Most people don’t see the parallel between interracial marriage and gay marriage. They claim they are two very different things, though the arguments for one have been used for the other. Religious intolerance was used to fight against interracial marriage for decades, and that same religious intolerance is used today against gay marriage. But here is one truly concrete example of why voters should not be allowed to vote on a civil rights issue.

The election of 2000 was contentious.  I mean, everyone remembers the outcome in Florida, and how it dominated the news cycle meant that an important Alabama race went unnoticed.  Here’s a little excerpt from Wikipedia, linking to a USA Today article:

In 1967, 17 Southern states (all the former slave states plus Oklahoma) still enforced laws prohibiting marriage between whites and people of color. Maryland repealed its law in response to the start of the proceedings at the Supreme Court. After the ruling of the Supreme Court, the remaining laws were no longer in effect. Nonetheless, it took South Carolina until 1998 and Alabama until 2000 to officially amend their states’ constitutions to remove language prohibiting miscegenation. In the respective referendums, 62% of voters in South Carolina and 59% of voters in Alabama voted to remove these laws.

Did you read that right?  ONLY 59% of Alabama voters approved to remove the invalidated interracial marriage laws.  That means 41% of the Alabama voters wanted to keep the discriminatory laws on the books, even if they were invalidated and couldn’t be enforced.  Here’s the voting breakdown (the percentages are rounded):

So here, literally, is a black and white example of why voters should never be allowed to vote on civil rights.

Hard to believe she would say something so bad.  Yes, she’s playing to a certain base, but most of the people in the United States recognize the separation of church and state.  Besides.  Do people really want to be able to sell their daughters into slavery, give up shellfish, and stop having to wear mixed fabrics?

I need to turn this video into something viral.  Suggestions?

Of course there are talks of boycotting Arizona, and the predictable “1,000,000 against Arizona’s new law” type groups on Facebook.  But there is one group that is actually doing something – and it may just work.

You see, back in 1993, Arizona decided it would not recognize the new Martin Luther King, Jr holiday.  And as such, the NFL pulled out the Superbowl from Arizona.  That hurt.  It was a big black eye, both tourism-wise, and money-wise.  They lost a lot of money because of that.  Well turns out that the 2011 MLB All Star Game is going to be in Arizona next year.  That pulls a lot of tourists, and a lot of money.  But the MLB Players Association wants to do something about that.

Having a large number of Hispanic players – and players from outside the United States – the MLBPA put out word that it objects to the Arizona law, and is calling for a boycott, and the 2011 All Star Game to be moved.  This could work.  This could REALLY work.  Hitting people in their pocketbooks sometimes is the only way to do it.

Thing is, ALL sports need to join in, both condemning the law, as well as boycotting Arizona.  My sport of choice, ice hockey, is represented by the just-ousted from the playoffs Phoenix Coyotes.  Wouldn’t it be huge if the NHL said that it would boycott Arizona?  If the NBA and NFL, and then other smaller organized sports like the WNBA and MLS followed suit?  Sports make money.  And depriving Arizona of money would make that message loud and clear.

So let’s hear it.  The NHL is made up of 80% foreign nationals.  Many other leagues are similar.  So let’s boycott Arizona.  Let’s make it financially HURT!

Well it hasn’t changed in the last few years.  Palin, Beck, and company are still saying some crazy things, and they are still inciting violence.  Anyone who doesn’t connect Palin’s SarahPAC and the image of Democratic Congressional districts with gunsights over them and Palin’s “Don’t retreat – reload” Twitter comment and the inciting of violence, frankly, has their head up their ass.

The inciting of violence from Republicans against those not like themselves is truly nothing new.  Think back to the man who burst into a Tennessee church and shot and killed complete strangers “because the church was liberal”.  He had hoped to start a trend, so that people would take out liberals, gays, and the “100 people screwing up America” list by right-wing author Bernard Goldberg.

