Etc.

Good news for gays and their allies: Obama is officially supporting the "Respect for Marriage Act" that bitch-slaps the "Defense of Marriage Act," which in reality wasn't defending a damn thing. One, I love that they're using the word "respect" in the title. The bill's short and sweet objective is "to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and ensure respect for State regulation of marriage." Fancy that. Democrats trying to give power to the States! ROMA respects the rights of consenting adults to decide with whom they will share their lives and marriage benefits. ROMA respects States' rights. There is much to like about this situation. I think that so many of the supporters of DOMA are looking at the situation illogically and think that they need to deny gays the right to marry in order to protect their own marriage or family. Or perhaps it is a religious issue, but I also find that silly because ROMA obviously does not compel churches to perform gay marriages. I'm so glad I was born liberal.

So...what are they really trying to accomplish? The Institute of Medicine is recommending that among other preventative health services, birth control should be mandatory on all health insurance plans. Without a co-pay. Which would increase access and therefore decrease unwanted pregnancies or unplanned pregnancies in which the mother was less than conscientious in her prenatal planning (i.e. boozing while the fetus was developing). Of course, someone has a problem with this. Jeanne Monahan, director of the Center for Human Dignity (seriously?) at the conservative Family Research Council lists two reasons to be against this: one, that requiring insurers to cover contraceptives violates the rights of people who don't believe in artificial contraception. Since insurance pools money as well as risk for all the policy holders, everyone would be paying for the "free" birth control, whether they believe in it or not. Two, abortion opponents argue that some emergency contraceptives (morning-after pills) can cause "very early abortions" by preventing the implantation of fertilized eggs into a woman's uterus. So these people would rather not increase access to birth control, which would prevent abortions, because the morning-after pill is kind of like an abortion? Because in some cases a sperm and an egg joined together but then had no where to go? Great plan. Something about this leads me to believe that the Family Research Council (another completely lame name for an organization) is not completely focused on reducing the number of actual abortions performed. I don't know what they are focused on, but it doesn't appear that the FRC is concerned with that.

Last night at the Denver Young Democrats Inauguration After Party I was chatting with some of the attendees when I mentioned that I live in the Cherry Creek neighborhood of Denver. Immediately several people jokingly called me out on living in a fancy neighborhood and implied my Democrat card might get taken away. I love this mentality. Being a Democrat means appreciating what you've been given and also what you've been able to earn for yourself in this country. It means go ahead and live in a fancy house or drive a fancy car - just remember you have nice things because you live in the United States of America. Sure, I got decent grades and I earn my salary by working hard. But I am in my current situation because of my public school education and my federal college loans, to name just two big things that immediately come to mind. The government is so far from perfection, but if you think you got to where you are without the help of the government, you are not looking hard enough. (Note: I live in Cherry Creek because I work in Cherry Creek, and my dog demands that I come home for lunch every day. Had to shorten the commute. Democrat guilt compelled me to write this note.)

A few years ago, to widen my perspective I subscribed to the Republican National Committee email list. I started getting sassy with them immediately. They really irked me because one of the first emails I received was addressed "Dear Fellow Patriot." OMG. I started replying to the emails with full educated Democrat sass. And it occurred to me recently that I had not received an email from Reince lately...I got kicked off the list!!!