Tag activism (13)

Texas senators support Defense of Marriage Act
Mood: tired
Posted on 2009-10-05 14:49:00
Tags: activism gay
Words: 706

A few weeks ago, I posted about the Respect for Marriage Act that would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and allow the federal government to recognize same-sex marriages in the states that currently recognize them. (see handy map) I was a little surprised to get an actual response from my two Senators (Representative McCaul indicated that he would send an actual response at some point), but not surprised to hear they were in favor of DOMA. For posterity:

Dear Mr. Stoll:

Thank you for contacting me about the definition of marriage. I appreciate having the benefit of your comments on this important matter.

As you may know, in 1996 Congress overwhelmingly passed—and former President Bill Clinton signed into law—the Defense of Marriage Act (P.L. 104–199). This federal law defines marriage as "only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife." I agree with this position.

Under the laws, traditions, and customs of all fifty states, marriage has historically been defined as the union of a man and a woman. However, judicial rulings—and outright lawlessness by local officials in some states—have threatened traditional marriage and moved this debate onto the national stage. The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas provides lower courts with the leverage needed to invalidate traditional marriage laws. The first major assault on traditional marriage came in Goodridge v. Mass. Dept. of Health, when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court—citing the Lawrence decision—overturned that state's traditional marriage law. Other activist state courts have followed Massachusetts’s lead. In light of these judicial trends, constitutional scholars on both sides of the aisle agree that the Defense of Marriage Act and similar state laws are now in peril. I believe that judges should strictly interpret the law and avoid the temptation to legislate from the bench or color their rulings with personal ideology.

I appreciate the opportunity to represent Texans in the United States Senate, and you may be certain that I will keep your views in mind should relevant legislation regarding the definition of marriage be considered during the 111th Congress. Thank you for taking the time to contact me.

Sincerely,

JOHN CORNYN
United States Senator



Dear Friend:

Thank you for contacting me regarding same-sex marriage. I welcome your thoughts and comments.

Marriage laws have historically been the responsibility of state governments, and I generally oppose federal government intrusion into matters of state authority. Currently, there are four states in which marriages for same-sex couples are currently performed. However, in 23 states these unions are either statutorily or constitutionally banned. Clearly, one state's action can have serious and far-reaching implications for other states, particularly because our Constitution requires states to give full faith and credit to the laws of other states.

In 1996, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) defined marriage as only between a man and a woman, and provided that states are not required to recognize same-sex marriages granted under another state's laws. I voted for this federal law, and I continue to support it today because I believe the traditional family unit should remain the foundation of our society. With respect to marriage, I am a strong supporter of the due process and equal protection rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. However, I do not support legislation that extends the traditional definition and recognition of marriage to same-sex couples.

On September 15, 2009, Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) introduced H.R. 3567, the Respect for Marriage Act of 2009. The bill contains provisions that would force all states and territories in the Union to recognize all marriages that are legal in the state of origin. This legislation would further repeal the federal law implemented by the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, which stipulates that “no state or territory needs to treat a relationship between persons of the same sex as a marriage, even if the relationship is considered a marriage in another state.” Currently, no Senate bill has been introduced to repeal DOMA.

Should Congress act on this legislation, I will keep your views in mind. I appreciate hearing from you, and I hope that you will not hesitate to contact me on any issue that is important to you.

Sincerely,
Kay Bailey Hutchison
United States Senator

5 comments

Respect for Marriage Act introduced!
Mood: hopeful
Posted on 2009-09-15 13:27:00
Tags: activism gay politics
Words: 345

This bill would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and allow married same-sex couples the same federal rights as all other married couples. This is a big deal. Here's a fact sheet about it. (.pdf) Right now, it only has 91 cosponsors (out of 435 representatives) so drumming up support is important!

Here's what you can do:
- Find your representative and senators and write them asking them to support the bill. The email I wrote is behind the cut:

Representative McCaul:

I respectfully urge you to support the just-introduced Respect for Marriage Act of 2009. This act will repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and restore the "Full Faith and Credit" clause of the US Constitution to allow states to determine who is married, not the federal government.

Right now, 5 states allow same-sex couples to marry (see http://gregstoll.dyndns.org/marriagemap/ for a detailed breakdown), and in 3 of these states the couples were given this right through a legislative process. However, married same-sex couples in these states don't have the rights under federal law that other married couples do, such as Social Security survivor benefits, Family Medical Leave protections, and fair federal taxation.

