Before the election, and before the overwhelming win for the Kentucky Gay Marriage Amendment, our local super-church, South East Christian helped to support this amendment with their “One Man, One Woman” campaign. This campaign involved numerous billboards and mobile advertising and through their weighty clout and coffers, I think they helped to steel conservative opinion around Louisville at least, where the measure passed 60% YES / 40% NO 20-point margin. The rest of the state voted 75/25 YES/NO. Certainly a win for SouthEast and their campaign, and it could be said for Christians state-wide.

Now, while SouthEast claims that “The same-sex marriage controversy is NOT ABOUT… homophobia, [or] whether homosexuals are nice people, good citizens, loving parents, loyal friends or helpful neighbors”, they forgot to mention that this amendment not only bars gays from “marriage”, but also from the lesser charge of “civil unions” which grants them the same rights as a “wedded couple” which includes any number of legal rights, including inheritance, life insurance, medical decisions, etc. Oddly enough, South East has left this out of their website, on any page dealing with “gay marriage”. However, on a funny ha-ha sidenote, they do reference a number of scientific studies in their defense of marriage. To quote:

The recognition that marriage is the union of male and female has never been seriously questioned in America until the past decade. During that time, activists were busy promoting their own private social revolution, and scientists were busy studying the institution of marriage and its affect on the participants and on society.

The results of hundreds of scientific studies and years of sociological research is undisputable. There is a mountain of evidence demonstrating the rewards to society as well as to individual families of marriage.

This is not an indictment of single-parent families; it is a scientific understanding of the dynamics of family structure.

Wow, hey! While you’re thumbing through scientific reports, why not read up on evolution as well! It’s just a letter away from “faggotry”.

I respect SouthEast’s opinion and the opinion of the lawmakers who support this tripe, but did the lawmakers have to go and completely ban even civil unions? I guess they figured that if they hooped and hollered about marriage enough that they could squeak in some verbiage about civil unions and just really kill the whole thing once and for all. That is some pork-barrel baby and the bath water sort of shenanigans that I really hate to see. To bar marriage from homosexuals is one thing, to categorically and systematically bar them from the rights regarded to any other wedded — or joined — couple is just ridiculous. This is a major setback for a very large and very real segment of our society that is not going to “go away”. Well, I take that back — if you wanted to rid the state of gays, well, you’ve made a step in the right direction, Kentucky!

That, of course, brings me to my final point — Kentucky is attempting a branding initiative that will create a singular, unified logo for the state. You, citizen, can even vote for your favorite logo. (On a side note: the agency that got the state’s business is New West, and according to a little bird New West is shipping a great deal of the some $14 million state ad budget down South to Atlanta in the form of contract work! Thanks Gov. Fletcher! Keep it in the state, man!) Anyway, I figure that at least this time the state is giving the public some choice in what logo will represent the state, rather than foisting some candy-assed design on us. Hey! Kentucky — It’s That Friendly (except to gays). Well, in that spirit of public consideration and contribution, I submit my own Kentucky logo:

jine: antiquated and poetic version of “to join”, or perhaps “to agree with”. Note usage here in this old Civil War bar shanty.

This is the text of an email from a friend of mine (who is gay) in reaction to the Kentucky Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment which passed this last Tuesday…

Friends:

As most of you are probably aware, the majority of voters in Kentucky, along with 10 other states across our fine nation, just placed a ban on same sex marriage into the state constitution, effectively endorsing discrimination as a model practice. I am sitting here very nearly in tears right now because what this means is that the state that I was born in, and spent the first 24 years of my life in, has decided that I am not entitled to the same respect or the same sense of basic human dignity that 90% of the country’s population is automatically accorded. What this means is that my monogamous relationship with my boyfriend of three years is worth less than my father’s less lengthy relationship with a woman from another country; it is worth less than the second marriage of my mother; it is even worth less than a 55 hour practical joke perpetrated by Britney
Spears. It is, in fact, worth nothing in Kentucky.

What this means is that I cannot, and will not, ever be a resident of Kentucky again.

Maybe this seems a bit extreme to some of you, but I’d ask you to try to see this from my perspective. The state I have spent the vast majority of my life in, the one that educated me and collected my tax dollars, has now decided it knows better than I do when it comes to my relationship. All I can think is “What right do you have to tell me who I can marry? What right do you have to determine that my relationship is worth less than your own? What right do you have to presume to speak for God?”

Many people, maybe some of you, think this fight was about giving special rights to gay people. This could not be further from the truth. It was, and is, about affording equal rights to every tax-paying citizen of this country. In fact, the only people with “special rights” in this respect are heterosexuals: straight people have the right to marry, gay people do not. Straight people have the right to inherit property from their significant other, make medical decisions for their significant other, take care of the person they love most in the world; gay people do not. I do not. I am not equal.

