me who adores the art deco style, in part I am sure because in my early childhood there were still a lot of buildings standing that were like that, it was like a kind of paradise.  For like, the upteenth time here in Disney World, I could only just wander around with my jaw hanging open.

There’s a plaque in central park that explains what they were trying to accomplish with Hollywood Studios, but by the time I had walked up to it, I already knew…

This is similar in kind to the poster for Tomorrowland which reads: The Future That Never Was Has Finally Arrived.

I entered a replica of Gorman’s Chinese Theater and took a ride through the movies.  You get on in a old sound stage set and a cast member dressed up as a 1940s stereotypical Hollywood talent scout hops on and informs you that you’ll not only be taking a tour through the great Hollywood films, but actually go inside them.  And then you’re off…first through a Busby Berkeley dance film and then into Hollywood gangster land where the talent scout is chased off the ride by a gangster who informs you that he’s taking over the ride and oh by the way, please had over all your valuables.  It goes on like that for a while and I won’t give it all away…there were the usual Disney animatronics, but of a better quality then the older Magic Kingdom rides…there was a trip through the Alien movie and for a moment you’re completely socked in a fog bank waiting for the beast to jump out at you.  Eventually you end up back at the soundstage where a voice yells "Cut…that’s a wrap…" and you get off the ride and go back out into Disney Hollywood…which is not all that different from Disney Tomorrowland.  It isn’t real.  And yet, for the moment anyway…it is.

I am not one to be easily amused, and yet the whole time I am thoroughly enjoying myself…and I find my whole attitude is different here.  I’m smiling at people.  I’m patient with idiots.  Small screaming children don’t irritate me.  Morons who block the road as if they own it don’t bother me (When did America get so goddamned fat?) I just walk around them and the happy little smile never leaves my face.  I’m living in a world that never was, that’s finally here. I can be a happy little nerdy kid here and It’s Okay.  In fact, it’s Expected of you.  All those relentlessly cheerful Disney cast members who are nowhere and everywhere with their perpetual smiles and earnest desire to make sure you "have a magical day" aren’t annoying me nearly as much as I was afraid they would.  In fact they are a blessing.  They’re my barrier between me and the world not two feet from the gates here, that voted last November to cut my ring finger off.  They’re here to keep it off me for a little while.  I wish I could give them all a great big hug.

And now the kid I used to be long ago, the one who smiled at everyone, the one with the big imagination, who wore his heart on his sleeve never thinking that people would take that as an invitation to cut it to ribbons, who trusted the world and in the goodness of people, has come back out of me.  At least for a while.  I thought he’d been beaten out of me in junior high school.

I’m in Orlando, visiting Disney World, and the damn Comfort Inn here charges for Internet which I refuse to pay (I’m posting this on my iPhone right now). So, expect very little posting here until I get back.

I’m already having a great time here in the park…but some journies are worth the trip, just to see someone smile.

[Update…] My bad…   There seems to be no charge for the Internet after all.  At any rate…I’m using the Motel wireless now and I didn’t have to plug in a credit card number like you usually do for Internet access when they’re charging.  Just for kicks and grins I plugged in to see what the charge was, and instead of being taken to a buy it now page I got my Internet right away.  Nice.

But posting will still be infrequent, because I am on vacation and I am trying to tune out the world for a while.  Also, Motel Internet is seldom reliable.

It’s raining here in Charm City and I’m packing my car and heading for what would have been the Experimental Prototype City Of Tomorrow had Walt Disney not been a cigarette smoker.  But what’s there now is still very nice, and so is the rest of it.  Disney World is Huge, and the first time I went there last November I spent most of my time just gawking at the immensity of it.  Now I have a better idea of what I want to do, and more time to do it.  I also want to wave ‘hi’ to a certain someone, and maybe see him smile one more time.

I’m spending a week, but not in the park this time, which will make it harder to just tune out the entire world like I did last time.  But the hotels inside the park are way too expensive…even the so-called "value" hotels.  There are so many other nice hotels and motels crowding around the entrances to the park that it’s not hard to find something even nicer then the mid priced Disney hotels at, I kind you not, about a third of the cost.  But then you are not in the park the entire time, and being wrapped completely inside that park almost makes it worthwhile.  You really can just leave the world behind for a while, and live in a place where it really is a small world after all, and there’s a great big beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of every day, and find yourself believing that dreams really do come true.

Once upon a time I viewed all that as nothing more then cheap escapism.  But the world, and my life, just stresses me out too much now.  I’m single, I’m desperately lonely, and I’m living in a world that never seems to let any chance go by to tell me it hates my guts.  And there is still that sense in the land of Walt, of all those things I thought the world was, and the future would be.  You can see it slowly fading as Disney’s handiwork is overlaid with newer things, some of which I doubt he would have liked, and some which just don’t hit the mark he would have.  But even as it fades, it lifts the spirit.  At least in someone of my generation.

