This is relatively outrageous, if you ask me.

Good news:

February 24, 2005
By DANIELA ALTIMARI, Courant Staff Writer

A key legislative committee made history Wednesday by endorsing a measure that would make Connecticut the second state in the nation to adopt civil unions for same-sex couples.

After a lively two-hour debate, the judiciary committee approved the civil unions bill by a 2-1 ratio in a largely bipartisan vote.

The proposal needs the approval of the full House and Senate and Gov. M. Jodi Rell to become law. But if that happens - and several lawmakers predicted it would - Connecticut would join Vermont as the only other state to extend nearly all of the rights and responsibilities of marriage to gay and lesbian couples.

…The bill, approved on a 25-13 vote, faced opposition on two fronts: those who said it went too far and those who argued it did not go far enough.

In a controversial move, the influential gay rights coalition that has been leading the call for same-sex marriage has been lobbying against the civil union proposal.

Anne Stanback, president of Love Makes a Family, said she was gratified by the tenor of Wednesday’s debate and by the overwhelming defeat of two other proposals to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. But in her view, she said, civil unions are an unacceptable compromise she intends to vigorously oppose.

…”That’s how we do things up here, we take things one step at a time,” said Rep. Themis Klarides, a Republican from Derby who supports civil unions. “Is [this measure] 100 percent equality? Maybe not. But it’s certainly something we should all be very excited about.”

One member of the judiciary committee is standing by Love Makes a Family. State Sen. Mary Ann Handley, a Democrat from Manchester who voted against the proposal, said she could not in good conscience support civil unions, which she branded as “marriage lite.”

…Marie T. Hilliard, a lobbyist for the Connecticut Catholic Conference, said she intends to oppose the civil union proposal, which she referred to as “marriage by another name.”

Sen. David Cappiello, a Danbury Republican, said he was still struggling with the civil union concept.

“I’m not ready to support civil unions, particularly if we’re going to be criticized by both sides,” he said. Cappiello ultimately voted against the bill, but said it was possible he could change his mind.

I understand the principled position re Full Marriage Only but Meee, I’ll stand with Rep. Themis Klarides & her Half-a-Loaf Caucus. :) Journey of a Thousand miles and all That sort of rot eh wot? :) btw the Between A Man & A Woman amendments Crashed on their homophobic Butts 10-26 and 10-28 respectively. No Legs. (Quite unlike Rep. Klarides btw but nevermind about that now. :)

Read the whole thing.

Now that Saddam is out of power, I knew the “axis of evil” needed a new member… but I was thinking maybe Syria or China, not Massachusetts.

Patrick is reinvigorating the Queergate debate with his latest post, “Polygamy, fine by you?” Between the inflammatory title and the inevitable comment-war, it’s just too juicy a post for me to resist linking to it. :)

Tom Colapietro is normally a progressive kind of guy on many issues. He screwed up here. Very poor choice of words, considering the (still sadly so prevalent) connotations of ’sick’. His backpedaling to the slightly-closer-to-neutral locution “a condition” is a small step in the right direction but it seems Tom still needs to Learn more about the Subject.

As to Tom’s House colleague (see below): I Dunno. Sounds to me like Roger may be Beyond Redemption.

Senator Offers Limited Apology

February 15, 2005
By MARK PAZNIOKAS, Courant Staff Writer

A state senator offered a limited apology Monday for calling homosexuality a sickness - a position abandoned 31 years ago by the American Psychiatric Association.

Sen. Thomas A. Colapietro, D-Plymouth, apologized for his choice of words after being confronted by an openly gay colleague, but he did not recant his opinion.

“It’s a sickness, I think,” Colapietro said in a story about same-sex marriage published Saturday by his local newspaper, the Bristol Press. “It’s not a cure for the sickness allowing them to marry.”

Colapietro was quickly criticized on an Internet bulletin board devoted to Bristol-area politics and in person Monday during a conversation with Sen. Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford, who is gay.

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When archconservative Alan Keyes was running for U.S. Senate last year, his gay daughter worked hard for his quixotic campaign, even though she disagrees with him about “almost everything,” because, well, he’s her father, and family comes first, right?

Now, Alan Keyes has rewarded his daughter’s efforts by disowning her because she’s a lesbian:

Alan Keyes and his wife, Jocelyn…threw her out of their house, refused to pay her college tuition and stopped speaking to her.

Maya, 19, says her parents cut her off because of who she is — “a liberal queer.” …

Her parents have known that Maya is a lesbian since they found a copy of the Washington Blade, the gay weekly, in her room and confronted her at the end of high school (she went to Oakcrest School for Girls, a Catholic school in McLean run by the church’s highly devout Opus Dei movement.) Ever since, Maya says, her parents have told her that her sexuality is wrong and sinful.

