Tim Minchin — If You Really Loved Me.

What’s on your mind?

My FDL colleagues & confreres will surely be discussing the legalities & intricacies of the striking-down of Californ-i-a’s Proposition 8, the referendum that said, in so many words, “if you are gay or lesbian or even remotely concerned with equality, fairness, and justice for all Californians, fuck you and suck it, and not in a good way, more in kind of the grim, sour way Ayn Rand very probably liked it sucked.”

Me, I’m just going to make fun of dipshit bigots and do a quick flyover of Greater Wingnuttia. Because I dislike these people and when they lose it amuses me, because they are very horrible and do not believe people I love deserve equal rights. So, screw them.

Our Lady of the Soggy Biscuit:

Actual quote from the ruling today: “Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage.”

This is a court ruling, not an academic seminar at Berkeley.

This isn’t about equality. This is about recreating our fundamental institutions.

Slavery, be it recalled, used to be a “fundamental institution.” Now it’s not! Freedom means the right to reform fundamental institutions that are unjust. In the name of, you know, equality.

Townhall is outraged, meanwhile, that CNN asked patrons of a gay bar what they thought about the ruling. Therefore the ruling is unconstitutional on grounds of being icky.

Colonel Mustard invokes a common wingnut point of faith, that this ruling Dooms the Democrats:

The politics of this opinion probably could not come at a worse time for Democrats. There is no groundswell of support for gay marriage, with even Obama having expressed the view during the campaign that marriage is between one man and one woman. The opinion attempts to short-circuit the political process by finding a constitutional right which most people — even people who might support gay marriage — do not recognize.

OMIGOD. But… nah. I’ll take justice, thankyouverymuch. And you wanna see a groundswell, we’ll show you a fucking groundswell.

Video via my friend Scott. Done by these fine folks.

(photo: purpleslog on Flickr)

Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill says she “received the message” from the voters back in Missouri, who passed a measure trying to exempt Missouri residents from the individual mandate on health insurance and the employer mandate to provide it:

I know that there’s a lot of work we need to do on not just the provisions of the law, but most importantly making sure everyone knows what’s in the law. And I can only be hopeful that as time goes on, more and more people realize the positive things that are in the bill. I do know that this vote very closely reflected the number of people who voted in the Republican primary versus the Democratic primary. But nonetheless, message received. I appreciate the fact that voters are sending a message. I don’t think it has any impact on the law itself, but it is a message.

Oh, good. For a minute there, I thought she was giving credence to a vote to bring back that old stand-by from the pre-civil war days, nullification.

In the meantime, though, I’ve got a question for my fellow voters in Missouri, for my state legislators, for my governor, for my senator, and for my would-be senator, Rep Roy Blunt: how much will it cost the State of Missouri to defend this nonsense in court?

If Missouri wants to defend the idea of nullification — an idea I thought was put to rest in 1865 — maybe they should  hold the hearing in the Old Federal Courthouse in St. Louis, where the Dred Scott case was argued. As long as we’re going back to the arguments of the pre-civil war era, why not go all the way?

Fortunately, Missouri is awash in state revenues, so paying to defend a patently unconstitutional ballot measure is not going to keep state roads from being fixed, state police on the roads, state parks from being cleaned up, nursing homes from being inspected, or affect any of a thousand other important state programs.

Oh, wait . . . Missouri is in the midst of a budget crisis.

Never mind.