The Republic of T.

I thought the columnist I mentioned earlier took the cake in terms of the religious right’s hysterical response to the California marriage ruling. Boy was I wrong.

Ed has posted two World Nut Daily columns that leave me pretty much staring in open-mouthed wonder. It’s the kind of thing you have to read to believe, but once I did I was left with a question or two which I’ll pose at the end of this post.

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So much has been written out there about the California marriage ruling, and I’ve read so much of it, that I can’t possibly write a post in response to each of them. In fact, some of them I’d just agree with and not add much more. So, it being Friday and all, this seems like as good a time as any for a round-up post of some of the most interesting stuff I’ve come across as bloggers celebrate and critique (sometimes simultaneously) the California ruling.

So, here goes.

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This must be the month for landmark ruling on gay issues. The California marriage ruling was one, now another case may put “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” one step closer to being on ice.

An Air Force major who was dismissed for being a homosexual can continue her legal fight against the military, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals let stand the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which bars the military from discharging gay or lesbian service members as long as they do not reveal their sexual orientation.

Yet the appeals court said the government may only “intrude upon the personal and private lives of homosexuals” to “advance an important governmental interest,” such as maintaining troop readiness or improving morale.

The decision came in the case of Maj. Margaret Witt, who was discharged after a career of nearly 20 years on the grounds that she had a six-year relationship with another woman, a civilian.

Witt welcomed the decision.

“I am thrilled by the court’s recognition that I can’t be discharged without proving that I was harmful to morale,” she said in a statement released by the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington state, which sued the Air Force on Witt’s behalf in 2006.

Prove that gays are harmful to morale? I wonder if they’ll have as much luck with that as the state had proving a compelling interest in prohibiting same-sex marriage in California. One can hope, anyway.

I don’t want to portray all conservatives as drooling dimwits, but good grief do they make it hard to avoid. Sometimes there’s just nothing I can do about it. Do these people read? Crack open a dictionary, maybe? Or some book other than the bible? Maybe hit Wikipedia or something before sounding off about an issue?

The columnist who inspired the previous post was bad enough. Now Rick Santorum has slithered out of oblivion to offer us his unique brand of brainless blathering.

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I’m going to be on NPR’s News & Notes later this afternoon (1:00 p.m. EST) talking about the California marriage decision, so it seems like as good a time as any to sort out my thoughts on the ruling and its implications.

After recovering from the emotional impact of the ruling, I sat down with the intention of reading the whole thing. I must confess, I only got through the first 90 pages. But after sorting through the legalese, what I saw was a ruling that effectively knocked the legs from under much of the religious conservative (radical right, theocratic, etc.) argument against marriage equality, and even went so far as to speak to some previous state supreme court rulings on the issue.

I’ll admit up front, I’m no lawyer, so I invite any lawyers out there to correct me on any legal issues I miss or get wrong. On the other hand, I know some other gay bloggers whom I respect have philosophical objections to the California ruling, though they’re in favor of same-sex marriage. So, I’ll say up front that I have no philosophical objections to the ruling, nor do I think the court was wrong in making the ruling.

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Not exactly.

The California Supreme Court ruling has brought Bob Barr — presidential candidate and sponsor of the Defense of Marriage Act — out from under his rock to make the following statement.

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I’ve got a few posts in the hopper related to the California Supreme Court marriage ruling, but this one moved to the top of the pile as soon as it was brought to my attention. Of all the conservative responses to the California ruling this one takes the cake. I’ve written about the procreative imperative, which the right wing has tried to establish as the basis of marriage. I’ve written an entire (and ongoing) series challenging the rightwing notion that marriage is only for making babies and only for people who can (or possibly could, if miraculously cured of infertility) makes babies. (But not for people who can raise well-rounded, developmentally normal children they didn’t conceive together in loving, safe, supportive homes.)

This, however, makes all of that seem almost logical. Forget about making babies. Forget about raising happy, healthy children. In their increasingly desperate question to narrow marriage down to something two queers can’t possibly accomplish together, they’ve boiled it down to this: in order for a marriage to be valid a penis must go into a vagina.