As you probably know, Texas currently does not allow same-sex couples to marry (indeed, it is forbidden in the state constitution), and this bill would not change that. It would just give the same-sex couples that are married in states that have chosen to allow it the same rights as any other married couples. Marriage laws have always been left up to this states, and this would restore this practice as the Constitution intended.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward to hearing from you.

-Greg Stoll

(a little tailored for Texas, obviously - change that part if you use it and you're not from here!)

President Obama supports repealing DOMA but it's going to be hard to get it through the House and Senate, and he's not investing any political capital in doing so. If you support repealing DOMA, please take a few minutes and write your representatives!

0 comments

Stuff I've been following: Time Warner, gay stuff, dentist
Mood: busy
Posted on 2009-04-10 10:03:00
Tags: health activism gay links
Words: 480

Time Warner

After my somewhat indignant email, I called Time Warner Austin customer service (800-418-8848) to express my displeasure. Had to wait on hold for around 10 minutes and when it went through, I just talked for a few sentences. It wasn't particularly eloquent, but I said what I wanted to say, namely that if they did this tiered bandwidth cap thing I was going to leave. I could hear the rep not taking me very seriously, but oh well.

More information: destoyerj found this article showing just how expensive the plans will be per GB (very). Here's Time Warner's latest statement - basically they're increasing the caps (slightly), adding a 1 GB cap tier (the only plan, I believe, that's cheaper than the current one), and delaying the start of the trials in Austin and San Antonio until October. And here's a kinda long response to the letter, point by point.

Since apparently a house just across Metric has AT&T U-Verse but we can't get it here yet (grumble grumble), I'm hoping it's available before October. I'd really like to switch away for cable as well, but AT&T doesn't have CableCards which would make our TiVo very sad.

Gay stuff

With last week's Supreme Court ruling in Iowa and this week's dramatic governor's override to allow same-sex marriage in Vermont, it's been a pretty good 10 days or so. Unsurprisingly, there has been some negative reaction.

Here's a ad from the National Organization for Marriage. Storm clouds aside, the three stories that are told are:
- A California doctor cannot refuse to treat a lesbian based on religious belief. Cry me a river.
- A New Jersey church group had a pavilion that was open to the general public for events but refused access for civil union ceremonies. Here I kinda sympathize with the church group - although it's kind of a dick mode, I think they should be allowed to deny people the use of their pavilion. Of course, this isn't a huge infringement on their rights...it's just a pavilion.
- A Massachusetts parent complaining that the public schools teach her child about same-sex couples. Well, she certainly has the right to disagree at home, but not teaching something in school (that happens to be the law in their state) because somewhat might object is just the sort of political correctness that conservatives are always complaining about.

Less importantly, the National Review came out with a truly homophobic editorial. Andrew Sullivan does the breakdown.

Dentist

My tooth still hurts from the filling I had done last week. Why?? Is this normal? I'm tired of this crap and think I might switch dentists.

Finally, some links

Actually, just one link, but it's a good one: The Road to Area 51, featuring actual interviews with people who worked there talking about what they worked on. (some programs were recently declassified) The truth is out there!

7 comments

Email to Time Warner re bandwidth caps
Mood: irritated
Posted on 2009-04-08 11:13:00
Tags: activism timewarner
Words: 226

As a followup to Time Warner's proposed bandwidth caps, I sent the following email to realideas@twcable.com, and encourage you to do the same:

To whom it may concern:

My name is Gregory Stoll and I'm a current Time Warner Cable customer in Austin, TX. I've heard that Time Warner is planning on imposing a tier-based bandwidth allocation system in Austin and I am very unhappy about this.

The maximum cap, 40 GB a month, is far too low to be reasonable. Even watching a couple of TV shows from hulu.com or movies from Netflix online will put me dangerously close to the cap. Even the proposed "super-tier" of 100 GB a month (source: http://a.longreply.com/101892 ), while somewhat more reasonable, pales in comparison to Comcast's 250 GB a month cap (source: http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/08/its-official-comcast-starts-250gb-bandwidth-caps-october-1.ars ).

I've had Time Warner Cable for cable service and internet service as long as I've been in Austin, through multiple moves, but if these changes go through, I will be forced to switch to AT&T U-Verse or Grande Communications GForce high-speed internet service.

Thank you for your time.

