I’ve been trying to avoid thinking about this morning’s ridiculous decision, but this afternoon a friend emailed me Dahlia Lithwick’s column in Slate:

“Let’s say you’re a justice on the Washington State Supreme Court. You have a nice life, a quiet life. Cozy chambers. Huggable clerks. And then in March of 2005, you hear oral arguments in a case about the state ban on gay marriage.

Eighteen months later, the dumb decision is still pending. You’ve tossed. You’ve turned. What to do?”

Or, of course, you could go back to reading the cranky mudslinging on the Slog. Up to you.

(Thanks to Steph for the tip.)

Forbes magazine, that authority on the dating scene, has released their annual report on the Best Cities for Singles. Seattle came in #7, just behind Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina.

Raleigh-Durham?

Anyway, those crack researchers at Forbes note that although Seattle has lousy culture (ranked #31) and so-so job growth (#20) and nightlife (#14), we have a very high coolness factor (#3) and and our online dating scene is quality stuff (#3).

Therefore: next time you can’t get a date on Saturday night? Blame it on Forbes. According to them, all your prospects are moving to Denver.

[Forbes]

… because someone had to mash-up the “____ is love” meme with the lineup of supreme court justices who defended marriage againt the gay and/or childless:

The 14th Amendment of the
United States Constituion

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

This law, of course, gave rise to the “separate but equal” racial discrimination clauses, those same clauses that were done away with at the same time the anti-miscegenation laws were repealed (although it might be worth noting that the last anti-miscegenation law was not removed from the books, as it were, until 2000, in Alabama; Virginia was the last state to prosecute, in 1967).

In Loving v. Virginia, which has to be one of the most poetic legal case titles there will ever be, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled

Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival…. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

Twenty-nine years ago, our country realized that love is colourblind. How much longer will it be before the country realizes that swapping gender for race in the Loving decision is a simple swap made so because of this very first line: marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival.

If you believe that, if you believe the State does not have the right to tell you who to marry, then you can only watch with anger and disbelief as the Washington Supreme Court violates the very basic civil rights of man laid so clearly out those 29 years prior.

Here’s hoping the case continues forward in appeal, and that the United States Supreme Court heeds its own words and rules that “classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law.”

The Washington State Supreme Court rules that we’re still New York-Alki.

Sorry, gays, but your awkward breakups will have to happen publicly versus publicly — in a court of law.

Remember, the Culture War Warning remains in effect. Just stay far, far away from the AM end of your radio today.

For those of you who use 85th, Greenwood, or 3rd Ave NW to commute home, you’ll need to find an alternate route home this evening. The 56th Annual Greenwood-Phinney Seafair Parade will start at 6pm and run through the evening.

It seems a little odd to have a parade on a non-holiday weeknight, but there you go. Just avoid the area until 8pm or so.

I, for one, was hoping that the Washington State Supreme Court would keep sitting on the gay marriage case for awhile. At least until after November. They’ve already sat on it for 16 months, for crying out loud. Would another three and a half months have killed them?

Of course gays should be allowed to marry, divorce, and suffer through love like the rest of us. However, I cannot begin to tell you how sick I am of seeing gays, and gay marriage, used as a political football every election season.

Sure enough, just as the 2006 elections are heating up, the decision in the case of Anderson v. King County is scheduled to be released tomorrow. And no matter what the decision is, I guarantee you will hear somebody screaming about it from now until November.

But if we have to have a decision right now, it damned well better be the right one.

[Seattle Times]
[Washington State Courts]

THIS IS THE METBLOGS ALERT SYSTEM. . . .

METBLOGS IS ISSUING A **CULTURE WAR WARNING** FOR THE FOLLOWING AREAS:

WASHINGTON
– WHOLE DANG STATE

UNTIL 2259 PDT FRIDAY JULY 28.

AT 2200 PDT THE METBLOGS ALERT SCANNERS DETECTED A SUPREME COURT RULING IN THE STATE GAY MARRIAGE CASE WILL BE ISSUED TOMORROW.

STATE SUPREME COURT RULINGS OFTEN BRING STRONG PONTIFICATING, SEVERE BLOVIATION, AND LARGE-SCALE POLITICAL GRANDSTANDING. SEEK SHELTER IN INTERIOR ROOMS AWAY FROM TALK RADIO. DO NOT DRIVE INTO STANDING ARGUMENTS AS THEY ARE OFTEN SHALLOWER THAN THEY APPEAR. KEEP YOUR EMERGENCY CULTURE WAR PREPAREDNESS KIT AT THE READY, WHICH SHOULD INCLUDE A GOOD, LONG BOOK (SUCH AS THE BIBLE, WAR AND PEACE, OR CRYPTONOMICON) AND HIGH QUALITY EARPLUGS. . . .

CONCURRENT WITH THIS ALERT THE CULTURE WAR THREAT SYSTEM BASED ON KIDS TELEVISION CHARACTERS IS RAISED FROM MELANIE TO BERT AND ERNIE. . . .

STAY TUNED TO METBLOGS FOR FURTHER INFORMATION AND IDEAS ON WHERE TO GO TO GET AS FAR AWAY FROM THE SCREAMING AS POSSIBLE. . . .

-30-

During this ridiculous hellish heat wave I found myself drowning in my own sweat. What better time to go out and search for a new swimming hole, sans body salts! My adventures took me to a far away place called Issaquah where a giant lake called Lake Sammamish offers a respite from death by heat stroke.
(more…)

The Mariners moved within three games of the division lead in the AL West, beating down the Blue Jays 7-3.

Yeah, we know that you’re too uber-cool to admit you’re an M’s fan, listening to your iPod stuffed with B-sides from bands no one has heard of but you, reading your copy of some anti-Bush diatribe written by a Tibetan monk who recycles and drives a hybrid, drinking your cup of fairly-traded shade-grown organic coffee with fairly-traded shade-grown organic soy milk and evaporated cane sugar, waiting for your anti-tax pro-tax anti-stadium pro-single-payer-healthcare anti-HMO meetup.

But, we all know the truth. You do care. You won’t admit it. You may not even want to consciously admit it. But we’ve seen your “freebie list,” and we know that Edgar Martinez is on there.