It is September again. Cool weather. Beautiful leaf colors. Picnics in the autumn. Football season. In autumn, not one in five men I know can talk about anything other than their work, girls, sex, or the religion of the oblong pigskin ball.
The other day I noted on my Facebook account that
"My favorite definition of football -- a game where you hurt guys, and people cheer.
"My favorite quote about college football -- college football is about as central to college academics as bullfighting is to horticulture. (Paraphrasing from Frank deFord editorial)"
Someone I accepted as a Facebook friend wrote me this
(brace yourself)
“One of my favorite quotes,
Elder Boyd K. Packer: “You are mistaken. There is a great purpose in it. You have not understood.
He tells you that this is not a spectator sport—it is for the participants. It is for their sake that he permits the game to continue. Great benefit may come to them because of the challenges they face.
He points to players sitting on the bench, suited up, eager to enter the game. “When each one of them has been in, when each has met the day for which he has prepared so long and trained so hard, then, and only then, will I call the game.”
Until then, it may not matter which team seems to be ahead. The present score is really not crucial. There are games within games, you know. Whatever is happening to the team, each player will have his day.” -- Mystery of Life
(Football is a great metaphor, a brutal one, but this is life!)”
RIGHT ASCENSION COMMENTARY
I do not know where to begin with this.
These comments may be the most idiotic things I have ever seen printed in my Facebook account.
For starters: Life is not football or a football metaphor.
Aside from the patronizing tone of both quotations involved, we should not make the mistake of believing life is supposed to be vicious just because it happens to be vicious. That makes as much sense as believing the Republican Party is stupid because it has people in it believing stupid ideas.
Football is primarily masochism versus sadism. The teams come and go. ULCA vs Stanford. BYU vs. Utah. Sodom vs. Gomorrah. Sadism represents the viewers and coaches. Masochism represents the players. If guys want to test their manhood, they should do it the way men have always tested their manhood – get married, make money, or go to war.
Football is a bu$ine$$. That is true in professional sport, but it is even true in college football. Consider all the money generated by football. Consider the money donated to schools by wealthy alumni attracted by the game. Consider the money first; consider the money foremost. Salaries aside the point, most in college football get some sort of financial take from the bu$ine$$. They might lose interest in the game if it weren’t for money – both over and under the table.
Betting represents the most important part of football finance This also means the most important part of the game is how it is set and fixed.
I find it hard to take seriously the contention that America suffers a financial crisis when the money continues to flow so completely into football.
REAL MANHOOD
Too many fathers think of football as a rite of passage to manhood. If guys want to prove their manhood, they should prove it the old fashioned ways – warfare or marriage.
Frank deFord spoke this on National Public Radio, 30 December 2009. Although he discusses professional football, I quote it at length because he could have just as easily said roughly the same things about college and high school ball:
“Only now, at last, are the people in the sport beginning to acknowledge what has been obvious: Football is a gladiator entertainment. Indeed, let us give credit to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. Yes, it took him long enough — but in the past month, he has finally begun to take the league out of the same kind of denial that baseball suffered so long vis-a-vis steroids.
“Goodell has issued new, more stringent rules with regard to concussions and has urged former players to will their brains to a study at Boston University, which is seeking to determine how much the sport scrambles brains.
“Invariably, however, when any attempts to improve football safety are suggested, a cry goes up that the spoilsports are out to destroy the very essence of the game. Hey, it's supposed to be a cruel sport. And, yes, it not only is, but as the players get bigger and faster, the collisions increase in their raw manpower.
“Moreover, in a real way, the focus of the action has moved, inexorably, up the body. What was originally football became more legball, then armball and now, essentially, headball.
“Don't worry, fans — none of this is going to endanger the spectator sport. Indeed, if anything, football becomes more popular, more vicariously exciting, as it becomes more dangerous. No, the greater cultural question is at the American grass roots: whether the new enlightenment — which will include yet another congressional hearing Monday — will affect the way the sport is viewed for our children.
“I can remember when educated, middle-class parents let their children smoke — and that's simply not accepted today. Will the same sort of people now conclude that they don't want their sons going out for football?
“Far more boys play football in high school than any other sport — well more than a million each autumn. For many Americans, it's a rite of passage for their sons to be on the football team.
“Nobody says that you learn to be a man playing baseball, say, or basketball. But that has always been a romantic part of the attraction of American football.
“But as the risks of football injury and long-term disability become more exposed, will many parents decide that it's better for their boys to play a safer but less glamorous sport? What price manly?"
RIGHT ASCENSION CALL TO ACTION
Well, readers – it may be too much to urge people to take a football free autumn. But we would all feel better.
At most, we should allow our children to play touch football in the park. Anything beyond that is dangerous to their health and character.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE UTAH REPUBLICAN CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION
I have been a member of the Republican Party since 1974, but here lately I feel like I am in a family that has gone dysfunctional.
Republicans in Congress express shock – shock! – at the federal deficit and propose huge spending cuts, mostly against the interests of poor and middle class people. Republicans will leave no billionaire behind in this crisis, of course; they will continue somehow to grow the military budget.
I find Republican hypocrisy about debt utterly breathtaking. The founding fathers wrote the Constitution in part to consolidate commerce, currency, and debt. The USA fought the Revolutionary War, Civil War, both World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan Wars all on borrowed money. Republican presidents Nixon, Reagan, Bush the Second, and various congresses all increased federal debt and debt ceilings
Americans have for ages purchased The American Dream with both federal and individual debt.
The American Way has always pushed payments two generations into the future. Why has the current crop of Republicans suddenly become righteous about debt?
Debt is not the main problem.
Americans consume mass quantities and shift payment into the future. We cannot sustain The American Dream and American in current funds. This has been our situation for ages. We always insist that Congress fund several federal pet programs to the max, but we want someone else to pay for those programs. Americans want the services of government but do not want to pay for them in taxes. So, both Democrats and Republicans implicitly supported deficit spending policies.
Most of your constituents will support federal budget cuts so long as Congress cuts programs where they do not have any sort of vested interest.
American culture is the problem.
Meanwhile, Congressional leaders and President Obama make speeches, go through complex public spectacles and rituals, and do not deal with the real problems of a culture too big to fund.
FIVE CALLS TO ACTION
I realize that a good letter deals in only one big issue at a time. However, today I do not quite have time to do that.
1. I would find it interesting to hear you express for the public record what we should reduce or eliminate in American culture.
2. The House and the Senate will need to raise the debt ceiling quickly.
3. The tax system is too complicated. Congress should reform it so everyone pays something into the funding of America.
4. Congress will have to raise taxes on the very rich and revoke a lot of tax credits on corporations and individuals, even the ones with political clout.
5. The oversees Empire of the United States has become too complicated and expensive to maintain. This means that the military needs streamlining, modernizing, and reducing.
Republicans in Congress express shock – shock! – at the federal deficit and propose huge spending cuts, mostly against the interests of poor and middle class people. Republicans will leave no billionaire behind in this crisis, of course; they will continue somehow to grow the military budget.
I find Republican hypocrisy about debt utterly breathtaking. The founding fathers wrote the Constitution in part to consolidate commerce, currency, and debt. The USA fought the Revolutionary War, Civil War, both World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan Wars all on borrowed money. Republican presidents Nixon, Reagan, Bush the Second, and various congresses all increased federal debt and debt ceilings
Americans have for ages purchased The American Dream with both federal and individual debt.
The American Way has always pushed payments two generations into the future. Why has the current crop of Republicans suddenly become righteous about debt?
Debt is not the main problem.
Americans consume mass quantities and shift payment into the future. We cannot sustain The American Dream and American in current funds. This has been our situation for ages. We always insist that Congress fund several federal pet programs to the max, but we want someone else to pay for those programs. Americans want the services of government but do not want to pay for them in taxes. So, both Democrats and Republicans implicitly supported deficit spending policies.
Most of your constituents will support federal budget cuts so long as Congress cuts programs where they do not have any sort of vested interest.
American culture is the problem.
Meanwhile, Congressional leaders and President Obama make speeches, go through complex public spectacles and rituals, and do not deal with the real problems of a culture too big to fund.
FIVE CALLS TO ACTION
I realize that a good letter deals in only one big issue at a time. However, today I do not quite have time to do that.
1. I would find it interesting to hear you express for the public record what we should reduce or eliminate in American culture.
2. The House and the Senate will need to raise the debt ceiling quickly.
3. The tax system is too complicated. Congress should reform it so everyone pays something into the funding of America.
4. Congress will have to raise taxes on the very rich and revoke a lot of tax credits on corporations and individuals, even the ones with political clout.
5. The oversees Empire of the United States has become too complicated and expensive to maintain. This means that the military needs streamlining, modernizing, and reducing.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
100 YEAR S OF MY FAMILY HISTORY ON GRANDVIEW HILL
This is the text of the talk I presented to my ward's primary sharing time. The information in the brackets adds details for a general readership / adult reading audience.
I always wanted to start a church talk this way:
Brothers and sisters -- young and old and indeterminate:
boys and girls and budding little wise guys:
100 years ago, in 1911, my grandfather and grandmother bought a farm and built a brick home a mile north of this church [Grandview South Stake Center]. They planted peach and apricot trees and raised a family of four boys and a girl. They watered the trees and plants, trimmed them, and harvested fruit from them. They sold peaches and apricots. They grew grapes and made grape juice. Very old grape juice.
My father started to milk the family’s cows at age 6. His father also taught him how to prune and water trees and pick the fruit. He learned how to grow grapes from his father and how to grow raspberries in Lincoln High School in Orem.
74 years ago [1937], my father bought a farm on Grandview Hill [1650 West 1460 North Provo]. Westridge Elementary School and Rotary Park are where his farm once stood. My father’s farm had apple, pear, and peach trees, grape rows, raspberry patches, flowers, and vegetables gardens . Father trimmed trees in winter. He sprayed the trees with stuff to get rid of bugs and watered trees in summer. He and his workers picked fruit in Septembers and Octobers.
