Pilgrimage to Chimayo

My truckbuddy Frank had a post on his blog the other day on this shrine I'd never heard about.  Some people call it the "Lourdes of America."  I'm neither Catholic nor athletic, and the idea of a 40-mile hike uphill is rather uninspiring, to say the least. However, I can appreciate the spiritual impetus, and I'm sure many people do get a blessing of some kind thereby.  The impious may jeer and laugh at such simplicities; but there are many worse ways to spend a weekend.

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Marriage Equality Comes to New Mexico

As of this morning, New Mexico - a next-door neighbor of Texas - is the 17th state to legalize same-sex marriage, hooray!  The Albuquerque Journal reports:

The New Mexico Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in favor of same-sex couples, granting them all the same rights of marriage enjoyed by heterosexual couples.

The court’s 31-page opinion states, in part, that: “All rights, protections, and responsibilities that result from the marital relationship shall apply equally to both same-gender and opposite-gender married couples.”

New Mexico joins 16 other states, the District of Columbia, and several Native American tribes in recognizing same-sex unions.

After eight of the state’s 33 counties began issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples earlier this year, county officials petitioned the court to provide a state-wide ruling.

The court ruled that county clerks must issue marriage licenses to couples regardless of gender, and that licenses issued to same-sex couples prior to the ruling must be recognized. More than 1,400 same-sex couples have been issued marriage licenses in New Mexico since August.

Here's the ruling itself:

New Mexico Marriage Case NMSC Decision by Equality Case Files

Updated marriage map from Freedom to Marry:

Click to enlarge.

Marriage News Watch, 9/6/13

Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights reports:




Update: Hawaii Governor Neil Abercombie has called a special session of the Legislature to convene on October 28 to pass a same-sex marriage bill; the governor believes there are enough votes in both the Senate and the House to pass the measure, which would come into effect in mid-November.

Same-sex marriage in the United States was first given serious legal consideration by the Hawaii Supreme Court in 1993, causing conservatives to react with horror in many other states around the country and in Congress, eventually leading to the passage of the federal Defense of Marriage Act three years later, followed by numerous state bans.

Hitched in Taos, and Other Marriage News

Some video of the first same-sex weddings in Taos, New Mexico, last Wednesday the 28th. Dignity may be somewhat lacking in these impromptu ceremonies, but the emotions are all that they should be.




While we're on the topic of marriage, Chicago Cardinal Francis George, while ranting against how "irrational" gay marriage is, admits that "the Church did not invent marriage"; but "nature gives us marriage," so that's why we do it.  Say what?

It's also worth taking another look at this rather amazing chart of Biblical Marriage that I posted on the Blue Truck a year or two ago - at the link, you can download it yourself or share it on Facebook or Twitter.

And Mary Cheney, lesbian daughter of the former Vice-President who married her wife, Heather Poe, last year in D. C.,  today slammed her sister's announcement earlier this week that she is "not pro-gay marriage."  Mary said:

For the record, I love my sister, but she is dead wrong on the issue of marriage. Freedom means freedom for everyone. That means that all families — regardless of how they look or how they are made — all families are entitled to the same rights, privileges and protections as every other. It’s not something to be decided by a show of hands.

Finally, in the atrium of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D. C., tonight Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will officiate at the wedding of her good friend and Kennedy Center Director Michael Kaiser and government economist John Roberts (no relation to Chief Justice John G. Roberts). On the guest list are stars of opera and Broadway, as well as the cream of Washington society. Ginsburg is already scheduled to celebrate another same-sex wedding next month.

My God, fellas - can you believe?? A GAY WEDDING presided over by a SUPREME COURT JUSTICE?!! Holy fuck, we're sure not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

And I have lived to see this day.

Marriage News Watch, 8/26/13

Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights reports:




FLASH, 6:28 PM CST - - - This just in, from the Santa Fe New Mexican:

Bernalillo County told to issue same-sex marriage licenses

An Albuquerque judge on Monday ordered the clerk of New Mexico’s most populous county to join two other counties in the state in issuing marriage licenses for gay and lesbian couples.

