Mary Maxwell with rainbow flag at Montgomery rally
by Mary Maxwell, current candidate for US Senate
If you are not lesbian, gay, bi, or transgender, you should be sad – you weren’t part of a beautiful love-in today, at the state capital of Alabama.
Although I am the original Mrs Straight, I was on the invitation list by grace of being a candidate in the forthcoming election. I had never been to such an event. Maybe this is what the flower children were like at Haight Ashbury in the 1960s? We all got tanked up on love, and I mean seriously.
The only whine I heard was that “Montgomery is 37 years behind Birmingham in having a gay parade.” Believe me this was no high-budget Sydney Mardi Gras — there were no floats, outrageous costumes, or baiting of the media. It was simply a family day in the park.
Family? Yes. One of the speakers said “If your family has rejected you, we are your family.” Last week a friend in Tuscaloosa told me that it is COMMON for parents in this state to disown gay sons. I’m not sure that is correct. (Actually what she said was “It is common for Republicans in this state to disown their gay sons.” Hard to believe.)
By the way, all 16 candidates were invited to the Pride rally but none showed up except the chick in red. (Election primary is August 15, register to vote at alabamavotes.gov!!)
The March
At 10.20am I joined the march to the Capitol. The LGBT’s were all walking fast so I straggled at the end of the parade. A kind, gay woman in a big, black sedan saw me and offered me a lift. She said “Hold on, we are going to go up on the sidewalks.” This got me up to the front, cheating, you know like Rowan Atkinson did in “Chariots of Fire” at the London Olympics.
The big black sedan was air-conditioned, what a relief in the sweltering heat! At first I failed to notice that the driver was wearing a gun. Eventually a cop car pulled up next to her. (The now nationalized color of patrol cars is black-and-white). She and the cop had a suspiciously collegial chat. Finally I got the point!
And, no, I wasn’t wearing a candidate badge, so she actually offered me the ride due to my “seniority.” Cops do the darndest things!
Water and Speeches
On reaching the steps of the Montgomery capitol, everyone was given a free bottle of ice-cold water by Pride, and Starbucks offered discounted ice tea. The steps were ceremoniously covered in the rainbow banner. The music provided was mostly by drums. Very good.
The first speaker was a minister (in US ‘minister’ never means parliament person). This minster of religion said “Since this is Sunday morning I realize some of you are missing church. I also realize some of you didn’t go to church and are not missing it” – laughter.
Many organizations sent a spokesperson, e.g. Southern Poverty Law Center (no friend of mine, quote unquote the Troy Davis case. Ditto the ACLU). A politician spoke – he was wearing a suit and tie. I don’t know how anyone could do that on a summer’s day.
Gender and Therapy
I thought they might call on me to speak. Wasn’t sure if I should introduce myself as a cisgendered Republican or a Republican cisgender (one who is today the same gender she was at birth.)
Oops, I just went to check the spelling and got a lecture:
In learning about the passe composé, the verbs that take être as their helping verb must also agree to the subject. “Je suis allé pour un homme. Je suis allée pour une femme.” What about people who don’t identify as male or female? How does it work here? French is not agender/genderqueer/bigender-friendly.
French has no gender-neutral singular pronoun like English does, e.g., by using “they.” There is “on” but it cannot be used for a specific person the way “they” or gender-neutral pronouns can in English.
It goes beyond that. Saying things like “my friend” will be gendered, as both “my” and “friend” changed based on gender. Same with “my partner”. While English can use gender-neutral term to accommodate for various orientation or hide you own, French doesn’t offer the same liberty.”
The speech at Montgomery today that I expect will stay with me longest came from a man who said: “For me, ‘therapy’ used to consist of sitting on a park bench after work in Dothan, Alabama, crying and crying until I could ‘get it together’ enough to walk home.”
Justice Roy Moore’s Approach
No doubt it was also therapeutic for the whole gang last year to get Judge Roy Moore deposed as Chief Justice, on the ethics charge that he refused to let the courts give out marriage licenses. I’ve said elsewhere that I support his efforts to resist federal intervention in state matters. To do that is really vital today on many fronts – education, health, and policing.
You may ask how Moore could refrain from getting in line with the US Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v Hodges (2015), the case that won (in a 5-4 judgment) the right of every person to marry. Apparently it is because – very technically speaking – the Court only spoke to the case at hand. Obergefell had come up through the Sixth Circuit as a ruling in a particular case.
Nevertheless, by invoking the constitutional right to equality, per the 14th Amendment, any other state case would ultimately lose the its ability to continue banning gay marriage.
