Travis judge rules gay-marriage ban unconstitutional – it wouldn’t let me post it as a link. This just happened, so we don’t know quite how things will shake out. Our County Clerk has said previously that she wants to issue marriage certificates.
This particular case was in probate court because it involves a will. The couple were together 8 years, long enough to qualify as a common law marriage. One partner died before her will could have been legally filed and unfortunately her family is fighting her partner inheriting. I’m keeping an eye on the news to see what’s going on. Sorry this is so short.
So this happened: Travis judge rules gay-marriage ban unconstitutional. This just happened, so we don’t know quite how things will shake out. Our County Clerk has said previously that she wants to issue marriage certificates.
This particular case was in probate court because it involves a will. The couple were together 8 years, long enough to qualify as a common law marriage. One partner died before her will could have been legally filed and unfortunately her family is fighting her partner inheriting. I’m keeping an eye on the news to see what’s going on. Sorry this is so short.
So this happened: Travis judge rules gay-marriage ban unconstitutional. This just happened, so we don’t know quite how things will shake out. Our County Clerk has said previously that she wants to issue marriage certificates.
This particular case was in probate court because it involves a will. The couple were together 8 years, long enough to qualify as a common law marriage. One partner died before her will could have been legally filed and unfortunately her family is fighting her partner inheriting. I’m keeping an eye on the news to see what’s going on. Sorry this is so short.
This section of the lunch counter from the Greensboro, North Carolina Woolworth’s which is now preserved in the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History has a living story to tell.
Many of you were not even born in 1960 when those seats were occupied by four very brave young black college students, Ezell Blair, Jr., Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil and David Richmond, who risked their lives to demand their right to be served, and who sparked a massive wave of sit-ins and boycotts against racial segregation – led by other young people.
I remember my parents, and my friends in junior high school deciding to boycott Woolworths as we watched images of jeering, pushing, spitting, punching, epithet yelling white people, trying to stop progress. I also remember watching a few brave young white students take similar abuse for deciding to join the black student protestors.
1960 was the year of the student-led lunch-counter sit-ins. For those who are not familiar with lunch-counters, they were the fast-food providers of the era (McDonalds, Taco Bell, Burger King, and others were just getting started). Suburban malls were still few and far between, and “downtown” was the main shopping district. Most large stores had lunch counters where a cup of coffee cost a dime, and you could get a cheeseburger, fries, and Coke for 60 cents. Lunch-counters provided quick cheap meals for shoppers, students, and workers on break the same way that shopping-mall food-courts do today. Nationally, there were more than 30,000 lunch counters in drug and department stores, bus terminals, and public buildings. Many were part of large national chains such as Woolworth (2,130 stores), McCrory (1,307), and Kress (272).
In most segregated communities, Blacks were encouraged to shop at chain and department stores, but they were not permitted to eat at a store’s “white-only” lunch counters and restaurants. And unlike whites, Blacks were not permitted to try on clothes prior to buying them or return purchases that did not fit. The sit-ins focused on the lunch-counters and restaurants, but all forms of discrimination were the ultimate target. In most cases where the sit-ins achieved victory, agreements to desegregate lunch-counters usually included eliminating the other forms of consumer discrimination. Note that in most southern communities, segregation was not a matter of personal choice on the part of white business owners. Segregation was mandated by law (see examples). Blacks who tried to use “white-only” facilities could be, and often were, arrested for violating a segregation ordinance (and in theory a white establishment could be held liable for serving Blacks).
But after Federal courts began declaring school and bus segregation laws unconstitutional, most southern prosecutors were careful to charge Blacks who defied segregation with general crimes such as “Disturbing the Peace” or “Disorderly Conduct” rather than violation of race-specific segregation laws. In this way they prevented the courts from overturning the segregation ordinances on appeal, and that allowed store owners to continue claiming that they had to deny service to Blacks because “it’s the law.” This cynical ploy was used to maintain segregation until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 eliminated all segregation laws.
We learn the names of “leaders” but rarely remember all those people, mostly young, who stepped up and fought back. North Carolina A&T’s campus has not forgotten.
