First of all, there's a lengthy item in today's Sunday Oregonian which details the legal limbo of same-sex marriages in Oregon, and the many and varied electoral and legal paths down which the battle could head.

Before we go anywhere else with the article, we should point out that it partially answers a question posed by a reader about what tangible real-world benefits are currently being enjoyed by gay and lesbian couples who received marriage licenses in Multnomah County earlier this year:

The license enabled [Becky] Yarnall, 29, to get health insurance through the employer of [Amanda] Wright, 24. Yet when Yarnall gave birth to their daughter, Sophie, in April, the state wouldn't allow Wright's name on Sophie's birth certificate as a parent. To get that, she must adopt Sophie.

That situation regarding health benefits is similar to one we've previously reported concerning another couple being highlighted in the newly-launched No on Constitutional Amendment 36 campaign. So that's at least two couples receiving some of the benefits of marriage only because they received marriage licenses in Multnomah County. In the previously-reported case, at least, there is also the express danger of losing those benefits should those nearly 3,000 same-sex marriage licenses be nullified either by voters or by the courts.

(Note, we've previously and recently referred to "3,000-plus" licenses. This Oregonian article refers to the number 2,961 -- so obviously we're been using a slightly-incorrect estimation.)

Which brings us to what the article is actually about: What the same-sex marriage landscape could look like under various possible outcomes of the parallel electoral and legal processed currently underway.

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Categories: Law Enforcement & Legal Issues, Same-Sex Marriage, State of Oregon
Copyright © 2004. Some Rights Reserved.

As everyone knows by now (although we're not sure the City's shock has worn off just yet) both President George Bush and Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry will be visiting Portland on the same day next week:

President Bush will visit the Rose City next Friday at 12:15 p.m. to attend and speak at a "small business summit," a Bush-Cheney campaign event centered on strengthening small businesses across the U.S., aides confirmed Friday.

Meanwhile, Massachusettes Sen. Kerry will be in Portland that same day for a rally that may also include his vice presidential running mate, North Carolina Sen. John Edwards. Kerry's aides made his scheduling announcement on Thursday.

As it turns out, of course, that day also happens to be Friday the Thirteenth. Hence this item's headline, since paraskevidekatriaphobia (we discovered after a trip to Google) is the term coined in the early nineties by a psychotherapist to describe fear of Friday the Thirteenth. He "reputedly claimed that when someone was able to pronounce the word they were cured."

All of that said, expect at least some sort of coverage of these visits here. And it's no stretch of the imagination to presume that someone or someones over at BlueOregon will be weighing in as well.

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Categories: State of Oregon
Copyright © 2004. Some Rights Reserved.

Just a quick update on the advertising situation here. First off, we now have an advertising information page which spells out the specifics of how ads function here, and some of our advertising policies.

You'll notice on that page that we've also added a new advertising feature: Premium ads. Now available in addition to our standard adstrip in the right-hand sidebar is a new single-ad placement at the very top of the left-hand sidebar. Because of that special placement, rates for premium ads are twice the rates for our standard ads.

(No, you're not hallucinating. As of this post, there is no ad in the premium slot -- which only makes sense since we're only just now announcing it.)

If you are, have been, or are consdering becoming an advertiser here, it's important that you read the new advertising information page and understand the options and our policies. For example, we will not be accepting ads for political campaigns or candidates in our premium slot, although we will continue to accept them in our standard adstrip.

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Categories: Meta-Communique
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Today marked the start of a series of "meet the candidates" events hosted by the East Portland Chamber of Commerce, with Mayoral candidate Jim Francesconi sitting down with a dozen or so East Portlanders to answer their questions.

We almost abandoned our plans to make our way to SE 98th and Burnside early this morning, thanks to the vagaries of TriMet. Our first bus arrived seven minutes behind schedule, but miraculously delivered us to our transfer point two minutes ahead of schedule. Unfortunately, our second bus apparently had itself been running even further ahead of schedule than that, because we had to wait an additional fifteen minutes for the next one. All of which amounted to us arriving at SE 98th Avenue (or, more accurately, at SE 102nd Avenue, since we missed our stop) several minutes past the 7:30 AM start time.

But we didn't want to cop out on this event. Single-candidate events should offer a worthwhile counterpoint to debates and forums. And for us, personally, our continuing search to learn more about the City (which, after all, was the entire reason for launching this site) would only be served by trekking out to the east part of town.

All that said, we're going to take a further digression and run through some other random campaign news before delving into that discussion.