You have to experience the parks to realize, again if you’re my age and remember watching him on television, how wide Walt Disney’s imagination ranged.  People think of Disneyland and they think of the part of the park called Fantasyland.  But there was Tomorrowland and Frontierland and Adventureland.  There was the little Main Street where everyone entered the park.  There was the hall of presidents, and the river boat and the monorail and the people movers.  There was the ground breaking animation, but also tons of live action film, and nature series and documentaries. Look a little deeper, beyond all the eye candy and the rides and the exhibits, and you see, astonished, a park infrastructure that is still held in awe by architects.  This operation is Huge and yet it runs smoothly.  And Disney World in Orlando is several orders of magnitude bigger, and it Still runs smoothly.  Chuck Jones once told Disney he wanted his job (Disney told him that position was already filled), and Jones was himself an fantastically creative animator.  But there was no city of tomorrow in Chuck Jones, let alone a World.

Last time I walked through the parks down in Disney World, it all came back to me…that it’s a small world after all…that the search for knowledge is a great adventure…that tomorrow was something to look forward to with a smile.  People told me after I came back home last November, how much better I looked, how more at ease I seemed.  One person insisted I must have gotten laid.  I hadn’t of course…but it was almost like that in terms of how good life seemed again.  For a little while…

So now I’m packing the Mercedes for another trip south.  Before I leave I briefly scan the web.  I see Andrew Sullivan reporting the Rod Dreher has replied to Damon Linker, who has in turn replied back.  Linker, you may recall, asked Dreher if he had something, anything, besides The Bible Says So to justify his obsession with the Homosexual Menace.  Dreher gives the expected answer back…

If homosexuality is legitimized — as distinct from being tolerated, which I generally support — then it represents the culmination of the sexual revolution, the goal of which was to make individual desire the sole legitimate arbiter in defining sexual truth. It is to lock in, and, on a legal front, to codify, a purely contractual, nihilistic view of human sexuality. I believe this would be a profound distortion of what it means to be fully human. And I fully expect to lose this argument in the main, because even most conservatives today don’t fully grasp how the logic of what we’ve already conceded as a result of being modern leads to this end.

Note the hyperbole.  The horror of individual desire being seen as more legitimate then his cheapshit barstool prejudices.  The knee jerk slandering of that desire as essentially nihilistic.  But what Dreher is afraid of here isn’t that the human heart is nothing, but that he is.  In the end, the Homosexual Monster, like the Dangerous Black Man and The Greedy Jew represents nothing more then the abyss he stares into every morning in the bathroom mirror.

This is why I am going back to Disney World.  I want to spend some more time in a place where I can have that vision of the world and tomorrow I had as a kid back again.  Where it’s a small world after all.  Where I can return a stranger’s smile and not wonder if they want to cut my ring finger off and stick a knife in my heart, so they can go to heaven.

Via Pam’s House Blend…  The Gay Panic Defense raises it’s head once again …

First it appeared that this young man, Scott A. Libby of Raymond, ME, died as the result of a horrific  accident:

February 20, 2009 9:14 AM

BETHEL, Maine (AP) – Officials are investigating a fatal accident in western Maine in which a freight train crashed into a car that was parked on the tracks.

Ed Foley of the St. Lawrence & Atlantic Railroad said the westbound train came upon a car that was parked on the tracks at least 200 feet away from the nearest road in Bethel at about 2:35 a.m. Friday.

Bethel Police Chief Alan Carr identified the victim as 25-year-old Scott Libby of Raymond. He said Libby apparently turned onto the tracks and then turned off his lights.

Carr said the train was traveling the posted speed of 25 mph and hit the car with all its force from behind.

But little by little, more details have been emerging. What’s now being revealed shows a far too familiar story of robbery after alledgedly sexual advancements were made, but with a few twists.

In a nutshell: Libby had told his parents that he was going to see a man to get paid back for a loan he’d given in exchange for some of the man’s property as security.  The man, Agostino Sampson, was living in a hostel near the tracks where Libby’s car was hit.  As police medical examiners determined that Libby had been killed before the car was hit, they questioned Sampson and his story began to fall apart.  Now it appears he beat Libby over the head with a cast iron pan handle, and as that seems not to have been enough, strangled him with a belt.

Surprise, surprise…Sampson is claiming Libby made a sexual advance…

A man found dead in his car on railroad tracks in Bethel last month may have been beaten with a cast-iron pan and strangled with a belt before a train hit his vehicle, according to a police affidavit.

Police believe Scott A. Libby, 25, of Raymond was beaten and strangled to death after making sexual advances to a former employee.

Libby’s body was found sprawled across the front seat of his 2007 Chevrolet Cobalt after it was hit by a slow-moving train on Feb. 20, police said.

The car was covered with blood inside and out and the bloodstained handle of a cast-iron pan was found in it, police said.

Libby and Samson had known each other for about seven years, and Samson had worked last summer for Libby, who had a landscaping business in Raymond.