February One (also referred to as the A&T Four Monument) is the name of the 2002 monument dedicated to Ezell Blair, Jr., Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil and David Richmond who were collectively known as the Greensboro Four. The 15-foot bronze and marble monument is located on the western edge of the campus of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, North Carolina. James Barnhill, the sculptor who created the monument, was inspired by the historic 1960 image of the four college aged men leaving the downtown Greensboro Woolworth store after holding a sit-in protest of the company’s policy of segregating its lunch counters.
CRMVet gives more detail on what happened and how the first sit-in sparked a movement:
On February 1, 1960, four Black men from NCA&T – Ezell Blair Jr, Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond – sit down at Woolworth’s “whites only” lunch counter and ask to be served coffee and doughnuts. They are refused. Though they are prepared to be arrested that does not occur. They stay until the store closes. The next day they return, now joined by Billy Smith, Clarence Henderson, and others. They sit from 11am to 3pm but again are not served. While they wait, they study and do their school work. The local newspaper and TV station cover this second sit-in. At first they call it a “Sit Down,” but soon everyone is using the term “Sit-In.” Blair tells an interviewer: “Negro adults have been complacent and fearful … It is time for someone to wake up and change the situation … and we decided to start here.”
The Greensboro students activate the telephone networks that had been built over the preceding months, and word is flashed across the South – from one Black campus to the next – Sit-In! Greensboro, North Carolina! Suddenly everyone is aware that Black students have openly defied a century of segregation. Greensboro students form the Student Executive Committee for Justice to sustain and expand the campaign. The Greensboro NAACP endorses their action. On February 3rd, more than 60 students, now including women from Bennett who have returned from break and students from Dudley High School, occupy every seat at the Woolworth’s counter in rotating shifts for the entire day. By February 4th they number close to 300 – including white students from Womens College (now University of North Carolina) – and the sit-ins spread to Kress and Walgreens lunch counters, and then to other Greensboro restaurants. In the following days as many as 1,000 protesters demand an end to segregation in Greensboro, North Carolina.
The Ku Klux Klan reacts. Led by George Dorsett – North Carolina’s official State Chaplain – they heckle and harass the students. The students are not deterred. Hoping that their presence will deter white violence, the NCA&T football team joins the protests. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sends organizers to help train the students in the tactics and strategies of Nonviolent Resistance. Sit-ins, picket lines, and boycotts continue off and on as negotiations get under way, the lunch counters are closed and reopened, and public opinion weighs in. The segregation laws are strengthened and dozens of students are arrested and charged with “trespass” for sitting-in. Woolworth and Kress stores in the North and West are boycotted and picketed in support of the sit-in movements that are now spreading across the upper and mid South, Atlanta, and New Orleans. When the college students leave for the summer, Dudley High students carry on. Finally, in July, the national drugstore chains agree to serve all “properly dressed and well behaved people,” regardless of race.
Two major documentary films that you should see, have been made about the sit-ins in Greensboro.
This is a trailer for the award winning feature length documentary, February One – The Story of the Greensboro Four.
..The world can change in a day
Despite hard-fought gains in the fight for racial equality, segregation remained firmly entrenched in 1960 America. Black citizens in the South were still treated as second-class citizens and their calls for justice remained largely unheard by the nation. There had been some advances in the arena of civil rights with the Brown v. the Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court decision (1954), the Montgomery bus boycott (1955-1956) and the federally enforced desegregation of Little Rock (Ark.) High school (1957), but after that, strong defiance by ardent segregationists pushed the Movement into retreat.
February 1, 1960 changed all that.
Based largely on first hand accounts and rare archival footage, the new documentary film February One documents one volatile winter in Greensboro that not only challenged public accommodation customs and laws in North Carolina, but served as a blueprint for the wave of non-violent civil rights protests that swept across the South and the nation throughout the 1960’s.
In February of 1960, a simple coffee order at America’s favorite five-and-dime store sparked a series of events that would help put an end to segregation in the United States. Join us as we detail the extraordinary story of otherwise ordinary young men, four African-American college students whose nonviolent sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter started a revolution.
