Remember this the next time some Leftist talks about what a lousy country we are because of the Salem Witch Trials hundreds of years ago (while, of course, denying that any culture can be superior to another, yet we should look to other cultures to better ours).

Another “America is bad” study is out.  Funny, everyone still wants to come here.  Would someone please tell our neighbors to the south how horrible we are?  Sue Pleming reports:

Iceland is the world's most peaceful nation while the United States is ranked among the bottom third, according to a study released on Tuesday.

Yeah, but didn’t Iceland foist Bjork on the world?

I’ve noticed that studies that say “Hey, the U.S. is great!” don’t get a lot of press.

The "Global Peace Index," compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit, ranked the United States 97th out of 140 countries according to how peaceful they were domestically and how they interacted with the outside world.

Well, sure. You know, plenty of cowards and slaves can be considered peaceful.  All they have to do is not fight back and never stand up for themselves or anyone else.  It is also easy to keep domestic peace when you don’t have the problem of third-world illegal alien gangbangers flooding your cities and when you keep a really tight leash on your citizens.  I prefer freedom rather than “peace” under a tyrant.  Just let me keep a gun.

Its image has also been damaged by the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the detention of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba.

Ah, so let all of terrorists out of confinement and then we'll be "peaceful" as they blow up our cities.  Two of the differences between the U.S. and other countries in the "prisoner abuse scandal": 1) the pictures got out, and; 2) the "perps" were punished instead of rewarded.

Small, stable and democratic countries were found to be the most peaceful in the index, with 16 of the top 20 coming from western or central European democracies.

They will be even more “peaceful” when the Muslims impose sharia law.

The index looks at 24 indicators of external and internal measures of peace, including U.N. deployments overseas and levels of violent crime, respect for human rights, the number of soldiers killed overseas and arms sales.

I see – so because we step up to the plate and our soldiers are getting targeted by terrorist savages, we’re no peaceful.  The counties that are content to let us do the heavy lifting are “peaceful.”  Arming people for defense is apparently not peaceful, either.

The index was launched under the auspices of the Institute for Economics and Peace, a new think tank that looks at the relationship between economics, business and peace.

Supporters of the index urged policymakers to focus more on education, wealth, and well-functioning government and pointed to the role of business in creating more stability.

The smaller the government, the better.  But what does it meat to “focus more on education, wealth”?  With free market capitalism, wealth will be developed independent of government actions.  There are many “educated” people who are neither wealthy nor peaceful.

While I do believe that free market capitalism can promote peace, it always involves open competition, and “peace” for the sake of material gain is not necessarily a good thing.

It is quite telling to see the reactions some people have to purity balls.  These events are formal events where fathers pledge to protect their daughters and daughters affirm the importance of their own purity, in a setting where girls can enjoy dressing up and being treated like a lady and spending time with her father.  Because our culture has devalued sex, encouraged the sexualization of children, and worked to undermine the importance of fathers as well as general parental authority, some people find the very idea of a purity ball creepy.

I’ve already dealt extensively with this topic in a previous blog entry that you can read by clicking here.

But today I wanted to respond to something I found on another blog.

The first upsetting thing about this is that a bunch of teenage girls are being brain-washed with a destructve mystification of their sexuality that will probably lead them to form unhealthy views of themselves.  

Do you see that?  This person thinks it is unhealthy for girls to strive to save sex for marriage and thereby give her husband a wonderful gift, increase her chances of having a lasting and happy marriage, decrease her chances of being abused, avoid STDs, avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, and avoid one way of bonding with someone who isn’t right for her.

No, supposedly it is “healthy” for a girl to let many men casually play with what she’ll use to conceive and deliver her children.

The second upsetting thing about this is the bizarre, pagan overtones of the above photograph, which looks like some sort of Roman fertility-sex rite, and shows how Christianity was actually a back-slide into the paganism that the Jewish religion had moved beyond.

I have a hunch this blogger wouldn’t approve of any symbolism or outward demonstration of making a commitment in this case.

The third upsetting thing is this picture and the bluntly incestuous overtones of the father-daughter pair.  I mean, look at this.  It looks like this girl is in some sort of sexual rapture brought on by some sort of perverse Freudian co-mingling of incest and religious frenzy.  In fact I think all religious madness is just misplaced (wasted) sexual energy, the foul smoke of curdled desire.

Project much? Perhaps people with this kind of reaction are betraying their own Freudian obsessions – everyone is a sex object to them, and all close relationships are really about sex – so, fathers and daughters should be distant from each other.

Are there any people who think the way expressed in the third objection who don’t fall into at least one of the following categories:

1) Was not raised with a father in the home.
2) Had an abusive, overly permissive, or otherwise lousy father/father figure.
3) Had an unhealthy feelings about/interaction with a parental figure?

I know there are many people who either weren't raised with a father in their home, or had a lousy father, and so they can't relate to these girls.  They think it is impossible for a father to have a loving and appropriate relationship with his daughter without something creepy going on.  But some fathers ARE decent men who want their daughters to see that they care about them and their well-being.