Libby met Samson at the Bethel Hostel late on Feb. 19 to collect $400 he had loaned Samson more than a year ago and to return a watch and silver bracelet held as collateral, Maine State Police Detective Herbert Leighton wrote in an affidavit filed in Oxford County Superior Court.

Although Samson initially told police that the transfer of money and jewelry had been completed without incident, he later said Libby "made sexual advances toward him, placing his hand onto/in the area of his groin," Leighton wrote.

"Agostino said he punched Libby in the face two times, causing Libby’s nose to bleed," but Libby still persisted in his sexual advances and offered to pay him money."

The detective noted that the autopsy showed no injuries to Libby’s nose.

Dr. Marguerite Dewitt, deputy chief medical examiner for the state, said Libby died of "asphyxia due to strangulation and blunt-force trauma to the head."

The blood on the pan handle matched Libby’s, according to the detective, and the handle was consistent with two pans that were recently missing from the hostel, the affidavit said.

A woven leather belt that appeared to be damaged was seized from Samson’s room at the hostel, Leighton said. Red-brown stained business cards belonging to Libby and "several apparent bloodstain patterns" were found about a quarter-mile south of the hostel on Westwood Road, a private way that abuts the hostel.

Leighton also noted that when Libby’s body was found, his pants pockets were turned inside out and there was no money on him.

Police photographed contusions on Samson’s hands, which Samson said he received after a box fell on his hand at work; he later said the injuries were a result of punching a refrigerator at work.

Emphasis in the Pam’s House Blend article.  You know what else I think is non-existent here?  The sexual advance.  The only word we have for that, is the word of Libby’s killer.

That’s the way it often is with the Gay Panic Defense.  The only evidence that a sexual advance was made is the testimony of the murderer, which police seem eager to accept at face value, whenever the victim is gay.  But in this particular case there is no evidence of that…at least not in the news stories.  Sampson however, seems well aware of the effect of telling the police that he, and not the man he beat with a cast iron pan and then strangled with a belt, was the victim.  He grabbed my dick and kept on trying to grab my dick even after I punched in twice in the nose…

Here’s what I think happened, based on the newspaper accounts:  Libby went to collect the $400 he was owed by Sampson, a man living in a hostel near the railroad tracks…a man clearly without a lot of money to his name.  Libby arrived at the meeting with Sampson’s jewelry, but Sampson either did not have Libby’s money, or was determined to get it back from him after Libby gave him his property back.  Sampson arranged for them to meet outside the hostel in Libby’s car.  Perhaps he told Libby that if his neighbors in the hostel saw them holding $400 and his jewelry they might rob them.

He armed himself with a cast iron pan handle that he’d somehow managed to cut off one of the hostel pans.  There are two pans missing and my hunch is he botched it the first time.  On the second try he managed to make himself a nice little cast iron blackjack he could stuff into his pocket and Libby wouldn’t see until it was too late.  When Libby gave him back his property Sampson beat him unconscious with his makeshift blackjack, and then he strangled Libby with his belt just to make sure.  Then he drives Libby’s car onto the railroad tracks with him still in it and walks away, figuring the next train to come along will take care of the evidence of murder and make it seem like an accident.  Now he has the money, and his jewelry, and probably whatever else Libby had on him.  Libby was found later, with his pants pockets turned inside out.

Then the police came knocking at his hostel door.  First he tells them nothing happened.  Then he tells them there was an argument, and yes he may have hit Libby a couple times over the head, but there might have been another guy in Libby’s car and maybe he did something to Libby afterwards. 

The police aren’t buying it.  But then Sampson reaches for his trump card.  The trump card the lawyers for Matthew Shepard’s killers, and ABC News, gave him.  The trump card the lawyer for Lawrence King’s killer, and Lawrence’s own father, gave him.  The trump card the lawyer for Timothy Bailey-Woodson gave him.  The trump card lawyers for murderer Raymond Carlisle, Amber Ladner and Cynthia Umstead, gave him.  The trump card every judge, every lawyer, every jury who ever excused bloodshed on account of the victim’s sexual orientation gave him.  He claimed Libby made a sexual advance. 

If that’s not a get out of jail free card, it’s almost certain to be a reduced sentence card.  Whatever crime he might have been convicted of had he not claimed to have been sexually assaulted, he will now almost certainly avoid, provided he sticks to it.  In Spain recently, a nation with legal same-sex marriage, a jury excused the brutal slaying of a gay couple by a man who stabbed them multiple times, robbed them, then tried to burn their house down to hide the evidence, on the killer’s sole testimony that they had propositioned him.  They let him go.

This is what decades of pulpit thumping about the homosexual threat has brought us.  In the 1975 film version of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely, a corrupt policeman tells detective Philip Marlow that his client need not worry too much about being prosecuted for killing a man "…as long as he wasn’t white."  But you can claim anyone is gay if you need an excuse for killing them.

