first, i was whiny in yesterday’s blog. i was well aware of that. that’s why i blog. now i don’t feel so whiny about it. and thank you for bearing with me.
today, a couple of items that caught my eye and got my goat:
the government is now rejecting straight marriage documents from new paltz, new york. social security now officially says that “no marriage documents issued after feb. 27 could be used to establish identity because of the gay marriages that took place there earlier this year.”
also, “certificates issued during the brief periods when asbury park, n.j., multnomah county, ore., and sandoval county, n.m., recognized gay marriages are also being rejected.”
and you thought that gay marriage didn’t affect you, o straight reader? what’s that bit about “first they came for the jews, (yada yada yada), and then there was no one left to defend me?” or something like that? my apologies if i yada-ed your specific ethnic group or whatever. but the government is going to hell in a handbasket.
incrementally.
so’s you won’t notice too much until it’s too damn late.
also, some companies in massachusetts are refusing to give legally married couples their legal benefits. it’s bad enough that they don’t give them anyway, without having to be told to do it. now they are just flouting the law, and of course they will get away with it.
thank god i work for time warner, which is an absolutely perfectly wonderful company to work for, and which gives me all manner of benefits for both me and my same-sex partner kirk.
and thank god i don’t work for general dynamics, fedex, and caritas christi health care, three of the companies that are not providing benefits. general dynamics i don’t think i can boycott, as i’m not planning on issuing any defense contracts anytime soon. and the health care thing, not much i can do about that.
but i sure as hell can stop using fedex. in fact, when i have time later, i’m gonna write and cancel my personal fedex number and tell them exactly why i’m doing it.
screw ’em.
i never thought i’d say this about arnold schwarzenegger, but he impresses me a little. i thought he’d be a real yob, and if i lived in california maybe i would think differently, but from my perch in new york, he doesn’t look too bad for a republican. i’ve said innumerable times that i’d be a republican tomorrow if they would just be truly conservative, which to me means fiscally conservative and on social issues keeping the government out of everyone’s business. of course, i’m oversimplifying, but there’s a republicanism that i can agree with. and arnold seems to me to be a throwback to the lowell weicker/liberal republicans that all these god-heads have driven out of the party. too bad for them. big tent, indeed. we’ll see if their tent stays big enough for arnold to be in. i’m betting it won’t be, which will mean that arnold’s influence will diminish or he will bolt the party. but no way are the republicans letting him have anything more than a token presence to use when it suits them to.
i think he may leave the party in the end. you heard it here first.