My honey’s parents spent the night with us and just left to fly to LAX, where they will meet other family members for a cruise to Vancouver, BC. We were invited, but with my travel schedule (or lack of one) lately, it’s been kind of hard to make any plans.

I was in Minneapolis on Thursday and Friday and got to have dinner with my brother and his family. Always fun.

I’m heading back to Brazil this week, arriving Saturday. This will make six trips to/from Brazil since mid-January (in 14 weeks). In sheer distance traveled, I will have done the equivalent of circumnavigating the globe four times.

My boss on Friday suggested that if I wanted to move to Brazil, she suspected that the company would support it. My honey was not thrilled, but logistically, I could probably do it for a year or so. He said, “You need to at least be home for our 25th anniversary” (in March 2013).

I guess we’ll see how serious everyone really is. I suggested that perhaps a week-long trip once a month to Brazil might suffice….

Our annual foray into the wilds outside of Thermopolis, Wyoming. This year, held June 24-26th.

I watched a very heart-warming and yet chilling documentary last night. Dear Zachary tells the story of Andrew Bagby, a young doctor who was killed by his ex-girlfriend. She turns up pregnant in court and his parents fight to gain custody of their soon-to-be-born grandchild.

This film is a visual letter to that child, Zachary, about his father from the perspective of dozens of his closest friends, family and co-workers. It also covers in great detail the legal battles and the love his grandparents had for him.

Well done, poignant and thought-provoking about the impact that a life — and death — can have on so many.

The Utah State Republican Party this past week spent a great deal of time creating their platform for the 2012 elections. This snippet caught my eye:

Delegate David Baxter is urging his conservative colleagues to adopt a platform that declares “God-given sexual power is to be used only between a husband and wife” — a stance that goes beyond an existing plank that marriage is to be between a man and a woman.

“We need to preserve the traditional family,” he said Thursday, “for the strength of society, the strength of the community and the strength of the individuals themselves.”

Baxter said the party should make it clear that it doesn’t support sodomy, adultery or fornication.

Fortunately, it appears that it was overwhelmingly defeated.

LINK

Had dinner last night with family-in-law and Maxine Hanks (one of the infamous “September 6″ who were excommunicated as ‘heretics’ in the early 1990s).

Fascinating discussion around religion, belief (or lack thereof) and LDS church history. It’s a good thing my honey was in Milan; he would have been bored to tears.

It made for a pleasant evening to have like-minded souls conversing about the great mysteries. The food was outstanding as well, which didn’t hurt the overall sense of well-being and feelings of kinship.

Mark Morford from the San Francisco Chronicle’s SFGate writes a mean opinion page.

Gay marriage makes the world shrug

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Argentina, at last check, is not yet writhing in flames. Canada, as far as I can see from my window, is still right up there, stoic and mild, smelling of pine trees and bitumen, watching lots of hockey, shooting guns, being Canadian. The Netherlands? Why, still crisp and clean, efficiently blonde as ever. It’s shocking, really.

After all, you’d think they’d be downright miserable. You’d think they’d be in country-wide group therapy, hating and hurling and spitting, maybe a few riots, some stabbings, panic in the streets, the very fabric of their various shell-shocked societies unraveling like Mel Gibson at a bat mitzvah.

In fact, it would appear that millions of people across a surprisingly large number of dashing, industrious countries all over the world — including Belgium, Spain, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Portugal and even adorable little Iceland — are still not yet imploding, not yet suffering the furious wrath of God, not yet dying in unchecked anguish before our very eyes.

What to make of it? After all, in each and every one of these sinful nations, gay people have been happily and legally getting married (and, presumably, divorced, remarried and tossed about on the same socio-emotional rollercoaster as their straight brethren) every single day, for months and years and — in the case of the Netherlands — nearly a decade now.

What the hell is wrong with them? Didn’t they get the newsletter? Don’t they know how very wrong, sinful, sick and perverted they all so obviously are? Haven’t they heard the hoarse wails of the terrified Mormon elders, the raspy screams of the obsolete Vatican, the tightened bowels of confused fundamentalists of nearly every major religion worldwide, all of them absolutely positive that allowing certain kinds of consenting adults who love each other to get married will spell the end of civilization, families, innocence, the military, God’s bitter and judgmental love as we know it? Someone should send them a pamphlet.
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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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And from today’s Salt Lake Tribune:

Gay-marriage ruling brings split Utah reaction

The LDS Church expressed disappointment at the news from California. Hundreds of jubilant gay-marriage supporters marched around the church’s Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City.On Wednesday, Utahns both panned and praised the decision of a federal judge in San Francisco to overturn Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that eliminated gay marriage in California. Two years ago, the campaign drew intense interest in Utah after the LDS Church urged its members to support Prop 8 with their cash and time. Utahns spent $3.8 million — most of it to defeat gay marriage — in the $83 million fight.

The federal ruling means, for now, gay marriage is legal — again —in the Golden State.
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