Vis Slashdot…  Google has been busy lately taking down all music related content from YouTube’s UK viewers.  This is in response to the content organization, PRS For Music’s royalty demands.  Google won’t pay the rates they’ve set for online music, and is simply taking down any music contant that PRS has rights to.  So PRS is happy, right?

Wrong …

pregnantfridge writes "In the ongoing conflict between PRS for Music and YouTube over the takedown of all music related content in the UK, PRS for Music have created a new site, fairplayforcreators.com, exposing the views of the music writers impacted by the YouTube decision. I am not certain if these views have been editorially compromised, but by reading a few pages, it’s clear to me that Music writers represented by PRS for Music are largely clueless about what the Internet and YouTube means to the music industry. Kind of explains why the music industry is in such a decline — and also why so much litigation takes place on the music writers’ behalf."

Here’s what PRS has to say about the tiff between it and Google, from it’s website…

Fair Play for Creators is an online forum set up by PRS for Music so that creators everywhere can publicly demonstrate their concern over the way their work is treated by online businesses.

Fair Play for Creators was established after Internet-giant, Google, made the decision to remove some music content from YouTube.

Google’s decision was made because it didn’t want to pay the going rate for music, to the creators of that music, when it’s used on YouTube.

Music creators rely on receiving royalties whenever and wherever their work is used. Royalties are vital in nurturing creative music talent. They make sure music creators are rewarded for their creativity in the same way any other person would be in their work.

Fair Play for Creators believes that fans should have access to the music they love, and that the work of music creators should be paid for by the online businesses who benefit from its use.

So…I guess they see some value in their music being played on YouTube after all.  That wouldn’t happen to be because sites like YouTube bring more new music to the attention of listeners these days…particularly Young listeners…then all the radio stations in the world combined would it…?

Never mind that some musicians actively despise PRS…I’ll get to that in a minute.  There was a nugget of insight in the Slashdot comments that illuminated something I’d been puzzled by, ever since the music industrial complex went on the warpath against the Internet.  Why the hell are they so bent on killing Internet Radio…???

I put it down to their fear of piracy.  I put it down to greed.  But there’s another aspect to this here that proves Heinlein was right when he said never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.  See it here, in Pete Waterman’s pathetic whining that he isn’t being paid every time one of his magnificent works is played on YouTube…

YouTube is not alone in the online hall of shame where the worthy notion of greater consumer choice is used as a cloak to disguise the fact that copyright infringement happens on a grand scale.

I co-wrote ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’, which Rick Astley performed in the eighties, and which must have been played more than 100 million times on YouTube – owner Google. My PRS for Music income in the year ended September 2008 was £11.

Music videos and music generally is at the very heart of User Generated Content sites. It is the hard work and creative endeavour of songwriters and musicians everywhere that has been the bedrock upon which many of these websites have been built, creating along the way huge value for their owners. As well as arguing with them over royalty rates, we should be fighting them to get proper recognition for the part we’ve played in building their businesses.

Pete Waterman, songwriter – 24 March 2009

Now, never mind that a lot of people think they’re owed compensation for having to listen to this song every time they’re Rick-Rolled.  Look at it.  Just look at it.  Waterman really thinks that a single play on YouTube is the same as a single play on radio, for which he gets a PRS royalty.  One Slashdot commenter put’s it in perspective…

Just to put this in perspective, if the song had been played 100m times on UK National Radio, he’d have been paid GBP2-5bn instead of GBP11. *That’s* how much Google are underpaying compared to market rate.

If he doesn’t want Google playing his music without paying him, then that’s fine: he’s got what he wants. Google are not playing his music. What’s his beef?

The going rate is whatever rate can be negotiated between the producer and the consumer. Google, as the consumer, has said ‘if that’s the rate, fine, we don’t need the product.’ Astley (and people like him) have to decide whether they want their music to reach an internet audience or not. If they don’t, that’s fine – Google not playing it works for them. But what they can’t reasonably do is complain that Google refuse to buy their product. If the supermarket in your high street tries to sell you chocolates at more than what you think they’re worth, you don’t buy them – no-one needs chocolate. If the PRS tries to sell Google music at more than Google thinks it’s worth, Google doesn’t buy it. So – where’s the beef?

Furthermore, your computation is wrong. When a tune is played in BBC Radio 1 or Radio 2, it’s heard by about 6 million people. When a tune is played on YouTube, it’s typically heard by one person. So 100 million plays on YouTube is not equivalent to 100 million plays on Radio 2, it’s equivalent to seventeen plays on Radio 2. Not seventeen million, seventeen.

So the equivalent payment is not £2-5Bn, it’s £340. Which is a lot more than £11, I’d agree – but is that because Google are offering too little, or because radio is paying too much?

Emphasis mine.  Here is why the corporate music industry is trying to squeeze the life out of Internet radio…they really believe that YouTube serving a song to a single user is the same as a radio station playing it once and they want the same kind of compensation the radio station gives them, Every Time an Internet site sends a song down a connection.  No…wait…Even More money then the radio station would have to pay .

