North Carolina

Updated.

Sadly, the enemies of joy won one Tuesday.

I don’t know how much solace we can take---some, at least---in the fact that the forces of joy came a lot closer to winning one in Colorado.  Close enough that this coming fall’s election can easily change it.

One thing we shouldn’t do, besides lose heart.  Get mad at the entire state of North Carolina.

It’s not a North Carolina thing.  Or a southern thing.  Maine and Pennsylvania have outlawed marriage equality.

And Connecticut, Vermont, New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, Iowa, and the state of Washington don’t have it because it was enacted by a popular vote.  Here in New York it was the work of the state legislature, with four brave Republican state senators providing the very small margin of victory. And in Massachusetts a court decided enough was enough.  And then another court ruled that the state legislature couldn’t pass an amendment to the state Constitution, thwarting an effort by that well-known closet moderate, Mitt Romney, who once boasted he was to the left of Ted Kennedy on gay rights, to have it put up for a popular vote.  And remember, in liberal Boston, gays still aren’t allowed to march as out and proud gay Irishmen and women in the St Patrick’s Day Parade.

And then there’s California.

So we shouldn’t single out North Carolina for our anger.

Besides, we need the state to stay blue come November.

Here’s the thing.  The President may be playing it too cagey, but if he’s re-elected he will be appointing the judges who will be deciding the larger victories for the forces of joy. 

The Right knows this.  They don’t hate him just because he’s black.

Updated because now they really hate him, but then who don’t they hate?:

The President has decided to stop being cagey.

Mr Pierce on the President’s completed evolution.

Comments

[Linkmeister]

Except that he's not nominating as many judges as there are vacancies, and the ones who have been nominated are languishing in Republican Senator-imposed limbo.

[Lance Mannion]

Link, this.

[Linkmeister]

Huh. Well, that's better than I thought. I know the Senate has made a few deals to approve more recently, but I didn't realize it was improving that much. Thanks.

[El Jefe]

Pierce was an excellent study on this: both the calculated presentation, and the real importance and *clarity* of what he said. For about the second or third, depending on how you count it, time since he took the oath, I've seen the guy I voted for actually be brave. Meaningfully brave. And that's water in an awfully parched place. I'm glad my Uncle Frank -- my gay godfather and my mother's all-but-official third brother -- held on against the combination of HIV and old age long enough to see this. Mom's an old civil-rights gal who spent high school and college in murderously redneck north Florida, so she's pretty happy too.

[El Jefe]

Lance,

BTW have you trademarked "forces of joy" yet? 'Cause you should. It's not simply about love casting out hate, it is in very important ways about the right to the lived experience of joy, and the responsibility of all of us to foster joy through the act of lived community.