Well... no.

At least DC recognizes domestic partnerships (which is more than can be said for a lot of other states).  As I've stated before, though, that has all the romance of signing a piece of paper -- but at least it's a start.

What pisses me off about the Defense of Marriage Act is the shadiness inherent in its creation.  The sliminess of "defining" marriage to purposefully exclude a particular demographic that isn't popular -- in the words of Stephen Colbert -- doesn't show a lot of balls. 

What's comical, however, are the stupid arguments to defend it.  My favorite being the "slippery slope" bit -- "If we let gays wed, what's to stop a person from marrying their PET?" -- as if the two are remotely comparable. 

All that DOMA is to me is fear on paper.  A back-handed, weasly attempt to legalize prejudice. 

...but it is a LOT easier than repealing a constitutional amendment.

I'm not the guy to be addressing this -- where's Geoff when we need him? -- but I'm pretty sure that CREATING a consitutional amendment that inhibits anyone's rights would be pretty hard to do, hence the whole nonsense of "defining" marriage.

I'm still not gonna applaud the Clintons for DOMA or "don't ask/don't tell" -- they're both fundamentally flawed. 

edited to add:  I guess I should say "ALL fundamentally flawed" because I feel the Clintons fall into that category, too.

...with the traditional slew of post-election pardons?

Didn't he already give out his ration of Medals of Freedom?

Er, Marc, no offense, bud, but you may be looking at that in a kind of naive way; fact of the matter - everything is run on money, and Michael is on to a good idea - if money can be made off gay marriage, it'll become a perminant American institution.

The Money factor over-rides the Religion factor.

Now, look, I see where you're coming from - your potential personal experience is being talked about like a commodity - that sucks the romance out of it, sure, sure, but in order for there to be the possibility for such a thing, we need to make sure it still can happen, and if it's bringing in money...

It's like... global warming.  (Yes, I just dropped that fart into the room)   Since I recently moved, the vast majority of radio stations where I now live are conservative (I did finally find NPR, so there's one non-conservative station) so I've been listening to that for a while now - and I find it odd that so many of them are so concerned with smashing the "lie" of global warming.  It's a huge thing to these guys - and it's funny because when I listened to left wing stations - no one was talking about global warming.  It wasn't an issue on the table for discussion, but these right-wingers are popping blood vessels making sure we all know it's a lie and if we listen to said lie, we'll be killed by Jesus or something.  (I can't follow these nuts paranoid rants.  I think that was the threat...)

Now, I'm no scientist - I don't have an informed opinon one way or the other about global warming, nor do I care about it.  I'm happy to let scientists work it out, and I'll do whatever - put my cans and bottles in the blue bin or whatever.  It's off my radar.

But having said that - I saw the Al Gore movie, and it made some interesting points, and showed some interesting observations, and in the end of it, they had this flyer (wasted paper?) that listed what you can do to help the planet - did it say that we need to go live in a teepee and forrage for nuts and berries and look like wild cavemen?  No.  It said, buy those twisty lightbulbs.  Carpool when you can.  Try walking or biking to work once a week.  Put your cans and bottles in the blue recycle bin.  Do your laundry at night.

I mean - it was insane - the right wing is acting like Al Gore is going door to door collecting first borns to rape and eat, but really, all the guy is suggesting is a few things that are so absurdly simple and not any sort of problem.

So!  (finally, the point comes!)  Why are the right wing radio guys so up in arms about global warming?  Because corporations will have to do business differently, and it will, in the short term, affect their bottom line, and they will not stand for it.

And so, the talking points for Global Warming were created, driven by money, or the potential loss thereof, and were handed out to the radio stations for discussion.

Marc - like it or not, money drives everything.  Do you know why we're the only civilized first world nation to not provide health care for our citizens?  Because there's more money to be made the way it's done now, and people with said money hire lobbyists to flutter around the Capitol, making sure our elected officials never put any sort of health care reform on the table.  You know why illegal immigration is such an issue?  Because if they were legal, corporations would have to pay them the minimum wage.* How many guesses do you need about why we're in Iraq?  Or why Halliburton was allowed to destroy and rebuild New Orleans?

It's ugly, but it's all about money.

*The fucking minimum wage.  A wage that says "If I could pay you any less, I would"

As I said, Marc, I'm not really the guy to talk to about this.  Not a lawyer, don't play one on tv.  Don't know much about consitutional law -- except how to spell it. 

On the other hand, what tickles me about the flag-burning amendment is they're really out-lawing INTENT.  Flags are properly DISPOSED of by burning (the boy scouts have been doing it for years), so it's not the burning of flags that's illegal -- it's WHY one would burn them. 

Idiots.