Cartoonists With Attitude

(Crossposted on “Alas” and on “TADA.” Arguments against SSM should be taken to “TADA,” please.)

Judge Walker has refused to permanently stay his ruling overturning California’s Proposition 8. Unless a higher court intervenes, same-sex couples in California will again have the right to marry beginning on August 18th. (pdf link)

I don’t know how likely a higher court is to intervene. But hopefully, this will create another window of opportunity for marriage equality — and yet another real-world demonstration that, contrary to the claims of SSM opponents, the sky will not fall. No matter what, this is good news for whichever happy couples choose to get married.

Walker’s ruling argued that the opponents of proposition 8 are unlikely to win on appeal, because they might not even have standing to appeal. In order to have standing to appeal a decision like this, you need to either (1) be the designated representative of the State of California, or (2) demonstrate that not issuing a stay will cause the person filing the appeal “a concrete and particularized injury that is actual or imminent.”

So once again, it comes down to straight people trying to explain to a court how gay couples marrying causes them harm. And once again, no dice.

The two funniest part of Walker’s ruling:

In Lockyer v City & County of San Francisco, the California Supreme Court explained that the regulation of marriage in California is committed to state officials, so that the mayor of San Francisco had no authority to “take any action with regard to the process of issuing marriage licenses or registering marriage certificates.” 33 Cal 4th 1055, 1080 (2004). Still less, it would appear, do private citizens possess authority regarding the issuance of marriage licenses or registration of marriages.

An anti-gay legal ruling used as precedent to deny a stay of gay marriage… that’s sweet. As Kip tweeted, “Oh you know that rhetorical knife? Let me twist it for you.”

And this made me giggle (bold by me):

Proponents also point to harm resulting from “a cloud of uncertainty” surrounding the validity of marriages performed after judgment is entered but before proponents’ appeal is resolved. Proponents have not, however, alleged that any of them seek to wed a same-sex spouse. …proponents do not identify a harm to them that would result from denial of their motion to stay.

Would we be better off if many intersections were redesigned, to get rid of most of the traffic signs and the traffic lights? Many traffic engineers think so, following in the example of the late Hans Monderman. From The Wilson Quarterly:

And Monderman certainly changed the landscape in the provincial city of Drachten, with the project that, in 2001, made his name. At the town center, in a crowded four-way intersection called the Laweiplein, Monderman removed not only the traffic lights but virtually every other traffic control. Instead of a space cluttered with poles, lights, “traffic islands,” and restrictive arrows, Monderman installed a radical kind of roundabout (a “squareabout,” in his words, because it really seemed more a town square than a traditional roundabout), marked only by a raised circle of grass in the middle, several fountains, and some very discreet indicators of the direction of traffic, which were required by law.

As I watched the intricate social ballet that occurred as cars and bikes slowed to enter the circle (pedestrians were meant to cross at crosswalks placed a bit before the intersection), Monderman performed a favorite trick. He walked, backward and with eyes closed, into the Laweiplein. The traffic made its way around him. No one honked, he wasn’t struck. Instead of a binary, mechanistic process—stop, go—the movement of traffic and pedestrians in the circle felt human and organic.

A year after the change, the results of this “extreme makeover” were striking: Not only had congestion decreased in the intersection—buses spent less time waiting to get through, for example—but there were half as many accidents, even though total car traffic was up by a third. Students from a local engineering college who studied the intersection reported that both drivers and, unusually, cyclists were using signals—of the electronic or hand variety—more often. They also found, in surveys, that residents, despite the measurable increase in safety, perceived the place to be more dangerous. This was music to Monderman’s ears. If they had not felt less secure, he said, he “would have changed it immediately.”

It should be noted that what Monderman advocated wasn’t simple anti-government libertarianism; despite the title of this post, it’s not just smashing the traffic lights. It’s using the tools of government to create a context in which drivers and others are cautious:

Monderman suggested to the villagers, who as it happens had hired a consultant to help improve the town’s aesthetics, that Oudehaske simply be made to seem more “villagelike.” The interventions were subtle. Signs were removed, curbs torn out, and the asphalt replaced with red paving brick, with two gray “gutters” on either side that were slightly curved but usable by cars. As Monderman noted, the road looked only five meters wide, “but had all the possibilities of six.”

The results were striking. Without bumps or flashing warning signs, drivers slowed, so much so that Monderman’s radar gun couldn’t even register their speeds. Rather than clarity and segregation, he had created confusion and ambiguity. Unsure of what space belonged to them, drivers became more accommodating. Rather than give drivers a simple behavioral mandate—say, a speed limit sign or a speed bump—he had, through the new road design, subtly suggested the proper course of action.

