Riding the Bullet, by Stephen King

This book was very short (only 2 CDs), basically a short story, by Stephen King, one of my favorite authors.

It tells the story of a college kid going to visit his mom, who had a stroke (I won't say more because I think any revealed detail in this kind of story could be a spoiler, and I hate them).

The story is ok, nothing great, and I found out they even made a movie based on it. I'd like to see it, but I'm afraid it might not be very good. King's books very rarely turn into good movies, but I love his style and the worlds he can create.

The book was read by Josh Hamilton, an actor, and he totally confirmed my opinion that actors make better audio-book readers then writers (see my earlier post on this topic).

All considered, given its shortness, I would recommend it, even if it's not one of King's best works.

Grade: 6.5

Happy Birthday BlogElution!!

Today it's the one year anniversary of my blog. It's been a good first year I'd say. I used to post more in the first months, obviously, but I'm still able to put out my thoughts on a fairly regular basis, all from the movies I see to the books I read, and from what strikes me as odd in our crazy world to what our often sleazy politicians and our crazy celebrities do. Well, Happy First Birthday, and many, many more.

Slovenia passes same-sex marriage law

Can you believe that a country like Slovenia is more progressive than the United States of America, the supposed beacon of democracy and tolerance?

Their law, however, is... how should I put it... peculiar, since they voted to allow gay marriage, but limited who can attend the ceremony. How bizarre is that?

Slovenia has passed a law legalizing same-sex marriages but put restrictions on the ceremony.

The law limits the number of those attending marriage ceremonies to two partners and a local community registration official. No friends, relatives or any third person are allowed to attend the ceremony, which can be held only in a state office.

So, ok, it's not perfect, but I'll take it for now. I also didn't know that:

Earlier this month, the Czech Republic became the first post-communist country to allow same-sex marriages.

Would you like everyone to know where you're from when you travel?

Especially in the state the world is currently in and if you're an American? I wouldn't. But apparently the State Department thinks it's ok to broadcast your nationality when you're traveling, since that's exactly what they're preparing to do starting in August:

Imagine being overseas and your identity being available for the taking - your nationality, your name, your passport number. Everything.

That's the fear of privacy and security specialists now that the State Department plans to issue "e-Passports" to American travelers beginning in late August.

They'll have radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and are meant to cut down on human error of immigration officials, speed the processing of visitors and safeguard against counterfeit passports.

Yet critics are concerned that the security benefit of RFID technology, which combines silicon chips with antennas to make data accessible via radio waves, could be vastly outweighed by security threats to the passport holder.
[...]
Kidnappers, identity thieves and terrorists could all conceivably commit "contactless" crimes against victims who wouldn't know they've been violated until after the fact.

"The basic problem with RFID is surreptitious access to ID," said Bruce Schneier security technologist, author and chief technology officer of Counterpane Internet Security, a technology security consultancy. "The odds are zero that RFID passport technology won't be hackable."

There's more:

U.S. passports are issued for ten years, which means the RFID chip technology of those passports, along with their vulnerabilities, will be floating around for a decade. Technology would have to "stop cold" Schneier of Counterpane says for improvements in skimming and hacking equipment not to occur.

And what are the chances of that happening? Technology progresses at runaway-train speed, so there's no chance in hell that your 8 years old passport will still be protected against hackers, since there's no way for you to download "security updates" like you do with your pc.

One final thought:

Sterling, however, compares RFID passports to a "nice yellow armband" -- a big sign on your body announcing your identity. "Would you pay anything for that device?" Sterling asks. "Would you buy it in a travel store because you thought it made you feel safer? Or would you conclude that this technology existed so that you could be treated like a can on a grocery-food shelf?"

Would you like to be tagged "American Citizen" when you're traveling through, let's say, North Africa or the Middle East?

The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini

I have to admit that it took me a while to get into this book. It was, unfortunately, an abridged version of the book and 5 CDs in all, and only halfway through the third did I start to really like it.

I say unfortunately because I'm sure that a lot of the questions I asked myself about what was happening had to do with the fact that some jumps in the storyline just didn't sound right.

Also, the book was read by the author, a fact I at first found fascinating, since I imagined the person who wrote the story should be able to give us enormous insight into how it should be read and felt and lived. How wrong was I. My previous two books had been read by Paul Michael, an actor, who is absolutely excellent at accents and at enveloping you into the story.

