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UPDATE ON PROP 8

Here's the latest on perhaps WHY Prop 8 (the bill to ban gay marriage)was "approved" in California. I use quotation marks here, because this issue should NEVER have become a "ballot-issue". It will come as no surprise to us LGBT persons, that religion played a major role in this.
I am a believer in a good, loving God/Universe, and cannot for the life of me, understand what drives people to feel this way/interpret the Bible this way/etc.
All so-called "Christians" should re-read the "Christ-parts"(that would be the New Testament, kids) of the Bible. Sigh.

Poll: Calif. gay marriage ban driven by religion
By LISA LEFF, Associated Press Writer Lisa Leff, Associated Press Writer
SAN FRANCISCO – Voters' economic status and religious convictions played a greater role than race and age in determining whether they supported the Nov. 4 ballot measure outlawing same-sex marriage in California, a new poll shows.

The ban drew its strongest support from both evangelical Christians and voters who didn't attend college, according to results released Wednesday by the Public Policy Institute of California.

Age and race, meanwhile, were not as strong factors as assumed. According to the poll, 56 percent of voters over age 55 and 57 percent of nonwhite voters cast a yes ballot for the gay marriage ban.

People who identified themselves as practicing Christians were highly likely to support the constitutional amendment, with 85 percent of evangelical Christians, 66 percent of Protestants and 60 percent of Roman Catholics favoring it.

The poll also showed that the measure got strong backing from voters who did not attend college (69 percent), voters who earned less than $40,000 a year (63 percent) and Latinos (61 percent).

The proposition, which passed with 52 percent of the vote, overturned the state Supreme Court's May decision legalizing gay marriage in California. The measure inserts language into the constitution limiting marriage to one man and one woman.

The poll found that, overall, 48 percent of voters oppose the idea of making gay marriage legal. Forty-seven percent support it, while 5 percent are undecided.

The results mirror previous PPIC polls from the last three years, suggesting that the $73 million spent for and against the measure did not do much to change public attitudes on allowing gay couples to wed, said survey director Mark Baldassare.

"At no point in time, before or after the election, did we have a majority of Californians saying they supported gay marriage," Baldassare said. "My takeaway from this is that until there is a major shift in public opinion one way or another, it's going to be another issue where voters are deeply divided."

Geoffrey Kors, executive director of the gay rights group Equality California, said the PPIC poll demonstrates that same-sex marriage advocates "need to make inroads in every category. If 2 percent of voters had voted differently, we would have had a different result," he said.

The poll was based on a phone survey of 2,003 California voters in the Nov. 4 election who were interviewed from Nov. 5-6. The sampling error was plus or minus 2 percentage points.

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On the Net:

The poll: http://www.ppic.org/main/publication.asp?i860
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There you have it--the demographics of fear, and bigotry, and hate.

Peace, kids.

OBAMA AND BIDEN!!!!!!!!! I took a couple of days to sorta "digest" this pairing, and here's what I've decided:
* Obama wants to pick up votes in Pennsylvania, which he'll definitely do(though he may not win that state, but it'll be closer), since Joe Biden originally hails from there.
* Blue-collar,working-class voters wil identify with Biden, as those are also his roots.
* Roman Catholics will increasingly consider Obama, as Senator Biden is a devout, beloved Catholic(though not without his critics--he supports Roe v. Wade). Most younger Catholics would have a problem supporting McCain's war-mongering stances.
* He's chairman of Foreign Affairs Committee, and has 35 years in Senate. So he's knowledgeable about foreign affairs(something Obama is perceived as being short on), and very experienced.
I still wish he'd selected one General Wesley Clark--I think that would've been a slam-dunk.
But I'm campaigning for Senator Obama, and if he believes Joe Biden can help carry this ticket, then, let's GO!!!!
Famous quote of Biden's, which I love:
"If anyone ever tries to say I'm not religious enough, I'll shove my rosary beads down their throat."
What do YOU think?
Go, Obama!!
www.my.barackobama.com
Peace, kids.

