prop 8

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/sen-tim-johnson-endorses-gay...

Johnson's reversal leaves only three Democratic senators who still oppose same-sex marriage: Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Mark Pryor (D-AK) and Mary Landrieu (D-LA)

The countdown continues. Only 3 days left until this historic Supreme Court freedom to marry case. Lines have been forming out side the Supreme Court for days now. The polling is moving in our favor at a rapid pace. Even a hundred some prominent republicans have made the jump to supporting marriage equality. There are some big events in DC, but you don't have to go that far to have a piece of history with this landmark case, because events are being held all across the country and across North Carolina.

The Supreme Court is taking up the Winsdor DOMA challenge and the Prop 8 Case. Depending on the ruling, and how broad or narrow it is, this could potentially end amendment 1, DOMA, and marriage discrimination all across the country.

"What's on Tap" is a weekly round-up of stories and links that may be interesting to Drinking Liberally patrons.

Join us every Tuesday evening from 5:30 p.m. onward at Tobacco Road Sports Cafe, 222 Glenwood Avenue in Raleigh. Happy hour specials end at 6 p.m. You can find more information about us on Facebook or our home site, and follow us on Twitter - @RaleighDL.

This week: Giving to high quality charities; Raleigh gets more electric car charging stations; drive-thru marital aids; and redesigning the traffic light. Come on in, the egg nog's fine!

It was about a week ago that we saw the ruling throwing out California’s Prop 8; that decision has now been appealed, and we will see, at some point in the future, how the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals handles the matter.

A couple of days later, I had a story up that walked through the ruling, describing the tactics used by the Prop 8 proponents, which, in the opinion of the Judge who looked at the evidence, were basically to try to scare Californians into thinking that gay people, once they’re able to get gay married, will somehow now be free to evangelize your kids and make them gay, too.

In the course of answering comments on the several sites where the story is up, I noticed that there were those who felt the Bible should be guiding our thinking here...that if it did, we would be better off than where we are today, with all those immoral gay people running around free to do all those immoral gay things.

This led me to an obvious question: are those who have been using the Bible as a sort of “divining rod” to figure out who is immoral and who is not...actually any good at it?

The airwaves (and the print and blog waves, for that matter) are filled with the news that a Federal Judge in California has declared that State’s Proposition 8 to be unconstitutional, which could clear the way for the resumption of same-sex weddings in the State.

Ordinarily, this would be the point where I would present to you a walkthrough of the ruling, and we’d have a fine conversation about the legal implications of what has happened.

I’m not doing that today, frankly, because the ground is already well-covered; instead, we’re going to take a look at some of the tactics that were used to pass Prop 8, as they were presented in Judge Vaughan’s opinion.

The California Supreme Court has upheld Prop 8, but did not dissolve the 18,000 marriages that took place between same sex couples last year in the state. The decision was expected, but is still disheartening.

I made it to the protest today in Greensboro, which was smaller than I expected. Hopefully lots of Triad folks attended the Raleigh event instead.

There were no frenzied groups of rabid wingnuts in sight.

I remarked on this to a fellow protester. "There wasn't enough time for them to organize," he said; holding a sign referencing Britney Spears' 55-hour marriage.

"Yeah, I guess most of the publicity was on the internet," I replied. "And they don't have internet."

"They probably communicate by carrier pigeon," he laughed.

No doubt some of the fine citizens passing by headed straight to their local Church of God and returned with a pickup load of angry Palin wackos. But by then, I had left.

As Barack Obama delivered his magnificent victory speech on election night, he began a now-familiar refrain:

Obama's desire for unity, his acknowledgment and respect for all of us--not just some of us--always captivated and comforted me. I was hungry for that, particularly after the divisiveness and polarization of the last eight years, and the war.