The most vitriolic "I told you so"

The full Indiana Senate passed a marriage protection amendment. This is not all bad, because they approved the version passed by the House, the one without the second sentence that banned civil unions. Which means it will not go before voters this fall. The legislature has to vote on it again after 2014 for possible voter approval in 2016. And voter opinion might change enough to prevent its passage -- or the Supremes may make it unnecessary.

Perhaps many GOP legislatures want the issue to just go away.



There is a lawsuit filed against the 2011 Michigan law that banned employee benefits for same-sex couples in state and local governments. Gov. Rick Snyder has filed a motion asking the court (not sure at what level) to keep the ban. Snyder's reasoning: banning benefits to gays "'eliminates local government programs that are irrational and unfair' and promotes 'financially sound' local agencies." Translation: offering domestic partner benefits is irrational and unfair because the relationships themselves don't meet a government interest. In addition, allowing governments to discriminate against homos saves money.



Vladimir Luxuria is a former Italian Member of Parliament and is transgender. She has been in Sochi and doing some protesting. She was first escorted out of the Olympic Park and dumped in the countryside. After her second protest she was escorted to the airport. Alas, the International Olympic Committee is just fine with that.



Rachel Maddow had a discussion with Kenji Yoshino, NYU law professor, about the string of gay marriage court victories. What caught my attention was the first part of the 9 minute segment in which Maddow reviews all the cool progressive stuff Attorney General Eric Holder has done in just the last year.



Back last June when the Supremes ruled that the federal gov't must recognize same-sex marriages, Justice Antonin Scalia fumed in his dissent that the ruling will be used to overturn state same-sex marriage bans. And that, according to Scalia, was a Bad Thing.

Jesse Wegman of the New York Times Opinion Pages lists all the cases since then where that ruling -- including Scalia's dissent -- has been influential in the judge's thinking: Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Utah, and Oklahoma with more to come.

Which means when another marriage case gets to the Supremes we all are eager for Scalia "to deliver the most vitriolic 'I told you so' in recent Supreme Court memory."



Teresa Tritch, also of the New York Times Opinion Pages, says the call to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour is worthy of support, but still inadequate. But why this figure?

But the recommended amount is more a political calculation than an economic one. It is enough to embarrass Republicans for not going along, but not enough to risk alienating business constituents (with the notable exception of the notoriously low-paying restaurant industry.)

First Presbyterian Church of Norfolk, VA has affirmed three tenets. From the first two -- Jesus is the way to salvation and the Bible is God's infallible Word -- one gets the impression that these are required beliefs for members of the congregation. So here's the third:

God’s people are called to holiness in all aspects of life. This includes honoring the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman, the only relationship in which sexual activity is appropriate.

Yep, the third most important belief in this church is that the only permissible sex is straight, married sex.

Fine, lots of churches believe that, though it may be rare to put it in the top three beliefs. But there is a reason for highlighting this particular church. It is where Judge Arenda Wright Allen attends and she credits her current success to the pastor there. And Judge Wright Allen is the one who recently struck down Virginia's ban on same-sex marriage. She has mastered the separation between church and state.