The technology of truth

Over in Oakland, California, the community is still reeling from the New Years Day shooting of an unarmed man by a police officer. Yesterday, peaceful protests gave way to a handful of violent rioters, as anger over the strange and tragic circumstances of the incident bubbled over.

The man, Oscar Grant, was face-down on a BART station platform, having been apprehended as part of a scuffle between two groups of people on the train. The police officer, Johannes Mehserle, pulled out his gun and shot the unarmed Grant in the back, then proceeded to handcuff him.

Grant died several hours later in the hospital, and it's several days later and still no one knows why in the hell Mehserle did what he did. It doesn't help that he has since quit his job, meaning that the BART authority can no longer force him by threatening to fire him. Mehserle also retained the services of an attorney almost immediately after the shooting, and has not made any statements.

Some excuses flying around are that he really meant to grab and fire his Taser, or that maybe he thought Grant was reaching for a weapon. Neither of these theories really hold water, though, once you watch the four videos that were taken of the incident itself. At worst, it looks like an execution. At best, a stupid, horribly negligent mistake.

At this point in time, it's almost impossible to predict what the outcome of any investigation or trial will be. There's almost no precedent in Oakland for an officer being charged for shooting an unarmed civilian, so the citizens are, quite rightfully, skeptical that justice will be properly served in this case.

Thing is, the only reason there's any chance of real justice in this instance is that people on the scene took video of it and then posted it online. The ability of citizens to record events as they unfold has the potential to be a powerful, grassroots tool for seeing that the truth is told and that justice prevails. Otherwise, it's official word against that of the rabble, and we all know how that usually plays out.

Assisting in this new ability are things like the new Eye-Fi Explore SD card. It uses wi-fi triangulation to geo-tag and upload photos and videos as you take them, wherever you are. Imagine the possibilities. Friends of mine had been postulating the creation of this sort of technology for years now, touting its ability to help protestors and the like get their images safely away from any potential confiscation by authorities.

So had one of those police officers present at the BART shooting been so inclined to take away the cell phones of those people taping the incident, this sort of technology would have rendered those actions moot.

There is certainly room for this sort of technology to be abused--but the same can be said for almost any invention. The important thing is that important information gets out, and maybe, just maybe, guilty parties will actually be held responsible for their transgressions.

For Oscar Grant's sake, at least, I certainly hope they do.

Never stop fighting for what's right

Despite the setbacks, momentum is on our side.
TCT - "Hundreds Locally March to Protest Passage of Proposition 8"
New York Times - "Protests Held Over Gay Marriage Ban"
LA Times - "Thousands Gather to Protest Prop 8"
In-Form (North Dakota) - "Gay Rights Protest on Fargo-Moorhead Bridge Draws Large Crowd"
Chicago Tribune - "Chicago Crowd Protests California Gay Marriage Ban"
Andrew Sullivan - Tracking the protests
More photos from the various rallies here and here.

Keep fighting the good fight.

Our common destiny

Canadian journalist Barbara Kay doesn't have a very high opinion of the gays. In fact, she argues in her latest opus in the National Post, people arguing that gay rights are a civil right and therefore akin to the struggles of racial minorities are all wrong and likely in need of a good spankin'.

This comes from several recent editorials (and the opinions of many, I'm sure) concerning the high percentage of African Americans who voted in favor of Proposition 8 in California, the proposition aimed at amending the state constitution to strip gays of their right to marry.

Most of the editorials are dumbfounded that a group that has suffered so much at the hands of discriminatory laws and attitudes would turn around and vote to do something similar to another minority group.

However, Kay (who is white) claims, "...black people just can't get too worked up about the "discrimination" of gays who haven't had any rights taken from them, can have legal sex together, live together, buy homes wherever they want, socialize wherever and with whomever they choose, and flip back through their family albums for any number of generations without finding a single slave."

Where to begin? First of all: Kay has apparently decided to conveniently deny the fact that plenty of homosexuals are also people of color. I'm sure some of them could "flip back through their family albums" and find a few ancestors who were enslaved. She is, like many others like her, marginalizing the experiences of some of the most marginalized people in our society. Way to go, Kay! That's very charitable of you.

Secondly: gay people haven't always been able to "have legal sex together" - they had to fight to overturn several draconian state-level laws that forbade this very personal and intimate act, even as recently as 2003, when the Supreme Court finally struck down the Texas anti-sodomy law. The ruling had a broader effect, too: it wasn't just Texas that still had the complete ridiculousness on the books, but 12 other states as well.