(Best Syndication News) One of the coolest ideas in the radio business may die soon, not because of lack of listeners, but because fees charged by the music industry. The problem is that Internet Radio stations may soon charged more per song than their satellite or conventional radio counterparts.

A decision back in March 2007 by the by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board and SoundExchange (the money collector for the RIAA) that doubled the rates for music played on the Internet could kill the industry. Pardora.com, one of the market leaders, may shut down soon if the payment structure is not changed. Their royalty fees are expected to hit $17 million this year alone, and as we all know, internet advertising is in its infancy.

The decision to charge Internet radio more could backfire on the music industry. To battle music pirates, some have advised the same price structure or rates less than their traditional media counterparts.

In a recent interview with the Washington Post, Pandora founder Tim Westergren, laid out his case. The is a potential "last stand for webcasting" before royalty fee increases begin to take hold, Westergren said.

The prices are expected to go from 8/100 of a cent per song per listener to 19/100 of a cent per song per listener by 2010, according to the Post report. Like the early days of Amazon, Pandora is losing money right now hoping to hold on to a market spot when the industry matures.

Emphasis mine. Thankfully they came to a deal before Pandora had to pull the plug.  But this made a lot of listeners absolutely livid when this story broke, and their ire wasn’t at Pandora for not paying the musicians enough.  Everyone could see this for the absolutely mind bogglingly self destructive greed that it was.  I have personally bought more new music off Pandora (which makes it really easy to buy the tunes you are listening to via Amazon or iTunes) in one month then I bought in the previous five years.  And that’s largely because the music industrial complex has utterly destroyed broadcast radio.  I just don’t listen to it anymore.  And if I’m not listening, I’m not buying.

Let me tell you about YouTube.  I watched a charming little video someone had put together…a train cab ride through the English countryside, time sped and slowed, set to the perfect background music.  Whatever music this user had set their video to, it was lovely and when I was finished watching I fired off a message asking them what it was.  It was a piece from Moby called "Inside".  I looked it up on Amazon and there it was.  It’s on my iPod and I’m listening to it as I type this.  Are you reading this PRS…I bought a fucking copy of something I heard on YouTube the other day.  And that’s not the first time either.  I have maybe a dozen or so songs on my iPod now that I first heard on YouTube.

Morons.

The short sighted greed here is staggering, but the complete ignorance of how the Internet works isn’t.  These are mostly folks of my own generation, and older, running these corporate junk music operations now, and we are a generation that grew up listening to music on static-y car radios, pocket transistor radios, and scratchy vinyl records.  Most of my generational peers, according to a recent Pew Institute study, have very little to do with personal computers in their private lives. Individuals like me…technology nerds (I built my first radio when I was 9), are the exception not the rule.  To most of my generational peers, the Internet is a bunch of tubes.  They don’t get it.  They never will. 

They really think that one play over the radio has the same value as one play on YouTube.  Well…and they’re greedy bastards.  One thing you need to know is that for all their posturing, they don’t really give a rat’s ass about musicians.  This from another Slashdot commenter…

As a musician myself, I was compelled to comment there. They won’t put it up though.

I take the opposite view. I have one album up for sale on iTunes and Amazon and another being uploaded right now – http://tinyurl.com/cdx44l [tinyurl.com] I don’t actually want to be represented by the PRS, but I have no choice. There is no opt out. You will collect royalties on my behalf whether or not I want you to. If I wish my music to be available free for streaming on Internet radio, you will not let me. So who’s worse, Google for throwing the baby out with the bathwater, or the PRS for extortion?

This was followed up by…

You can opt out of collecting your royalties from the PRS. You can’t stop the PRS collecting from the broadcaster.

Say I want to perform a set of my music in a pub, no covers, just stuff I wrote. The pub has to have a PRS performance license and has to pay the PRS for my performance even if I’m not registered with them.

It’s extortion, and as usual it’s the artists who get screwed – the number of places to play is dropping for the small local artist as landlords stop paying the PRS tax.

So if one of these days you find yourself wondering what happened to all the live music you used to hear…thank the record industry.

Andrew Sullivan and Damon Linker wonder what makes Rod Dreher so fixated on gays…

Damon Linker challenges Dreher’s fixation with gays:

Why, given the myriad ways that our society and culture diverge from the long list of archaic norms, practices, and beliefs upheld in the Bible, does homosexuality inspire such anxiety, even panic? What are you afraid of?

It’s a good question.

Well here’s a simple answer: he’s a bigot.  I know…I know…saying someone is a bigot is supposed to be nothing more then ad hominim name calling designed to shut down debate.  Kinda like the way calling someone a Nazi invokes Goodwin’s Law and the argument is over.  But the problem with Goodwin’s law is that it makes it impossible to identify facisim when its staring you in the face, and the same goes for this notion that ‘bigot’ is merely the equivalent of a grade school taunt.  It isn’t.  It’s a good old fashioned English word and it has a real meaning.  People like Dreher fall into that meaning exactly.  Why?  Because his mindset when it comes to gay people springs from a deeply rooted animus that will not suffer examination or question.  He cannot see the people for the homosexuals. 

