Massachusetts To Allow Nonresident Same-Sex Couples to Wed After This Week

For all its problems, have to say are really like living in Massachusetts. Not only was it the first of so far only two states to legalize same-sex marriage, but now it seems that Massachusetts is finally getting ready to allow same-sex couples from other states to get married here.

The reason that they haven’t been able to up until now is due to a 1913 law that prohibits any couple from getting married in Massachusetts if their marriage would be illegal in the state in which they reside. What kinds of marriages were illegal in some states in 1913? Why, interracial marriages, of course! To be fair, incestuous marriages were also covered under this law, but the reason the law was passed early in the last century was very likely the then-scandalous marriage of a black boxer to a white woman. Besides, Massachusetts already had laws preventing such marriages (see Massachusetts General Law, Title III, Chapter 207, sections 1 and 2). There's little doubt that the 1913 Law was passed due to racist motivations.

The law wasn’t even enforced in Massachusetts until 2004, when governor Mitt Romney started thinking about running for president. When it came time for him to start worrying about pandering to the right-wing religious base of the Republican Party, he invoked as quintessentially racist law to make it look like he was opposed to gay marriage — even though he wasn't strongly opposed to at least civil unions as late as 2002 (note: the site I've linked to here is one run by one of the most conservative political action groups in Massachusetts, so this is not "liberal" anti-Romney material but conservative-generated info). The national spotlight seems to have changed that.

Our current governor and state legislature looked to be on the verge of kicking the 1913 marriage law off the books, and it’s about time. A vote on this may be held in the state Senate today and in the House by Thursday. If the law is overturned, it will be legal for a couple from any state to be married in Massachusetts if their union is legal in this state.

A long way since 1913

the best-known act of the Massachusetts Legislature of 1913 is a law denying marriage licenses to nonresident couples if their union would be illegal in their home states.

The measure has a miserable history. Though it resurfaced as part of the same-sex marriage debate in 2004, its origins lie in racial discrimination...

...Back in 1913, interracial marriages were legal in Massachusetts, but not in most states. Yet it's not at all clear that any interracial couples were ever turned away under the law. Instead, it fell into obscurity and only resurfaced four years ago, when Governor Mitt Romney cited it in telling towns to refuse marriage licenses to same-sex couples from out of state.

Other states can enforce their own laws. And if most states refuse to recognize some marriages that are legal in Massachusetts, that's their loss...

The law in question is Massachusetts General Law Title III, Chapter 207, Section 11:

No marriage shall be contracted in this commonwealth by a party residing and intending to continue to reside in another jurisdiction if such marriage would be void if contracted in such other jurisdiction, and every marriage contracted in this commonwealth in violation hereof shall be null and void.

Section 12 then explains how out-of-state residents are to be prevented from getting married in a way that's legal in Massachusetts but not legal in, say, Oklahoma:

Before issuing a license to marry a person who resides and intends to continue to reside in another state, the officer having authority to issue the license shall satisfy himself, by requiring affidavits or otherwise, that such person is not prohibited from intermarrying by the laws of the jurisdiction where he or she resides.

This is probably why Section 11 was never enforced before it was dredged up from obscurity in the case of same-sex marriages. Enforcing something like this would have meant that any couple without a Massachusetts address would have needed a note from their local justice of the peace or lawmakers or what have you that explained the laws of some other state in order to get married here, in which case why would they bother to get married here at all? Essentially, this would have had the effect of barring anyone from out of state from getting married in Massachusetts.

As one might expect, the moon-faced assassins of joy are up in arms about the death of this bigoted blight on the Massachusetts law books. "But this will make Massachusetts the Las Vegas of gay marriage," whine people such as Peter LaBarbera, to which I can only reply, so what if it does? Right now, isn't Las Vegas the Las Vegas of straight marriage? Don't half of all opposite-sex marriage end in divorce? If concerned women like Bam-Bam are worried about Massachusetts becoming a Mecca for same-sex couples who want to have a go at a formal commitment, there's an easy solution; simply make their marriages legal in lots of other places. Then they wouldn't be forced to come here or go to California to get married. Problem solved. Of course, what the whiners are really opposed to is that these couples will be able to get married at all. This isn't about Massachusetts, it's about their watching their ability to prevent same-sex marriages from happening at all.

As far as I'm concerned, if every homosexual couple in the world decides they want to get married in Massachusetts starting next week, fine! Come on over! Welcome; sorry to have kept you waiting while our government got around to finally obliterating a law intended to enforce one form of bigotry that had been used to maintain another that has at last become a minority view after a four-year experiment has demonstrated that allowing two committed men or two committed women from wedding one another does not, in fact, cause invisible sky-giants to rain meteors down upon us all. Good luck and may you have many years of happiness together.

The world is about to become a tiny bit better.

