Today the California Supreme Court upheld Prop 8, the constitutional amendment that took away the right of gay people to marry in the state. The majority may now invalidate a minority’s rights at the ballot box.
Remember, this isn’t the same as the other couple of dozen states, like Oregon, that have banned gay marriage in their constitution. In those states, the right for gays to marry did not exist. In California, the court declared the right for gays to marry to be a constitutional right, and then the haters passed the constitutional amendment to take away that existing right.
Strangely enough, the Court left intact the marriages of some 18,000 gay couples who exercised their right before Prop 8 passed. I guess somehow that 18,001st gay couple to get married would’ve been the trigger for gaypocalypse or something. Weird, isn’t it, that 18,000 gay Californians have a right that hundreds of thousands of other gay Californians do not, a right the 18,000 would lose if they ever got divorced.
Conceivably, a majority of Californians could pass constitutional amendments to ban anyone from anything, so long as they didn’t touch the federally-protected classes of gender, religion, race, ethnicity, age, national origin, familial status, disability, or veterans status. No decision on rights from the California Supreme Court can be considered final, because the majority could always overturn it. This is much bigger than a ban on gay marriage, this sets precedent for the majority to take anyone’s rights! A right isn’t a right if it can be taken away; it’s a privilege. The California Supreme Court just decided that all rights in the Republic not granted by the federal constitution are now just privileges, granted unto you by the majority.
The reaction from some of the knuckle-draggers has been predictable. This on from the HuffPo comments is typical:
There is ONE and only ONE fair solution to this problem and it is the same solution that has been proposed by many people including Elton John. Homosexuals should be granted all of the same rights, benefits of married heterosexual couples, the union should be identified by a different term than “marriage”.
Homosexuals don’t seem willing to accept that and I think that it speaks volumes to the underlying intentions.
Great point! Just like little black kids in the 1950s should be granted all the same rights and benefits of education as the white kids, but they should be housed in separate buildings identified by a different term than “schools”.
Strange how gay folks don’t seem willing to accept their lifelong loving partnerships being trivialized by straights as some sort of “sub-marriage” or “alternamarriage”. Homobigots don’t seem willing to see gay folks as equals and their need to cling to a word speaks volumes to the underlying intentions. You’d grant an equal marriage so long as it isn’t called “marriage”? It’s really just an eight letter word you’re hung up on?
Is marriage religious? Fine, keep it in your church, take government out of it completely, and ban anyone from it who makes you uncomfortable. But if marriage is a civil institution with government benefits, all citizens get to participate equally. Restricting one’s choice of lifelong partners to just half the population isn’t just homophobic, it’s sexist!
It will be fun being a cynical old coot, someday telling my grand-nieces and nephews about the days when we used to openly discriminate against gay people… if I can get past their holo-tattoos and cyber-implants.
Howdy, Radicals! It’s been a long time since I posted here. I took the end of my show pretty hard and every time I thought about posting here again it just made me sad. Thank you so much for all the emails and comments expressing your love for the show and missing it. I miss it, too.
Many people have asked if I am returning to the air anytime soon. Probably not.
Here’s the deal: Not only was I the host of the show, but I also had to produce it, engineer it, record it, write it, sell it, promote it… basically aside from Stevie doing a fantastic job with answering phones and running the live engineering, everything about The Russ Belville Show was done by me. I won the talk radio contest and they put me on XM with no budget, no staff, no advertising, and no promotions. In fact, they were going to dump me six months into the deal when I rose a stink about being promised “a year-long contract” for winning the contest. As it turned out, being on for twenty months was 14 months longer than they expected and 8 months longer than I expected. Every show I put on the air actually ended up costing me $67 by the time you work through all the income vs. expenses.
(You want an idea why progressive talk radio is in the shitter? Do you think it is the talent of the hosts, or… y’all discuss it; any speculation from me would be seen as ’sour grapes’.)
Now, if someone from a progressive talk radio network called up and said, “Hey, we found your old shows and thought you’d be a hit. We’ve got a studio for you, a producer, and an engineer. We’ll begin a big ad campaign and we can start you on five of our network’s stations right off the bat. Interested?”, I’d be in the air faster than freeway chase in LA. But doing it all myself? No, never again.
So, what after three months has inspired me to return to the Radical Writ? Is it Obama backing away from nearly every campaign pledge? Is it the not closing Gitmo, not prosecuting torture, bringing in the insurance industry to ruin health care talks, giving money hand over fist to Wall Street thieves, snickering at the marijuana legalization question, not ending Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and tacitly endorsing every right-wing fraidy-cat terrists-gonna-kill-us FOX talking point?
