SON MIS LOCURAS

Mom: Look! How cute. A little girl and her mother having lunch together.
Me: What do you think we’re doing? We’re just 30 years older.

Sometimes I’m naïve about elections and the lengths to which people will go to win them. I was reminded of this again yesterday when a friend noted that when she went to her polling place in NYC, she was handed a ballot with the selections already half filled in.

Of American Halloween my mom says, “Esto no da miedo. Si quieres miedo te llevo a mi pueblo. Conoceras lo que da miedo.”

She means that scary looking dolls and paying to get into a Scary Farm to be chased by people you know will be jumping out of walls isn’t the same as really not being able to explain what you’re seeing.

Some of my family’s stories of the paranormal:
–The burning ember of a cigarette that appeared in the spot in the orchard where my maternal grandfather smoked for years, long after he had died
–The ball of fire that bounced along the arroyo on the ranch where my uncle worked, spooking my uncle and his horse
–The window in a distant aunt’s house that appears to move inches from its physical location

My mom hated my Halloween costume until she saw that others liked it. That’s why she has me doing a walk around the neighborhood to show it off right now.

Finally, the catalog companies are getting that I don’t want their catalogs.

Today, I received one that said, “Could this be …. your last catalog? Yes!! Unless you order soon! Sorry, but rising paper and postage costs mean that we can only mail catalogs FREE to readers who buy.”

Yay!! I have every incentive now not to buy. Now if only the other 10 catalogs said the same.

I was at a fundraiser with some friends this weekend and we invited a new couple to sit with us. As the evening went on and my friends and I settled into our customary roles and told the raucous stories we always share when together, the young woman who had just met us declared, “Where have you women been all my life? You are just fabulous!”

Her reaction confirmed what I’ve always known, that I’ve been lucky enough to find the world’s best group of friends.

The menu said, “Guacamole smashed to order.”

I guess my response should have been “until it no longer resembles an avocado.”

“Can I get something less spicy—like cream cheese?”

Random foot.

Just need a dance.

Do people who use “alot” also use “abit”?

There’s a Spanish expression I think describes my daily morning struggle—”Con las cobijas pegadas.” It translates roughly as “with blankets stuck to you.” I feel the sheets and blankets every morning as I drag myself to the gym. It never gets easier.

My urban existence doesn’t often have ducklings crossing my path. Maybe that’s why this group of kids brought ducklings to mind. Or maybe it’s just the t-shirts.

I’ve mentioned it before, my mom is the crotchety lady in her neighborhood. She doesn’t like noise, kids, or pets. She’s really trying to be better about not fighting with the neighbors, but her random ways of getting to them just crack me up. Today’s thoughts, “Si se portan bien, yo me porto bien. Si no, les pongo la aspiradora.”

Amazing what words look like when you’ve forgotten why you wrote them.  Yesterday’s example

“Jesus is at your desk.  Call him for help.”

No, wasn’t being evangelical, just trying to find someone IT help.   I’d just forgotten that when I saw the message as I looked back through my sent file later in the day.

Trial’s over for now.  It’ll resume sometime in March.  In the meantime, there’s a t-shirt you can buy.  Find it here.

The Supreme Court denied the dissemination of video from the Proposition 8 trial today.  The court order is here.  The 5-4 decision relies on the idea that giving the public five business days to comment on the changing of court rules that would have allowed the broadcast of the trial wasn’t enough.  The order says

We are asked to stay the broadcast of a federal trial. We resolve that question without expressing any view on whether such trials should be broadcast. We instead determine that the broadcast in this case should be stayed because it appears the courts below did not follow the appropriate procedures set forth in federal law before changing their rules to allow such broadcasting. Courts enforce the requirement of procedural regularity on others, and must follow those requirements themselves.

I’d like to think that this isn’t an indicator of how the Supreme Court will come out when the trial’s outcome eventually gets to it and more an indicator that the Court that has never liked the idea of being watched by cameras simply is out of step with technology.  But,  that’s probably my optimism speaking. 

Fortunately, the laptops are out and people are liveblogging the trial.  I’m following the trial and analysis here, here, and here.   This piece is an overview of today’s events, including the questioning of a Proposition 8 supporter and named defendant Hak-Shing William Tam and examination of the role of procreation in determining the meaning of marriage.