Well it may not be that far fetched to think that Joseph Sean McVey, age 23 of Ohio, was a fan of Palin, Beck, and Goldberg.  Why else can you explain why Goldberg had a car modified to look like a police/security vehicle, and showed up – armed – at the airport that Air Force One and President Obama had just departed.  What’s the most chilling aspect of the story?  When asked what he was doing, McVey said he heard Obama was in town and “wanted to see him”.

There are two Facebook groups out there that say it all.  “I didn’t like George Bush, but I never wished him dead“.  It has under 1,000 fans.  The Facebook group that is praying for the death of President Obama?  It has 1,000,000 fans.

According to its 2006 tax returns, Freedom Alliance reported revenue of $10, 822, 785, but only $397,900–or a beyond-measly 3.68%–of that was given to the children of fallen troops as scholarships or as aid to severely injured soldiers.

So while this is a disgusting and reprehensible behavior, it is NOT illegal.  Sure, Hannity lied.  But lying to the public to further yourself is something that Sean Hannity does on a nightly basis, so it is not outside of his realm of usualness.  Charity Navigator has dropped Hannity’s charity from a 4 star down to a 2 star, though honestly that seems charitable in itself.  I mean when a charity organization expenses more in postage than it does in actually giving to those it is supposed to be helping, that is saying something.

But most of the world, and certainly all of Hannity’s viewers know nothing of this.  Otherwise they wouldn’t be donating their hard working dollars to such an untrustworthy “charity”.

A gay elderly couple that had been together for quite a while named Clay and Howard lived in Sonoma County, California.  Now you think of Sonoma, and think – this place is just North of San Francisco, and it is known as the wine country.  It has to be progressive.  Well not for Clay and Howard.  You see, Howard (age 88) fell down outside his and Clay’s (age 77) home.  Unable to care for him, Howard was put in a nursing home.  But things took a dramatic turn for the worse.  Clay was forbidden by the County to see Howard.  Clay himself was put in his own nursing home.  The County and the facility declared that Clay and Howard were just “roommates”, and thus Clay had no legal right to either see Howard, nor make any decisions about his care.

This is an excerpt from the article that is most horrific – though I plead with everyone to read the entire thing over at NCLRights.org:

What happened next is even more chilling: without authority, without determining the value of Clay and Harold’s possessions accumulated over the course of their 20 years together or making any effort to determine which items belonged to whom, the county took everything Harold and Clay owned and auctioned off all of their belongings. Adding further insult to grave injury, the county removed Clay from his home and confined him to a nursing home against his will. The county workers then terminated Clay and Harold’s lease and surrendered the home they had shared for many years to the landlord.

This is beyond chilling and horrific.  This is some of the most disgusting treatment of gay elders that I have ever read about.  And I ask you this one question:  Would this have happened to a man and a woman who were married?  No, not at all.  So why would we allow this to occur to a gay couple?

Marriage is about love, and gay and lesbian couples have and express love just like their straight counterparts.  But it is also about protection and civil rights provided by law.  This is why marriage is so very important – gay and straight.

Three weeks ago, there was a South Korean ship that was patrolling the waters near North Korea.  There was an explosion, and almost half of the crew on the warship was killed.  At first, people thought it was an accident.  But from a BBC report this morning on the radio (and an LA Time report from 2AM PST), it was found that the explosion expressed INWARDS from the hull, not outwards.  This indicates that it was either a bomb or torpedo.  This, my friends, is an act of WAR.

The President of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, read the names of the 46 dead and missing, while officials are trying to connect the incident with North Korea.  Of course this did not sit well with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il.  North Korea, while expressing condolences for the loss of the seamen, castigated South Korea in the media, warning that they had better not implicate North Korea in the incident.

It is insane that this isn’t front and center in the regular news.  But we have to hear about some celebutard’s reaction at some show, or some reality series crap.  This is dangerous.

What gets me is how the author says we can be “smiled upon by God” by basically rebuking homosexuals, allowing CHRISTIAN ONLY prayer in school, etc, etc.  It’s sad, really.

They’ll hide behind some sort of “colorblind” quote – trust me.  But I’m sorry, it’s a lie, because as I said in the past, republicans -as a rule – are racists.