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Florida Republican Primary: Religious Candidates in Counties With Creationist School Boards

McCain won the Florida Republican primary, taking 36% of the vote to second place Mitt Romney's 31%. I thought Huckabee would do better than his meager 13%, a fourth-place finish that put him behind even Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani has dropped out at this point; Huckabee would appear still to be expecting a miracle. Clue for ya, Huckster: there won't be one.

For his part, Romney's concession speech touched back to his own religious appeal, containing the notable line about how "hard-working, god-fearing" people are what made America great "and always will." Huckabee has been the biggest bible-thumper in the Republican race without doubt but Mitt Romney is certainly willing to do the same. McCain is a somewhat more secular-minded candidate (which isn't to say I like his positions) and Giuliani, the least-religious of the bunch, has endorsed him at this point.

I was curious, though, as to how candidates who've made religion an issue did in those Florida counties wherein school boards have passed pro-Creationism resolutions against the proposed science education standards. In other words, is there any correlation between Huckabee and/or Romney finishing in first or second place in a given county and a Creationist school board being present? I cobbled together side-by-side comparisons by using a map of counties that have passed or proposed such a resolution (by Pim van Meurs) and an interactive map from The Washington Post that broke down voting by county.

Huckabee


Huckabee finished first in four counties (Holmes, Washington, Suwanee and Gilchrist). Two of these counties (Holmes and Washington) have Creationist school boards. He came second in 11 more counties (Jackson, Calhoun, Madison, Taylor, Hamilton, Lafayette, Baker, Bradford, Levy, Hardee and Okeechobee). Of these, pro-Creationist resolutions have been passed by the school boards in Jackson, Madison, Taylor, Hamilton and Baker counties. Of the 12 counties where such resolutions have been passed, then, Huckabee finished first or second in seven.

Romney


Romney finished first in 18 counties; of these, Baker, Nassau, Clay, St. Johns, and Union have school boards that have passed anti-science resolutions. He finished second in 35 more counties (there are 67 counties in Florida). Among them are Putnam County, where a resolution has been passed, and Dixie, Wakulla, Okaloosa, Martin and Palm Beach Counties (considered likely to draft a resolution) and Polk and Pinellas Counties (where resolutions have been drafted but not yet voted upon).

In both the cases of Huckabee and Romney, they often came second only by less than 5% of the vote. McCain squeaked out wins in several of the counties. He finished third in only two counties, one of which (Baker County) has passed a resolution condemning Florida's new science education standards.

Of the counties in which school boards have passed these resolutions, then, McCain lost in seven. In the pro-Creationism counties in which McCain won, the victory was by less than 5% in three:

Jackson County: McCain 35%, Huckabee 33%
Madison County: McCain 36%, Huckabee 34%
Taylor County: McCain 39%, Huckabee 32%
Hamilton County: McCain 37%, Huckabee 31%
Putnam County: McCain 33%, Romney 32%

In none of these did McCain win a clear majority; it appears that Huckabee and Romney are splitting the religious conservative vote overall. In the aftermath of Super Tuesday, I'll be looking for Huckabee to drop out and endorse Romney. If he'd done that before the Florida primary, in fact, Romney might just have won the thing. What happened in Florida, I think, gives us a good glimpse of where McCain's support base isn't. If he becomes the nominee, I think a lot of evangelicals will stay home on election day. That's fine by me. I'd love to see a Republican candidate take the nomination without carrying the religious wingnut vote. I think it could be done, and if so it would demonstrate eloquently the diminishing influence of the Bronze Agers on politics.

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Fred Thompson Quits, Huckabee is Going To, and John McCain Will Be Running in November

Fred Thompson is giving up his lukewarm presidential bid. He never seemed to want it all that much, anyhow. Even his announcement was only three sentences long:

Today I have withdrawn my candidacy for President of the United States. I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort. Jeri and I will always be grateful for the encouragement and friendship of so many wonderful people.

— Source

Nah, I don't think anyone benefited from Thompson's snoozer of a campaign, except maybe for John McCain and Mike Huckabee. The former may have won South Carolina because of Thompson. The latter, as mentioned yesterday, may be in the midst of a religious revelation because of it.

From the sound of things, Huckabee isn't going to last too much longer, either. That's what I thought would happen if he didn't win South Carolina. So the Huckster is largely conceding Florida and hoping to hang in until February 5, Super Tuesday. I'm not sure what the point of that is, but that's what he's doing. Giuliani isn't going to win Florida; he'll be dropping out after that primary. The Republican race is essentially between Romney and McCain at this point. Not that I would vote for either one of them, but I think McCain is going to be the Republican candidate for November. Huckabee may well make a return then, though. I could see a McCain/Huckabee ticket, or a McCain/Romney ticket, for that matter.

