Wow, that was a really tiring three hours -- but so rewarding! Thanks to the California Channel and SFGTV for broadcasting the proceedings of the arguments. joedecker, the ACLU, quite a few other Twitterers and I had a rousing discussion going the entire time, and a big thanks to the folks at Twitter for providing us with such a great platform for discussion!

I'm going to go catch the last showing of Watchmen tonight, but after that, I've got a big post brewing on my take on the proceedings. A lot of the endgame arguments dealt with what constitutes an inalienable right and what doesn't; one of the Justices in fact framed it as a dispute between the right of the California people to amend their Constitution and the right of individuals to enjoy equal protection under the law.

Protip: One of these rights is inalienable and the other one isn't. Pop quiz for my readers: which is which, and why does it matter?

Discuss in the comments. I'll be back in a few hours.

Sorry for the late announcement, folks, but I wanted everyone to know -- the California Channel will be broadcasting (and webcasting) the oral arguments in the three Prop 8 cases, starting at 9am Pacific time. (That's about an hour from now.)

You can follow the live stream on the web, and joedecker and I will be Twittering the proceedings at http://twitter.com/prop8liveblog. Come join in the dialogue!

(No, I will not be LoudTwittering anything back here.)

ETA: If the Cal Channel isn't working for you, SFGTV2 will also be broadcasting. Go here and click on the SFGTV2 link. (At the moment I'm watching the Black History Month Kickoff Celebration -- uh, a month late? -- and at 9am the Prop 8 coverage starts. Shanaka Hodge is a good poet, btw.)

I did not realise, until evelien mentioned it, that if you are a non-US citizen and are travelling to the US, even if you are a citizen of a country covered by the Visa Waiver Program, you must now apply for entry to the US online at least 72 hours before you travel. Yes, even if you are only there for a short time. Yes, even if you are only transiting through the US on your way to another country -- that's right, even if you never leave the airport.

Seriously, State Department, what the fuck? US-VISIT wasn't enough of a pain in the ass, so you shut it down and put together an even more annoying program?

I do have to wonder how long this is going to last; this will without a doubt increase the number of deportees (thanks to people who don't find out about the need to apply for authorization, or who forget to do it, or who don't realize that infants who are flying without a ticket still have to have an authorization, &c, &c), and the airlines are going to be extremely nonthrilled about having to mule them all back home.

It's not quite clear from the ESTA website what the goals of the program are. The FAQs seem to indicate that they're trying to keep out people who have been convicted of crimes of moral turpitude and people with communicable diseases. Fun fact: six of the eight communicable diseases that are grounds for denying someone entry to the United States are sexually transmitted diseases. This includes HIV.

Now, I don't know about the rest of y'all, but it has never been my experience that foreign nationals view the US as the place to go on mad fucking sprees. Denying an HIV-positive person the ability to enter the US simply because of his or her medical condition is discrimination, plain and simple, and it just isn't right. There is a DHS "final rule", issued last October, which specifically applies to HIV+ folks, under which they can enter the US for a mere 30 days, rather than the 90 days that everyone else gets on a nonimmigrant tourist visa, but this is small comfort: HIV+ foreign nationals are considered second-class persons under these rules.

Here, incidentally, is where things get interesting. The State Department's page on Classes of Immigrants Ineligible to Receive Visas cites Section 212(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Sec. 212(a)(1)(A)(i) states that any alien "who is determined (in accordance with regulations prescribed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services) to have a communicable disease of public health significance, which shall include infection with the etiologic agent for acquired immune deficiency syndrome" (emphasis mine) is ineligible for admission to the US. HowEVah, if you check out Section 212 on the USCIS website, the bit about AIDS isn't there; it's replaced by a footnote. Turns out that the bit about AIDS was amended out on July 30, 2008.

So, in other words, (1) the State Department isn't keeping its own public information documents up to date (no surprise), and (2) the Department of Homeland Security is issuing its own prejudicial rules, simply because it can. Section 305 of H.R. 5501 removed the language about HIV, passed the House and Senate and was enrolled as Public Law No. 110-293. The jackasses at DHS turned right around and turned it into a rule under colour of their own authority, and that rule affects everyone just as much as a law passed by Congress does.

I bitched a lot during the last eight years about the ridiculous power grabs the executive branch has pulled, and this is just another one of them. AIDS activists, gay-rights activists -- if you aren't pissed off about this, you should be. The DHS's style of thinking is benighted, anti-factual and just plain wrong: they're acting like they think HIV can be contracted from casual contact, which is just as absurd as a frat boy who thinks he can catch "the ghey" from talking to a gay man at a bar. We deserve better from our government.

And just remember, folks: this is a "rule" we know about. The DHS and the TSA have a whole laundry list of "secret rules" which they still enforce, as John Gilmore and others have learned to their peril.

Demand transparency from your government. They're supposed to be of, by and for the people. It's up to us to keep them that way.

I'll say this for the No on 8 crowd -- we don't waste our time. Three lawsuits were filed today with the California Supreme Court, seeking orders blocking enforcement of Prop 8 and aimed at striking it down, and the count isn't even done yet!

"But, Meredith," I hear you say, "this is a constitutional amendment -- aren't the Supreme Court's hands tied?" Actually, due to the approach the plaintiffs are taking, the CA Supreme Court does have the ability to consider this. The legal reasoning behind the lawsuits is interesting, and if you live in California, it's worth your time to understand it.

( Probably only of interest to those in California )

Next up: what's happening right now, what the next few months mean to you, and what the hell is going on with existing marriages.

Mad props to songblaze for research assistance and getting me thinking about it from this angle.


This work by Meredith L. Patterson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

I'm with ilcylic on this one. Suck it, San Francisco!

If I weren't off to a hackfest tonight, I'd be going to the range.

Love,

maradydd, happy gun owner

As promised, the press office of the Senate Judiciary Committee just sent me their release on the Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008. (Thanks, y'all!) Below the cut, it's reproduced in full. The first section is a press release, i.e., the who (as in, who's sponsoring it), what (description of the bill), when (today), where (Washington, DC) and why (pull-quotes from the bill sponsors explaining their goals) for journalists to refer to. The second section is a statement from Sen. Patrick Leahy, which (based on its wording) I think is being read before the Senate today.

I especially want to draw attention to the third section in order to head off any possible misinterpretation. The third section is a summary of the bill, not the bill itself. It describes what will be contained in each section of the bill, but the summaries and descriptions are not the bill. So, for instance, the bit in section 2 where it talks about "conditions on eligibility" -- those will be spelled out in much greater detail in the bill itself, which you can look for on THOMAS when it's posted there. I expect it'll be up by tomorrow. (ETA: according to Alex Curtis over at Public Knowledge, the bill numbers you're looking for are S.2913 and H.R. 5889. They have PDFs which you can download, too.)

I'll have some remarks on the bill itself, once the actual text is posted. But for now, enjoy the press kit! (ETA: vanbeast tracked down the direct link on Sen. Leahy's site, so you can read it there too.)

( And now, what you've all been waiting for )