Prop 8 liveblogging - and the marriage equality debate rages on

[rhythmia]

So the Prop 8 trial in my good ol' state of California started Monday. Supreme Court ruled against allowing live media coverage. So much for transparency.

to try to make up for that, the Courage Campaign is doing live blogging from the courtroom.

http://prop8trialtracker.com

Please check it out.

ETA:
Reading through the first couple of days of courtroom summaries is amazingly edifying. A couple of the expert witnesses give us a crash course in the history of marriage in the United States, history of LGBT discrimination in the US, and lots of sociological tidbits. Also the folks commenting on the liveblogging are building into a thriving community, and people are sharing relevant links left and right.

Also! A hilariously relevant flash animation as SF Gate.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/01/13/fiorewhose.DTL

Comments

[primroseshows.livejournal.com]

That's a great website, bb! Thank you for the link. I hope the trial ends in favour of marriage equality.

[rhythmia.livejournal.com]

Hope so too. *_* If you are so inclined, do pass it along. ^^

How are you doing, btw? Start of a new semester going okay?

[kegom.livejournal.com]

Hey you, thanks for the link! I followed it and for the last ...twelve hours? or so, I've been avidly following the updates - to the point where I'm not really doing anything else on the net.

I'm kind of cheering for all of the witnesses on trial and getting annoyed at the pro-Prop-8 laywer whose strategy largely seems to involve trying to wear the witness down until they make a mistake, or something (because seriously, five hours or so of cross-examining one witness? really?). I really hope they're going to shoot the pro side down! (And if they do, I'll have to look into our own system our domestic registration thing. I always thought that at least emotionally it was sort of the same as a marriage, because all the media refer to it as a "marriage" and it mostly gives the people the same tax benefits and insurance stuff - though not the same adoption right, sadly - but with the last witness on trial so far, I'm starting to wonder about it...)

[rhythmia.livejournal.com]

Hey you! I'm glad you're finding it useful/interesting! I'm kind of in the same boat; I mostly can't follow it real-time (which is lucky for my refresh key) and I end up reading it all in a chunk at the end of the day, which still takes me a while because it's so moving and fascinating to read and take part in the comments. Which are amazingly civil and logical and other things found in short supply on the internet.

I'm curious how things work in Germany (or heck, any place that isn't here) for gay and lesbian couples, and if there's anything in place for trans people?

yeah, the pro-8 side seems limited to ad hominem attacks and trying to talk the expert witnesses in circles. So I'm glad the witnesses so far all seem really on the ball about responding in clear ways. I'm interested (in a trainwreck sort of way) what the witnesses for the defendant (pro-8) side are going to say when it's their turn to be up, considering a couple have already withdrawn. >.>

By the way, I'm glad to see you're back and you survived your grad school! I have a tab up with your 'I aten't ded' post, and I will be getting to it once I hammer my internet into submission. XD Also, yay Discworld books? :D

*hugs*

Part 1 of 2 (I'm back and already going over comment limits again. v-v")

[kegom.livejournal.com]

It really feels like a really nice community is building up on that site. ^-^ So hopefully, even should the court decide for the proposition (lets hope not!), there'll be a community there that will keep on trying and supporting each other.


How things work in Germany for gay and lesbian couples... hhmmm, I'd say it's pretty much like in the United States, but not quite as extreme in some parts?
Generally, it seems like homosexuality itself is slightly less of a problem for people than it is in the US. Of course, distinctions have to be made between rural and urban areas (urban areas being more tolerant generally) and between north and south (in the north half of Germany, most people are Lutheranian-Protestants and most people in the south half are Catholics), and there's still a whole lot of "casual" discrimination against gay people going on in everyday life, but there are openly gay people in most German parties (though not in the right-winged nationalistic and in the stricter Christian parties), the mayors of the two largest cities in Germany (Berlin - which is also our capital - and Hamburg, where I live) and our foreign minister are all openly gay, and generally, it seems that people don't care about that, as long as they do their job. A lot of things could be better, really, but I think they're not totally bad either. At least we don't have something like "Don't ask, don't tell" in the military anymore, and the only profession where everyone seems to be afraid to come out is professional soccer. (Which is the national sports here and I really can understand why no one would want to come out there - we've still got problems with hooligans and even when there aren't any hooligans around, there's always at least one fist-fight in the audience during all soccer games.)

