Proposition 8 Upheld In California

I'm dissappointed to say the least that the California Supreme Court upheld proposition 8 in California today. But it isn't quite the victory that the Conservative and Religious right think it is. Reading through the decision comments it becomes apparent that the Justices were not repealing a gay couples rights as a married couple in California, but simply the ability to call their union a marriage.

I have to tell you, that if that were the case federally, I wouldn't care what they called my union with my partner. Give me the same rights and protections under the law (including the tax laws), and you can have your claim to the term marriage. I'll take Civil Union, Domestic Partnership, whatever. It's the rights that are conveyed by the union, not what it's called. That clearly was protected by the Justices comments.

Tired Old Arguments

I was cruising around the internet today, reading my favorite blogs, and then heading over to facebook to catch up with friends. I clicked on the twitter application link there and was browsing through topics on their page, and found this one below. I was in a pretty good mood today. I had spent a great weekend at home with my partner, celebrated Mother's day with my Mom, gone fishing and actually caught fish! Then, I read this thread on twitter. Not is such a good mood anymore. Disgusted actually. You'll just have to read it for yourself, and you'll see what I mean. Post after post after post of hatefull, prejudiced, angry statements back and forth between "Christians", and "Homosexuals". The same usual arguments, that start out sounding caring and disintegrate into inflamed and agitated statements when no one agrees with anyone else. Christians and Homosexuals.......Man, you're really screwed if you happen to be both.

Here's the link to the twitter discussion on facebook.

New friends at home

 

I got to spend a little time at home this past summer, and had a great time watching two little birds working feverishly to build this nest, and then raise their family. It was built on the front porch, and when we would come in late at night, the parents would dive bomb us as we walked up onto the porch. The little ones stuck around for a while, and then were gone. I'm hoping they'll choose the same spot for a new home next year.

McCain throws in the towel on the Financial Crisis

Senator McCain apparently realizes that he has nothing of any substance to add to the conversation in America about the financial crisis. He’s decided to just avoid the issue completely and try to distract the American voter with misleading adds that are just more of the same mud slinging he’s becoming known for.

The problem is, it’s hard to distract someone from the heat, when their hair is on fire. We’ve watched our retirement savings disappear, and been saddled with debt that it will take us years to pay off. Many of us are losing our jobs, or live in fear of it. The cost of living is going up, and the amount of money we’re bringing home is going down. People are losing their homes, and watching their single largest investments lose value as the housing market is flooded with foreclosed properties that no one can get a loan to purchase.

I’m sorry, but refusing to talk to me about this doesn’t make me feel any better about what you’re going to do to fix my problems. I have to admit though, that when Senator McCain was actually talking about the crisis, he wasn’t making me feel much better either. It was so apparent that he didn’t even realize that there was a crisis until late in the game, and then his response to it was to go to Washington and accomplish nothing.

If the best that you have to offer in the conversation about how to help this country crawl out of the pit we’ve been thrown into over the last eight years, is to point out to me that your opponent has a middle name that you don’t like, then perhaps just keeping your mouth shut and letting the people out there who actually understand the trouble that we’re in discuss the issues might not be such a bad idea. On that note, Senator McCain, I applaud your decision to just stop talking about the crisis. Since that is all that I really care about today as I watch my retirement savings go down every time the market opens, it keeps me from having to waste my time trying to listen to your ideas. After all, I can just look back at the past eight years and get a pretty good idea.

Vote Republican? Not a chance.

Driving through town, I noticed a political poster for John McCain in the yard of someone that I know personally to be gay. Not just gay, but OUT gay. At first I thought it was probably put there by someone without my friend knowing it, so I gave him a call and was shocked to discover that he had put the sign up and was planning to vote for the republican candidate in the general election.

I just couldn’t believe it. I asked him why? Why would you even consider voting for ANYONE in the republican party if you are a gay American with any concerns for not just furthering equality, but maintaining the gains we have achieved? He told me that he was voting against the democratic party, more than voting for the republican party candidate and admitted that in truth, he knew very little about McCain’s views on equal rights for gays and lesbians, or gay marriage (although he assumed that he was no different from any of the other republicans and opposed it). His major voting concern was the economy, and he felt that the democrats gave too much of his money away to people who sat at home and didn’t work, or were here illegally. He wanted less social program spending and a hard lined approach to immigration reform.

When we hung up, it took me a long while to get past my disbelief and to focus on what he was saying. He wasn’t voting for the people that he knew would help him achieve personal freedoms, his main concerns lay lower in the list of essential human needs.

It’s my belief that people vote according to their perception of needs. If you’re hungry, poor, have no roof over your head, then you vote for the person who is going to help elevate you to a point where you get these basic needs met. Once those needs are met, you start focusing on your future needs, and who will help you meet those needs. When you think you have those needs met, you begin to focus on your personal freedoms and the things that you’d LIKE to have, but don’t need to survive.

For my friend, who had been impacted greatly by the economy, and by workers in our area who are here illegally taking jobs for much less pay, the questions of immigration and taxation were at the base of his needs list, overpowering his desire to have his relationship protected. But there is a problem with that thinking. What benefit do we as gays and lesbians get from tax reform that doesn’t recognize our relationships or our families? None.