Unfortunately, Mr. Hosseini does not have that ability. It was for instance very hard to distinguish who was saying what during a conversation, because no accent or intonation was used. Also, being an Afghan himself, the author read all Farsi words in pure Arabic, making it harder to understand. Finally, he occasionally would slip in some word in Farsi without even telling us what it meant (although maybe the book does, and no, it wasn't always possible to extrapolate its meaning from the context).

Trust me, all those little, seemingly innocuous differences can amount to a lot when you're constantly jolted out of the story to understand who is talking, what they are saying, or what they might be saying. Over and over, I found myself rewinding to make sure I understood what was going on.

Anyway, like I said, eventually I got into the story, which really is beautiful, and I would definitely recommend the book, although not the abridged audio version. However, on his behalf, I have to say that Mr. Hosseini is a wonderful writer, capable of painting magnificent images with just a few words. And this was only his first literary effort!!

The Kite Runner is the story of two kids, Amir and Hassan, who grow up in Afghanistan before the Russian invasion and the Taliban reign. Belonging to different social classes, things aren't always perfect, but the two are, one way or another, connected for the rest of their lives.

The story is also interesting because it affords us a window into the normal, everyday life of a country that, alas, is now in the headlines only for bad news, like drug trafficking, infighting among local tribes or the growing insurgency, and that we mostly know for being the country that harbored Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The book offers both laughs and tears and all the characters are fully developed, three dimensional, and very real. I often wondered if this was an autobiography, but apparently it's not.

Anyway, a good book (Ray actually loved it from the very beginning).

Grade: 8.5

Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity

I'm glad that the jury returned this verdict in the latest trial of Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who drowned her 5 kids when suffering from postpartum depression.

In my opinion, the woman has always been guilty only of getting pregnant over and over again in spite of her doctor's warnings that every pregnancy would increase her mental depression.

As is often the case, religion played a role in the whole ordeal. I don't recall their faith specifically, but I remember, at the time, reading that despite the warnings, the Yates would not use birth control because their faith expressly forbad it.

And so she kept getting pregnant and having babies, feeling more and more depressed until tragedy struck. It was inevitable.

Yates will be committed to a state mental hospital, with periodic hearings before a judge to determine whether she should be released. If convicted, she would have faced life in prison.

Now the woman will spend the rest of her life regretting her actions, and I'm sure that's punishment enough for what she's done. She certainly did not deserve the death penalty (which she got at the end of her first trial) for doing something she had mentally no control over.

Another setback

The Washington Supreme Court upholds that State's Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and denies gays the right to marry.

So we lose another battle.

Naturally, it's not over, and at least this time the decision is "rational" (unlike the one from the New York Court of Appeals just a couple of weeks ago) and only states that the DOMA per se isn't unconstitutional based on the State Constitution:

"The two cases before us require us to decide whether the legislature has the power to limit marriage in Washington State to opposite-sex couples. The state constitution and controlling case law compel us to answer "yes," and we therefore reverse the trial courts.

In reaching this conclusion, we have engaged in an exhaustive constitutional inquiry and have deferred to the legislative branch as required by our tri-partite form of government. Our decision accords with the substantial weight of authority from courts considering similar constitutional claims. We see no reason, however, why the legislature or the people acting through the initiative process would be foreclosed from extending the right to marry to gay and lesbian couples in Washington."

The New Berlin?

Wow, things have really taken a turn for the worse in Iraq. It looks like the country (as I always thought it would) will end up being split among the three ethnicities forced into the Iraqi experiment almost nine decades ago, when the Middle Eastern map was redrawn at the end of World War I:

"Iraq as a political project is finished," a senior government official was quoted as saying, adding: "The parties have moved to plan B." He said that the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish parties were now looking at ways to divide Iraq between them and to decide the future of Baghdad, where there is a mixed population. "There is serious talk of Baghdad being divided into [Shia] east and [Sunni] west," he said.

Nice work, George.

Born Different

This new website is dedicated to spreading the message among the general public that being different is ok; that there's nothing wrong with it; that just because you're different, you're not a threat to society, your neighbor, or anyone else's livelihood.

The website very effectively uses an adorable, heart-melting puppy, Norman, to present the issue in a smart and cool way. Norman looks like his brothers and sisters and seems perfectly "normal," until...

Well, click on the "norman on tv" link to check out these great short videos.

The message here is clear and simple, Norman isn't responsible for how or who he is. He was born that way. Is it right or fair to discriminate against him?

The site also offers links to solid scientific research that both answer our staunchest critics and debunk myths about homosexuality.

Check it out, it's very good.