Sometimes, when it comes to the basic human and civil rights of people, you simply cannot leave it up to the states. Our Constitution is supposed to grant all of these rights and protections for everyone already, but still we have to fight for further clarification, for people who can't quite seem to grasp its full meaning.

Thirdly: It's so kind of Kay to allow that homosexuals can "live together" and "buy homes wherever they want." Though I have a sneaking suspicion that she'd rather that weren't so, I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and simply point out that again, this wasn't always so (and still isn't so in some places). Throughout history, homosexuals have had to hide their true selves else risk being ostracized, abused, and even killed simply for loving differently. And unlike what Kay surreptitiously claims, this isn't all the result of a "mere sexual preference" (a convoluted way of saying "choice") - we're talking inborn traits that are as much a part of people as their need to breathe.

There are so many points with which to take issue in this article (she calls the push for gay marriage rights "political entitlement that has been fabricated from whole ideological cloth" for instance), but I'll end on this one:

African-Americans, Jews, aboriginals, the Roma people and other historically disadvantaged ethnic or racial groups experience their collective memory through the narratives they inherit from their parents and grandparents and ancestors. Indeed, they are a true identity group because they have a collective history and common memories. The sufferings they endured are directly related to who they are historically, to characteristics and events they cannot change, to their skin colour and bloodlines, to the deeds of their ancestors. Where is their commonality with individuals disconnected from the great chain of human history, whose "identity" isn't a culture, an ethnicity, a race or a civilization - just a mere sexual preference that rules out both a collective past and a collective future, the sine qua nons of a true identity group.

What a load of bull. All of these groups have unique histories and cultures. There are some shared qualities where rampant discrimination and the struggle for fair treatment comes in, but ultimately this is all a comparison of apples and oranges. I think few gay rights advocates are arguing that African Americans and homosexuals are just the same, and that the former should support the latter because of that. The incredulity stems, I think, from the idea of one traditionally oppressed minority group turning around and oppressing another. This isn't to say that all African Americans (or Latinos, or Christians, or Mormons, etc.) are against gay marriage, because they aren't. But I think it's fair to wonder why such a large percentage of them voted for Prop 8, and what we can do to change perceptions and attitudes so that everyone can get on board with the crazy notion that everyone deserves equal rights under the law.

That's not political entitlement. We're not asking for anything more than what everyone else already has. I really, really don't understand what's so hard to understand about that.

It's time, I think, we all started being honest with one another. What really scares and/or puts off those who so vehemently oppose gay rights? So many of them couch their feelings by claiming not to have any problems with gay people, just gay people getting to take part in the "institution of marriage." Well I'll tell you what: you're so keen on that "traditional institution," why don't you bring back arranged marriages, dowries, and the utter male domination of women (no divorce rights, no parental rights, no financial rights, etc.)? Because that's your "traditional institution of marriage" right there.

The great thing about history is that we can learn from it and improve upon ourselves and our society. We keep around what worked, and throw out what didn't. Discrimination, oppression--that doesn't work. Equal rights, freedom to be who you really are--that works.

I'm going to end with the words of Mormon church spokeswoman Kim Farah, who issued a statement in response to the recent uproar by anti-Prop 8 activists against the church for so heavily supporting the proposition. She probably wouldn't like me using her statement in this way, because it's clear her intent was fraught with hypocrisy, but the sentiment is still good: "No one on either side of the question should be vilified, harassed or subject to erroneous information." [emphasis mine]

Amen, sister. Barbara Kay? You'd do well to take that to heart.

A torn heart

I watched the returns roll in with a festive and like-minded crowd last night at the High Noon Saloon, and admit that I found myself getting misty-eyed on several occasions.

When the camera coverage on CNN cut to images of the Rev. Jesse Jackson with tears in his eyes, I almost lost my composure completely. I haven't agreed with everything he's done and said over the years, but still I have a great deal of respect for the greater fight he's been fighting. And here is a man who walked beside Martin Luther King Jr., and now he gets to see the election of this country's first African American president. Amazing.

Too, it's very nice to be on the winning side of a national election for the first time in my voting career.

We all deserve to feel really good, to revel in this massively historic accomplishment. But still, not to rain on any parades, we have a lot of hard work ahead of us. Obama said it himself in his victory speech last night. It's going to be an uphill battle. We have far better tools and leadership with which to see that battle through now, but it's still not going to be easy.

With the new-found Democratic majorities in both houses of the legislature here in Wisconsin, and a strengthening of those majorities at the national level, Democrats must now kick into high gear and get things done. And we, their constituents, must hold them accountable and push them to do the right thing. It's often very tempting for the majority party to just run roughshod, more focused on assuaging their own egoes and selfish desires than on actually working for a better country for all of us. Let's make sure that doesn't happen again.

