Gay marriage: Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Iowa, Maine (today), and New Hampshire (just waiting on the governor so who knows). The next battleground is here in New York where Gov. David A. Paterson introduced a marriage bill last month and the State Assembly, which strongly supports it, will probably take it up next week. The bill’s fate in the Senate is less certain. Several of the above states still have fights to be fought, and they will be but the big fights remain. The closer this fight gets to the south, the more venomous it will become. However, here’s what David Patterson had to say last month.
I think the stirring debates of Daniel Webster, the thunder speeches of Frederick Douglass and the inspiring writings of Harriet Beecher Stowe certainly were a catalyst for the great abolitionist movement in the mid-19th century, but it could have come to a screeching halt when probably the most painful and agonizing United States Supreme Court decision was rendered in 1857, when Dred Scott was denied the opportunity to escape slavery north of the 36th parallel.
And yet, only five and a half years later, Mr. Paterson noted, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves in rebel states. Mr. Paterson compared the rapid progress of the same-sex marriage to the transformation of the status of black Americans — at least on paper — in the 1850s and 1860s.
Proposition 8, which overturned same-sex marriage in California last November, “left a number of advocates in a place of complete confusion and stunned disbelief.”
“This is a civil rights issues,” Mr. Paterson said, citing issues like hospital visitations, health insurance coverage and inheritance that are connected with marriage. He called for an end to “a legal system that has systematically discriminated against all of them.”
He continued:
Anyone that has ever experienced degradation or intolerance would understand the solemn duty and how important it actually is. Anyone that’s ever experienced antisemitism or racism, any New Yorker who is an immigrant, who has experienced discrimination, any woman who has faced harassment at work or suffered violence at home, any disabled person who has been mocked or marginalized, understands what we’re talking about here. We have all known the wrath of discrimination. We have all felt the pain and the insult of hatred. This is why we are all standing here today. We stand to tell the world that we want equality for everyone. We stand to tell the world that we want marriage equality in New York State.
He said, “I understand the trepidation and the anxiety that people feel right now,” but said that “rights should not be stifled by fear” and that “silence should not be a response to injustice.”
“If we take no action, we will surely lose,” Mr. Paterson declared. “Maybe we’ve already lost. There is no gain without struggle.”
Mr. Paterson noted that his predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, had introduced a similar bill in 2007. “I’m wondering if I’m in a time warp or have been sent someplace else in time,” he said, citing critics who said he was “rushing.”
“Didn’t we cry out for democracy, and didn’t we ask for the openness and transparency of government that we thought we deserved?”
The governor continued: “I am not in any way attempting to instruct the majority leader of the Senate or the speaker of the Assembly … I am here to speak against those who are antagonistic and antithetical and always have been, not only to marriage equality, but equality,” for gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people. The reality is that for me this is the time to fulfill the dreams of our founding Constitution, which implored us to expand the rights of the union. Our founding Constitution has been expanded to include African-Americans, the right of women to vote, the right of immigrants to get citizenship in this country.”
I’m not sure how I missed it but I didn’t even know this was going on. North Carolina has placed a ban on smoking in businesses where minors are present. It’s a great start but doesn’t seem fair in some respects to all. In 2003 when New York banned smoking in bars and restaurants, there was plenty of uproar about losing customers but it didn’t happen. I enjoy going to bars more than I ever did because when you leave, you don’t have to wash your clothes and the only headaches you get are from the drunks. The house passed the watered down version Thursday 72-45 and the Senate is expected to follow. Every time I go to NC, it still surprises me when I walk into a restaurant and smell the smoke even with the non smoking sections.
Charles Schumer has changed his mind and now supports gay marriage. Of course, this makes me happy but I still can’t bring myself to in any way appreciate or endorse this big pompous blow hard. Both of New York’s senators now support gay marriage.
Westboro Baptist Church descended upon Albany this morning across from Albany High School. School was delayed for two hours to avert any problems. To be so brainwashed, but to be so brainwashed while still having so much interaction with the outside world is beyond me. I understand someone drops them off in a white van, they protest, and someone picks them up in a white van and takes them to their next stop. But to be surrounded buy hundreds of protesters everywhere you go, and I’m sure, only seldom, someone joins their side, how can you not question anything you’re saying? I question myself frequently. I question others more frequently. Any of my superiors will tell you I will argue my point unless I feel it is just useless or they change my mind about it. I do listen to other’s point of view. Besides, I believe these protest do nothing but make the opposition stronger. After downtown, it was off to SUNY-Albany and then they plan to spend the rest of the day in Plattsburgh protesting their gay mayor, the high school’s gay/straight alliance, and Plattsburgh State’s production of “The Laramie Project”. A busy day.
On positive note, freight may be flowing through Schenectady in two directions at once soon. There are double tracks all the way through the state except between Schenectady and Albany where freight traffic (and passenger traffic to a lesser extent) backs up all the time. For years, the state has been trying to finance this very expensive project and the stimulus package may mean it finally gets done. Not only will it help move the abundance of train traffic that comes through the city but it will mean a lot of new infrastructure. The train trestles that go through downtown are dated anywhere between 1901 and 1908. Long before the old Erie Canal was filled in, the tracks were raised for pedestrian safety. These same bridges that we sit under while waiting for traffic lights that seem to “leak” on us and seriously creep me out.