Here’s the plaintiffs’ opening statement in today’s trial. Stay up to date with trial happenings here and here.  While the Supreme Court stayed the posting to YouTube of video, both Twitter and blogs are providing a way to stay in touch with what’s happening in the courtroom.

OPENING STATEMENT
(as prepared)

This case is about marriage and equality. Plaintiffs are being denied both the right to marry, and the right to equality under the law.

The Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly described the right to marriage as “one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men;” a “basic civil right;” a component of the constitutional rights to liberty, privacy, association, and intimate choice; an expression of emotional support and public commitment; the exercise of spiritual unity; and a fulfillment of one’s self.

In short, in the words of the highest court in the land, marriage is “the most important relation in life,” and “of fundamental importance for all individuals.”

As the witnesses in this case will elaborate, marriage is central to life in America. It promotes mental, physical and emotional health and the economic strength and stability of those who enter into a marital union. It is the building block of family, neighborhood and community. The California Supreme Court has declared that the right to marry is of “central importance to an individual’s opportunity to live a happy, meaningful, and satisfying life as a full member of society.”

Proposition 8 ended the dream of marriage, the most important relation in life, for the plaintiffs and hundreds of thousands of Californians.

___________________________________

In May of 2008, the California Supreme Court concluded that under this State’s Constitution, the right to marry a person of one’s choice extended to all individuals, regardless of sexual orientation, and was available equally to same-sex and opposite-sex couples.

In November of 2008, the voters of California responded to that decision with Proposition 8, amending the State’s Constitution and, on the basis of sexual orientation and sex, slammed the door to marriage to gay and lesbian citizens.

The plaintiffs are two loving couples, American citizens, entitled to equality and due process under our Constitution. They are in deeply committed, intimate, and longstanding relationships. They want to marry the person they love; to enter into that “most important relation in life”; to share their dreams with their partners; and to confer the many benefits of marriage on their families.

But Proposition 8 singled out gay men and lesbians as a class, swept away their right to marry, pronounced them unequal, and declared their relationships inferior and less-deserving of respect and dignity.

In the words of the California Supreme Court, eliminating the right of individuals to marry a same-sex partner relegated those individuals to “second class” citizenship, and told them, their families and their neighbors that their love and desire for a sanctioned marital partnership was not worthy of recognition.

During this trial, Plaintiffs and leading experts in the fields of history, psychology, economics and political science will prove three fundamental points:

First – Marriage is vitally important in American society.

Second – By denying gay men and lesbians the right to marry, Proposition 8 works a grievous harm on the plaintiffs and other gay men and lesbians throughout California, and adds yet another chapter to the long history of discrimination they have suffered.

Third – Proposition 8 perpetrates this irreparable, immeasurable, discriminatory harm for no good reason.

I

MARRIAGE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT RELATION IN LIFE

Plaintiffs will present evidence from leading experts, representing some of the finest academic institutions in this country and the world, who will reinforce what the highest courts of California and the United States have already repeatedly said about the importance of marriage in society and the significant benefits that marriage confers on couples, their families, and the community. Proponents cannot dispute these basic facts.

While marriage has been a revered and important institution throughout the history of this country and this State, it has also evolved to shed irrational, unwarranted, and discriminatory restrictions and limitations that reflected the biases, prejudices or stereotypes of the past. Marriage laws that disadvantaged women or people of disfavored race or ethnicity have been eliminated. These changes have come from legislatures and the courts. Far from harming the institution of marriage, the elimination of discriminatory restrictions on marriage has strengthened the institution, its vitality, and its importance in American society today.

II

PROPOSITION 8 HARMS GAY AND LESBIAN INDIVIDUALS, THEIR CHILDREN AND THEIR COMMUNITIES

Proposition 8 had a simple, straightforward, and devastating purpose: to withdraw from gay and lesbian people like the Plaintiffs their previously recognized constitutional right to marry. The official title of the ballot measure said it all: “Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry.”

Proponents of Proposition 8 have insisted that the persons they would foreclose from the institution of marriage have suffered no harm because they have been given the opportunity to form something called a “domestic partnership.” That is a cruel fiction.

Plaintiffs will describe the harm that they suffer every day because they are prevented from marrying. And they will describe how demeaning and insulting it can be to be told that they remain free to marry—as long, that is, that they marry someone of the opposite sex instead of the person they love, the companion of their choice.