I Have a Dream...

Are straight couples less stable parents than their gay counterparts and consequently require the benefits of marriage to assist them?

Kenji Yoshino opines just that in a New York Times op-ed analyzing last week's 4-to-2 decision by New York's highest court that a legislative ban on same-sex marriage did not violate the state Constitution.

He states their decision could be read to mean something quite unflattering for heterosexuals:

What's noteworthy about the New York decision, however, is that it became the second ruling by a state high court to assert a startling rationale for prohibiting same-sex marriage -- that straight couples may be less stable parents than their gay counterparts and consequently require the benefits of marriage to assist them.

The critical question, expressed in a plurality opinion by three members of the New York court, is whether a "rational legislature" could decide that the benefits of marriage should be granted to opposite-sex couples but not to same-sex couples. The opinion then answered in the affirmative with two different arguments. While both related to the interests of children, they differed significantly in vintage and tone.

The more traditional argument stated that the Legislature could reasonably suppose that children would fare better under the care of a mother and father. Like most arguments against gay marriage, this "role model" argument assumes straight couples are better guides to life than gay couples.

And like other blatantly anti-gay arguments, it falls apart under examination. In a decision last month in a case concerning gay foster parents, the Arkansas Supreme Court found no evidence that children raised by gay couples were disadvantaged compared with children raised by straight couples.

But the New York court also put forth another argument, sometimes called the "reckless procreation" rationale. "Heterosexual intercourse," the plurality opinion stated, "has a natural tendency to lead to the birth of children; homosexual intercourse does not." Gays become parents, the opinion said, in a variety of ways, including adoption and artificial insemination, "but they do not become parents as a result of accident or impulse."

Consequently, "the Legislature could find that unstable relationships between people of the opposite sex present a greater danger that children will be born into or grow up in unstable homes than is the case with same-sex couples."

To shore up those rickety heterosexual arrangements, "the Legislature could rationally offer the benefits of marriage to opposite-sex couples only." Lest we miss the inversion of stereotypes about gay relationships here, the opinion lamented that straight relationships are "all too often casual or temporary."

Imagine that! I thought one of the arguments not to allow gays to marry was that we're so promiscuous, we would ruin the good name of marriage. Well, apparently, we're not the only ones, or rather, we're not the ones at all!

Unfortunately, he also tells us how this decision was really just a sugar-coated pill for gays, and above all, a ruling that, appearing "nice," might take longer to overturn than a nasty one would have been:

We should not need a century to unmask the "reckless procreation" argument as a new guise for an old prejudice. The "reckless procreation" argument sounds nicer -- and may even be nicer -- than the plainly derogatory "role model" argument. But equality would be nicer still.

It sure would.

The world of toddlers

Daniel turns 3 this Sunday, July 16, and I just got an email/newsletter from Pampers about what to expect now that he enters this new stage in his life.

Reading it, I found this little pearl:

Your 3-year-old can't lie at this age, but he will creatively reconstruct reality so it matches the way he would like things to be. He thinks his words can create a preferable reality and that reality can be truly denied.

And then I wondered, "Is Bush 3?"

When Gorbachev speaks, you listen

This is the man who was able to bring down the Iron Curtain that shielded the Soviet Union from the rest of the world and facilitated East-West relations to the point of thawing the Cold War and allowing for the USSR's dominion on the east to collapse.

As a result, all eastern Europe's Communist regimes fell, one by one, and democracy spread. He even lost his job, shortly after the fall of Communism in Russia, because of a coup.

Without Gorbachev, the world would be a dramatically different place. Arguably a worse place.

Recently, first Cheney, then Bush, accused Putin, the current Russian President, of stifling democracy in his own country. They publicly attacked him right when we need him most on our side against Iran and North Korea. How stupid is that? Do this people have any idea of how things work in the real world?

So now, Gorbachev commented on the situation. And what he said isn't pretty for Bush:

"We have made some mistakes," he said, referring to recent attacks on Russia's democracy. "So what? Please don't put even more obstacles in our way. Do you really think you are smarter than we are?"

The former general secretary of the Soviet Union Communist Party accused Americans of arrogance and trying to impose their way of life on other nations.

"Americans have a severe disease -- worse than AIDS. It's called the winner's complex," he said. "You want an American style-democracy here. That will not work."
[...]
The former Soviet leader had severe criticism for two of the most important people in the Bush administration: Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

"They are just hawks protecting the interests of the military -- shallow people," he said.

January 2009 won't be here soon enough, I'm afraid.

