We certainly don’t want to break the bank

The company I work for, a relatively small, privately held financial technology services company with annual revenue in the $200 million range and about 1,200 employees, was recently acquired by a Fortune 500 company with annual revenue in the $8 billion range and approximately 23,000 employees.  Sounds like a great opportunity for us, right?  Not exactly.

Everyone in the office where I work received this email the other day.

There will be a massage therapist on-site Thursday, May 13, from 9 am to Noon.

WHO:  XXXXX XXXXX, HHP, CMT, ST, RMT certified 1000hrs Licensed

WHERE: XXXXX conference room

Session are for 10 minutes or you can reserve up to a 20 minute maximum session.  The charge is just $1 per minute, so $10 for 10 minutes.  Please bring cash only.

You may reserve a time through XXXXX XXXXX (ext. XXXX).

What's the problem with this, you wonder?  One of my employees put it best when he forwarded this response to several of us.

Glad the employees are paying for it. I'd hate for our $8 Billion/year company to be out the 180 bucks. 😉

If the cost is just $1 per minute and the therapist is only going to be here for 180 minutes (3 hours), it certainly makes me wonder why we aren't worth the company paying the damn $200 and calling it a fringe benefit.

Go ahead and say it with me.  What the fuck?

That’s what they get for going too far

In October of last year I wrote about the Florida legislature and governor wrongfully interfering with the medical care of a woman named Terri Schiavo.  You may remember the case.  Terri has been in a persistent vegetative state since 1990, a state which all of her doctors agree will likely never be reversed.  In fact, every doctor will agree that there has never been a case of someone recovering from such a state after three months.

Terri has been in this state for more than 13 years.

Terri's husband, Michael, has been trying to let Terri die a comfortable death since she has virtually no chance of recovery, but her family has selfishly circumvented his wishes (and what he says are his wife's wishes) by getting the state government to pass a law enabling the state to take control of her care — literally wresting her medical care away from her husband who, by law, has every right to manage it.

In a turn of events which I had hoped for, a Florida judge has struck down the law as unconstitutional because it violates the disabled woman's right to privacy and delegates legislative power to the governor.

Circuit Judge W. Douglas Baird said Terri's Law (as it came to be known) improperly gives the governor "unbridled discretion" and interferes with Terri Schiavo's right to make her own medical decisions.

The judge said Terri's Law "in every instance, ignores the existence of this right and authorizes the governor to act according to his personal discretion."

He said the governor failed to spell out any compelling state interest that would be adequate to override Schiavo's rights.

Although Michael Schiavo says this is a victory for his wife, both sides agree that this will likely end up before the Florida Supreme Court.

I hope that, when it does, they too find that Bush and his cronies in the legislature violated the state's constitution in addition to Terri's rights.

At a time when the greater Bush clan and Republican party are so adamantly protective of marriage and all that it entails (so long as it's not given to homosexuals, that is), this will be an interesting argument.  How do you continue to "protect marriage" while trying to steal a husband's right to manage the medical care of his wife who is no longer able to make such decisions for herself?

As one of the most heated right-to-die battles in this nation's history, I hope this works out in the Schiavo's favor, restoring control of medical care to the spouse, honoring Terri's wish to not be maintained artificially, and essentially bitch-slapping Jeb Bush and the Florida legislature for being selfish criminals who try to use their official power to take rights away from the people of Florida.

That gay marriage thing again – anti-miscegenation

I have already made the comparison between the anti-gay marriage movement and the anti-miscegenation laws of long ago.  The anti-miscegenation laws made it illegal for people of different races to marry.  These laws, long thought to be protective of genetic integrity and civilization as a whole, were struck down as unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in 1967.

Protective of civilization?  Gee, that sounds familiar.

Perhaps we should put the comparison in a slightly more personal light.

Richard and Mildred Loving were married in June of 1958 in Washington DC because, as an interracial couple, they could not marry in their home state of Virginia because it still upheld the anti-miscegenation law which stated that interracial marriages were illegal.  Despite their marriage being illegal in their home state, they returned there after marrying and lived together in Caroline County, Virginia.

Early in the morning on July 15, 1958, they awoke in their bed with three flashlights shining in their faces.

"What are you doing in bed with this lady?" a voice demanded from behind the lights.

Mildred was the first to respond.

"I am his wife," she said.