I have to wonder if people who publicly bash purity balls have ever publicly noted the strangeness of some aspects of "gay pride" parades and events, which also deal with sexuality?  Probably not.  After all, how can we say men keeping other men on leashes in front of toddlers is strange when girls are  - gasp - dressed up in formal gowns at a ball with their own father?

So Prince Charles says we have 18 months to stop a climate change disaster.  Here are my questions:

1. What will this disaster look like?  Give us specifics that will be observable and measurable, including a timetable.  By the way, "warmer temperatures" are not enough.  It has to be something that is actually bad, as in destructive to people, animals, and property.  Also, if there are the same number of hurricanes as there have been in the past, that won't be enough either.

2. What exactly do we have to do to prevent such a disaster from happening?  Again, give us specifics, including deadlines.

3. If we do not fulfill what you say is needed in response to my second question, and what you said in response to my first question also doesn’t come to pass, will you issue an apology, abdicate all claims to any title you have or may be in line to receive, and withdraw from public life?

If there’s anything we can’t allow, it is that an advisor to a Republican candidate have political or private sector experience.  My goodness, such people might have some sort of bias or something!

Also keep in mind that, when someone a Democrat candidate has chosen to marry and spend his life with makes public experiences and speaks out on public issues, it is not okay to criticize what she says.  Got that?!?

Please deal with the candidate himself – but keep in mind that any criticism of his positions will be deflected with something along the lines of “People are tired of that kind of politics” or “People are tired of those kinds of attacks”.  This will be effective in preventing the candidate from having to defend his positions.  He will then go on to make political attacks on others.

What is the purpose of licensing marriage?

The state (representing the people) did not invent marriage.  It simply has recognized it and has licensed it.  But why license it?  Because having some recognition and order to marriage is of benefit to society.  All other things being equal, it is better for society to have a man and woman who are married to each other for life, and for children to be raised within that marriage.  It is of less benefit for a child to be raised without a mother or father, no matter how many people are raising that child.  Licensing marriage assists in providing stability in marriage, clarity in divorce and paternity, efficiency in government dealings with children and households and property, and in preventing polygamy and close family members from marrying.

All of society is comprised entirely of males and females.  So the basic building block of society is found in the uniting of males and females in marriage.  Same-sex pairs, trios, quartets, and so forth – no matter how large, no matter how stable, no matter how loving – do not have a representative of both sexes.  Neither one of the sexes is expendable.

Marriage is how society orders itself and perpetuates itself.

Even if all both-sex pairings do not produce children, they are the only ones that can naturally produce children, and the only ones that can raise those children with one parent of both sexes – which is important, because we all have to deal with both males and females in daily life.

Unless you are completely neutrally bisexual, you can’t say with a straight face that there is no difference between men and women in personal relationships, and thus marriage and parenting.  Men and women are not interchangeable in this area. No matter how good two women are at mothering, they can’t be fathers.

The state (representing the people) has an interest in how the next generation is raised, as they will be the soldiers, voters, leaders, investors, and workers of the future.  In other words, marriage has a direct correlation on the health of the citizenry in many ways.

We, the people, don’t have the same interest in same-sex pairing.  Yes, same-sex pairings can also raise children, through adoption and third-party reproduction, but those situations are not ideal, and not everyone is in favor of those things in the first place.  We should not encourage same-sex couples (or, single people) to create and raise children without both a mother and father.  While they have the freedom to do so, we ought not enshrine a right for them to do so.  Indeed, true rights do not obligate others without their consent – true rights are natural, like the right to express yourself.  Third party reproduction requires – ta da – a third party, and thus is not a right.  If two men were stranded on an island, they would have no chance of perpetuating society.  Homosexual acts, unlike heterosexual intercourse, has no benefit to society.

There is always someone who points out that, by choice, infertility, or age, there are marriages that do not produce children.  Yes, but both-sex pairings are the only kind that can.  You will never find two men or two women who are able to produce children by themselves.  When the state issues a marriage license, it can verify sex, but should not have access to verifying fertility or intention to conceive children.

We have chipped away at marriage and the conditions that support it, both legally and culturally: encouraging casual fornication without shame; rampant adultery and a lack of legal consequences for engaging in it; denigrating masculinity and femininity, motherhood and fatherhood, and gender roles; discouraging childrearing by making children liabilities instead of assets and usurping parental authority; shacking up; glorifying parenting as a single; and punishing men for marrying women.  Make no mistake – if these things hadn’t come before, we would not find ourselves in this situation now, with the California Supreme Court overreaching and finding new rights for groups that infringe on the rights of others.

Marriage created society.  Our legislators did not create marriage.  Forcing a change, via judicial fiat, on something that has existed in every culture since the dawn of human history is foolishness.  Even in polygamous societies, even in racist societies, marriage was always about uniting the sexes, because uniting the sexes is an inherent to marriage as round is to a circle.  Diluting the meaning of the word degrades something that has served society well, and thus isn’t a good idea.