-Greg
It's not a great email, but it'll do. If you care about these bandwidth caps, take a minute and send a copy (although you should probably edit the personal details :-) ) to realideas@twcable.com.

I plan on calling Austin customer service (800-418-8848) tonight and saying basically the same thing.

18 comments

fight the smears!
Mood: impressed
Posted on 2008-06-12 17:23:00
Tags: activism politics
Words: 95

Obama's new site fightthesmears.com is a good list of rebuttals of the emails that have been going around about him. If you get those forwards, reply with a link to it!

Another impressive aspect of Obama's campaign is the new matching gifts thing. When I donated last week, apparently my money (since I had donated before) was used as a matching gift to a first-time donor, and I even got an email from the people whose gift I matched. They live in Oregon. Pretty easy way to make my gift feel like it means something.

0 comments

a collection of links that suddenly accumulated in my firefox tabs
Mood: hopeful
Music: Radiohead - "15 Step"
Posted on 2008-01-29 13:04:00
Tags: activism programming politics links
Words: 245

5 attributes of highly effective programmers - the title is cheesy, but it's a very good article, and it quotes The Screwtape Letters which was a nice surprise. Also on that site is The Effective Software Developer's Book List which is an impressive collection.

For Gay Democrats, a Primary Where Rights Are Not an Issue, This Time - the headline says most of it, except for this gem:

In an address last week honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at a black church in Atlanta, Senator Obama made waves by lecturing the audience about homophobia. “We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them,” he said during the speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Dr. King served as co-pastor with his father.

Joe Solmonese, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay lobbying group, said he thought Mr. Obama’s speech was the first time a presidential candidate had brought up gay issues in front of a nongay audience without being prompted to do so. “This is dramatically refreshing,” he said. “It’s a great day when we can look at a field of candidates and determine that we are comfortable with all of them on gay rights and move on to other issues.”
Awesome! (via dailykos)

I saw this press release from the National Organization of Women (NY chapter) about how Ted Kennedy betrayed women by supporting Obama instead of Clinton. It made me angry, until this rebuttal made me feel better.

2 comments

Snickers ad pulled
Mood: tired
Posted on 2007-02-06 15:41:00
Tags: activism
Words: 14

Snickers ad pulled. (as a followup to my earlier post) Good? Bad? I dunno.

12 comments

homophobic Super Bowl ad
Mood: irritated
Posted on 2007-02-05 09:25:00
Tags: activism
Words: 337

I know that's a somewhat strong accusation, but I think it's justified in this case. I'm talking about the Snickers ad shown during the first quarter.

Here's the synopsis: Two guys working on car with open hood. One guy pulls out a Snickers bar, sticks it in his mouth, and starts to eat it as he leans over the open hood. Other guy sees this, puts other end of the bar in his mouth and starts to eat it. They meet at the middle (a la "Lady and the Tramp"), then recoil after a brief pause. They then discuss how they just kissed, and one says "Quick! Do something manly!", they they pull out some of their chest hair. The End. Or, an AP synopsis:

BEST AD FOR A LOUD BAR: Snickers. In this spot from Mars Inc., two auto mechanics accidentally kiss after being unable to resist chomping on opposite ends of a Snickers bar. The cure for this inadvertent moment of intimacy? "Do something manly!" says one. Both proceed to rip out handfuls of chest hair.

You can see the ad at afterthekiss.com, which features four different endings. ("Chest Hair" is the one that aired during the Super Bowl)

I'll admit, the endings are a little funny - I'm reminded of the Futurama episode "Amazon Women in the Mood" which featured Bender, Fry and Zapp Branigan making a number of women jokes. In the commentary, the writers said that they decided it was OK because after every single one of them, the joke-teller got physically hurt somehow, which sorta reminds me of this ad. But seriously, come on. Two guys kissing is a horrible accident that must be rectified by a super-manly act?

So, screw you, Mars, Incorporated. I will write an angry email soon. I'm surprised GLAAD isn't on the case already...

Edit: I may have misinterpreted the ad, as others are suggested it was meant to be mocking of homophobic attitudes. If that is the case, sorry for getting all riled up for nothing.

10 comments

Election 2005: not good, but not horrible
Mood: a little depressed, but ok
Posted on 2005-11-09 08:39:00
Tags: election activism
Words: 311

So, the big news is obviously that Prop 2 passed by a wide margin - 76%-24%.