As if to reinforce his wife's response, Richard pointed to their five week old Washington DC marriage license hanging on the wall in their bedroom.

Caroline County Sheriff R. Garnett Brooks, not impressed by the license, said, "That's no good here."

The sheriff, along with two deputies, who had entered the house through an unlocked door at 2:00 in the morning, promptly arrested Richard and Mildred.  The lawmen charged the couple with violating Virginia's law prohibiting interracial marriage because Richard was white and Mildred was "colored."

The arrest and conviction of the young couple — Richard was 24 and Mildred was 18 — is similar to the arrest four years earlier of civil rights heroine Rosa Parks.  Whereas Rosa Parks refused to obey Montgomery's ordinance requiring colored people to sit in the rear of city buses, Richard and Mildred Loving refused to obey Virginia's anti-miscegenation law.

Writing about the case in Emerge magazine, Victoria Valentine said the Lovings "didn't start to make history, they just wished to live as husband and wife."

Born in Caroline County, Virginia, Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter grew up on the same road near one another in the town of Central Point.  Valentine described Central Point as the type of community where colored and white families were friendly with each other.  Within their community they acknowledged relationships between one another.  In fact, a number of the women birthed interracial children but were never married.

At that time in America, only a few couples married across racial lines.  According to US Census data, in 1960 there were 51,000 black/white married couples in the whole of the United States.  Of that number, 26,000 were black woman/white man couples.

For comparison, there were 328,000 black/white married couples in 1995.  Of those 328,000 couples, 122,000 of them were black women/white men combinations just like the Lovings.

The reason there were so few interracial marriages at the time Richard and Mildred were arrested has more to do with the laws manifesting religious values rather than constitutional values.  One comes to this conclusion after reading Judge Leon M. Basile's decision in the Loving's case.  He sentenced the couple to one year in jail, then suspended the sentence on the condition the couple remain out of the state of Virginia for 25 years.

Judge Basile admonished the Lovings in his ruling when he said, "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and He placed them on separate continents.  And, but for the interference with His arrangements, there would be no cause for such marriage."

After the trial, the Lovings moved to Washington DC, where they lived with their three children.

After spending several years in exile, homesick for family and friends, the Lovings decided to continue their fight to get back home.  They sought help from the American Civil Liberties Union, who agreed to take on the case.

In 1963, still living in Washington DC, they initiated a suit challenging the constitutionality of the anti-miscegenation law in Virginia.  In March of 1966, the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the law and the ruling against the Lovings.

Convinced that they did indeed have the right to marry and live where they wished, the Lovings appealed the ruling until it landed on the docket at the US Supreme Court.

It should come as no surprise that the US Supreme Court told Sheriff Brooks and Judge Basile to stay out of Richard and Mildred Loving's bedroom.

On June 12th, 1967, ten days after Richard and Mildred celebrated their 9th anniversary, the US Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the constitutionally protected right of a white man and a black woman, and, to a greater degree, all interracial couples, to be married.  Having ruled that the laws were unconstitutional, the US Supreme Court forced the 16 states which still had anti-miscegenation laws on their books to erase them.

And how does this relate to the gay marriage debate, you ask?

The anti-miscegenation laws, originally passed in the 1800s, were enacted to protect "white purity" as many believed was God's intention.  This segregationist approach wrapped in the shroud of religion was the same mindset that brought us church-sanctioned slavery and the Inquisition.

Remember that there was never a non-religious reason for the anti-miscegenation laws.

The same can be said for the push to deny marriage rights to same-sex couples.

We can safely assume that the Lovings were outcasts because of their differing ethnicities just as homosexuals are outcasts today because of their sexual orientation (which makes them different from the majority).  Once again, based on fear and the strong belief that God is on their side, majorities repress minorities and deny them rights which should be available to everyone rather than a select, popular segment of society.

If the institution of marriage is indeed sacrosanct, striking down the anti-miscegenation laws should have caused the same riotous outcries and calls for amending the Constitution as the gay marriage debate has.  After all, gay marriage is a currently open question whereas the anti-miscegenation laws are history.  Here we are more than 35 years after they were struck down and I see no movement to reverse their demise.

Should we not have protected marriage then just as we claim to be trying to protect it now?

Is it because the normal evolution of society has seen fit to eliminate support for those laws and ideals from most intelligent people?  And what makes the gay marriage question any different?