Gay Marriage to Alfred: Your Thoughts

Well, whatever the case, the whole Boycott Utah thing is really dumb, especially given that California has roughly as many Mormons as Utah does in numbers.

It hasn't been a meme here hardly (thankfully) but it's growing all over the blogosphere. :/

Because California is supposed to be "better than that".

― Black Seinfeld (HI DERE), Monday, November 17, 2008 5:05 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

isnt the more obvious answer 'because gay people could actually get married in california'? i dont remember the mayor of ft lauderdale telling str8s to get over it cuz gay marriage was here to stay

Dan, get back to me when California has roughly as many Mormon universities as Utah does.

'Til then, I'm coming around on the Utah boycott. It's silly at worst, has the potential to make a valuable symbolic point for years to come, and maybe most importantly it lets people feel as though they're getting a little of their own back from outside interlopers who reached across the border to mess with California.

Rogermexico, looks like you may not have to worry about Utah getting damaged in the near future.

There's one person who looks like he's going to fuck up Utah permanently.

George W. Bush

Uproar over federal drilling leases next to parks

SALT LAKE CITY – The view of Delicate Arch natural bridge — an unspoiled landmark so iconic it's on Utah's license plates — could one day include a drilling platform under a proposal that environmentalists call a Bush administration "fire sale" for the oil and gas industry.

Late on Election Day, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced a Dec. 19 auction of more than 50,000 acres of oil and gas parcels alongside or within view of Arches National Park and two other redrock national parks in Utah: Dinosaur and Canyonlands.

The National Park Service's top official in the state calls it "shocking and disturbing" and says his agency wasn't properly notified. Environmentalists call it a "fire sale" for the oil and gas industry by a departing administration.

Officials of the BLM, which oversees millions of acres of public land in the West, say the sale is nothing unusual, and one is "puzzled" that the Park Service is upset.

"We find it shocking and disturbing," said Cordell Roy, the chief Park Service administrator in Utah. "They added 51,000 acres of tracts near Arches, Dinosaur and Canyonlands without telling us about it. That's 40 tracts within four miles of these parks."

Top aides to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne stepped into the fray, ordering the sister agencies to make amends. His press secretary, Shane Wolfe, told The Associated Press that deputy Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett "resolved the dispute within 24 hours" last week.

A compromise ordered by the Interior Department requires the BLM to "take quite seriously" the Park Service's objections, said Wolfe.

However, the BLM didn't promise to pull any parcels from the sale, and in an interview after the supposed truce, BLM state director Selma Sierra was defiant, saying she saw nothing wrong with drilling near national parks.

"I'm puzzled the Park Service has been as upset as they are," said Sierra.

"There are already many parcels leased around the parks. It's not like they've never been leased," she said. "I don't see it as something we are doing to undermine the Park Service."

Roy and conservation groups dispute that, saying never before has the bureau bunched drilling parcels on the fence lines of national parks.

"This is the fire sale, the Bush administration's last great gift to the oil and gas industry," said Stephen Bloch, a staff attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

"The tracts of land offered here, next to Arches National Park or above Desolation Canyon, these are the crown jewels of America's lands that the BLM is offering to the highest bidder," he said.

An examination of the parcels, superimposing low-resolution government graphics onto Google Earth maps, shows that in one case drilling parcels bordering Arches National Park are just 1.3 miles from Delicate Arch.

"If you're standing at Delicate Arch, like thousands of people do every year, and you're looking through the arch, you could see drill pads on the hillside behind it. That's how ridiculous this proposed lease sale is," said Franklin Seal, a spokesman for the environmental group Wildland CPR.

In all, the BLM is moving to open 359,000 more acres in Utah to drilling.

Other Utah leases that are certain to draw objections from conservation groups include high cliffs along whitewater sections of Desolation Canyon, which is little changed since explorer John Wesley Powell remarked in 1896 on "a region of wildest desolation" while boating down the Green River to the Grand Canyon.

Others extend to plateaus populated by big game atop Nine Mile Canyon, site of thousands of ancient rock art panels, Moab's famous Slick Rock Trail and a campground popular with thousands of mountain bikers.

