Delhi Pride 2008 (photo: Sonali Gulati for Wockner News)
Veteran reporter Rex Wockner has posted an update to his original article on the decriminalization of gay sex in India. Yesterday, a good number of outlets around the vast internets claimed the High Court’s decision only applied in Delhi. Not so, says Wockner.
I also got on the phone tonight with Vikram Doctor of India’s Queer Media Collective. Vikram said: “Every major media outlet in the world got this wrong because they don’t understand how the Indian courts work. It will apply nationally until somebody challenges that at the Supreme Court, which is where this case is going to end up anyway.”
My indispensable factchecker guy, Bill Kelley, who also happens to be a lawyer, says that most common-law courts work thusly: “The decision of an appellate court binds lower courts within its territorial jurisdiction but also (a) it acts as the ‘last’ word on the subject nationally unless a court of equal authority elsewhere makes a contrary decision or the supreme court reverses the decision and (b) it binds the parties to the case (e.g., the Government of India) regardless of where they may ‘go’ within the country. For these two reasons, the Delhi High Court decision appears to have nationwide application.”
There is a whole lot more to read and pix to peruse at Rex’s blog.
Why is this court’s decision so important? According to Rex:
India is the world’s second-most-populous nation: 17.22 percent of all humans live there. That’s 1,165,760,000 people.
Now assuming, for instance, that 5% of the population of India were of the homosex orientation. That would mean that 58,288,000 human beings no longer have to worry about spending ten years in prison for the crime of following their hearts. That is pretty damn significant.
Resisting OK Rep. Sally Kern’s Christianist morality proclamation (video: David Glover at YouTube)
Gun-totin‘ hate-monger Sally Kern and her little mob of Christian supremacists encountered some resistance yesterday as the Oklahomo-hater tried to inflict her personal biblical values, in the form of a morality proclamation, on the citizens of Oklahoma. Bravo to those Oklahomans who took a stand against state Representative Kern’s kooky marriage of theocracy and gun worship.
If you happen to have some Fourth of July time to waste, you can amuse yourself by reading the whole thing at HRC’s Backstory.
Kern even had the temerity to include a completely phony, made-up, as in he-never-frickin’-said-it quote that she attributes to Patrick Henry: “This great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians.” Wrong! Even hardcore Christian nationalists like David Barton walked away from that one long ago. But the fundies will trot out any old lie if they imagine it will keep us ‘mos in our place.
If you’ve been following along, you’re undoubtedly aware that nothing tickles the fundies more than the fact that they imagine the invisible dude in the sky has given them a special dispensation from that whole not-bearing-false-witness thing. From third-string ex-con fibbers like James Hartline to professional prevaricators like Tony Perkins to outlandish lying loons like Pat Robertson, nobody makes up shit like fundamentalist Christians.
Ed Brayton points to a reader of Andrew Sullivan’s who has the full 411 on why the fundies are so mesmerized by Alaska’s Queen Esther Governor Sarah Palin:
Part of Sarah Palin’s irresistible appeal to her fundamentalist base is her ability to look at the camera with utter conviction and declare black to be white.
The ability to lie well is a valuable part of the fundamentalist psychology. My son isn’t gay, he just hasn’t found the right woman! Those rocks aren’t 50 million years old, they just look like it as a test of our faith! My sexless marriage isn’t foundering, it is filled with God’s spirit! The minister isn’t molesting little Maria, they’re just very close! It isn’t torture, it is being tough on terrorists!
Fundamentalists can recognize a truly audacious and talented liar from miles away. Instead of running the other way, as you might expect, they gather around the powerful liar, for they know that their own lies will be respected and protected by a leader who understands the paramount importance of preserving their whole system of denial.
In case you missed this, here’s MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann taking on President Obama with Dan Savage in tow. Says Olbermann, “We need all of the Arab linguists we can find. I don’t care what they look like or what they do. The president is god damned wrong on this.”
Right Tony Perkins. That’ll happen (photo: Family Research Council, type: mine)
The God, guns and anti-gays movement has a new national front. Jody Brown, writing at the Reverend Donald Wildmon’s make-believe news site OneNewsNow, reports that the radical religious right has formed a brand new gun-loving, gay-hating mob.
Conservative Christian groups form new federation
Jody Brown
Conservative Christian organizations are joining forces to defend traditional values they believe are under assault in the U.S. today.
The new coalition, called the Freedom [sic] Federation, unites black and Hispanic evangelicals with the American Family Association, Concerned Women for America, the Family Research Council, and other groups.
[ ... ]
The federation’s “Declaration of American Values” also upholds private property and gun rights, and addresses such issues as freedom from excessive taxation and national sovereignty.
Teabaggers and xenophobes. Well, that rounds things out rather nicely. It’s pretty amusing to watch the radical religious right latch onto conservative financial and immigration issues in their groveling efforts to regain favor with fiscal conservatives, who now balk at the thought of the GOP being dragged back into the mire by the same religious nutjobs who championed Sarah Palin over sanity in 2008.
Sorry Ms Brown, but Right Wing Watch did a vastly superior piece on this new Christian supremacist gang.
Scenes from the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network’s protest
at the White House (video: AmericaBlog’s Joe in DC, at YouTube)
Here, via the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, are some comments from active-duty gay and lesbian servicemembers on the demonstration against Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell at the White House:
“Thank you everyone who is marching on Saturday. I would be there too, but I am currently deployed overseas. My partner of 4 years remains at home stateside, both of us silenced from DADT. If you’re thinking about going, please do! Every person counts!”
“Thank you for marching… Please continue to be tough on the President! Thank you for fighting for us!!”
“I’m also one of many people currently deployed. I love my country and I am proud to come to places like Iraq and help protect my family and my country which I love so much. …I wish now more than ever that I could be in DC to march and fight this war as well.”
“If the President doesn’t take care of the situation, I’ll be leaving the military as well and I’m currently on my second enlistment. Since that’s what my partner and I agreed on.”
According to the SLDN site, as I write this, 272 GLBT servicemembers have been discharged under Commander in Chief Obama’s watch. Call me Mr Hasty, but maybe it’s time for all GLBT folk in the service to stand up and tell. Let’s see if they discharge everyone.
“Some think it is a stepping stone to full equality, some disagree and think full equality is the only thing that we can accept, all agree that the proposed Bill does not go far enough. Anyone can get married in this country except you, any soccer hooligan, any gay basher, any fascist, any murderer, any sex offender can get married, but you cannot.”
— Miss Panti (aka Rory O’Neill), parade host at Dublin’s Pride celebration,
on Ireland’s proposed Civil Partnership Bill
