Today is the day we give babies away...

[lydy]

My grandfather was a sailor, and he used to sing my mother the clean parts of sailor songs as lullabyes. Barnacle Bill, as you might guess, was severely truncated. He would also say, "Today is the day we give babies away, with a half a pound of tea," but he never followed it up with the next line, "So if you know any ladies that need any babies, just send them all to me."

God knows why that's on my mind at 3:30 a.m.

They haven't called Ohio, yet, but I am pretty sure it will go to Bush. Minnesota went to Kerry, so I guess I did my part. As for the rest of it, I have either too much or too little to say. I wonder...will abortion be legal in 4 years? I do wonder. And there is the too much and too little, all in one sentence.

"It's all over now, Baby Blue."

Comments

[joel-rosenberg.livejournal.com]

It's bad that it's in question, of course, but it's vanishingly unlikely to stay that way. Imagine the argument that the person interposing would have to make -- basically, that Al can give a power of attorney to just about any person in the world except Bob and/or Cathy, because he's in love with one or both of them and they live together. ("So, let me understand this, Counselor -- you're telling that it would be okay if they were total strangers, okay if they were close friends, okay if they were roommates who liked each other a lot but weren't in love with each other, okay if Al hated Bob's guts and thinks that Cathy is Satan incarnate, but that the power of attorney's invalid because exactly why?" Or, "Yes, your honor, we've carefully investigated, and we can prove that not only are Al and Bob good friends, not only are they roommates, and not only that they've upon occasion had sex with each other, but are, in fact, life partners.")

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

But I think the m-word is much more of a magical word than that for many of the people involved. The argument would not use the words "life partners." They would use the words "effectively married." Which shouldn't make a bit of difference, but apparently makes a good deal of difference to thousands of Ohioans.

It's not as though gay marriage was previously legal in Ohio. Thousands of Ohioans turned out to make it this specific kind of illegal. This specific, cruel, illogical kind of illegal. I'm not willing to bet that they'll suddenly come to their senses, or that they haven't managed to get any judges appointed who agree with their views.

[joel-rosenberg.livejournal.com]

I'm sure that they won't suddenly come to their senses; I think the only hope is for them to slowly, gratingly come to their senses with a lot of fits and starts.

Remember how the civil rights movement worked. It wasn't overnight; it was a matter of, quite literally, generations, where careful, considered strategy was used, repeatedly, for any advance, no matter how small. It wasn't an accident, for example, that it was Rosa Parks -- a small, quiet, unthreatening black woman -- who was the focus of the bus desegregation campaign, nor that young, unscary, black girls were the plaintiffs in Brown vs. Board of Education.

I'm rather not unsympathetic on the issue -- see "The Lesbian of Darkness" -- but this battle is going to be won slowly, in the court of public opinion.

Where, by and large, it is being won, just agonizingly slowly. Shortcuts -- whether it's the MA Supreme Court ruling in this, or Silviera in the gun-rights movement -- don't work. That isn't fair, I think -- but it's true.