YES (I also think the Washington Post could have made better pronoun choices when describing Bailar’s life before transition, but remember how old and easily confused people who read the Washington Post sometimes are):
She was the quintessential recruit for the women’s swimming team at Harvard University: a nimble breaststroker with a fierce work ethic and sharp intellect. But when Schuyler Bailar jumps into the school’s Olympic-size pool this fall, he instead will be a member of the men’s team, the first openly transgender collegiate swimmer in U.S. history.
Emerging from a tortuous year of self-reckoning and a lifelong quest to feel comfortable in his own skin, Bailar, 19, will be navigating far more than the usual freshman challenges; he also will be a pioneer and role model as society openly grapples with shifting mores about traditional male/female gender lines.
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Docents Gone Wild (this is what happens when you hire Charlotte York):
Kat Braz, a graphic designer from West Lafayette, Ind., was visiting the Iolani Palace in Honolulu this past December when she said a guide scolded her for straying from the group. The docent, an older man in a Hawaiian shirt, insinuated that certain people on the tour were fat, she said, and mocked them for not knowing obscure historical trivia. Ms. Braz, 35, couldn’t wait for the experience to end. “I’ve never had anybody be so rude before,” she said.
More arts-loving baby boomers—educated, experienced and recently retired—are hustling to become museum tour guides. The number of volunteers ages 65 and older is projected to climb nearly 23% to 13 million in 2020 from 10.6 million today, according to the Corporation for National and Community Service, a federal agency focused on volunteering.
*
Wheatcroft is now 55, and according to the Sunday Times Rich List, worth £120m. He lives in Leicestershire, where he looks after the property portfolio of his late father and oversees the management of Donington Park Racetrack and motor museum (which he also owns). The ruling passion of his life, though, is what he calls the Wheatcroft Collection – widely regarded as the world’s largest accumulation of German military vehicles and Nazi memorabilia. The collection has largely been kept in private, under heavy guard, either in the warren of industrial buildings Wheatcroft owns near Market Harborough, or at his homes in Leicestershire, the Charente in south-west France and the Mosel Valley in south-west Germany. There is no official record of the value of Wheatcroft’s collection, but some estimates place it at over £100m.
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Zookeepers are living the dream:
In a 2009 paper for Administrative Science Quarterly, J. Stuart Bunderson and Jeffery A. Thompson studied zookeepers and found that the profession was about the closest anyone in the modern, secular world comes to having a calling—the sort of intensely meaningful career that Martin Luther said could turn work into a divine offering. Zookeeping is dirty, repetitive, and poorly paid. And yet people volunteer for years, move across the country, and accept major sacrifices in their personal lives to be able to do it.
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Scalia is such a turd.
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NOPE:
A husband of a friend of mine received this email from his workplace:
“You have the opportunity to attend a Retreat at ____ Church, on Friday from 9 am-4 pm. It will be a day guided by Father ____, on finding Peace and God with your fellow colleagues in the workplace. Continental breakfast and lunch will be served. If you would like to attend, this will be a paid day. If you choose not to attend, we will try to accommodate you by opening the corporate office. (This will be based on attendance) Please respond by email to Mary and myself if you will be attending or not. Response needed, no later than 3 pm Monday.
*
Alessandra is going to go do what she was born to do: write about rich people. Who is your favourite TV critic and how do we get them her old job?
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You are not Sherlock, do not hound people:
Could you send us a phone log confirming you were where you say you were the night Jessica died? Why does your white truck look like the white truck that a commenter said might belong to the murderer? Care to explain that 2003 drug possession charge? If locals engage with their interrogators, they end up arguing all day with people they’ve never met. They can’t avoid suspicion by staying offline, either, because when they do so, they appear even guiltier.
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The fuck is thisssss oh, I would FLIP OUT, like, I would live in a haunted house, absolutely, but I would NEVER stay in a house that some weirdo is obsessed with:
“I have been put in charge of watching and waiting for its second coming,” one of the letters reportedly reads. Two others allegedly refer to the couple’s young children. “I am pleased to know your names now, and the name of the young blood you have brought to me,” one reportedly says. Another asks, “Have they found out what’s in the walls yet?”
