Hawaiian punch

As I predicted she would, Hawaii’s Republican Governor, Linda Lingle, has vetoed that state’s civil union law. I never had any doubt—she’s a Republican governor, after all, and opposition to legal recognition of same-sex relationships is one of that party’s non-negotiable litmus tests.

Lingle began her veto message saying, "I have been open and consistent in my opposition to same-gender marriage and find that House Bill 444 is essentially marriage by another name." So apparently she wasn’t the least bit serious when she pretended to listen to supporters of the law, and is lying now when she claimed she tried to do her “very best to reach a reasoned decision”. He veto was clearly based on her personal anti-gay bigotry.

Hawaii is plagued with a virulent religious right. The Roman Catholic Church, the Mormons and fundamentalist Protestants have long been in collusion to fight the civil and human rights of GLBT people in that state. In fact, Hawaii was a training ground for this cabal as they learned skills they’d ultimately use to take away marriage equality in California.

As hypocritical as it is for the divorced Lingle to pontificate on the validity of other people’s relationships, her call for a vote is despicable. "A vote by all the people of Hawaii is the best and fairest way to address (this) issue.”

The far right always pushes this nonsense and tries to convince ordinary people that it’s fair and reasonable. Putting aside the disgusting immorality of ever putting human rights to popular vote, how come it’s “best and fairest” for voters to have a say on same-sex relationships, but we never get to have a say on theirs? What if, say, we got to vote on forbidding divorce, or maybe denying legal recognition to new marriages of divorced people? Surely that’s “the best and fairest” thing to do if we’re going to allow voters to sit in judgement over people’s relationships. Why shouldn’t the validity of all relationships be voted on?

The reason, of course, is that the right hates gay people and they’re singling us out for special persecution. That their position is both logically and morally indefensible doesn’t matter to them, nor does their blatant hypocrisy or bigotry.

Lamda Legal and the ACLU have announced plans to sue Hawaii because its constitution forbids discrimination against gay people; they will argue that because the state constitution also now allows marriage to be restricted to man-lady marriage only (thanks to that religious cabal), the state has to provide an equivalent arrangement not called marriage, something Lingle has prevented. So, she’ll cost Hawaii taxpayers money.

Lingle also has an especially mean streak in her. She invited to her announcement the retired Justice Steven H. Levinson: He issued the 1993 ruling that the Hawaii state constitution’s equal protection provisions meant the state couldn’t forbid same-sex marriage. That, in turn, set off the entire national war over marriage (including the passage of the federal Defence of Marriage Act), and led to the amendment to the state constitution to allow the state to discriminate in marriage.

Lingle tried to paint her bigoted act as bringing “honor to the political process”, as if she had any idea what that word means. There’s now the predictable call to boycott Hawaii, but it seems to me that energy ought to be focused instead on the single goal of electing as Governor of Hawaii a sane, rational, non-bigoted person who will, unlike Lingle, reflect “the values of Hawaii."

Fortunately for Hawaii, Lingle is term-limited out of office this year. The Primary Election to determine who will vie to succeed her will be held September 18.

Pandering Republicans

Two Republican Governors are pandering to the religious extremists that run their party. One is doing it to prepare a presidential campaign, the other, because she’s probably just stupid.

Minnesota’s Republican Governor, Tim Pawlenty, followed through on his threat and vetoed his state’s recently passed “death rights” bill for same-sex couples. The law would have allowed a surviving partner to make funeral arrangements for the deceased partner, and the right to sue for wrongful death.

Pawlenty said he was doing so because of his exclusive support for “traditional marriage” and that the measure was addressing a “non-existent problem”. In his opinion, if same-sex couples want some weak approximation of the protections he vetoed, why they can always spend hundreds of dollars on legal fees and hope that if something happens the deceased’s family doesn’t swoop in and invalidate those documents—it only takes a homophobic judge to do that, and that’s easy enough to find. If Pawlenty left his megachurch from time to time and talked to real people, not just those he’s pandering to, he might know what a crock he’s spouting.

In his veto message, Pawlenty preached: “Marriage—as defined as between a man and a woman—should remain elevated in our society at a special level, as it traditionally has been. I oppose efforts to treat domestic relationships as the equivalent of traditional marriage.” He pontificated that a “surviving domestic partner” should not be “afforded the same legal recognition” as a legally wedded spouse

We’re talking about the right to make funeral arrangements—not marriage, not civil unions, not any kind of legal recognition whatsoever—just the right to make funeral arrangements for one’s partner! What kind of heartless bastard would kick people in the gut when they’re at their lowest? Tim Pawlenty is that kind of heartless bastard (just like another Republican governor was).

The mainstream newsmedia used to portray Pawlenty as a “moderate”. He’s not. Instead, Pawlenty is either just another radical-right extremist Republican, or a self-aggrandising opportunist who will use anyone and say or do anything to get power, which is even worse.

