The Buck and Mike Blog

Shamefully, the Bureau of the Census has decided to “edit” the marital status of legally married same-sex couples in the 2010 census and list us as “unmarried partners.” It’s a step that denegrates the status of our relationships and our families by falsely denying their existence and is in contradiction to recommendations from Census Bureau staff themselves.

I know that the federal government does not recognize full marriage equality. But the world has changed. Equality in civil marriage is available to the entire U.S. population now because it is available in California to residents and non-residents alike (and soon in Massacusetts, which already extends it to its own residents). Not to mention the thousands of civil marriages performed in Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, South Africa, and Norway. New York, New Mexico, and Rhode Island now recognize all these marriages.

This is especially disturbing because government agencies as well as the private sector use census figures to determine the types of families that exist, where they live, and what their potential needs are. This should not be a Bush Administration-driven political decision.

I usually am skeptical of online petitions, as mass e-mailings are routinely ignored by members of Congress. However, People for the American Way are providing a petition that they will present directly to the Census Bureau. Their’s is a voice that will be heard.

Please sign the petition. Our families thank you.

Census Bureau, Bureau of the Census, marriage equality, People for the American Way

Note: While I don’t totally agree with the tone of Mark Morford’s following opinion piece, I think his view of the demise of the radical Christian Right is accurate, so I’m sharing it here. –Buck

It is the end of the nutball Christian right. Here is your proof. To go

By Mark Morford,
SF Gate (San Francisco Chronicle)
Friday, July 11, 2008

Hey, remember the angry evangelicals? The quivering clan of militant Christoholics who propelled Bush into office and seized the national narrative for a few terrifying moments about five years back, ran deep into the woods with it and rubbed it all over their naughty bits in a frenzy of fear and confusion and lust for all things homophobic and saccharine and spiritually denigrating?

Dying. Nearly dead. Gasping their last. Very soon to be a footnote, a caricature, a gag, a punch line, blasted to the dustbin of history like dried housefly limbs after a sneeze. You should know this now.

Yes, you are right; they already were a caricature, a cultural pothole, a nasty rash in the armpit of society. But it wasn’t all that long ago that they were, through a bizarre series of sociopolitical machinations still being parsed by baffled historians, a powerful rash, hugely newsworthy, as dangerous and unstoppable as they were wrongheaded and sad. Remember?

You were not much younger than you are right now. As the Bush era crested, as the neocons’ power reached nuclear levels, when female nipples and f-words and evil gay agendas ruled the news, the evangelical Right–led by the most virulent, spittle-flecked gaggle of mental throwbacks to ever stain the American newswires, Focus on the Family (Dr. James Dobson’s clan) and the American Family Association and its nefarious leader, the Rev. Donald Wildmon–these groups controlled, for a brief, awful moment, the national dialogue. They were the temporary arbiters of taste, the warped conscience of a freaked-out culture. And lo, it was ugly.

Rejoice, won’t you? For their time is over.

Did you know the AFA recently boycotted McDonald’s?
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Christian right, Mark Morford, Focus on the Family, American Family Association

I saw a license plate today on a zoomy PT Cruiser parked in a handicapped spot at the local Safeway. It said “WHY ME.” Ah, yes, the eternal question.

But what would you do if you were Christopher Harmon, who has a rare degenerative neurological disease that has left him deaf, blind, speechless, quadraplegic, unable to feed himself, and on a respirator? Obviously, write four children’s books and a screenplay. http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/us/2008/07/05/deaf.blind.writer.kare

He’s my Hero of the Week.

Christopher Harmon

During this election year we have heard a lot of crap about who is patriotic and who is not. So-and-so candidate is not patriotic because he doesn’t wear a flag pin. Another candidate is unpatriotic because he stood too far away from the American flag to be photographed by everyone at every angle. The very idea of questioning a candidate’s patriotism is insulting. Like they want to take a pay cut and serve their country so they can sell out to Italy because they like pizza? Dumb!
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patriotism

A couple of weeks ago, Norway became the sixth country to sign on to marriage equality. (See chronology below.) Others will follow shortly, as one of the last barriers to civil rights equality continues to topple worldwide.
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Norway, marriage equality, civil rights