*
I enjoy Charlotte so much (I do think that it’s possible to hire a sex worker in an ethical manner, and I do not think that the act of paying a professional for sex is inherently bad or shameful or should be illegal):
Be reasonable. Your sex worker isn’t there because of their lust for you, or even their like for you. They’re there because it’s their job. Interrogating them about their own tastes, proclivities, and the authenticity of what they wanted you to believe was an orgasm is boorish and will cast a sour pall over the proceedings. “What do you want to do?” is one of the most groan-worthy things you can say to a sex worker, because odds are they want to be texting their friends, watching a Bravo marathon, or fucking the person they’re dating instead of you.
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Did you read the piece about lithium?
Lithium, a mood stabilizer that can help stop and prevent manic cycles, is usually the first medication tried with bipolar patients; it’s effective for most of them. Including me. I was discharged and sent back to high school with an apple-size bruise on my hip. For two decades since then, I have been taking lithium almost continuously. It has curbed my mania, my depression and, most significant, the wild delusional cycles that have taken me from obsessing over the value of zero to creating a hippie cult (my uniform: bell-bottoms, psychedelic sports bra and body glitter, head to toe). As long as I take those three pink lithium-carbonate capsules every day, I can function. If I don’t, I will be riding on top of subway cars measuring speed and looking for light in elevated realms.
*
Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
Pilot Viruet is a really good tv critic. I think she would do great work for the Times. Someone who actually likes and understands tv would be a welcome change. I have no idea how to get her this job, as much as I wish they would hire her.
Oh man, can’t believe I forgot to put Pilot on my list. Seconded!
I like your choices, but Margaret Sullivan has been pointing out that not a single of the 20 culture critics for the NYT are black, and so Pilot would improve the Times on that score, and do really good work.
You’re absolutely right. As soon as I saw you suggest Pilot I realized how 100% white my selection was.
+1 Pilot Viruet, her twitter is the greatest. But if I’m being totally honest, I’d rather her Fred Durst sitcom get picked up. That thing was hilarious.
ETA: omg the description of Stanley’s new “beat.” Not sure whether to laugh or cry at that. Either way it is pretty perfect.
I have ideas for new tv critics! First and foremost: Molly Lambert. Alternatives I would also find acceptable: het Grantland colleague Andy Greenwald (love his snarkiness), Alan Sepinwall, Sarah Mesle.
Honestly, there’s a lot of great writing about TV lately. I love it.
HELL to the NO with that house watcher nonsense. How is it not traceable who’s sending that stuff? This seems like something you shouldn’t be able to get away with in 2015.
Love that guide to hiring a sex working. I interviewed a professional domme for a column I write, and she was so smart and savvy and so utterly uninterested in putting up with bullshit. It was refreshing to see a woman in any professional field field be so self-assured; it was doubly so to talk to one who refused to equate her own sex work with any degree of victimization or violation. It was so, so clear that her boundaries were just as important as any client’s, no matter how much he was paying, and that is a trait that I definitely felt like I could use some mentoring on.
I have family friends that live in Westfield and it is ALL THE FUCK OVER THE NEWS here. My sister sent me a link to the nj.com article at work the other day and it scared the bajibblies out of me.
“the bajibblies”
I’m using this now.
Jeebus H., that is CREEPY. I have family there in a very similar house (maybe in the same neighborhood?)
Aw, the docent piece bummed me out! My retired mom has been a docent for 5 years now (she wrote me about getting her 5-year badge last week) and it’s something that’s really enriched her life since becoming an empty nester and leaving the work force. She has the opportunity to teach to a lot of students every year (the majority of the tours at the regional museum) and I think she’s been able to incorporate some really cool lessons that would be obliterated with “canned” tours and monologues. (#NotAllDocents)
But on the other hand, I can see how the position would attract some bad apples, and how dependent it is on individual judgement. If there are so many willing volunteers, they should be able to just “fire” the bad apples… and on the other other hand, I get the sense that often docents are also donors, and if those categories overlap, it might be financially detrimental to “fire” them.
“Firing” volunteers is a minefield for sure. Especially if they happen to have been with the institution for a long time, and the paid staff feel like they owe them something. Our docents happen to be a long standing, tight-knit, autonomous group – which presents it’s own problems. If one of them feels slighted or if they collectively don’t like a new policy, they band together and threaten mass exodus. I and my coworkers expend a lot of energy and time figuring out how to break new policies or rules to them in a gentle way. It makes me so angry a lot of the time because I feel like we’re coddling them and these are ADULTS here.
