Categories
Silent Sunday June 2 2024
Category: Culture
The Supreme Court decided in June, 2015 that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples. The decision was Obergefell v Hodges, and the was one of the most definitive for civil rights in the last century.
A few short years later, this decision, like that for Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed rights to healthcare, is under threat with a Supreme Court more interested in forcing a narrow, restrictive ideology than the law. In response Congress just passed the Respect for Marriage Act. Though the protections aren’t as comprehensive as the Obergefell decision, at a minimum this Act ensures that same-sex marriages would be recognized by both federal and state government, though it could not force states to issue marriage certificates to same-sex couples.
Perhaps at a minimum, it will provide a warning to the Supreme Court that no, they won’t be allowed to turn back the clock, and they’ll leave Obergefell alone.
Serendipitously, this week while I was recovering old weblog posts from the Wayback Machine, I recovered one titled “No other word works but great.” I wrote it February 18, 2004 and it was about that brief and shining time when Gavin Newsome and the city of San Francisco, in an act of civil defiance, issued marriage certificates for same-sex couples.
As I wrote at the time:
This news coming out of San Francisco, is the first news I’ve heard in a month, over a month, of the triumph of the human spirit, the fire of those who will not accept the dictates of a hypocritical society, and the goodness of people reaching out to other people.
Enjoy this flashback, and think on how far we’ve come, and what we can’t lose.
Update:
The follow up longer essay I promised, also recovered from the Wayback Machine: For those who inhabit the empty spaces of the coloring book.
Categories
My mother’s pen and ink
The first image is “One of the Family”, by Frederick Cotman, painted in 1880.
The second image shows the same painting, but this time in black and white from a magazine page. This second image is coated with ink marks, stains, and other signs of wear. The reason why is my mother used this painting as inspiration for the only pen and ink drawings she’s ever done.
I happen to have the first, and the best of her pen and inks, in image three. Mom gave it to Dad, who passed it on to me when he went into assisted living.
Mom took some liberties with interpreting the original artwork. For one, the father figure was dropped from her work. I’m not sure if it’s because Mom thought the he was extraneous for the work, or she was making a symbolic choice reflecting her ambivalence about the men in her life.
The rest of the images are of Mom’s pen and ink. I thought I would provide some detail. It took quite a bit of time to scratch this piece out.
Categories
JK Rowling is a bigot
Politico has a new story about JK Rowling and her battles with the trans community.
I liked the Harry Potter books and the Fantastic Beasts movies, but I’m not a fan of Rowling. Or that sad excuse for a human being the NY Times let write an awful piece this week.
These people are using the fight for women’s rights as a transphobic attack. They’re no longer even hiding it.
I had thought we, who have long fought for equality, would be better than this. Evidently, not.
Here are two terms for you: AFAB and AMAB.
They stand for assigned female at birth and assigned male at birth. They’re inclusive terms that can be used in debates such as those around the right to control our access to abortion, to pregnancy prevention aids, and to healthcare used to treat gender dysphoria.
If we want to include cis women, transmasculine, and non-binary in a discussion—and we do when it comes to the harm tossing Roe aside does—then AFAB will do until something better comes along.
I am a woman. I am a cis woman. I use she/her as my pronouns. Even fitting society’s stereotypical model of a ‘woman’, it is still a fight being the person who I am. I can’t even imagine how much harder it is being someone who does not identify themselves the same way, but is facing the same, or worse, healthcare restrictions. The least I can do is make sure when talking about abortion rights, we’re all included.
We’re all being hurt by the same people: those who value power over humanity. I’d be a pretty sad excuse for a human being if I allowed this.
So, sorry that Rowling gets her feels hurt. She’s a bully, and a bigot.
Earlier today I was stunned to read about the accusations of sexual harassment against Robert Scoble. We aren’t friends, but we have friends in common and we have interacted remotely in the past.
I had no idea, no clue, that Scoble had harassed women. There are some people you might suspect of doing so, and some people you don’t, and before today I would have listed Scoble in the latter category. It just goes to show that on the internet, people don’t always know you’re a dog.