Meanwhile Hawaii—the state that caused the frenzy to outlaw legal recognition of same-sex relationships when it looked like that state’s courts were about to legalise same-sex marriage—has a similar Republican governor problem. Linda Lingle has said she “may” (read, she absolutely will) veto a civil unions bill in that state. Her party’s convention yesterday puffed up their chests and passed a resolution demanding that she do so, arguing that while people are free to “choose” their own “lifestyles”, "their choices [sic] may not always be good for all of society." If Lingle does veto the bill, it’ll prove that she’s stupid, and interested only in doing what the religious extremists in her state demand, not in doing her job on behalf of all the people of Hawaii.

Both Minnesota and Hawaii are proving, as I’ve always said, that Republicans were lying when they said they pushed Proposition 8 and similar measures not because the party was anti-gay, but merely because the measures were “pro-marriage”. The Republican Party is anti-gay to its very core.

And all of this news breaks on the sixth anniversary of the day on which Massachusetts became the first state in the US with same-sex marriage—not civil unions, not mere funeral rights, but full marriage equality. The state still exists and the world hasn’t ended, despite christianists’ predictions to the contrary. In fact, the state has the lowest divorce rates in the US. Seems to me they’re doing something right.

Hawaii next?

Hawaii may soon enact marriage equality, which would be great for SO many reasons. Aside from the most important resons for enacting marriage equality—justice and fairness—another reason is simpler: Closure.

Many people forget that it was actually a 1993 decision by the Hawaii Supreme Court, Baehr v. Lewin, that led a few years later, in 1996, to the infamous "Defense [sic] of Marriage Act". The USA's rightwing was terrified that if Hawaii legalised marriage for same-gender couples, the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the US Constitution would force all states to recognise those marriages. Of course, DOMA went much farther, also denying federal benefits to legally-married gay couples—of which there were NONE in the USA in 1996!

I remember distinctly that some otherwise sensible people on the centre and left argued that DOMA, bad as it was, was the only way to stop the movement to amend the US Constitution to forever outlaw marriage equality in all 50 US States. It would buy time, they argued, until the people’s hearts changed. Maybe they were right.

However, by the time President Bill Clinton signed DOMA into law, the trigger—possible marriage equality in Hawaii—was over. In 1998, Hawaii (together with Alaska) became the first US state to amend its constitution to ban marriage for same-gender couples, though in Hawaii's case it merely allowed the state legislature to restrict marriage to opposite gender couples only. This was basically designed to overturn the Baehr decision. It wasn’t until 2004 that Massachusetts became the first US state with marriage equality—though DOMA blocked any national or federal recognition of those marriages.

In 2010, the puffed-up, self-important arrogant—and twice divorced—Republican then-Governor of Hawaii, Linda Lingle, vetoed that state’s civil union law. As she would, being a Republican governor, and all, and who was, as such politicians so often do, perhaps overcompensating for something. Much has changed in the years since then, and Hawaii is rid of her (she lost a 2012 bid to become a US Senator from Hawaii).

If Hawaii does enact marriage equality, it would be a great way to start closing the national wounds that were opened up there 20 years ago this year, wounds that were rubbed open again and again, chiefly by opportunistic Republican politicians and their religionist allies. The world has moved on from the anti-equality frenzy of the mid-1990s, and more and more places are adopting marriage equality. I think it would be fantastic for Hawaii to do so, too, 20 years after becoming the place where the USA's fight began.

The time has come, Hawaii!

Photo: By the uploader (Own work; taken by the uploader) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

‘I Am Vetoing This Bill’

A few days ago, I blogged about Hawaii’s Governor, Republican Linda Lingle, vetoing a bill that would’ve created civil unions in that state. I was not kind to her, though far kinder than I should have been. In this video, Sean Chapin goes a bit farther than I did. Some will feel he went too far, others not far enough.

But love it or hate it, the message at the end—“It’s time to stand up”—is inarguable. For too long the agenda of the right has been tolerated as if it was just another opinion, as if their determination to deny the humanity of their fellow citizens was somehow reasonable and worthy of respect.

So I applaud people who call out the right for their bigotry and hypocrisy. Maybe if more of us stand up about this, one day doing so will be unnecessary.

Sean has many other—and varied— videos on his YouTube Channel.

My own special island?

It’s not every day that we get the chance to work out an alternative future, or, at least, to realise the answer to a question about such a future. Recently, that’s what happened to me, and it was as obvious as it was irrelevant. Even so, I now know the answer to the most common question I’ve been asked since moving to New Zealand.

It took a few years, but eventually people—Americans and New Zealanders alike—started asking me if I thought I’d ever live in the USA again. I said I thought it was unlikely, but, since I never say "never", I couldn’t absolutely rule it out. A lot has changed since then.