And while we're at it, let's do something at the national level to actually fulfill the promise of equal rights for all under the law. Last night saw one giant step forward for equality, and several state-level steps back.

In California, for instance, Proposition 8 looks to have passed by a slim margin, stripping the rights of LGBT people across the state and (hopefully only temporarily) extinguishing the light of one of the great beacons of fairness in this country. It also throws into limbo around 18,000 same-sex marriages that have been conducted over the past 4 1/2 months.

I want you to imagine, if you can, waking up one morning to find that your fellow citizens have voted to revoke your marriage license, simply because your idea of love differed from theirs. I cannot even begin to understand how heart-rending this must be for all those couples who thought finally, finally, they were able to enjoy the same rights as everyone else. To know that so many people still have such a fundamental misunderstanding and fear of something as simple as the love you have for your partner. To realize that, after so much gained ground, you've once again been pushed back into the muck.

It's time to up our game, then--to launch a nationwide campaign to garauntee equal rights for all just as we did to rid ourselves of things like anti-miscegenation laws.

Just as important, though, is the continued and more quiet rise in visibility for LGBT people. The more gay folks people get to know on a personal level, the more they tend to support gay rights. It's about education and familiarity. The false spectre of the evil, degenerate, family-destroying gay falls pretty quickly to the wayside once people really meet and interact with members of the LGBT community. So despite these crushing blows to the cause--or perhaps because of them--it is crucial that we continue to fight the good fight, never stopping, because as Americans we have to believe that equality and fairness will eventually win out over ignorance and oppression.

We saw the potential for positive results yesterday, when Obama claimed victory. Take heart in that, and keep movin' forward.

TO ADD: I don't agree with the "fascist" part, but the rest seems about right:

This whole thing makes me doubly angry, because 1) it's super lame, and 2) it's making it difficult for me to be as happy as I ought to be about Obama winning. Blargh.

MORE TO ADD: Andrew Sullivan has a really good take on this here.

YET MORE TO ADD: OK, I'll buy this and dare to hope. The proposition alone may not actually be enough to amend the CA constitution.

Living vicariously through CA and FL

On November 4th, citizens in both California and Florida will head to the polls not just to voice their preference for president, but also to help decide whether their states will write discrimination into their constitutions by banning gay marriage.

In California, this comes just seven months after the state's supreme court ruled that it was unconstitutional to deny marriage and all its legal benefits to same-sex couples. Outraged that the whole "equal rights under the law" thing was actually being upheld, opponents of gay marriage rallied and put Proposition 8 onto the November ballot. Proposition 8, as I'm sure most of you already know, would re-ban homosexual couples from marrying and annul all of the same-sex marriages that have already taken place.

ELIMINATES RIGHT OF SAME-SEX COUPLES TO MARRY. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Changes the California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry in California. Provides that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California. Fiscal Impact: Over next few years, potential revenue loss, mainly sales taxes, totaling in the several tens of millions of dollars, to state and local governments. In the long run, likely little fiscal impact on state and local governments.

Down in Florida, a similar ballot measure will be voted on come Nov. 4th - and it's eerily reminiscent of the one Wisconsin voted into law back in 2006. Though gay marriage is already illegal in Florida, Amendment 2 would "enshrine the prohibition in the Florida Constitution, making it nearly impossible for a judge to overturn." It would likely apply to domestic partnerships as well, which effects both straight and gay couples.

I still don't understand why some folks are so hell-bent on writing discrimination into the law. But America has spent every day since its inception fighting to make good on the original promises of the Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. I guess, then, I shouldn't be surprised that the struggle continues, but since I'm an idealist at heart, it still makes me sad.

Take, for example, one of my favorite bands, the Ditty Bops. The dynamic duo at the band's center, Amanda Barrett and Abby DeWald, have been a couple for ten years and were just recently finally able to get married (they live in California). Now, I want you to watch this video and tell me why you want to strip these two of their rights and how on earth you could possibly disapprove of their relationship.

But you know what? It shouldn't matter whether or not they're the most adorable and talented couple ever (because they pretty much are), because no one seems to have as much of a problem with the many perfectly wacky straight folks who get married every day.

Because it shouldn't matter.

If two consenting, not immediately related to one another adults wish to enter into a legally binding relationship, with all of the federal benefits it entails, then it should absolutely be their right to do so. You don't get to decide for them. Period.

