Same-Sex Marriage Still Banned in Washington State

Meh. Not a happy thing.

Reports on the decision:

  • Washington Courts: Press Release

    This morning, the Washington Supreme Court issued a decision in Andersen v. King County, a consolidated case regarding Washington’s Defense of Marriage Act.

    The Court’s lead opinion was authored by Justice Barbara Madsen, holding the Washington Defense of Marriage Act does not violate the Washington State Constitution. This decision overturns trial court decisions in King and Thurston Superior Courts in this case.

  • Seattle PI: State’s high court upholds ban on gay marriage

    The state Supreme Court today upheld Washington’s law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, rejecting the argument of 19 same-sex couples that they’ve been unfairly denied the right to wed.

    In a splintered decision, Justice Barbara Madsen wrote that the state’s marriage law was enacted to “promote procreation and to encourage stable families.”

    “The legislature was entitled to believe that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers the State’s legitimate interests in procreation and the well-being of children.”

  • Seattle Times: State Supreme Court upholds gay marriage ban

    The decision came as a sobering defeat for gays and their advocates, who’d hoped the court would strike down the so-named Defense of Marriage Act — DOMA — which restricts marriage to one man and one woman.

    Writing for a 5-4 majority, Justice Barbara Madsen said DOMA is constitutional because in establishing DOMA “the legislation was entitled to believe that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers procreation, essential to the survival of the human race and furthers the well-being of children by encouraging families where children are reared in homes headed by children’s biological parents.”

    As such, DOMA does not violate the state Constitution’s privileges and immunities clause, which requires that any benefit granted to one group must be granted equally to all. “Allowing same sex couples to marry does not, in the legislature’s view, further these purposes,” she wrote.

It’s all about the children. Meh. What a crappy argument. Admittedly, I haven’t read the official arguments yet (the court documents are linked to in both newspaper articles), so maybe there’s a bit more to it than that, but from what the papers boil it down to…meh.

So marriage is about procreation and the survival of the human race? What about married couples who either cannot or choose not to have children? Does this mean that according to our state Supreme Court, it’s better to be in an unhappy, unfulfilling, loveless relationship that’s pumping out another child every ten months than it is to be in a happy, committed, healthy, loving relationship that happens to be childless?

And if we’re “encouraging families where children are reared in homes headed by children’s biological parents,” then shouldn’t we be outlawing adoption? Sorry, you had the kid, it’s better for the kid if you raise it, even if you’re a teenager, unable to support yourself, on drugs, or any number of other reasons why you might not want to raise the child you just bore. Don’t even get us started on gay couples adopting children!

Sorry gays. We don’t care if you love each other. You don’t have children, and marriage is all about the children, so you can’t get married.

Meh. What a stupid, weak, cowardly cop-out. I expected better.

Need a Hand?

Apparently there’s enough to spare these days…

In South Plainfield, New Jersey: Severed hand found in nude dancer’s home.

A severed hand was found at the home of an exotic dancer who decorated her home with skulls, and she was charged with improper disposition of human remains, authorities said.

Friends said the hand had been given to the woman by a medical student.

[…]

Kay’s mother, Patricia Ann Kay, told the newspaper that her daughter bought the skulls from a mail order catalog. She said her daughter has always been fascinated with the macabre, and when she was a girl she collected animal skulls and snake skeletons.

“She has a flair for the dramatic,” Patricia Ann Kay said. “I have never tried to stop my children from doing whatever they want. As long as they are happy, aren’t hurting anyone, and it’s keeping them out of the poor house.”

In Springfield, Virginia: Customer at Market in Springfield Cuts Off His Hand

Igbal Asghar reached across the counter at Super Halal Meat market and passed two butchered chickens to the man with the familiar face. Then he ducked into the walk-in freezer to fetch the customer’s second order, goat meat.

When the butcher stepped out seconds later, the customer’s severed left hand lay on the floor by the meat saw, Asghar said. The customer ran down the Springfield store’s center aisle and into the front parking lot, leaving a trail of blood and yelling repeatedly that he was “not a terrorist.” Outside, another witness said, the man announced that he had used the meat saw to cut off his hand “for Allah.”

