Boycott the 2010 Census [Unless They Decide to Allow Their Workers to Record Data Accurately and Truthfully]!

According to this story in the Silicon Valley Mercury News [that I read about on Pam's House Blend], the US Census Bureau has announced that it plans to instruct its employees to lie when recording data about married gay and lesbian families in the upcoming 2010 census. Because of the irrational refusal of the federal government to acknowledge the existence of non-heterosexual marriage, [which those taking the red pills often attempt to excuse by uttering the magic incantation, "Well, it's because of DOMA,"] federal workers recording data for the upcoming census will be instructed to "classify" married non-heterosexual couples as "not married." The full effect of all this inaccurate data is yet to be determined, but it might have something to do with lower funding for social programs in communities with higher concentrations of gay and lesbian families.

A good way for gay and lesbian families to respond to this affront to their dignity might be to boycott the census entirely and refuse to provide any data beyond a statement such as, "Due to the federal government's pig-headed, naive, irrational, and superstition-based refusal to acknowledge the nature of reality as it pertains to the existence of non-heterosexual marriage, this household refuses to participate in the 2010 Census in any way." I think that might be technically illegal, which would make this an act of civil disobedience. You have been warned. However, I personally have refused to participate in the census and sit on federal juries since the mid-nineties for the very same reasons and have never had to face any consequences.

It's an America Sale!

Iconic landmarks in the US are once again being sold to the highest international bidders just as they were during the last Bush presidency when Japanese investors bought Rockefeller Center. One can only hope this development in the international macrobrewing business community will lead to price and distribution parity between Stella and Bud in North America.
JG8D69D

Firefox 3 Rocks

I'm running it on a 1+-year-old MacBook running 10.4.?. It loads faster and looks slicker, and I have yet to see a pop-up from a blocked site. I'm sure there are more reasons than that to upgrade, but none that were so pleasantly obvious to me. The install was a bit goosey because it asked me if I wanted to replace my existing [and working just fine] version of Firefox 2 without assuring me that it would import all my bookmarks and preferences. It did but only after I aborted the first install to rename the old version just in case the new didn't work. You can get it here.

Summer Settles Into Philadelphia

Hell's under water,
a warm wet blanket, woven
from July's first breath.

Roxborough Has a New Church

According to the Review, it's called St Miriam's of the Catholic Apostolic Church of Antioch, and they are sharing space with the Reconstructionist Mishkan Shalom Congregation at Shurs Lane and Freeland Ave. The fact that neither congregation is preoccupied with abusing gay and lesbian folks is welcome news.

Gavin Newsom Was Right!

It looks like California is going to become the second state in the nation to treat all of its citizens equally under the law. Unless, of course, the apartheid-loving, psycho-Nazi-Jesus-freaks who have appointed themselves arbiters of morality for our entire nation gather enough signatures to put a special referendum on the ballot to nullify the court's decision and then convince enough of their neighbors to vote for it. Governor Schwarzenegger has vowed to uphold the ruling. If he ever had any chance of winning Cali in the general election, John McCain would have shit his pants.

Raging Bigots Stifled By One Courageous Pennsylvania Senator

At the behest of Republican Rasputin-wannabes such as Karl Rove, Pennsylvania, not unlike many other "swing" states, has recently been subjected to repeated efforts by Christian extremists (who receive much of their funding from forces outside the commonwealth) to ratify a constitutional amendment that would relegate our law-abiding and tax-paying gay and lesbian citizens to permanent second-class citizenship by denying them legal recognition of any marriages, civil unions, or domestic partnerships they might choose to form. Before any constitutional amendment, even bigoted and Nazi-apartheid-like amendments such as this one, can be put to the citizens of Pennsylvania in a referendum, it must be passed by both houses of the legislature in two consecutive sessions with reconciled language. Last session, the House and Senate each passed very different versions and then did nothing to reconcile the versions, putting the Christian extremist bigots back at square one. This session, the extremist forces managed to convince one bigoted freshman lawmaker to re-introduce the failed legislation.

They didn't anticipate the reaction they would receive from Senator Vince Fumo this time around. No one did. Fumo has always believed that gay and lesbian people deserve equal treatment under the law. Now that he's announced he's retiring because of health issues and an ongoing corruption investigation, he apparently feels more free to really say what's on his mind. During testimony before his committee, Fumo informed one Christian extremist who happened to be African American and was speaking in favor of the amendment that Fumo's more conservative colleagues in the Senate would certainly vote to re-legalize black slavery if they could do it on a secret ballot. People pretended to be shocked, but anyone who knows upstate Pennsylvania (anywhere besides Philadelphia and its adjacent suburban counties), knows that Fumo was telling the sad truth, not committing hyperbole as the Daily diplomatically asserts in this op-ed.

After the slavery revelation failed to derail the legislation (which would be surprising almost anywhere besides Pennsylvania), Fumo attached an amendment to the amendment so that it would also outlaw most heterosexual divorces. Up to that point in the debate, the bigots kept asserting that they were not bigots, and all they wanted to do was to protect the institution of marriage. However, when they were faced with the prospect of legislation that might actually preserve a few marriages (on legal paper at least) but would do nothing to subjugate gay and lesbian citizens, they turned around and went home as very unhappy and unfulfilled bigots. The amendment was promptly tabled. The next time it could possibly come up for debate would be after the 2008 presidential election.

Thanks to the infinite fuck-ups and abuses of the Bush-Cheney junta, our beloved country is in a sorry state. It's nice to know (and it gives me hope that we may re-establish democracy on a national level very soon) they don't always get their way.

What Happens to Bush-Cheney Junta Cronies Who Actually Do the Right Thing?

They get fired almost politely.