I think your docents are closely related to my volunteers.
Hahah they’re like some kind of weird guild.
Yeah, I do get the sense from my mom that there’s two types of docent volunteers: the ones who are doing it because it’s a fun thing to do, and the ones who treat it like it’s a competition or a fortune 500 job or something. She tends to avoid the “cliquey” ones, as she calls them, but from what she’s told me, I could see them starting shit. Damn shame, and I’m sorry to hear that yours are causing you trouble.
And to be fair, we have quite a few that are a lot like your Mom – knowledgeable, thoughtful people who just want to help educate and are damned good at it. Those are the ones who have kept me from burning this place down in a fit of rage on several occasions.
there are definitely at least two types in the program i work with.
some are amazing people, and frankly i think the fact that i get to spend lots of constructive work time and downtime with a group of 65+ individuals is really valuable. like, my understanding of what a kickass, smart, funny, woman past 60 is like has been expanded greatly by spending time around so many of them.
and many are fantastic teachers! who care about art and history and kids like i do!
then there are some snitty little cliques that are just mean to each other, people who are disrespectful of and openly bad mouth staff, and some people who disagree with educational policies we have and seem hell bent on wrecking our program from the inside out. and I have not once ever in fact seen any of these people “fired” or quit.
I have seen a very small handful of people who seem to hate the program with a passion and yet fulfill all of their volunteer hours every single month…i honestly don’t get that..
and there are of course the foot in mouth moments, like the docent who, when starting a tour with a primarily black 4th grade class, quipped, “Don’t worry, I speak Jive.” Then paused for a beat expecting Airplane! related laughs, while said 4th graders just stared at her in confused uncertainty. there are definitely moments like that….
the docent who, when starting a tour with a primarily black 4th grade class, quipped, “Don’t worry, I speak Jive.”
:-O = my most appalled face
One of the library systems that I’ve worked at tolerated a volunteer who was rude, quick to visit her obnoxious opinions on anyone not fast enough to get away, and not even that good (or just plain careless) at the basic tasks that she was assigned, for the simple reason that, if she were “fired”, she would probably make good on her threat to run for the library board, where she could do some real damage.
UGH that Docent piece. 50% of my job consists of wrangling docents and let me tell you, some of those stories hit a little too close to home. I had a elderly (white) male docent who, during a school tour in our exhibit on slavery, turned to the tall black young man standing next to him and said, “Now YOU would make a great field slave!”
It made me completely and totally sick.
There is a prevalent thought amongst some of my slightly older coworkers dealing with the docents that “well, they’re of a different generation, they don’t know any better” but my argument is always THEY DON’T LIVE UNDER A ROCK, THEY LIVE IN CURRENT SOCIETY. There’s no excuse for that kind of talk or behavior, especially when impressionable young people are concerned. This should be an institution of not only learning, but inclusion and SAFETY for heaven’s sake.
YOU WOULD MAKE A GREAT FIELD SLAVE ohhh my goooooooddddd
It’s my experience that some people are completely unable to NOT SAY things. I have a coworker who says the most amazing things, things that a person concerned for his or her job would never let into the light of day. I can only watch in amazement.
See and THAT’S the kind of thing that makes me nuts about people and specifically that docent. It’s like herd immunity – everyone is too polite to call them out, especially if they’re their elder or have been there longer, so the person in question gets to say whatever they want and are “protected” somewhat by the people around them. The thought is usually “Aw, well that’s just *Docent*, he always talks like that”, but there needs to be more CALLING OUT OF BAD BEHAVIOR.
I sympathize with this opinion, but at this point I think he’d have to kill someone to get fired, and I have to work with this nit-wit.
Stay strong, my friend. Sending you deep wellsprings of Patience 🙂
My mom works in small museums. I was the youngest, so I got dragged along to them for “mandatory volunteering” as she called it. For most of my childhood, I thought the word “docent” meant “miserable old person that I do not want to be around.”
I visit the Huntington Library and Gardens quite a bit and there’s an older white lady docent who gives tours to school children in a big silky mumum with chopsticks in her hair and I just want to YANK THEM OUT every time I see her. The smugness radiates.
Tell me you fired him.
RIGHT??? At the VERY LEAST.
HE’S STILL WITH US. He was talked to about that incident and is “strongly discouraged from giving that tour” but he still walks the halls of this place. He is also one of Those People who appropriates Native American cultural dress and objects and oh GOD he’s the worst.
allllll the frowny faces.
Does that school still send kids there on field trips?
I think so, only because I believe the staff involved jumped in and did everything they could to apologize profusely and make it better. For the most part our school programs are very popular and we do a good job as a whole dealing with sensitive cultural issues (we also do quite a bit of Native American programming as well) but who’s to say the next time This Guy says or does something wholly racist or insensitive that the entire school decides to go elsewhere? (I wouldn’t blame them!)
Holy hell.
I have to admit that I am really thankful that my job involves only the occasional interaction with docents. I hear enough stories from my coworkers who manage the docent program (although they are generally about the same small group of bad apples). We used to have professional gallery teachers which were replaced by volunteer docents to save money and time, but really not much of either is happening.
Just escort the visitors out politely and burn the museum down with that asswad in it.
It’s hard not to get frustrated that I’m still wait-listed to docent at three different places when I know there are people like that there who will never leave or be asked to leave.
To quote my favorite “Yo, Is This Racist?” response of all time:
“NO TOLERANCE FOR RACIST LITTLE KIDS. NO TOLERANCE FOR RACIST OLD PEOPLE. IF YOU’VE GOT IT TOGETHER ENOUGH TO BE RACIST YOU’VE GOT IT TOGETHER ENOUGH TO BE TOLD TO GO FUCK YOURSELF.”
My grandparents and parents are white folks who grew up in super-white Midwestern states. My dad didn’t meet a black person until he was in college. That didn’t stop them from marching for civil rights in the 60s, it didn’t stop them from getting to know people from other races and cultures over the years, and it hasn’t stopped them from embracing our family as it spread out across the world and got dramatically less white. It’s not like there was nobody in the Greatest Generation or the Baby Boomers who was saying, “Hey guys, racism is bad!”
EXACTLY. This is why the “well that’s his generation” argument holds zero water. If anything, this man lived through the Civil Rights era – you mean to tell me he didn’t catch on that racism is Bad?
Who on earth would ever think a religious retreat with work colleagues was a good thing? Or even a thing? My response would be a very angry email citing the 2010 Equalities Act (if it was relevant in Michigan, which it is not).
(Reading the comments, in which people are talking about not feeling comfortable admitting to being an atheist in the workplace, is making me very grateful for the overwhelming secular nature of the UK.)
And yet the UK actually has a state religion. I love you guys.
It is a super-weird setup. The head of state is the head of the church! State-run primary schools are meant to have daily acts of “collective worship”! But at the same time I pretty much assume everyone is an atheist unless they say otherwise, and politicians talking about God in public get serious side-eye. Maybe it’s just that we assume that the state’s taking care of the whole religion thing so as individuals we can just blow it off.
From my time living in the UK, it seemed like professing strong or emotional views about *anything* (except maybe football) was just considered profoundly embarrassing to most people.
There’s a very different attitude in the States, where people are often much more in-your-face about sharing their personal views. And in many parts of the country (though not where I live, thank heavens), you’re expected to make a rather public display of your faith.
Oh my gosh I’m going through the comments and just got to the one where “SlickWilly” is claiming persecution of Christians by the commenters and intoned that the Charleston shooting was not racially motivated and I give up
I just give up
Ugh. People are the worst.
It made me very thankful I work in a super liberal city at a state university.
It’s kind of great that the answer on this AAM was “this is illegal and you can assert your rights” instead of some icky gray area where everyone knows it’s a bad idea but it’s technically legal.
LW in the comments said the husband ended up working the extra day, though 🙁 at least he can prevent something similar from happening again, though?
The thing is, a lot of what the employer is doing is legal in the US. It’s fine to have a paid religious retreat for work employees (it’s common for religious institutions/nonprofits) but legally, you cannot force people to choose between going to a religious retreat and getting paid. The employer needed to offer all employees the paid day off or allow them to work.
Also, it looks like it’s legal if you have fewer than 15 employees.