I’d like to also mention teacherken’s Daily Kos diary from 2011, It was a simple action.
I hear criticisms leveled too often at young people. The history of youth activism is directly connected to the movements taking place today…no longer using telephone networks, like those black student’s from the 60’s, but today’s media of facebook and twitter to get young folks organizing, protesting and out into the streets.
We need to both honor those who stood up in the past, but also to join and support what is going on right now.
Welcome to The Moose Pond! The Welcomings diaries give the Moose, old and new, a place to visit and share words about the weather, life, the world at large and the small parts of Moosylvania that we each inhabit.
In lieu of daily check-ins, which have gone on hiatus, Welcomings diaries will be posted at the start of each week (every Sunday morning) and then, if necessary due to a large number of comments, again on Wednesday or Thursday to close out the week. To find the diaries, just bookmark this link and Voila! (which is Moose for “I found everyone!!”).
The format is simple: each day, the first moose to arrive on-line will post a comment welcoming the new day and complaining (or bragging!) about their weather. Or mentioning an interesting or thought provoking news item. Or simply checking in.
With Valentine’s Day upon us …. a look at the celebrity crushes I have had, after the jump ….
I have three younger sisters, who all went through their Tiger Beat phases (with Bobby Sherman, Shaun Cassidy and Rick Springfield, respectively). By contrast, I had one crush in my teen years, then added one in adulthood (my early thirties) and one in middle age (my forties).
Yet it was only upon recent discussions with co-workers that I realized that each of my three crushes came only after (at least) a three-step process – that one may have fleeting infatuations, but it takes more to last. At the risk of sounding overly whimsical, let me explain ….
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As a child, I first heard of a certain rock singer by hearing her voice on the radio with her two hit songs of the late 1960’s. “Wow, that is some voice” was my thought. Secondly, I saw her photo on an album cover …. and my knees wobbled. Then again: at age 14 with the hormones starting to go into overdrive – well, it didn’t take much for that to happen.
Yet my heart wasn’t truly stolen until I read of all the outrageous things that Grace Slick did: singing Wooden Ships in Germany and emphasizing the line “Who won the war?!?” …. then bringing Abbie Hoffman to the White House for a college alumni gathering (that Tricia Nixon organized) just for starters. She became my boyhood crush then …. and although she retired from music twenty-five years ago: I still find her story a fascinating one. And yes, her singing on Somebody to Love and White Rabbit still amazes me, decades later.
The Chicagoland native’s family eventually settled in Palo Alto, California and in her memoirs wrote extensively about her early life.
She was able to talk her parents into sending her to the (now defunct) Finch College in New York: “a finishing school for girls who don’t have the grades to get into Vassar but their parents have money” as she put it. So did Tricia Nixon, which is why she received an invite along with other grads to the White House – under her family name, Grace Wing – but was turned down as a “security risk” upon arrival.
She became a model at the I. Magnin flagship department store, and in her memoirs you could see the dichotomy her life is. She was doing something quite traditional (modeling) and yet bristled upon receiving a suggestion: “No, I will not cream my elbows, thank you”. Then she saw the Jefferson Airplane perform and decided that (a) they were making more money than she was, and (b) were also … having a lot more fun.
Since leaving music in 1989, she has devoted herself to the art world – making numerous appearances at art shows, with some rock & roll portraits, and many other different styles. She is age 75 today and here are examples of her work that – I believe – were in her memoirs.
Fast forward to the late 80’s-early 90’s (when I was in my thirties). One show that I grew to love was the Vietnam medical drama China Beach – and especially nurse Colleen McMurphy, portrayed by Dana Delany. Dressed in Army fatigues, I was not drawn to the character so much for looks as it was the warmth that Nurse McMurphy emanated: if I was laid-up in a hospital (be it military or civilian) I would hope that I could have a caregiver like her to endure such circumstances. The role garnered two Emmy Awards for Dana Delany, and in fact she was feted by actual Vietnam nurses – grateful for (a) the attention that they never received during their time, and (b) portraying the role they played in such a sympathetic manner.