70 years ago [c 1941], Father planted that row of tall old pine trees east of Westridge school and north of the parking lot. The pine trees were all about five inches tall. His barn stood 150 feet north of the last pine tree of that big row of pine trees.
63 years ago [18 July 1949], my Father married my Mother.
61 years ago [January 1950], He built our first red brick home where the park restroom now stands.
I arrived here 55 years ago [September 1956]. The street in front of Westridge School did not have sidewalks when I walked to and from Grandview School. The neighborhood had a few homes, and many open fields where kids played. There were other farms, too.
My father liked to do concrete in April, so I help him. In spring we would burn the dry weeds off ditch banks so water could flow to the trees. When I got older, I drove tractors and trucks around the farm and helped watered trees.
About 69 years ago, [1942], my father built a white wood building called a “packing shed.” Where the tennis court now stand at the corner of the park, In that building, he and his workers (including me) sorted the fruit by size using a noisy machine. Big Medium Small Tiny. We put the fruit in baskets and boxes, placed them in big refrigerated cooler rooms to stay fresh until we sold them. I helped sell fruit when I was a boy.
41 years ago [April 1970], my family moved into the house where I now live. The neighborhood then had the street in front of Westridge School [1460 North Street], and the street where the C***l family now lives [1750 West] and the street where the R******* C******** family now lives [1400 North]. The street where the S******t and S****s families now live [1500 West] was a dirt lane lined with wild roses and tall shade trees and fruit trees. The street where I live was then a dirt road with an open irrigation ditch and no sidewalk.
My relatives started joining the Church [of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints] in the 1930s. When I was your age, I attended church in an old chapel 9 blocks northeast of this building [Columbia Lane, Provo]. It belonged to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints then. Today, the Baptist Church owns it.
I also attended church in that brown chapel 4 blocks northeast of this church [1350 West]. The church held primary in the middle of the week in the afternoon after school. We primary children studied Jesus and The Articles of Faith. {I held up my old primary bandallo around my neck} On our birthdays, the boys and girls would contribute coins to a bank in the shape of Primary Children’s Hospital. We sent that money to the hospital to care for poor children.
39 years ago when I was a priest, [November 1972] the ward moved into this chapel [Grandview South Stake Center, Grand Avenue]. At that time the church held Sunday school classes separately for adults, big kids, and little children. In fact, I blessed the sacrament for the Junior Sunday School children at this desk right there.
Today [24 July 2011], I remember the open fields and all the fruit trees, white with blossoms in May and glorious in autumn color in October. My grandparents and parents have all long gone.
The past is only the present a second ago. When you get good at writing, I hope you will write down what you do in your homes and in church so that the children of the future will remember you too.
I always wanted to start a church talk this way:
Brothers and sisters -- young and old and indeterminate:
boys and girls and budding little wise guys:
100 years ago, in 1911, my grandfather and grandmother bought a farm and built a brick home a mile north of this church [Grandview South Stake Center]. They planted peach and apricot trees and raised a family of four boys and a girl. They watered the trees and plants, trimmed them, and harvested fruit from them. They sold peaches and apricots. They grew grapes and made grape juice. Very old grape juice.
My father started to milk the family’s cows at age 6. His father also taught him how to prune and water trees and pick the fruit. He learned how to grow grapes from his father and how to grow raspberries in Lincoln High School in Orem.
74 years ago [1937], my father bought a farm on Grandview Hill [1650 West 1460 North Provo]. Westridge Elementary School and Rotary Park are where his farm once stood. My father’s farm had apple, pear, and peach trees, grape rows, raspberry patches, flowers, and vegetables gardens . Father trimmed trees in winter. He sprayed the trees with stuff to get rid of bugs and watered trees in summer. He and his workers picked fruit in Septembers and Octobers.
70 years ago [c 1941], Father planted that row of tall old pine trees east of Westridge school and north of the parking lot. The pine trees were all about five inches tall. His barn stood 150 feet north of the last pine tree of that big row of pine trees.
63 years ago [18 July 1949], my Father married my Mother.
61 years ago [January 1950], He built our first red brick home where the park restroom now stands.
I arrived here 55 years ago [September 1956]. The street in front of Westridge School did not have sidewalks when I walked to and from Grandview School. The neighborhood had a few homes, and many open fields where kids played. There were other farms, too.
My father liked to do concrete in April, so I help him. In spring we would burn the dry weeds off ditch banks so water could flow to the trees. When I got older, I drove tractors and trucks around the farm and helped watered trees.
About 69 years ago, [1942], my father built a white wood building called a “packing shed.” Where the tennis court now stand at the corner of the park, In that building, he and his workers (including me) sorted the fruit by size using a noisy machine. Big Medium Small Tiny. We put the fruit in baskets and boxes, placed them in big refrigerated cooler rooms to stay fresh until we sold them. I helped sell fruit when I was a boy.
41 years ago [April 1970], my family moved into the house where I now live. The neighborhood then had the street in front of Westridge School [1460 North Street], and the street where the C***l family now lives [1750 West] and the street where the R******* C******** family now lives [1400 North]. The street where the S******t and S****s families now live [1500 West] was a dirt lane lined with wild roses and tall shade trees and fruit trees. The street where I live was then a dirt road with an open irrigation ditch and no sidewalk.
My relatives started joining the Church [of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints] in the 1930s. When I was your age, I attended church in an old chapel 9 blocks northeast of this building [Columbia Lane, Provo]. It belonged to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints then. Today, the Baptist Church owns it.
I also attended church in that brown chapel 4 blocks northeast of this church [1350 West]. The church held primary in the middle of the week in the afternoon after school. We primary children studied Jesus and The Articles of Faith. {I held up my old primary bandallo around my neck} On our birthdays, the boys and girls would contribute coins to a bank in the shape of Primary Children’s Hospital. We sent that money to the hospital to care for poor children.
39 years ago when I was a priest, [November 1972] the ward moved into this chapel [Grandview South Stake Center, Grand Avenue]. At that time the church held Sunday school classes separately for adults, big kids, and little children. In fact, I blessed the sacrament for the Junior Sunday School children at this desk right there.
Today [24 July 2011], I remember the open fields and all the fruit trees, white with blossoms in May and glorious in autumn color in October. My grandparents and parents have all long gone.
The past is only the present a second ago. When you get good at writing, I hope you will write down what you do in your homes and in church so that the children of the future will remember you too.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
REMEMBERING PRESIDENT'S WIVES: HOSTESSES, ADVOCATES, POWER BROKERS
Here is the short list of wives of the Presidents of the United States who either served in my lifetime or died in my lifetime:
Grace Coolidge died in1957
Edith Wilson 1961
Eleanor Roosevelt 1962
Mamie Eisenhower 1979
Bess Truman 1982 died age 97
Pat Nixon 1992
Jackie Kennedy 1994 died age 64
Lady Bird Johnson 2007 died age 94
Betty Ford 2011 died age 93
Here are the living former and current first ladies:
Rosalyn Carter still alive and now the senior living former first lady
Nancy Davis Reagan still alive and now the oldest of the living group at 90.
Barbara Bush still alive
Hilary Rodham Clinton still alive
Laura Bush still alive
Michelle Obama current first lady. The first president’s wife born in my lifetime
RIGHT ASCENSION COMMENTARY
First of all, I think, the president's wife should be called the President's Wife. "First Lady" is way too precious for the 21st Century.
In 1976, most conservative Utah LDS political activists and voters disliked Betty Ford. They were uncomfortable for starters that she had discussed openly breast cancer, for they did not want to discuss boobage in public, even in a medical context. She openly campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment, which Mormon men detested. The ERA in their minds would open the world up to more radical lesbianism. It also represented in their minds something that would force the LDS Church to admit women to the priesthood and pay women equally with men in the work place. Taking women seriously as equals was just about the last thing the Old Boys in Utah wanted to do under any circumstances.
The Utahns did not like Betty Ford especially after she spoke frankly on 60 Minutes about her children’s marijuana use and premarital sex. Betty made the comments around 1975; at that point she had lived in Washington since 1949. It says a lot about the drug and sexual climate of the place that she made those admissions without batting an eye. Washington has been soggy and kinky for ages; those are workplace hazards of the place. When she went public about her alcohol problem, it was certainly no surprise to people who knew the Washington social scene well. Washington’s cultural tolerances of alcohol caught many public figures and their wives.
The president’s wives are not elected to office with their husbands. Technically the best first ladies were people like Grace Coolidge, Bess Truman, Mamie Eisenhower, Jackie Kennedy, Pat Nixon, and Laura Bush who did hostess duties and little else.
Unfortunately, this nation has endured some Eva Perons of the West.
When I was quite a little boy, Edith (Mrs. Woodrow) Wilson died, almost a year into the Kennedy Administration. She attended Kennedy inaugural with about seven other past and future first ladies. In 1919, her husband suffered a stroke that incapacitated him, but she helped keep up appearances and she in fact did act in some ways as president. Technically, she should have orchestrated a resignation so that a fully functioning President Marshall could have been in place to meet the needs of the 1920s. However, the powerful do not give up power easily, so she became in some ways the first female acting president of the USA.
The first Mrs. Wilson, incidentally, was a civil rights social activist in Washington before her untimely death.
Even today, the hard line conservatives cannot stand Eleanor Roosevelt. It is hard to tell what they dislike most about her – her stands on civil and human rights, her instrumentality in founding the United Nations, or “My Day.” At one point in her first lady career, Hilary attempted to emulate Eleanor with her own weekly column, but she clearly did not have Eleanor’s stamina or clear writing style. Oddly enough, Eleanor influenced an actor/ screen guild president / California governor named Ronald Reagan. From 1975-1979, he presented nearly 1000 short editorials – most from a conservative point of view – on his syndicated radio program, most of them written by himself. The editorials also appeared in some places as a newspaper column. The spirit of “My Day” was not far away.