Working for one boss is hard enough
at least when work is over you can leave
when your second boss is Jesus then it gets tough
especially if you find you don’t believe
When your boss decides that it is time to team up
with supernatural managers you’ll find
some policies that only Lot could dream up
and silliness will join your daily grind
These imaginary supervisors – have they
gone to Vegas for team-building meets?
and have they MBAs from UC Davis?
or interned for investment banks on Wall Street?
So in the interest of employee morale
Either run a business or a Christian Church
Don’t try to sing a capitalist chorale
Jesus memory will only be besmirched
FOUR BOXES.
FOUR BOXES! Between scotusblog and open thread I’m not getting any work done today.
EXAAAACTLYYYY
I’m not supposed to be crying in the lab! I’m worried I’m going to fall in love next but at least if I fall in love with a woman I can now get married!
Reading on my phone on the way to a doctor, so…commenting is hard. But, as predicted, ugly crying.
-cosetthetable
Happy crying is never ugly!
I lived next to a mini-cemetery for a year in college and that wasn’t NEARLY as creepy as that Watcher shit, jfc. That is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen.
I just finished the buzzfeed piece (A++ for the header Troll Detective, btw), and I don’t know whether to be horrified or fascinated. Probably both? And it goes on in the comments!
Also, the mom used the n-word (specifically in the context of telling her daughter she didn’t want her to keep dating a black guy) but maintains that she didn’t mean it in a racist way. That’s quite some cognitive dissonance, there. It’s almost impressive.
My other takeaway from that piece was that I’m so glad I don’t live in that town. Seems like everyone in that story is terrible. Yeesh.
I went on a docent led tour at the New Museum through the Chris Ofili exhibit a few months ago, it was a wonderful tour. Only about 5 of us chose to go on it. While we were waiting to start, an older woman asked to take a picture with the docent. The docent was not super nice, but obliged. I was thinking “wow, this is going to be a long tour…grumpy docent, picture happy customers,” but it turns out it was her MOM, who has been a docent at the Met for years and years, and I think the daughter was just mildly embarrassed. They both knew so much about art, and I was really charmed. (And the mom stood back and let her daughter do her thing).
Whoaaah I am just hearing that the Supreme Court has ruled 5-4 in favor of same-sex marriage
http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2015/06/scotus-marriag…
Does this mean I have to get gay married now?
It means if you have a non-gay marriage you must either accept that it no longer means jack shit, or you must get divorced in favor of a gay marriage.
But seriously, this is a BEAUTIFUL day and it’s about goddamn time!
All straight marriages are hereby invalidated; straight people will have to remarry their spouses if we want it to count.
Great, fine, more cake for everyone.
June 25th shall hereby be known as Gay Day, when EVERYONE must renew their marriage by eating wedding cake.
We had pie when we got married the first time. Can we have pie again now? I like pie.
No, eating pie at a wedding invalidates the sanctity of wedding cakes.
Dessert Equity!
That is a bridge too far, if we start allowing pies at weddings, what’s next? People will have cookies or flan.
Yo, I’m from Pittsburgh. A wedding without cookies is barely a wedding at all.
The yinzers are known barbarians though.
Counterargument: a yinzer wedding has cookies AND cake. We win at civilization!
I’m just going to have to add that to the list of ways I disrupted traditional marriage, then.
1. Lived with the guy beforehand
2. Had a job outside the home both before and after the wedding
3. No babies have resulted
4. No bride-price OR dowry
5. Pie
My grandma is nodding her head in heaven at this comment, and whispering in my ear, “See?!? I told you wedding pie for your husband’s family was against the rules!”
I am very happy for the many gay people who will now get what we must call regular married, but is it okay for me to also be really, really happy about how mad Scalia has got to be about this?
I just think about his toad face, quivering with rage and it makes me so glad inside.
A secret truth I am not particularly proud of: I hoped he might get so mad about this his little head would just pop. Doesn’t seem to have happened though. Bummer.
Guys like Scalia live forever. He’s going to be shaking his jowels at everyone’s bad morals until he’s a hundred.
