I came home from work yesterday at 11 am because I had a major migraine. I had wondered if my migraines would still be triggered by weather when we were getting snow instead of rain. Apparently, they will be. We got more snow last night.
It was also a rough day because I was feeling depressed. It’s probably because of a number of factors, but mostly, this new migraine medication doesn’t seem to be helping much at all. It’s so disheartening because I feel like I’ll never find anything that will work. I haven’t found anything that will conquer them in nearly 45 years, but I hold out hope that the headache clinic won’t give up on trying to find a solution.
The US Senate on Wednesday advanced legislation that would provide federal protections for same-sex and interracial marriages, endorsing the measure in a bipartisan vote that moves it closer to becoming law. The 62 to 37 vote for cloture on the bill was a crucial test of support for the Respect for Marriage Act. I know we sometimes hear about cloture, but we don’t always know exactly what that means. Cloture is a Senate procedure that limits further consideration of a pending proposal to thirty hours in order to end a filibuster. Therefore, once the thirty hours are over, the bill will go before the Senate for debate. At this point, there is no longer a need for 60 votes to pass the legislation.
The Respect for Marriage Act is expected to be put up for a final vote in the Senate tomorrow. Once that happens, it will go back to the House of Representatives for another vote. As long as the House does not change anything, the bill will go to President Biden for his signature. I honestly can’t imagine the House trying to change anything. If that were to occur, the bill would have to go to a Conference Committee to reconcile the differing language before being sent back to the House and Senate for another round of votes. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi knows that she does not have time to waste with a Conference Committee. She knows that she has to put it before the House in the same form that it was passed in the Senate because Democrats will no longer have a majority on January 3.
In a speech on the Senate floor before the vote, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said, “Today, the Senate is taking a truly bold step forward in the march toward greater justice, greater equality, by advancing the Respect for Marriage Act. It’s a simple, narrowly tailored but exceedingly important piece of legislation that will do so much good for so many Americans. It will make our country a better, fairer place to live.”
Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, a Republican who was among the group of Senate negotiators, highlighted the broad public support for same-sex marriage and noted that for most Americans, marriage equality is a settled question. “We’ve shown here through this legislation that these rights can coexist, religious freedom on the one hand, LGBTQ on the other hand,” Portman said. “It is my hope that with the changes we’ve talked about today and we’ve all now agreed to, we can pass this legislation with the same kind of overwhelming bipartisan majority we saw in the Houses of Representatives and therefore settle this issue once and for all.”
The Respect for Marriage Act repeals the Clinton-era Defense of Marriage Act and safeguards same-sex and interracial marriage by requiring the recognition of valid marriages regardless of “sex, race, ethnicity or national origin.” The bill was introduced after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. There have been concerns from Democrats that a concurring opinion from Justice Clarence Thomas left decisions from the high court protecting the right to same-sex marriage under threat. The bill easily cleared the House in July with support from 47 Republicans. Though several GOP senators initially expressed support for the plan, Schumer agreed to postpone a vote on the legislation until after the midterm elections after some Republicans worried it would endanger religious freedom.
To assuage their concerns, the amendment ensures nonprofit religious organizations will not be required to provide services, facilities or goods for the celebration of a same-sex marriage, and protects religious liberty and conscience protections available under the Constitution and federal law, including the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It also makes clear the bill does not authorize the federal government to recognize polygamous marriage and safeguards any benefit or status — such as tax-exemptions, grants, contracts or educational funding — of an entity so long as it does not arise from a marriage.
The amendment “recognizes the importance of marriage, acknowledges that diverse beliefs and the people who hold them are due respect, and affirms that couples, including same-sex and interracial couples, deserve the dignity, stability and ongoing protection of marriage,” according to the bipartisan group.
With the amendment, the bill will have to be taken up by the House once again before going to President Biden’s desk for his signature. The White House urged passage of the measure.
“The right to marriage confers vital legal protections, dignity, and full participation in our society,” the White House budget office said in a statement of administration policy. “No person should face discrimination because of who they are or whom they love, and every married couple in the United States deserves the security of knowing that their marriage will be defended and respected.”
We are expecting our first major snowfall today. They are predicting 4-8” but a lot of it may be slushy snow which is the worst in my opinion. It’s heavy and hard to clean off my car or drive in. I’m feeling a bit under the weather. I think I’m getting a cold. I wish I could just stay home today, but that’s not an option. My appointment to get my snow tires put on is today and if I were to cancel, it would be another month before they could do it, so come hell or high water, I’m getting my tires changed today. I’d wait at the place while they do it, but they don’t have a waiting area anymore. They did away with it during the pandemic. So, my boss is going to pick me up and take me to the museum where I will likely feel miserable all day. I hate feeling like this.
His artfully unkempt strawberry blonde head sports outsized headphones. Like a contemporary bust. Behold the innocence of the freckles, ripe pout of cherry lips. As if the mere sight of the world hurts him, he squints greenly and applies saline drops. You dream him crying over you. For the duration of a subway ride you fall blindly in love. Until he exits. Or you exit, returning home to the one you truly love to ravish him.
