Same Sex Marriage Lawful In DC

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/us/08marriage.html?_r=1&ref=politics

Same-sex marriages legally performed in other states and countries will now be recognized as legal marriages in Washington DC.  The bill passed 12-1 and was not opposed by Congress, thereby becoming law.  Councilman Catina is now working on a bill to make performing same-sex marriage in DC legal.

Irony & Logicfail

( For those who read my journal who do not use Twitter, here's a very basic summation of how Twitter works, to explain why the following story is so amusing )

Now, the story:

@yetused on Twitter made a tweet that said "creeps me out! #polyamory" Naturally, everyone who follows the #polyamory tag asked what was up with that. What followed was a series of very angry tweets by @yetused about how horrible polyamory was and how it was insulting to her own relationships.

Actually, what she said was that it was insulting to everyone who is in love, was in love, or ever will be in love.

Seriously, that's a direct quote.

So, of course, people started responding. So @yetused then yelled at everyone to "get off my lawn" (again, direct quote) because she felt she was being attacked and invaded by all the poly people who took exception to her comments. She began berating people for having a problem with what she said in her own Twitter and we should stay out of it if we didn't like what she had to say.

Responses were then sent about how she made a public Tweet meant that we were not on her lawn, that she was out in the open and therefore subject to other people having an opinion on what she wrote.  It was pointed out to her that adding a hashtag to her tweets brings it to the attention of everyone who searches for that hashtag and we don't actually have to go into her Twitter page to see it.  And responding with an @reply is made on our own Twitter accounts publicly and is not a private Direct Message.

NEWSFLASH ......... THE INTERNET IS PUBLIC.

Now, of course, I can moderate what is said here, within my personal LiveJournal, but I cannot stop anyone from making a post in their own LiveJournals about what I said. Even if they direct their comments *to me* in their own LJs, it is a public conversation and they have the right to say whatever they want to say about me. I can only stop people from commenting here, within my own LJ. But if I made a comment in a public post, chances are, someone is going to see it and have a difference of opinion, and possibly someone will even want to write their own journal entry about me.  And that might be annoying, but that's what happens when one makes one's opinions publicly known and then deliberately identifies those comments in such a manner as to make it possible for other people to read them even if they don't know who one is and never would have seen the comment otherwise.

The irony here is that @yetused has since made a series of tweets yelling at me (and possibly others, I don't know, I'm not actually reading her Twitter page, just the @replies she makes to me) to "get used to it" that if I say something to her, she'll say something back.

I have not ever actually complained that she was talking to me, I have only responded to her flawed logic regarding other people making comments about her original anti-poly tweet. She actually said "You don't get it? If you start conversation you will get reactions. Deal with it."

Can we say irony?

This Is Not Polyamory, This Is Monogamy + Jealousy + Murder

http://www.mail.com/Article.aspx?articlepath=APNews\Football\20090708\FBN-McNair-Killed.xml&cat=sports&subcat=football&pageid=1

Why is it that homosexuals and polyamorists are charged with the downfall of society and a lack of family values, when this monogamously married man had a 6-month affair with a woman, who then got so enraged at the thought of him possibly cheating *on her* that she then shot and killed him?

I don't know a single polyamorist who would stand up for what Steve McNair did.  He cheated on his wife.  He endangered her life by engaging in a sexual relationship with a woman without his wife's knowledge.  He could have given her an STD, or this psycho girlfriend could have chosen to kill the wife and their four kids instead once she learned that McNair made up the story about his pending divorce.

The poly community in no way supports this scenario.  I wouldn't go so far as to say McNair "got what he deserved", but I do have to ask him "what the fuck were you thinking?"  What do you expect to happen when you betray the trust of another human being?

I want to make very clear that I am not excusing McNair's murder.  Sahel Kazemi has taken another person's life and I do not support or excuse that in any way, shape or form.  This was not a case of self-defense, the man was sleeping.  He was an asshole, perhaps, but the solution to his asshatery is to break up with him, not kill him.

But when you betray a person's trust, you identify yourself as a person who cannot be trusted.  And when a person believes that you cannot be trusted, she will naturally believe that you have betrayed her at some point because she (rightly) believes you to be untrustworthy.  And then when she believes that you have betrayed her, she will undoubtedly act out on her hurt feelings.

It is not actually a stated fact that McNair cheated on his mistress with a third woman, this was simply Kazemi's belief at this time.  But if he cheated on his wife to be with Kazemi, why wouldn't he cheat on Kazemi with someone else?

On the flip side, if we lived in a society that did not revere monogamy above all other relationship forms, if we did not perpetuate the myth that there is a single "soulmate" for everyone, if we did not hide the fact that humans are not actually monogamous by nature, and if we did not discourage the open and honest acceptance of this fact coupled with a sense of personal responsibility for one's actions, if we did not insist that interest in, attraction for, or relating to other people indicated a lack of something in a pre-existing partner, then we would have far fewer jealousy-related acts of violence. 

If McNair and his wife understood and accepted that McNair was not a monogamous person, she would not have learned that her own life had been put in danger by the man she trusted it with, from a cop telling her that her husband was dead.

If the mistress understood and accepted that McNair was a married man and had no plans to divorce, and that she would not be his only partner, it is possible she would not have killed him on the mere suspicion that he had a third partner somewhere.  Then again, someone who is willing to kill like this is probably crazy to begin with.

But if we had a society that disapproved of jealousy, or at least did not excuse poor behaviour because of it, then perhaps her crazy would have been caught much earlier, before she had the chance to harm someone with her crazy.  And then McNair would not be the sleezball that he is for cheating on his wife because they would have had an open arrangement.  Perhaps, if it had been an open arrangement, his wife (who was not going through NRE or loss of cognitive functions due to blood-rearrangement of her internal organs) might have seen the signs that this chick was a wackaloon and advised against a relationship with her.

People need to understand that having additional partners does not mean that you are "not enough".  It didn't mean that when our parents had additional kids, it didn't mean that when our best friends found spouses, it didn't mean that when our spouses have best friends, and it doesn't mean that when our lovers have additional lovers.  It means only that humans are social creatures who naturally form intimate relationships with other people.  Only by acknowledging and accepting this fact can we consciously modify our behaviour to embrace our natural inclinations and still do so honestly, ethically, and with care and consideration for our fellow humans.  

As tacit says, a majority of our problems would cease to exist if people just talked to each other.  This is not polyamory, this is cheating and this is crazy.

Did You Know I'm Really A Muslim?

 

Ha!

If politicians insist that marriage is a "state right", then they have to get rid of DOMA (the Defense Of Marriage Act), which interferes with the states' ability to regulate marriage.

And the state of Massachusetts thinks so too. They've filed a lawsuit against the federal government challenging DOMA, saying that DOMA defines marriage in such a way that it prevents Massachusetts from being allowed to treat gay marriage equally to straight marriage if they want to.  If gay marriage is a "state right", and this state wants to say gays have the right to marry, DOMA won't let them.  It's a lot like Sarah Palin saying "my daughter made her own choice to keep her baby, but no one else gets to choose what to do if they get pregnant because I said so!"

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/07/08/massachusetts.marriage.lawsuit/

Good luck Massachuesetts!