This past Tuesday, Portland Tribune columnist Phil Stanford continued his bizarre fixation upon Francesconi, Tom Potter, Seabiscuit, and candidate hair. It's arguably was with something of a relief that we opened today's edition of the paper to find that Stanford had once again gone off on vacation.

Meanwhile, the Potter campaign sent out an email on Wednesday announcing the successful move of their campaign office to SE Hawthorne. And, turning to the Commissioner No. 1 race for a moment, the Nick Fish campaign sent out an email this morning mentioning appearances Fish made at several National Night Out events this past Tuesday.

Finally (or, rather, last up before the Francesconi coverage), today's "Campaign Watch" in The Oregonian detailed some sparring between the two Mayoral candidates, with Francesconi accusing Potter of "overpromising taxpayer dollars" with his support for a Centennial Mill renovation, while Potter "accused Francesconi of supporting the elimination of arts funding in the county's 46 SUN schools, run as a partnership between Multnomah County and the city."

(For what it's worth, it's also indicated in this "Campaign Watch" that the recent arts and culture forum, it turns out, is available in transcript form from the Regional Arts & Culture Council.)

Which brings us to the main focus of this item: Francesconi's appearance at an event hosted by the East Portland Chamber of Commerce early this morning.

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Categories: 2004 Mayoral Campaign, Metro-Area Politics
Copyright © 2004. Some Rights Reserved.

We've been reminded of something that is extraordinarily germaine to the discussion about inevitability.

Way back on February 20, it was reported (in fact, we mentioned it here) that four initiatives had been filed which proposed variations on a ban of same-sex marriage in Oregon -- two of which, in fact, were constitutional and not statutory.

This is important from the standpoint of the inevitabiltiy argument because Multnomah County did not begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples until March 3 -- twelve days later.

Now, it's true that discussions on the issue at the Multnomah County level reportedly began in late January, but there's no evidence that opponents of same-sex marriage had any inkling of this, so it can't be effectively argued that those opponents filed their original initiatives as a response to these discussions.

Had no same-sex marriage licenses been issued in Multnomah County at all, Oregon would still have faced the prospect of a Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages -- which was the entire point of our inevitability argument to begin with. Our situation, then, would have been more directly comparable to that of Missouri, whose voters this week passed such a Constitutional amendment.

Now, there of course is debate as to the nature and character of the effects upon the debate that having 3,000-plus same-sex marriages will have here in Oregon. We've already staked out pur own position in that regard, arguing that the existence of these licenses (and the tangible real-world benefits they are already generating for their bearers) generates an entirely new dynamic in this state: Measure 36 as a marriage nullification amendment.

Regardless of one's position on these effects upon the debate in Oregon, the timeline of events demonstrates the inevitabiltiy of facing a fight over a Constitutional amendment here no matter what did or did not happen in Multnomah County.

Note: A version of the content of this entry originally appeared as an update to an earlier item but we decided to bump it into its own item as well.

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Categories: Law Enforcement & Legal Issues, Same-Sex Marriage, State of Oregon
Copyright © 2004. Some Rights Reserved.

We haven't much been keeping up with the bankruptcy of the Archdiocese of Portland here lately, but various elements of the question of whose law governs in the case have arisen in the past couple of weeks, so we thought we'd take a quick tour -- heavy on the links and quotes, light on the comments.

In a July 22 story from the Catholic News Service, we found this:

Judges dealing with the first bankruptcy filing in history by a U.S. Catholic diocese will need to consider canon law against bankruptcy law and First Amendment rights of freedom of religion.

...

One key issue will be whether the court can dip into the resources of parishes and schools to pay sex abuse plaintiffs.

Lawyers for sex abuse victims view the parishes and schools as assets of the archdiocese. The archbishop said that canon law holds that parish property belongs to the parishes, not the archdiocese.

One federal bankruptcy attorney, who asked to remain anonymous, said the archdiocese will have a big job stating its case.

"The problem is that Section 541 of the bankruptcy code defines what is property of the estate, and it is a very broad definition," said the attorney, who works for a U.S. Trustee Office in another part of the country.

That article also has some discussion of some other cases involving interaction between church law and civil law, but in one example related the issue at hand is a civil court intervening in an internal church dispute -- not the case here in Portland, where the archdiocese voluntarily stepped into the civil arena of its own accord. The article, however, does argue that "creditors cannot force not-for-profit organizations to be liquidated, as they might be able to with a for-profit company."

Continuing along chronologically, The Oregonian recently published a pair of articles on the specifics of canon law -- one a general examination and the other an interview with an expert.

