A minor set-back

I haven't talked about it a lot, but I have talked, a few times, about progress being made by the LBGT movement over the last few years.  It's inevitable that things will improve drastically in the next twenty-ish years (the younger set shows no interest in continuing the hate that drives much of the discrimination), but there will be set-backs on the way.

The newest are bills passed, or pending, in statehouses, that legalize discrimination under the rubric of religious freedom.  It's a sad tactic, using Jesus' name to further vitriolic hatred (even the most cursory reading of the gospels would show that Jesus was invariably kind and loving toward the downtrodden and hated), but Indiana is the most recent example.  Arkansas, I understand, might well be next.

What they did was pass a bill that attempts to make it legal to discriminate against anyone, for any reason, if it conflicts with your religious belief.

With any other Supreme Court in history, there's no chance that this would be upheld in a First Amendment challenge, but who knows, with this Court.  Actually, I think this court would find a way to rationalize saying that it's ok in this one instance, but would acknowledge that it would never be allowed outside the legal contours of this exact case.  That's pretty much the MO of the right wing of this court.  I'm not sure whether to call that extremely ballsy (it's chutzpah, for sure) or completely spineless (because they don't have the courage of their convictions to make broad rulings).

In any event, while this has no long-term impact, I'm sorry to see the short-term hurt it will cause in that state (and in any other states that pass similar laws).

I am glad that some big companies are stepping up, and saying that this is unacceptable.  I'm disappointed that Gen Con (a huge gaming convention, to which I've been a couple of times; fantastic experience, both times) is staying in Indianapolis for at least the next five years.  It goes so completely against the ethos of the gaming community that I'm more surprised than disappointed.

I'm also very disappointed that the NCAA, which certainly has a significant number of LGBT constituents, is also rather mealy-mouthed about their reaction.  I'd agree with Olbermann that they should have immediately pulled out of Indianapolis for the Final Four, regardless of where that forced them to have it.  Indiana's government needs to be smacked in the face, and it would have been good to see the NCAA give that first smack.  The NCAA would have taken a significant financial hit, this year, but would more than make it up down the road.

DOMA delenda est

I'm not a terribly close watcher of the Supreme Court (the current court composition, especially Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas, tends to piss me off), but I was encouraged by what I heard yesterday.

They struck down DOMA, which was great, and halted implementation of Prop 8 in California. The latter was good, as far as it went, although I was a bit disappointed (not surprised, mind) that they didn't decide in a way that would keep other states from doing the same.

Essentially, they said that the defendants (various anti-gay bigotry groups) had no standing to defend the state's decision, if the state itself wouldn't defend it.

So a tiny bit of disappointment there, but mostly I'm pleased with the decisions.

Two minor bits of amusement, related. When talking about it, just before the announcement, I was stuck watching CNN, and they decided to show a graphic highlighting which states have approved same-sex marriage and such. What I found so amusing was that the states that allow same-sex marriage were colored RED. Very ironic decision, there. (The states that don't allow it were uncolored.)

The other funny bit came this morning on the radio, when they interviewed a woman who wasn't so pleased with the decision. She said that she was against it because she didn't think gays should be allowed to marry (unsurprising, a bigot), and, more amusingly, that the Bible said that marriage should be between a man and a woman, and that shouldn't change. I wonder how much of the Bible she's actually read. The only passages I'm aware of that specifically talk about marriage (beyond stuff like, "Jesus went to a wedding") talk about it as between a man and many women (stuff like, "If your brother dies, you must marry his wife", and the many early men mentioned as having two or more wives (Lamech and Abraham, for instance)).

Anyway, Yay, progress.

Coming out of a BIG closet

I don't have a lot to say about Jason Collins, the NBA center with the Wizards, for publicly coming out of the closet, except that I admire his courage, and I hope this gets us to the point where people will only think about someone's abilities on the field/court, not about their sexuality.

We hold these truths to be self-evident...

It finally hit me exactly why Objectivism pisses me off so much. The underlying assumption (yes, I'm sure this seemed completely obvious to everyone but me, but it took me a while to put my finger on it) of Objectivism is that all men are not created equal. And the superior people can (and should) do exactly what they want to do.

And this is amazingly un-American, as well as a moral morass. Objectivism is objective in exactly the same way that the Democratic Republic of Congo is democratic.

No wonder the reading is so popular on Wall Street. They need some way to try to justify the amount of money they make on the backs of the poor and middle class.

DOMA-ciliation

I heard yesterday, I think, that Obama had decided not to defend DOMA in court. I must admit, I'm very conflicted on this, on several levels.

On the one hand, I think DOMA must go. I think it's pointlessly discriminatory, and doesn't actually help anyone (though the homophobes certainly will claim it helps them. And I suppose if their peace of mind is a priority, I can't really argue with that).

But it isn't the President's place to decide that a law is unconstitutional; this is part of why the courts exist. Plus, the DoJ is basically admitting that Obama is giving them an order. Given that a significant part of the why the DoJ exists is to make sure that the executive branch is actually following the law, the President giving them orders certainly sounds like the DoJ doesn't believe in their own mandate. And that disturbs me greatly.

If the President does something clearly illegal, who else is going to pursue it? If the President is calling all the shots, then it seems to be nobody.