I don't know if you know who Laurel Hester is, but the whole thing should have been a no-brainer for the county government. It took an immense amount of pressure to get them to move on it.
Reversing themselves after months of battering at public meetings and in the press, Ocean County's freeholders are scheduled to vote Wednesday to extend pension benefits to the domestic partner of Lt. Laurel Hester and other members of the Police and Fire Retirement System.
The decision came after a political teleconference among the Republican leaders of the county yesterday afternoon.
The agreement that emerged calls for the freeholders to vote Wednesday, after a closed-door meeting that is a routine part of their caucuses, to extend the pension benefits to Hester and her partner, Stacie Andree.
Welcome
Seems "Welcome to the Neighborhood" being aborted is starting to show up on the blogosphere. (See "Cultures in Collision," below.) Check out the comments at AmericaBlog (shrill and slightly paranoid), Cabanaboyscoot (intelligent and subliminally deadly).
Brokeback and "Ex-Gays"
Read this review by Stephen Murray at Epinions. He's brought out a point in the story and the film that the wildmons are using for political fodder, and, as I may have mentioned, it's a phenomenon they have, if not created, certainly made far worse than it needed to be.
Re: Gore
Read this entry by Spencer Windes at Left Coast Breakdown. I hope Gore runs. Even if he doesn't run, I hope he gets elected. One of Charles de Lint's recurring themes is that there are second chances. Maybe it's time we got one.
Sensibilities
The gay blogosphere seems to feel this cartoon is offensive. I took it as satirical. But then, I take pretty much everything as satirical. It's a way of avoiding clinical depression.
Fabulous article that links Brokeback Mountain and the Alito hearings. This guy thinks like I do. Read it. (Thanks to cabanaboyscoot.)
But it doesn't matter. No matter the heat and bile of the resistance, no matter how brutish or sanctimonious the stranglehold of our leadership, no matter how many complaints about nipples or wailings about intelligent design or accusations of a "gay agenda," no matter how many uptight neocon judges they appoint, progress still manages to find the cracks, slip through the holes and seek the sun. Consciousness expands anyway. The river flows on. The awakening continues. It is always the way.
And the Bushes and the Cheneys and the Rumsfelds, the Gonzalezes and the James Dobsons and the Sam Alitos of the world, they can only stand at the base of that mountain of new awareness and pass their laws and beat their chests and scream their resistance as the mystics and the masters just smile that ageless, knowing smile and walk away.
I can't think of a better place to stop.
Later. . . .
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