Here is the dear 14th Amendment, which arose in connection with the 13th Amendment’s outlawing of slavery in 1866:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Obergefell v Hodges
John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the United States (who came in with Katrina, in September, 2005 – I am referring to the hurricane), wrote one of the four dissents to the majority opinion, as written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, in Obergefell. Roberts said:
“Stripped of its shiny rhetorical gloss, the majority’s argument is that the Due Process Clause gives same-sex couples a fundamental right to marry because it will be good for them and for society. If I were a legislator, I would certainly consider that view as a matter of social policy. But as a judge, I find the majority’s position indefensible as a matter of constitutional law.”
In making comparison between the role of the two branches there — legislature and judiciary — it may have seemed that the Chief Justice was going for what in Australia is called parliamentary supremacy.
It is indeed ultra vires for a court in the US to make law; that’s Congress responsibility. (I think Roe v Wade was wrongly decided – Texas had the right to ban abortions.) But in my opinion, the 14th Amendment did give the Court the power to overturn a ban on same-sex marriage.
Australia
In 2013 the High Court of Australia overruled a law in a territory that had allowed same-sex marriage (against the 1961 Commonwealth Marriage Act). I went troppo over it. Not because it forbade the territory to oppose Commonwealth law, but because the Court demanded a rollback of the marriages that had taken place during the short period of time that the law was in effect.
(Please see my troppo-ism in my article “An Australian Defense of Marriage” — the first thing I ever wrote for Gumshoe — in a year, 2013, when GumshoeNews.com was not yet a daily publication.)
Oddly, Australia still has not legitimized gay marriage. It allows “civil unions” — which is a help, as same-sex couples run into frustration regarding inheritance, welfare benefits, or next-of-kin involvement in medical emergencies.
I think some people from Montgomery should pop over to Sydney to see what’s going on, and some people from Sydney should pop over to Montgomery for next year’s Pride love-in.
I’m just sayin’.
Mary Maxwell, PhD, LLB, is contactble at www.MaxwellForSenate.com
I didn’t catch the lady cop’s name, but if I run into her again I may ask her to look at a video of the Blue man and Gargasoulas’s donuting. Three identical silver cars tailed Gargasoulas’s red Holden and took no action. They weren’t even disguised.
Hey, could it be they were there to assist elderly peeps like me? Nah, kidding.
So I just went back to February’s Gumshoe to read Dee’s excellent armchair investigation of the event. (Armchair with telephone, to call police and witnesses.) Dee, you did such a good job, but the events fly by so quickly. Except for the Boston Marathon and the Port Arthur massacre we never have enough follow-thru. I want everyone to re-read Dee’s February 6 2017 article “The three silver cars, the blue man and Peekay,” and make some effort to hold the VIC gov’t accountable.
In fact, Dee, just re-run it as tomorrow’s article, without the comments, and ask for a new set of comments as to people’s ideas for following thru. Not that my efforts re Sydney siege Inquest had the least effect, but let’s not give up in advance.
God help us.
Responding to Dee’s comment above:
In 2005, USA reported thusly:
“The traditional Adam 12 police cruiser, in basic black and white. Police departments from Florida to Arizona are converting their squad cars to the old color scheme made famous by the TV police drama that aired from 1968 to 1975. The reasons: tradition and better visibility. In Mesa, Ariz., the police department’s 287 marked Ford Crown Victoria cruisers — white with a blue decal on the doors — will be switched to black-and-whites over the next six years. “It’s also a morale thing,” Trapani says. “We did a survey in the department, and a majority of the police officers wanted to go with black and white”.”
More likely it is to create a general spectre of police control. Dee, the car I got into was solid black, an undercover vehicle. The driver said she was the back-escort for the march and I believe her. The Southern hospitality here is something to behold!
Regarding zapping, I have not heard of a zap that can remove memory, but any shock can (I think) remove the immediate short-term-memorized stuff that has not yet been transferred into long term memory. I recall my husband, a physician, saying that mothers used to be given scopolamine after childbirth to help them forget the pain.
As for extra-terrestrial visitors, I hope I don’t have to waste time debunking. All species on earth — such as lion, mosquito, and Homo sapiens (“wise man” – what a name!) – are earth-bound. Ain’t goin’ nowar, and don’t you be belieivin’ those ads for space travel. Are travellers planning to bring a lifetime cache of food and water? Will they be “phoning home”?
Nasa made some announcement about alien life. I’ll look that up.