His reaction is the funniest official statement I’ve ever seen: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/26/antonin-…
tl;dr: suddenly he thinks it’s bad that the 9 people in the Supreme Court can vote about laws for the entire country
Also he tells the HuffPo to “go ask a hippie” whether “Freedom of Intimacy is abridged rather than expanded by marriage” and the reporter walks outside and asks the first hippie they come across and the hippie deems Scalia a “knucklehead”. Case closed!
I mean, also, he’s married. So like, sick burn to your wife, dude. Hope she doesn’t read your opinions, perhaps because, like the rest of us, she has written you off as an idiot blowhard.
Yeah, I don’t see Scalia in a hurry to give up his spot on the bench to a judge from Iowa.
Hey, I’d love to see him give up his spot for some Iowans. I even know of a few who might be qualified. (BTW, as a (relatively young) Iowan, that was one of the most shameful moments in my personal history in the state. I burned a lot of bridges with a lot of friends that I thought were decent people until the Varnam case was decided.)
(Just to be clear, I do not have anything particular against Iowans; certainly, I don’t have anything more against them than I have for people from New Jersey)
HEY NOW
(j/k we’re awful, but only in the best way, and my apologies if you get an ID notification saying that I followed you because my internet is being WEIRD, just like us Jerseyans)
I am sorry, but as a Pennsylvanian I am honor-bound to an emnity for your people.
Understandable, I am sworn to make rude hand gestures every time I see a PA plate in the left-hand lane, anyway.
You’ll have to have the opposite of a Lavender Marriage (going by the color wheel, a Lime-Green Marriage?)
I played Life w/my 8-year-old today and when she hit the STOP!! GET MARRIED!! square she decided to “get gay married.” It was awesome.
PERFECT child, well done.
Epigram
it’s bad enough I have to work
but when it’s church as well
my feeling’s I should tell the boss
that he can go to Hell.
If you ever kickstarter your anthology of witty, news-related doggerel, I will totally back it
Alas, I fear that most of the poems I post here would be totally obsolete by the time of publication. I DO write other poems, maybe someday I will produce a chap-book.
In the meantime, enjoy all of it for free!
I linked to that Guardian piece a few days ago and it’s just a massive pile of NOPE. What kind of 5-year-old asks for an authentic SS helmet for his birthday? Why did his parents even buy him one??
I try not to answer when people accuse me of being a Nazi,” he said. “I tend to turn my back and leave them looking silly. I think Hitler and Göring were such fascinating characters in so many ways. Hitler’s eye for quality was just extraordinary.”
That’s really the thing to remember about Hitler, he could really pick out the best curtain fabric for your top secret hiding-from-the-Red-Army bunker.
Also, if there’s one thing I will never feel silly about, it’s accusing a man of being a Nazi when that man has gone on the record as saying shit like “I think I could give up everything else, the cars, the tanks, the guns, as long as I could still have Adolf and Hermann. They’re my real love.”
“I don’t show many people the collection, because not many people can understand the motives behind it, people don’t understand my values.”
YOUR MOTIVES AND VALUES ARE PRETTY CLEAR THOUGH.
“I want to preserve things. I want to show the next generation how it actually was. And this collection is a memento for those who didn’t come back.”
Okay, sure, but: does preserving Hitler’s favorite Coke vending machine or Eva Braun’s gramophone contribute meaningfully to our knowledge of WWII?
As far as I can tell, this piece mentions the Holocaust only once, rather obliquely, when he says he bought a backpack that turned out to have undeveloped film on it which included some photos of the Berger-Belsen camp. It must have been very soon after the liberation, because there were bulldozers moving piles of bodies. No mention of whether those photos were kept or on display anywhere, no acknowledgement that those piles of bodies were his “real loves” Adolf and Hermann’s dream come true. So by “those who didn’t come back” he means the fallen Nazi soldiers.
Just, uughhhhh. Skimming over this piece again made me feel like I desperately need a shower.
…I knew there was a reason I didn’t want to read that piece. I feel dirty just reading your extracts. *shudder*
He strikes me as the richest member of that class of weirdos who are obsessed with serial killer memorabilia and I wish they would have asked if he knows/speaks to David Irving. He wouldn’t be able to cast his collection as harmless if he got it by enriching Nazi Holocaust deniers.
He does actually seem to lack the wistful romanticism that characterizes people obsessed with Confederate memorabilia, so I can’t really tell if he’s reached that level of awful. In any case, super rich people are the worst.
GAY MARRIAGE GUYS IT’S CONSTITUTIONALLY GUARANTEED ACROSS THE NATION WHOOOOOO
Opinion is up: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556…
Good news! Congrats to everyone, everywhere, who wants to get married and now can.
There’s a party in my twitter feed and I can’t stop smiling. I don’t even know why – I’m not American OR gay – but it just feels like one of those historical moments of progress.
I love this part from the opinion: “The history of marriage is one of both continuity and change. Changes, such as the decline of arranged marriages and the abandonment of the law of coverture, have worked deep transformations in the structure of marriage, affecting aspects of marriage once viewed as essential. These new insights have strengthened, not weakened, the institution. Changed understandings of marriage are characteristic of a Nation where new dimensions of freedom become apparent to new generations.” Just, chills right now.
So glad that (a majority of) the justices have taken Stephanie Coontz to heart!
I’m so, so happy for you all, I’m literally tearing up! Congratulations! First health care and now this!
This is going to be a huge deal internationally, right? If America, AMERICA, land of guns, Jesus and Hollywood, achieves marriage equality – this is going to be HEARD!
Guys, we can stop calling it Gay Marriage now! Love is Love! Marriage is Marriage!
Thank you, every person who’s been out — you made it that much harder for anybody to see gay people as non-people!
Love wins!
“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”
Goosebumps. Holy crap, SCOTUS. You (uh, 5 of you) nailed it. This is what marriage, at its best, can be. My spouse is my partner, my best friend, my teammate. Nobody should be locked out of that.
One thing I really love about the way this court opinion is written is that it doesn’t resort to a libertarian-style argument like, “Well, I have my moral values and you have yours, who’s to say what is honorable and what is degrading, we have no right to judge each other, so live and let live, etc.”
Detractors of same-sex marriage have complained for years that support for same-sex marriage is just a symptom of the rise of anything-goes, postmodern moral relativism. They said that we can’t make the word “marriage” mean whatever we want, or else it loses its value. They said supporters of same-sex marriage don’t realize that marriage is a public honor like the Nobel Prize, meant to communicate something about what we as a society value, and we can’t award an honor to a bunch of unworthy recipients without devaluing it.
But this court opinion doesn’t respond with the wishy-washy relativism that Scalia is always going on about. It meets the opponents on their own terms. It straight-up agrees that marriage is supposed to be a public honor, and that whom we allow to marry communicates something about our values as a society, and THEN it goes on to argue that marriage between same-sex couples is in fact honorable and good, and that extending marriage to same-sex couples strengthens the institution of marriage.
this gif, yall:
BEST DAY!! BEST DAY!!
I want to ask people who are complaining that “state no longer means state” exactly what state they think John Kerry is the Secretary of?
In Schuyler Bailar’s story, I love the quote from grandma: “Well, I knew that. Now I have two grandsons from your mother.” Grandmas. They know you. And you cannot surprise them.
MARRIAGE EQUALITY YOU GUYS
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/06/26…
My boss just bought everyone donuts to celebrate the court ruling. Best. Day. Ever.
CAN WE PLEASE TALK ABOUT THAT WATCHER THING???
It’s got to be some dumb bored teenager who just read the Dionaea House, right?
Yesterday I made the mistake of reading a bunch of stories on nosleep reddit (I’m a jumpy, paranoid baby so I shouldn’t, but sometimes I like to make life hard for myself). As soon as I chickened out and switched to facebook instead, that story popped up and I nearly had a heart attack. IT’S SEEPING INTO THE REAL WORLD
SCALIA SCHAEDENFREUDE THREAD!!
My favorite, favorite thing is how he reserves his nastiest bitching for footnotes.
Footnote 22: “If, even as the price to be paid for a fifth vote, I ever joined an opinion for the Court that began: ‘The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity,’ I would hide my head in a bag. The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.”
SCOTUSblog posted that, along with the masterfully restrained observation: “He is not happy with Justice Kennedy.”
He’s just so mad, and he can’t do anything about it, and it’s glorious.
What a relentlessly awful person. He might as well have just said “I hate equality and gay people” and been done with it.
I mean, how DARE people define and express their identities!!! Honestly, what is he even mad about in that passage?
