Mambo Taxi

Hey- I've been sitting on some really cool news for the last ten days.

Law firm Kramer Levin has just filed a pair of amicus briefs on behalf of religious organizations.

The US Supreme Court will be hearing challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8 on March 26th (Prop 8) and March 28th (DOMA). The DOMA case being appealed is United States v. Windsor, in which a lesbian couple who married in Toronto, lived in New York (which recognized their marriage), and then had to pay $363,000+ in federal estate taxes when one spouse died in 2009. If they had been a heterosexual couple, they would have paid no estate taxes.

At the gathering of Friends for LGBTQ Concerns this month, in Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business, our group was asked if we might be added as friends of the court. We had received a letter from the law office just weeks earlier. A small group studied the draft filing (so amazingly well-written!) and recommended that we do add our name to the brief. Our Business Meeting then discerned this was part of our witness, and so we sent back our "yes" along with a few minor corrections- and additional URLs. ...And they cited our webpages! Our collection of Marriage Minutes are cited in a Supreme Court filing! The webpages which were put together by fyddlestyx and myself!
_{(Though I want to make clear that other Quaker bodies wrote these Minutes on the subject of same-sex marriage. We just collected and shared them.)}

BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE

BISHOPS OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN THE STATE OF
CALIFORNIA; MANHATTAN CONFERENCE OF
THE METROPOLITAN NEW YORK SYNOD OF THE
EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH IN AMERICA;
THE RABBINICAL ASSEMBLY; THE
RECONSTRUCTIONIST RABBINICAL
ASSOCIATION; RECONSTRUCTIONIST
RABBINICAL COLLEGE; RABBI AKIVA HERZFELD
OF SHAAREY TPHILOH; THE UNION FOR
REFORM JUDAISM; UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST
ASSOCIATION; UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST; THE
UNITED SYNAGOGUE OF CONSERVATIVE
JUDAISM; AFFIRMATION; COVENANT NETWORK
OF PRESBYTERIANS; FRIENDS FOR LESBIAN,
GAY, BISEXUAL, TRANSGENDER, AND QUEER
CONCERNS; METHODIST FEDERATION FOR
SOCIAL ACTION; MORE LIGHT PRESBYTERIANS;
PRESBYTERIAN WELCOME; RECONCILING
MINISTRIES NETWORK; RECONCILINGWORKS:
LUTHERANS FOR FULL PARTICIPATION; AND
RELIGIOUS INSTITUTE, INC. IN SUPPORT OF
AFFIRMANCE IN FAVOR OF RESPONDENTS

Any information about the brief was to remain private until after it was filed; it's been tough to sit on this without telling anyone. The anti-DOMA brief is so very well written! How great is this...

"It appears that what those other amici want is not protection for their own free speech and free exercise rights, but rather immunity from disapproval they may face by those who affirm the rights and relationships of lesbian and gay people."

"[The preceding] belies the claim of certain amici favoring reversal that American religions speak uniformly or overwhelmingly in opposition to marriage equality for same-sex couples. To the contrary, American religious thought and practice embrace a rich diversity. No one view speaks for “religion” – even if, contrary to the Establishment Clause, it were appropriate to give weight to religious views in evaluating and applying the Constitution’s secular promise of equal protection."

"Were the federal government to start recognizing the lawful civil marriages of same-sex couples– as it does interfaith marriages, interracial marriages, and re-marriages after divorce – religions that disapprove of such unions would remain free to define religious marriage however they wish. They could withhold spiritual blessing of such marriages and
indeed bar those entering into them from being congregants at all, just as they are now free to do so on grounds of faith, race, prior marital status, or any other characteristic deemed religiously significant. Amici urging reversal fail to explain how their religious practice would be burdened by the fact that
other people are afforded equal marriage rights by the state. For example, the brief of amici Liberty, Life
and Law Foundation and North Carolina Values Coalition scarcely even touches on the actual legal
consequences of recognizing the marriages of same-sex couples. Instead, it focuses on fears of having to
“endorse or facilitate” marriages of same-sex couples [...]"

And it keeps going.

---

It was a minor miracle of timing that the law office asked us to sign on just a few weeks before our gathering; and the deadline for our decision was three days after the gathering ended. A few weeks in either direction and we would have not been able to sign on as a friend of the court, since our group only meets twice a year.

And a final note: This law firm, Kramer Levin, has been a strong supporter of LGBT rights and cases for almost 20 years. melted_snowball pointed out to me that one of the three founders, Arthur Kramer, was a character in his brother Larry's autobiographical play, The Normal Heart. The two brothers had an enormous falling out in the mid 80s when Arthur Kramer would not lend his name to Larry's anti-AIDS activist group, Gay Men's Health Crisis, only offering personal support of his gay brother. Larry saw this as a cop-out; in the play, they remain estranged until Larry's death (though it seems that in real life they had some limited rapprochement).

And so this is a small part in a long story. And it keeps going.