[…]

Asghar said the man’s son told him that evening that his father was on medication for mental problems. Dan Schmidt, a spokesman for the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department, said authorities believe the man had mental health problems. Schmidt said he did not know whether doctors planned to try to re-attach the man’s hand.

Bizarre.

iTunesStar Trek: The Next Generation – Main Theme From” by Erich Kunzel; Cincinnati Pops Orchestra from the album Symphonic Star Trek (1996, 1:43).

Trekommendations?

Yes. Horrible title. Bad blogger. No donut.

Still.

As much as I enjoy Trek, I’ve never really explored the literary Trek work terribly much over the years. As it stands, my entire Trek book collection spans all of twenty volumes, only a few of which are novels.

So — any recommendations from others out there who might have explored more of the printed Trek universe? I’m always up for more additions to my “to read” stack….

Retkhan

Khan Noonien Singh, long one of the most famous and most loved villains in the Star Trek universe, has over time presented some (extraordinarily geeky) issues to fans who know his story.

Namely, the Eugenics Wars of the 1990’s. According to Star Trek canon as established in the original series episode ‘Space Seed‘…

From 1992 to 1996, Khan was absolute ruler of more than one-quarter of Earth’s population, including regions of Asia the Middle East.

In the mid 1990s, [Khan and other genetically engineered] Augment tyrants began warring amongst themselves. Other nations joined to force them from power in a series of struggles that became known as the Eugenics Wars. Eventually, most of the tyrants were defeated and their territory re-captured, but up to 90 “supermen” were never accounted for.

Khan escaped the wars and their consequences along with 84 followers who swore to live and die at his command. He saw his best option in a risky, self-imposed exile. In 1996, he took control of a DY-100-class interplanetary sleeper ship he christened SS Botany Bay, named for the site of the Australian penal colony. Set on a course outbound from the solar system, but with no apparent destination in mind, Khan and his people remained in suspended animation for Botany Bay’s (nearly) 300-year sublight journey.

Of course, when this was all dreamed up in the 1960’s, no-one knew that Trek would survive until the mid-’90’s, let alone grow into the phenomenon that it did. Once the ’90’s rolled around, though…well, yes, as fans, we are perfectly aware that Trek is fiction. It’s just more fun when we can find ways to make the Trek universe and our universe overlap. When Trek takes place tens or hundreds of years in the future, that’s easy. Once we get to a point where we’ve moved solidly into the decades referenced in Trek with no sign of genetically engineered supermen or Eugenics Wars…well, that’s when things start to get creative.

A couple of years ago, I picked up two Trek novels by Greg Cox: The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh, Volume I and Volume II. Cox does an incredible job of retconning (that is, ‘retroactive continuity‘: “…the adding of new information to ‘historical’ material, or deliberately changing previously established facts in a work of serial fiction. The change itself is referred to as a ‘retcon’, and the act of writing and publishing a retcon is called ‘retconning’.”) as he merges the established Trek universe with the known recent history of the real world.

In Cox’s version of history, many of the perceived minor skirmishes and events around the world during the ’90’s, from middle-eastern conflicts to terrorist incidents were actually the public result of conflicts between the supermen as they battled with each other behind the scenes. It’s done quite well, and nicely filled in the details of Khan’s life on Earth up to his exile on the Botany Bay.

Hundreds of years later, of course, the Enterprise discovers the Botany Bay drifting in space and has their first encounter with Khan, culminating with Khan and his crew being marooned on Ceti Alpha V. Then, eighteen years later, Khan is rediscovered and eventually killed during the events of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

While long recognized as one of the best (if not the single best) Trek film, Khan left a number of unanswered questions regarding Trek continuity:

  1. Why did the Reliant not recognize that Ceti Alpha VI had exploded and that they were actually orbiting Ceti Alpha V?
  2. Why did nobody realize they were in the same system that Khan had been marooned in?
  3. Why had Khan never been checked up on, as Kirk had promised to do at the end of ‘Space Seed’?
  4. How could Khan recognize Chekov (and vice versa) when Koenig wasn’t on the show until the season after ‘Space Seed’ was filmed?
  5. What happened during Khan’s years on Ceti Alpha V?