That animus will reliably outrank any higher consciousness the man has, assuming he still has any left.  Case in point: his recent brouhaha about that family in East Texas who were killed in a violent home invasion.  Dreher, you may recall, was shocked, shocked, not at the deaths, but at one offhanded statement by the grieving father, that bisexuality was ‘hip’ in his little East Texas town…

UPDATE: To clarify: I’m not saying that the teenage culture of bisexuality is worse morally than murder, for heaven’s sake. Obviously murder — and murder of one’s own family — is about the worst thing imaginable.. I’m simply saying that I was more shocked by this tidbit about the decadent teenage culture in a tiny Texas town than I was by the foul crime itself. Big difference.

He really believes there is a "big difference" there.   He just doesn’t notice, is not capable of noticing, the wildly disproportionate response to the vicious murder of an entire family, verses one offhanded statement by a father probably crazy with grief that bisexuality is cool among the teenagers in his town.  Dreher sees nothing unusual in his own shocked response to the idea of bisexuality in an East Texas town, verses his offhanded notice of the killings.  Yes, yes…they were all killed…but OhMyGod bisexuality is becoming cool in East Texas!!!

He doesn’t see the problem here.  He can’t.  He’s a bigot.  The homosexual will always loom larger in his consciousness, then any brutal crime of violence, because his animus sees nothing other then The Homosexual.  The Homosexual is the burr under his saddle.  The Homosexual is the devil in the darkness.  The Homosexual is the monster knocking on the door.  Never mind the man’s family was butchered, just look at what kids are saying about bisexuality in East Texas!  This is how bigots think.

Linker, like a lot of people, simply cannot believe that is all there is to it…

I find this especially perplexing in Rod’s case because he denies so strenuously that his views flow from anti-gay animus. As he puts it in a recent post, 

Gay-rights supporters typically believe people like me hold to our opposition to gay marriage and so forth because of some animosity towards gays. I know that it’s true for a lot of conservatives, but in my case — and in the case of most people I know who share my views — it’s not an emotional matter. We have gay friends, are comfortable around gay people, and simply don’t share that visceral reaction that used to be commonplace in American life, and (regrettably) still is in many quarters.

Yet the visceral reaction was there for all to see when he posted about the murders in East Texas…er…sorry…the Bisexuality in East Texas.  And we know, and acknowledge in the law, that murder can be hot blooded or cold blooded.  Yet cold blooded bigotry seems to completely baffle people.  Why, some of my best friends are… after all.  I quit one job I held years ago, when I overheard the owner state flatly that he’d hire a black man, but only if he shinned his shoes and called him Massah.  And it wasn’t with any rage or passion he said it.  He was simply stating a fact.  Like the weather, or the time of day.  If Dreher has any gay friends, it’s because they shine his shoes and call him Massah.

Linker asks Dreher a few questions in a desperate attempt to find something, anything, rational at the bottom of Dreher’s little corner of the human gutter…

Why, given the myriad ways that our society and culture diverge from the long list of archaic norms, practices, and beliefs upheld in the Bible, does homosexuality inspire such anxiety, even panic? What are you afraid of? Is it that you fear that if orthodox religious communities stop denouncing gay marriage (to the faces of married gays, which seems to be what you’d like them to do) the human race will stop reproducing itself?  Or is it that you worry that if your children aren’t taught in church that homosexuality is an abomination they’ll shack up with same-sex partners when they grow up? But isn’t the decision to do something like that far more a product of nature than culture? I don’t know about you, but no amount of pro-gay propaganda could tempt me to sleep with a man — because I’m by nature sexually attracted to women. Some of what you write about homosexuality leads me to believe you worry that naturally straight men and women will be seduced into being gay by watching too many episodes of Project Runway. But you can’t seriously believe that. Can you?

Here’s the problem.  For Dreher, and bigots like him, this isn’t about what they believe.  It’s a knee that jerks first and justifies itself later.  Any excuse will do, even if it is transparently self serving and utterly unconvincing.  He doesn’t have to convince you of anything Linker, he just has to dig in his heels and not be moved.  If you can’t make him admit that his prejudices are irrational he wins the argument.  It really is that simple.