In the first few days of August, things have continued to develop. Recently, the archdiocese claimed $10 million in assets, a figure of course disputed by the opposing side in the dispute:

The Archdiocese of Portland, Oregon, has filed papers with a bankruptcy court listing $10 million in assets. Creditors of the archdiocese -- including lawyers for sex-abuse victims -- will try to persuade the court that the archdiocese actually controls assets of up to $500 million.

...

The main point of contention in the bankruptcy case, however, will be the ownership of property held by the parishes of the Portland archdiocese. Real-estate records in Oregon show the value of parish properties at over $400 million. Creditors argue that these properties must be included as assets of the archdiocese, since the Portland archdiocese holds legal title to them. But the archdiocese counters by saying that under canon law, these properties belong to the parishes, and the archdiocese merely holds them in trust.

This article goes on to make clear what we would consider a rather important point: "As a matter of legal record, the properties are clearly owned by the archdiocese."

Just this week, the archdiocese argued for a venue change in the case, but the bankruptcy judge told them that they nonetheless must determine how much the archdiocese is actually worth, "no matter which federal judge hears the case." This attempt to switch courts prompted some pointed comments:

"The question is whether these are personal injury tort claims" instead of creditor claims by the alleged victims in bankruptcy court, Stilley said.

Albert Kennedy, an attorney for the victims, pointed out that the archdiocese chose to file bankruptcy and now appeared to be changing its legal strategy by heading to another court.

"We didn't choose this forum, the debtor (church) chose this forum," Kennedy said. "If this court doesn't have jurisdiction, I don't know why they filed here."

Which somewhat underscores our only real argument in this entire matter. Since the archdiocese chose of its own free will to enter the civil realm of bankruptcy court, they shouldn't be permitted to suddenly claim special privleges under canon law. Of course, in every sense of the word, that it truly a lay opinion, based mainly on the continuing and nagging sense that the archdiocese is trying to have it both ways in order to escape responsibility.

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Categories: Law Enforcement & Legal Issues
Copyright © 2004. Some Rights Reserved.

Note: This post has been updated. Any and all updates appear at the end of the original post.

As evident from previous references, other Oregon weblogs are also reacting to the news out of Missouri and/or Washington. There's a brief Alas, A Blog item on the Washington court ruling, to which we link primarily because of the very active discussion in the reader comments.

Over at WWP, a double-dare has been issued. In it, he restates his criticism of the Oregon approach as compared to the Washington approach, in response to which we can only reply with a reference to our inevitability argument, and the suggestion that to make the comparison in full, we need to wait and see if Washington voters move to try a Constitutional amendment in that state.

He also reasserts that the anti-amendment arguments here in Oregon will focus on constitutional terms to the exclusion of the personal angle. We can only offer the reminder that this is not yet evidenced in the campaign itself, and that it is too early to know for certain.

Meanwhile, RoguePundit deconstructs the Missouri results, and also casts a vote in favor of keeping a focus here in Oregon on the personal angle of "how the many (gay) folks who are our friends, neighbors, and co-workers are harmed by the lack of equal rights." Regardless of what one thinks about the anti-amendment campaign's likelihood of sticking to that approach, that makes at least three votes from Oregon weblogs (Worldwide Pablo, RoguePundit, and ourselves) in strong favor of doing so.

Elsewhere, there's an editorial from southern Oregon to which we also want to take a moment time to respond, since it also argues from the proposition that Oregon's approach has "create a total mess." Primarily, we want to reference this portion:

For those who have any comprehension of the history of the initiative process in Oregon...and this writer believes that elected officials cannot claim ignorance...it was obvious that Oregonians would decide this issue at the ballot box by voting on an initiative to constitutionally ban gay marriage in Oregon. For those political and judicial mechanics in county courthouses, there is no excuse for undercutting the power of the people by preemptively approving gay marriage at the county or city level in Oregon.

Whether the author intended it or not, the above actually backs our own argument of inevitability. As stated, "It was obvious that Oregonians would decide this issue at the ballot box by voting on an initiative to constitutionally ban gay marriage in Oregon." Our continued insistence, then, is that issuing 3,000-plus same-sex marriage licenses in advance of any such inevitable ballot measure can only reinforce the strategy of discussing the personal angle and real-world impacts upon gays and lesbians.

Unlike the events in Missouri or Washington, here in Oregon those personal discussions are one step further removed from the hypothetical. While the debate in any state can discuss the rights and responsibilities denied to same-sex couples under restrictive definitions of civil marriage, the debate here incorporates the premise (which we've raised previously) that approving Measure 36 in essence would be an act of marriage nullification.

Elsewhere, supporters of same-sex marriage have had to content themselves with arguing that voters should grant the rights and responsibilities of marriage to same-sex couples -- while here, we have the opportunity to argue that voters should not revoke the rights and responsibilities of marriage already granted to 3,000-plus same-sex couples. And why do we have this opportunity?

