All The News That's Fit To Fist The California Supreme Court is Basically The Goblin King In Labrynth

Posted on May 27th, 2009 by Colin
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Ok. So I know I haven’t written here in a while. And so much shit has happened. SO MUCH SHIT HAS HAPPENED!!!?!?!?!?! Just so ya’ll know, I’m gonna try and start updating again and have some more podcasts coming up for all 5 of you that actually download and listen to that shit.

Something important happened yesterday however, and as a gay, gay blog, I do need to at least pretend to cover it. California hasĀ  upheld Proposition 8, Prop H8, or whatever you want to call it, in a 6-1 decision. You can download the full text of decision here if you have time to browse a over 100 pages of legal text. If I was a more intelligent person, I’d probably read the full decision and then offer some sort of nuanced point of view on how marriage equality could continue to move forward in California.

Unfortunately I don’t have that much time. But I do have enough time to read editorial features online!!!

Mark Morford wrote this nice little piece up for the San Francisco Chronicle today to give all you gay protesters last night some hope in light of the CA Supreme Court’s decision. It’s pretty well written and a great piece. Memorable quotes:

  • Watch carefully as they sigh and roll their eyes, then whip out their Nokias to text their friends about how this creepy elder just tried to convince them that the harmless, yawningly commonplace homosexuality currently saturating the popular culture all around them, from fashion to Facebook, movies to “American Idol,” is not only wrong, but so wrong that the law should ban it forever because… well, no one really seems to know exactly why.
  • You could say, then, that we are, right this minute, at the tipping point. You could say that very soon indeed — sooner than many people expect, in fact — we will all look back on this inane gay marriage hysteria and wonder, what the hell was that all about? What the hell were we thinking? And by the way, isn’t President Obama’s second term going just astonishingly well?

Basically his opinion here is that “Gay marriage is a done deal,” regardless of the opposing legislation that might litter our path there. So all we need to do is like Jennifer Connelly at the end of Labrynth and say “You have no power over me” and then the right wing’s Escher inspired fortress will collapse and we’ll be back at home with our little brother (whom we thought was kidnapped!) and it will be like this whole bad dream never happened.

Labrynth and Gay Marriage

I guess the problem I have here is that I am part of this eye rolling, Nokia wielding, texting and sexting generation, albeit on the older side. However, I am defintively part of those known as “digital natives” and can safely say that I am on the older end of “Generation Y,” “The Millenials” or “Generation WTF,” you know, whatever you want to call it. And you know what? We’re not as liberal as people assume, there’s still a good number of close minded conservatives among generation Obama. Just because us young liberals currently have the spotlight doesn’t mean the pendulum couldn’t swing the other way.

I have difficulty taking any comfort in the idea that gay rights are part of an unavoidable zeitgeist or Hegelian march through history that will inevitabley end in equality and understanding for all. Gay marriage is far from “the last civil right,” especially when you examine trans issues, continued racism in our country, immigration, and as Andrew Sullivan points out in a powerful blog post regarding his personal life, discrimination against HIV positive people and serodischordant couples.

These are real families, and real people, living real lives, and this is what the fight for gay marriage needs to be about — real families and real people and how our government can create structures to support them the same way we support white heterosexual families in this country. The rights associated with gay marriage are actually about a whole lot more than gays getting married; these are rights that need more than people saying gay marriage is “cool” or “kinda chill” or “who cares” in order to come to fruition. It’s about families who have a need to be recognized by the federal government with full federal rights. The current solution we are fighting for is to create a more inclusive definition of marriage (just as a reminder — civil unions would be seperate and therefore per se would breed inequality).

Now that I am off my soapbox, I will admit his major points do have a good amount of merit. I mean even pre-pubescent vloggers on YouTube are cool with homosexuality these days:

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