Tag: Texas

Texans Fight for Gay Divorce

October 1, 2009
AmericaCivil RightsGLBTLegal
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Now I’ve pretty much heard everything.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

A Texas judge has cleared the way for two Dallas men to get a divorce, ruling that Texas’ ban on same-sex marriage violates the constitutional guarantee to equal protection under the law.

District Judge Tena Callahan’s ruled Thursday that the court “has jurisdiction to hear a suit for divorce filed by persons legally married in another jurisdiction.”

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has argued that because the state doesn’t recognize gay marriage, its courts can’t dissolve one through divorce. Voters approved a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in 2005.

Abbott says he’ll appeal the ruling.

You gotta love the law.  Now the haters are confounded.

Only in America.

I’m really intrigued by this ruling.  If the case proceeds, Texas will have to allow that these two men were legally married in another jurisdiction.

Ha.  Ha.

As Craig Ferguson says, “It’s a great day for America, everybody!”

Fort Worth Gay Bar Raided on 40th Anniversary of Stonewall

June 30, 2009
GLBTLegal
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From the Dallas Voice:

Between 150 and 200 people gathered on the steps of the Tarrant County Courthouse Sunday, June 28 — the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion — to protest a police raid on a Fort Worth gay bar, The Rainbow Lounge, at about 1 a.m. that day. Gay Fort Worth City Councilmember Joel Burns told the protesters he has called on Police Chief Jeffrey Halstead to conduct a thorough investigation into allegations of harassment and police brutality against bar patrons during the raid. One man remains hospitalized with a brain injury after, witnesses said, several officers threw him to the ground while arresting him.

Sources have said that seven people were arrested in the raid although witnesses at the scene said many more people were handcuffed with zip ties and taken out of the bar.

One man, identified by his sister as Chad Gibson, was in the intensive care unit at Fort Worth’s JPS Hospital with bleeding in his brain after officers threw him to the ground and used zip-ties to handcuff him.

The raid happened on the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion.

Joel Burns, Fort Worth’s first and only openly gay City Council member, was in Houston for the weekend, but came back to Fort Worth in time for the rally at the courthouse.

“We want all citizens of Texas and Fort Worth to know and be assured that the laws of ordinances of our great state and city will be applied fairly, equally and without malice or selective enforcement,” Burns said at the rally, reading from a prepared statement.


“We consider this to be part of ‘The Fort Worth Way’ here. As elected representatives of the city of Fort Worth, we are calling for an immediate and thorough investigation of the actions of the city of Fort Worth police and Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission in relation to the incident at the Rainbow Lounge earlier this morning,” Burns said.

In an e-mail communication before noon on Sunday, Burns said he had already talked with Fort Worth Police Chief Jeffrey Halstead who had promised an investigation into the matter. Burns also said at that time that Mayor Pro Tem Kathleen Hicks, who represents the district where the Rainbow Lounge is located, and City Manager Dale A. Fisseler were also already aware of the situation.

The suspicion is that “elements of the law enforcement community selectively targeted a recently opened gay and lesbian establishment for selective enforcement and harassment.”

Not much commentary at this point.  I’m just watching this one.

Let Texas Secede!

April 17, 2009
AmericaRepublicansWhite House
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Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com did a decent analysis of politics in a post-Texan-secession United States.  As he puts it, if Texans follow the charge of Governor Rick Perry, Democrats would control Congress with a fillibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and Republicans would be severely weakened.

Here are a few of Nate’s key points:

  • If Texas were not in the Union, the Democrats would currently have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate — or at least they would once Al Franken gets seated. This is because, in a 98-seat Senate, only 59 votes would be required to break a filibuster.
  • If Texas were not in the Union, the Republicans would operate from a significantly weakened position in the House, since the net 8-vote advantage their congressional delegation gives them in the state (they have 20 seats to the Democrats’ 12) is by far their largest.
  • If Texas were not in the Union, George W. Bush would never have become President in 2000 — not because he’d be constitutionally ineligible (Bush, despite his Texas twang, was born in posh New Haven, Connecticut). Rather, he wouldn’t have had enough Electoral Votes to defeat Al Gore.

Let Texas secede!  Let’s build a wall to keep out the illegal Texans who try to cross our borders!  Give the Republicans their own country!  Let them have little government or no government, executions on every street corner, no health care, no welfare, no social security!  Let them “Drill, Baby Drill!” until they’re drunk on oil as the United States of America freely moves away from oil to green technology!  Let’s impose huge tariffs on imports from Texas!

Let the lunatics run the asylum!  Let Texas go!

Enough exclamation points for you?  Notice I’m not classifying this one under “Humor.”  This Republican idea has promise.