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Political Issues/Comments / Re: Gay Marriage Roll Call Veto Vote Today

« on: April 09, 2009, 02:37:47 PM »

JLB: We want to protect our children and it's a natural instinct to stick to what we know works.  I respect that.  But we're talking about the state's role here, not how you want to raise your own children.  The state needs to protect kids from many backgrounds and place them with parents who can care for them.  Vermont and the rest of the country are much more complicated than the values you can articulate and encourage in your own kids.  Two men raising a daughter has happened and is happening, so it isn't "outside" our evolution or design, and it's presumptuous to make fundamental arguments about human nature like that, and even more dangerous to apply it to a regulatory body like the state government. 

Think of how many children are at risk who are either with abusive families or without a caretaker at all.  In terms of adoption -- which apparently doesn't fit into your view of marriage, since it's not based on procreation -- agencies have very, very high standards for prospective parents.  Income, living arrangement, past history (especially with drug/alcohol use) are all carefully investigated before a child is placed into the custody of an adoptive family.  The process of adoption is also a very expensive -- about 30-50k per child, which I believe is around the median annual income for a Vermonter.  The state should be helping with those costs, not putting up barriers, for example, by not recognizing a family unities (eg: gay marriage).

I'm close with a couple who have adopted two children.  It was a difficult and extremely expensive process for them, and it took four years of hopes, trials and let-downs.  They went through an organization based in Oregon that presented their profile -- their names, pictures, mini-biographies, whether they have any other kids, what values they wish to encourage -- to mothers who were preparing to offer their child for adoption.  Their profile was presented along with many others, both gay and straight, men and women.  You can imagine how intimate and moving it is for a mother to choose you and your married one to take care of their child.

They now care for two beautiful girls, Sarah and Esther, who are healthy and happy, bilingual in English and Dutch, both very exploratory and talkative.  One father is an engineer at Google; the other stays at home with the little ones, but finished his Ph.D. in child psychology before they began the adoption process.  Both they and the two girls were lucky to be in a financial position to afford the adoption.

For the girls, having two fathers isn't strange at all.  Children are incredibly adept and protecting them from diversity is the social equivalent of spraying your house with Lysol every five minutes.  Kids intuit and understand love much more easily than adults.  Adults worry about petty things like: so are they both called dad?  (One is "dad", the other is "papa".)  What will they do when they hit 13 and start maturing?  (Gay men rarely have a shortage of girl friends.  Trust me, it's covered.)  Will they be made fun of in school?  (Everyone is made fun of in school.  When we were kids, we stood up, hated our parents a little, got through, coped.  Went home, had a good meal.)

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Political Issues/Comments / Re: Gay Marriage Roll Call Veto Vote Today

« on: April 08, 2009, 07:36:20 PM »

Here is the statement of purpose from bill S.115 (which legalized gay marriage in Vermont):

"This bill proposes to permit same-sex couples to marry starting September 1, 2009. Couples will not be permitted to establish civil unions after such date, but existing civil unions will continue to be recognized.  The bill would allow clergy the right to refuse to solemnize a marriage, if to do so would violate the clergy person’s right to religious liberty protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and by Chapter I, Article 3 of the Constitution of the State of Vermont."

Here's the full document in PDF format:
http://www.leg.state.vt.us/docs/legdoc.cfm?URL=/docs/2010/bills/intro/S-115.pdf

This is not about taking away liberty, it's about protecting it.  Your rights within the church will not be compromised.  Nobody has any interest in crashing a school dance or homeless shelter. 

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Political Issues/Comments / Re: My Position On Gay Marriage - March 29, 2009

« on: April 08, 2009, 01:49:25 PM »

Yesterday was my friend's 27th birthday.  I called and said, hey gay marriage in Vermont!  He said yeah that's great, but I'm in California and I haven't had a date in 4 months.  We laughed, caught up; he complained about his professors, I complained about work.  In talking about mutual friends we inevitably took stock of who lost their job, which grants got pulled, who had to move back in with their chain smoking grandmother, etc.  We did that yesterday and it was a buzz-kill, but to end the conversation with "four states for marriage equality, this is great" --- truly, that was a gift.

I live in Austin, TX with two friends from Fairfax.  We piled into my car with Vermont plates and drove around town yesterday.  Technically we drove my car because it's the only car that's serviceable right now and we needed groceries, but genuinely, the Vermont plates were a hit.  People WAVED!  There's a prevailing mood of gloom and cynicism here, just as there is all over the country, especially around the university where nobody knows what will come of them after graduation; but when the state (any state) does something to protect individual liberty, not to take it away or ignore it as less important, at a time when politicians are promising "bold moves" without quite understanding what will happen: it provides the kind of hope that what will get us through this recession.  If the state is to be trusted to go into incomprehensible debt in an attempt to restore our economy, the state must also show its citizens, who will have to pay for this debt, that it trusts them as 300 million individuals to have the values and intelligence to handle such a burden.  That isn't done by mandate or by expecting the government to list out what those values or hard work will be.  We're Americans.  We'll figure it out on our own, we're the most inventive, resourceful people in the world, but it can't happen if we lose sight of equality and the basic principles on which this country was founded. 

Tomorrow is my own birthday, and I'll be turning 27 as well.  My friend and I were born two days apart, but our poor mothers went into labor on the same day, on the 6th.  (So, so sorry mom.  On so many levels.)  I know my friend will call, and since we'll have nothing to talk about since we exhausted all that chit-chat two days earlier, I think I might tell him to check out this site - I'm really proud of some of the comments on here, especially this public letter from Representative Gilbert.  The rest of the country could learn a lot from the Vermonter's dependence on holding one's own.  I keep telling people, trust me, they are plenty sick of gay marriage in Vermont, it's the LAST thing on their minds.  But what they will NEVER put up with the government telling them what they can and can't do, which is exactly what Douglas was doing with that belligerent veto. 

Good work, Vermont.