Meet Me in St. Louis, Louie

Marriages are happening in the Gateway City as I type, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:

Denying Missouri's gay couples the opportunity to marry is unconstitutional, a judge ruled Wednesday. As a result, St. Louis Circuit Judge Rex Burlison said in his decision, marriage licenses can be issued throughout Missouri beginning today. In St. Louis city, four license were issued immediately after the ruling.

"The Court finds and declares that any same sex couple that satisfies all the requirements for marriage under Missouri law, other than being of different sexes, is legally entitled to a marriage license," Burlison wrote.

He said the Missouri Constitution violates the equal protection and due process clauses of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. However, the state attorney general said he will appeal the ruling to the Missouri Supreme Court. Burlison's ruling comes more than four months after four couples were married at St. Louis City Hall, even though there is a 10-year-old state constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman.

Full text of the ruling, which it seems applies only to the city of St. Louis, is here. Freedom to Marry has pics of several happy couples tying the knot at the courthouse.


In other news, with most local races now fully counted, Republicans have retained their majority in the House of Representatives and gained majority control of the Senate. Crap. This bodes no good.

Super Saturday

The kiss seen round the world.

Three great news stories yesterday: first, Austrian drag performer Conchita Wurst won the Eurovision song contest with her rendition of "Rise like a Phoenix." Now the bearded-lady look doesn't do much for your Head Trucker; frankly, I think it's silly, show-offish, and extremely unattractive - but Putin and his evil homo-bashing thugs in Nowheresville are all pissed off by this, so fuck him - up with Conchita!




Second, Arkansas became the first Southern state where same-sex marriages were performed, following state circuit judge Chris Piazza' ruling late Friday that the state's marriage ban is unconstitutional.  In a very learned ruling that cited other recent rulings in Virginia, Utah, and Okalahoma, as well as the Windsor and Loving rulings, and even the Dred Scott Decision, Judge Piazza wrote:

Regardless of the level of review required, Arkansas’s marriage laws discriminate against same-sex couples in violation of the Equal Protection Clause because they do not advance any conceivable legitimate state interest necessary to support even a rational basis review. . . .

Furthermore, the fact that Amendment 83 was popular with voters does not protect it from constitutional scrutiny as to federal rights. The very purpose of a bill of rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. W.Ya. State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette,319 U.S. 624,638 (1943). The Constitution guarantees that all citizens have certain fundamental rights. These rights vest in every person over whom the Constitution has authority and, because they are so important, an individual’s fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections. Id. at 638. . . .

It has been over 40 years since Mildred Loving was given the right to marry the person of her choice. The hatred and fears have long since vanished and she and her husband lived full lives together; so it will be for the same-sex couples. It is time to let that beacon of freedom shine brighter on all our brothers and sisters. We will be stronger for it.

The county clerk in Eureka Springs, a gay-friendly resort town up in the Ozarks, issued 15 marriage licenses yesterday.  The state attorney general plans to appeal the ruling, so it's not yet known when or whether other Arkansas counties will follow suit on Monday.  KARK in Little Rock reports:




And in neighboring Missouri, my fellow Texan Michael Sam made some fabulous history by becoming the first openly gay player in the NFL when was drafted by the Saint Louis Rams yesterday - and kissed his boyfriend, Mizzou swimmer Vito Cammisano, live on ESPN, which broadcast a number of instant-replays of the smooch.  It's quite a moving moment, if you haven't seen it yet:



Afterwards, Sam received congratulations from, among others, President Obama.  BTW, his story is even more moving when you consider that Sam is the first of his troubled family to attend college; read about his very difficult upbringing near Galveston in this NYT report.

Vince Gill Confronts Westboro

Country megastar Vince Gill, raised a good Baptist boy in the depths of Oklahoma, confronted picketers from Westboro Baptist Church (who are not really Baptists, but a single clan of fanatics) outside the Kauffman Center, his concert venue in Kansas City, Missouri, this past Sunday. The picketers were protesting at his concert because he and wife Amy Grant, another singing star, are "adulterers" according to the Bible. Via Towleroad:



Way to go, Vince! He's a good man.

Here are Gill and Grant discussing their initial friendship and later marriage in a Larry King interview from 2008:

Why Marriage Matters

Roger Gorley and Allen Mansell

Roger Gorley, a gay man in Kansas City, Missouri, was arrested, handcuffed, and dragged away from his partner's hospital bed on Tuesday after the partner's family said they didn't want him there:



This can happen to you. Family wishes always trump visiting friends - and if you aren't married, at best you are just friends in the eyes of the law - at worst, mere strangers, even if you've lived together for years. And as you see here, even legal documents like power of attorney can be ignored at the whim of a functionary.

Nobody gives a fuck if you are lovers, or domestic partners, or "civil-unioned" - hell, they don't even know what that means. They barely know what marriage means, as witness the airheaded, dipshit blonde Fox newsreader referring to the two men as not legally being "man and wife."

But if you are married, then the police and the courts have to respect that. Marriage makes the two of you each other's next of kin. Nobody can muscle in between the two of you, or shove you aside. As I've said many times here on the Blue Truck, marriage is not really about who you love or what kind of wedding you have. It's all about protecting the two of you in your persons and your property, and having the equal respect and dignity of the law on your side.

And that matters a hell of a lot, boys.


Update: John Aravosis of Americablog has talked to Roger's 26-year-old daughter, who was in the hospital room at the time and says that it was the patient's brother who ordered his partner to leave; the nurse on duty ignored the express wishes of the patient himself:

Amanda says that the nurse had her father removed because of the loud disagreement her father was having with his partner’s brother, Lee, who had arrived at the hospital room at the same time as her father.

Rather than intervene and inform the brother that Roger was in fact the designated representative of his gay partner, the nurse had Roger removed. This, in spite of Allen reportedly saying from his hospital bed that he wanted his husband to stay in the room with him.

“Allen said he wanted dad in the room,” Amanda told me. “He said ‘I want him here’” as the nurse was asking Roger to leave.

When I asked Amanda if the nurse was possibly not aware of what the fight was about, Amanda responded: “She knew what was going on.”

Read the full exclusive interview here.


Update:  Further details on the story have come out during interviews with both Roger and his husband's brother, Lee Mansell: