Since The Monkey does arrive on April 1st, I had no qualms about declaring an “unmarried partner” as “Person 2″ on my Census response. That said, it’s wick-wack that being counted as a queer person is intrinsically tied to my “marriage/partnership.”. Hi, being Queer is about recognizing a broader non-heteronormative community. Really.

Which all reminded me that 10 years ago, I contemplated (and honestly, I don’t remember what I decided to do…), registering Tamu as my non-married partner to mitigate the under-counting of queers.

Check out the photo album here.

I was so moved that after the credits, “awesome!” was the first word out of my mouth. Then I exploded with “WHAT THE FUCK Pixar? Would it have killed you to have a lead female character?” For real, Just One woman, girl or animal that is not: 1) dead, 2) wordless and myopically focused on returning to children when not cracked out on chocolate and named Kevin (because all cool stuffs must be boy gendered until proven otherwise), or 3) Mom patiently sitting on the sidelines while Son pines for Dad or Grandpa figure.

I’m so jaded by the father-son, boy-man character relationship dominating most films that I rarely get this riled up anymore. Plus, Disney/Pixar is the veritable King of the Mother-less child, Father-Son bonding odessey (Finding Nemo, Pinnochio, Bambi et al.) I shouldn’t expect radical gender bending here.

But I’ve paid good money to see 8 out of the 10 Pixar movies in theaters because they are consistently smart, creative and moving storytellers.

Ultimately, my distress is not about Pixar movies per se, but about the deeply entrenched ideas about gender and how they restrict our imaginations and sense of possibilities, especially for girls and young women. I mean, really, you charge a boat load of the best creative minds with making a movie and they can’t create a cast of characters that operate beyond typical gender relationships? Pixar’s cast isn’t even bound by human characteristics. They are fish, robots, animals, toys, monsters, race cars and imaginary super heroes. Yet, they imbue strict human gender identities in each character.

The always secondary female characters Pixar creates shows their team can make funny, complex and engaging female/girl characters: The Incredibles, Eva in Wall-E and of course, Dory in Finding Nemo. Gender roles aren’t encoded in our DNA. They are created and enforced by each of us and promulgated by wonderful storytellers like Pixar.

10 Pixar films and not one with a lead girl/woman. It feels like a deliberate snub. C’mon Pixar! Use your powers for good! Give us a girl!

I downloaded the Prop 8 decision and skipped to Carlos Moreno’s lonely and eloquent dissenting opinion. It carefully lays out his legal argument for why a proposition that requires discriminating against a group based on a suspect classification is indeed a revision of the state constitution. But for this blog entry, I’ll spare you a re-cap of the analysis surrounding the distinction between a revision and amendment and share with you a selection of the grand statements that will ground me as I wade through the majority opinion. If you want to read the actual legal arguments—of which there are 185 pages worth, go here.

Justice Moreno’s name was briefly floated as a possibility for the Supreme Court and I wonder how this opinion would have played out in confirmation hearings. Guess we’ll never know.

Justice Carlos Moreno:

“The rule the majority crafts today not only allows same-sex couples to be stripped of the right to marry that this court recognized in the Marriage Cases, it places at risk the state constitutional rights of all disfavored minorities. It weakens the status of our state Constitution as a bulwark of fundamental rights for minorities protected from the will of the majority. I therefore dissent…

Describing the effect of Proposition 8 as narrow and limited fails to acknowledge the significance of the discrimination it requires. But even a narrow and limited exception to the promise of full equality strikes at the core of, and thus fundamentally alters, the guarantee of equal treatment that has pervaded the California Constitution since 1849. Promising equal treatment to some is fundamentally different from promising equal treatment to all. Promising treatment that is almost equal is fundamentally different from ensuring truly equal treatment. Granting a disfavored minority only some of the rights enjoyed by the majority is fundamentally different from recognizing, as a constitutional imperative, that they must be granted all of those rights. Granting same-sex couples all of the rights enjoyed by opposite-sex couples, except the right to call their “ ‘officially recognized, and protected family relationship’ ” (maj. opn., ante, at p. 7) a marriage, still denies them equal treatment…

I realize, of course, that the right of gays and lesbians to marry in this state has only lately been recognized. But that belated recognition does not make the protection of those rights less important. Rather, that the right has only recently been acknowledged reflects an age old prejudice (Marriage Cases, supra, 43 Cal.4th at pp. 821-822, 846, 853) that makes the safeguarding of that right by the judiciary all the more critical…

Proposition 8 represents an unprecedented instance of a majority of voters altering the meaning of the equal protection clause by modifying the California Constitution to require deprivation of a fundamental right on the basis of a suspect classification. The majority’s holding is not just a defeat for same-sex couples, but for any minority group that seeks the protection of the equal protection clause of the California Constitution.”

