slaveofone’s archive for May, 2009

A Bittersweet Day by slaveofone

Today is both a sad and happy day in California. The California Supreme Court–after ruling that prohibiting gay marriage was anti-Constitutional and then allowing 18,000 gay couples to be married–nevertheless upheld the people’s will to change the State Constitution and to make the terrible injustice of Prop 8 a reality. I think that the California Supreme Court did the right thing in upholding the will of the people to make their Constitution and to decide for themselves what they will legally allow and what they won’t (much better the people decide what they want than government decide for them!). And yet what the majority decided is, in my opinion, a great and disastrous inhumanity. I feel like I’m living back in the days of Martin Luther King when he was speaking and marching and protesting the injustice and the inhumanity of our nation first against African-Americans and then against those we demonized in Vietnam. It seems like no matter all the progress we have made, we have returned to where we were before. And it is startling to think that there are now parts of Europe like Denmark and Belgium that are MORE free and just than California–at least on this front. And yet, there is great good in the free will of humanity to make their own choices and to be self-governed–to be able to make WRONG choices. Ultimately, I think right will win out and the choices of gay couples will no longer be coerced, oppressed, and controlled by the wills of others. And then we can work on the next injustice. But until then, here we are.

Watching The Constitution Burn by slaveofone

The Patriot Act scares the living shit out of me. Here’s an example why it does: Mom Says Patriot Act Stripped Son of Due Process. Basically, it gives government the ability to supersede your INALIENABLE rights as declared in the Constitution based on the government’s own arbitrary whims. As this poor mother and son found out the hard way, far from making America safer, the Patriot Act puts America at the risk of the kinds of fascism and tyranny that have held sway over the rest of the world since the beginning of human history. Even YOU could be taken in the middle of the night and held hostage indefinitely by your own government without the ability to defend your innocence.