Americans adored Jackie Kennedy for no substantial reasons other than she was young, beautiful, stylish, glamorous, gracious, and sophisticated. It is interesting how many people prefer a first lady image rather than a working first lady resembling Hilary, who labored on health care (and botched it). She later became an actual elected senator and an actual secretary of state – both of which eluded Eleanor Roosevelt. She did serve as a United Nations delegate. She could have been the first secretary general of the United Nations, a position that her husband Franklin seriously contemplated before his death.
Jackie’s glamour image is somewhat misleading, because she was also bright and a hard worker – particular in the herculean efforts she brought to the White House restoration project from 1961-62.
Jackie was born in 1929 and served as first lady while in her 30s. She might still be alive if her health and emotions and not been undercut by the horrors that she witnessed in her lifetime.
Lady Bird and Betty are my first lady heroes – tough talking, willing to make a difference. Lady Bird was a Texas business woman along with being the wife of Senator Lyndon B. Johnson. I could not stand him, but Lady Bird was first rate. First of all, she put up with Lyndon’s eccentricities, and that took real character. Second she got involved in the cause of Texas wildflowers and national beautification. What’s not to love there?
Mrs Carter also had her causes, but she came and went quickly. I find it hard even to remember her as first lady.
Betty Ford spoke out on the dangers of drug addiction and of breast cancer. Heaven only knows how many lives she helped save and redeem. It is true that she supported abortion on demand as birth control, but that was hardly unique in the period – so did Carter, Hilary, Obama, and the Bushes.
Utahns adored Nancy Reagan in 1976. Well, Utahns disliked Betty Ford intensely in 1976. This situation has its ironies: for starters, the Ford family was one of the best looking political families ever with few skeletons in its closet. Certainly the Reagan family was more dysfunctional than the Ford family; heaven only knows their private lives could not stand scrutiny.
Nancy’s Reagan’s interference in the Reagan administration goes beyond legend. It is infamous. Anyone who consults an astrologer before overseeing her husband’s bookings cannot be all good. Peggy Noonan reported in What I saw at the Revolution that Nancy did not particularly care for the Sandinistas; she thought her husband’s public support for them was bad for the president’s image. She also wanted her husband to stop speaking out on antiabortion themes as well. That sort of thing only pleased his base support and did nothing to expand his foundation. She could sometimes satirize her own image – she once sang “Second Hand Rose” at a GridIron Dinner, but basically she and Madame Chiang Kai-shek would have gotten along famously. Who knows, they might have.
Barbara Bush also presented a force to reckon with in her husband’s presidency. She makes an interesting contrast to Betty Ford. Ford turned cancer and addiction adversity into causes that helped redeem thousands, maybe millions of people. In the early 1950s, her daughter died of blood cancer after early experimental chemotherapy treatment. Barbara so internalized her grief that her hair turned prematurely snow white. She could have advocated for childhood cancer victims – as far as I can remember, she did not. At least not to the extent that Betty Ford advocated for cancer and addiction.
Hilary was a power in her own right even in her husband’s administration. As a result, she was the most despised first lady since Eleanor. In all fairness to her, I think she would have been a marginally better president than Bill. She certainly could have done no worse.
She really should have been the first presidential wife to divorce her president in his term. Bill’s extramarital activities with Monica Lewinsky – I called her the courtesan of Lewinsky – certainly caused her plenty of negative emotions and of embarrassment. If her husband had possessed any decency, he should have resigned, but that is another story.
Few public figures are as difficult to write about as Laura Bush. As first lady, she did advocate for literacy, yet her years as first lady tend to fade in the mind – something that we cannot say of Hilary. As a youngster, Laura Welch was involved in an auto accident that killed another teenager. She could have taken that tragedy and used it to advocate for youth driving reforms. Instead she internalized it.
Michelle Obama is the first first lady actually born in my lifetime. I actually remember January 1964, because it was when Joseph Fielding Smith dedicated the church building I attended as a boy.
Grace Coolidge died in1957
Edith Wilson 1961
Eleanor Roosevelt 1962
Mamie Eisenhower 1979
Bess Truman 1982 died age 97
Pat Nixon 1992
Jackie Kennedy 1994 died age 64
Lady Bird Johnson 2007 died age 94
Betty Ford 2011 died age 93
Here are the living former and current first ladies:
Rosalyn Carter still alive and now the senior living former first lady
Nancy Davis Reagan still alive and now the oldest of the living group at 90.
Barbara Bush still alive
Hilary Rodham Clinton still alive
Laura Bush still alive
Michelle Obama current first lady. The first president’s wife born in my lifetime
RIGHT ASCENSION COMMENTARY
First of all, I think, the president's wife should be called the President's Wife. "First Lady" is way too precious for the 21st Century.
In 1976, most conservative Utah LDS political activists and voters disliked Betty Ford. They were uncomfortable for starters that she had discussed openly breast cancer, for they did not want to discuss boobage in public, even in a medical context. She openly campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment, which Mormon men detested. The ERA in their minds would open the world up to more radical lesbianism. It also represented in their minds something that would force the LDS Church to admit women to the priesthood and pay women equally with men in the work place. Taking women seriously as equals was just about the last thing the Old Boys in Utah wanted to do under any circumstances.
The Utahns did not like Betty Ford especially after she spoke frankly on 60 Minutes about her children’s marijuana use and premarital sex. Betty made the comments around 1975; at that point she had lived in Washington since 1949. It says a lot about the drug and sexual climate of the place that she made those admissions without batting an eye. Washington has been soggy and kinky for ages; those are workplace hazards of the place. When she went public about her alcohol problem, it was certainly no surprise to people who knew the Washington social scene well. Washington’s cultural tolerances of alcohol caught many public figures and their wives.
The president’s wives are not elected to office with their husbands. Technically the best first ladies were people like Grace Coolidge, Bess Truman, Mamie Eisenhower, Jackie Kennedy, Pat Nixon, and Laura Bush who did hostess duties and little else.
Unfortunately, this nation has endured some Eva Perons of the West.
When I was quite a little boy, Edith (Mrs. Woodrow) Wilson died, almost a year into the Kennedy Administration. She attended Kennedy inaugural with about seven other past and future first ladies. In 1919, her husband suffered a stroke that incapacitated him, but she helped keep up appearances and she in fact did act in some ways as president. Technically, she should have orchestrated a resignation so that a fully functioning President Marshall could have been in place to meet the needs of the 1920s. However, the powerful do not give up power easily, so she became in some ways the first female acting president of the USA.
The first Mrs. Wilson, incidentally, was a civil rights social activist in Washington before her untimely death.
Even today, the hard line conservatives cannot stand Eleanor Roosevelt. It is hard to tell what they dislike most about her – her stands on civil and human rights, her instrumentality in founding the United Nations, or “My Day.” At one point in her first lady career, Hilary attempted to emulate Eleanor with her own weekly column, but she clearly did not have Eleanor’s stamina or clear writing style. Oddly enough, Eleanor influenced an actor/ screen guild president / California governor named Ronald Reagan. From 1975-1979, he presented nearly 1000 short editorials – most from a conservative point of view – on his syndicated radio program, most of them written by himself. The editorials also appeared in some places as a newspaper column. The spirit of “My Day” was not far away.
Americans adored Jackie Kennedy for no substantial reasons other than she was young, beautiful, stylish, glamorous, gracious, and sophisticated. It is interesting how many people prefer a first lady image rather than a working first lady resembling Hilary, who labored on health care (and botched it). She later became an actual elected senator and an actual secretary of state – both of which eluded Eleanor Roosevelt. She did serve as a United Nations delegate. She could have been the first secretary general of the United Nations, a position that her husband Franklin seriously contemplated before his death.
Jackie’s glamour image is somewhat misleading, because she was also bright and a hard worker – particular in the herculean efforts she brought to the White House restoration project from 1961-62.
Jackie was born in 1929 and served as first lady while in her 30s. She might still be alive if her health and emotions and not been undercut by the horrors that she witnessed in her lifetime.
Lady Bird and Betty are my first lady heroes – tough talking, willing to make a difference. Lady Bird was a Texas business woman along with being the wife of Senator Lyndon B. Johnson. I could not stand him, but Lady Bird was first rate. First of all, she put up with Lyndon’s eccentricities, and that took real character. Second she got involved in the cause of Texas wildflowers and national beautification. What’s not to love there?
Mrs Carter also had her causes, but she came and went quickly. I find it hard even to remember her as first lady.
Betty Ford spoke out on the dangers of drug addiction and of breast cancer. Heaven only knows how many lives she helped save and redeem. It is true that she supported abortion on demand as birth control, but that was hardly unique in the period – so did Carter, Hilary, Obama, and the Bushes.
Utahns adored Nancy Reagan in 1976. Well, Utahns disliked Betty Ford intensely in 1976. This situation has its ironies: for starters, the Ford family was one of the best looking political families ever with few skeletons in its closet. Certainly the Reagan family was more dysfunctional than the Ford family; heaven only knows their private lives could not stand scrutiny.
Nancy’s Reagan’s interference in the Reagan administration goes beyond legend. It is infamous. Anyone who consults an astrologer before overseeing her husband’s bookings cannot be all good. Peggy Noonan reported in What I saw at the Revolution that Nancy did not particularly care for the Sandinistas; she thought her husband’s public support for them was bad for the president’s image. She also wanted her husband to stop speaking out on antiabortion themes as well. That sort of thing only pleased his base support and did nothing to expand his foundation. She could sometimes satirize her own image – she once sang “Second Hand Rose” at a GridIron Dinner, but basically she and Madame Chiang Kai-shek would have gotten along famously. Who knows, they might have.
Barbara Bush also presented a force to reckon with in her husband’s presidency. She makes an interesting contrast to Betty Ford. Ford turned cancer and addiction adversity into causes that helped redeem thousands, maybe millions of people. In the early 1950s, her daughter died of blood cancer after early experimental chemotherapy treatment. Barbara so internalized her grief that her hair turned prematurely snow white. She could have advocated for childhood cancer victims – as far as I can remember, she did not. At least not to the extent that Betty Ford advocated for cancer and addiction.
