I’m also glad my car made it, despite some brake “burning” on the way down the mountain and a noise which my brother now believes was the wheel bearing. My friend Ed and I traveled about 900 miles round trip taking the scenic route up and down California in my Buick.

Here are the pictures from my camera and from others who attended:

Looking through the 37 people I know (and I doubt I even know that many gay Republicans) and other friends of theirs who were linked to the page, I saw men with shirtless pictures and others with slutty, made-up sexual names, so I really doubt that these activist, extreme liberal individuals had anything but disdain for the woman, and probably just wanted to engage in watching the slow train wreck that is her life.  One of them even publishes a smut magazine.

I agree in general that there are some unfortunate surprises when one discusses ideology even among gay men, but San Francisco resident, homosexually married, poly slores are generally not among them, to my relief.

Soon after her 18th birthday in April she had taken her written and behind the wheel driver’s tests and passed both with her first try.

In June she graduated from Castro Valley High School.

By the time she graduated, she had secured a summer job as a paid intern at Camp Galileo in Oakland.  After acclimating to what a “real” commute was like, she probably appreciated me a bit more, and she ended up loving her job there, getting an extension for a few weeks to what her original work schedule was supposed to be.  She loved working with the kids and the professional educators, who gave her glowing recommendations.

She registered for community college in Oakland and got her classes.  She will be taking 14 credits, which is full time, and so she started looking for a permanent part-time job.

Last week she interviewed for a couple of jobs in San Francisco and Berkeley, but she had been hounding me and nagging about needing a car, even though I was not all that convinced she “needed” one and that it was not my fault that she had chosen a college that was harder to reach with public transportation.  Understandably she was a little concerned about whether it would be safe for her to finish class at 9pm once a week and take public transportation home.

So on a whim Saturday, we went to a few of the places where she noticed there were cheaper cars off the main strip by our house.  We found a “wholesale” place where none of the cars had any Carfax reports available, but we realized that what we were budgeting, there was probably no use in trying to find a top of the line used car, which is what I consider the one I have to be.

Sunday we went back to look at the car that had intrigued us the most, and the nice saleslady walked us through the steps.

I made some financial sacrifices to buy her something, even though she was between jobs and we had no assurance that she would have any income in the coming months.  I was also worried that she was being too picky about the kind of jobs she wanted and wasn’t looking locally enough.  After consulting with a few friends and family members, like my brother, we decided that the car was a worthwhile investment.  So Alex is now the very happy owner of a 2004 Mitsubishi Lancer ES, a car which is actually newer than mine, even though it has more miles than mine does.  It seems to be very safe and in pretty darn good condition and Alex is elated and feels quite grown up with this new responsibility.

One day later (today), Alex heard back and she actually got the job she wanted the most!  She will be working as an activity leader Monday through Friday in the afternoons for the entire academic year at Rosa Parks Elementary School in Berkeley with kindergarteners.  This is a shorter and cheaper commute than she would have into San Francisco, and she is making more than she would be at that job.  She is also considering taking a weekend job with some of her subsequent interviews, since that won’t conflict with her classes or primary job.

Next summer she is also hoping that the summer camp that she worked at this summer will higher her back at a position with more responsibility, so for the foreseeable future, she is very well prepared for the future, and I can’t contain how proud I am of her, even if we are both paying through the nose for the convenience of having a two car household at the moment.

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Reportedly, after discussing and using the word “nigger” numerous times with a black woman who called her show distraught over racism in her own home, Laura told the woman that she should not be married to a white man inter-racially if she “didn’t have a sense of humor about race”!  As a white man who was married to a black woman who I was with for 11 years, I don’t think flippantly using highly offensive words as jokes makes it easier.  Would it be okay if Laura’s gentile friends and loved ones go around saying “kike this” or “Heeb that” to her or used “jew” as a verb?  Words like “nigger” were not acceptable during the course of my relationship or at any time in my life, thankfully.  I never even considered using it in any context.  I don’t accept anyone else in my family using it, even if they are black or mixed-race like my daughter.

The only laughter that I ever had about race that I can recall was when I would ask my ex-wife to do something for me and she would look at me and say, “Do I look like a slave?” or when I was dating a black guy and I went to a 50′s diner with my daughter and him and joked that we shouldn’t be sitting in the same area (as per the MadTV skit).

http://abolishthenword.com/

So Ben is going to Washington to kick some ass (my word, but he used the word “hell”).  Is Arizona the new bastion of right wing nuttery that used to be Florida until all the liberals moved down there?  This guy is a joke who had to distinguish himself among the many people vying for the same seat, and already scandal  in the form of some kind of link to a hetero porn site, is biting as his heels.  Nevertheless, Fox “News” (“news” being said with a grain of salt since they underwrite some of these lame, poorly-attended tea party events, rather than even attempting to be impartial) is “right” there promoting him, already.