And the evidence will demonstrate that relegating gay men and lesbians to “domestic partnerships” is to inflict upon them badges of inferiority that forever stigmatize their loving relationships as different, separate, unequal, and less worthy—something akin to a commercial venture, not a loving union. Indeed, the proponents of Proposition 8 acknowledge that domestic partnerships are not the same as traditional marriage. Proponents proudly proclaim that, under Proposition 8, the “unique and highly favorable imprimatur” of marriage is reserved to “opposite-sex unions.”

This government-sponsored societal stigmatization causes grave psychological and physical harms to gay men and lesbians and their families. It increases the likelihood that they will experience discrimination and harassment; it causes immeasurable harm.

Sadly, Proposition 8 is only the most recent chapter in our nation’s long and painful history of discrimination and prejudice against gay and lesbian individuals. They have been classified as degenerates, targeted by police, harassed in the workplace, censored, demonized, fired from government jobs, excluded from our armed forces, arrested for their private sexual conduct, and repeatedly stripped of their fundamental rights by popular vote. Although progress has occurred, the roots of discrimination run deep and its impacts spread wide.

III

PROPOSITION 8 HARMS GAY AND LESBIAN INDIVIDUALS FOR NO GOOD REASON

Proposition 8 singles out gay and lesbian individuals alone for exclusion from the institution of marriage. In California, even convicted murderers and child abusers enjoy the freedom to marry. As the evidence clearly establishes, this discrimination has been placed in California’s Constitution even though its victims are, and always have been, fully contributing members of our society. And it excludes gay men and lesbians from the institution of marriage even though the characteristic for which they are targeted—their sexual orientation—like race, sex, and ethnicity, is a fundamental aspect of their identity that they did not choose for themselves and, as the California Supreme Court has found, is highly resistant to change.

The State of California has offered no justification for its decision to eliminate the fundamental right to marry for a segment of its citizens. And its chief legal officer, the Attorney General, admits that none exists. And the evidence will show that each of the rationalizations for Proposition 8 invented by its Proponents is wholly without merit.

“Procreation” cannot be a justification inasmuch as Proposition 8 permits marriage by persons who are unable or have no intention of producing children. Indeed, the institution of civil marriage in this country has never been tied to the procreative capacity of those seeking to marry.

Proposition 8 has no rational relation to the parenting of children because same-sex couples and opposite sex couples are equally permitted to have and raise children in California. The evidence in this case will demonstrate that gay and lesbian individuals are every bit as capable of being loving, caring and effective parents as heterosexuals. The quality of a parent is not measured by gender but the content of the heart.

And, as for protecting “traditional marriage,” our opponents “don’t know” how permitting gay and lesbian couples to marry would harm the marriages of opposite-sex couples. Needless to say, guesswork and speculation is not an adequate justification for discrimination. In fact, the evidence will demonstrate affirmatively that permitting loving, deeply committed, couples like the plaintiffs to marry has no impact whatsoever upon the marital relationships of others.

When voters in California were urged to enact Proposition 8, they were encouraged to believe that unless Proposition 8 were enacted, anti-gay religious institutions would be closed, gay activists would overwhelm the will of the heterosexual majority, and that children would be taught that it was “acceptable” for gay men and lesbians to marry. Parents were urged to “protect our children” from that presumably pernicious viewpoint.

At the end of the day, whatever the motives of its Proponents, Proposition 8 enacted an utterly irrational regime to govern entitlement to the fundamental right to marry, consisting now of at least four separate and distinct classes of citizens: (1) heterosexuals, including convicted criminals, substance abusers and sex offenders, who are permitted to marry; (2) 18,000 same-sex couples married between June and November of 2008, who are allowed to remain married but may not remarry if they divorce or are widowed; (3) thousands of same-sex couples who were married in certain other states prior to November of 2008, whose marriages are now valid and recognized in California; and, finally (4) all other same-sex couples in California who, like the Plaintiffs, are prohibited from marrying by Proposition 8.

There is no rational justification for this unique pattern of discrimination. Proposition 8, and the irrational pattern of California’s regulation of marriage which it promulgates, advances no legitimate state interest. All it does is label gay and lesbian persons as different, inferior, unequal, and disfavored. And it brands their relationships as not the same, and less-approved than those enjoyed by opposite sex couples. It stigmatizes gays and lesbians, classifies them as outcasts, and causes needless pain, isolation and humiliation.