So, it’s time I drew a line for my basic sense of self-respect, and sadly for me, that line must be abandoning the state I once considered my home.

Check out this article from CNN: McCain: Same-sex marriage ban is un-Republican. Thank you, John McCain. Aside from the fact that an amendment would be most-unAmerican and terribly exclusionary, McCain makes the point that wresting control of an issue that varies from state-to-state from the states (and more to the point, from the people in those states) is most assuredly un-Republican. Good on ya.

Checking my gmail email address (hamsandwich AT gmail DOT com) today, I noticed I had a piece of mail! Exciting!

Hi Ben,



I thought you might be interested to know that I used some of your Creative Commons licensed photos as part of a presentation that I did recently on wikis. In case you might be interested, here is a link to the presentation “slides” (click on the photos to advance):



http://www.minezone.org/wiki/MVance/Introduction


And here is the “thanks” page:



http://www.minezone.org/wiki/MVance/ThanksTo


Thanks for making your photos available.



- Matt

http://www.minezone.org/wiki/MVance/AboutMatt

Well, I must admit that I didn’t even think about the Creative Commons and my photography — but yeah, it’s in the footer, and yeah I don’t mind if you use it! Matt’s a true champ, though, by A) giving me credit and B) letting me know! Thanks a bunch, Matt.

Some of you long-time visitors to thelocustDOTorg may remember the “tribute” I did for the CONET project from Irdial Discs. It is a four-disc set of recordings of shortwave “numbers” stations, and I originally heard about them from the title of Wilco‘s excellent “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” album. The title sprang from a clip they used from the CONET project at the end of their “Poor Places” track of a young girl repeating “Yankee… Hotel… Foxtrot…” (the lead-in for the “Phonetic Alphabet NATO” track on the CONET discs). Kelly and I originally heard this track on our honeymoon, whilst in a rainstorm in St. Louis. It was hella creepy! (but awesome). Later, my interest was piqued and I set up my CONET tribute.

Fast-forward two years, and we see that after a two-year legal battle (previously unknown to me), IRDIAL is being reimbursed by Jeff Tweedy for royalties. I had assumed that Wilco had cleared it, but apparently not. Wired has a good article summing this up, entitled Wilco Pays Up for Spycasts .

It should be pointed out that Irdial has put some of their assets into the public domain under their Open Content system, and you can download their entire catalog (if you can find a mirror) for free personal, non-commercial use. I have mirrored the 4-disc CONET set and accompaning PDF in my CONET tribute.

The Courier-Journal has a 2003 Election Guide, with plenty of information and articles.

Don’t know where your voting location is? Never fear, citizen — check out the LOJIC’s Voter Connection.

Polls are open from 6AM to 6PM, and anyone in-line at 6PM will get a chance to vote.

TechTV has secured subpoenas from the RIAA and has created an “RIAA Hitlist of Kazaa users“. Wow. TechTV actually did something useful!

From The Smoking Gun‘s “Document of the Day”:

JUNE 25–Meet Dion Milam. The 30-year-old California inmate may be the scariest looking criminal TSG has ever seen. Milam, who wears “Aryan” and “Honor” tattoos above his eyebrows and a swastika tat on his neck, was charged yesterday in a methamphetamine case (his brother-in-law allegedly tried to mail the drug into the Stanislaus County Jail, where Milam is being held on a murder charge). The below mug shot was taken earlier this year following Milam’s arrest in the murder case. Milam, who pulled a gun on sheriff’s deputies, got roughed up a bit as he resisted arrest. (1 page)

ben: that man is the pride of the species and i think we should breed him for our own horrible bloodsport.

it would be called “Aryan Honor” it would start out small and eventually gain a loyal following. then would be exposed as fake and scripted. in the wake of that scandal, reality shows with many of the same “actors” would be created one of which would be “Goat House“. “Goat House“, much like “Survivor” would be the true original, by which future shows are modeled and poorly copied. but even the true originator must wane and then the obvious sequel and a true triumph of a pun — “Goat Boat” would be spawned.

m@: you’ve got an entire TV empire in the works here… just waiting for the societal depravity required to set it in motion…

ben: danielle refers to my flights of fancy as “elaborate daymares”.

m@: heheheh.

(let’s face it folks… i’m just ripping off TVGoHome)

update: caption – “hey buddy, you’ve got a little custer in your mustache!”

further update: that picture is still creeping me out.

I just saw an ad on TV (I’m at home, waiting on some repair people for the air conditioning) and I saw an ad for local lawyer Darryl “Turn-This-Wreck-Into-This-Check” Isaacs, touting him as the “KENTUCKY HAMMER”. Hah. Whew. Apparently, Isaacs & Isaacs doesn’t have a website, but I did find an article about Isaacs nearly being killed by a falling light pole at Seneca Park. Apparently he was hit with glass and debris, and narrowly escaped flattening.

update: found a website for Isaacs and Isaacs