Debutante Gone Wrong

From the Billy DeFrank Center in San Jose:

Just this afternoon, the California Supreme Court decided to grant review to numerous lawsuits regarding Prop. 8, making the case that:

Proposition 8 is invalid because it revises the California Constitution, rather than an amendment the document.
 
Proposition 8 violates the separation of powers doctrine under the California Constitution.

Proposition 8 violated the the Equal Protection Clause of the California Consitiution
 
If Prop. 8 is not unconstitutional, the marriages performed before Prop 8 passed should still be valid.

The court gave a very short briefing schedule, giving the state until December 19th to respond and giving our side until January 5th to respond to those briefs. Amicus briefs must be filed by January 15th, with replies to those due by January 21st.

The court has NOT granted a stay of Proposition 8, as requested by several of the lawsuits filed.   So, until such time when Proposition 8 is deemed unconstitutional,  no more marriage licenses will be issued to same-sex couples.

Over the past 100 years, the California Supreme Court has heard nine cases challenging either legislative enactments or initiatives as invalid revisions of the California Constitution. In three of those cases, the Court invalidated those measures.

Our community should be  pleased that the Court has granted review of these cases (they could have opted to not consider the lawsuits), but this should not be considered an indication they will rule in our favor.

My friend form High school Teecher Lady and her daughter went to the protest against prop 8 in San Francisco, she shared this: 

"the best part was the creativity of the signs (we were so far back in the crowd that we couldn't hear the speakers -- but we blame the circling news helicopters for that).  Here are our favorite slogans:

Welcome to California: Free-Range Chickens and Caged Gays

No More Mr. Nice Gay

Only Sissies Fear Gay Marriage

Str8 Against H8

Marry Me!  Don't "Mary" Me!

My Family Values Equality

Did You Cast a Ballot or a Stone?

When Do I Get to Vote on Your Marriage?

Queer Eye for the Prop 8 Guy:  Church -- State -- Honey,  Stop!  Never, Never Mix!

Protect Marriage: Ban Divorce

First They Ignore You
Then They Ridicule You
Then They Fight You
Then You Win
--Gandhi

Do You Really Want ME Marrying Your Daughter?

Irony: Polygamists Defending Traditional Marriage
(should I add this to my examples of irony that I use in my classroom? :-)

Gay is the New Black

Having Gay Parents Does NOT Hurt Me.  Prop 8 Does.
(carried by a little boy perched on the shoulders of his parent)

Gay Agenda:
1. equality
2. see #1

Chickens: 1
Gays: 0

It was a gorgeous, sunny day, and I sensed a mood of hope and confidence that equality is right around the corner.  "

I hope she is right.

I celebrated one of the brightest minds of his generation this afternoon.  As a professor I sometimes despair of finding minds with whom a brainstorm session is just that.   I don’t get enough of them, or meet enough students who can do this.

Sam rolled into my classroom on sunny April day this past spring.  His smile was bright and his blue eyes glinted with amusement and satisfaction as I began to teach.  Soon, he started to heckle me and kept it up all quarter.  Many times he would tell me I was Loki or sometimes, Thor, and that was who he pictured me as. The papers he turned in were supposed to be 4-7 pages.  He turned in friggin’ novels whose page length average was twenty-one.  When I griped jokingly about this, he said with a malicious and somewhat gleeful spark in his eye, “what?  I had a lot to say.” I couldn’t really complain too much as they were intelligent, well-written and succinct (even at that many pages).  I asked him to work with me on a project because of his writing and thinking skills.  I never do that.  Students usually come to me.

The summer was a rough time for me and he and I exchanged a couple of emails and one or two IM sessions in which he told me about a harrowing experience at camp, and I told him how much moving sucked.  We agreed to meet solidly in the fall.  We got some good ideas off the ground, and had some good data to work witih.  I gave him an assignment of preliminary research, which we were both excited about.  The hypotheses were flowing and the data was good.

He died that weekend in his sleep.  His father said suspected heart failure.

Sam had Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy and told me that he had another five to ten years to go, or at least that is what they thought. They were wrong. He had made plans to go to Cal in the fall and become a research psychologist.  But, they were wrong.  His twin sister Shayna had known from the time she was small what she wanted to do.  Sam had just found his passion. I know this because the last time we met he swung his pencil up at me and said “ I blame you” before telling me he wanted to major in Psychology.  I am so mad that they were wrong.  They were wrong.

We lost one of the good ones that day, and I am sorry that he could not go further in his education.  The rest of his teachers would have seen what I saw, one of the brightest minds of his generation.  Today I said goodbye in room full of people who also saw Sam.

My research team who will be working on Sam’s paper have voted to put Sam’s name second.  I vetoed it, in the name of honor and academic integrity.  His name will be first.

In memoriam; Sam Fogelman  1988-2008

I wish I had said this is in this way

So my friend OK now has a blog (you might remember her from Cirque d’Soleil entries).  She has hit a point in her life where it is all about her, and as I read this I was pleased for her and felt a spark of recognition as well.   She has had some major life changes come down at a very young age, and while I want to say this is unusual, it isn’t with the folks I know right now.  But I am so pleased to see that she is taking care of herself and working on the things that will make her happy. Since I am now incredibly poor (because I chose to only work part time to finish this novel that I cannot seem to get away from) and have sometime to work on me (and working on the Deb is always one of my favorite activities) I found myself resonating with the sentiment written by OK, and take it up as my battlecry:  It is all about me right now.  

    Last evening I took a seminar on Fundraising and Event planning through the Junior League and saw people that I remembered I liked very much when I saw them again.  I made a couple of dates for drinks with these women, and another for dancing on a regular basis after I told her of Blues dancing this past Sunday Night with Crybaby (another cool girl who immediately cries at the RIGHT things,; sunsets, weddings, sweet moments, angry tears for injustice – LOVE her) and how much fun we had.  Crybaby and I will be hitting the floors regularly now, salsa, swing and blues:  The boys had just better get ready.

At 3:30 this morning, because I was struck by an idea for the novel, I arose and began pounding the keyboard.  I ended up writing 3,oo0 words in two hours because it just poured out of me.  If there were an ironic twist to this story it would be that the words were crap when I awoke, but they aren’t.  So no irony in stock today, and the great thing about re-reading everything is that it let me go some more. When I was living with another person, I did not feel the freedom to do this, and though I wrote down the ideas in the book I keep for this purpose, It was not the same kind of energy, and so very much got done.
 I now live alone, and feel as if I can go big by going out and dancing or dining or attending a lecture, or whatever, alone or not.  Or, I can stay home and read, or stay home and write or stay home and knit while watching a movie (I don’t have cable).  The freedom I feel is astounding and the amazement that I feel great is embarrassing.  I no longer have to live in mediocrity, and the half life is over.  Neither does K-Dub

Watch us go!!!