Not all of the societies of the past were “homophobic” – indeed, some were quite encouraging of homosexuality - and yet “same-sex marriage” has always been an oxymoron, even in those societies.  We did not stop same-sex marriage.  It never existed in the first place.  Activists are trying to hijack marriage as a means to an end.

But supposedly, we are more advanced and wiser now, and someone thinks the California constitution mandates this decision.  It just isn’t so.  A homosexual person has always had the very same right to licensed marriage as the heterosexual person.  It makes no difference whether or not someone wants to meet the conditions of obtaining a license.  Coupling is voluntary.  Thus, there was no need to change the licenses.  It is perfectly legitimate to treat different arrangements differently, and a same-sex arrangement is different than a both-sexes arrangement.  We do it all of the time with other licenses – if you don’t meet the criteria, you do not get that license.

Marriage – husband and wife – provides the best context for raising children.  Homosexual people have to live in the same society as everyone else.  They will not be immune to the ill effects of the further breakdown of marriage and family.

I have been tolerant.  I have not sought to use force to prevent homosexual people from being with anyone of their choosing.  In fact, there are such people who know me who would be shocked to know my feelings in this matter, because they’ve never asked me and I’ve always been polite and kind and fair and respectful in my dealings with them and their partners.  I believe they deserve the same protections anyone else; violence, harassment, vandalism targeting them is unacceptable and I condemn it, just as I do such actions against anyone.

But when you force me, as a Californian, to issue you a marriage license when there is no bride or no groom, you are being intolerant of me.  You are using the force of law to force me to “support” something I do not accept.  You make a mockery of my marriage.  You devalue my marriage with a counterfeit.

Bible-believers are part of this society too, and we see marriage as something sacred and one of the few institutions initiated directly by God.  We can’t support calling anything but marriage marriage.  You might find that some of us would be fine with “civil unions” (California already has them), but the fact remains that from societal perspective, we do not have the same interest in same-sex pairings as we do in uniting both sexes.

So as we kick marriage while it is down, I'm sure we will look the blame the ill results on something else.  It is sad and shameful what we are doing to marriage, and how we're letting a tiny few activists to reorder society for the rest of us.

These couples act as though they haven’t been allowed to see each other –as if they’re waiting for a marriage license before sharing a bed.  All of this comes from yesterday’s Los Angeles Times.

Joe Mozingo, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer, has a piece that has this heading:

After Disappointments, Couple hopes for Dignity and a Ceremony
For Jim Smith and Frank Reifsnyder, the ban on gay marriage was another example of gays and lesbians being treated 'as less than human.'

They could have had a ceremony before.  And the law in no way treated homosexual people as less than human, any more than it treated bachelors as such.  If you're relying on the law to make you feel good about yourself - good luck.

The slights are mostly small, but cumulative. Maybe it's the blank, slightly confused expression on someone's face when Jim Smith introduces his "domestic partner."

I see – and, as a man, introducing another man as your husband won’t elicit such expressions?  People know what domestic partners are.

Or the extra fee that rental car agencies charge if they both want to drive the car, because they are not married.

Sounds like a problem to be worked out between the rental car agencies and their customers.  There’s no need to reorder a basic building block of society.  It’s like going after a fly with nuclear bomb.

Or the tax forms they cannot file jointly.

So changing marriage about all of these peripheral things, huh?  Yeah, sounds like a good reason to try to change an institution that’s at least thousands of years old.

Each instance is a little reminder that society sees them, according to Smith, "as less than human."

Oh please.  Are widows less than human?

He and his partner, Frank Reifsnyder, have been a couple for 10 years. They have graduate degrees and lucrative careers and a beautiful Spanish colonial home in Toluca Lake, with fountains and tiled terraces and vaulted ceilings with hand-hewn beams.

Sounds like the man has been holding them down big time, doesn’t it?

They have 14-month-old twins, Milo and Kaylee, whom they adore.

Huh?  Sorry, where did the egg(s) come from?  Where was the womb?  Where is the mother in this equation?  These guys intentionally brought children into a situation that deprives them of a mother?  Are women really that disposable?  I guess so.

In their eyes, they have all the trappings of a happy marriage -- just not the marriage itself. And they want it.

In other words, they have everything they need, but they want to force me to issue them a marriage license without a bride being involved.

In a 4-3 vote, the state's high court ruled that language in the law "limiting the designation of marriage to a union 'between a man and a woman' is unconstitutional and must be stricken from the statute."

The law was recognizing marriage, not creating it.  Society and nature “limited it”, or if you believe as I do, God did.  It’s like saying that law should not limit the designation of a circle to something that is round.

Smith and Reifsnyder won't get substantially more legal rights from the ruling. Same-sex couples who register as domestic partners in California have many of the legal rights accorded to married couples, and the ruling will have no effect in the federal domain, including Social Security and income taxes.

