A minor jumbled sort of rant on gay marriage

So I re-stumbled upon Keith Olbermann's impassioned speech about gay marriage and Prop 8 due to its inclusion in AfterEllen.com's Top 8 LGBT Political Videos of 2008 list just now... (Check it out, the first vid is an anti-Prop 8 musical starring Jack Black as Jesus.) And on second watch it still resonated so I thought I'd share:



Transcript here.

It seems like the main reason people (and when I say people, I mean religious bigots and deluded conservatives- so a loose definition y'know) do oppose gay marriage is the sheer symbolism of the thing- civil unions are accompanied by most of the same legal entitlements as marriages, right? But "Seperate but equal" is by definition segregationist and therefore just not true, it's a signifier of second-class citizenship. Recognising gay marriages as legally and socially completely equal would mean that the validity of homosexual relationships would have to be taught in schools and accepted everywhere- that they would be recognised as equally good, morally and practically. This is an article on same-sex marriage and equality by Wilkinson & Kitzinger which I've only skim read so far because it's holidays and my brain is disintegrating into melted ice-cream mush, but looks stimulating. Love doesn't discriminate and neither should the law! Oh look, I'm reduced to yelling slogans. That's okay though. It's holidays.

So anyway... Everyone got all het up over the ridiculousness that was Prop 8 last month, in America and around the world, but has anyone noticed that there is relatively no public movement for marriage equality in Australia? Nothing halfway as publicised in the US, so far as I've noticed anyway. Maybe there are just less of us here. I do think that the legalising of same-sex marriages is inevitable, like other human rights advancements that we look back on now and wonder why the fuck it took so long. But what to do in the meantime eh? http://www.australianmarriageequality.com/.

And in other LGBT news, the Pope is an arsehole! Fsk fsk fsk, I am so not into organised religion right now.

FLOW: Can anyone really own water?

Flow is a new documentary by Irena Salina about the global water crisis that looks at the growing privatisation of the global water supply by corporations, whether we're running out of lifejuice and widespread ramifications of such things. It's won a bunch of important wreaths and shit, should be in indie cinemas early next year. Looks scary!

http://www.flowthefilm.com/

Dashing through the snow, etc.

IS IT CAN BE XMAS TIEM NOW PLEES?

#474; In which you better Watch Out

This one kinda dilutes the message, but gosh dang whadda classic: (& lol)

I don't really mind Xmas (as I've taken to calling it in a really feeble secular gesture, considering that the X actually stands for Christ in Greek lettering or someshit- whatever, it LOOKS different!*) as like... a cultural tradition, familial bonding sort of event. I guess. Not that my family is doing excessive amounts bonding though- it does feel pretty pathetic to be cruising the internet on Xmas Day! (Also I first typed that as "excessive amounts of bondage", which is true and pretty comforting...) From my room I can hear neighbours on every side getting drunk and singing ABBA kareoke, makes me feel sorta deprived and lonelylike. No big jolly crazy times here! But at least we don't have to go to church. And I got some presents. So nothing to complain about really...

I will though, because gotta say I do wish my laptop knew it was Xmas. Maybe then it would stop giving me so much shit (on this most holy of days)- the volume control is having an epileptic fit and Amanda Palmer's blog won't open, in addition to which it has managed to summon me for a daily web trawl on what should really be a completely web trawl-free day. I've even checked my Facebook, for fuck's sake! Alas poor Yorrick etc.

*EDIT: Language Log of course has a significantly more sensible position on the matter, from a while back... Bah humbug.

(Almost!)

Austenbook

Are you doing the Austen comparitive study for HSC English and CBF actually reading Pride & Przhej? Do you tend to spend all your life on the internet instead? Then look no further than Pride and Prejudice, the FaceBook feed! Gold gold gold.

(From the same site there is also this fanfic that basically summarises/parodies the book "in the form of Austen's juvenilia". Not quite as brilliant but just putting it out there yes.)

opposite day.

“What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest
loneliness, and say, ‘This life which you live must be lived by you once again
and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must
come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again
and again be turned and you with it, dust of the dust!’ Would you throw yourself
down and gnash your teeth and curse that demon? Or would you answer, ‘Never have
I heard anything more divine’? ”

—Nietzsche

I have not bummed across America
with only a dollar to spare, one pair
of busted Levi’s and a bowie knife.
I have lived with thieves in Manchester.

I have not padded through the Taj Mahal,
barefoot, listening to the space between
each footfall, picking up and putting down
its print against the marble floor. But I

skimmed flat stones across Black Moss on a day
so still I could hear each set of ripples
as they crossed. I felt each stone’s inertia
spend itself against the water; then sink.

I have not toyed with a parachute cord
while perched on the lip of a light aircraft;
but I held the wobbly head of a boy
at the day centre, and stroked his fat hands.

And I guess that the lightness in the throat
and the tiny cascading sensation
somewhere inside us are both part of that
sense of something else. That feeling, I mean.

—Simon Armitage