Bear with me a minute here.  I’m getting flashbacks of Cheney and Haliburton.

These same private prisons in Arizona routinely and recently have had escapees, at least one of whom is still at large as of this writing!

I understand that the people who proposed this bill would say it applies to all foreigners, but what does a Canadian border crosser look like?  How many Irishmen jump the border into Arizona?  Do they really maintain that there is a perfect balance of ethnicities among the illegal immigrants in a border states? It’s racist and violates the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, as a federal judge recently found.I have never heard of a Canadian coming to this country illegally (let alone to a southwestern state bordering Mexico) to subject himself to pay for the medical care he would get for free in his own country, and which is actually higher quality in many instances than our own (lower child mortality rate to start with).  The racial profile issue was controversial because Latino people would be targeted and more suspect, even if they were tenth generation Arizonan and even if their families were there before we stole the southwest from Mexico.

The governess specifically speaks about the border with another country and the supposed crime that it facilitates, when there has been nothing but a steady decrease in crime over the past several years in AZ and a decrease in border crossings because the demand has dissipated due to the crappy economy that the party of this governor has burdened us with.  She is trying to claim that the feds are doing a worse job at their responsibility with border patrolling.  There is no logical association between the urgency that she has to scare white people with this supposed invasion except to make her private prison-representing friends who detain (not repatriate) borders crossers richer.  Just the fact that the ran from the reporter when confronted about this blatant conflict of interest that she failed to disclose speaks volumes.

I don’t even believe in hetero marriage, as I’ve said pretty much all along, but I’ll be damned if some people should be able to suffer while others cannot, and there truly are innumerable legal advantages to what marriage can bring (immigration alone).  My daughter’s classmate keeps pointing out that gay people have the right to marry (people of the opposite sex) but I can’t believe that rhetoric would even be taken seriously by those who spent money and time trying to limit the rights of a vibrant part of the population.

So congratulations to my home state, my father’s home state and the home of my grandparents and great-grandparents (to which I returned to live for the fifth time in 2007), for agreeing with almost half the voters (not that decisions of this magnitude should be made by propositions in the first place).  California realizes that we cannot remain in Draconian times by making endemic minorities systematically inferior.  I’m already embarrassed enough by our European neighbors who don’t have to think twice about these things.

My hope is that the case is indeed appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, which generally does not put its fingers on domestic relations cases of any kind (although one could argue this is a civil rights case). Most cases that are brought to the US Supreme Court are not heard, and so the ruling of the federal Judges, such as this one, remain as law in good standing.  There is only a need to hear it if the Court feels like there was an error in interpreting the law, which in the federal arena, includes most importantly, the US Constitution.  On that basis, this decision is sound, and agreeing to hear the case could easily create a mandate that all states allow gay marriage, which is why the supporters of Proposition 8 had better be damn careful they don’t open up that Pandora’s box.  Still, I think it’s ridiculous to have a hodge-podge of gay marriage rights in one country.  Canada had that for a little while and it was seen as ridiculous, so they made gay marriage completely legal in every province.  Let’s have some common sense like they did.  Our grandchildren will be wondering what all the damn fuss was about.

I am also confident that no legislature in California would ever get the support it needed to overturn such a ruling and because of the Supremecy Clause of the US Constitution, it would be moot.  The haters should look at the bright side — the financial windfall that legalizing gay marriage necessarily brings to a jurisdiction should be welcome, especially by the party that touts fiscal responsbility and libertarian ideals of keeping the government out of our lives and by extension bedrooms.  Besides, California’s budget can use all the help it can these days, which is why even Republican Schwarzenegger wouldn’t have thwarted the gay marriage rights if it had crossed his desk and he had little to say in opposition to it.  Indeed, if it wasn’t for gay men, he may never have achieved the status that he had in his Hollywood career, which we all know was based almost exclusively on his physique and not his “talent” for acting.

The important line of the decision today was that there was “no rational basis” why one group would need to subject the other group to a position of inferiority.  Brace yourself for the backlash, my friends.  Gay Judge or not, the fight for righteous equality is not over.

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