But Smith was ecstatic. He said the significance of the ruling is much deeper.

"I think this signals the beginning of the end of ostracism and bullying and all the things used to make people feel less human than others," Smith said.

He’s deluding himself into thinking this will force people to ignore their instincts and what they plainly know to be true.

"Having a majority of the people you live with say you are less worthy of participating in this economy and society," said Smith, "that would make it pretty hard to stick around."

Let me clear this up for you, buddy: YOU ARE PEFECTLY WELCOME TO LIVE BY THE SAME RULES AS THE REST OF US.  What the court is doing is changing the rules for everyone when there is no need to.  Just because you prefer biking to driving a car doesn’t mean you don’t have access to freeways, just like people who prefer driving.

Smith and Reifsnyder always knew they wanted a family.

Then they should have found wives.

They found an egg donor and a surrogate mother.

Ah, a rent-a-womb and a buy-an-egg. How nice.  Gee, why can't any of these same-sex make their own babies?  Oh, that's right.  Mother Nature is a bigot.

They moved from West Hollywood to a tree-lined street in Toluca Lake.

"In West Hollywood, we saw one kid in a three-block radius," said Reifsnyder.

Uh, that’s because, in case you haven’t noticed, it takes both a man and a woman to make a baby naturally.  So they want the kids to have a kid-friendly environment, but not a mother?  Interesting.

John M. Glionna and Francisco Vara-Orta, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers, report, in a piece headlined with:

San Francisco, West Hollywood Celebrate the Supreme Court's Gay Marriage Ruling
One couple said they had long wanted to say 'I do' but had been stymied by those who said 'You can't.' Now they could.

They could have said “I do” all along.  This is not “gay marriage”.  This is “same-sex marriage” which is still an oxymoron. But two heterosexual men can also get “married” under this ruling.

One man talking on his cellphone announced, "Hey guess what? Gays can get married in California. And that means me."

You could have gotten married before, too.  Just not to another man.

Robert Denos, 43, and partner Wil Wilcox, 50, who were [“]married[“] in San Francisco in 2004, dressed up their three small boys -- including a 6-month-old named after San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom -- and brought them out to celebrate.

Where did those kids come from?  Where is their mother?

"They'll have the respect of other families," Wilcox said.

From a judge.  That doesn’t mean everyone else support this sort of thing.

Gavin Newsom, the adulterous mayor of San Francisco who has been in on this scheme to subvert the will of the California electorate from the start, wrote this commentary.

In that spirit, yet one more barrier gave way when the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday that all Californians, regardless of sexual orientation, have the right to marry.

Again, licensed marriage is not a right, but when I went to get my license, nobody asked me my sexual orientation.

It was 60 years ago that the state Supreme Court ruled in Perez vs. Sharp that the ban on interracial marriage was unconstitutional -- 19 years before the U.S. Supreme Court would come to the same conclusion in Loving vs. Virginia.

“Race” is incidental to marriage.  Sex is inherent to it.  It’s like saying that ban on blue circles in the past means we should allow for square circles now.

So in February 2004, when I ordered San Francisco's county clerk to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, it was with full recognition that as goes California, so goes the nation.

You don’t respect marriage, and you don’t respect the law, and you don’t respect the American system.  You simply counted on some judges to overreach.

The same groups that sponsored Proposition 22, the ballot measure the court just overturned, are close to placing a measure on the November ballot that would write discrimination against gays and lesbians into our state Constitution. This effort would not only nullify Thursday's ruling, it could overturn existing laws granting the most basic rights to same-sex couples.

Licensed marriage isn’t a most basic human right.  If it was, single people could also get marriage licenses.

It is one thing to have an intellectual discussion about marriage equality. It is quite another to sit down with a loving couple of nearly 50 years and try to explain to them why they are being discriminated against by a government they help fund with their tax dollars.

Emotion makes for poor law.  They know full well why things are they way they are – they’ve been this way through all of human history.  It isn’t like some right-wing group came along and stopped an established tradition of two men marrying and getting a license.  They could have chosen licensed marriage, but they chose not to participate, or they couldn’t find the right spouse.

His piece is a rambling appeal to emotion with very little logic or reasoning.  It is self-serving and designed to boost his chances of being Governor, and just maybe enough loons in San Francisco and Los Angeles will vote for him.

Then the Los Angeles Times, figuring this wasn’t enough, ran this editorial.

Marriage Rights for All

Again, everyone had the same access to marriage.

'Marriage," the U.S. Supreme Court ruled more than 40 years ago, "is one of the 'basic civil rights of man,' fundamental to our very existence and survival."

Why our survival? Because marriage brings the sexes together.  That ruling was at a time where people could be barred from living together unless they had a licensed marriage.  That is no longer the case.  This is wholly inappropriate to invoke when talking about two men or two women.  Society would still exist if there were NO same-sex pairings.  The same can't be said about both-sex pairings.