It's interesting to watch the Republican candidates beginning to drift away from the heavy religious message. Maybe that says something about how this country is changing just a little bit. Perhaps the evangelical fundies are finally starting to lose their stranglehold on political discourse in this country. Time will tell. Still, Huckabee is sinking like a rock, Romney is talking about business now, and McCain is probably the least religiously-motivated of the pack with the exception of Giuliani. Even most New Yorkers don't like Giuliani.

Democrats? Dunno yet. I have a sneaking suspicion that it's going to be Hillary Clinton on that side, maybe with John Edwards as a VP if he'd accept it. It's still too close to call, though. It probably doesn't matter too much; barring any huge change in momentum, the Democrats are more likely to win in November. Of course, a lot can happen between now and then. We'll see.

At least we'll finally be rid of ShrubCo either way, more or less. Who knows — perhaps the next administration won't be so keen on supressing science and rewriting reports to fit policy instead of fitting policy to the fact-finding that results from inquiry. After eight years of the crap we've had, that alone would be a nice change.

We'll see.

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The Opposite of Huckabee

Riddle me this: What is the opposite of Mike Huckabee?

Answer: The opposite of Mike Huckabee is A Dirty Shame, John Waters' 2004 twisted masterpiece.

I've seen all of John Waters' movies, except for Cry Baby, at least once. Last night was my third time watching A Dirty Shame and I like the flick better each time I see it. It's his most subversive movie. His other movies are about weird people; A Dirty Shame is based on the idea that normal people are just one minor head injury away from becoming absolute freaks.
In the wild world according to Waters, we all have an inner pervert waiting for an impact to the cranium to emerge. Anything at all can be sexualized, from a can of Spaghetti-O's to a car tire, and the world is divided into freaks and neuters, the latter being people who hate sex. None of it's true, but it makes for a hilarious cinematic world view.

Waters goes even further, of course, because that's what John Waters does at his best. It's not enough for everyone to be either a perv or very nearly one. There's a perv Jesus and perv apostles and the whole thing is part of a religious awakening. The whole world will become instantly transformed into paradise when an act that has never been sexual becomes one. As it turns out, the magical sex act that brings on the Rapture is... butting heads. That's it. We all bang our heads together and the neuters get "left behind." I mean, who else but John Waters can come up with that after shocking and challenging an audience with some of the most bizarre, deviant behavior ever brought to the screen? Who else would even try turning Tracy Ullman into a nymphomaniac in the first place? John Waters is the Genius of Trash. I love his flicks and I love A Dirty Shame best of all.

But there is one thing that makes my favorite Waters movie even better, and that's watching it as a break from keeping tabs on the presidential race. Let's face it, the world of presidential politics is every bit as trashy and unreal and perverse as the best John Waters movie. They're all so earnest and squeaky clean and wrapped in flags, those candidates. It's an act. John McCain and Mitt Romney's victory speeches don't show us anything more real about humanity than does strapping a pair of enormous prosthetic breasts onto Selma Blair and calling her Caprice Stickles. They've all got handlers who tell them how to look and what to do. They all follow a script designed exactly to remove as much authentic humanity from them and turn them into caricatures in an effort to cover up the imperfections that make us people. When we see Barak Obama or Mike Huckabee campaigning or when we see Johhny Knoxville levitating in "astral orgasm," we're seeing a symbol, not a person. They're all characters that stand for something, some principle, some ideology, some perversion. It's unreal. It sure is fun, though, to whiplash between the extremes. There's a balance to be struck by experiencing the characters created for A Dirty Shame and the characters created for CNN.

Everybody creates a character that they project into the world to some extent; only a very, very few people — perhaps only one, if we're lucky — ever see our total reality. That's intimacy. When that intimacy slips out, the person-as-symbol becomes debased. When Howard Dean screamed in Iowa, he became too human and that was the end of his presidential bid. When Bill Clinton got a blowjob, and when Larry Craig tried to get one, they became debased, even though the truth of the matter is that just about every male on the planet has spent at least a few minutes of their day thinking about or getting the same thing (on a good day). Does that mean I want to see Fred Thompson's sex face plastered across the front page of the newspaper? Ugh, no. Still, the images we have in our heads, placed there through the aperture of some camera, are just fiction. Whether we ever see it or not (oh god oh god I'm sorry for putting this image in your heads so early in the morning), it's entirely possible that Hillary Clinton prefers doggy-style and that John Edwards has passed gas in a movie theater at least once. It's just as likely that Minka [This link is NOT work-safe or family-friendly!!!!] can quote Jean-Paul Sartre and Ron Jeremy enjoys discussing Impressionism over a snifter of fine brandy.

These are thoughts engendered by watching A Dirty Shame between coverage of Nevada caucuses and the South Carolina primary. Get a copy of the flick yourself and do the same on Super Tuesday and see if you don't come up with something similar. In any case, the opposite of Mike Huckabee is A Dirty Shame. There's just no getting around it.