The fault lies with Bush

The big brouhaha over the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal revealing secrets about the government tracking of terrorists' finances hurting our war on terror can be summed up by the last paragraph of this enlightening article by Larry C. Johnson:

The furor over the "SWIFT" story has little to do with keeping America safe and a lot to do with keeping Republicans in power. If the leak was so devastating there would be a full court investigation of who in the Federal Government spoke to the reporters. But, as shown above, this information was not secret and was already in the public domain. It appears that Bush, with the advice of Karl Rove, sees demonizing the New York Times as a great way to energize a flagging political base. When it comes to hurting our nation's security and putting our citizens at risk, the fault lies with Bush, not the New York Times.

Amen

Lady Luck really is blind

SWARTZ CREEK, MI - A woman won $21,584 on a 10-cent bet at a Michigan horse track.

Wow!!

Countdown to our Wedding

Three months from today, on October 14^th, Ray and I will get married. Finally.

We know it's not technically called "marriage" but "civil union," but we don't care. To us that's just a word. We aren't offered marriage yet, so we'll take civil union... for now.

Our relationship deserves the recognition that comes from an official rite, whatever it is called.

We've now been together for ten and a half years, and we feel more than ready for the next step.

My friend Vittorio will be my Best Man, and a few other friends will join us from Italy. Hopefully, my parents will be there too.

Can she be President?

The Republicans came this close a couple weeks ago to passing a constitutional amendment prohibiting the desecration of the American flag.

With all the problems the country faces and all the problems in the world that affect us every day, they decided that the best use of their time and our money was to try to enshrine a piece of fabric into the Constitution, when a governmental study shows that the flag isn't being desecrated at all, virtually ever.

I'm glad it didn't pass, since it pointed out once again that although the Republicans control all the branches of government they still can't get anything done.

Anyway, Ray showed me this yesterday:

What the American Flag Stands For
by Charlotte Aldebron

The American flag stands for the fact that cloth can be very important. It is against the law to let the flag touch the ground or to leave the flag flying when the weather is bad. The flag has to be treated with respect. You can tell just how important this cloth is because when you compare it to people, it gets much better treatment. Nobody cares if a homeless person touches the ground. A homeless person can lie all over the ground all night long without anyone picking him up, folding him neatly and sheltering him from the rain.

School children have to pledge loyalty to this piece of cloth every morning. No one has to pledge loyalty to justice and equality and human decency. No one has to promise that people will get a fair wage, or enough food to eat, or affordable medicine, or clean water, or air free of harmful chemicals. But we all have to promise to love a rectangle of red, white, and blue cloth.

Betsy Ross would be quite surprised to see how successful her creation has become. But Thomas Jefferson would be disappointed to see how little of the flag's real meaning remains.

And now that you read that, check this out:

Charlotte Aldebron, 12, wrote this essay for a competition in her 6^th grade English class.

Twelve years old and she gets it already. Why can't the politicians in Washington?

So young, so wise. Maybe there's still hope for America's future.

An Inconvenient Truth

I really enjoy watching a good documentary nowadays (it must be something that comes with age...) and the latest I saw is something I wholeheartedly recommend everybody sees.

Tell your friends and relatives, or take them with you. This is something that shouldn't be missed by anybody, because we all live in the same world and we'll all be affected by global warming in the future (if we haven't yet), whether we like it or not, whether we want to admit it's real or not, whether we have an invested interest in keeping people from learning about it and focusing on it or not.

An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's lecture about global warming is full of data, all presented very professionally, passionately, and convincingly by a man who's been trying to do something about this impending catastrophe for something like 30 years.

He presents us with the evidence he collected by talking to experts worldwide and doesn't impose his views on global warming on anyone. He just asks us to look at the evidence and then ask ourselves if we think we should do something about it or not.

I believe global warming is real, all around us, happening right now, as we speak, and that we, humans, are the main (or only) cause of it (at least in this point in time and at these levels). And that belief always made me feel sad. Sad for the planet. Sad for nature. Sad for all the animals who don't have a choice but live in the world we unilaterally altered.

After seeing this movie, I realized that not only should we do something about global warming because it's stupid to wreck the only planet we have, the only place in the universe where we can live, and because we don't 'own' the world, it belongs to all species. But it's also a moral imperative that we do something about it, because it's not right or fair that we delay taking action, only to hand over a world in ruin to future generations.

I really believe that in 100-200 years, people will look back at us and say, What were they thinking? Why didn't they act? Why didn't they do something?