Yeah, sure. But first, I want to talk about something REALLY important: the embarrassment that was the selection of Kris Allen as the next American Idol.
But for a theory about how Kris pulled an upset over the wildly popular Adam Lambert, the Christian vote is a pretty good one. It’s certainly one factor. (So is talent, Tiger Beat ready looks and viewers who get tired of being told someone is a lock when they haven’t even voted yet.) In fact, look at seasons past and where there’s a clear Christian vs secular showdown, the Christians have been winning handily. Take that, Charles Darwin! Sometimes the survival of the fittest goes to the person with the best telephone prayer chain. Check it out. (And please keep in mind I’m not talking about their personal faith, just our perception of it from what we told on the show at the time they were competing. Someone I describe as worldly might be exceptionally devout while the contestant prominently sporting a cross might be at the juke joint on Saturday and never even make it to church on Sunday.)
Season One featured wholesome Kelly Clarkson vs the worldly, media savvy Justin Guarini. Clarkson won big time and set the standard for Idols to come.
Season Two: Clay Aiken and Ruben Studdard both held forth on their faith. Ruben had an edge perhaps from the tight-knit black churches that came out strong for him. But this was a Christian vs Christian finale so you can’t draw any conclusions from this one.
He continues on through the current season, pointing out how the contestant with the most “God cred” wins the Finals. (However, for Season 2, while both Ruben and Clay had the God card, don’t forget that Clay was “teh gay” for those Christian viewers.)
But I think the true theory is the Southern AT&T Text Messaging theory, only with the Christian vote acting as tiebreaker. In Idol voting, you’re allowed to call or text in ten votes per line. However, calls get you busy signals and you have to keep redialing to get just two votes, much less ten.
Text messaging, though, gets no busy signal and you can send in ten of them in the time it would take to get through one Idol phone call. Now, understand that anyone can call, but only AT&T subscribers can text, and AT&T’s subscriber base is largest in the South.
So when watching Idol Season 9, ask yourself, “Who would a 13-year-old girl in Mobile vote for?”
Evidence?
Allen (Arkansas) vs. Lambert (California)
7) Cook (Missouri) vs. Archuleta (Utah)
6) Sparks (Arizona) vs. Lewis (Washington) (Religion wins tiebreaker)
5) Hicks (Alabama) vs. McPhee (California)
4) Underwood (Oklahoma) vs. Bice (Alabama) (Religion breaks tie)
3) Fantasia (North Carolina) vs. DeGarmo (Georgia) (Religion breaks tie)
2) Studdard (Alabama) vs. Aiken (North Carolina) (”Not gay” breaks tie)
1) Clarkson (Texas) vs. Guarini (Pennsylvania)
What are the chances you’d get three finalists from Alabama and only two from California? Or that ten of sixteen finalists would be from former Confederate States and zero from the Northeast?
SALT LAKE CITY 30 June 2008 The following letter was sent from the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to Church leaders in California to be read to all congregations on 29 June 2008:
Preserving Traditional Marriage and Strengthening Families
In March 2000 California voters overwhelmingly approved a state law providing that “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.†The California Supreme Court recently reversed this vote of the people. On November 4, 2008, Californians will vote on a proposed amendment to the California state constitution that will now restore the March 2000 definition of marriage approved by the voters.
The Church’s teachings and position on this moral issue are unequivocal. Marriage between a man and a woman is ordained of God, and the formation of families is central to the Creator’s plan for His children. Children are entitled to be born within this bond of marriage.
A broad-based coalition of churches and other organizations placed the proposed amendment on the ballot. The Church will participate with this coalition in seeking its passage. Local Church leaders will provide information about how you may become involved in this important cause.
We ask that you do all you can to support the proposed constitutional amendment by donating of your means and time to assure that marriage in California is legally defined as being between a man and a woman. Our best efforts are required to preserve the sacred institution of marriage.
Individuals exercising their 1st Amendment rights… or a church violating its tax-exempt 501(c)(3) status?
I spent the evening at an election-watching party sponsored by a local auto dealer who is a huge supporter of progressive talk radio. What fun it was, for once, to be in a room full of cheering, crying people who weren’t dressed in Green Bay Packers clothing. Out here in Portland, we all counted down from :45 seconds to 8pm our time, because we knew that would be the moment CNN would call the election for Barack Hussein Obama.
(Now that he’s elected, I will be calling him “Barack Hussein Obama” because it will will irritate the righties and not saying his middle name, when we routinely do that for every other president, gives that anti-Muslim smear more power than it deserves. I’m proud of our president Barack Hussein Obama and his middle name, too!)