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I knew as soon as the California Supreme Court marriage ruling was posted, that I would read the whole thing. I started reading it at my desk, after it was posted, but stopped once got to the “bottom line” of the ruling — and, truly, because as I realized what I was reading, and what the California Supreme Court had said, the emotion was too much.

I wasn’t born when the Brown v. Board of Education ruling was handed down, so I don’t know what it was like for those Black Americans who heard it or read it and realized what the court had done. But I think I have an idea, based on what I felt yesterday after reading the decision.

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By now, it’s not news, I’m sure. But equality won a victory in California today.

The California Supreme Court has overturned a gay marriage ban in a ruling that would make the nation’s most populous state the second one to allow gay and lesbian weddings.

The justices’ 4-3 decision Thursday says domestic partnerships are not a good enough substitute for marriage. Chief Justice Ron George wrote the opinion.

The city of San Francisco, two dozen gay and lesbian couples and gay rights groups sued in March 2004 after the court halted San Francisco’s monthlong same-sex wedding march.

The case before the court involved a series of lawsuits seeking to overturn a voter-approved law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

With the ruling, California could become the second state after Massachusetts where gay and lesbian residents can marry.

There’s more, of course. I’m going to try and get through as much of it as I can, but at some point I’m going to have to find a quiet spot in the office, to cry. (I called the hubby to tell him, but we couldn’t talk for long, because both of us wanted to retain some composure.)

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I don’t even want to think about it, but the California Supreme Court’s marriage decision will be coming down today.

The California Supreme Court will rule Thursday on the legality of the state’s ban on gay marriage.

The justices today posted a notation (PDF) on the court’s Web site that the ruling in the civil rights challenge to the same-sex marriage ban will be posted at 10 a.m. Thursday. The Supreme Court heard arguments in five consolidated legal challenges in March, and had until early June to rule on the issue.

The long-awaited ruling is a crucial test of the simmering public, social and legal debate over gay marriage, triggered in 2004 when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom allowed thousands of gay and lesbian couples to wed before the courts put a halt to the marriage licenses.

San Francisco city officials and civil rights groups then challenged a state family code law that restricts marriage to a man and a woman, as well as a 2000 voter-approved ballot initiative that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. A San Francisco trial judge declared the ban unconstitutional, but a divided state appeals court in 2006 upheld the law, concluding that it is up to the voters or Legislature to legalize same-sex marriage, not judges.

The state Supreme Court is reviewing that ruling.

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I was halfway through writing the previous post when I came across something that made me realize this would be a two-part deal. That’s when I cut the post short and wrote:

The last time we visited Parker’s pre-school, one of teachers said she remembered when we came there with Parker as an infant. She remarked about how well Parker has grown up, and was happy to see that we are raising Dylan too. I think I know what she sees when she looks at our family now. She sees a family with two devoted parents, and two thriving children.

What other people see, I can only imagine. And I can only wish I didn’t have to care.

But it’s obvious that I do have to care.

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I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole yesterday. During a (rare) quiet moment, I took some time to catch up on my news/blog reading. And I finally started reading a collection of news stories that I’d quietly tucked away until I could actually bring myself to read them. I thought that would be a long time, because they were the kind of stories that I usually put out of my mind, because I can’t bear to think about them.

What started me was Katharine’s comment, which linked to Scott’s post about something Felix Fritzl said upon seeing the moon for the first time.

“Is that God up there?” - Felix Fritzl, 5, sees the moon for the first time since leaving the cellar.

And so it began.

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I wasn’t expecting the traffic. In fact, it was the last thing from my mind when, late last week, I read the news that Deborah Jeane-Palfrey — a/k/a “The D.C. Madam” — committed suicide. I shouted the news to my husband, over the din of Dylan’s babbling and Parker “watching” a Tivo’d television show while playing with his race cars, and then I just thought what damn shame it was.

And how I wish she hadn’t done it. I realized that some part of me was rooting for her; wanting her to come out on top, even if only after serving a few years in prison. I remember thinking, not that anyone else in particular should have been one of the two (at least) casualties in this story, but about the significance of who was on that casualty list, and whose career’s weren’t.

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