And not only can you not make a bigot admit their prejudices are irrational, you can’t make them take responsibility for them either.  It’s not his fault that he has to go on the warpath against gay people…it’s the gay’s fault.  They’re Making him do it, every time they Flaunt themselves in his face thereby provoking him to act.  If we stop denouncing homosexuality then the entire human race will cease reproducing and become extinct.  Yes, it’s a staggeringly irrational argument.  But understand this if you understand nothing else about it: the point isn’t that it’s a good argument, the point is that it puts the blame on gay people for his hostile behavior toward them.  Homosexuality is a threat to our very survival…I Have to do this to them…I am Forced to confront the Homosexual Menace…

Homosexuals molest children.  Homosexuals spread disease.  Homosexuals have caused the fall of every great civilization…  The Homosexual is a threat we must confront…  Homosexuals are tortured souls…sexually addicted…unable to function normally in society…desperate to be freed from the bondage of their homosexuality…We Must Help Them…We Must Save Them From Themselves…  The Homosexual needs our salvation…  These aren’t arguments that withstand the slightest critical glance.  But they don’t have to be.  They’re not offered as reasons…they’re excuses.  Excuses to blame gay people, for the bigot’s hostile behavior toward them.

And if Dreher can’t blame gay people for his cheapshit bar stool prejudices, he has one other trump card he can play: he can blame God…

I suspect that Rod’s first instinct will be to respond that the issue isn’t really homosexuality at all. It’s "authority." Rod, after all, believes

that you simply can’t discard a teaching on which the Bible — in both testaments — and (for Catholics and Orthodox) authoritative church tradition could not be more clear, simply because it doesn’t suit contemporary mores. 

And that’s all well and good until Linker comes to the obvious point that Dreher, like every other bigot making this argument, picks and chooses his religious beliefs to suit himself.  God is not the reason.  God is the excuse.

Does Rod have any non-question-begging answer to this question? An answer that doesn’t just amount to saying, "because the church says so"? 

Yes.  I hate them.

More line items, in the war on gay people…

Spring break off to violent start after gay men are beaten in Seaside

Two 22-year-old men who left a campfire to walk along the beach in Seaside were beaten unconscious in what appears to have been a hate crime, according to police.

 

Another Gay Bashing

The man disembarked the bus moments later, followed by Idris and an associate. Police say Idris again approached him, telling the man that homosexuality violates his religion. 

 

Protesters Decry Cinncinnati Gay Bashing

Kafagolis and Kirkwood reportedly inveighed against the victim, screaming anti-gay epithets as they punched and kicked him, knocking him to the ground.

 

Gay couple claims attack in Newark was bias related

…they were returning to their car parked near Raymond Boulevard and Broad Street from the Prudential Center at approximately 11 p.m. when a group of 15 to 20 teenage girls and boys approached them from the opposite direction and then punched and kicked them as they yelled an anti-gay slur.

 

Judge Throws Out Confession In Transgender Slaying

Andrade allegedly told his girlfriend that he "snapped" and that "gay things need to die."

 

UC Police Report Possible Anti-Gay Attack

Police say one of the victims knew one of the suspects, who attacked both of them when he found out one of them is gay.

Probably not.   But I haven’t been blogging as often as I have previously and it’s because I’m not sitting in front of a computer nearly as much.  As I said previously, I’m finding I get a lot more done around the house when I’m not sitting down at my computer.  But something else is happening.  Something I was sort-of hoping would happen, though I hadn’t taken into account what it might mean for my blogging patterns.  Slowly, but inevitably, my iPhone is becoming my all purpose communication – entertainment – information widget. 

When it first hit the streets, the iPhone was lacking a couple of really important items in my personal information management toolkit: a sync-able notepad and ToDo tracker.  But I have really great third party iPhone apps now that fill those slots.  And as I get more comfortable with using them, I use Mowgli, my main household computer, less and less. 

Last weekend, I had Mowgli off almost the entire time.  I ran Bagheera, the art room Mac, to finish a couple of photography projects that I’d left on my plate for far too long.  But Mowgli is slowly being relegated to finances and work related projects.  I am keeping in touch with the world, and with my daily life, more and more with just the iPhone now.   

And…there is this:  My little patch of the good earth is on the cusp of spring, and I don’t want to be angry all the time.  I read the news, in particular the continuing culture war on gay people, and I get angry.  So I am avoiding the news.

This Saturday, I’m going to Disney World again, for a week.  Mostly to just spend some more time in a place where it’s a small world after all, there’s a great big beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of every day, and dreams really do come true.  Better there, then driving across the mid-west and listening to hate radio the whole way.  My brother said they still have their YES ON 8 campaign signs planted in their front yards of houses all over Oceano, Pismo Beach and Arroyo Grande.

Via Box Turtle Bulletin .  Congressman Daniel Lungren complains that congress, in its outrage over bonuses paid to the AIG group that wreaked the company, and oh by the way, the entire world economy, is ignoring the constitution…

Lungren Addresses AIG Bonuses 

Here are the facts: in the stimulus package an amendment was adopted that the Majority put in stating that provisions in the TARP and stimulus bills that limited compensation payments would not apply to ‘any bonus payment required to be paid pursuant to a written employment contract executed on or before February 11, 2009.’  It was written specifically to protect the very bonuses that we’re talking about here today.  And so now we’re asking how do we undo what we did?  And the Majority has brought to us a bill that doesn’t recognize the truth of the Constitution.  There is something called a bill of attainder.  You can’t punish a group because you don’t like them.  You can’t have them treated more onerously than somebody else without a trial. 