The order from State District Judge Alan Malott came in a case involving a lesbian couple who sought an emergency ruling because one of them is dying.

In an unexpected turn, the couple was able to get married Friday after a judge in a separate case ordered the Santa Fe clerk to issue same-sex licenses. Also last week, the clerk of Doña Ana County in Southern New Mexico decided on his own to recognize same-sex marriage.

Malott said New Mexico’s constitution prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Earlier Monday, Bernalillo County Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver said she had 1,000 licenses printed in case Malott ordered her to issue licenses for same-sex marriages.

The hearing originally was scheduled on an emergency motion to force the county to issue a marriage license to Jen Roper, who is dying of cancer, and Angelique Neuman because of Roper’s cancer. . . .

A group of Republican legislators is planning to file a lawsuit to stop [Doña Ana County Clerk Lynn Ellins].

Ellins, however, says, “I think the train has pulled out of the station."

Update, 8/27, 1:35 p.m.: Two more counties, San Miguel and Valencia, announced today that they will also issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples this week.

This train is bound for glory.

Just Married in the Land of Enchantment

"Mass Gay Wedding in Santa Fe" was the news on Friday afternoon as
gay and lesbian couples flocked to the courthouse to get hitched.

Teh gay seems to be bustin' out all over the place now. Suck it, Putin.

This week, two counties in New Mexico began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. On Wednesday, Lynn Ellins, the county clerk of Doña Ana County, which is next door to El Paso, Texas, took it upon himself to begin issuing marriage licenses, saying:

After careful review of New Mexico's laws it is clear that the state's marriage statutes are gender neutral and do not expressly prohibit Doña Ana County from issuing marriage licenses to same-gender couples. Any further denial of marriage licenses to these couples violates the United States and New Mexico Constitution and the New Mexico Human Rights Act. Doña Ana County is upholding New Mexico law by issuing these marriage licenses, and I see no reason to make committed couples in Doña Ana County wait another minute to marry.

Then late on Thursday afternoon, a state district judge ruled on a case brought by several gay couples that Santa Fe County, home of the state capital, must begin issuing marriage licenses, and the clerk there did so beginning on Friday afternoon. County clerk Geraldine Salazar stated:

I am a fervent supporter of same-sex marriage in New Mexico and have always believed that the restrictive and antiquated statutes in our State must fall to principles of equal protection embodied in our Constitution. I have been frustrated recently wanting to issue licenses but being confronted with long standing statutes that do not permit it. Now that Judge Singleton has ordered me to issue a license to Messrs. Hanna and Hudson on constitutional grounds, I intend to do so and to issue a license to any same-sex couple who desires one and are otherwise qualified. By complying with the judge’s order, we will be issuing licenses legally and will not continue to use limited county resources on further litigation.

New Mexico statutes do not specify that married couples have to be male-female.  No doubt there will be more lawsuits for and against marriage equality until it is finally settled, but seems like the dam is cracked beyond repair in New Mexico now.  Here's a video summary of this week's events:

Newsbites

At this holiday time, when the Christian world is - theoretically - piously commemorating the birth of Christ, a little good cheer from Mexico . . . and a lot of fake-Christian crap from elsewhere.

A bill to legalize same-sex marriage, including adoption rights, passes  Mexico City's legislative assembly by 39-20.  The city enacted civil unions in 2007, and will be the first jurisdiction in all of Latin America to have equal marriage.  Population, 2009:  8.8 million, and 21 million in the metro area.

City lawmaker Victor Romo, a member of the mayor's leftist party, called it a historic day.  "For centuries unjust laws banned marriage between blacks and whites or Indians and Europeans," he said. "Today all barriers have disappeared."