Because here in Multnomah County, officials opted not to go the route of other states, which have left same-sex couples disenfranchised while the issue "progresses" in the courts and at the polls. And while we can admit to its risk, we continue to deem this the more courageous and the more moral approach.

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Categories: Law Enforcement & Legal Issues, Same-Sex Marriage, State of Oregon
Copyright © 2004. Some Rights Reserved.

One of the other items have gotten lost in the shuffle over the past week or so relates to the most recent developments in the march towards creating an Inner SE Portland community center on the grounds of the old Washington-Monroe High School. Despite our reporting in July, we neglected to post about last week's City Council action, but the existence of a follow-up agenda item yesterday gives us the opportunity to deal with it all now.

In that earlier item, we reported on the specifics of the ordinance filed by Commissioner Jim Francesconi to authorize the purchase of 4.5 acres of the site, for eventual development into a community center for a neighborhood (and surrounding area) which has clamored for one for years. That ordinance, which indeed was adopted by City Council back on July 28, authorized the purchase, while this week's ordinance (pdf) authorized "lines of credit and notes to finance the acquisition of land."

We have any number of pages of notes from last week's Council session, and a few from this week's, but most of the remarks are not dissimilar from what's been said all along about this endeavor -- variations on the themes of "it's about time," and expressions of thanks to those at the City who made it happen, especially Francesconi.

On a related note, the revised budget adopted by Council as a result of recent arbitration between the City and police union speficially protected the $1 million from the general fund required as part of the package being put together for the purchase.

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Categories: Design & Development, Livability
Copyright © 2004. Some Rights Reserved.

It is not our custom to report on events in other states, but recent developments (exceedingly recent, in fact, having occured within the past two days) on the same-sex marriage front in the states of Missouri and Washington are important both for rhetorical and strategic reasons, and so we feel it's worth taking some time to address them here.

Let's begin in the state of Missouri, where voters yesterday approved a Constitutional ban on same-sex marriage not dissimilar to the one to be considered by Oregon voters this November. This development prompted some words of warning over on Worldwide Pablo regarding what strategies should and should not be employed here in Oregon:

Should we now ditch the niceties of the "don't put graffiti in the constitution" argument and simply tell the stories of the gays and lesbians who stepped up for marriage, and say plainly what it is we are proposing to remove by the amendment now before Oregon voters?

In the comments over at WWP, it's evident that there is some bad blood as regards previous campaigns related to the rights of gays and lesbians, during which (WWP contends), parties such as Basic Rights Oregon began with such a "personal story" approach, but drifted into strategies of a less human interest nature as the elections in question drew near.

It's clear from yesterday's kick-off event for the campaign against Measure 36 here in Oregon that this latest effort also is starting off making use of the personal angle, and for the moment we'll give the anti-amendment coalition the benefit of the doubt that they will continue to do so -- which is not to say that we won't do our part to remind them to continue to do so.

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Categories: Law Enforcement & Legal Issues, Same-Sex Marriage, State of Oregon
Copyright © 2004. Some Rights Reserved.

Somehow we scored a double whammy today, as PORTLAND COMMUNIQUE scored "best of" slots in today's Willamette Week, both in the paper's own picks and in the readers poll.

In the former, we were dubbed "best blog jammer," and their editorial write-up looks like this:

Jack Bog's recent disappearance from Portland blog royalty left an empty throne in local cyberspace. But while there are a number of capable contenders for the crown (see "Blah, Blah, Blog," WW, July 7, 2004), there is only one real heir apparent: Christopher Frankonis, a.k.a. The One True b!X, the mastermind behind Portland Communique (communique.portland. or.us). PC overcomes the banality of the personal weblog with insightful original reporting and gives otherwise impenetrable news a human spin. Commenting on all the events we don't have time to attend and posting with the regularity of a Metamucil dealer, b!X is clearly Portland's new Blog Baron.

And in the latter, we're simply "best local weblog," and the brief description says: "Capturing the attention of all you blog surfers is Portland Communique at www.communique.portland.or.us, written by The One True b!X--a.k.a. Christopher Frankonis."

We're not sure what the numbers were on the readers poll, but our thanks to whoever voted for us. We know we did, of course. And one of bariastas at the downtown Stumptown did so as well. So, we know we got at least two votes.

We are left with one lingering question, however: Do dealers of Metamucil actually partake of their product, or merely push it on others?

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Categories: Media, Meta-Communique
Copyright © 2004. Some Rights Reserved.