On the other hand, it seems that some intersections are improved by doing nothing more than turning the traffic lights off:

Renee at Womanist Musings has had a nephew die. My sympathies are with her and her family.

Womanist Musings is accepting contributions to pay for the burial; there’s a donor box on the upper-left corner of the blog, and any amount of money would help. They’ve currently raised a little over half of their $6626 goal.

Post what you want, when you want, with whom you want. Self-linking makes me clap my heels and dance the night away.

This camera commercial is just neat as a piece of animation, although I found the story odd — I found myself wondering if the dude had gotten divorced or something, just because his wife stopped showing up at all. They also made a sequel with billboard-sized photos.

More links:

1. Christopher Hitchens writes beautifully about his cancer.
2. Interviews with Christian boys about how girls should dress to be “modest”:
   

   Immodesty, then, is not simply about being vigilant about your clothing (don’t wear a purse that falls diagonally across your body, don’t show your arms or your thighs), it’s a constant vigilance about how you display your body (don’t stretch, bend, or bounce). “Clothing plays a part in modesty, but it is only a part,” an 18 year old male explains, “Any item of clothing can be immodest” (his emphasis).

3. The history of zippers is surprisingly entertaining reading. (Via.)
4. A graduate student in Medieval Studies at Yale discusses the actual history behind the word Cordova. What a shock: It doesn’t mean anything offensive at all. Who knew that people who uncritically parrot stuff they heard on Fox News could be mistaken?
5. THE GREATEST ACTION-ADVENTURE TV SHOW INTROS OF ALL TIME!
6. Look at GOP leader Boehner squirm when directly asked about how the GOP’s tax cuts will grow the deficit. A stunning entry in the annals of weaseldom.
7. Glenn Greenwald takes apart Ross Douthat’s defense of marriage inequality.
8. Dispatch from Arizona: Life Without Sanctuary
9. The average term of Supreme Court Justices has gotten much longer, not mainly because people are living longer, but because the job has gotten so much better that almost no one quits anymore.
10. We could save over $500 million a year by no longer printing dollar bills, and using dollar coins instead. But our political process is so broken that it’s hard to imagine Congress being willing to pick up a free $500 million dollars that’s just lying on the sidewalk.
11. Undocumented immigrants aren’t “jumping the line,” because there is no line to jump.
12. “Illegals” are Helping to Save Social Security — for Other Americans :: racismreview.com
13. When unemployment rises, xenophobia and nativism rises, too.
14. Ear Pull Championship (with photos!)
15. Today’s Degrassi episode will feature transgender character
16. “Crisis Pregnancy Center” employee suggests that women go through with childbirth in hopes that it’ll reform her abusive boyfriend.
17. This cartoon about a newspaper delivery boy made me laugh.
18. “Sometimes I think it’s too late for my daughter to develop a healthy sense of her own sexuality, when at 10 she’s already getting clear messages about her function as a object for the male gaze.”
19. XKCD on Period Speech
20. Another reason Senate Democrats are (and always will be?) losers.
21. The NAACP Was Right, Cont.
22. Obama Launches New Program to Help Corporations “Take Advantage of Low Labor Costs” Abroad
23. States are broke not because of poor planning, but because of a historically bad recession.
24. Indian Women Increasingly Taking Self Defense Classes to Fight Back (Literally) Against Eve Teasing
25. Unemployment marches on, and if watching this video isn’t terrifying to you then I think there’s something wrong with you (via):

(Crossposted on Alas and on TADA. Comments defending NOM or arguing against marriage equality for same-sex couples should be taken to TADA.)

Look at it this way. Let’s say you have a choice between:

a) standing up before a room full of children and encouraging them to exercise more, or

b) standing up before a room full of children and encouraging them to exercise more, and then throwing a handful of knives into the audience.

Why would you select b), unless you wanted to hurt someone?

Read the whole post here.

(Crossposted on Alas and on TADA. Arguments in against recognizing SSM legally should be taken to TADA, not posted on Alas.)

1) First reaction: HELL fuzzy yes!

2) As nice as this feels now, like Scott Lemieux, I’m not optimistic about where this case is going. In the end, the Supreme Court will decide, and the Court historically tends to be a follower rather than a leader on civil rights. (For example, interracial marriages were already legal in most of the US when the Court ruled on Loving vs Virginia).