And among those people, there will be our kids, our grandkids, our great-grandkids. Do we really want to leave them a world gone crazy just because it's too hard to deal with it know? Because it would take too many resources to take care of it?

I don't think so. Go see the movie. Talk about it. Share your views. Change people's minds. Change whatever behaviors you can. Everything matters. Everything counts.

We must save Earth.


Grade: 9

Study shows homosexuality's genetic origin

A new study has provided credible evidence that being gay is genetically determined rather than being a so-called lifestyle choice, adding further weight to the argument that lesbian and gay people should be treated equally in society and not discriminated against for something that's just as inherent as skin color:

A man's sexual orientation may be determined by conditions in the womb, according to a study.

Previous research had revealed the more older brothers a boy has, the more likely he is to be gay, but the reason for this phenomenon was unknown.

But a Canadian study has shown that the effect is most likely due to biological rather than social factors.
[...]
He found the link between the number of older brothers and homosexuality only existed when the siblings shared the same mother.

The amount of time the individual spent being raised with older brothers did not affect their sexual orientation.
[...]
Writing in the journal, Professor Bogaert said: "If rearing or social factors associated with older male siblings underlies the fraternal birth-order effect [the link between the number of older brothers and male homosexuality], then the number of non-biological older brothers should predict men's sexual orientation, but they do not.

"These results support a prenatal origin to sexual orientation development in men."

He suggests the effect is probably the result of a "maternal memory" in the womb for male births.

A woman's body may see a male foetus as "foreign", he says, prompting an immune reaction which may grow progressively stronger with each male child.

The antibodies created may affect the developing male brain.

In an accompanying article, scientists from Michigan State University said: "These data strengthen the notion that the common denominator between biological brothers, the mother, provides a prenatal environment that fosters homosexuality in her younger sons."

Let's see what arguments the gay-haters will come up with now to refute this study's results.

Cars

The latest offering by the King Midas of animation studios, Pixar, is very enjoyable but not as thrilling as its predecessors.

Cars is a movie technically impeccable, just not as refreshing as Toy Story, as inspiring as A Bug's Life, as smart as The Incredibles, as sweet as Finding Nemo, or as heartwarming as Monsters, Inc.

All those attributes apply to Cars too, just not in the same way.

I remember the first trailer I saw of Cars, a while back, when it was still slated to be released last year. I didn't like it. It told me nothing at all. As opposed to, for example, The Incredibles' teaser trailer, which left me laughing and longing to see the movie.

Naturally, I assume I wasn't the only one left cold by Cars' first trailer. The movies' producers obviously tested the trailer and quite likely saw the same reaction from many in the audience, which prompted them to delay the release and retool the picture somewhat.

Anyway. Cars is the story of a race car that could be the first rookie ever to win the Piston Cup in his first season. Things, obviously, don't go as he expects, and he finds himself lost in the middle of the desert, somewhere along the once famous Route 66.

Here, he meets the people living in a town long forgotten by everyone, maps included, who still hope, someday, to see the tourists come back.

I don't want to spoil the plot, so I'll stop here, but maybe one thing that differs in this movie, as opposed to the ones that preceded it, is the fact that many of the characters are only caricatures, stereotypes. Now, maybe the other Pixar movies had stereotypical characters too, but they were more subtle.

We actually brought the kids with us (it was Daniel's first time ever at the movies!!), but they didn't seem to enjoy the picture much. They were both quite restless (a sign that what was going on on the big screen wasn't very interesting) and Danny eventually just wore himself out and fell asleep in my arms (so sweet.)

I also should say that Cars is almost two hours long, an amount of time few kids the age of ours can manage standing still.

Anyway, would I recommend the movie? Sure, it's entertaining and wonderfully done (you can even see the reflections of the surroundings in the cars as they move around.) The actors do a fine job, the story isn't bad, the music is good and you can find much worse movies at the multiplex during the summer, so, if you like animated movies, go see it. You'll enjoy it.

Grade: 7.5

It's getting really hot out there

A recent study has revealed that Earth's "warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years," it's likely the hottest it's been in 2,000 years, and it's been possibly much longer since Earth has run such a fever:

The National Academy of Sciences, reaching that conclusion in a broad review of scientific work requested by Congress, reported Thursday that the "recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia."