Hilary was a power in her own right even in her husband’s administration. As a result, she was the most despised first lady since Eleanor. In all fairness to her, I think she would have been a marginally better president than Bill. She certainly could have done no worse.
She really should have been the first presidential wife to divorce her president in his term. Bill’s extramarital activities with Monica Lewinsky – I called her the courtesan of Lewinsky – certainly caused her plenty of negative emotions and of embarrassment. If her husband had possessed any decency, he should have resigned, but that is another story.
Few public figures are as difficult to write about as Laura Bush. As first lady, she did advocate for literacy, yet her years as first lady tend to fade in the mind – something that we cannot say of Hilary. As a youngster, Laura Welch was involved in an auto accident that killed another teenager. She could have taken that tragedy and used it to advocate for youth driving reforms. Instead she internalized it.
Michelle Obama is the first first lady actually born in my lifetime. I actually remember January 1964, because it was when Joseph Fielding Smith dedicated the church building I attended as a boy.
Monday, July 4, 2011
AN EDITORIAL COMMENTING ON A DENIAL EDITORIAL
This editorial has that Ukrainian Easter Doll quality, for it is an editorial comment on an editorial comment.
First the credits where credits are due:
The Never, Never Land of denial
© 2011 Deseret News Publishing Company | All rights reserved
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705375545/The-Never-Never-Land-of-denial.html
By Timothy R. Clark Deseret News
Published: Monday, July 4, 2011 9:13 a.m. MDT
Timothy R. Clark, Ph.D., is an author, international management consultant, former two-time CEO, Fulbright Scholar at Oxford University and Academic all-American football player at BYU. His latest two books are The Leadership Test and Epic Change.
“After civil war and the beheading of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell rose to power and became Lord Protector of England. As a leader and reformer, Cromwell commands intense controversy concerning his legacy. Some have castigated him as a ruthless dictator. Others have enshrined him as a founding father of England’s commonwealth and parliamentary democracy. Regardless of the view you take, it’s impossible to dismiss the power of the speech he made when he dismissed the Rump Parliament on April 20, 1653. It cuts to the heart of leadership intent and the tension between stewardship and self-interest.”
RIGHT ASCENSION COMMENTARY
Clark then quoted only parts of it. I prefer to quote for my editorial all of Cromwell’s dismissal of the Rump Parliament, since it is THE classic denunciation in the whole history of classic denunciations. It is the type of public address, depending on one’s political view point, that one wishes President Obama or one of his political adversaries, say Jon Huntsman, would blow in and say right to the collective pusses of the current House of Representatives, and then the Senate.
Oliver Cromwell's speech dissolving the Rump Parliament
delivered at London, England, April 20, 1653.
“It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice.
Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government.
Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.
Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess?
Ye have no more religion than my horse. Gold is your God. Which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?
Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defiled this sacred place, and turned the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices?
Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance.
Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this House; and which by God's help, and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do.
I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place.
Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.
In the name of God, go!”
Clark comments on the tone of this dismissive.
“Now resist the temptation to dismiss the speech as puritanical nonsense, moralistic high-mindedness or pious rhetoric. Even if you think it’s sanctimonious and even if Cromwell was a hypocrite, ask yourself this question, “Does this man have a point? Is the point relevant in our society, in our organizations, in our families?"
“I had finally stopped reeling from Anthony Weiner’s mockery of public service when I had to endure yet another episode of embarrassment, courtesy of Rod Blagojevich, the former governor of Illinois. Blagojevich has just been convicted on 17 counts of corruption, including attempted fraud, extortion, bribery and conspiracy. That’s not a surprise to anyone; the evidence was overwhelming. But then came his unchastened response: “Frankly, I’m stunned.” Then came the even more fantastic response: “Among the many lessons that I’ve learned from this whole experience is to try to speak a little bit less.” It made me think of a phrase by George Eliot from her novel, "Middlemarch": “Taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves.”
RIGHT ASCENSION COMMENTARY
It is fascinating how many conservatives get utterly indignant at Anthony Weiner’s . . . Well, Anthony Weiner’s weenie. It is not a crime for a married man to flirt. Nor is it a crime to lie to tabloid journalists. Many if not most find the climate in Washington – whether meteorological, political , or sexual -- poisonous these days. Whether the members of Congress live as single or married, monogamous, or adventuresome persons, Washington’s sexual climate has been of the kinky variety for a decades. Washington’s climate remains a perk or hazard of the federal public service profession.
Clark Continues:
“Isn’t it interesting that the human mind has an infinite capacity to rationalize? When reality doesn’t meet our expectations, we can escape to Never, Never Land. We can accept or deny. We can embrace reality or fashion a new version. Because humans hate discord between ourselves and reality, we always do one or the other, or perhaps a little of both. We can change ourselves or pretend to change reality. We can tell ourselves a soothing story. We have become very good at telling ourselves soothing stories, and we tend to spend an enormously long time doing it. In fact, we often wait for the impending crisis to hit before we are ready to throw away our soothing story. Public policy is the place where soothing stories abound.”
RIGHT ASCENSION COMMENTARY
I refuse to be intimidated by "reality." What is reality? It is nothing more than a collective hunch.
Inevitably when someone tells us, “You have to face reality!” What someone is really saying to us is that we have to believe his view of reality, or better put, his fantasy world view.
Clark continues
“How long did it take us to admit that smoking is a bad idea? How long will we persist in the denial that violent video games are harmful to children? How long will we contend that pornography is benign? How long will we argue that lotteries are not a regressive tax that preys on the poor? “We may each be entitled to our own set of opinions,” as the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “but we are not entitled to our own set of facts.”
RIGHT ASCENSION COMMENTARY
Countless people can prove Facts accurate through their five senses. Humans, however, always interpret the facts. Many places, Washington for example, do believe they have a right to their own collection of factual evidence.
I find Clark’s paragraph on the problems interesting, but arbitrary. He wrote a short article, so I expect that. If I had written it, I would have an arbitrary list as well, but I would include denial of the growing problems of
Ignoring the problems of alcohol.
Classifying prescription drug abuse as good and all other drug abuse as bad.
Continuing to burn fossil fuels at cheap prices
Spending trillions of dollars on the illusions of national and personal security
Relying on the Second Amendment and collecting guns to re-enforce the illusion of personal safety
Continuing to ship in foods, vegetables, and fruits from around the world at cheap prices.
Thinking that just because one has a job and makes money one is productive.
Believing that the American dream means self reliance, when in fact Americans have always purchased the American Dream on borrowed money and sent the debt two generations down the line for payment.
Clark concludes his editorial this way:
“Let me quote two men who were fast friends, then adversaries and friends again because they finally threw away the soothing stories that justified the bitterness that separated them for so long. Thomas Jefferson said, “In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.” His colleague and friend, John Adams, offered these words, “I sleep well, appetite is good, work hard, conscience is neat and easy. Content to live and willing to die. Hoping to do a little good.”
Let's try to spend less time in the Never, Never Land of denial.”
First the credits where credits are due:
The Never, Never Land of denial
© 2011 Deseret News Publishing Company | All rights reserved
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705375545/The-Never-Never-Land-of-denial.html
By Timothy R. Clark Deseret News
Published: Monday, July 4, 2011 9:13 a.m. MDT
Timothy R. Clark, Ph.D., is an author, international management consultant, former two-time CEO, Fulbright Scholar at Oxford University and Academic all-American football player at BYU. His latest two books are The Leadership Test and Epic Change.
“After civil war and the beheading of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell rose to power and became Lord Protector of England. As a leader and reformer, Cromwell commands intense controversy concerning his legacy. Some have castigated him as a ruthless dictator. Others have enshrined him as a founding father of England’s commonwealth and parliamentary democracy. Regardless of the view you take, it’s impossible to dismiss the power of the speech he made when he dismissed the Rump Parliament on April 20, 1653. It cuts to the heart of leadership intent and the tension between stewardship and self-interest.”
RIGHT ASCENSION COMMENTARY
Clark then quoted only parts of it. I prefer to quote for my editorial all of Cromwell’s dismissal of the Rump Parliament, since it is THE classic denunciation in the whole history of classic denunciations. It is the type of public address, depending on one’s political view point, that one wishes President Obama or one of his political adversaries, say Jon Huntsman, would blow in and say right to the collective pusses of the current House of Representatives, and then the Senate.
Oliver Cromwell's speech dissolving the Rump Parliament
delivered at London, England, April 20, 1653.
“It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice.
Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government.
Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.
Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess?
Ye have no more religion than my horse. Gold is your God. Which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?
Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defiled this sacred place, and turned the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices?
Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance.
Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this House; and which by God's help, and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do.
I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place.
Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.
In the name of God, go!”
Clark comments on the tone of this dismissive.
“Now resist the temptation to dismiss the speech as puritanical nonsense, moralistic high-mindedness or pious rhetoric. Even if you think it’s sanctimonious and even if Cromwell was a hypocrite, ask yourself this question, “Does this man have a point? Is the point relevant in our society, in our organizations, in our families?"
“I had finally stopped reeling from Anthony Weiner’s mockery of public service when I had to endure yet another episode of embarrassment, courtesy of Rod Blagojevich, the former governor of Illinois. Blagojevich has just been convicted on 17 counts of corruption, including attempted fraud, extortion, bribery and conspiracy. That’s not a surprise to anyone; the evidence was overwhelming. But then came his unchastened response: “Frankly, I’m stunned.” Then came the even more fantastic response: “Among the many lessons that I’ve learned from this whole experience is to try to speak a little bit less.” It made me think of a phrase by George Eliot from her novel, "Middlemarch": “Taking the world as an udder to feed our supreme selves.”