“As long as I was quiet about being gay or my politics, we got along,” she says. “Then I went to the Counterinaugural,” last month’s protests in Washington against President Bush. “My father didn’t like that.”

[So they’re not disowning her because they just discovered she’s a “sinner.” They’re disowning her because she’s become a public embarrassment to them. Wow. -ed.]

Maya returned from the demonstration to find that she had been let go from her job at her father’s political organization.

She says she was told to leave her father’s apartment and not to expect any money toward attending Brown University, where she was admitted but deferred matriculation to spend a year teaching in southern India. “In my father’s view, financing my college would be financing my politics, in a sense,” Maya says, “because I plan to be an activist after college.” …

“After all the arguments and tensions over the years, I always hoped it would never actually get to this point,” Maya wrote, “although I suppose given our vastly divergent political beliefs, it was inevitable.”

But her friends told her no, there was nothing remotely inevitable about the break, that political differences and even sexual orientation ought not result in being kicked out. Maya wrote: “They say most parents would be thrilled to have a child who doesn’t smoke, have sex, do drugs, hardly drinks. . . , does well in school, gets good grades, gets into the Ivy League. . . , goes regularly to church, spends free time mentoring kids.”

Once upon a time, I respected Alan Keyes as an honest and articulate champion of his beliefs, even though I strongly disagreed with those beliefs. Now, all of that respect is entirely gone. The man sickens me. He is a hypocrite, a demagogue, and — it now turns out — a bad father and a bad person. Shame on you, Alan Keyes.

Vaginagate and Queergate rage on. Here’s the latest, in another email to the law-school listserv:

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I agree that #1 and #2 are the best… and #1 is by far the least “judicially activist.” I love it! (Hat tip: Becky.)

Well it looks like straight marriages don’t have a monopoly on divorces anymore. Gay couples in Massachusetts have begun to show up in courts filling for divorce. Don’t worry all you Republicans, you don’t have to make it illegal, they can end their own marriages :)

The USC-UCLA rivalry is typically quite bitter, but if BoiFromTroy is to be believed, it seems this year’s Trojan-Bruin game will be unusually merry… downright jolly… you might even say… gay!

Under the circumstances, perhaps CNN anchor Anderson Cooper will come out (so to speak) to the Rose Bowl and support his fellow taxpayers.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. :)

A bunch of Greeks are up in arms about the movie Alexander’s portrayal of Alexander the Great as a big gay. (Or at least a big bisexual.) So they’re suing Warner Brothers, though I can’t imagine for what. (You can’t libel the dead!)

The most amusing quote comes from Greek lawyer Yannis Varnakos, who opines, “We cannot come out and say that President John F. Kennedy was a shooting guard for the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team, and so Warner cannot come out and say Alexander was gay.” LOL!

The only minor difference between the two situations cited by Varnakos is that, whereas JFK never donned a Lakers jersey or took the floor at The Forum, Alexander did, um, like, have sex with men. Just saying.

It’s official… I came out of the closet this evening:

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Me and Kristine, straight but not narrow.

Today is “Gay? Fine By Me” day on campus, as hundreds of students wear these orange t-shirts in solidarity and in protest against the university’s refusal to officially recognize AllianceND as a legitimate student group (and more generally against Notre Dame’s anti-gay tendencies). The protest started in March, continued in April and October, and now again today.

There’s a whole slate of events scheduled for today, including the return of the once-banned giant closet.

P.S. I guess the technical term is “Q-Day.”

UPDATE: More gay photos, taken by yours truly.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Full photo gallery here.

With Boston College winning its fourth straight over Notre Dame, the Patriots beating the previously undefeated Jets for their record 21st consecutive win, the Red Sox ahead 2-0 in the World Series, and Kerry gaining in the polls, my God loves gay marriage theory is looking better and better. :)

I know the title of this post might seem a wee bit provocative, even inflammatory. But let’s look at the facts:

November 2003: The Massachusetts Supreme Court declares that it is unconstitutional to limit marriage to straight couples only.
January 2004: The New England Patriots, of Foxboro, Massachusetts, win the Super Bowl.
February 2004: The Massachusetts Supreme Court reiterates that only full-fledged gay marriage, not mere civil unions, will satisfy its previous ruling.
March 2004: Massachusetts Senator John Kerry clinches the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.
May 2004: The first legal gay marriage licenses in American history are issued in Massachusetts.
July 2004: Sen. Kerry is formally nominated for president at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts.
October 2004: The Patriots break the NFL record for consecutive wins AND the Boston Red Sox win the American League championship for the first time in 18 years (and just the fifth time in 86 years).

It certainly seems like God has been smiling on Massachusetts ever since it legalized gay marriage. That’s all I’m saying. :)

But, uh, get back to me after the World Series and the presidential election are over, and we’ll see if this theory is still holding up…