A panel of top climate scientists told lawmakers that Earth is heating up and that "human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming."
[...]
Other new research Thursday showed that global warming produced about half of the extra hurricane-fueled warmth in the North Atlantic in 2005, and natural cycles were a minor factor.
[...]
The scientists said they had less confidence in the evidence of temperatures before 1600. But they considered it reliable enough to conclude there were sharp spikes in carbon dioxide and methane, the two major "greenhouse" gases blamed for trapping heat in the atmosphere, beginning in the 20^th century, after remaining fairly level for 12,000 years.

Between 1 A.D. and 1850, volcanic eruptions and solar fluctuations were the main causes of changes in greenhouse gas levels. But those temperature changes "were much less pronounced than the warming due to greenhouse gas" levels by pollution since the mid-19^th century, it said.

And what's the reaction of our President to such shocking revelations, threatening our very own planet?

The Bush administration has maintained that the threat is not severe enough to warrant new pollution controls that the White House says would have cost 5 million Americans their jobs.

The threat is not severe enough. Astonishing. Does Bush need to see Texas-like deserts in place of the front lawn of the White House to see global warming as a severe enough threat to give a damn?!

I wonder if the Bush administration ever contemplated the undeniable fact that if the US ends up under a mile of ice, our jobs will be the last of our worries.

Let's see how glad Mexico will be to accept 300 million immigrants from its northern neighbor when we're forced to flee to avoid being enveloped by glaciers taller than the Empire State Building.

Who will want to build a wall then, I wonder...

Twist

It's the story of a group of straight guys (most of whom drug addicts) forced to hustle other men by a mysterious and violent Bob, whom we never see.

Sold as a "queer Oliver Twist update," it's gritty but not totally engaging.

Lead by a very good Nick Stahl, the movie is definitely watchable and the message of desperation it sends is disheartening, but I did find myself looking at my watch a couple of times, despite the gay twist introduced by a very sweet and cute Joshua Close's Oliver.

And that's pretty much it. This is probably the shortest commentary I ever wrote on a movie I saw, good or bad, and it goes a long way to show how the picture left me with very little to say about it.

Nevertheless, I'd still watch anything with Nick Stahl, whom I consider one of the most promising actors of his generation.

Grade: 6.5

What a blow to our collective heads!!

The New York Court of Appeals has ruled this morning that "the state Constitution does not guarantee a right to marriage for same-sex couples, and that state lawmakers, not the courts, are better suited to consider the issue."

That's disappointing in and of itself, but the worst thing is what the court based its reasoning on.

They basically accepted and adopted the gay bashers' argument that marriage should be between a man and woman:

• because it's always been like that (so what, things change, Hello 21^st century),
• because only a man and a woman can procreate and so they deserve an institution for them alone (which follows that, from now on, we should test all heterosexuals for normal reproductive organs before they marry; if there is a problem, they can't marry, and if they can marry but still don't have kids after, say, a couple years, their marriage should be annulled -- and not be allowed to re-marry),
• and because kids do better when they see a man and a woman in their daily lives (the biggest load of crap ever held as an argument, disputed by sound scientific studies and countless medical professionals).

Needless to say, it's a huge blow for all gays and lesbians hoping to marry their loved ones and finally be protected by the same rights that protect their heterosexual friends.

Worse yet, it will clearly embolden the enemy, and this ruling will be used in the future by other courts that aren't prepared to take on their duty to protect the minorities in our society.

And this happened in New York, of all places, a liberal and forward-thinking state, home to one of the largest gay populations on Earth.

In a decision that has been eagerly awaited by both sides in the gay marriage debate, the court, the highest in the state's judiciary system, concluded that the legislature could have "a rational basis" for limiting marriage to heterosexual couples, in large part because of their ability to bear children.

The court did not rule that the state should not or could not allow gay marriages, only that the state constitution did not require that it allow them.

The decision called the idea of same-sex marriage "a relatively new one" and said that for most of history, society has conceived of marriage exclusively as a bond between a man and a woman. "A court should not lightly conclude that everyone who held this belief was irrational, ignorant or bigoted," the decision stated.

"There are at least two grounds that rationally support the limitation on marriage that the legislature has enacted," the court said, "both of which are derived from the undisputed assumption that marriage is important to the welfare of children."

First, the court said, marriage could be preserved as an "inducement" to heterosexual couples to remain in stable, long-term, and child-bearing relationships. Second, lawmakers could rationally conclude that "it is better, other things being equal, for children to grow up with both a mother and the father."

"Intuition and experience suggest that a child benefits from having before his or her eyes, every day, living models of what both a man and a woman are like," the court said.

Astounding.

Losing really hurts.