Yesterday while on lunch and browsing the bookstore shelves, I noticed that Cox had a new Khan book out, To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh, in which he explores the eighteen years between ‘Space Seed’ and The Wrath of Khan. I’ve only read the first chapter so far, but Cox is continuing to display his ability to construct believable retcons. The majority of the book is concerned with the last of the above posed questions, telling the story of Khan’s years in exile. The first chapter, though, in addition to setting up the framing story of Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Sulu returning to Ceti Alpha V to investigate and assuage Kirk’s guilt over the deaths of his crewmen, family, and ship during the events of the second, third, and fourth Trek films, also quickly and concisely answers the first three questions.

Cox even comes up with an explanation for the fourth — though he did fail to use Koenig’s “Chekov kept Khan waiting in the restroom” idea.

Khan’s long been Trek’s best villain, and Greg Cox is doing a bang-up job of filling in the holes outside of established canon. It’s well worth picking up his books if you’re in the mood for a little Trek-based fun.

(Incidentally, consider ‘retkahn’ or ‘retkahnning’ to be my proposal for Greg Cox’s ability to flesh out Khan’s story. The word amuses me, and neither seems to show up in Google yet [retkhan, retkhanning], which actually surprised me a bit.)

Hot Tunes

Goofy idea that I don’t have the programming chops to create:

A plugin for iTunes (originally I was thinking of a separate program, but I think that this could probably all be done through Applescript) that, when activated, polls the weather services on the ‘net for the current temperature and then randomly selects a song from the year that matches the current temperature. A sunny summer day of 85° would produce synthpop from 1985, a cool fall afternoon of 63° would play the rock and roll of 1963.

Options that should be included:

  • Some form of fahrenheit/celsius recognition.
    • Switch between the two systems (85°F/1985 is 29°C/1929).
    • Converting between the two (85°F plays 1929, 29°C plays 1985).
  • Choosing songs from the decade, rather than the year (85° plays songs from 1980-1989, 72° plays from ’70-’79).
  • Applying some alteration (plus or minus X, other transformations) to affect the temperature to year conversion (otherwise, most places would get a lot of songs from the 70’s through the summertime, and many people don’t have a huge collection of 20’s and 30’s tunes to listen to during the winter months).

It’s the kind of silly little one-trick pony that could only be released as freeware, and likely wouldn’t get a ton of usage. It amused me when the idea crossed my mind, however.

(Incidentally, the song I’m listening to at the moment — which will be noted at the bottom of this post — was released in 1979, because according to my ‘puter, it’s 79°F outside. At 11:20pm. Ick. Yes, I’m whining. Yes, Colorado, Arizona, and many other places are hotter than it is here in Seattle. I’m still whining. Candles shouldn’t melt when they’re not lit.)

iTunesI Hope That Somethin’ Better Comes Along” by Kermit the Frog/Rolf the Dog from the album Muppet Movie, The (1979, 3:58).

Just a little warm…

I suppose it was only a matter of time before Seattle started getting hit by the summertime heat.

94 degrees today...

Okay, so it’s not the 100-plus that other parts of the country have been getting, but still. Ugh. Yesterday was a record-setting 97, apparently, and it felt like it. Every fan in the apartment is going strong, and we still don’t really want to move any more than we have to.

Just had to add my voice to the chorus of “it’s hot” whining. ;)

iTunesI’m Wishing/One Song” by Various Artists from the album Disney’s Princess Collection (1996, 3:08).

Best Phone Call Ever

Xebeth just called.

She’s okay — out of the ICU, unplugged from the various tubes, and working down the list that R made of people she had to call. She’s a little hoarse from the tube they had down her throat (though quite impressed at herself for being able to deep throat seventeen inches — I do love my friends…), and feeling a bit beat up and bruised, but she’s definitely pulled through.

So incredibly good to hear her voice.

To those of you who may have seen my first post about this and kept Xebeth in your thoughts — thank you. I know she’s in no hurry to go…but a little friendly support certainly can’t hurt. Thanks.