Ugly-Lite? Withhold your vote!

The only way.

Pam at Pandagon has good entries up on Kaine, just installed this past week as Democratic governor of Virginia, mantle bearer for Warner (he of high hopes). Kaine, who gay baited in his run, supported always the party line dross about what marriage is (or is not!), then tapped for the SOTU response (get it? the party DOES have a message, and Kaine is the bearer...) - and now will sign the gay marriage ban despite being ''uncomfortable'' with the wording.

Gay rights activists embrace under a flag made up of the Spanish and rainbow flags outside parliament in Madrid after same-sex marriages were legalised despite fierce opposition from the Catholic church.
[Photograph: Susana Vera/Reuters]

Washington Blade has a good over view as well. And a troubling over view....

I do believe Mr Israel will be disappointed,

Josh Israel, president of the Virginia Partisans Gay & Lesbian Democratic Club, which endorsed Kaine, said he hopes the newly installed governor will at least work to make the ballot language more reflective of the amendment's wide scope.

"We would certainly hope that the governor will consider using his power to make sure the language and process is fair," Israel said.

I know Kilgore was a horror, I watched (from out in CA) two debates between Kaine and Kilgore, but the party is using the Kilgores of America as an excuse.

Don't let them. The politics and philosophy of non-violent engagement waged by Dr King properly used the violence of the Bull Connors, the whips, the dogs, the water hoses, all of it - to further America and her people.

Don't let the cowards of America use hate to sell hate-lite. They want to take us back and the Democrats, too many of them, have joined with the hard right, the white, christian, male-dominant right.

It is NOT electoral pragmatism. It is hatred and division.

By 1960, four states in the United States had not desegregated their public schools since the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1954 had been handed down. They were South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi.

But! Not to worry, bigots know best - and they never give up:

"It's unfortunate that those that oppose the marriage amendment are using issues like domestic violence as scare tactics," said Victoria Cobb, executive director of the Family Foundation in Virginia.

But gay rights and domestic violence activists point to other states' interpretations of marriage amendments, as well as the promises of amendment supporters before the referendum.

"What we're expecting is that for all these people that said 'the sky is falling' to reverse their position," Phil Burress, spokesperson for the Ohio Campaign to Protect Marriage, told the Columbus Dispatch after voters approved that state's marriage amendment in 2004. "This is not going to affect the elderly. It's not going to affect private contracts. What it's going to do is stop marriage by a different name."

If the candidate and his or her party doesn't represent your interests, if in another era they would block school desegregation, block the Voting Rights Act, block the Civil Rights Act, block Loving v Virginia, which, so late (1967), undid laws against miscegenation: DON'T VOTE FOR THEM.

Dixiecrats, whether North or South (and they are BOTH places), we don't need them!

Remember what can be, from Zapatero, elected to lead Spain after Aznar:

"We are not legislating, honorable members, for people far away and not known by us. We are enlarging the opportunity for happiness to our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends and, our families: at the same time we are making a more decent society, because a decent society is one that does not humiliate its members.

"In the poem 'The Family,' our [gay] poet Luis Cernuda was sorry because, 'How does man live in denial in vain by giving rules that prohibit and condemn?'

"Today, the Spanish society answers to a group of people who, during many years have, been humiliated, whose rights have been ignored, whose dignity has been offended, their identity denied, and their liberty oppressed.

Today the Spanish society grants them the respect they deserve, recognizes their rights, restores their dignity, affirms their identity, and restores their liberty.

"It is true that they are only a minority, but their triumph is everyone's triumph.

It is also the triumph of those who oppose this law, even though they do not know this yet: because it is the triumph of Liberty.

Their victory makes all of us (even those who oppose the law) better people, it makes our society better. Honorable members, There is no damage to marriage or to the concept of family in allowing two people of the same sex to get married.

To the contrary, what happens is this class of Spanish citizens get the potential to organize their lives with the rights and privileges of marriage and family. There is no danger to the institution of marriage, but precisely the opposite: this law enhances and respects marriage.

"Today, conscious that some people and institutions are in a profound disagreement with this change in our civil law, I wish to express that, like other reforms to the marriage code that preceded this one, this law will generate no evil, that its only consequence will be the avoiding of senseless suffering of decent human beings. A society that avoids senseless suffering of decent human beings is a better society.

"With the approval of this Bill, our country takes another step in the path of liberty and tolerance that was begun by the democratic change of government. Our children will look at us incredulously if we tell them that many years ago, our mothers had less rights than our fathers, or if we tell them that people had to stay married against their will even though they were unable to share their lives.

Today we can offer them a beautiful lesson: every right gained, each access to liberty has been the result of the struggle and sacrifice of many people that deserve our recognition and praise.

"Today we demonstrate with this Bill that societies can better themselves and can cross barriers and create tolerance by putting a stop to the unhappiness and humiliation of some of our citizens.

Today, for many of our countrymen, comes the day predicted by Kavafis [the great Greek gay poet] one century ago:

'Later 'twas said of the most perfect society/someone else, made like me/certainly will come out and act freely.' "

Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Let it be...