About the Poem
This is not the typical poem that I post. It does not have the usual poetic structure that I prefer. The only structure seems to be that the poem is justified, not aligned on the left or right margin. I probably don’t need to explain this but when you justify text, you give your text straight edges on both sides of the paragraph. Justifying extends each line of your text to the left and right margins. Justifying text might make the last line of text in a paragraph considerably shorter than the other lines. I have to wonder if the justifying of the text is an allegory itself. Sometimes poets use the structure of a poem for a particular purpose. It might be the case with this poem. Maybe the text is justified because the poet is justifying his short-lived obsession with the strawberry blonde he sees on the subway. I think sometimes we feel guilty over carnal thoughts about other men, but we shouldn’t. Yet, the poet describes the man as innocent because of his “freckles, ripe pout of cherry lips.”
Then again, the poem may have just come to Legaspi as he was riding the subway and saw a handsome young man near him. Whether there is a hidden meaning or just a fleeting thought put to paper, I like the “story” that it tells. I think the poem itself is self-explanatory. We have probably all been there and had these same thoughts.
About the Poet
Joseph O. Legaspi was born in the Philippines, where he lived before immigrating to Los Angeles with his family at age twelve. He received a BA from Loyola Marymount University and an MFA from New York University’s Creative Writing Program. A Fulbright scholar and two-time NYSCA/New York Foundation for the Arts poetry fellow, Legaspi is the author of Threshold (CavanKerry Press, 2017) and Imago (CavanKerry Press, 2007), winner of a Global Filipino Literary Award; and the chapbooks Postcards (Ghost Bird Press, 2019); Aviary, Bestiary (Organic Weapon Arts, 2014); and Subways (Thrush Press, 2013). In 2004, he cofounded Kundiman, a national organization serving generations of writers and readers of Asian American literature. He works at Columbia University, teaches at New York University and Fordham University, and lives with his husband in Queens, New York.
Last Week after the election, Tucker Carlson of Faux News was spouting his usual drivel by claiming the “Democratic Party controlled media” cost Republicans the red wave they were sure was coming. My friend Susan sent me a post from Joe.My.God that had the quote by Carlson. She said, rather facetiously, she had “Not one freaking clue what information this jackass (Carlson) is trying to impart.” Here is what Carlson said, then I’ll translate.
“In some cases, candidate quality is not actually the most important thing. What is? Well, the mechanics of an election. They matter. In fact, they matter sometimes more than any individual running in the election.
“The way people vote makes a big difference to the outcome and so, by the way, does access to channels of communication. Why does that matter? Well, because you can say whatever you want, but if no one hears you, you’re not really speaking.
“And that’s the case for Republicans so often, as if Republicans can communicate their message unencumbered on a single cable television channel and a handful of relatively low-traffic websites. That’s it.
“The rest of the American media amounts to a gigantic filter designed to distort what Republicans are saying.
“It’s a campaign apparatus and only the Democrats have it. Now you can whine about that – ‘the media are liberal!’ – but it’s not about liberal or conservative.
“It’s about winning elections and Democrats can win because they have that. If Republicans want to win elections, too, they might spend some money to fix that, to achieve parity.”
Translation: “Republican candidates are stupid, ignorant fools who shouldn’t be elected, but we (Faux News) lie to you about them so you’ll vote for them anyway because more important than anything is that you vote Republican so we can make more money. Intelligent people actually watch real news channels that tell the truth, but we prefer stupid people who we can manipulate.”
She thanked me for the translation and said, “He just didn’t use the right words.” I responded, “He’s a Republican. If he used the right words some might notice that the man behind the curtain is a fraud.”
In yesterday’s post, I quoted Proverbs 1:7, which said, “But fools despise wisdom and instruction.” Carlson and others at Faux News constantly prove my point about how true this really is. It’s a perfect description of the Republican Party and those who support it. If you look at the “Don’t Say Gay” bills, the banning of books in libraries, dictating to teachers what they can and cannot teach, etc., there is no question that they “despise wisdom and instruction.” Even God says they are “fools.” But as James 1:5 tells us, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.” All we have to do is be open to the truth. The Republican Party is no longer open to the truth. It has become a party of lies based on the myth of a stolen election (not to mention a Lost Cause).
Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels is often credited with a quote that seems to be the current strategy of the Republican Party when he said:
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
It is an excellent definition of the “Big Lie;” however, there seems to be no evidence that it was used by Goebbels.
The World War II American intelligence agency, the OSS, described Hitler’s use of the big lie in his psychological profile:
“His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”
If the Republican Party hasn’t already become a fascist political party, it is quickly becoming one under the leadership of TFG. The common themes among fascist movements include authoritarianism, nationalism (including racial nationalism), hierarchy and elitism, and militarism characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
The “red wave” was more “like a light pink puddle,” as one friend of mine put it. The Republicans may still take the House, but if they do, it will be a very slim majority, yet enough to be annoying in their quest for revenge. The Senate will remain in the hands of the Democrats with the possibility of gaining one seat. It just shows how important it is to go out and vote.
Joe
The Closet Professor 