Before my analysis and thoughts, a message to those of you who didn't vote for whatever reason: I understand that situations come up on Election Day and that we're all busy people. But when you don't vote, you're letting other people speak for you, and in Texas, that's not necessarily a great idea :-) You may argue that your vote wouldn't make a difference, since the margin was so wide, but if it had passed with a narrower margins we'd see stories about how it was a close vote and did more poorly than expected instead of Ban on gay marriage passes by large margin statewide (screw the Stateman's registration...grr...). So, if you're not registered to vote, please do so - it's easy to do. And if you couldn't vote for whatever reason, just plan ahead next time and vote early or request an absentee ballot. Both are pretty easy to do.

Anyway, so, yeah, that sucks. On the bright side, Travis County was the only county in which it was rejected, which makes me happy I'm living here (at least of anywhere in Texas...)

Here's why I not as upset as maybe I should be: I know that we're on the right side of this issue, and I am fully confident that in the end we will win. It may be 10 years, it may be 50 years, but at some point gays being married will be like interracial marriages today. So, screw you, Texas, but we're in this for the long haul.

Anyway, the news was good from other parts of the country - Democrats won the governor's race in New Jersey and Virginia, and Maine rejected a measure to repeal antidiscrimination laws for gays (after voting anti-gay in 1998 and 2000). So that's good, at least.

7 comments

Happy 151st post to me!
Mood: busy
Posted on 2005-11-08 13:28:00
Tags: pictures activism
Words: 75

I put up pictures from this weekend (including Ren Fest), although I didn't take very many.

For your viewing pleasure this evening, the Texas election results (courtesy of the Secretary of State). I'll be watching as soon as we get back from our boring meeting.

My hands have been hurting for the last week or so (it feels like the muscles in the hand, but it's hard to tell). This is not a promising development.

1 comment

Reminder: vote tomorrow!
Mood: hopeful
Posted on 2005-11-07 12:53:00
Tags: activism
Words: 38

Just a reminder to vote tomorrow (and vote against Prop 2 if you're in Texas!) See my previous post for more info. If you live in Travis County, you can go to www.traviscountyelections.org to find your polling place.

1 comment

vote next tuesday!
Mood: concerned
Posted on 2005-10-28 12:21:00
Tags: activism
Words: 111

For people that are registered to vote in Texas, there's an election next Tuesday (November 8). Please vote No on Proposition 2, which would not only ban gay marriage in the Texas Constitution, but prevent any "legal status identical or similar to marriage". So, clearly civil unions are not permitted, but perhaps even legal documents that would give djedi and I some rights associated with marriage (visitation rights in the hospital, next-of-kin type status, etc.)

This is a special election, so turnout will likely be low, which means that we do have a chance to reject this amendment!

You can go to friendsvote.org to find your precinct number and polling place.

10 comments

flag burning, mostly
Mood: mellow
Music: nothin' at the moment
Posted on 2005-06-23 10:15:00
Tags: activism flag burning python challenge
Words: 263

So the House passed the flag-burning amendment yesterday, and people think it has a chance in the Senate.

Quick poll on the subject:
[ Fill out Poll ] [ View Poll Results ] [ Discuss Results ] [ Close Poll ]

Poll #518624 Flag burning
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 7

Should flag burning be legal?

View Answers

Yes
7 (100.0%)

No, but the amendment should pass giving Congress the power to make it illegal in the future
0 (0.0%)

No
0 (0.0%)


I wrote my senators (Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn) just now.


I would urge you to vote against the constitutional amendment that would give
Congress the power to ban desecration of the American flag. I agree that the
flag is a powerful symbol of our country, that many have fought and died for.
However, they have fought and died for the freedoms that the flag represents,
including the freedom to disagree with the government. Free speech is one of
our country's most important rights, and any curtailment of such should be
avoided.

In addition, flag burning is such a rare event that it seems foolish to amend
the Constitution to prevent it. Our Constitution has been amended very few
times in the history of our nation, and never has it been amended for trivial
or symbolic reasons.

All these concerns notwithstanding, the text of the proposed amendment is very
broad and open to interpretations. Does this mean that wearing or washing a
T-shirt with a picture of the American flag on it is "desecrating" it?

I hope you share my concerns about this amendment, and I would be interested in
hearing your thoughts on the matter. Thank you for your time!


In non-flag related news, I did another Python Challenge level, but I'm stuck on level 5.

ASMC rehearsal is tonight - hopefully it won't be as tiring as the last one. Especially since I'm more tired going into it...

8 comments

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