Sierra, the BLM's director for Utah, said the Park Service was consulted on the broad management plans that made the sale of parcels next to national parks permissible, even if it was not given notice on which specific leases were being offered. She apologized for that omission but said notice wasn't legally required.

She said national parks want to keep oil and gas wells five to 10 miles away "but that policy doesn't exist."

Roy said the standard for an eyesore visible from a national park turns on what a "casual" observer might see.

The hostility carried over into an e-mail exchange between Sierra and Mike Snyder, the Denver-based regional Park Service director, who noted his agency's demand that BLM pull 40 to 45 drill parcels from the auction list. "You stated that you were not willing to do this," Snyder wrote Nov. 6.

Within hours, Sierra responded "These decisions and the lands available for leasing should come to no one's surprise," according to copies of the e-mails obtained from her office.

Sierra said she instructed her district and field managers to educate the park superintendents on why drilling is OK "adjacent to and near the park boundaries."

In the e-mail, Sierra boasted of having "a very good working relationship" with Roy, the federal coordinator in Utah for the Park Service, but in an interview he said he had "no idea this sale was coming down the pike."

Roy said that when he asked Sierra what was going on, she replied: "We added some tracts, sorry we didn't notify you. We can take up these concerns when we issue" drilling permits. He said his response was: "Holy cow."

Sierra didn't dispute this account, but said "I don't think I was in a mood that dismissed his concerns lightly." She said she had promised only to review the objections, parcel by parcel, before the auction is held Dec. 19.

this is 2008, not 1958 right? sucks people are still so fucking stupid

I'd snicker that W is God's judgment on Utah for gays and abortion but jesus christ...

And speaking of God's judgment: lol

http://coloradoindependent.com/15287/after-pumping-money-into-prop-8-focus-on-the-family-announcing-layoffs

UPDATE: Focus on the Family announced this afternoon that 202 jobs will be cut companywide — more than 20 percent of its workforce. Initial reports bring the total number of remaining employees to around 950.

Focus on the Family is poised to announce major layoffs to its Colorado Springs-based ministry and media empire today. The cutbacks come just weeks after the group pumped more than half a million dollars into the successful effort to pass a gay-marriage ban in California.

Merry Christmas!

hahahaha I am never changing my screen name because of the delicious confusion

i think at this point worrying about tactics (protests, boycotts, prank phone calls to random mormon households in the middle of the night) is sort of beside the point. making a whole lot of collective noise is the best strategy, and however people do that is going to add to the collective commotion and momentum, even if some individual efforts seem counterproductive or whatever. when you're within a few percentage points of swinging the vote, that's not the time for nuance or finesse. to resort to the inevitable sports metaphor, when it's 3rd and inches, you just bunch everybody together and piledrive on through. the vote sucked, but people being pissed off about is good, and everybody should just stay pissed off and keep banging pots and pans. this will change. everybody knows it'll change. even (the saner) people on the right basically admitted it was a lost fight years ago. so it's just a matter of keeping up the push.

the Cali court is already considering overturning this, if the headline I read the other day is to be believed

I mean....this thing should not have even been on the ballot. However it got on there, the entire legality of it is in question. 18,000 marriages have already been performed - they can't just be voided now based on a misguided ballot measure

The court in May ruled that preventing what was done in 2004 was unconstitutional; no ban is legal. People just need to take a deep breath and let this play out...

...protesting seems to be the best, and dare I say it (the peaceful ones as most have been) the most productive way to keep this fresh in the face of the courts and the public; it's reat.

Boycotts otoh are stupid and counterproductive, potentially alienating straight supporters. Especially the El Coyote one, which from the Curbed LA chronicles is turning out to be a hilarious/epic folly

my fave sign from the rally saturday: "SPANDEX IS A PRIVILEGE, MARRIAGE IS A RIGHT"

>it's reat

i forgot where this was going :)

I also campaigned on behalf of HRC over the summer and Andrew Sullivan needs to pull the dildo out of his orifice and relax. It faces many disadvantages from a fundraising angle, particularly that many of its contributors want to stay anonymous - maybe if he tried calling them, instead of just blogging and taking potshots, he'd realize what a fucking challenge it is..