Now, that’s an unfortunate truth that we have to deal with.  How can we deal with it?  Yesterday in the Judiciary Committee we had an alternative using bankruptcy principles, but that hasn’t been brought to the floor because it’s arguably constitutional.  This is to get headlines to show we are outraged.  Let me tell you if we overturn the Constitution to show our outrage, no single American is safe.  Because in the future what we will do is say, we have a precedent that when we have an unpopular group, when we have a group that deserves some punishment, we won’t go through the real laws.

Emphasis mine.  You can’t punish a group because you don’t like them.  If we overturn the Constitution to show our outrage, no single American is safe.  Ya think? 

Lungren voted for Proposition 8.

If you are still thinking that the fight for freedom to marry is something that only affects gay couples, you’d better start thinking again…

Are they married? It depends . .

In 2004, Michelle, a project manager for a financial services company, and Marc, a draftsman, planned to marry in Philadelphia and get their license in Bucks County – a decision influenced only by the office’s proximity to their home in Hatboro.

They were acting within the law, of course. Couples can buy their marriage licenses in any one of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties and hold their ceremonies in any other.

So how, the Toths now wonder, is their marriage considered legal in Montgomery County, but possibly null and void in Bucks?

The short answer is that the people responsible for issuing marriage licenses – the 67 elected clerks of Orphans Court – are at odds with one another. And the growing ranks of couples using a nontraditional officiant or no officiant at all are getting caught in the conflict.

On one side are clerks, such as those in Bucks and Delaware counties, who want the state marriage-license law tightened. They say the institution of marriage is being sullied, if not undermined, by nontraditional ministers and those who they believe are irreligious, liberal couples seeking to stretch the law.

On the other side are clerks, including those in Philadelphia, Chester, and Montgomery counties, who say the law is clear as long as it is read without bias. Their position has the backing of the American Civil Liberties Union. (This issue does not exist in New Jersey.)

Once, getting the license was not among the wedding minutiae that might drive a sane person to "go bridal." But now the process has become complicated and, some would say, needlessly politicized.

Pennsylvania has two types of marriage license:  One that involves some registered official, either a clergyman or a judge.  The other is a "self-uniting" license, which is used by couples who wish to take their vows in the presence of witnesses, but without a the clergy or judge.  Quakers, being the most frequent self-uniters in the state, this license has come to be known as the "Quaker" license.  But note, it isn’t just for Quakers.

The clerks are trying to get rid of the self-uniting license, or severely restrict it to Quakers or other approved religious groups only…they claim to protect the interests of the married couples.  They’re telling couples they can’t use the self-uniting license unless they’re Quakers, and warning couples who have already been married using that license to come in with a real minister for a re-marriage. 

The ACLU is fighting the clerks over this and so far they’ve won every court case.  But the clerks are apparently ignoring the courts and doing what they damn well please.

In an Allegheny County case, a federal judge ruled that self-uniting licenses were not just for Quakers – and that clerks were barred from asking religious questions.

In Philadelphia, Bucks, and Montgomery Counties, judges issued rulings that conflicted with York County’s. Clergy from the Universal Life Church were indeed authorized to solemnize marriages, Bucks County Court Judge C. Theodore Fritsch Jr. ruled in December 2008.

Still, Bucks and Delaware Counties are ignoring the rulings in the ACLU lawsuits.

Reilly says she is protecting engaged couples from future problems. Hugh Donaghue of Delaware County goes a step further. He requires marriage-license applicants to supply Social Security numbers (not required under federal law) because he suspects that some foreign nationals see the marriage license as a valid form of identification.

"Getting a marriage license allows you to establish identification for other purposes and change your status in the country," Donaghue says.

And, speaking of identification, Donaghue’s office requires a photo ID, and he is suspicious when individuals (mostly followers of Islam) don’t have them.

"They say their religious beliefs do not allow them to have their photos taken," Donaghue says.

Like Reilly, Donaghue says his interest is in protecting well-meaning individuals.

Pull the other one.  They don’t give a rat’s ass about the welfare of couples in love.  They care about this:

They say the institution of marriage is being sullied, if not undermined, by nontraditional ministers and those who they believe are irreligious, liberal couples seeking to stretch the law.

That’s the problem here.  That’s the only problem here.  

What you need to understand about the fight over same-sex marriage is that it isn’t a fight over same-sex marriage.  It’s a fight over the freedom to marry.  My freedom and yours.  If you have been sitting back watching the religious right take a torch to the marriages of same-sex couples because you didn’t figure it had anything to do with you, I have two words for you: You’re next.

Wake-up.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired.  Tired. Email From You.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile.  Smile. 

Amazingly…life can still be good at times.  Very good.  For a while.