This was her breakthrough role, and afterwards one saw her on television entertainment news often – this time, not wearing Army fatigues. And yes, my heart did skip-a-beat …. okay, two. Then, the third piece of the puzzle came when I read a newspaper profile, indicating that we had several things in common: (1) we are the same age (with birthdays only a few weeks apart), (2) we grew-up on opposite sides of the Long Island Sound (her in Connecticut), and (3) we both have Irish-American last names which are frequently mis-spelled due to the letter “E” – her last name of Delany is missing a second “e” that everyone expects … and my last name of Tracey has a letter “e” … that nobody expects.
Of course, I came to appreciate her work over the years, appearing in numerous TV and film roles – in recent years, as a recurring character on Desperate Housewives and in an ABC series called Body of Proof – with her once again in a medical role (as a Philadelphia medical examiner). The show was also one of those rare TV shows with two female co-stars (with Jeri Ryan as an elected public official) and while in its short life the plotlines sometimes got too fantastic (too many way-out twists and turns) it did come as a shock to the show’s fans when ABC cancelled it despite (relatively) good ratings.
Next, it was nice to learn that she shares our political viewpoints. She became active in Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, is involved with both Planned Parenthood as well as NARAL Pro-Choice America and in 1999 joined the board of the Scleroderma Research Foundation – a degenerative skin disease (that disproportionately affects women of child-bearing age). She also attended a 2012 fundraiser to help the Elizabeth Warren victorious Senate campaign.
Finally, what I consider to be the role of her life was in a 1995 made-for-TV movie about the life of the nurse and birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger – dealing with her adversary Anthony Comstock (portrayed by the late Rod Steiger). The downside is that it wound up being shown on Lifetime TV – I say “downside” because this is a film that I believe every adult male should see (and likely may not, due to the network it appeared on). Sanger herself bore three children, and many women in her neighborhood suffered from being constant breeders (if you will) with no legal access to birth control. There have been some reviews of the film saying that it was over-dramatized, too sympathetic to her (than the facts warranted) and too polemic towards her opponents (than the facts warranted). That may be – but for everyone who wonders what the “War on Women” fuss is all about, this film would be an eye-opener.
She is scheduled to appear in a new series with Billy Crystal entitled The Comedians – which will be a different type of role for her at age 58. But one that I have little doubt she will be up to the challenge for.
By the time I reached age 40 and middle age, I was now listening primarily to jazz and blues music (plus a smattering of other styles) on the radio and in concerts. Around 1999, I began to hear on Vermont Public Radio’s (then) nightly jazz program from time-to-time a woman singing romantic, Great American Songbook ballads …. and within a piano-guitar-bass format, so her words could be heard quite clearly. After a few times, I recall thinking, “Hmmm, that’s a nice voice – now what’s this singer’s name again, Diana … Kohl(?)” …. yet it wasn’t until I saw a CD in a music shop that I first saw the photo of Diana Krall – and once again, history repeated itself. The third leg of the stool came in 2003 when she married Elvis Costello at Elton John’s castle outside of London – talk about a power couple.
It turned out that I first heard her music from her breakout album, 1998’s When I Look in Your Eyes that featured strings and romantic songs by the likes of Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, George Gershwin and Cole Porter. It not only led to her first Grammy Award (for jazz album) but was also the first jazz album to be a Grammy nominee for Album of the Year in twenty-five years: earning her a spot on the sophomore 1998 Lilith Fair tour where – along with fellow Canadian Holly Cole – they may have been the only jazz performers.
All of a sudden, you saw a jazz performer in places not normally seen: such as Sesame Street in 2005, in a 2007 Lexus ad campaign, and as as a singer in several movies. One of which was 2004’s De-Lovely – the Cole Porter biopic with her singing Just one of Those Things – along with several noted others singers performing Cole Porter classics. She gave birth to twin boys in late 2006, a first-time mother at age 42 and just this month (as a 50 year-old) released the album Wallflower – with songs by Jim Croce, the Carpenters, Elton John, and the Eagles.