It is unconstitutional.

There’s history in the making this week as a federal court in California begins its trial on the constitutionality of Proposition 8, passed in 2008.  For those with time and inclination, the trial is scheduled for live broadcast to a number of federal courthouses.  In the L.A. area, it’ll be at the Richard H. Chambers United States Courthouse, 125 South Grand Avenue, Pasadena, California, Courtroom Three, First Floor. Additional locations can be found here.

In anticipation of the trial, a number of articles have addressed the case for marriage equality this weekend.  Here are links to “The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage,” in Newsweek and “A Risky Proposal,” in The New Yorker.

I’ve got a personal stake in this one, so will be watching attentively, and posting as resources become available.  Cross your fingers, say a prayer, and read up on the issues so you can intelligently defend marriage equality.

It was a good year.   Photos below.

Yes, we do periodically dress up for a party. I think once a year is probably about all of the dressing up I can take. Fortunately, there are only a few more, lower key, holiday parties to go and then the season is done. Phew!

The 110 is always treacherous on a rainy day. The road curves and people drive too fast and it’s the only place you’re guaranteed to see a spin out EVERY time it rains. This sign at Via Marisol caught my eye because it sat at the on ramp, as if to say, “beware.”

My dear friend, Edith Ramirez, was nominated to the Federal Trade Commission. She’s good people, a fabulous mentor, and someone who’ll do a great job. One reason why I’m a big fan of hers is that she’s too modest to trumpet even this level of accomplishment. That’s why I’ll do it for her.

Wish her luck!

A copy of the White House press release below.

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release November 17, 2009 Presidential Nominations Sent to the Senate, 11/17/09
Julie Simone Brill, of Vermont, to be a Federal Trade Commissioner for the term of seven years from September 26, 2009, vice Pamela Harbour, term expired.

Scott H. DeLisi, of Minnesota, a Career Member of the Senior Foreign Service, Class of Minister-Counselor, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to Nepal.

Earl F. Gohl, Jr., of the District of Columbia, to be Federal Cochairman of the Appalachian Regional Commission, vice Anne B. Pope, resigned.

Edith Ramirez, of California, to be a Federal Trade Commissioner for the term of seven years from September 26, 2008, vice Deborah P. Majoras, term expired.

Beatrice Wilkinson Welters, of Virginia, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to Trinidad and Tobago.

Seemed appropriate to post this today, even though I didn’t get a chance to honor the day completely by watching Henry V.

Was looking through my photo albums today and ran across this b&w of my uncle Emilio at a late-50s/early-60s wedding in Buenaventura, Mexico.  He’s second from the right, my uncle Regino is on the left.  Emilio was my favorite uncle and he died earlier this year.  Maybe that’s why I love this picture right now.

John Hughes died today.  And, while I didn’t grow up in anything that looked like the neighborhoods depicted in his movies, they spoke to me.  In no particular order, my favorite John Hughes memories:

• Breakfast Club–my sister and I talked our way into this film because neither of us was 16 yet.  I remember the lobbying taking too much effort.  We sat in the Santa Fe Springs movie theater enthralled by the characters we met (in case you care, I identified with Ally Sheedy).
• Home Alone–again, with my sister.  This time, it was during a Thanksgiving break while we were both in college.  We took in a late show at Copley Plaza and the seven-year-old sitting behind me complained about my hair blocking his view of the screen.  We laughed, but didn’t move.  I’d grown into myself, and my hair.  It is one of my favorite memories of being in Boston (and college) with my sister.
• Weird Science–the closest I came to thinking anyone would ever put my high school in a movie.  One of this movie’s scenes was shot in our high school’s gym.  I can’t even tell which one when I watch the movie, but I do remember seeing Anthony Michael Hall crammed into the back seat of a Porsche 924 as he zoomed away from campus after the shoot.
• Some Kind of Wonderful–it’s an anthem of sorts, will explain some other day.
• Sixteen Candles–reminded me that I was getting old.  When I came back to L.A. after college and gave one of my then students a ride home, she told me her weekend plan was to “watch the old movie ‘Sixteen Candles.’”  I didn’t throw her from the moving vehicle.  I was kinder then, I told her to pay attention.
• Ferris Bueller’s Day Off–every day reminds me of how great it is to enjoy being yourself.

Thanks again, Mr. Hughes.