Hawaii legalizes same-sex civil unions

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Well done, Hawaii, well done:

Less than a year after seeing the push for civil unions vetoed, gay rights advocates cheered as Gov. Neil Abercrombie signed into law a bill legalizing civil unions and making Hawaii the seventh state to grant such privileges to same-sex couples.

Abercrombie signed the legislation at a ceremony [yesterday] at historic Washington Place.

"E Komo Mai: It means all are welcome," Abercrombie said in remarks before signing the bill into law. "This signing today of this measure says to all of the world that they are welcome. That everyone is a brother or sister here in paradise."

"The legalization of civil unions in Hawaii represents in my mind equal rights for all people," he said.

Well, yes, sort of. To me, there will not be equal rights in this area until there is full marriage equality, and that also means equal terminology as well. They shouldn't be "civil unions," they should be "marriages." Either that or, perhaps preferably, all state-sanctioned partnerships that we currently call "marriages" should be called "civil unions," including heterosexual ones.

It's not an insignificant point, as homosexual couples should be able to be married, if that is what heterosexual couple are allowed to be, though I understand that the bill the governor signed into law "allows all couples — same-sex and heterosexual — to enter into a civil union, a legal status with all the rights, benefits, protections and responsibilities as traditional marriage."

Yes, I'd be happy if every state allowed such civil unions, but there needs to be complete marriage equality.

On Wisconsin

By Distributorcap

On, Wisconsin! On, Wisconsin!

Plunge right through that line!

Run the ball clear down the field,

A touchdown sure this time.

On, Wisconsin! On, Wisconsin!

Fight on for her fame

Fight! Fellows! - fight, fight, fight!

We'll win this game.

Finally, some people in America -- notably in Wisconsin -- are waking up to the fact that the Republicans are just a bunch of bullies who have absolutely NO idea how to govern. They sure know how to scare, intimidate, and stir the pot, but when it comes to governing, they're clueless. When people voted in these teabaggers and their Koch-bought slaves, they voted mostly out of frustration and anger. Now they are beginning to see the fruits of the votes: Scott Walker, John Kasich, Chris Christie, Rick Scott, and a whole slew of others who want nothing else but to bust unions and give MORE tax cuts to the wealthy.

It is class warfare to the Aynrand degree.

It is one thing to want to fix the financial mess (almost entirely created by the mass giveaway to corporations and the rich), but it is another thing to blatantly want to dismantle the workers and middle class of America as payback for the financing of electoral victories. That is the MO of Scott Walker. Any giveback from the wealthy, not so much in the MO.

I will say it here: Scott Walker is nothing short of a fascist. His no-negotiation stance leaves little choice for the opposition. Walker is also a greedy bastard on top of being a fascist. He wants to continue to cut taxes for the rich, his position against collective bargaining singles out the unions that did not support him, and he wants to allow the state to sell its assets under no-bid rules (to the Koch boys, of course). If any teabagger could actually read. I would think even they would be appalled by that one.

The populist selling of puritanical Ayn Randism and Milton Friedmanism as a political philosophy is continue to creep into the governance of America. One only has to look to Chile in the late 1970s and Argentina in 2001 as examples of what happens when free markets and self-sufficiency at the expense of the common interest runs amok. Since 1981, we have altered our economic system to make the corporate elite even more elite. With the Rand/Friedman/Reagan theory that it would trickle down, all that has happened 30 years later is that people like the Koch boys have kept that accumulated wealth and the rest are fighting for the scraps.

Wisconsin is finally showing America (and the media, which has portrayed the working class as a bunch of lemmings doing only as they are told) that peaceful protest can be effective and important (even if they don't win in the end). I can only hope that this type of "virus" does spread and does show up in 2012 at the ballot box OR in recall votes before then.

Biden: "There's an inevitability for a national consensus on gay marriage."

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Hill:

Vice President Joseph Biden said in a television interview Fridaythat "there's an inevitability for a national consensus on gaymarriage."

The vice president, who backs civil unions but notsame-sex marriage, weighed in on the issue two days after PresidentObama acknowledged his position was "evolving."

"I think the country's evolving," Biden said in the interview withABC News. His comments were not the first time he has suggested thecountry would eventually accept and support gay marriage. Asked in a2007 appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" if gay marriage wasinevitable, Biden replied that "it probably is."

I think Biden's right -- that same-sex marriage legalization is inevitable given the evolution of the country. I would also call this progress, as Americans and American society in general become more liberal, more accepting of difference and diversity.

Now, it's not clear what a "national consensus" would mean. Perhaps, despite his 2007 comments, such a consensus would form around civil unions but not same-sex marriage, that is, around Biden's own position. But I suspect that the country is ultimately moving towards not some separate-but-more-or-less-equal status for same-sex unions but full marriage equality, with the state (most, if not all, states, that is) recognizing both same-sex and opposite-sex marriages equally.

I would be fine with civil unions if they applied equally to same-sex and opposite-sex partners. Indeed, an argument can be made that the state should do away with "marriage" altogether, replacing it with "civil union" as the state-recognized partnership of two people. There could still be "marriage," but it would be religious, and hence private. You could get "married" by a religious official, for example, but while that religion would recognize the partnership as a "marriage" within its own code, the state would recognize it as a "civil union."

Simply, such partnerships, or civil unions, should be purely secular in nature. While the state should not tell religious institutions what to do, within certain broad parameters, religious institutions should not continue to hold such sway over society.

Anyway, while Obama's views on same-sex marriage may very well be "evolving," I don't expect him to push aggressively for the repeal of the odious Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), as I wrote yesterday, let alone for the full legalization of same-sex marriage beyond what some states have done or are doing on their own. Aside from the fact that he has been dragging his heels on gay rights the past two years, whether because of excessive caution (political calculation) or lack of principle (personal commitment), there just won't be any urgency for him to turn his attention to DOMA, not with Republicans in control in the House, with Democrats far from a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and with more pressing political concerns to attend to in the lead-up to 2012.

A national consensus may very well be forming, and it may very well take the shape of support for marriage equality, but there's still a long way to go for any such consensus to be reflected politically.