And yet that right has been routinely denied to American men and women based on their sexual orientation.

Wrong again!

But the court recognized that rights must supersede customs, that just because marriage traditionally has been defined as a union between a man and a woman, it cannot be denied to same-sex couples by "tradition alone."

Well, you need not look to the past to confirm that men and women are still different.

I’m not surprised.  This was from a newspaper that decided to publicize and celebrate the fact that one of its sports reporters decided to have his genitals hacked off and get female hormones injected into him, and to dress like a woman.  He’s still got a Y chromosome, so he’s still a man.  Just one who is mutilated by his own choice.

At least, four judges did.  Four judges – or rather, whoever the fourth one is – have decided to impose their will on the people of California and try to engage in social engineering by using legal force to counterfeit the basic building block of society.

My apologies, as a lifelong Californian, to the rest of the country.

Make no mistake about it – marriage built society.  Our laws have traditionally recognized – not created – marriage.  Instead of going the route the rest of us did – thousands of years of recorded human history and experience with marriage as a lasting sacrament – homosexual activists have decided to go the short route of judicial activism.  So now a tiny fraction of society has come closer to removing the very meaning of marriage.

The uniting of both of the sexes is inherent in what make marriage marriage.  A judge telling me that a man can marry a man is like telling me that it is possible for a circle to be square, or for the color blue to be warm to the touch.  It makes me prone to disbelieve this judge.  From a societal interest, marriage is about uniting the sexes, not about love, attraction, or validating relationships.  Society doesn’t have the same interest in a couple of one sex as it does a couple that includes both sexes.  So now the law will be devalued because calling two men together a marriage will be akin to calling water milk because it is also a potable liquid.  The less the law aligns to reality the less credibility it has.

You do have a right to associate with whomever you want to, as long as they consent to associate with you.  You can have ceremonies, you can cohabitate, you can make promises to each other, you can hug and kiss and stick things where they don't belong.  Nobody can stop that.  But state-licensed marriage is not a right, as true rights do not obligate others without their consent.  It is something that has been voluntarily given by the people of California to a man and a woman because society benefits from marriage, as it is how we raise the next generation of soldiers, voters, taxpayers, workers, and leaders with both a mother and a father.

I promise you – it is only a matter of time before same-sex couples argue that it isn’t fair that both-sexes couples can produce children together without expensive adoptions and surrogacy arrangements, and thus that they have a right to have such costs paid for by taxpayers.  It might sound ridiculous, and some may scoff, but that is exactly how people reacted when we used to say that the activists were going to try to change marriage.

As I have written here before, with no-fault divorce, the high divorce rate, the abandonment of legal punishments or civil consequences for adultery and breach of promise, the rise of promiscuity, shacking up, and illegitimacy – people no longer see marriage as a big deal.  It has been kicked so many times while it is down, what’s the difference if we redefine it?  We have separated sex and marriage, childbearing and marriage, childrearing and marriage, living together and marriage, commitment and marriage, and on it goes.

From Lisa Leff’s Associated Press article:

Jeanie Rizzo, one of the plaintiffs, called Pali Cooper, her partner of 19 years, and asked, "Pali, will you marry me?"

This makes as much sense as a conscientious objector claiming to be a military veteran of war.  A woman can’t marry a woman, and a man can’t marry a man.

"This is a very historic day. This is just such freedom for us," Rizzo said. "This is a message that says all of us are entitled to human dignity."

Untrue.  This is not about human dignity.  It is about tearing marriage further down.  You had all of the freedom a straight person had before this ruling.

The city of San Francisco, two dozen gay and lesbian couples and gay rights groups sued in March 2004 after the court halted the monthlong [“]wedding[“] march that took place when Mayor Gavin Newsom opened the doors of City Hall to same-sex [“]marriages[“].

Yes, a man who thinks so little of marriage that he was carrying on an affair with his assistant’s wife.

"Today the California Supreme Court took a giant leap to ensure that everybody — not just in the state of California, but throughout the country — will have equal treatment under the law," said City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who argued the case for San Francisco.

Everyone already had equal treatment.  Yes, couples were treated differently.  That is because they are different.  There are business designations in the law that I can't apply to myself if I don't have that kind of business.

California already offers same-sex couples who register as domestic partners the same legal rights and responsibilities as married spouses, including the right to divorce and to sue for child support.

But, "Our state now recognizes that an individual's capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual's sexual orientation," Chief Justice Ron George wrote for the court's majority, which also included Justices Joyce Kennard, Kathryn Werdegar and Carlos Moreno.

None of that has anything to do with this.  It is that two men or two women is not the same thing as a man and a woman.  It isn’t.  If it was the same thing, then nobody would be a homosexual and nobody would be straight - because there would be no difference.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Marvin Baxter agreed with many arguments of the majority but said the court overstepped its authority. Changes to marriage laws should be decided by the voters, Baxter wrote. Justices Ming Chin and Carol Corrigan also dissented.