RIGHT ASCENSION COMMENTARY
It is fascinating how many conservatives get utterly indignant at Anthony Weiner’s . . . Well, Anthony Weiner’s weenie. It is not a crime for a married man to flirt. Nor is it a crime to lie to tabloid journalists. Many if not most find the climate in Washington – whether meteorological, political , or sexual -- poisonous these days. Whether the members of Congress live as single or married, monogamous, or adventuresome persons, Washington’s sexual climate has been of the kinky variety for a decades. Washington’s climate remains a perk or hazard of the federal public service profession.
Clark Continues:
“Isn’t it interesting that the human mind has an infinite capacity to rationalize? When reality doesn’t meet our expectations, we can escape to Never, Never Land. We can accept or deny. We can embrace reality or fashion a new version. Because humans hate discord between ourselves and reality, we always do one or the other, or perhaps a little of both. We can change ourselves or pretend to change reality. We can tell ourselves a soothing story. We have become very good at telling ourselves soothing stories, and we tend to spend an enormously long time doing it. In fact, we often wait for the impending crisis to hit before we are ready to throw away our soothing story. Public policy is the place where soothing stories abound.”
RIGHT ASCENSION COMMENTARY
I refuse to be intimidated by "reality." What is reality? It is nothing more than a collective hunch.
Inevitably when someone tells us, “You have to face reality!” What someone is really saying to us is that we have to believe his view of reality, or better put, his fantasy world view.
Clark continues
“How long did it take us to admit that smoking is a bad idea? How long will we persist in the denial that violent video games are harmful to children? How long will we contend that pornography is benign? How long will we argue that lotteries are not a regressive tax that preys on the poor? “We may each be entitled to our own set of opinions,” as the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “but we are not entitled to our own set of facts.”
RIGHT ASCENSION COMMENTARY
Countless people can prove Facts accurate through their five senses. Humans, however, always interpret the facts. Many places, Washington for example, do believe they have a right to their own collection of factual evidence.
I find Clark’s paragraph on the problems interesting, but arbitrary. He wrote a short article, so I expect that. If I had written it, I would have an arbitrary list as well, but I would include denial of the growing problems of
Ignoring the problems of alcohol.
Classifying prescription drug abuse as good and all other drug abuse as bad.
Continuing to burn fossil fuels at cheap prices
Spending trillions of dollars on the illusions of national and personal security
Relying on the Second Amendment and collecting guns to re-enforce the illusion of personal safety
Continuing to ship in foods, vegetables, and fruits from around the world at cheap prices.
Thinking that just because one has a job and makes money one is productive.
Believing that the American dream means self reliance, when in fact Americans have always purchased the American Dream on borrowed money and sent the debt two generations down the line for payment.
Clark concludes his editorial this way:
“Let me quote two men who were fast friends, then adversaries and friends again because they finally threw away the soothing stories that justified the bitterness that separated them for so long. Thomas Jefferson said, “In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.” His colleague and friend, John Adams, offered these words, “I sleep well, appetite is good, work hard, conscience is neat and easy. Content to live and willing to die. Hoping to do a little good.”
Let's try to spend less time in the Never, Never Land of denial.”
Saturday, June 25, 2011
NEW YORK, CALIFORNIA, UTAH: MARRIAGE IN MODERN TIMES
We start this editorial with an article, in its entirety, culled from the headlines.
Gay marriage backers: New York vote has national impact
Yahoo! News
AP
Saturday evening, 25 June 2011, 8:40 p.m. MDT
By DAVID CRARY, AP National Writer
NEW YORK – Many obstacles still lie ahead for supporters of same-sex marriage, and eventually they will need Congress or the Supreme Court to embrace their goal. For the moment, though, they are jubilantly channeling the lyrics of "New York, New York."
"Now that we've made it here, we'll make it everywhere," said prominent activist Evan Wolfson, who took up the cause of marriage equality as a law student three decades ago.
With a historic vote by its Legislature late Friday, New York became the sixth — and by far the most populous — state to legalize same-sex marriage since Massachusetts led the way, under court order, in 2004.
With the new law, which takes effect after 30 days, the number of Americans in same-sex marriage states more than doubles. New York's population of 19 million surpasses the combined total of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Iowa, plus the District of Columbia.
The outcome — a product of intensive lobbying by Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo — will have nationwide repercussions. Activists hope the New York vote will help convince judges and politicians across the country, including a hesitant President Barack Obama, that support of same-sex marriage is now a mainstream viewpoint and a winning political stance.
"New York sends the message that marriage equality across the country is a question of `when,' not `if,'" said Fred Sainz, a vice president of the Human Rights Campaign.
Wolfson, president of the advocacy group Freedom to Marry, said the goal is attainable by 2020, or sooner, "if we do the work and keep making the case."
The work — as envisioned by leading activists — is a three-pronged strategy unfolding at the state level, in dealings with Congress and the Obama administration, and in the courts where several challenges to the federal ban on gay marriage are pending.
"This will be a big boost to our efforts nationally," said Richard Socarides, a former Clinton White House adviser on gay rights. "It will help in the pending court cases to show that more states are adopting same-sex marriage, and it will help in the court of public opinion."
The New York bill cleared the Republican-controlled Senate by a 33-29 margin, thanks to crucial support from four GOP senators who joined all but one Democrat in voting yes. The Democratic-led Assembly, which previously approved the bill, passed the Senate's stronger religious exemptions in the measure, and Cuomo swiftly signed it into law.
Gay rights activists have been heaping praise on Cuomo for leading the push for the bill, seizing on an issue that many politicians of both parties have skirted. Yet the Senate vote marked the first time a Republican-controlled legislative chamber in any state has supported same-sex marriage, and several prominent Republican donors contributed to the lobbying campaign on behalf of the bill.
For those engaged in the marriage debate nationally, recent months have been a political rollercoaster.
Bills to legalize same-sex marriage failed in Maryland and Rhode Island despite gay rights activists' high hopes. However, Illinois, Hawaii and Delaware approved civil unions, joining five other states — California, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington — that provide gay couples with extensive marriage-like rights.
Adding those eight states to the six that allow gay marriage, more than 35 percent of Americans now live in states where gay couples can effectively attain the rights and responsibilities of marriage. Just 11 years ago, no states offered such rights.
For now, gay couples cannot get married in 44 states, and 30 of them have taken the extra step of passing constitutional amendments banning gay marriage. Minnesota's Republican-controlled Legislature has placed such an amendment on the 2012 ballot.
Brian Brown, president of the conservative National Organization for Marriage, vowed to seek defeat of the New York Republicans who helped the marriage bill pass. He also predicted victory for the amendment to ban gay marriage next year in Minnesota, and said this would belie the claims that the same-sex marriage campaign would inevitably prevail nationwide.
"We've won every free, fair vote of the people," Brown said Saturday. "Backroom deals in Albany are not an indication of what people in this country think about marriage."
Efforts may surface in some states to repeal the existing marriage bans, but the prospect of dismantling all of them on a state-by-state basis is dim. In Mississippi, for example, a ban won support of 86 percent of the voters in 2004.
Thus, looking long term, gay marriage advocates see nationwide victory coming in one of two ways — either congressional legislation or a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that would require all states to recognize same-sex marriages.
"The way you do that is creating a critical mass of states and a critical mass of public opinion — some combination that will encourage Congress and the Supreme Court," Wolfson said. "By winning New York, we add tremendous energy to the national conversation that grows the majority."
Shorter term, gay rights activists and their allies in Congress would like to repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which denies federal recognition to same-sex marriages. The act is being challenged in several court cases, and Obama ordered his administration in February to stop defending the law on the grounds it is unconstitutional.
Democrats in Congress have introduced a bill to repeal the law, while the Republican leadership in the House has pledged to defend it.
Obama, when elected, said he supported broadening rights for gay couples but opposed legalizing same-sex marriage. More recently, he has said his position is "evolving," and he asked gay activists at a New York City fundraiser Thursday for patience.
Nonetheless, frustrations are mounting. Freedom to Marry says more than 112,000 people have signed its "Say I Do" appeal to the president, and gay marriage supporters have launched an EvolveAlready campaign on Twitter.
"We hope that, through this public pressure, we'll be able to move the president to understand that he's falling behind the majority of Americans who see marriage equality as a key civil right," said Robin McGehee of the advocacy group GetEqual.
Several recent opinion polls — by Gallup and The Associated Press, among others — have shown that a majority of Americans now approve of same-sex marriage, which a decade ago lagged below 40 percent support. Particularly strong backing for gay marriage among young people, who've grown up watching gay friendly films and TV programs, has prompted many analysts across the political spectrum to suggest the trend is irreversible.
Some conservatives, however, say the opinion polls are belied in the voting booth and point to the steady stream of approvals of state-level bans on same-sex marriage.
"The opposition has created an illusion of momentum but not a real base of support or track record of victory in the courts," said Brian Raum, senior counsel with the conservative Alliance Defense Fund.
Mary Bonauto would disagree.
An attorney with Boston-based Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, she has spent two decades battling for legal recognition of same-sex relationships. She helped win the landmark court rulings that led to civil unions in Vermont in 2000 and same-sex marriage in Massachusetts in 2004.
Even in the 1990s, she recalled thinking the cause eventually would prevail nationwide.
"I could see attitudes change," she said. "Eventually we have to have one standard of justice in this country and establish that sexual orientation is not a basis for discrimination."
She recalled setbacks just a few years ago in New York — a 2006 Court of Appeals ruling that there was no constitutional right to same-sex marriage in the state, and the decisive defeat of a same-sex marriage bill in the state Senate in 2009.
"The switch this time tells us there's a lot of momentum pointing toward marriage equality," Bonauto said.
Vermont lawyer Beth Robinson, now counsel for Gov. Peter Shumlin, worked with Bonauto in the late 1990s on the case that led to the state's pioneering civil union law. She expects the move toward nationwide same-sex marriage will be bumpy but inexorable.