Diamonds. And a Poet's Sword.
A few interesting tidbits from the news, below. My faith in God is strong, and the idea that gorgeous gems played a part in this "elegant universe" is lovely, and appealing!
The second story I reprinted here, gives an update on a rather obscure, but very talented, long-dead Nicaraguan poet. I included one of his poems, beneath that article.
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Diamonds May Have Jumpstarted Life on Earth
Robert Roy Britt
LiveScience Managing Editor
LiveScience.com
One of the greatest mysteries in science is how life began. Now one group of researchers says diamonds may have been life's best friend.
Scientists have long theorized that life on Earth got going in a primordial soup of precursor chemicals. But nobody knows how these simple amino acids, known to be the building blocks of life, were assembled into complex polymers needed as a platform for genesis.
Diamonds are crystallized forms of carbon that predate the oldest known life on the planet. In lab experiments aimed to confirm work done more than three decades ago, researchers found that when treated with hydrogen, natural diamonds formed crystalline layers of water on the surface. Water is essential for life as we know it. Also, the tests found electrical conductivity that could have been key to forcing chemical reactions needed to generate the first birth.
When primitive molecules landed on the surface of these hydrogenated diamonds in the atmosphere of early Earth, a few billion years ago, the resulting reaction may have been sufficient enough to generate more complex organic molecules that eventually gave rise to life, the researchers say.
The research, by German scientists Andrei Sommer, Dan Zhu, and Hans-Joerg Fecht at the University of Ulm, is detailed in the Aug. 6 issue of the American Chemical Society's journal Crystal Growth & Design. Funding was provided by the Landesstiftung Baden-Wurttemberg Bionics Network.
Another theory, called panspermia, holds that life on Earth arrived from space, as organisms rained down inside tiny meteors or giant comets.
The new research does not conclusively determine how life began, but it lends support to one possible way.
"Hydrogenated diamond advances to the best of all possible origin-of-life platforms," the researchers contend.
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Nicaragua poet's sword mightier than pen. AP News service

The pen may be mightier than the sword, but it isn't quite as attractive for thieves.
Unidentified robbers have swiped a sword that belonged to Nicaraguan poet Ruben Dario from a museum while leaving some of his valuable original manuscripts untouched.
Museum secretary Maria Elena Quintero said Sunday that police are investigating the disappearance of the ceremonial sword Dario used when he served as Nicaragua's ambassador to Spain. She did not give an estimate of the sword's value.
It was taken from a glass case at the museum in Dario's old home in the colonial city of Leon. It appears to be the only artifact missing.
Dario lived from 1867 to 1916 and is considered the father of the Modernismo movement.
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Hey kids, I selected one of his poems:

TO ROOSEVELT

The voice that would reach you, Hunter, must speak
in Biblical tones, or in the poetry of Walt Whitman.
You are primitive and modern, simple and complex;
you are one part George Washington and one part Nimrod.
You are the United States,
future invader of our naive America
with its Indian blood, an America
that still prays to Christ and still speaks Spanish.

You are strong, proud model of your race;
you are cultured and able; you oppose Tolstoy.
You are an Alexander-Nebuchadnezzar,
breaking horses and murdering tigers.
(You are a Professor of Energy,
as current lunatics say).

You think that life is a fire,
that progress is an irruption,
that the future is wherever
your bullet strikes.
No.

The United States is grand and powerful.
Whenever it trembles, a profound shudder
runs down the enormous backbone of the Andes.
If it shouts, the sound is like the roar of a lion.
And Hugo said to Grant: "The stars are yours."
(The dawning sun of the Argentine barely shines;
the star of Chile is rising..) A wealthy country,
joining the cult of Mammon to the cult of Hercules;
while Liberty, lighting the path
to easy conquest, raises her torch in New York.
But our own America, which has had poets
since the ancient times of Nezahualcóyolt;
which preserved the footprint of great Bacchus,
and learned the Panic alphabet once,
and consulted the stars; which also knew Atlantic
(whose name comes ringing down to us in Plato)
and has lived, since the earliest moments of its life,
in light, in fire, in fragrance, and in love-
- the America of Moctezuma and Atahualpa,
the aromatic America of Columbus,
Catholic America, Spanish America,
the America where noble Cuauthémoc said:
"I am not in a bed of roses"--our America,
trembling with hurricanes, trembling with Love:
O men with Saxon eyes and barbarous souls,
our America lives. And dreams. And loves.
And it is the daughter of the Sun. Be careful.
Long live Spanish America!
A thousand cubs of the Spanish lion are roaming free.
Roosevelt, you must become, by God's own will,
the deadly Rifleman and the dreadful Hunter
before you can clutch us in your iron claws.

And though you have everything, you are lacking one thing: God!
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In reprinting it here, I encountered a few problems with reproducing it exactly, with the correct line-breaks, which is sooooo frustrating. You may also access this poem at:
http://www.dariana.com/R_Dario_poems.html
This poem certainly works on many levels, and it certainly is still quite timely, despite Dario having lived only between 1867-1916. Educated by Jesuits, he apears to have rebelled against the Roman Catholic Church, though he also seems to take much pride in the culture of Catholicism.
I personally felt the downy blond hair on my arms rise when reading the lines about "our America lives." It is such a prophecy about Latin America, Central America, and their (impending) rise to power, and what it may give them: the status and wealth that the U.S. has always assumed was ours alone.
Peace, kids.