Category Civil Rights

Even Fred Flintstone was down with having a gay old time

Pat Ryan 9 Comments

Quick follow-up on the New York gay marriage vote, while waiting for a rational explanation from those in the “states’ rights” crowd who support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would prevent states from exerting their rights on this issue:

–hooray for the mayor of New York’s unequivocal support for gay marriage: it’s the right thing to do, opposing it is the same as opposing women’s rights or civil rights or the abolition of slavery, the law won’t require religions to perform or sanction a same sex marriage…and although people are free to belong to any religious group American society as a whole places its faith in the Constitution, not some set of religious laws.

–the Obama Administration isn’t defending the Defense of Marriage Act, and when House Republicans threaten to fight an 81-year-old woman over it even the lawyers bail out.

–the gay marriage issue helped a president win re-election in 2004; now some political pros think the Democrats can use gay marriage to hammer Republicans in 2012 because it could pull traditional Republicans away from the right-wing Christian evangelicals taking over the GOP.

–and looking into the future far beyond 2012, how many of us have even thought about how all this kerfuffle over gay rights will be viewed by our descendants?

“A vote of conscience”

Pat Ryan 2 Comments

Congratulations to the New York legislature for legalizing gay marriage in the state, for doing it with support from Democrats and Republicans, for stepping forward and changing the law to protect the civil rights of all New York citizens.  I read that the passage of the New York law is being credited to a couple of senators, one of whom voted against a similar proposal two years ago, both of whom cited the same reason for their vote this time: conscience.  “It was the right thing to do” is a powerful weapon.

I’m happy to see that people are coming around.  Yes, much more slowly than you might like, but big changes don’t happen overnight.  Now you’ve got the lawmakers in New York, the third-most populous state in the nation, accepting that gay marriage is a question of civil rights, one that can’t be pushed aside any more.

The objections still come predominantly from a religious point of view, and I get that.  These people want the civil law to enforce their religious beliefs on everyone, but that’s not the way it works in this exceptional country.  For the sake of the discussion, let’s accept the premise that the United States was founded on Christian principles; that still doesn’t make the United States a “Christian nation,” despite the fact that more Americans identify as Christians than as members of any other religion.   The Founding Fathers—not all devout Christians in the modern sense, not by any means—believed in everyone having the freedom to worship as they choose to, and in a government that does not show preference for any one religion over another (my translation of the establishment clause).  Legislators pass laws to protect the rights of all Americans, not just the ones who practice the majority religion.

You don’t believe in gay marriage?  OK, that’s your right.  Your church doesn’t believe in gay marriage?  Don’t perform any; no one’s forcing you.  What New York and other states have done is make it legal for two people of the same sex to take out a marriage license under civil law and enjoy the rights and responsibilities that come with being married.  They don’t need the approval of any religious group, they’re married in the eyes of the law.  From a legal point of view, I don’t see the substantive difference between a heterosexual couple who get married in a civil ceremony and a homosexual couple who get married in a civil ceremony—none of them have the approval of any church, nor do they need it.  More power to ’em all.

News on the march

Pat Ryan 3 Comments

Tidying up the files and hoping no one has noticed the “funny” little comments at the top of the page while I find out where they’re coming from:

I am still annoyed at the decision announced last month by the Obama Administration not to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other alleged September 11 attack plotters in civilian court…actually, “shameful” is the word that first came to mind.  It caved in to bullying and fear-mongering from those who don’t really trust the justice system and want a guarantee of a conviction, which they believe they get from a military tribunal instead of a dozen New Yorkers off the street (I refer you to a prior discussion to the issue last year).   On the other hand, Osama bin Laden didn’t get a public trial, either…

Good news and bad from our Texas Legislature.  The state senator who took heat for her plan to railroad accused sex offenders by changing the rules of evidence in their trials had the temerity to defend her position in the paper by claiming her plan actually protects the rights of the accused!  On the other hand, the bogus statistical machination that the state education agency has been using to falsely pump up the annual student assessment test results is on its way out.

In another development on the fungible facts front, the Arizona senator who intentionally misspoke on the Senate floor about the use of funds by Planned Parenthood, and who had his press secretary try to explain it all away by assuring reporters that those words were “not intended to be a factual statement,” has had the Congressional Record edited so that he’s not lying misspeaking anymore.  Because members of Congress have granted themselves the “privilege” to do things like that.

Some days you think you have a pretty good handle on things and the world is spinning in greased grooves…and then you’ve got to figure out how to reconcile that world with one in which an Iranian government power struggle in the 21st century has led to arrests on charges of sorcery, and where the Chinese have outlawed time travel in works of fiction.  If they’re against mythical stories, why do they keep calling their country a republic?

This is history we’re seeing

Pat Ryan 4 Comments

First Tunisia; then Egypt; then Yemen and Bahrain and Iran, and now Libya, where the country’s ambassador to the UN  has broken with the government, and Qaddafi has ordered the military to attack the people but two fighter pilots flew to Malta and asked for political asylum rather than attack the protesters in Tripoli.

This is just stunning to see: across a part of the world that we Americans just assume has given in to the rule of kings and despots, people are standing up for themselves.  They’re not demanding an Islamic theocracy—they’ve taken to the streets to claim their right to self determination.  Outstanding!

I don’t know if any or all of these popular uprisings will succeed; I don’t know how far the rulers will go to keep their grip on power and privilege.  (I don’t know what the literati of 18th century Europe thought of the first reports of rebellion by the British colonists in the Americas, either.)

But I have a feeling…I think that by this time next year, we’ll see more than a couple of new democratic governments in northern Africa and the Middle East.  We’re witnessing a new birth of liberty, right where we’d have never bet we see it.

Yea, Egypt!

Pat Ryan 10 Comments

It is rare, indeed, to witness an important moment in world history: I’m old enough that I saw man’s first step on the moon, 63404977I saw the Berlin Wall fall (both on TV…thank you, TV), and today my old friend let me see an historic triumph of freedom and peaceful resistance to oppression in Egypt.   It’s an important reminder to us cynics to everyone about the power of ideas, and of the human spirit.  And like Gandhi and King and others taught, it shows that monumental change can be gained without resorting to violence.  How’s that taste, Al Qaeda?

I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but neither do the wingnuts who are certain that Muslim fundamentalists will soon be in power in Cairo.  Any assertion that Muslims, as a group, would rather live in a theocracy than a democracy is just flat wrong—as groups, Muslims and non-Muslims prefer democracy, and in virtually identical percentages.  Did hundreds of thousands of Muslims peacefully fill the streets of Cairo around the clock for the last three weeks to get out from under a secular dictator so they can submit to the whims of religious zealots?

Today the military is in charge in Egypt, and while on its surface “military assuming power from civilians” does seem to be the definition of “coup” this doesn’t feel that way.  It was the police that pushed back against the demonstrators in Cairo, but the army kept things from blowing up and seemed to be on the side of the people instead of the president.  The military leadership gives me the impression that even if they weren’t eager to see Mubarak go, they were smart enough to see that he couldn’t stay.  (And props to the protesters themselves for their patience and restraint after the disappointment of Mubarak’s Thursday speech when he said he wasn’t leaving; any other response might have forced the military to take another course.)

We shall see what comes next.  In the meantime, the old reliable Explainer at Slate has a very good list of answers to some nuts and bolts questions about what’s going on in Egypt.