Domestic/civil partnerships are accepted throughout Germany, and they mostly give the couples the same rights that married couples have, except the right to adopt as a family (the partners can adopt individually but not together) and some of the tax-related rights. But they've got the right to inherit and be insured through their partner (which isn't as big a deal as it is in the US, I think, because the majority of people here are either insured through their workplace or through the state, but it still has advantages when it comes to costs, I think) and adopt the partner's biological child and stuff like that, so for most people not involved in the discussion it's pretty hard to see the differences between the domestic partnership and a marriage.
Most of the problems that we still have with getting laws that are pro-domestic partnership / gay marriage to be accepted lie on the church, because while the Lutheranian-Protestant church accepts domestic partnership (and might, in general, also accept gay marriage), the Catholic church only accepts the domestic partnerships as "not equal to marriage"; and because one of the bigger parties in Germany (uhm... I don't know whether you know anything about the German party system - basically we don't have two big parties like the Democrats and the Repubicans in the US, but a whole lot of small parties instead - everything from the national party to the green party, to the semi-communist party and the pirate-party; which usually get the necessary majority of votes necessary by forming coalitions with each other), the CDU (= Christian Democratic Union), is based on the church and (especially in the south of Germany) still represents the old "conservative values", it tends to shoot down most progress that's made in that direction.

Part 2 of 2

[kegom.livejournal.com]

I'm still hopeful, though, because there are several gay politicians in the CDU as well, the most well-known of them being the mayor of Hamburg, who was really active during the last Christopher Street Day, to get a ban on discrimination of GLBT people into the constitution. (Theoretically, there's already a ban, but it's not far reaching enough, as far as I can understand.) Also, we've got two immediate neighbours (Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands) that totally accept gay marriage, and a couple of other not-immediate neighbours (Spain, Great Britain and the Scandinavian countries) which also either have gay marriage or something that's the same as marriage but without the name, so I think that, as long as we keep fighting for it, we'll have gay marriage in everything but the name (and the Catholic church's blessing) eventually.


(Ugh, that was long. ^^" But I hope it was somewhat informational, if not interesting? Also, I wanted to link you to the article on registered partnerships on Wikipedia, but then I looked at the English language version and the German language version and discovered that the former doesn't really have the same information as the latter, so...)



I'm interested (in a trainwreck sort of way) what the witnesses for the defendant (pro-8) side are going to say when it's their turn to be up, considering a couple have already withdrawn. >.>


Me too. Especially with their reason for withdrawing - afraid of being harassed or discriminated against if they witnessed? Honestly, wtf.


Yeah, I'm back. ^-^ Exams aren't over (they're looooooooong - like twelve months long), but I've got a bit of free time right now, so I'm back to being more or less active. ^-^) Also, we'll totally have to squee over Diskworld books together at some point! I'm such a huge Terry Pratchett fan, it's not even funny anymore.


*HUGS BACK*

[flange5.livejournal.com]

MUST NOT BE REFRESHING BETWEEN CLASSES.

I guess I'll check it out again when I get home tomorrow and NOT between classes (T/Th class schedule means jammed day at work, no time for refreshing and ranting in my office). I'm kind of appalled at how little coverage it's getting in the mainstream news here--I guess no camera=no coverage for stupid news outlets? Hell, even HuffPo seems really light on coverage. Thank god for the blog--though it's fascinating how the other blogs don't allow comments and differ not only on spin but actual content of what happened.

I'm really sad that even though the anti prop 8 group are totally pwning the prop 8 arguments SCOTUS is likely to suck once the Prop 8 people appeal DDD: But I will hope for better things than I expect. *glares at SCOTUS*