But all it took was one person to impose a change on the rest of us.

The conservative Alliance Defense Fund says it plans to ask the justices for a stay of their decision until after the fall election, said Glen Lavey, senior counsel for the group.

Yeah, good luck with that.

From Jim Christie’s article:

A dissenting opinion by Judge Marvin Baxter and joined by Judge Ming Chin said a narrow majority of the court had carved a constitutional right out of existing equal-protection laws, overstepping legislative powers in what amounted to "legal jujitsu." A third justice dissented on different grounds.

"It simply does not have the right to erase, then recast, the age-old definition of marriage, as virtually all societies have understood it, in order to satisfy its own contemporary notions of equality and justice," Baxter wrote.

At least someone on that bench has some sense.

Maura Dolan, Los Angeles Times staff writer, reports:

Today’s ruling by the Republican-dominated court affects more than 100,000 same-sex couples in the state, about a quarter of whom have children, according to U.S. census figures.

They certainly didn’t make those children together – not with outside help.

It came after high courts in New York, Washington and New Jersey refused to extend marriage rights to gay couples.

They probably refused to extend “square rights” to circles, too, and veterans' benefits to nonveterans, and won't pay for  hysterectomies for men, those New York bigots!

Before today, only Massachusetts' top court has ruled in favor of permitting gays to wed.

This is such sloppy language.  Gays has the same freedom to wed as anyone else.  They just didn’t want to use that freedom.  That someone does not want to exercise a freedom does not mean that something is wrong with that freedom and it must be changed for everyone.

Paul Drugan, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder, said the county was not immediately granting same-sex [“]marriage[“] licenses, noting that the court's decision would take effect in 30 days.

I’ll have to go back and check to see what my marriage license says.  It will be so sad if “bride” and “groom” will have to be removed from the license.

Holding up a sign that says, "Life feels different when you're married," Ellen Pontac said she was beyond words.

"Oh, wow," she said. "It felt so good when we got married in San Francisco. This feels better."

“Feelings… nothing more than feelings.”  Feelings make for bad law.  This is all about how someone feels.

She hugged her partner Shelly Bailes. "The best day of my life was when I met Ellen," Bailes said. "This was as good as that."

Why?  Because ONE PERSON agrees with you?  The people of the state of California, who are supposed to be the ones issuing marriage licenses, do not, or at least have not yet.  You are happy because one person is forcing the rest of us to do something with which we disagree – something that makes a mockery of something we hold dear.

A few feet away, Kate Kendell, executive director of National Center for Lesbian Rights, was mobbed by reporters and well-wishers.

"As of today, the right to marry is now guaranteed to anyone," she said.

Really?  Anyone?  Not so.  How about people who haven’t found a partner?  They can’t get a marriage license.  Nor can close family members, or someone who is already married.  Oh, the bigotry of it all!  A right is a right after all, no matter how small the lobby.

"All I know is that we won."

Society loses.  The California electorate loses.  You are part of both of those categories, no?  Ah, but who cares about that as long as you feel affirmed in your choice of partners?

At his home in Toluca Lake, Jim Smith a parent and part of a same-sex relationship, also rejoiced. "I'm ecstatic," said Smith, 40, chief technology officer for an online advertising agency. "I think this is the beginning of the end of ostracism, bullying, and all the things that used to make people feel less human than others."

Not really.  If you feel like those things were prevalent before, they’re not going away just because of a court ruling.

The plan by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, City Atty. Dennis Herrera and gay rights lawyers to challenge state marriage laws by [“]wedding[‘] same-sex couples was carefully considered.

City officials chose the first couples to wed, hoping their long unions and sympathetic stories would put a face on same-sex marriage that courts would find difficult to reject. The city also decided to begin the weddings on a day when courts were closed to deprive opponents of quick legal intervention.

Live by the sword, die by the sword.  The ends to not always justify the means.  You could have set a precedent and example that can be used by others to do something you don’t like.  Will you like it if a handful of conservatives get a judge to force a change on your life, so we'll feel better?

Here some quotes in the Los Angeles Times:

Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles), California Assembly speaker:
"It is a true testament to advancing equality and to recognizing the right of all Californians to build a future with the person they love.”

Uh, they didn’t have a right to do that before?  Someone tell Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell.

Ina Piette, a 76-year-old resident of Laguna Beach:
"It doesn't bother me. . . . We try to control people's lives too much. How would this hurt other people? I don't see it."

It is controlling for a judge to tell me that I must issue a marriage license when there is a bride or groom missing.  Counterfeiting devalues the real thing.  This will make it easier to deprive children of a mother or a father.  I don't want more people growing up without a mother or father, because I'll have to interact with them and they will be at a disadvantage.

Antonio Villaraigosa, Los Angeles mayor [and adulterer]
"It's been a long journey to reach this historic day," he said, standing in the courtyard of L.A.'s Gay and Lesbian Community Center. "This is about people and the right for people to love who they want."