So there you have it: I think everyone should be allowed to have crushes independent of your significant other, and those are my three. And while my co-workers said that “Catherine Deneuve is acceptable, Brigitte Bardot is not” (and one girlfriend asked me years ago, “I hope you don’t like Christie Brinkley”) … mentioning these three names to female friends (both romantic and platonic) has not garnered any negative feedback. And the best part: they are all still active artists, whose work will hopefully continue for years to come.
Let’s close with a song from Diana Krall’s new album … a re-working of the 1975 hit I’m Not in Love by the British band 10cc.
In this week’s address, the President laid out his plan to ensure more children graduate from school fully prepared for college and a career.
Our elementary and secondary schools are doing better, as demonstrated by the news this past week that our high school graduation rate has hit an all-time high, but there is still more that can be done to ensure every child receives a quality education. That’s why the President wants to replace No Child Left Behind with a new law that addresses the overuse of standardized tests, makes a real investment in preschool, and gives every kid a fair shot at success.
He reminded everyone that when educating our kids, the future of our nation, we shouldn’t accept anything less than the best.
Hi, everybody. In my State of the Union Address, I laid out my ideas to help working families feel more secure and earn the skills required to advance in a world of constant change.
And in a new economy that’s increasingly built on knowledge and innovation, a core element of this middle-class economics is how well we prepare our kids for the future.
For decades, we threw money at education without making sure our schools were actually improving, or whether we were giving teachers the tools they need, or whether our taxpayer dollars were being used effectively. And our kids too often paid the price.
Over the past few years, we’ve seen signs that our elementary and secondary school students are doing better. Last year, our younger students earned the highest math and reading scores on record. Last week, we learned that our high school graduation rate hit a new all-time high.
This is progress. But in a 21st century economy, our kids will only do better than we did if we educate them better than we were educated. So we have to do more to make sure they graduate from school fully prepared for college and a career.
This year, I want to work with both parties in Congress to replace No Child Left Behind with a smarter law that addresses the overuse of standardized tests, makes a real investment in preschool, and gives every kid a fair shot in the new economy.
Now, it’s pretty commonsense that an education bill should actually improve education. But as we speak, there’s a Republican bill in Congress that would frankly do the opposite.
At a time when we should invest more in our kids, their plan would lock in cuts to schools for the rest of this decade. We’d end up actually invest less in our kids in 2021 than we did in 2012.
At a time when we should give our teachers all the resources they need, their plan could let states and cities shuffle education dollars into things like sports stadiums or tax cuts for the wealthy.
At a time when we have to give every child, everywhere, a fair shot – this Congress would actually allow states to make even deeper cuts into school districts that need the most support, send even more money to some of the wealthiest school districts in America, and turn back the clock to a time when too many students were left behind in failing schools.
Denying a quality education to the children of working families is as wrong as denying health care or child care to working families. We are better than this.
I have a different vision for the middle class.
In today’s world, we have to equip all our kids with an education that prepares them for success, regardless of what they look like, or how much their parents make, or the zip code they live in.
And that means trying new things, investing in what’s working, and fixing what’s not.
That means cutting testing down to the bare minimum required to make sure parents and teachers know how our kids and schools are doing from year to year, and relative to schools statewide.
That means giving the teachers and principals who do the hard work every day the resources they need to spend less time teaching to a test, and more time teaching our kids the skills they need.
Some of these changes are hard. They’ll require all of us to demand more of our schools and more of our kids, making sure they put down the video games and iPhones, and pick up the books. They’ll require us to demand that Washington treat education reform as the dedicated progress of decades – something a town with a short attention span doesn’t always do very well.
But I’m confident we can do this. When it comes to education, we are not a collection of states competing against one another; we are a nation competing against the world. Nothing will determine our success as a nation in the 21st century more than how well we educate our kids. And we shouldn’t accept anything less than the best.
Thanks, and before I go – Happy Valentine’s Day, Michelle. Have a great weekend, everybody.
To mark the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, members of Congress [on Wednesday, February 11th] reintroduced a bipartisan bill to strengthen and restore the law’s core protection, which the U.S. Supreme Court gutted in 2013.
The measure is sponsored by Reps. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), John Conyers (D-Mich.), and others. The bill was also introduced last year, but the Senate held just one hearing on the legislation, and the House refused to hold a hearing.
