Posts Tagged: Ryan Heath


21
Jun 10

MARRIAGE VOTES = MORAL HAZARD

Chopra by Adam Bouska

Moral Hazard is the best argument I’ve heard against the idea of letting the public vote on marriage rights. Deepak Chopra puts it brilliantly here.

In essence – moral hazard occurs when you can take a risk but never have to face the consequences if it goes wrong. Just as bankers should not be allowed to gamble with the money of others without risking their own rewards, the public should not be able to vote on taking away gay marriage rights without risking their own rights.  That is obviously not how a referendum on gay marriage is ever worded, and this shows us how illegitimate and harmful such votes are.

I’ve changed my mind.  I no longer have any respect for a vote that takes away a fundamental civil right for arbitrary reasons. That is not democracy in action, it’s moral hazard in action.


16
Jun 10

LATEST ON PROP 8 TRIAL HERE

a poster from the 2008 referendum

live transcriptions here of closing arguments in trail seeking to overturn California’s gay marriage ban. If you want to learn the definition of asshole, it is in the ban’s sponsors not just seeking to keep the referendum result in place, but actually asking for the 18,000 legal same sex marriages to be INVALIDATED by revoking state recognition of them.

I promised this blog would be fun and nice, but unfortunately there are times when an asshole is just an asshole. Step up to the plate, Prop 8 backers who, says their attorney Andrew Pugno,  aren’t asking Judge Vaughn Walker to nullify the 18,000 marriages, but only to rule that government agencies, courts and businesses no longer have to recognize the couples as married…. and the difference is what exactly?

Alicia Keys latest big name to show support for equality, by the way: she posted a message on Twitter today saying, “Join the fight to strike down #Prop8 http://bit.ly/8ucc9o @AmerEqualRights.”



18
May 10

ESSAY: LOVE IN A COLD CLIMATE

Here is a new essay I’ve written about marriage inequality in my home country of Australia.

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The institution of marriage is so much a part of life’s furniture that it is taken for granted by millions of Australians. We cannot imagine an Australia without it, so we do not bother to imagine it at all in a national or political sense. But for more than a million Australians, marriage cannot be taken for granted. It cannot be taken at all.