They couldn’t love who they wanted before?  Such sloppy thinking.  So deceptive.  To listen to the likes of this, you'd have thought that none of these people have loved each other before today, or that they were thrown in jail for doing so.

Richard Mark Alfaro, a resident of Los Angeles, 55, and an HIV-positive man:
"I'm at a point where I don't think I'll ever get married, who will want me the way I am?"

But he quickly added, "The younger generation of gays needs it before they get too messed up like some of us. This will offer them stability in their relationships finally to the point of what's perceived as 'normal.' "

Yeah, because nobody who is married ever got HIV, right?  I predict that this will not really improve things for gay people – it will worsen things for “marriage”, as “married” people, as a group, will see an increase in domestic violence and substance abuse and infidelity and mental and physical illnesses because a population that has a higher rate of those things will be included.

Jennifer Chrisler, Executive director, Family Equality Council
"With this historic and fair-minded ruling, the California Supreme Court has taken a tremendous step in moving equality forward for California families.”

In other words, they still have more changes they want to force on the rest of us.  Nothing will ever be enough for them.

“Though we recognize that it does not take a marriage to make a family, we understand that thousands of same-sex couples and their families in California and beyond desire to marry and are in critical need of the legal protections that marriage affords."

In other words, they don’t really value marriage, except as a way to get things like entitlements.  Either marriage makes a family or it doesn’t.  You can’t have it both ways as in “Now we can finally be a family" and "We already are a family."

Assemblyman Lloyd Levine (D-Van Nuys), author of California's same-sex [“]marriage[“] bills:
"I am absolutely elated by the California Supreme Court's decision. We live in 2008 and there is no place for discrimination in any way, shape or form.”

What an incredibly stupid statement.  We all use discrimination all of the time – otherwise we sit there like blobs doing nothing.  What matters is the basis for discrimination.  There is no reason to believe that, say, someone would be a better or worse accountant based on the color of their skin, so we should not discriminate against someone based on skin color when hiring an accountant.

"All people in California have equal rights under the law.”

You mean they didn’t before and they now do?  Is that so?  Then I never want to hear you saying otherwise in the future about anything else.

“I look forward to the day when all people can marry the person they love.”

Another incredibly stupid statement, because taken at face value, it can be applied to polygamy and close family members marrying each other.

Elisa Odabashian, resident of Burlingame, Calif.
"For more than 21 years, Ash and I have wanted to marry. Our kids, Gavin [17] and Baylor [14], yearn for their parents to be married.”

You intentionally put children into a situation where they wouldn’t have a father?  That’s very selfish of you.

”Today, we have been told that we will get that basic human right to love and to have society acknowledge and honor our love and our family.”

You already had the right to love.  You didn’t love until today?  Society doesn’t honor your relationship – a judge does.

How many of the couples will split up because one of them doesn’t really want to marry, at least without a pre-nup?  How many gay men and women are already being taken to the cleaners by their less-affluent exes via the domestic partnership law?  You have to take the obligations and restrictions with the privileges, folks!

But will none of them be allowed to sell ice cream?  Andrew Blankstein of the Los Angeles Times reports.

A measure that bars registered sex offenders from operating ice cream trucks in San Bernardino County has been unanimously approved by the Board of Supervisors.

The ordinance, sponsored by Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt, requires anyone seeking a business license to sell ice cream to undergo electronic fingerprinting that would be checked against state and national criminal databases. Violators could be fined $500 per day or face six months in jail or both.

Now, maybe the newspaper isn’t being precise in their terminology, but if this is a blanket ban on any sex offender from operating ice cream trucks, as opposed to child molesters or someone who otherwise has a history of crimes against children, then I think it is overreaching.

For example: Why should someone who got drunk at a Spring Break event and exposed himself to other drunk Spring Breakers ten years ago be banned from operating an ice cream truck?  Or, what if someone was caught in a prostitution bust once ten years ago?  Should someone who was convicted of statutory rape twenty years ago for having sex with his 17-year-old girlfriend when he was 18 be banned?

Let’s use some common sense here.

No, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for sex offenders.  But I think unfair or unnecessarily restrictive laws are harmful.  I think this kind of overreaching with legal force is a reaction to the promotion of license in the culture.  We claim we are more open and free about sex and more tolerant of alternative sexuality, but if someone messes up sexually, we crack down with extra force.  We make things unnecessarily complicated because we don’t want to tout that keeping sex within marriage is the ideal, and back it up with our actions.  We put our children in situations where it is more likely they will be abused (day care, or with a date, shack-up honey, or stepparent), and then try to prevent the abuse by trying to ban molesters from parks.  How about...watching your own child?

With a bunch of socialists and reconquistadors in control of the California legislature, and a not-so-Republican Governor who wants to get along with them, it is no surprise that California finds itself spending more than it is taking in.

When my family does this, we cut back.  When politicians do this, they think of ways to confiscate more money from the governed.

Evan Halper, Los Angeles Times staff writer, reports.