We will still be taxed as singles even though we have been in relationships for years and have bought homes and have mortgages and bills just like the heterosexual neighbors do. We still won’t be able to claim the children of our partners, or to write off the medical expenses that we pay for these children, because our relationship with them isn’t recognized. We can’t write off the mortgage interest that we pay on the mortgage if the mortgage is in our partners name. Bottom line, the republican tax cuts aren’t helping us, because they don’t even recognize that we exist. If you’re an adult in a committed relationship with a home to maintain, working hard and making a decent living, then you’re still just a single person making too much money as far as the tax code is concerned so you get to pay more taxes so that the neighbors don’t have to. Why, because they have the benefit of marriage. You don’t.

The republicans want to keep it that way. At least the more progressive republicans want to keep it that way. The really conservative ones want to take away our rights to even have legal contracts that protect our finances and our health care decisions and take care of our need to protect our partners both financially and medically. They want to push us back into the closet, and out of their lives. They like the idea that we pay a disproportionate amount of money in taxes, because it means they don’t have to. It helps them, hurts us, and they love that idea.

I wish I had an answer for him on the immigration issue. He believes that deporting millions of illegal aliens is an option. Realistically, I just don’t. I don’t see that even being physically possible, so we need to work on a solution that is feasible. One that addresses the impact that these workers have on working Americans, and has a realistic chance of success. I don’t see that either party has a real answer yet, but can’t argue that my friends experience certainly justify his frustration and willingness to vote to relieve it.

For me, even the idea of voting for a candidate that courts the religious right is out of the question. Not just because I am gay, but because I hate the idea of any president sitting in the oval office, and giving one ounce of weight to the demands of someone like Dr. James Dobson, or Pat Robertson, or any other ultra conservative who thinks they have the right to define the values of an entire nation based on their own personal beliefs. If the republican party wants to align itself with these kinds of far right extremists, and will do anything to try to make them happy, then they are leaving ME out in the cold and certainly will never get my vote.

Both democratic candidates are right. It is time for change in this country. It’s time for people to be seen as individuals who have the right to live their lives according to their own values and beliefs within the constraints of the law. It’s time for religion to take it’s place in peoples personal lives, and to get out of political policy decisions where it has no place. It’s time that a persons actions be allowed to define them, and not their sexual orientation.

I can’t change my friends mind, he’s still going to vote for McCain. I’m just glad my vote will be there to cancel his out. But that’s what it’s all about. Two people standing on opposite sides of a fence, talking about how each of us thinks change needs to occur. In the end, we’ll still be friends, and one of us will have to buy the other dinner. Hope he can afford the seafood feast he’s going to be buying me when the democrats win in November!

Jane Rule - Dead at 76

Jane Rule, the acclaimed author and lesbian, has died at the age of 76. There are news bites on the internet that far surpass anything that I could say about her, but I didn't want her passing to bo by without at least saying that I felt the loss. One of my favorite quotes is hers:

"If men really are turned on by all that awful underwear, leg and footwear, all that paint and headachy perfume, then maybe they should have been wearing it all along."

Here are links to some of the news bytes:
The London Free Press
Regional Leader-Post, Canada
Vancouver Sun
Now Toronto

Having an off Day!!

There are some definite pro’s to making your living traveling from one place to the next, spending thirteen weeks, and then moving on to the next hospital. I’ve been able to see places I probably would have never seen. Made friends is places I didn’t think I would. Learned from Nurses all over the country. It’s great.

But for all the pro’s there are some definite draw backs. Not the least of which seems to be the effect that age has on your ability to adjust to a new place, a new climate, and a new schedule over and over again. I’m finding myself struggling with the beginnings of menopause, which I personally believe I am much to young for of course. I remember thinking that my Mother had to be exaggerating when she talked about how miserable the hot flashes she was having were. Now, I realize that my mother must have been understating their effects in an effort not to terrorize me because it’s MUCH worse than she let on. As a matter of fact, this is the most agonizing thing I have ever dealt with. To make it worse, I am in a new place, where no one knows me and I’m not comfortable sharing my physical status. So, I am certain that they are looking at my dripping wet hair and thinking that I am either about to have a massive heart attack or that I have some disgusting personal hygiene problem.

Add to the hot flashes and the night sweats the fact that my body is irritatingly less firm, and my skin has these interesting little brown spots popping up all over it. I suppose I should be grateful. They’re just age spots and not carcinoma’s. My period, which for decades was as regular as clockwork and little more than a slight irritation in my day to day life, is now a dreaded week long struggle to find time to run to the bathroom every hour and wonder if it is actually possible to bleed to death during your period.

It would at least be some comfort to be going through this at home, where I have friends and family that know me, and will understand. Where my partner can offer me the pity that only someone ten years your junior can offer you, because they don’t yet understand that what they are seeing is an inevitability that is racing towards them like a freight train. Where I can spend my days off snuggled up on the couch with my pets, who truly understand my need for unconditional love, and don’t seem to be staring at the age spots on my arms. Lastly, where my Mother is right down the street and I can ream her out for not warning that this was coming so that I could have had a complete hysterectomy, started on hormones long before this all started! Now, where’s that G-D bottle of advil?