Unfortunately, a narrow majority of my fellow Wisconsinites were misguided enough to pass our blight of an amendment to do just that. And so I am left to fervently hope that California especially and Florida, too, do better.

If you live in either of those states, please, vote no. Donate money. Talk to your friends and neighbors who might disagree and be thinking of voting yes, and do so with compassion and logic. The struggle continues.

Bizarre old laws and the homophobes who love them

Oh Julaine Appling, you are Wisconsin's biggest homophobe. You are so crazy about the gays, in fact, that I have seriously begun to suspect that some cute girl once broke your heart, and/or that your family life was terribly repressive, and you've never quite been able to recover. I think we could all sympathize with that more if, as a result, you hadn't become such a massive tool.

Last week, newspapers began reporting on an old, seldom-enforced Wisconsin law that says residents of this state cannot obtain marriages in other states that are illegal here. The penalty for breaking this law is a fine of $10,000 and up to 9 months in jail.

Yeah, it's pretty crazy.

I can only assume that the law was originally intended to be used in cases of incest and/or polygamy, but rabid anti-gay activists like Appling have a hard-on for seeing it applied to any Wisconsin couple that goes to California to get hitched and then returns.

While it's (thankfully) unlikely that any attorney would take up the issue to prosecute some unsuspecting gay couple, Appling and her ilk still seem intent on pressing it: ""If [the law] were challenged and the courts decided to basically wink at it, and refused to enforce the law, we have a problem."

Because 1) gay people getting married at all will destroy the world! and 2) Wisconsinsites getting married in California will destroy the world! Yeah, OK, whatever.

Hopefully, this particular chapter of the gay marriage debate in this state will turn out to be a relative non-issue. Unfortunately, however, there still remains a great deal of work to do to educate about and advance the cause of true equality for all. One of the biggest, craziest enemies of this cause is Appling and groups like the Wisconsin "Family" Council. Fingers pressed firmly into their ears and over their eyes, they seem hell-bent on conducting a self-righteous crusade against something that harms no one. All this while all manner of real problems are currently being faced by their friends and neighbors. A world of shame on them.

Please, would someone do us all a favor and tell Ms. Appling that those tingly feelings she has about other women are not wrong? This has gone on long enough.

(Case and point)


h/t: Illusory Tenant

Alive and well

I only shoot padded arrows, I swear.

Just in from a nice, week-long vacation to California, specifically the Bay area, and contrary to popular belief the state didn't force me to get gay married upon entry. Happily, however, it is true that gay couples now have that right, and I can only hope that the trend toward actual equal rights under the law continues nationwide.

Expect a short trip report tomorrow, including recommendations for awesome places to see and hike should you ever find yourself in that part of the country.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with this short and extremely San Francisco story: on the final night of our stay, we got together with some friends to see the recent Indiana Jones film (which thankfully did not suck) at a spectacular old movie palace called the Castro on, predictably, Castro St. When we got out, it was late at night, the air was cool, and many people were out and about. Strolling rather nonchalantly toward us down the sidewalk came three gentlemen, all naked as the day they were born, seemingly without a care (or a cop) in the world. I couldn't think of a more perfectly Castro/SF way to end our vacation, really, and we all went home with a bemused smile and a good tale to tell.

Hope you all had a lovely and relaxing Memorial Day. In addition to the always welcome three-day weekend, it's good to have a day now and then specifically set aside to remember and honor those people who've served their neighbors by serving, whether militarily or as a civilian, in the name of continually striving to make our country and our world a better place for all to live in.

Go California! and county accountability meetings

Two things:

First, I am extremely heartened by the California Supreme Court's decision that gay and lesbian couples have the constitutional right to marry in that state. This is great news, though it does make me somewhat sad when I remember that Wisconsin is, so far, not so forward-thinking. Well, I'll be in San Francisco next week, so I'll at least get to celebrate and spread the love for a little while. Then it's back to work at home.

----

Secondly, the Dane County Board of Supervisors has announced a community meeting to help address the publics' concerns over the 911 center and how it handled the Brittany Zimmermann call. The meeting is scheduled for Monday, May 19th at 6:00PM in the lower level of the Fitchburg Community Center at 5510 Lacy Road. As I mentioned above, I'll be in SF and unable to attend this (about which I am pretty bummed), but I'm hoping that lots of other folks turn out and demand some answers. And then let me know how it went, yeah?

"Dane County 911 Center director Joe Norwick, Dane County executive Kathleen Falk, Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney and Madison Police Chief Noble Wray have been invited to speak at the hearing. Board members said they want to give Dane County residents an opportunity to get direct answers to questions." That would be nice.