Nowadays, the chances of me ever returning to the USA to live are pretty much non-existent. That has nothing to do with the USA, and it absolutely has nothing to do with the current regime in power there—that has never been a factor no matter who was president (bad ones didn’t keep me away, and good ones didn’t make me want to return).

What’s changed the answer is simple: Me. I’ve built a life here over the past 21+ years, and that life has included being around for various births, deaths, marriages, end of relationships, and more social and cultural change than I can remember without thinking about it. All of that has been first-hand only here in New Zealand: Similar events in the USA that I was connected to were, at best, second-hand for me.

So, the focus and centre of my life is now clearly in New Zealand, while at the same time all the sorts of things I’ve experienced here, including changes to society and culture and cities. The same things that happened in the USA did so without me.

As I’ve said many times, the USA I left no longer exists except in my memories, so returning to the USA now would be like moving to a foreign, if oddly familiar, country. In a way, it would be a bit like someone in the USA moving to Canada: Sure, there are some similarities, but also so many differences that would matter a lot.

All of which means that the question of “if” is now kind of irrelevant because it’s answered by “no” with 99% certainty. However, ask the question as “what if” and it becomes more interesting: What if I returned to the USA to live—where would I go?

Let’s put aside the reason/circumstance for the return because they matter a lot and could produce very different answers. Instead, I’ll simplify things by looking only at what I would want, ignoring all other variables.

The most obvious solution would be to return to Chicago. I have friends and family still living there, Democrats, if not always progressive ones, have a lot of control, it’s LGBT friendly, and it’s my native land. However, the city I knew has been replaced by a different one, and the people I knew there have aged like me, moved on, and some have died. It would not be anything like the place I left. But the main factor is that there’d be winters to deal with, and I hate the very idea of having to endure a Chicago winter. This would be the reason I’d reject Chicago.

There are more progressive places in the Northeast, but there’s also winter there, too. And, like Illinois, they do have too many hard conservatives. I have ancestral ties to Pennsylvania, but I’d have no desire to live there or to experience their winters.

I could never live anywhere in the South—too much hard right politics, racism, xenophobia, and religious “christian” extremism. The closest I could come would be Washington, DC, but it can have harsh winters AND summers. Plus, it’s really expensive, and at my age I can’t imagine trying to start a life there.

I’ve never been a fan of the Great Plains states (too flat and they can have harsh weather). The Southwest states have too many political conservatives. The Northwest has too many conservatives, too, but mainly the climate doesn’t appeal to me. Alaska would only be suggested as a joke, I’m sure.

California would be a possibility: Much of it has a mild climate, and despite pockets of hard right conservatism, most of the state is at least somewhat progressive, mostly thanks to the big cities, of course. The fact it’s geologically active doesn’t worry me—I live in a geologically active country now. But the state can be expensive to live in and has had problems adjusting to its multicultural reality.

It turns out that the best possible place for me might be Hawaii.

Sure, the state’s expensive, but the climate is mild. It's heavily Democratic, despite some problems with rightwingers like the vile Republican ex-governor Linda Lingle (who I was never kind to on this blog). The state does have problems with conservative religionists, mostly Catholic, fundamentalist protestant, and Mormon, who stridently opposed the civil and human rights of LGBT people and used Hawaii as a training ground for their anti-LGBT campaigns in other states, including California’s infamous anti-gay Proposition 8.

On the other hand, Hawaii is a Polynesian land with a long multicultural history—similar to New Zealand. Auckland is the world’s largest Polynesian city, with a slightly higher percentage of Māori than the smaller Honolulu has of native Hawaiian (Auckland is also home to peoples from various island nations, including Polynesians; about 71% of New Zealand’s total foreign-born population lives in the city). So, in terms of “fit” alone, Hawaii would probably be best for me.

All of this came about because I was half watching a show on HGTV called “Hawaii Life”, named after a real estate firm of the same name, and which is really just a Hawaii-specific version of any of the channel’s “house hunter” shows. The episode I saw featured an “empty nest” woman relocating to Hilo on the Big Island (Hawaii). I wasn’t interested in where she was looking, for a lot of reasons, but the multiculturalism and Polynesian influence was obvious—and appealing.

I’ve never been to Hawaii, so I can’t know whether I’d actually even like it. Despite that, Maui appeals to me most, I think. But, then, so do parts of California.

It’s virtually certain that I’ll never live in the USA again, but if I did for some reason my choices would probably be narrowed to Hawaii, possibly Maui, and California. And all of that is precisely because I’ve lived in New Zealand all this time. That being the case, why on earth would I want to leave what I already have?

I’ll be staying put. Never say “never”, sure, but that’s almost certainly not going to change.

The title of this post is taken from a line in the song "Bali Ha'i", which is from the musical South Pacific. Update: I've now published a post where I go into some of the back story about that song in the movie version.