General: September 2007 Archives

Crazy day today. For the most part, life is good. Just a few thoughts....

I got this today from Love Makes A Family about the Maryland ruling for gay marriage...

Dear Bill,

We have just learned that the Maryland Court of Appeals has ruled in the case of Conaway v. Deane and Polyak that same-sex couples do not have the right to marry under the Maryland state constitution. Read more about the decision at http://www.equalitymaryland.org/.

This is an extremely disappointing ruling for our colleagues at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Equality Maryland who have worked tirelessly on this case for the last three years. More significantly, however, it harms the tens of thousands of committed same-sex couples and their children in Maryland who have been told today that their families are not worth protecting and respecting.

Although Maryland’s high court has failed to end this discrimination against same-sex couples and their families, the fight isn’t over. Equality Maryland immediately urged their state legislature to do the right thing and pass a bill extending marriage to same-sex couples.

Here in Connecticut, we also expect a ruling soon from our state’s highest court in our marriage lawsuit, Kerrigan & Mock v. CT Department of Public Health.

God, I can’t even afford to emotionally get into this issue of gay marriage anymore. It just takes too much out of me. It’s like it drains the good and positive out of my life and it all becomes negative. I have to at least think in my mind that Kent and I have a marriage just as real as those who were married by the State. I know it’s not true, but it’s the only way I can deal with it. Does that make me a weak person?

Sometimes I think that people just have to try to deal with life’s issues the best way they can. That’s what I try to do... look at the life we have built together, and look at all the good things in our lives. And hopefully by the time one of us is ready to croak, we will be able to have the legal and financial protections that heterosexual married people have, so that whichever one of us survives, the other won’t have to deal with all the legal problems of not having the option of being seen as a “spouse”. ARGH!!!! See... more negativity. But if we don’t care about issues, who will? And what will make things get better?

On my way to work this morning, I listened to the audio recording of the student who was tasered this morning. I later watched the incident. Basically, the student was trying to ask John Kerry a few questions, which Kerry wouldn’t answer. Then they tried to escort him out. He said he didn’t resist, but I can see that he was resisting. Then, they tasered him. That’s disturbing enough to me. But what is more disturbing is the fact that if you say the wrong thing, or if someone doesn’t like what you are saying, that is grounds to be tasered by the police?

This headline says it all: Student Asks Kerry Tough Question, Kerry Watches Him Get Tasered; Free Speech Nowhere to be Seen.

And here’s the video.