If you can’t tell from how late I’m posting, I’m on Christmas vacation for the rest of the year–and I already started partying over the weekend.
The party started with reading a headline I never thought I’d read in a paper in my home state (and tearing up over the photo galleries and mentally cheering the judge*):
It also involved decorating gingerbread cookies with the nephew and “Gromma” and “Grompa”:
And it ended with watching the actual Christmas Vacation while somebody waited for Santa:
It’s a good time of year.
*As quoted from the Tribune article linked to above, U.S. District Judge Robert J. Shelby issued the nicest and most rational “suck it” that I have ever heard to conservative arguments:
Shelby took issue with the state’s argument that the plaintiffs “do not possess the qualifications” to enter a marriage relationship, saying there is “no dispute that the plaintiffs are able to form a committed relationship with one person to the exclusion of all others” and to raise children within that union if they desire.
Shelby said the state’s argument about the ties between marriage, procreation and optimal child-rearing were not compelling, nor was its assertion that the plaintiffs were seeking a new right.
“However persuasive the ability to procreate might be in the context of a particular religious perspective, it is not a defining characteristic of conjugal relationships from a legal and constitutional point of view,” the judge said. “The state’s position demeans the dignity not just of same-sex couples, but of the many opposite sex couples who are unable to reproduce or who choose not to have children.”
What same-sex couples seek is simply the same right “currently enjoyed by heterosexual individuals: the right to make a public commitment to form an exclusive relationship and create a family with a partner with whom the person shares an intimate and sustaining emotional bond,” he said.