They predict the public won't stand for painful cuts to schools and healthcare to close a shortfall the governor now pegs as high as $20 billion, and say anti-tax forces will ultimately have to accept that more revenue is needed to bring the state into the black.

The unions would certainly raise a stink, and of course, the Democrats are absolutely beholden to them.

Some of the proposals would be used to help balance the budget; others would fund specific new programs.

NEW programs – so they can raise taxes again later when the behavior of the residents changes in response to these new taxes and, of course, the politicians don’t want to stop the programs.  The best is when they add a tax to cigarettes, arguing that it will help reduce smoking, then take that money  and spend it in some new program; cigarette purchases (at least ones subject to the tax) drop, and so funding for the new program drops, so the general fund is tapped to keep funding the program originally created with the cigarette tax!

The legislators say their various causes -- as broad as averting further cuts to the general fund, which is tapped by all government programs, and as narrow as improving local trash cleanup -- are too important to let slide just because the state is broke.

The state is supposed to be the people.  If they people have to cut back, so should the state.

"If we don't do some of these things, we are going to have to cut nearly $5 billion out of schools," said Assemblyman Charles Calderon (D-Montebello), chairman of the Revenue and Taxation Committee.

You can probably meet most of that billing Mexico for educating Mexican citizens and dropping the “let’s make gay kids feel good about being attracted to each other” programs.

He has proposed some of the Legislature's more unconventional measures, including taxes on digital downloads and adult entertainment.

Calderon said he was moved to push for levies on downloads such as iTunes because state sales tax laws do not reflect the high volume of purchasing that Californians do online. Consumers can download music from the Internet through Apple's iTunes and other services tax-free, Calderon noted, while they pay sales tax for buying the same music on a compact disc at a store.

So drop the tax on the music at the store.

His proposal would empower state authorities to collect sales tax on the downloads, increasing the cost of a typical 99-cent song to roughly $1.07. Calderon projects that the bill (AB 1956), which could also apply to pornography downloads, cellphone ring-tones, online books and feature films distributed on the Internet, would raise about $500 million for the state budget.

I’d like to see him define the difference between a pornographic download and other downloads.

Calderon said the resistance to his bill did not surprise him. But he is perplexed that he hasn't been able to get more traction for another proposal: a 25% tax on sex toys, strip shows, pornographic magazines and videos and anything else sold in an "adult entertainment venue."

Okay, so what if they are sold in a venue that is not primarily “adult entertainment”?

"This is a major industry that is putting a disproportionate burden on state services," he said. "Drugs are heavily used. The actors have a short life span. Some leave the industry drug-addicted with no skills. They wind up availing themselves of Medi-Cal and other state programs."

Much of the same things could be said about illegal aliens or homosexual people.  Not all people in those categories are burdens on the state.  Many are.  But then, if someone has a short life span, I would say they are less of a burden on state services.  Why can't the state simply allow the private sector to handle some of these things - such as health care and education?  It never fails - first, they get people to count on publicly funded health care, then they want to use that as an excuse to control our lives.

A coalition of porn stars, strippers and others in adult entertainment roamed the halls of the Capitol recently to lobby against the Calderon bill (AB 2914).

That must have been a fun day to be there.

California.  You have to love it.  I focused on the "adult" stuff in this entry, but if you follow the link, you can read about some of the other schemes they've come up with.

Dear “Progressive, Modern” People: How should we handle situations where we think you are making a huge and terrible mistake, but you expect us to smile and throw you a party?

I recently received:

1) A wedding invitation from a childhood friend is whose bride to be, by the accounts of two people who’ve dealt with her, is a troubled woman.

2) The news that an unmarried professional woman I know will soon be having a baby.

3) A bulletin on MySpace from a high school classmate announcing how excited she is to be moving herself and her two boys into her boyfriend’s place.  He’s not the biological father of the boys, and there was no mention of marriage.

In each case, I was dismayed.  But these days, you "with it" people expect compliments, praise, congratulations, encouragement, and gifts for being in these situations, and it is very common for people to place themselves into these situations.

Yes, you are adults who should be free to make their own choices.  However, we are put into an awkward position when you expect us to express support for decisions that we think are harmful to you and to children and to something we hold dear, such as the institution of marriage.  If we express anything other than enthusiastic support, you’ll react as though we wish you ill, when actually we care about you.

If we were to say what we’re really thinking, we’ll risk getting labeled as intolerant, hateful, judgmental, old-fashioned, out step, and so on.  And when the years go by and prove us to be right, our legitimate and correct concerns are likely to go unacknowledged, if we’re even still in contact with you.  You will never admit that we were right, and you'll likely continue to think of us as jerks (even though we weren't the ones putting your children into a bad situation).

I’ve been there.  I was once engaged to a woman who was all wrong for me.  My family and friends, no matter what they said, couldn’t do anything about it as far as telling me I was making a mistake.  Fortunately, I refused to take her back after one of her frequent “dumpings” of me, and I dodged