But in New Mexico, whose statutes do not specify that married couples have to be male and female, a state legislator has filed a bill to close that theoretical loophole by constitutional amendment.  (New Mexico has never recognized or performed same-sex marriages.)  A domestic partnership bill was defeated there earlier this year, but Governor Bill Richardson says he hopes to get such a bill passed next year.

Up in Canada, where equal marriage became the law of the land in 2005, the gay-haters are foaming at the mouth over this wicked, disgusting, totally obscene Christmas card sent out by Member of Parliament Scott Brison to 5,000 friends and constituents:

Nova Scotian Brison, on the left, married his husband, Maxime St. Pierre, in 2007, the first federal MP to marry a same-sex partner while in office.  The wedding was attended by the cream of Canadian politicians, including two former prime ministers.  And still, even in liberal, gay-friendly Canada - the haters just can't stand even the merest suggestion that two men can love each other.  Especially at Christmas time!

Back in the U.S., Prominent right-wing homophobes Peter LaBarbera and Matt Barber are slugging it out over who should take the rap for this repulsive description of gay relationships:  "one man violently cramming his penis into another man’s lower intestine and calling it ‘love.’”  Joe Jervis, as usual, is on the case, with glee. 

Notice, guys - this is a scared-shitless straight boy's nightmare concept of what it's like.  Not at all the reality as we experience it.  Not the truth.  A lie - but a Big Lie that straight boys for centuries have built up and spread in the name of their self-reflecting Heterosexual God - and have used, and are still using, to absolutely crush the life out of gay people wherever they can.

Joe is also keeping track of the freeper-creepers whose maniacal calls for Civil War II are growing more strident:

A violent overthrow of the socialist bastard traitors BEFORE this hellish health care debacle gets enacted is the only way we will ever be able to stop our plunge into socialist-fascist tyranny. I only hope that we have enough patriotic military officers & soldiers who will fight with us & for us.

 Uh-huh.  Socialist-fascist tyranny.  Can you say oxymoron, you morons?

Over in the United Kingdom, where civil partnerships have been in place for four years now, they have their extremists too:  Stephen Green, leader of Christian Voice, says Jesus approves killing the gays - and adulteresses too: 

The Bible calls for the ultimate penalty for sodomy (Lev 20:13) and for rape (Deut 22:25), and our Lord upheld the death penalty when He called for the accusers of the woman caught in adultery to cast the first stone (John 8:7) – if, that is, they were not implicated in adultery themselves. The contrast between our politicians and those of Uganda could not be more stark. A Parliamentarian in Uganda is trying to protect his nation's children. The House of Commons of the United Kingdom is trying to corrupt ours.

Hmm, so just Who Would Jesus Kill? - and would that include all the family-loving, Bible-believing, adulterous Republican politicians in this country?

Also, in Northern England, an Anglican priest in York, the Rev. Tim Jones, has delivered a sermon advising his congregation to shoplift from big retailers - not small ones, mind you - because "God's love for the poor is more important than the property rights of the rich."  Help me out here guys - I just can't find this verse in the Sermon on the Mount, can you?  And just What Would Jesus Steal, anyway?

Down in Puerto Rico, though, a voice of sanity:  out bisexual closeted I-never-said-I-was-gay singing star and single dad Ricky Martin has a timely message of peace and goodwill to men posted on his website:

The murders of James Byrd, Matthew Shepard, Jorge Steven Lopez [Mercado], Marcelo Lucero, Luis Ramirez and countless others who were victims of violent 'hate crimes' should be completely unacceptable to every human being; because we're all human beings. . . .  Accepting diversity is the first and most important step we can take towards eliminating hate crimes and uniting humanity. If we ACCEPT, humanity unites. If humanity unites, equal human rights will become a reality. And if equal human rights become a reality, peace will be within our reach.

And finally, on an archaeological note, the remains of a small, modest house dating from the time of Jesus have been found in Nazareth, illustrating the typical living accommodations of that time and place.  Nothing fancy, just little bitty houses in a little hick town way out in the boonies:  you'd never think anything worth mentioning would come from a place like that, would you?