Respect for Marriage Act

Yesterday the US Senate's Judiciary Committee approved the Respect for Marriage Act, which will repeal the section of the inappropriately named Defense of Marriage Act that prevents the federal government from recognizing valid same sex marriages. It was a 10 to 8 party line vote in the committee, with the Democrats voting for it and the Republicans opposed. I am proud that Dianne Feinstein of California sponsored the bill. The arguments that the Republicans made were offensive and lame. The bill will probably not come up for a vote in the full Senate, but this is a positive step. I want my government to acknowledge my marriage.

Also in the elections on Tuesday in a state Senate race in Iowa the Democrat won, thus continuing the Democratic control of the chamber. This is important because the majority leader, Mike Gronstal, has promised not to allow the Constitutional amendment to ban marriage equality to come to a vote while he is the majority leader.

On a personal note, my son Leo advanced from level 6 to level 7 in his swim lessons. In this level he will learn the butterfly. I'm proud of his accomplishment, since he now swims better than I do.

I also didn't realize how long it had been since I posted here. I'll try to check in more often.

Leo returns, Don't Ask Don't Tell leaves

I talked with my husband Christopher the other day about my blog. He asked that I remove our son's name and use a pseudonym again. Apparently internet security and safety recommendations are to not use children's names. So I changed his name in a post from a while back to Leo. Jay, I couldn't remove Leo's true name from your post without removing the entire post so I had to delete your comment. Sorry.

On other topics, Don't Ask, Don't Tell ended yesterday. It is a big step. I dated a few guys who were in the military when I was younger, and it wasn't fun to have to hide when we went out. One more brick removed from the wall of inequality for gays and lesbians in this country.

Prop 8, again

I watched the recording of the California Supreme Court's recent hearing on Prop 8, the state Constitutional amendment that outlawed same sex marriages. The legal issue this time is a question from the United States Ninth Circuit court asking if under California law the proponents of Prop 8 can defend the law in court since the governor and state attorney general said that Prop 8 was unconstitutional and refused to defend it. It was interesting to watch. The Prop 8 proponents argue that if they are unable to defend propositions the governor and attorney general can essentially nullify a law in federal court by refusing to defend it. I can see their point, and I think that the court will agree with them. But in my opinion the legal argument by Ted Olson, the anti-Prop 8 lawyer, was much better. The California Constitution specifically says that the people have legislative power through the initiative process to propose and pass laws, as happened with Prop 8, but there is no executive branch power to defend the law in court. That power is expressly given only to the governor and attorney general. Olson argued that giving that power to the proponents would violate the separation of powers in the Constitution. It will be interesting to see what the court decides. Ultimately, even if the court says that the proponents do have "standing" to defend the law under California law, that does not mean that the meet the federal standards to defend it in federal court. If they do not have standing, Prop 8 would be unconstitutional and marriage equality would return to California. That would be great, but I really want all Americans to have marriage equality. My best case scenario would be for this case to reach the US Supreme Court and have Prop 8 and all laws that forbid marriage equality declared unconstitutional. Then I might feel like a full citizen with all the rights that other Americans have.

who my husband is

Since I shared who I am, or at least my first name, I'll tell you about my husband. His name is Christopher Koehler, and he is an author and editor. His first book, Rocking the Boat, was published earlier this year. It's a male-male romance, although that doesn't really describe it well. It's about two guys who fall in love, but is that a romance? It seems like a novel to me. Yes there are a few sex scenes, but life does have sex. I do recommend it, having read it through rewrites and edits. At least I don't show up in this one - he did model a minor character in an earlier story on me - it was a shock to be reading in bed one night and realize "Hey, that's me!" His second novel, Tipping the Balance, is coming out in less than 2 weeks. So if you haven't read a male-male romance/novel/love story, you can give one a try. It is an entire genre of books, which I didn't realize.

new glasses...what was I thinking?

First, I want to thank everyone for their kind comments on my last post. I was overdue for being honest with my name.