I'm not saying they're beyond reproach, but they've done a lot over the past few decades when NO ONE dared to do ANYTHING. They were campaigning nationwide against all the states' ballot measures that were anti-gay, including in Tennessee where the legislature was considering passing a law that'd make it illegal to even *talk* about homosexuality prior to 9th grade in public schools (in response to the 8th grader gay Californian getting killed earlier this year).

Does he know any of this, or did he just think vociferously attacking the standard gay rights group in the nation is a productive way to write something attention-worthy today?

just more evidence that most "professional bloggers" easily belong to the segment of society-punditry that contributes the least

is there a "Prince hates gay marriage" thread?

Covered here: Favorite poster from NR's "The Corner"

it's probably a few posts on the general purpose "Prince is batshit insane" thread on ILM, otherwise known as that Prince thread. You know, THAT one.

Prince claiming he was misquoted, apparently

Yeah I read that on HuffPo, and the main argument from Prince's management was like "*shock horror* the interview wasn't even using a MIC!"

Like Prince would allow anyone to record him in an interview anyway?

I was more shocked that Prince wore sandals with socks

*tut tut*

and platform sandals at that!

come on, no one is shocked about Prince wearing platform sandals

Stephen Baldwin speaks:

"If they legalize gay marriage in all 50 states in my lifetime, I'll get a Billy Ray Cyrus tattoo on my butt to go with the Hannah Montana one."

http://www.nypost.com/seven/11192008/photos/p6i.jpg

someone kick this guy in the nuts plz

ew TMI!

some actual shit that matters

In its May 15 ruling legalizing gay marriage in California, the justices seemed to signal that a ballot initiative like Proposition 8 might not be enough to change the underlying constitutional issues of the case in the court's eyes.

The ruling said the right to marry is among a set of basic human rights "so integral to an individual's liberty and personal autonomy that they may not be eliminated or abrogated by the legislature or by the electorate through the statutory initiative process."

Supreme Court of California OTM

More on the literally batshit-insane tourette's laden "christian" nutjob-tycoon-demon who funded Prop 8 and wants to destroy California weeee:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-11-03/the-man-behind-proposition-8/?sem=1

Few Americans have heard of Ahmanson—and that's the way he likes it. He donates cash either out of his own pocket or through his unincorporated Fieldstead & Co. to avoid having to report the names of his grantees to the IRS. His Tourette's syndrome only adds to his mysterious persona, as his fear of speaking leads him to shun the media. While Ahmanson once resided in a mental institution in Kansas, he now occupies a position among the Christian right’s power pantheon as one of the movement’s most influential donors. During a 1985 interview with the Orange County Register, Ahmanson summarized his political agenda: “My goal is the total integration of biblical law into our lives.”
The campaign to teach “intelligent design” in public school classrooms, the Republican takeover of the California Assembly, and the rollback of affirmative action in California—Ahmanson has been behind them all. He has also taken a special interest in anti-gay crusades. Ahmanson’s most controversial episode related to his funding of the religious empire of Rousas John Rushdoony, a radical evangelical theologian who advocated placing the United States under the control of a Christian theocracy that would mandate the stoning to death of homosexuals.

https://store.afa.net/pc-10000122-5-theyre-coming-to-your-town-dvd.aspx

the San Francisco of Arkansas!

Wait, does that mean it's 'Tenderloin' is in a 'North Beach' district, too?

only homosexuals love history and relaxation

Has anyone posted this amicus brief on the subject?

Compelling argument.

Reads like it was ghost-written by Jack Chick.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/172653

I am really surprised to see Newsweek running this article, it's not as lukewarm and middle-of-the-road as I expect from them. It says "cover story" at the top, so that sounds like they're not positioning it as an opinion piece.

That's cool. I was actually reading the recent obit of Osborne Elliott, who was Newsweek's editor from like 1961-76, and learned that the magazine has a history of taking an editorial stand on contentious issues of the day (esp. in contrast to Time and other newsweeklies) -- like I guess in the '60s they were all like CIVIL RIGHTS: DEAL WITH IT.

this is already in the wiki article, lol?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsweek#Allegations_of_Liberal_Bias

the comments are another amazing datum supporting poe's law

that's a really great article. the comments are depressing...a reminder that for all the talk about outreach, so many people just won't be talked to.