My mom and I are emailing RIGHT NOW about how happy we are that he’s unhappy. What a day!!
Oh man, I’m not generally a fan of HuffPo… but they actually went and found the nearest hippie! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/26/antonin-…
(and the hippie said “Scalia is a big knucklehead.”, proving hippies can, indeed, be wise)
I’m here for the schadenfreude, but the last paragraph in his dissent was kinda creepy, wasn’t it?
“Hubris is sometimes defined as o’erweening pride; and pride, we know, goeth before a fall. The Judiciary is the “least dangerous” of the federal branches because it has “neither Force nor Will, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm” and the States, “even for the efficacy of its judgments.” With each decision of ours that takes from the People a question properly left to them—with each decision that is unabashedly based not on law, but on the “reasoned judgment” of a bare majority of this Court—we move one step closer to being reminded of our impotence.”
Like, if I read that on some random crazy right-winger site, I would assume that the writer wanted the people to overthrow the courts. The idea that a SC Justice would write that in a dissent is ridiculous.
Yeah, it’s super fucked up. It’s like the sinister version of Ron Swanson working for Pawnee city government and rooting for its demise at the same time.
oh that he would hide his head in a bag. scalia seems the tantrum type.
The rage tears of Antonin Scalia are a magical nectar that heals the sick and turns wastelands into green gardens, probably.
I know! I’m filling my cup with the best tears today.
Cheers! *clink*
Antonin and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week.
Roxane Gay was excellent on morning edition today!
Yay to all of you from me in Ireland! Congratulations, this is such a milestone. I’m tearing up over here reading reactions.
(Mandatory: suck it, Scalia)
@lilah80 – Should we all send him some bedazzled paper bags to hide his archaic nonsense-spewing head in? The temptation, it is STRONG.
What a day!
With the amount of time his head would have to spend in them, I think we need to go with a more durable material than paper for the bedazzled bags. Other than that, I am 100% behind you!
Re: the sex work thing, I was a (briefly) a phone-sex operator, and I def. got a lot of calls from dudes who would a) try to find out personal information (which you were not supposed to give them; even my name was fake) and/or b) start off by asking what I liked. It’s not really relevant, bro, because you are not going to run into me at your neighborhood convenience store and start up a real-life romance, and you are the one paying for this interaction, so I will feign breathy enthusiasm for whatever it is YOU like, regardless of how I personally feel about it.
I gave serious thought into becoming a phone sex operator but the opportunity never really presented itself; if you ever decide to write down your thoughts/experiences, I’d certainly read it!
You could check out Gina Gold’s work, she was a phone sex operator and stripper for a few years and is very funny!
Ooh…done! Thanks for the tip (pun totally meant)!
Sent from my iPad
The waxwork figure of Hitler in that one photo really seems to me to be inconsistent with the emphasis on the collecting compulsion, or the fetishization of physical, historical objects. That just seems to me like another step beyond (not that it's a distinction I'd have thought myself likely to need to make!)
the docent who, when starting a tour with a primarily black 4th grade class, quipped, "Don't worry, I speak Jive."
:-O = my most appalled face
I am sorry, but as a Pennsylvanian I am honor-bound to an emnity for your people.
Understandable, I am sworn to make rude hand gestures every time I see a PA plate in the left-hand lane, anyway.
From the zookeeper article:
“An intense sense of duty is something any employer would love to get from employees, particularly if it means they’re so dedicated they don’t worry much about low pay or tough working conditions. Bunderson and Thompson refer to this as the “double-edged sword” of meaningful work. Zookeepers sometimes care so much about their job that they accept being exploited … In other words, “meaning” makes workers more productive without the need to give raises or offer better working conditions.”
It’s a funny old world.
My grandma is nodding her head in heaven at this comment, and whispering in my ear, "See?!? I told you wedding pie for your husband's family was against the rules!"
You could check out Gina Gold's work, she was a phone sex operator and stripper for a few years and is very funny!
That Neo-Nazi march just sounds so horrific; I was reading about it a few days ago and I can't believe there's no way of banning it. (Also in North London, although thankfully not too near that area.) And yeah, I found myself not sure what to think about Wheatcroft either. It's unnerving, but at least he's not actively spouting anti-Semitism, I guess?