Every two years I can get a discount on new glasses through work. My last pair has been sliding down my nose when I look down for the past year, and they fall off if my face is sweaty or I bend over in just the wrong way - the glasses seem to fall off most when I'm scooping out the cat box - really gross, I know. So I got my new pair today. I was excited about them, came home wearing them, and Leo's comment when he saw me wearing them was "You look like a fool." They are kinda Harry Potter-ish, tortoise shell colored plastic frames with round lenses. I looked in the mirror after Leo went to bed and realized... I don't really like them. I'm on the small side, and my eyes are closely set, so most glasses are too big for me. The center of my eyes are not at the center of the lenses of most glasses, and this pair is no exception. I dug out the old pair that was my favorite - very small round lenses in a thin wire frame. They look better on me, but two problems with them - they aren't comfortable, and the lenses are too small for my "progressive" lenses since I need bifocals. So should I go for style or comfort in glasses? Which would you choose?

To make the glasses situation worse, Christopher went with me and got new glasses as well. He picked out a nice wire frame very similar to his current glasses. As I was getting my glasses measured and whatever else they do, he changed his mind and picked another pair that are almost identical to mine, although I didn't realize that at the time. Now our glasses are too similar. For some reason I don't think that a gay couple should have nearly identical glasses. It reminds me of the time one Easter when we visited my grandmother and without realizing it were wearing almost identical outfits. We totally freaked out the teenage friend that my much younger cousin brought to that Easter dinner - I don't think the kid had ever seen a gay couple before, and the fact that we were dressed nearly identically seemed to make his head explode - he kept staring at us but would look away if we looked at him.

who I really am

When I started this blog, most of the other blogs that I read were anonymous. I started by reading the now infamous Mikey blog that turned out to be a hoax. So I didn't include my name. But I have no reason not to put my name out there. I've been out for many years now, so why not?

My first name is Burch. Yeah, I know, a weird name. I was named after my father, who was given the last name of a family friend as his first name. I decided not to include my last name here, not because I'm not out, but because I'm a physician and I don't want my patients who do a Google search on me to find this blog first. This blog is about my personal thoughts and events in my personal life, not my professional life.

My husband's name is Christopher, not the pseudonym David that I gave him. Christopher would prefer to keep our son's name off of the blog, so I'll continue to call him Leo

I'm still here

I've been gone a long time - just got busy with other things.

We were in San Diego last week for vacation. We offered Leo a Disney trip but he preferred to return to San Diego again, mostly to go to Legoland. We stayed in a condo very close to the convention center, so we were there for the end of ComicCon. I noticed people wearing unusual outfits/costumes before I realized what was happening. We did the usual kid things, but didn't go to Sea World this time. I can only take a few days of amusement parks before I overdose on them.

When we rented a car at the airport, we were offered a Hummer. I never thought that I would get in a Hummer, and I didn't. We had reserved a small SUV (David's idea, not mine) but they gave us a huge one instead. What we didn't realize was that the parking space under the condo complex was very small, and getting that boat into the space was difficult to put it mildly. David scraped one door handle the first time that we did it.

We drove up to Orange County to have lunch with a friend of David's in San Juan Capistrano. (She's a liberal Mormon, if that isn't an oxymoron, and refers to entering Orange County as going "behind the orange curtain", a reference to the old Iron Curtain across Europe for those too young to understand.) We toured the old Spanish mission there after lunch. I was surprised by the San Onofre nuclear reactor. I knew that it was along the coast but it's just right there between the beach and I5, where a terrorist with a car or 18 wheeler full of explosives could take it out and spread radioactivity for many miles. And why put a nuclear reactor in an earthquake zone and in a place that could have a tsunami? The disaster in Japan could have happened there.

I'm really angry at Obama and the Democrats for caving to the crazies in the Republican party over the debt limit. Grow a spine and tell the loonies no and then stick to it! I am seriously thinking of joining the Green Party. I actually agree with them more than the Democrats, but after the Ralph Nader debacle in 2000 I feel like a vote for the Greens is a vote taken away from the Democrats, which is essentially the same as voting for a Republican.