"As people get to know their gay and lesbian neighbors, friends and family, the notion of denying those families equal rights becomes untenable," she said. "For New York to go there, on a vote rather that a court order, is huge ... It's a victory not just for New York, but for the whole country."
Robinson said Vermont, which legalized same-sex marriage in 2009, offered a lesson to wary Americans in other states.
"It isn't that the sky isn't falling — it's more positive than that," she said. "Vermont is a better place for it. Each of us has the opportunity to be our best selves."
Among the New Yorkers who will now get that opportunity are Richard Dorr, 84, and John Mace, 91, who have been partners for 61 years while pursuing successful careers as voice teachers in Manhattan.
"We thought about getting married in Massachusetts, but it just didn't seem to jibe right," said Dorr. "It should be in the state where you live."
They plan to seek a marriage license as swiftly as possible but don't envision a lavish ceremony.
"Just a couple of witnesses and a justice of the peace," Dorr said.
When they fell in love, back in 1950, "marriage never crossed our mind," he added. "It was just that we had to be together. We could not stay away."
Copyright © 2011 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
RIGHT ASCENSION COMMENTARY
On 25 June, the New York legislature legalized gay marriage. It won’t be long before California finds a way to legalize in finality the concept. The logic, such as it was, used in both states seems along the lines of what’s sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose, and in the 21st century we cannot go around following the foolish old traditions of our fathers.
Some bigots tried to make an issue of the sexual preferences of California Judge Walker, who made the central ruling. Few associated with the case cared to do so. American culture for years allowed heterosexual married judges make rulings about marriages, and who exactly cried out conflict of interest then
Meanwhile in Salt Lake City, the public communications department of the Church of Jesus Christ has in the past few years issued a number of statements expressing regrets at the legalization of gay marriage. We would hope the brethren of public affairs and public communications departments would find a line more sophisticated than [paraphrase here] God ordained marriage between a man and a woman and that’s the way it has always been and that is the way it just has to be sort of stuff. The P C department always does a fine job making God look like some sort of bigot. They did the same sort of job for God back in the days when it publicly endorsed withholding priesthood from the blacks and decried mixed racial marriage.
For Mormons with parents or children who prefer same gender relationships, this current situation resolves itself by whom do they list best – the Brethren or their gay relatives and their gay friends. If the gay crowd has more charming people, there goes the Church’s influence.
Marriage is not a domestic arrangement between two people. Marriage is a covenant among four entities, not two:
one man
one woman
children of the culture
the culture in which the covenant takes place.
Children have a personal stake in the definitions of marriage. Children’s interest always gets lost in heterosexual – homosexual marriage controversies.
A child has a right to the love, respect, nurturing, and care of both a mother and a father. Fathers are not just a biological act or an afterthought.
Companionship and domestic arrangements are one's own business between Consenting Adults. A child, however, has a right to the loving influence of both a man and a woman.
RIGHT ASCENSION CALL TO ACTION
Politicians in California, Utah, and elsewhere mouth platitudes about protecting the sanctity of marriage, but most of them possess vague notions and definitions of marriage. Congress and the states should spell out the covenant relationship of marriage among the four entities of a man, a woman, American culture and American children in a black-letter law Constitutional amendment. Politicians should not banter marriage about for electioneering points.
And now, yet another article culled from the headlines:
New York becomes largest state to approve gay marriage
Deseret News
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/print/700146923/NY-becomes-largest-state-to-approve-gay-marriage.html
By Michael Gormley Associated Press
Published: Friday, June 24, 2011 11:58 p.m. MDT
ALBANY, New York — New York lawmakers narrowly voted to legalize same-sex marriage Friday, handing activists a breakthrough victory in the state where the American gay rights movement was born.
New York will become the sixth state where gay couples can wed and the biggest by far.
"We are leaders and we join other proud states that recognize our families and the battle will now go on in other states," said Sen. Thomas Duane, a Democrat.
Gay rights advocates are hoping the vote will galvanize the movement around the United States and help it regain momentum after an almost identical bill was defeated here in 2009 and similar measures failed in 2010 in New Jersey and this year in Maryland and Rhode Island.
Though New York is a relative latecomer in allowing gay marriage, it is considered an important prize for advocates, given the state's size and New York City's international stature and its role as the birthplace of the gay rights movement, which is considered to have started with the Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village in 1969.
The New York bill cleared the Republican-controlled state Senate on a 33-29 vote. The Democrat-led Assembly, which passed a different version last week, is expected to pass the new version with stronger religious exemptions and Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who campaigned on the issue last year, has promised to sign it. Same-sex couples can begin marrying begin 30 days after that.
The effects of the law could be felt well beyond New York: Unlike Massachusetts, which pioneered gay marriage in 2004, New York has no residency requirement for obtaining a marriage license, meaning the state could become a magnet for gay couples across the country who want to have a wedding in Central Park, the Hamptons, the romantic Hudson Valley or that honeymoon hot spot of yore, Niagara Falls.
New York, the nation's third most populous state, will join Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and the Washington capital district in allowing same-sex couples to wed.
For five months in 2008, gay marriage was legal in California, the biggest state in population, and 18,000 same-sex couples rushed to tie the knot there before voters overturned the state Supreme Court ruling that allowed the practice. The constitutionality of California's ban is now before a federal appeals court.
The passage of New York's legislation was made possible by two Republican senators who had been undecided.
Sen. Stephen Saland pledged the deciding vote. He voted against a similar bill in 2009, helping kill the measure and dealing a blow to the national gay rights movement.
"While I understand that my vote will disappoint many, I also know my vote is a vote of conscience," Saland said in a statement to The Associated Press before the vote. "I am doing the right thing in voting to support marriage equality."
Gay couples in gallery wept during Saland's speech.
While court challenges in New York are all but certain, the state — unlike California — makes it difficult for the voters to repeal laws at the ballot box. Changing the law would require a constitutional convention, a long, drawn-out process.
The sticking point over the past few days: Republican demands for stronger legal protections for religious groups that fear they will be hit with discrimination lawsuits if they refuse to allow their facilities to be used for gay weddings.
The climactic vote came after more than a week of stop-and-start negotiations, rumors, closed-door meetings and frustration on the part of advocates. Online discussions took on a nasty turn with insults and vulgarities peppering the screens of opponents and supporters alike and security was beefed up in the capitol to give senators easier passage to and from their conference room.
The night before, President Barack Obama encouraged lawmakers to support gay rights during a fundraiser with New York City's gay community. The vote also is sure to charge up annual gay pride events this weekend, culminating with parades Sunday in New York City, San Francisco and other cities.
Despite New York City's liberal Democratic politics and large and vocal gay community, previous efforts to legalize same-sex marriage failed over the past several years, in part because the rest of the state is more conservative than the city.
The bill's success this time reflected the powerful support of Cuomo and perhaps a change in public attitudes. Opinion polls for the first time are showing majority support for same-sex marriage, and Congress recently repealed the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that barred gays from serving openly in the military.
In the week leading up to the vote in New York, some Republicans who opposed the bill in 2009 came forward to say they were supporting it for reasons of conscience and a duty to ensure civil rights.
Pressure to vote for gay marriage also came from celebrities, athletes and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the Republican-turned-independent who has long used his own fortune to help bankroll Republican campaigns and who personally lobbied some undecided lawmakers. Lady Gaga has been urging her 11 million Twitter followers to call New York senators in support of the bill.
While the support of the Assembly was never in doubt, it took days of furious deal-making to secure two Republican votes needed for passage in the closely divided Senate.
Representatives of the Roman Catholic Church, Orthodox rabbis and other conservative religious leaders fought the measure, and their Republican allies pressed hard for stronger legal protections for religious organizations.
Each side of the debate was funded by more than $1 million from national and state advocates who waged media blitzes and promised campaign cash for lawmakers who sided with them.
But Republican senators said it was Cuomo's passionate appeals in the governor's mansion on Monday night and in closed-door, individual meetings that were perhaps most persuasive.
The bill makes New York only the third state, after Vermont and New Hampshire, to legalize marriage through a legislative act and without being forced to do so by a court.
Associated Press writer Michael Virtanen contributed to this report.
© 2011 Deseret News Publishing Company | All rights reserved
ANOTHER RIGHT ASCENSION CALL TO ACTION.
I can only imagine the orthodox conservatives in Utah drawing a fake line in the sand to protect the divine institution of marriage. Most of them do not have a very clear concept of the concept of marriage, divine or otherwise. They and their members in the legislature will undoubtedly make life for Utahns rather unpleasant until the day when the rest of the nation views Utah in much the same way the rest of the nation viewed Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama in the 1960s.
Heterosexuals damaged marriage more than any other group. They, after all, created marriage definitions / traditions / laws to include polygamy, mistresses, doweries, la casa grande and la casa bonita, quick divorces, institutional acceptance of violence against women and children. Their liberalized marriage laws allowing people of different cultures, classes, nations, and races to marry in fact made successful marriages harder to achieve. Men and women of different cultures, classes, nations, and races do have a moral and legal right to marry each other. It does not follow, though, that they have created marriage that will be inherently more successful,
After we accept many of these bogus assumptions, marriage between same-gender couples is just another small leap. Backwards.
We should allow and accept the companionship legalities and domestic arrangements that consenting adults want. Marriage God invented; companionship mankind invented. The law should accept both gay and straight domestic partnerships with unblinking legal equality and objectivity.
A child, however, deserves both a father and a mother in a family. This means that adoption laws need careful attention everywhere.
Gay marriage backers: New York vote has national impact
Yahoo! News
AP
Saturday evening, 25 June 2011, 8:40 p.m. MDT
By DAVID CRARY, AP National Writer
NEW YORK – Many obstacles still lie ahead for supporters of same-sex marriage, and eventually they will need Congress or the Supreme Court to embrace their goal. For the moment, though, they are jubilantly channeling the lyrics of "New York, New York."
"Now that we've made it here, we'll make it everywhere," said prominent activist Evan Wolfson, who took up the cause of marriage equality as a law student three decades ago.