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The Circus of Gawd

I find no end of humor in the efforts of the adherents of one religion to label those of another as evil, Satanic, bound to burn in hell, etc. Let's face it; all religions are pretty weird when looked at from the outside. It's no more rationale, no more self-evident, that one should believe in the resurrection of a 2,000 year old Nazarene being the expiation of spiritual taint than it is that one should have faith in the existence of a demon that looks like a peacock and tries to keep souls from leaving the material world. Without an exception that I can think of, religions are at best internally consistent. They all break down when applied to the empirical universe, and if this were not the case then there would be no need for a concept of "faith" in the first place. Faith is merely the bridge that the adherents of a given religion attempt to build between what they see as the internal logic of their belief and the inconsistencies it encounters when applied to the world in which we live. To quote a t-shirt worn by a student I saw at a Florida State campus religious organization's recruitment table one day, "Faith is the belief in what can't be seen."

This is why I find it humorous when I encounter a story like this one:

Group sics IRS on Mormon critic
'Bring it on,' evangelist says of investigation of Romney comment

The Internal Revenue Service has been asked to investigate the Florida ministry of Bill Keller, host of the Live Prayer TV program as well as LivePrayer.com for his comments about Mormonism. Americans United for Separation of Church and State said it has written to request the review of Keller's comments that a "vote for Mitt Romney [is a vote] for Satan."

"Americans United asserts that Bill Keller Ministries seems to have violated federal tax law when its online division, Liveprayer.com, ran articles warning readers that a vote for Romney is a vote for Satan," the activist organization announced...

...while some evangelical Christians were defending the presidential candidacy of Mormon Mitt Romney from an attack by Al Sharpton, Keller took a step in the other direction.

"If you vote for Mitt Romney, you are voting for Satan!" he wrote in a daily devotional sent to 2.4 million e-mail subscribers on May 11...

"I have been warning you for years now about this cult born out of the pits of hell and responsible for sending millions of souls to eternal damnation," Keller said...

"Those who follow the false teachings of this cult, believe in the false jesus of the Mormon cult and reject faith in the one true Jesus of the Bible, will die and spend eternity in hell," he charged. "Romney getting elected president will ultimately lead millions of souls to the eternal flames of hell!"...

Keller was a businessman convicted of insider trading in 1989, a crime for which he served more than two years in federal prison. After getting out, he received a degree in biblical studies from Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, and has been in full-time ministry ever since.

Seriously. Let's assume for a moment that this guy believes his diatribes. What does that really mean? After all, it could just as easily be the other way around. There's no factual, testable, empirical reason to believe that Keller is any more correct in his beliefs than is Romney. The books and dogmas that Keller believes in could just as well have been written by some infernal, pitchfork-toting boogieman as Romney's. Or they both could have been. Or neither one, for that matter, which is my personal belief. I'm sticking with Occam's Razor on this one; as far as any objective evidence is concerned, all the books of the Old and New Testaments, as well as the Book of Mormon, can be easily enough explained by human authorship. Looked at from that light, the whole thing turns weird in a hurry. Keller is a convicted felon, albeit one who did his time (if he's not defrauding his flock even as we speak), yet he feels perfectly comfortable telling others that if they vote for Mitt Romney, they're going to hell.

Perhaps comfortable isn't the right word, though. Perhaps the phrase "righteous and justified" is a better fit. He's so certain of his viewpoint that he's willing to challenge the IRS. Again looking at the evidence, I personally fear the IRS far more than I do any claw-footed netherworld beastie, and if Keller functioned primarily in a rational mindset, so would he. The fact is that under American law, churches are granted tax-exempt status so long as they out of politics. This condition was upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court recently in the case of Branch Ministries vs. Rossotti. Keller may not like that fact, and others might not, either, but that's the law. What Keller is doing by making explicit statements about Romney from his pulpit is a violation of it, and as such the tax-exempt status of his church should be revoked. Of course, Keller has a history of having broken the law in the past, so he may have an inherent disdain for it. As far as I'm aware, personal preferences aren't a defense in a courtroom, nor at an audit. Unless Keller can coax Jehovah himself to take the witness stand, he's managed to perform an amazing feat of contortion. He's managed to stick his foot in his mouth and then shove his head up his rear end.

I suppose that if he loses his pulpit he could get a job in a sideshow somewhere!

From where I sit, that wouldn't be much of a career change. If nothing else, these religious squabbles are entertainment. That is, unless the two sides start shooting at each other. I'm sure that Keller, at least, has thought about it. He'd be happy to know that I, for one, have no intention of voting for Romney. Receiving Keller's ringing endorsement wouldn't have changed that a bit. It may be hoping for too much, but I would love to cast a vote in the next election for a presidential candidate who deals with the world based on fact, not faith.

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