Marriage equality comes to the States

Yesterday, as everyone knows by now, marriage equality is now the law of the land everywhere in the United States. The final decision was a 5–4 ruling.

Hooray for the future and equal rights!

Polygamists charged

Polygamy charges have finally been laid against Mormon fundamentalists from Bountiful. And if you read the article you’ll see that these misogynist will be making the exact same arguments that socons elsewhere: that religion trumps everything. One example would be the contraception mandate cases in the US.

And yet these socons’ hypocrisy is revealed by the fact that they do not support polygamists. If they truly, truly, truly thought religion should trump everything else, they be supporting polygamists. The fact that they don’t shows that their “concerns” about religion is really just a pretext.

Additionally, that slippery slope actually isn’t. The polygamists explicitly argued that marriage equality meant they had to be allowed to marry multiple people. However, the court upheld the law against polygamy. It rejected the very argument bigots make against marriage.

As for myself, I think we give too many privileges to religion already. It ought to be illegal to oppress women, and that women’s rights ought to overrule religion every time. And therefore my opposition to polygamy follows, whether you’re a Mormon fundamentalist, radical Islamist, or any other theomisogynist.

DOMA gutted, Prop h8 overturned

Today has been a great day for homomentum, as SCOTUS has struck down part of the United States’ Defense of (heteronormative) Marriage Act and overturned California’s Proposition 8.

The guts of the first decision striking down part of the DOMA was that the federal government is not allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation when it comes to providing the benefits of marriage. Proposition 8 was struck down on a technicality: standing.

Marriage equality is coming to France

The National Assembly of France has voted 331–225 to enable marriage equality (via):

French lawmakers have legalized same-sex marriage after months of bruising debate and street protests that brought hundreds of thousands to Paris.

Tuesday’s 331-225 vote came in the Socialist majority National Assembly. France’s justice minister, Christiane Taubira, said the first weddings could be as soon as June….

And regarding those protests, they were weird in light of something I mentioned years ago:

The number of PACS [the French acronym of the Civil Solidarity Pact] celebrated in France, both gay and heterosexual unions, has grown from 6,000 in its first year of operation in 1999 to more than 140,000 in 2008, according to official statistics. For every two marriages in France, a PACS is celebrated, the statistics show, making a total of half a million PACS[‘]ed couples, and the number is rising steadily.

[…]

Perhaps more important as an indication of how French people live, the number of heterosexual men and women entering into a PACS agreement has grown from 42 percent of the total initially to 92 percent last year [2008].

Notice how all those PACS were actually reducing the number of marriages? Enabling same–sex marriage eliminates this justification for PACS. But the protestors would rather there be fewer marriages rather than marriage equality.

And another irony meter bites the dust

Look at this rubbish by one of Serena Joy’s relatives. I’d like to draw your attention to the big photograph accompanying it at the top (screenshot below).

Does the big photograph right below the title look familiar?

Look familiar?

It should, because the photograph is actually one of Lela McArthur (left), and Stephanie Figarelle (right), the first same–sex couple to get married at the Empire State Building.

In other words, a screed against gender equality is accompanied by a photograph of a same–sex couple, an example of an institution that helps to increase gender equality.

You really, really can’t make this up.

And speaking of same–sex marriage, I strongly suspect that much conservative opposition to it is rooted in misogyny. As Echidne (and others) have argued, same–sex marriage subverts traditional/stereotypical gender roles. In (say) a marriage between two women, it can be a partnership of equals or not. If it is a partnership of equals, than neither is in the stereotypical submissive “feminine” role. If it is not  partnership between equals, than one partner (who, be definition, is female) must be in the stereotypical dominant “masculine” role. It therefore means that some woman is adopting a stereotypical masculine gender role in her marriage. The same reasoning applies to a same–sex marriage between two men. If it is a partnership of equals, than neither partner is dominant or submissive. If it is not a partnership of equals, than one man must be in a stereotypical submissive feminine role. Either way, either neither partner is in their sex’s stereotypical gender role, or else one partner is, but you cannot tell which purely by determining their gender. As Echidne put it (my emphasis):

“I cannot help thinking that those who are opposed to same-sex marriage might be opposed to the idea of a marriage where they cannot tell, right off the bat, who should be the high priest and who the congregation in the family. In other words, they treasure the patriarchal form of marriage more than the idea that the partners should be of different genders.”

Via Jessica Valenti.

Update: The picture has been removed. But I saved a screenshot. The internet never forgets.

Update 2: Figarelle released a statement. You can read it at Feministing.

Worst argument against marriage equality EVER

I think we should file this under the “You can’t make this up” category (emphasis added):

WASHINGTON — Marriage should be limited to unions of a man and a woman because they alone can “produce unplanned and unintended offspring,” opponents of gay marriage have told the Supreme Court.

By contrast, when same-sex couples decide to have children, “substantial advance planning is required,” said Paul D. Clement, a lawyer for House Republicans.

This unusual defense of traditional marriage was set out last week in a pair of opening legal briefs in the two gay marriage cases to be decided by the Supreme Court this spring.

This argument from shotgun wedding pretty much shows how opponents of marriage have no real arguments. That’s why they’ve come up with an argument that actually comes up with a reason to support same–sex marriage. Also juxtapose how many of those who oppose marriage equality also attack Planned Parenthood and seek to restrict access to abortion and contraception.

The apparently disturbing thing about this argument is that it has been used before and apparently accepted by some US court.

Via Lawyers, Guns, and Money.

Child of the random stuff

In no particular order:

• Brilliant takedown of someone who fails to understand that freedom of expression does not mean freedom from criticism.
• Have you ever seen a more obvious and more blatant example of deliberately losing? At least they got what they deserved.
• Vietnam (of all places) might enable marriage equality. If it does so, Vietnam will be the first country in Asia to do so. Get with the times, USA.
  • I wonder when the wingnuts will start claiming that marriage equality is some communist plot.
• China’s brutal athlete training methods. They seem uncomfortably close to the “professional amateurs” some communist countries used to use.
• A must–read post about maladaptive daydreaming. Please, please read it.
• The Sensuous Curmudgeon fisks a creationist who’s so far along the downward spiral of stupid that they claim “[plants] are not alive.”
  • No, that’s not a Poe and no, I’m not making this up.