With a historic vote by its Legislature late Friday, New York became the sixth — and by far the most populous — state to legalize same-sex marriage since Massachusetts led the way, under court order, in 2004.
With the new law, which takes effect after 30 days, the number of Americans in same-sex marriage states more than doubles. New York's population of 19 million surpasses the combined total of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Iowa, plus the District of Columbia.
The outcome — a product of intensive lobbying by Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo — will have nationwide repercussions. Activists hope the New York vote will help convince judges and politicians across the country, including a hesitant President Barack Obama, that support of same-sex marriage is now a mainstream viewpoint and a winning political stance.
"New York sends the message that marriage equality across the country is a question of `when,' not `if,'" said Fred Sainz, a vice president of the Human Rights Campaign.
Wolfson, president of the advocacy group Freedom to Marry, said the goal is attainable by 2020, or sooner, "if we do the work and keep making the case."
The work — as envisioned by leading activists — is a three-pronged strategy unfolding at the state level, in dealings with Congress and the Obama administration, and in the courts where several challenges to the federal ban on gay marriage are pending.
"This will be a big boost to our efforts nationally," said Richard Socarides, a former Clinton White House adviser on gay rights. "It will help in the pending court cases to show that more states are adopting same-sex marriage, and it will help in the court of public opinion."
The New York bill cleared the Republican-controlled Senate by a 33-29 margin, thanks to crucial support from four GOP senators who joined all but one Democrat in voting yes. The Democratic-led Assembly, which previously approved the bill, passed the Senate's stronger religious exemptions in the measure, and Cuomo swiftly signed it into law.
Gay rights activists have been heaping praise on Cuomo for leading the push for the bill, seizing on an issue that many politicians of both parties have skirted. Yet the Senate vote marked the first time a Republican-controlled legislative chamber in any state has supported same-sex marriage, and several prominent Republican donors contributed to the lobbying campaign on behalf of the bill.
For those engaged in the marriage debate nationally, recent months have been a political rollercoaster.
Bills to legalize same-sex marriage failed in Maryland and Rhode Island despite gay rights activists' high hopes. However, Illinois, Hawaii and Delaware approved civil unions, joining five other states — California, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington — that provide gay couples with extensive marriage-like rights.
Adding those eight states to the six that allow gay marriage, more than 35 percent of Americans now live in states where gay couples can effectively attain the rights and responsibilities of marriage. Just 11 years ago, no states offered such rights.
For now, gay couples cannot get married in 44 states, and 30 of them have taken the extra step of passing constitutional amendments banning gay marriage. Minnesota's Republican-controlled Legislature has placed such an amendment on the 2012 ballot.
Brian Brown, president of the conservative National Organization for Marriage, vowed to seek defeat of the New York Republicans who helped the marriage bill pass. He also predicted victory for the amendment to ban gay marriage next year in Minnesota, and said this would belie the claims that the same-sex marriage campaign would inevitably prevail nationwide.
"We've won every free, fair vote of the people," Brown said Saturday. "Backroom deals in Albany are not an indication of what people in this country think about marriage."
Efforts may surface in some states to repeal the existing marriage bans, but the prospect of dismantling all of them on a state-by-state basis is dim. In Mississippi, for example, a ban won support of 86 percent of the voters in 2004.
Thus, looking long term, gay marriage advocates see nationwide victory coming in one of two ways — either congressional legislation or a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that would require all states to recognize same-sex marriages.
"The way you do that is creating a critical mass of states and a critical mass of public opinion — some combination that will encourage Congress and the Supreme Court," Wolfson said. "By winning New York, we add tremendous energy to the national conversation that grows the majority."
Shorter term, gay rights activists and their allies in Congress would like to repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which denies federal recognition to same-sex marriages. The act is being challenged in several court cases, and Obama ordered his administration in February to stop defending the law on the grounds it is unconstitutional.
Democrats in Congress have introduced a bill to repeal the law, while the Republican leadership in the House has pledged to defend it.
Obama, when elected, said he supported broadening rights for gay couples but opposed legalizing same-sex marriage. More recently, he has said his position is "evolving," and he asked gay activists at a New York City fundraiser Thursday for patience.
Nonetheless, frustrations are mounting. Freedom to Marry says more than 112,000 people have signed its "Say I Do" appeal to the president, and gay marriage supporters have launched an EvolveAlready campaign on Twitter.
"We hope that, through this public pressure, we'll be able to move the president to understand that he's falling behind the majority of Americans who see marriage equality as a key civil right," said Robin McGehee of the advocacy group GetEqual.
Several recent opinion polls — by Gallup and The Associated Press, among others — have shown that a majority of Americans now approve of same-sex marriage, which a decade ago lagged below 40 percent support. Particularly strong backing for gay marriage among young people, who've grown up watching gay friendly films and TV programs, has prompted many analysts across the political spectrum to suggest the trend is irreversible.
Some conservatives, however, say the opinion polls are belied in the voting booth and point to the steady stream of approvals of state-level bans on same-sex marriage.
"The opposition has created an illusion of momentum but not a real base of support or track record of victory in the courts," said Brian Raum, senior counsel with the conservative Alliance Defense Fund.
Mary Bonauto would disagree.
An attorney with Boston-based Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, she has spent two decades battling for legal recognition of same-sex relationships. She helped win the landmark court rulings that led to civil unions in Vermont in 2000 and same-sex marriage in Massachusetts in 2004.
Even in the 1990s, she recalled thinking the cause eventually would prevail nationwide.
"I could see attitudes change," she said. "Eventually we have to have one standard of justice in this country and establish that sexual orientation is not a basis for discrimination."
She recalled setbacks just a few years ago in New York — a 2006 Court of Appeals ruling that there was no constitutional right to same-sex marriage in the state, and the decisive defeat of a same-sex marriage bill in the state Senate in 2009.
"The switch this time tells us there's a lot of momentum pointing toward marriage equality," Bonauto said.
Vermont lawyer Beth Robinson, now counsel for Gov. Peter Shumlin, worked with Bonauto in the late 1990s on the case that led to the state's pioneering civil union law. She expects the move toward nationwide same-sex marriage will be bumpy but inexorable.
"As people get to know their gay and lesbian neighbors, friends and family, the notion of denying those families equal rights becomes untenable," she said. "For New York to go there, on a vote rather that a court order, is huge ... It's a victory not just for New York, but for the whole country."
Robinson said Vermont, which legalized same-sex marriage in 2009, offered a lesson to wary Americans in other states.
"It isn't that the sky isn't falling — it's more positive than that," she said. "Vermont is a better place for it. Each of us has the opportunity to be our best selves."
Among the New Yorkers who will now get that opportunity are Richard Dorr, 84, and John Mace, 91, who have been partners for 61 years while pursuing successful careers as voice teachers in Manhattan.
"We thought about getting married in Massachusetts, but it just didn't seem to jibe right," said Dorr. "It should be in the state where you live."
They plan to seek a marriage license as swiftly as possible but don't envision a lavish ceremony.
"Just a couple of witnesses and a justice of the peace," Dorr said.
When they fell in love, back in 1950, "marriage never crossed our mind," he added. "It was just that we had to be together. We could not stay away."
Copyright © 2011 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
RIGHT ASCENSION COMMENTARY
On 25 June, the New York legislature legalized gay marriage. It won’t be long before California finds a way to legalize in finality the concept. The logic, such as it was, used in both states seems along the lines of what’s sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose, and in the 21st century we cannot go around following the foolish old traditions of our fathers.
Some bigots tried to make an issue of the sexual preferences of California Judge Walker, who made the central ruling. Few associated with the case cared to do so. American culture for years allowed heterosexual married judges make rulings about marriages, and who exactly cried out conflict of interest then
Meanwhile in Salt Lake City, the public communications department of the Church of Jesus Christ has in the past few years issued a number of statements expressing regrets at the legalization of gay marriage. We would hope the brethren of public affairs and public communications departments would find a line more sophisticated than [paraphrase here] God ordained marriage between a man and a woman and that’s the way it has always been and that is the way it just has to be sort of stuff. The P C department always does a fine job making God look like some sort of bigot. They did the same sort of job for God back in the days when it publicly endorsed withholding priesthood from the blacks and decried mixed racial marriage.
For Mormons with parents or children who prefer same gender relationships, this current situation resolves itself by whom do they list best – the Brethren or their gay relatives and their gay friends. If the gay crowd has more charming people, there goes the Church’s influence.
Marriage is not a domestic arrangement between two people. Marriage is a covenant among four entities, not two:
one man
one woman
children of the culture
the culture in which the covenant takes place.
Children have a personal stake in the definitions of marriage. Children’s interest always gets lost in heterosexual – homosexual marriage controversies.
A child has a right to the love, respect, nurturing, and care of both a mother and a father. Fathers are not just a biological act or an afterthought.
Companionship and domestic arrangements are one's own business between Consenting Adults. A child, however, has a right to the loving influence of both a man and a woman.
RIGHT ASCENSION CALL TO ACTION
Politicians in California, Utah, and elsewhere mouth platitudes about protecting the sanctity of marriage, but most of them possess vague notions and definitions of marriage. Congress and the states should spell out the covenant relationship of marriage among the four entities of a man, a woman, American culture and American children in a black-letter law Constitutional amendment. Politicians should not banter marriage about for electioneering points.
And now, yet another article culled from the headlines:
New York becomes largest state to approve gay marriage
Deseret News
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/print/700146923/NY-becomes-largest-state-to-approve-gay-marriage.html
By Michael Gormley Associated Press
Published: Friday, June 24, 2011 11:58 p.m. MDT
ALBANY, New York — New York lawmakers narrowly voted to legalize same-sex marriage Friday, handing activists a breakthrough victory in the state where the American gay rights movement was born.
New York will become the sixth state where gay couples can wed and the biggest by far.
"We are leaders and we join other proud states that recognize our families and the battle will now go on in other states," said Sen. Thomas Duane, a Democrat.