We’re biting our nails still over Merkley/Smith in the Senate. Smith lieads by about 1,000, but votes from Multnomah (Portland Metro – strongly Merkley) haven’t all been counted yet. I’m biting my nails for Al Franken in Minnesota, because while we’ve had Actor-Americans in government (Fred Grandy, Fred Thompson, Ronald Reagan) and Athlete-Americans (Steve Largent, Jack Kemp) and Former Cokehead-Americans (George W. Bush) in office, I believe Franken will be our first Former Cokehead-Actor-Comedian-American to sit in the Senate.
Oregon passed Measure 57 and Measure 61, so Measure 61 failed. If you said, “Huh?”, welcome to Oregon initiative politics. Our rightwing nutjobs sponsored 61, which increases mandatory minimum sentences for certain crimes, which will cost us up to $400 million to build new prisons. So the legislature sponsored 57, which increases mandatory minimums on fewer certain crimes, which will cost us up to $200 million to build new prisons, but if 57 passes with more votes than 61, 61 is invalidated. This is how Oregon fights an awful bill, by proposing a less-awful counter bill, instead of just fighting the awful bill.
Michigan passed it’s medical marijuana measure with 63% of the vote and Massachusetts passed it’s marijuana decriminalization measure. 13 states with 1/4th the US population now recognize and protect medical users of marijuana, and 13 states now no longer arrest and incarcerate social users of marijuana (six states do both).
And yet, California, where I had just been three weeks ago, sitting in a downtown dispensary enjoying a gourmet choice of vaporized cannabis without fear of law enforcement…
California, the capital of the worldwide pornography industry, thanks to lenient laws…
California, where I can buy hundred-proof liquor store on the shelves of the local grocery store…
Californians voted to amend their constitution to revoke a right from people already granted that right – the right to marry for gays and lesbians.
Wow. What a precedent. So, like, if enough Californians decided to do it, they could revoke just about anybody’s right to do anything, couldn’t they? Well, no, not if that right were something protected in the US Constitution. They couldn’t, for example, create an amendment to define marriage as only between one man and one woman of the same race, religion, or ethnicity.
Civil rights groups are petitioning the California Supreme Court, saying that you can’t really use the initiative process to take away people’s constitutional rights. Good luck with that.
And there are the other anti-gay marriage and anti-gay adoption amendments that passed this time around in other states. It’s going to keep happening like this, election after election, as homophobic majorities will keep voting to discriminate against LGBT.
This can only be solved federally. Either federal legislation, constitutional amendment, or Supreme Court decision. You’re not likely to get #1, even less likely to get #2. Maybe President Barack Hussein Obama will get us the Justices on the bench to give us #3.
Just watching Meet the Press on my DVR when Andrea Mitchell is asked about the possibility of Sam Nunn of Georgia being Barack Obama’s vice presidential choice. After discussing the pluses of a Nunn veep pick, Andrea just can’t help but make me laugh out loud:
This is example #5,298 of someone on my TV who can’t help but put “gay” and “shove down throat” in the same sentence. We now return you to you regularly scheduled programming, already in progress…
Let My Partner Stay // Current
You know what’s going to be fun? Being an old man and explaining to my grandkids how back in the early part of the century, people weren’t allowed to marry their same-sex partners and people could be imprisoned for possessing marijuana. I imagine they’ll look at me like kids today look when they hear that people couldn’t marry their different race partners and people could be imprisoned for possessing alcohol. back in the last century.
Hillary wins West Virginia, California Supreme Court overturns same-sex marriage ban, Huckabee makes lame assassination joke about Obama at NRA, Bush calls Obama and “appeaser”, interview with Red State Update’s Jackie & Dunlap.
The American Family Association rides to our rescue like Paul Revere. Watch and learn how these illegal immigrants from The Fabulous Republic of Homoslavia are crossing the borders of your town, hell-bent on redecorating your homes, piping in show tunes, and secretly teaching your children that it’s OK to not hate people that are different!
Seriously, does anyone anymore not believe that these people so obsessed with homosexuality are the biggest closet cases on the planet? Gay people aren’t as obsessed with gay sex as these fun-duh-mental-less evan-genitals.
Coralie La Salle: You were the only U S journalist to cover that critical interview with Benazir Bhutto where she said Osama Ben Laden was dead and buried [...]
Arline Sherman: Just turned on my XM and found you gone. I will miss you. I looked foward to your program every sat.
Masini: Idea, like mr. Henry Ford had))
"Radical" Russ: RadicalRuss.com is back online and migrated to the new servers.
Allen (Arkansas) vs. Lambert (California)
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