Tag Archives: civil rights

Huzzah for Ben & Jerry’s

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Really, this is a huzzah for Vermont, but I love this symbolic show of support for yet another state making civil rights a reality not just a talking point.

In celebration of Vermont’s new marriage equality, Ben and Jerry’s is renaming (just for Sept. and just in VT) their awesome Chubby Hubby ice cream and relabeling it Hubby Hubby.

I met Chubby Hubby in the mid-90s at Boston’s phenomenal Scooper Bowl (debuts of all the new ice cream flavors by every ice cream company on the planet, filling the Commons with free ice cream and insane amounts of goodwill). I love the flavor, for peanut butter and chocolate and pretzels are my idea of heaven, even though Cherry Garcia often spends more time in my house.

I’m so proud of companies that put their neck on the line for what they believe in. B&J is already doing awesome work for livable wages, poison-free farming and dairy ranching, the planet, and other causes near and dear to me. But it’s just lovely that they are rolling out a line of happy celebration for this new law. What goes on in other people’s houses is their business, and the number of cartons of B&Js now in my freezer, as of today, is my business.

Prop. 8

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Okay, I can’t let go of this constitutional amendment declaring some people unequal. Thankfully, neither can the rest of the No on 8 people.

So, historically, in a democracy such as ours, people vote for representatives and for laws. But there is a check on the hateful, ignorant, or misguided attempts of one group to hurt another. When the people enact a law that goes against the principles of the Constitution, the judiciary backs us up and makes us take back the law and start over again.

So the people pass a law. The Supreme Court says, um, you can’t do that. It’s not constitutional. And the people are supposed to say, damn. I wish I could have it my way, but I respect the constitution. But now, in the era of executive dictatorship, the people write a Constitutional Amendment to make their unConstitutional law into an unchecked and unassailable law?

There was a time that Americans wrote laws saying it wasn’t okay for blacks to marry whites. And the Supreme Court said, um, you can’t do that because all people are equal.

And we are.

So now people write laws saying one man can’t marry another man and one woman can’t marry another woman. And the Supreme Court said, um, you can’t do that because all people are equal. And instead of saying, aw shucks, it sucks to live in a country where all people are equal but I guess I’ll have to, people then write a Constitutional Amendment and say all people are equal except people who love similarly gendered people?

How did 52% of Californians say that people aren’t equal if I don’t like who they are?

How did 52% of Californians say, if this law is un-Constitutional, let’s change the Constitution?

Some Americans used to say that blacks were not equal and shouldn’t have equal rights, and they were wrong. And now they say it about gays, and they’re wrong again.

Know what totally sucks? By percentages, in California it was overwhelmingly African Americans who voted that some people aren’t equal and shouldn’t get to marry.

That’s at least Alanis Morisette ironic, even if not literary ironic.

I mean, it’s not surprising that the Church is willing to be on the wrong side of a civil rights issue again. Religion has been the excuse for oppressing women and for enslaving human beings. So I’m not shocked that the church groups are pouring their tithed dollars into making their rules seem like the only rules that are acceptable. But African Americans turning around after having the civil right to marry whomever they want, and take that away from another group? Tsk tsk, Californians. Tsk tsk.

Don’t hold your breath on your high horse, there, Utah. We’ll undo this miscarriage of justice soon.