Turns out I will remember what I was doing when New York State Senate passed the Marriage Equality bill.

I was skyping with my parents; we had just said our good-byes, agreed it could take a while for them to get to the vote, even if it were a sure thing (but what if two senators fell and broke their noses and had to leave the chambers...) and mom made one last check on New York Times before hanging up, and there it was. And she got to read it from our Ithaca friend Diane M's facebook page as well. 33-29 votes in a Republican Senate. The bill will become law 30 days after Gov. Cuomo signs it.

This one, US State #6 for full marriage protection, is particularly noteworthy to me because I was born in New York State, lived there for my first 25 years; and so many friends in New York will now have legal marriage protection. In fact one friend (Vonn N.) is from the district of Steve Saland, the Republican senator who made a 10pm shift from undecided (without religious protections built in) to supporting it (with religious protections).

Congratulations, New York State! ...44 states to go, plus federal.

How's that go? Slow arc? Yeah, like that.

Via sociolog_images:

"Regardless of the arguments you’ll hear so often that gun rights are being increasingly infringed upon, at least on this issue, it appears that gun-rights advocates have made significant progress at affecting the legislative process at the state level."

...that turns out to be an understatement. I was distressed to see how much the gun control laws have changed in the US since the mid-1980s concerning restrictions on concealed weapons. In 39 states, currently, if you pass a safety course and background check, you can carry concealed guns. (In three others, a gun license gives you the right to do so, without checks). Just two states don't allow concealed gun licenses; Wisconsin and Illinois (down from 15 in 1986).

This is of course not the same as how easy states make getting regular gun permits, which I would like to know as well but haven't looked up yet.

Biking home today, on my regular commute.

Though, not really, because I didn't turn at the usual block.

So I'm biking a street off from the usual commute, and I wonder why I didn't turn.

And I come up and see a bicyclist on the left side of the street, biking against traffic. Wearing a helmet. In his mid-20s.

So I say, "Hey there."

He says, "Hey," in a friendly way. I slow down a bit to match him.

I say, "I hope you don't mind, and I'm not trying to give you a hard time, but did you know it's really dangerous biking on that side against traffic? Because the cars aren't looking for things moving at bike speeds on that side of the road. And that's really dangerous for you."

He stopped and looked confused. "But I thought we were supposed to go against traffic to see them better. For safety." He sounded betrayed.

I said, "It's safer if you're a pedestrian. On foot, you're moving slowly, it's fine to be on that side. But on a bike, according to law, you're a vehicle."

"Oh. Wow. Thanks."

"You're welcome. Yeah, I think a lot of people got told that in school a while ago, that they should bike against traffic, but it's really unsafe for you, and it's unsafe for bicyclists who are coming the other way. Nobody expects bikes to be there."

"Oh. OK."

"Take care."

"Yeah, have a good day."

And I biked on home, with a lump in my throat.


---

Today at lunch, melted_snowball and I were talking about the condition of being a bicyclist or pedestrian in this town, or in many places in North America. And we agreed there is no reason, other than lack of public will, for car/bike/pedestrian interaction to be as fraught as it is (particularly car/bike, but also bike/pedestrian). d. mentioned a friend's post today considering his choice to bike on less trafficked roads and to back away from engaging motorists who are being dangerous. This is come up regarding a recent grisly Toronto road-rage altercation that left a bike courier dead, though it's mostly gotten press because the motorist is a former Attorney General of Ontario charged with vehicular homicide. That situation is sad, but the overall condition of culture around bicycles is pretty damn sad too.

I want to see a lot more public will toward educating both cyclists and motorists about the rules of the road. I want to see a police blitz ticketing cyclists without lights or bells or running red lights; I want to see a lot of blitzes. I want to see a lot more adult defensive-cycling classes. (A national program recently sent a trainer-instructor here, for companies or individuals who wanted to teach cycling classes; I have heard nothing about its success or failures. And only heard about the program in take_the_lane's blog.)

But the status quo is deeply frustrating.

In the last week, I wrote three posts but didn't like how they came together, so I gave up and saved them as Private. I'm not feeling particularly anti-communicative; but non-technical things seem tougher to write about. Possibly that's because I'm switching off between programming and writing my talk for the University IT conference in 11 days.

I woke this morning with a sore throat, the second in a row, and I'm hoping it will be OK tomorrow, because I obviously don't want the cold du jour.

As I was waking up, I was obsessing about change.gov, whether I should bother sending feedback concerning justice concerns, suggestions on engaging citizen activism, or what. And what would transparency in government look like in practice, if the next US gov't goes anywhere with that promise. And probably I should just let it go. Hm.

I took the morning off work and slept, came in at lunch-time, and got a fair bit done by the afternoon. My to-do list for tomorrow feels like a bit much if I'm fighting a cold; I expect I'm not going to get to see Faust at the movies (aw). But there's a house-warming in the evening (yay!) And much tea in my future.

Busy week around here. d's been running ragged; he's at the U tomorrow for much of the day. I think they owe him a vacation.