Lastly, I’ve been using a reader for the last couple of months and while it’s faster, I think you lose a lot of the personality that goes with the reading. A lot of times, the pictures are not there as well as the videos and it’s more like reading a document rather than a web page. I may use it for some of the less frequently updated blogs and news but for the most part, I’m gonna move back to just looking at the site.
Usually I don’t read the opinion or editorial pages but giant lettering in the subtitle as I read the paper (you know, the one made of paper) yesterday caught my eye.
Two wrongs
Opponents of anti-gay group just as hate-filled as their target
Fred Phelps’ church will be picketing Albany High School one morning next March and the article goes on to say that Phelps and his membership which consist almost entirely of his family should be pitied, not hated. The counter demonstrations that the writer eluded too may be angry, but why shouldn’t they be? In the same sense, a counter protest against a KKK rally would be angry and anyone suggesting that those protesting against the KKK are wrong to be angry would be denounced by all the mainstream whereas, members of the KKK have been just as brainwashed just as the members of Fred Phelps’ church have been.
I feel I not only have the right to be angry at Phelps’ crew, I have the right to hate them…and I know my mom would say I shouldn’t hate anybody…but I do. I’m a layed back guy and I don’t get angry easy but this stuff sets me into a tail spin. The writer has no idea where we have been and what we’ve been through.
The writer ends it asking whether the press will do the standard coverage or go deeper into the issue as to what motivates this group and how it reflects on Christianity itself. I doubt many people really even think of Westboro Baptist Church as a Christian church. You can call yourself a church and get not for profit status pretty easily actually. All you have to do is look at all the people who have services in their living room and call it a church.
Senator Gillibrand and her views on gay rights…I loved Hilary Clinton but she never had the political courage to say what she really believed when it came to gay marriage. Once more, Kristen Gillibrand is very much anti-gun control. I don’t always agree with her but I seriously respect her for not backing down to the democratic leadership for having different views as they try to get her to change her stance on gun control.
So Brian and Jerry did their reenactment without anyone getting thrown from a horse but there were several Albany City Commissioners doing a press conference there at the same time which really seemed to piss off Jerry Jennings. Don’t fuck with Jennings when he’s got his cape on.
Chris Brown, WTF is wrong with you? You’re supposed to be this nice guy and now this… Wrigley’s has pulled their Double Mint ads and I hope every station stops playing you and you never sell another record. I hope someone beats the shit out of you and then bites your ear off. You don’t mess with my girl Rihanna, you don’t mess with any girl…
Albany Mayor Gerald D. Jennings and Schenectady Mayor Brian U. Stratton will re-enact the historic 1690 Ride of Symon Schermerhorn today at 11 a.m. at Albany City Hall.
Schermerhorn’s the guy who in 1691 rode to Albany in the middle of a blizzard to tell them the Indians were burning Schenectady and killing them all, late to become “The Schenectady Massacre”. I like Brian Stratton and I love Jerry Jennings but seriously, he’s riding a half a block. What I would like to see is both of them riding the same horse or even better, Brian Stratton getting thrown off. Not getting hurt mind you, but I’m hoping the cameras are there. Link
From the, “I know you don’t give a damn file”, I accidentally broke off a branch from a rhododendron this fall and decided to put it in water on the window sill and see what happened. It’s now 5 degrees and it’s blooming…like you give a damn.
It is unlawful for a person in a public forum or place of public accommodation wilfully and knowingly to publish orally or in writing, exhibit, or otherwise make available material containing words, language, or actions of a profane, vulgar, lewd, lascivious, or indecent nature.
A person who violates the provisions of this section is guilty of a felony and, upon conviction, must be fined not more than five thousand dollars or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
A FELONY! … A State Senator from South Carolina presented a bill that wants to make cursing against the law. At $5000 a shot, a trip to Myrtle Beach could cost me several hundred grand or the rest of my life in jail. No vacations to South Carolina. Of course, this is the same guy who also proposed a law against sagging pants.
He wants to outlaw low-riders statewide and complains, “The whole culture’s deviant. We have lost control of our young people. I think men should be made to look like gentlemen.” Sen. Robert Ford of Charleston.
He just doesn’t know how hot sagging is, and how come he doesn’t seem to be against girls wearing low cut blouses This guy could be a New York politician with all the posturing and “Please put me on the TV even though I have nothing to say”. What a jackass.
Kirsten Gillibrand is New York’s new US Senator. She’s currently the US House Rep from upstate including the eastern, southern, and northern suburbs of Albany. I actually like her. She’s independent, a proponent of gay marriage yet an opponent of gun control. She’s very much into helping veterans and clean energy, yet not a very big tax tax tax Democrat. I wonder if she likes sagging pants.