Gay rights advocates are hoping the vote will galvanize the movement around the United States and help it regain momentum after an almost identical bill was defeated here in 2009 and similar measures failed in 2010 in New Jersey and this year in Maryland and Rhode Island.
Though New York is a relative latecomer in allowing gay marriage, it is considered an important prize for advocates, given the state's size and New York City's international stature and its role as the birthplace of the gay rights movement, which is considered to have started with the Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village in 1969.
The New York bill cleared the Republican-controlled state Senate on a 33-29 vote. The Democrat-led Assembly, which passed a different version last week, is expected to pass the new version with stronger religious exemptions and Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who campaigned on the issue last year, has promised to sign it. Same-sex couples can begin marrying begin 30 days after that.
The effects of the law could be felt well beyond New York: Unlike Massachusetts, which pioneered gay marriage in 2004, New York has no residency requirement for obtaining a marriage license, meaning the state could become a magnet for gay couples across the country who want to have a wedding in Central Park, the Hamptons, the romantic Hudson Valley or that honeymoon hot spot of yore, Niagara Falls.
New York, the nation's third most populous state, will join Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and the Washington capital district in allowing same-sex couples to wed.
For five months in 2008, gay marriage was legal in California, the biggest state in population, and 18,000 same-sex couples rushed to tie the knot there before voters overturned the state Supreme Court ruling that allowed the practice. The constitutionality of California's ban is now before a federal appeals court.
The passage of New York's legislation was made possible by two Republican senators who had been undecided.
Sen. Stephen Saland pledged the deciding vote. He voted against a similar bill in 2009, helping kill the measure and dealing a blow to the national gay rights movement.
"While I understand that my vote will disappoint many, I also know my vote is a vote of conscience," Saland said in a statement to The Associated Press before the vote. "I am doing the right thing in voting to support marriage equality."
Gay couples in gallery wept during Saland's speech.
While court challenges in New York are all but certain, the state — unlike California — makes it difficult for the voters to repeal laws at the ballot box. Changing the law would require a constitutional convention, a long, drawn-out process.
The sticking point over the past few days: Republican demands for stronger legal protections for religious groups that fear they will be hit with discrimination lawsuits if they refuse to allow their facilities to be used for gay weddings.
The climactic vote came after more than a week of stop-and-start negotiations, rumors, closed-door meetings and frustration on the part of advocates. Online discussions took on a nasty turn with insults and vulgarities peppering the screens of opponents and supporters alike and security was beefed up in the capitol to give senators easier passage to and from their conference room.
The night before, President Barack Obama encouraged lawmakers to support gay rights during a fundraiser with New York City's gay community. The vote also is sure to charge up annual gay pride events this weekend, culminating with parades Sunday in New York City, San Francisco and other cities.
Despite New York City's liberal Democratic politics and large and vocal gay community, previous efforts to legalize same-sex marriage failed over the past several years, in part because the rest of the state is more conservative than the city.
The bill's success this time reflected the powerful support of Cuomo and perhaps a change in public attitudes. Opinion polls for the first time are showing majority support for same-sex marriage, and Congress recently repealed the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that barred gays from serving openly in the military.
In the week leading up to the vote in New York, some Republicans who opposed the bill in 2009 came forward to say they were supporting it for reasons of conscience and a duty to ensure civil rights.
Pressure to vote for gay marriage also came from celebrities, athletes and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the Republican-turned-independent who has long used his own fortune to help bankroll Republican campaigns and who personally lobbied some undecided lawmakers. Lady Gaga has been urging her 11 million Twitter followers to call New York senators in support of the bill.
While the support of the Assembly was never in doubt, it took days of furious deal-making to secure two Republican votes needed for passage in the closely divided Senate.
Representatives of the Roman Catholic Church, Orthodox rabbis and other conservative religious leaders fought the measure, and their Republican allies pressed hard for stronger legal protections for religious organizations.
Each side of the debate was funded by more than $1 million from national and state advocates who waged media blitzes and promised campaign cash for lawmakers who sided with them.
But Republican senators said it was Cuomo's passionate appeals in the governor's mansion on Monday night and in closed-door, individual meetings that were perhaps most persuasive.
The bill makes New York only the third state, after Vermont and New Hampshire, to legalize marriage through a legislative act and without being forced to do so by a court.
Associated Press writer Michael Virtanen contributed to this report.
© 2011 Deseret News Publishing Company | All rights reserved
ANOTHER RIGHT ASCENSION CALL TO ACTION.
I can only imagine the orthodox conservatives in Utah drawing a fake line in the sand to protect the divine institution of marriage. Most of them do not have a very clear concept of the concept of marriage, divine or otherwise. They and their members in the legislature will undoubtedly make life for Utahns rather unpleasant until the day when the rest of the nation views Utah in much the same way the rest of the nation viewed Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama in the 1960s.
Heterosexuals damaged marriage more than any other group. They, after all, created marriage definitions / traditions / laws to include polygamy, mistresses, doweries, la casa grande and la casa bonita, quick divorces, institutional acceptance of violence against women and children. Their liberalized marriage laws allowing people of different cultures, classes, nations, and races to marry in fact made successful marriages harder to achieve. Men and women of different cultures, classes, nations, and races do have a moral and legal right to marry each other. It does not follow, though, that they have created marriage that will be inherently more successful,
After we accept many of these bogus assumptions, marriage between same-gender couples is just another small leap. Backwards.
We should allow and accept the companionship legalities and domestic arrangements that consenting adults want. Marriage God invented; companionship mankind invented. The law should accept both gay and straight domestic partnerships with unblinking legal equality and objectivity.
A child, however, deserves both a father and a mother in a family. This means that adoption laws need careful attention everywhere.
CONTEMPLATIONS ON "GOSPEL PRINCIPLES" LESSON 35
On Sunday 19 June, my high priests’ priesthood group discussed lesson 35 of Gospel Principles: obedience.
The instructor did bring up the question of blind obedience; the high priests dutifully danced around the positive aspects of doing what they are told to do. There is a big irony in The Worldly Mocking the Saints of God for blind obedience. Everyone will at one time or another believe something or do something with no factual evidence at all to back up the belief or action. The big question in our lives is What WILL we do without factual evidence?
The same Worldly types who mock the Saints of God for obedience will gladly and blindly do whatever their bosses tell them to do if the bosses promise big cash payments. Wall Street in the last decade was this particular scenario in action. Who exactly among the Moneyed Classes really understood negative derivatives speculation? However, the Wall Street geniuses told their minions there was money to be made, and off we went to the poor house.
One of the more interesting lines in the obedience lesson was this observation from the text.
“It is better to obey the commandments because we fear punishment than not to obey them at all. But we will be much happier if we obey God because we love Him and want to obey Him.”
This thought runs completely counter to the way much if not most of politics on this planet works. A population self-motivated by inner strength of purpose, high ideals, and emotions greater and purer than hate and fear would constitute the last thing despots the likes of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot -- to say nothing of all the little tin Gods we see and hear so much of these days on cable news – really and truly want. If people become self-motivated, they could start taking independent actions independent of The Beloved Leader, and no despot wants that possibility. Therefore, today as always most governments revolve around One Great Ego and Fearing One Great Ego.
I find it interesting that the lesson writes the thought
“It is better to obey the commandments because we fear punishment than not to obey them at all. But we will be much happier if we obey God because we love Him and want to obey Him.”
Instead of
We would be better off if we obey commandments not because we fear punishment but because we see and understand the good and safety in obeying commandments.
Apparently even God prefers people who will worship him and ask his advise on everything instead of people who are self motivated by higher ideals.
The entire lesson 35 did revolve around personal revelation and doing what God wants us to do. In reality, the typical LDS priesthood holder has to deal most often with obedience in terms of what his priesthood leader wants him to do. If God through the spirit tells a priesthood holder to do this, and his human priesthood leader says do that, obviously God holds seniority in the issue. We will see how often this did happen in day to day life.
The instructor did bring up the question of blind obedience; the high priests dutifully danced around the positive aspects of doing what they are told to do. There is a big irony in The Worldly Mocking the Saints of God for blind obedience. Everyone will at one time or another believe something or do something with no factual evidence at all to back up the belief or action. The big question in our lives is What WILL we do without factual evidence?
The same Worldly types who mock the Saints of God for obedience will gladly and blindly do whatever their bosses tell them to do if the bosses promise big cash payments. Wall Street in the last decade was this particular scenario in action. Who exactly among the Moneyed Classes really understood negative derivatives speculation? However, the Wall Street geniuses told their minions there was money to be made, and off we went to the poor house.
One of the more interesting lines in the obedience lesson was this observation from the text.
“It is better to obey the commandments because we fear punishment than not to obey them at all. But we will be much happier if we obey God because we love Him and want to obey Him.”
This thought runs completely counter to the way much if not most of politics on this planet works. A population self-motivated by inner strength of purpose, high ideals, and emotions greater and purer than hate and fear would constitute the last thing despots the likes of Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot -- to say nothing of all the little tin Gods we see and hear so much of these days on cable news – really and truly want. If people become self-motivated, they could start taking independent actions independent of The Beloved Leader, and no despot wants that possibility. Therefore, today as always most governments revolve around One Great Ego and Fearing One Great Ego.
I find it interesting that the lesson writes the thought
“It is better to obey the commandments because we fear punishment than not to obey them at all. But we will be much happier if we obey God because we love Him and want to obey Him.”
Instead of
We would be better off if we obey commandments not because we fear punishment but because we see and understand the good and safety in obeying commandments.
Apparently even God prefers people who will worship him and ask his advise on everything instead of people who are self motivated by higher ideals.
The entire lesson 35 did revolve around personal revelation and doing what God wants us to do. In reality, the typical LDS priesthood holder has to deal most often with obedience in terms of what his priesthood leader wants him to do. If God through the spirit tells a priesthood holder to do this, and his human priesthood leader says do that, obviously God holds seniority in the issue. We will see how often this did happen in day to day life.
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