“Fifty years ago, tragedy in the streets of Selma galvanized our nation to pass the Voting Rights Act and bring equality to the ballot box,” said Nicole Austin-Hillery, director and counsel of the Brennan Center’s Washington, D.C., office. “Today, that core protection is in tatters and discrimination continues to tarnish our elections. America was founded on the principle that we are all ‘created equal.’ To fulfill that promise, we need an election system that works well for everyone, and doesn’t tolerate discrimination against anyone. We urge Congress to quickly pass this bill and ensure Americans have strong voting protections in time for the 2016 election.”
Here are the key provisions:
The Voting Rights Amendment Act would, among other changes:
– Require jurisdictions with a recent record of repeated Voting Rights Act violations to pre-clear election law changes.
– Expand the current “bail-in” procedures, which allow courts to subject jurisdictions to preclearance.
– Create a uniform requirement to inform voters of certain pending voting changes.
– Enhance the ability of lawyers to halt discriminatory election measures before they can harm citizens.
– Allow federal observers to monitor elections to ensure compliance with laws protecting the rights of Americans who speak limited English.
The VRA has been continually reauthorized since it was passed in 1965 and has always had bipartisan support. The most recent reauthorization, in 2006, was with a Republican Congress and a Republican president. Voting rights should not be a partisan issue: the right to choose our government is the most basic right in a democracy.
So why can’t we do this?
Because the Republican Congress is controlled by the teaparty with its scorched earth politics of exclusion. Their hold on power depends on disenfranchising those who disagree with them because their ideas are repulsive to the majority of Americans.
If there are any Republicans who still care about small d democracy, they should pressure their leadership to bring this bill to the House floor for a vote, get it passed and then send it to the Senate for a vote.
The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law is a nonpartisan law and policy institute that seeks to improve our systems of democracy and justice. We work to hold our political institutions and laws accountable to the twin American ideals of democracy and equal justice for all. The Center’s work ranges from voting rights to campaign finance reform, from ending mass incarceration to preserving Constitutional protection in the fight against terrorism. Part think tank, part advocacy group, part cutting-edge communications hub, we start with rigorous research. We craft innovative policies. And we fight for them – in Congress and the states, the courts, and in the court of public opinion.
Last June, the Center wrote a report on the impact of the Shelby County v Holder ruling:
Before the Shelby County decision, the Brennan Center examined the potential consequences of a ruling against the preclearance process in If Section 5 Falls: New Voting Implications. In just the year since Shelby County, most of the feared consequences have come to pass – including attempts to: revive voting changes that were blocked as discriminatory, move forward with voting changes previously deterred, and implement new discriminatory voting restrictions.
The decision has had three major impacts:
– Section 5 no longer blocks or deters discriminatory voting changes, as it did for decades and right up until the Court’s decision.
– Challenging discriminatory laws and practices is now more difficult, expensive, and time-consuming.
– The public now lacks critical information about new voting laws that Section 5 once mandated be disclosed prior to implementation.
This paper summarizes some of the stories behind these facts, and tracks the voting changes that have been implemented in the states and other jurisdictions formerly covered by Section 5: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia in their entirety; and parts of California, Florida, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, and South Dakota.
Almost 52 years ago Gov. George Wallace made his infamous stand in the schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama to block two black students from registering for classes.
It was really all for show. Wallace knew he had no authority to stop the students. The federal courts had ruled that the time had come to integrate UA […]
… last night Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore ordered all probate judges not to follow the federal order and instead continue to enforce the state’s ban against same sex marriage. Moore threatened that any probate judge carrying out the federal court order could be impeached …
He is trying to stand in the courthouse door as surely as Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door. Shame on him.[…]
What happens next? I don’t know. Moore is standing in the courthouse door. He represents the old days, the days of fear and misunderstanding and the denial of equal rights.
Bentley will gather with his lawyers today to mull his options.
I hope the governor will follow his instincts and remember to be the governor of all the people, something Wallace forgot.
[The ] Supreme Court denied Alabama’s request to put same-sex marriages on hold pending the appeal of two cases.
