And the bike (bicycle place) that we really liked on Mass Ave is shutting its doors. I went to go pick up my Nishiki they rebuilt and they told me the sad news. Paying the lease on the place is cheaper than trying to run it.
The balmy weather of the past few weeks is gone. Last night while we slept, winter came again for it's final roar. This morning I awoke to less than 20 degrees-Fahrenheit and wind gusts that would test the strength of any one's toupee glue.
So I flipped to the Indy Star and saw the following article:
Same-sex marriage ban collapses
'Yay!' I thought,'Maybe the Hoosier State is coming around to the last quarter of the 20th Century.' Dare I even think it? Maybe even the 21st century.
Oh, no. I couldn't be that lucky. The article starts off optimistically enough in the first few paragraphs.
"This truly is significant," said John Joanette, a lobbyist for Indiana Equality, a leading opponent of the amendment. "This was all about doing what's right for the state of Indiana and the people of Indiana."But then the swing vote, the one vote that finally managed to stall the bill in committee, Terri J Austin, D-Anderson, tearfully said:
"I have cried over this. I have prayed over this. I have sought advice from everyone I know to try and come to the right decision in my heart."What was her crisis about? Not the first sentence of the amendment that defines marriage as only being only between one man and one woman, but the second sentence which reads:
"may not be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents of marriage be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."Super. When walking the razor's edge for equality for all her constituents finally made her make a decision, it really just boiled down to: if a girlfriend was stalking her boyfriend or if some dumb redneck was smacking around his girlfriend and her kids, the police wouldn't be able to do a thing about it. And get sued again, just like in the '80's when they wouldn't prioritize responding to domestic violence calls and women got beaten to death. And the departments got their backends handed to them in million dollar increments.
The corporations chimed in with their arguments that they already offer domestic partner benefits and they would be worried about attracting librul, educated talent to the state. Because most talented, educated people are libruls, I guess. To be fair, I used to work for Lilly at a part-time gig a few years ago setting up their training sessions: they put their money where their mouths are. They very often had sensitivity workshops on the topic of LGBT coworkers (in addition to Japanese, Chinese, Indian, an Latin American coworkers as well).
To summarize, it stalled this year because the police don't want to get sued, and the corporations still want you smart people to come to our Tent Revival to make them some more money. Come to think of it, this may very well turn out to be the theme of the 21st century. Indiana, for once, might just be right there on the cutting edge.
If that's the case,(to the tune of Morrissey's "Everyday is Like Sunday")"Come, Mayan Calendar prediction, come..."
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