This is so poorly written...."was laughable," "according to many," - quite encyclopedic- give it a few hours before it's edited
The article stated that The Bible used vague phrasing when outlining the Judeo-Christian parameters for marriage, and that cleared a pathway for gay marriage. All of this, in spite of the fact that The Bible clearly states that homosexual acts are a sin, and should be punished.
To say that a liberal bias did not exist in the article was laughable, according to many. The article further argued that The Bible was written to apply to a society very unlike American society of 2008, and that the rules of The Bible were open to interpretation. This argument was diametrically opposed to the Orthodox Christian belief that The Bible's rules are to be taken literally. Orthodox Christian belief is a conservative institution in America, and Newsweek's opposition to this ideology puts this article on the liberal end of the political spectrum.
Many readers feel that many of Newsweek's articles have displayed a similar bias, and that articles that "lean to the right" on the political spectrum were few and far between. Readers argued that Newsweek was so biased in its reporting that it was no longer a credible source.

lol

we better start stoning our wives then.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081209/...Al5ElZYdys0NUE

Calling in 'gay' to work is latest form of protest

By LISA LEFF, Associated Press Writer Lisa Leff, Associated Press Writer Mon Dec 8, 9:12 pm ET

SAN FRANCISCO – Some same-sex marriage supporters are urging people to "call in gay" Wednesday to show how much the country relies on gays and lesbians, but others question whether it's wise to encourage skipping work given the nation's economic distress. Organizers of "Day Without a Gay" — scheduled to coincide with International Human Rights Day and modeled after similar work stoppages by Latino immigrants — also are encouraging people to perform volunteer work and refrain from spending money.

Sean Hetherington, a West Hollywood comedian and personal trainer, dreamed up the idea with his boyfriend, Aaron Hartzler, after reading online that a few angry gay-rights activists were calling for a daylong strike to protest California voters' passage last month of Proposition 8, which reversed this year's state Supreme Court decision allowing gay marriage.

The couple thought it would be more effective and less divisive if people were asked to perform community service instead of staying home with their wallets shut. Dozens of nonprofit agencies, from the National Women's Law Center in Washington to a Methodist church in Fresno collecting food for the homeless, have posted opportunities for volunteers on the couple's Web site.

"We are all for a boycott if that is what brings about a sense of community for people," said Hetherington, 30, who plans to spend Wednesday volunteering at an inner-city school. "You can take away from the economy and give back in other ways."

Hetherington said he's been getting 100 e-mails an hour from people looking for volunteer opportunities, and that his "Day Without a Gay" Web site has gotten 100,000 hits since mid-November.

Despite Hartzler and Hetherington's attempt to fashion a positive approach, some organizers of the street demonstrations that drew massive crowds in many cities last month have been reluctant to embrace the concept, saying that it could be at best impractical and at worst counterproductive to "call in gay."

"It's extra-challenging for people to think about taking off work as a form of protest, given that we are talking about people who may not be out (as gay) at work, and given the current economic situation and job market," said Jules Graves, 38, coordinator of the Colorado Queer Straight Alliance. "There is really not any assurance employers would appreciate it for what it is."

Graves' group nonetheless is arranging for interested participants to volunteer at the local African Community Center in Denver. The agency said it could find projects to keep 20 people busy, but so far only 10 have pledged to show up, said Graves.
___

On the Net:

http://www.daywithoutagay.org/

I learned about that from a facebook invitation, but I have a job interview tomorrow in a state where gay marriage actually is legal. Call me selfish but I feel that "calling in gay" to the interview would be a bad idea.

"...there is a real, unbroken line between the jihadist savagery in Mumbai and the hedonistic, irresponsible, blindly selfish goals and tactics of our homegrown sexual jihadists."

- Pat Boone, December 6, 2008

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=82830

homegrown sexual jihadists!!

Amy Balliet announced the "Day w/o a Gay" at the end of the marriage equality rally last month here, and the entire crowd went "wha??". The idea is to do 10 actions like this, on the 10th of each month.

Um, are we really caring about someone who's taking his cue from Webster's on gay marriage?

"caring about" no. Waiting for a sequel to his 50-year-old teen advice book, maybe!