Same-sex, whole-milk marriage: 50 Shades of Gay

[Primula Baggins]

Anthy, I think you are sometimes shy just because of the unique perspective you bring to discussions, which is precisely why people look forward to your posts so much, and respond to them so much. If you want to evade that kid of attention, you will simply have to start posting like a dunderhead, a clodpoll, or a niminy-piminy nitwit.

I give cheap lessons in all three. Just sayin'.

[yovargas]

Can't really say I'm all that concerned with what Time is doing millenniums and eons from now.



As long as Anthy keeps writing Anthy-posts I think things will be more or less okay.

[Lidless]

As ever, Roger Ebert has an excellent essay on the subject:

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/08 ... heard.html

[Inanna]

As ever, Roger Ebert has an excellent essay on the subject:

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/08 ... heard.html

That is a good essay, thanks Lidless.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Very interesting that same-sex marriage is more and more becoming a bi-partisan cause. Ken Mehlman, the former Bush political strategist who recently came out, is co-hosting a fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights, the group that sponsored the Perry lawsuit, and includes a number of high-profile conservatives.

Republican money for same-sex marriage

[yovargas]

I dream of the day when the irrational bonds between economic conservatism and social conservatism vanish!

[Cenedril_Gildinaur]

It seems that the Tea Party is actually making that bond weaker. They are displacing the Theocrats within the Republican Party, and they don't care about gay issues the way the Theocrats do.

The paleoconservatives have roughly the same stand on civil liberties as libertarians, but not quite as strong, so they're generally on the right side. The neoconservatives like gays in the military because they simply need more cannon fodder. The mercantilists just want to make money and don't care who they sell to. The "law and order" faction has realized that being gay isn't against the law. A Republican judge overturned Prop 8.

Meanwhile Obama is in favor of Civil Unions but not Gay Marriage and has dithered on Gays in the Military.

The Democrats have generally taken that particular voting bloc for granted under "Where else will you go? Who else are you going to vote for? Republicans? Get real, they hate you." But if the Republicans really are changing their tune it may mean the exact changes the Democrats think can never happen. In a way it will parallel the much older voting bloc shift when the African American vote shifted from Republican to Democrat even though the Democrats were aligned with the Klan for decades.

[vison]

I dream of the day when the irrational bonds between economic conservatism and social conservatism vanish!

Amen, brother.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Yet another, perhaps even more surprising, indication of the changing attitudes towards gays and lesbians:

Castro admits 'injustice' for gays and lesbians during revolution

[Primula Baggins]

I've been feeling a tide starting to turn, and hoping I was right.

[nerdanel]

The latest update in the Perry case, as many of you may have heard, is that this week in Sacramento, the Third District Court of Appeal (the state appellate court) refused without explanation to order Schwarzenegger and Brown (i.e., the state of California) to appeal Judge Walker's ruling. The Pacific Justice Institute, a conservative group, had made the request. The Institute plans to appeal the ruling to the California Supreme Court.

Unless the California Supreme Court reverses, this sets the stage for the Ninth Circuit to consider the intriguing (from a federal courts!nerdy perspective) question of whether the intervenor-proponents have appellate standing. From a legal perspective, I feel this is the most interesting question in the case, and one on which I hope the Supreme Court will ultimately provide guidance. The due process and equal protection arguments concerning whether same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry are well-elaborated, and when the federal courts will accept them is solely a function of time.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Welcome back.

[Primula Baggins]

I had exactly the same thought when I read nel's post last night.

[yovargas]

Nerd.

[Lidless]

We are all Nerds here.

[Inanna]

Geeks, sorry. We are all Geeks here. Not Nerds.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Sorry, I'm a nerd, not a geek.

[Primula Baggins]

Given my exalted position in the geek hierarchy, shared here only by Teremia, I blush to admit that I don't know what distinguishes a geek from a nerd. But perhaps that is a topic for another thread.

I seem to recall that the Ninth Circuit accelerated the deadlines for this appeal. Is that also a deadline for them to rule on standing?

[Lidless]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/scott/nerd-venn-diagram

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I seem to recall that the Ninth Circuit accelerated the deadlines for this appeal. Is that also a deadline for them to rule on standing?

Yes. They asked that the parties address the standing issue in their briefs, and presumably the panel will address it at the oral argument the week of December 6. In all likelihood, if the panel rules that the proponents do not have standing to appeal, they won't rule on the other issues of the case at all, unless the SCOTUS (or potentially the full Ninth Circuit reviewing the decision en banc) disagrees and throws it back to the panel to decide the case on the merits.