I only skimmed the decision, but it seems that it’s not as sweeping as California’s In re Marriage decision. That case also declared unconstitutional the ban on same-sex marriages. More importantly though, it held laws that discriminate based on sexual orientation are subject to “strict scrutiny.” Sexual orientation joined race, religion and national origin as a “suspect classification.” And all that is legalese for “you better have a damn good reason to treat this group of people differently from others.” In sum, the California Supreme Court provided queers the highest level of protection against discrimination.

The Iowa Supreme Court didn’t go quite as far. Concluding that the ban on same-sex marriage didn’t even pass “intermediate scrutiny”, judges in Iowa called it a day and punted the question of whether laws that discriminate based on sexual orientation require a highest level of review. Perhaps this was a compromise to get a unanimous decision.

Nonetheless, with most court-side cheerleaders and commentators tensely expecting California’s court to uphold Prop 8’s ban on same-sex marriage, we can rest assured that we can always move to Iowa…or not.

As I re-read this, I wonder why I am compelled to post this sort of constitutional law 101 entry. I don’t even enjoy reading legal writing. Oh well, one of the many existential queries facing Lunamania. Off to do more productive things on this beautiful Saturday afternoon.

“The argument will take place from 9:00 a.m. until about 12:30 p.m. at the California Supreme Court in San
Francisco. Because of the small size of the courtroom, there will likely be no seats available there. However, there are a number of locations near the court that will be screening the argument live for the public.

Marriage Equality USA is hosting a public viewing outside of San Francisco City Hall in the Civic Center Plaza.
Please visit www.marriageequality.org for details.

San Francisco LGBT Center, 1800 Market Street. Visit www.sfcenter.org for more details.

Auditorium, Hastings College of the Law, 198 McAllister Street.

Milton Marks Conference Center, Lower Level, Hiram Johnson State Office Building, 455 Golden Gate Avenue.

Koret Auditorium, San Francisco Public Library, 100 Larkin Street at Grove Street, on the basement floor of the library. However, the room is open only until 11:30, so they will not be able to show the entire argument.

Supporters can also watch the argument at home. The California Channel will be showing the argument live. Click here for a list of stations that will carry the argument: www.calchannel.com/channel/carriage/. There will also be a live webcast over the Internet at www.calchannel.com.”

Stop sterilizing poor women–end the “maximum family grant” rule: The rule works like this: low-income women who conceive and give birth while receiving public assistance (CalWorks) receive no additional cash aid to support the baby. Why? Because pushing poor families into deeper financial straits builds character and strengthens families. Note, the maximum amount of aid for a single adult supporting one child in San Francisco is $584 per month. Maximum cash aid for a family with 2 children is $723.

Encourage queer families to foster and/or adopt children: San Francisco already has an ad campaign doing just this. So maybe the pro-family folks could hop over to Arkansas where as of January 1st same-sex couples are banned from becoming foster or adoptive parents.

Extend legal protections to all parents and children: California has some legal protections, but cross state lines and it’s legal chaos. Seems like a no-brainer that Mom or Pop would be in the best position to make medical and other decisions for their kid, but nah, that privilege is reserved for heterosexuals.

Oh the list could go on…but I’ve made my point.

The Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights is sponsoring a counter protest tomorrow: 10:30 AM, Music Concourse (the end of Market at the Embarcadero BART), January 24. I’ve heard it’s been kind of a fun counter-protest in past years.

I streamed hours of CNN Live, chocked up seeing Michelle (and Barack) Obama, smiled at Sasha’s exuberant thumbs up, winced at Rick Warren, laughed with Rev. Lowery, wished Mariah had chosen a song other than Hero, admired Jay-Z’s glasses and marveled that www.whitehouse.gov has a tumblr acct.

I also made a deliberate effort to harbor hope and high expectations of the Obama administration. I took my imaginary fruity smelling markers and unfurled my imaginary butcher paper and with my imaginary illustration skills conjured an imaginary world of just immigration reform, a living wage, racial justice and queer justice (not just marriage equality–although that’s important too), bigger stronger more effective labor unions, restorative justice, free health care, better public schools, no kill animal shelters, blue skies, clean water, affordable airfares that somehow leave no carbon footprint–you get the point.

Projecting hope and generating high expectations are familiar exercises from those “visioning” exercises that beleaguered non-profits conduct as part of those groan inducing 8 hr retreats that devolve into 14 hr events because you have to go process the dysfunction of the day over stiff drinks. I digress. Placing the Executive Branch of government in the same head space as that alternate social justice reality felt totally alien. Alien, but not an entirely laughable or impossible a mental exercise with Obama as POTUS*. It underscored my low expectations of elected officials, but reminded me that inching towards that imagined reality requires holding government accountable to our loftiest ideals.

In the coming days, I’ll both cheer and jeer the potus, but I’ll try to remember the imaginary world I conjured yesterday as we hold Obama –and ourselves–accountable to our “better angels.” When the Obama-ites gets too far out of line, I’ll just remind myself that at least there are no Bushes in the Oval Office.

*I think POTUS is a great acronym. Yes, because it sounds like a potty joke.