Scopolamine after childbirth!!!??? What about the breast feeding mothers? Speaking as a mother, the memory of the pain diminishes naturally. No drugs needed. It’s hard to believe the insanity/stupidity/incompetence sometimes of people who claim to be authorities. I really hope your husband was reporting on something that happened before he became a doctor, or at least something that he never did. (I don’t remember what sort of physician he was if you ever mentioned it.)
Hi Spec. Thanks for catching me out. I believe he said the mothers were given something to make them not remember the pain. But he probably didn’t exactly say “scopolamine.”
It is my understanding that scopolamine has that effect. A friend of mine who had a stressful procedure done a few years ago told me that he was given the “forgetting drug” afterward.
I understand that it does have a forgetting effect as well. Maybe it depends on the dosage, but from what I’ve seen it wouldn’t be very helpful for a new mother to be in a stupor if she’s going to have to take care of a baby and perhaps others. Very upsetting if true, and I don’t doubt it that it is. It’s just that the “side effects” with this drug would seem to be way too strong and would incapacitate the mother. I’d also be curious if all were aware that this was being done so that arrangements would be made for someone else to care for the baby and family while the mother recuperates.
This is from medicine.net. (or medicine.com):
“Scopolamine: Scopolamine was introduced in 1902 and used up until the 1960s. The name comes from that of the 18th-century Italian naturalist Giovanni Scopoli. Together with atropine, scopolamine is a component of belladonna which comes from a plant called “deadly nightshade,” once used as a means of poisoning ones enemy. When scopolamine is given in lower (non-poisonous) doses, it causes drowsiness, amnesia, and euphoria (a “high”) and was thus used as a preanesthetic agent.
“Combined with morphine, scopolamine provided childbirth without pain (or without the memory of pain), once a much sought-after objective. However, there were serious problems with twilight sleep. It completely removed the mother from the birth experience and it gravely depressed the baby’s central nervous system. This sometimes made for a drowsy depressed baby who was difficult to resusitate, to get breathing normally.”
Yes, that’s what I expected, except that it was a preanesthetic so the baby got the full force of the drug as well as the mother. Even worse and very scary! Thanks for finding and sharing this. Amazing!
Mary, I’m wondering why you weren’t wearing your candidate badge or button at this LGBT rally. It would seem like a good opportunity to influence some potential voters, especially since you were the only candidate there.
Mary,
You climbing into a black and white sedan that turned into a cop car… wondering if they were the “Men Dressed in Black” — checking up on you. You probably haven’t seen the movie. But undercover men dressed in black zap people with a mind gun to erase their memory of seeing aliens on earth.
Maybe they were not giving you an air-conditioned drive — but were “checking” up on their candidate. Especially sent out to scout on Maxwell.
(I’ll have to re-read my own article again)
Beautiful write up Mary, keep up the good work.
I found a video about the Orlando shooting. At the Montgomery Pride we prayed “for the 49 brethren killed in the attack at Pulse (gay) Nightclub.” Was it a genuine event?
The expert (he does not want to be called expert) on terrorist attacks is Elias Davidsson in Germany. He has looked deeply into several of the European events and can’t find any of them to be genuine, that is, like media reports them to be. (Elias also turned out a massive study of the Mumbai attacks, entitled “The Betrayal of India.”)
Here is the video. Please note: I don’t usually show a vid when I have not done proper research. Today I can’t take time from my campaign. OK? Exercise caution. Start at 4.44 for the Pulse shootings:
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Whoops. I didn’t know till after I uploaded that vid that its cover says “Luciferian elite/Jews.” That is not my gig. (I oppose it.)
Newcomers who want to see my writing about false terrorism can download “Marathon Bombing” from this website – or pay $9.95 at Amazon. I do not claim to have looked into the physical aspects of the Boston event. Rather, I used the transcripts of the Tsarnaev trial. They show such falsification of evidence and blatant lying by attorneys that you have to think the case is not genuine.
At 4.44 in the Orlando video, the narrator implies that the “wounded” are crisis actors. I shy away – with one exception, Jeff Bauman – from claiming that any victim is an actor. My main reason is that video presenters – Peekay, for example – seem to me to be doing something other than trying to enlighten us.
Well, at least Peekay gives his name. Most don’t. It strikes me very odd that a truth-seeker would go to the trouble of making an exposé-type film and not want to get credit for it.
Anyway, if you have got something important to say about Orlando, and will give your name. here’s the space for you. Thanks!
Everybody will be there one of these days….
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