Justice Thomas and Justice Scalia dissented, writing, “Today’s decision represents yet another example of this Court’s increasingly cavalier attitude toward the States. Over the past few months, the Court has repeatedly denied stays of lower court judgments enjoining the enforcement of state laws on questionable constitutional grounds.
Justice Clarence Thomas, a black American who benefited from the civil rights battles of the 1960s, giving cover to this century’s states righters.
More below the fold …
NY Times:
BREAKING NEWS Monday, February 9, 2015 9:45 AM EST
U.S. Supreme Court Won’t Stop Same-Sex Marriages in Alabama
The United States Supreme Court said early Monday that it would not stop same-sex marriages in Alabama, as gay couples gathered outside courthouses across the state.
Justices on Monday morning denied a request by the Alabama attorney general to extend a hold on a judge’s ruling overturning the state’s ban on gay marriage. The attorney general, Luther Strange, had asked the Supreme Court to halt the weddings until the justices settle the issue nationwide when they take it up this year.
Judge Callie V. S. Granade of Federal District Court ruled in January that the Alabama ban was unconstitutional, but she put a hold on her order until Monday to give the state time to appeal. Gay couples are lining up at courthouses seeking marriage licenses.
But in a dramatic show of defiance toward the federal judiciary, Chief Justice Roy S. Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court on Sunday night ordered the state’s probate judges not to issue marriage licenses to gay couples on Monday.
According to reports early Monday, probate judges in Birmingham and Montgomery had defied Chief Justice Moore and were issuing licenses.
8:44 a.m. Shelby County Probate Judge Jim Fuhrmeister has decided to not issue any marriage licenses due to conflicting orders from the federal judge and Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore.
8:30 a.m. Bibb County Probate Judge Jerry Pow said he is not issuing marriage licenses to any couples this morning. When asked why, he said: “I don’t know whether I want to defy the Chief justice of the state Supreme Court or a federal judge.”
8:30 a.m. And the marriages begin, in Jefferson County.
Madison Underwood @MadisonU
One of the first couples to get married – Olanda Smith and Dianah McCaryeo
8:32 AM – 9 Feb 2015 Birmingham, AL, United States
Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore sent a letter to probate judges ordering them to refuse to issue same-sex marriage licenses when the courts open for business Monday. Moore wrote that the judges weren’t bound by a federal judge’s ruling Jan. 23 that the marriage ban was unconstitutional.
“Effective immediately, no probate judge of the state of Alabama nor any agent or employee of any Alabama probate judge shall issue or recognize a marriage license that is inconsistent with (the Alabama Constitution),” Moore wrote.
All photos in this post are by Prince Balume and Achilles Balume, and are posted here with permission.
In 2006, DR Congo passed a new constitution, which is similar to our (US) constitution in many ways. The right to vote, to assemble, and to free speech are guaranteed. Beyond our constitution, it guarantees strong parity between men and women. The issue today, though, is that it imposes tenure limits on the President.
By law, President Joseph Kabila must step down and allow an open election in 2016. He began as a military dictator who led the country through a transitional government, and was then democratically elected President. His re-election met with some criticism, and he’s since been maneuvering to extend his tenure — recently by trying to amend the tenure law outright, and then by introducing requirements that would delay the election.
Last month, Kabila’s supporters in Parliament passed a census requirement for the next election. That law would delay the 2016 election indefinitely. The people of DR Congo organized a coordinated demonstration to protest the census requirement. The government cracked down on the protesters. Some were killed and others are not yet accounted for.
The great success was that Parliament eventually relented and removed the census requirement. It was a real step toward implementing democracy. It dearly cost people who demonstrated, though — some who paid with their lives.
Mass communication was hard to find in DR Congo until recently. Smartphone technology exploded in the last couple of years, though, so social media is allowing the people of Congo to organize in a ways that were not possible just a few years ago.
People organize in the streets in cities across DR Congo. These images are from Goma.
The government cracked down on the protestors. Many people were arrested — some are still missing.
Timo Mueller compiled a more detailed account as it spilled out on social media. Please have a look.
