Nice editorial in today’s New York Times.

Marriage Is a Constitutional Right

Until Wednesday, the thousands of same-sex couples who have married did so because a state judge or Legislature allowed them to. The nation’s most fundamental guarantees of freedom, set out in the Constitution, were not part of the equation. That has changed with the historic decision by a federal judge in California, Vaughn Walker, that said his state’s ban on same-sex marriage violated the 14th Amendment’s rights to equal protection and due process of law.

The decision, though an instant landmark in American legal history, is more than that. It also is a stirring and eloquently reasoned denunciation of all forms of irrational discrimination, the latest link in a chain of pathbreaking decisions that permitted interracial marriages and decriminalized gay sex between consenting adults.

As the case heads toward appeals at the circuit level and probably the Supreme Court, Judge Walker’s opinion will provide a firm legal foundation that will be difficult for appellate judges to assail.
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Today I visited the Museu Paulista (the old Museu do Ipiranga), which was built to commemorate Brazil’s independence from Portugal in 1822. I actually learned quite a bit and came back to the hotel and read up on the event in Wikipedia as well, so I have a fuller view of that slice of history.

The building was dedicated in 1895 or so and is striking from a distance, albeit a strange ochre color. Upon getting closer, you realize that it is very shallow — almost like a façade from a Hollywood set. It is very wide and ornate and seems to be a mixture of architectural styles, but mostly neoclassical. The grounds are beautiful and terraced with fountains and oddly oriental-appearing stone beasts, fish, American- (or Nazi) style eagles on poles and surrounded by lush tropical foliage.

At the bottom of a very long and skateboard-filled promenade sits a stack of marble stairs, plinths, bronze lions and ornate and patinaed heroic-sized sculptures at the Praça de Independência. It reminds me of something one would find outside of Buckingham Palace in London and commemorates Brazil’s independence. It has an oddly-placed gas flame that seems like an afterthought on the eastern side.

From a history perspective, our old mission office was in Porto Alegre on Avenida Princesa Isabel. Today I finally learned who she was and what part she played in Brazil’s history (basically finally freeing the slaves after a very slow process begun by her father years earlier. He happened to be out of the country at the time. This did not happen until 1888 and perhaps reflects to some degree why Brazilians lag behind even the US in their cultural treatment of different races).

My honey went to a wedding reception without me last night (at my request) and ran into someone he had known from his hometown of Las Vegas 20+ years ago. She told him about her journey out of the LDS church and into another area that purports to have the “sealed portion” of the Book of Mormon translated and available.

I checked out their website and was impressed with the lucid thought, the seemingly normal people who subscribe to this and the nice web design

It is somewhat cryptic in tone and I assume was designed that way to attract people into pursuing more information — and in spending $26 to buy the book (the BOM is supposedly only 1/3 of the total; this is the other 2/3).
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Apparently yesterday was the 150th anniversary of the reburial of the bones of the victims of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. I guess they are going to do something for every significant event until the end of time.

I can’t wait for the 10th anniversary of the 150th anniversary in 2017.

A photograph accompanied the Salt Lake Tribune article. Is it me, or is there some irony in a 21-gun salute honoring 119 men and women that were essentially killed by walking firing squad?

Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States. I’ve always been a Lincoln aficionado and in looking back, am noting that I have visited almost every place he did.

As a child, I visited New Salem, Illinois and learned of his early adult years. I visited his and Mary Todd Lincoln’s home, his legal offices and the statehouse in Springfield, Illinois. I have stood at the site of several of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

As a young adult, I journeyed to the great battlefield at Gettysburg and stood where he delivered his legacy address. I visited the inn where he stayed and the train station that served him there.

In Washington, D.C., I traipsed the halls of the White House, where he lived, Ford’s Theater where he was shot and the Petersen House where he died. I have seen the life-castings of his great hands and face and the clothes he wore that fateful night.

I have roamed the capitol building and discovered the crypt directly underneath the great dome — built during his presidency — and touched the fringe-lined and black-draped catafalque upon which rested his casket in the hall above, as a grateful nation paid homage in the days following.

I have ventured into every nook of the Lincoln Memorial — the grand edifice built to commemorate his 100th birthday. I have studied every word carved into the marble walls and looked out upon the reflecting pool towards the Washington Monument.

I have stood on the porch of the Custis-Lee Mansion at the crest of the Arlington National Cemetery across the river to the west, and seen the great expanse of the capital city where he spent the last four years of his life.

I have pilgrimaged to the sandstone crypt built into the side of a hill where he was first buried and his final tomb in the same cemetery in Springfield, Illinois.

I have seen the cold, white marble sarcophagus that crowns his burial place, 20 feet below.

Mr. Lincoln, yours is a legacy that was hard-fought, well-earned and well-deserved.

Requiescat in pace.