Alaska Celebrates Marriage Equality
Tonight a jubilant crowd gathered at Mad Myrna’s in downtown Anchorage to celebrate a judge’s ruling that declared Alaska’s current restrictive marriage laws unconstitutional both on the grounds of equal protection, and due process. It felt historic and happy, and long overdue. There was lots of smiling, and love, and laugher, and cake with rainbow sprinkles.
Monday morning, Courtney Lamb and Stephanie Pearson, litigants in the case, will apply for a marriage license in Anchorage.
It was a good day for equality, personal liberty, and constitutional justice. Congratulations to us all.
Stephanie Pearson and Courtney Lamb
The twit who waved the word “genetics” [Woo! Science!] above displays a typically disgraceful lack of understanding.
Here’s PZ Myers on what is “natural” human behavior and what “Nature” selects for:
Humans are complex organisms whose development is plastic and strongly dependent on environmental influences. There is selection pressure for the population reproduce, which we social beings accomplish with a significant subset of individuals providing sufficient progeny to replenish the population each generation, and with a similarly significant subset of the population working cooperatively to provide a supportive environment.
Evolution doesn’t care. All that matters is that the population thrives into the next generation, and that requires that individuals cooperate. Evolution is not a micromanager, either; we acquire random variations purely by chance, some work, some don’t, and in general, there are so many competing factors driving our survival that selection cannot possibly fine-tune emergent properties of behavior to such a degree that biology can specify exactly who you will bump genitals with. We are dealing with general tendencies expressed to varying degrees in individuals within a population.
If there is one biological imperative for humans, it is this: love one another. Build communities. Cooperate. Help each other in adversity. Successful populations will express these behaviors to a greater degree.
There are also biases towards favoring sexual interactions with members of a different sex, but that’s a secondary priority. Even if sexual preference were non-existent and totally random, women would pair up with men half the time, which would be more than sufficient to propagate our species, especially if the other half are working cooperatively to build safe homes and stable food supplies and provide loving educational environments.
From my biological perspective, the negative behavior that affects the survival of the species isn’t homosexuality, but anything that disrupts the cooperative bonds of community and foments hate — homophobia in humans is the destructive behavior that selection should work against. But keep in mind that if God has lousy aim, evolution is even worse…so we should also encourage behaviors that discourage attitudes that work against our survival.
AlaskaLive, the greatest threat to your children is the self-righteous, ignorant, fearful hater that is you.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/08/31/homosexuality-and-evolution/#more-20359
Congratulations to Ms Pearson and Ms Lamb and all my Alaskan friends and neighbors who will finally enjoy marriage equality in our beautiful state!
I know we have to get through the Governor Torpedo torpedo routine- he is such a dip- but it is here .
It is finally here.
About damn time.
oh and that poor FB commenter Alaska Live?
Hon, there’s cold compresses and hot tea and such like which’ll get you through that attack of the vapors but, really, you should think about counseling.
All that worrying about folks who can’t, don’t, and won’t harm you is not good for you dear.
Crimenently- life is hard enough. There is no need to make up bogeymen and the like to make it tougher. Quit worrying about horsepunky!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Congratulations, Alaska. Congratulations to all the men, women and families of Alaska. And eat your withered heart out Sarah Palin.