3) Speaking of the Court, Dahlia Lithwick argues persuasively that Judge Walker wrote his opinion primarily for an audience of one person, Anthony Kennedy. The rest of us are all just sort of reading over Kennedy’s shoulder. “I count—in [Walker's] opinion today—seven citations to Justice Kennedy’s 1996 opinion in Romer v. Evans (striking down an anti-gay Colorado ballot initiative) and eight citations to his 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas (striking down Texas’ gay-sodomy law).”

4) Speaking of Judge Walker, right-wingers are saying that Walker only ruled against prop 8 because he’s gay. (Walker, who was nominated to the bench by Ronald Reagan and then by George Bush sr., was at the time opposed by Democrats who believed Walker was anti-gay.)

5) The award for least reality-based reaction goes, not for the first time, to Maggie Gallagher, who predicts this result: “Parents will find that, almost Soviet-style, their own children will be re-educated using their own tax dollars to disrespect their parents’ views and values.”

6) Speaking of stupidheads¹ without coherent positions, President Obama is still acting like a stupidhead without a coherent position. (Not exactly a shock, I know.)

7) The cliff notes versions: A Quick And Easy Summary of Perry v. Schwarzenegger. Or, for a more detailed nutshelling of the ruling, try Prop 8: The facts vs. the fears. And in either case, I’d recommend reading the take on it at Hunter of Justice, as well.

I entirely agree with the legal basis of this ruling. The opponents of SSM marriage have failed, once again, to establish a rational basis for barring same-sex couples from equal treatment by their government.

In the end, it always comes down to one question: “How will straight, married couples be harmed if same-sex couples can also marry?” And in the end, opponents of equality are unable to come up with any reasonable, fact-based answer to that question. Because they are so unable to make a reasoned argument, in the long run equality will win.

Unfortunately, that may still be a decade or two away. And a loss in the Supreme Court at this point could push that eventually victory further down the road. I desperately hope I’m wrong, but I think that a few years from now we’ll be wishing that this particular lawsuit hadn’t been brought.

On the bright side — as Scott said, I think — even if the Supreme Court strikes this decision down, all that really means is that we’ll be doing this fight state by state, instead of in Federal courts. And that’s where we are right now, anyway.

1. I’m using the term “stupidhead” in honor of my niece and nephew. Also, I don’t want to use either “douche” or “dick,” and I can’t really think of a satisfying substitute term.

As usual, post what you want, when you want, with whomever you want. Self-linking is awesome.

1. People really can die of loneliness.
2. History may suggest that we’re doomed to a long, slow, unpleasant economic recovery.
3. This music video, featuring a single close-up shot of Christopher Eccleston staring into the camera for nearly three minutes, is surprisingly compelling.
4. Marx and Ayn Rand are the same: They both believed “that the world is fundamentally divided between virtuous creators of wealth and lazy parasites.” The main difference is that those Marx saw as parasites, Rand saw as creators, and vice versa.
5. MMW Roundtable on Time Magazine’s Aisha Cover.
6. And be sure to read this as well: Nobody is Helping Aisha. (Possibly disturbing photo.)
7. Noah Millman’s discussion of the Shylock character is actually pretty interesting.
8. More studies finding that children raised by gay parents do just fine.
9. Common but foolish responses to the Bechdel Test.
10. Senate cutting food stamps to pay for Medicaid and teacher funding
11. These examples of John Vassos’ 1931 illustrations of phobias are really cool.
12. “Even the most cosmopolitan of us are really just provincial hicks. Which is nice actually; it means there’s always some city we can wander into, looking about in wonder.”
13. A Strong Argument Against Context. This short, snarky post cracked me up.
14. The Obama Administration is deporting more undocumented immigrants than the Bush administration ever did. Newflash, Obama: There is nothing, nothing, nothing you can do that will cause right-wingers to stop hating you. So please, for mercy’s sake, stop trying.
15. Photoblog – Pilot ejects an instant before fighterjet crashes
16. Han Solo and Chewy, 30 years later.
17. Giant Crystal Cave in the Mexican Desert. Extremely awesome photos.

The book itself will be released on November 1st, but I’m taking pre-orders now! Click through for details on how to order a copy of your very own. Or several copies, in time to give all your friends on Hanukkah!

As you can see, kids love Hereville:

Photo of Taran Jack reading through Hereville by Jenn Lee, the creator of the kick-ass low-key science fiction epic graphic novel Dicebox.