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same sex marriage

The Generation of Change

by Alex David Jimenez

Roughly six years ago, when my now fiancé and I had just moved in together, the United States Presidential election of 2008 made history. Just under a year earlier, when we began dating, I recall him saying that he didn’t believe that Barack Obama stood a chance of winning the election. He told me, though he hoped otherwise, that he didn’t believe that we would see a black U.S. president in our lifetime.

Ten months later it came to pass.

In the same respect, another remark my partner made, amid our many deep conversations during candlelight dinners and Sunday mornings-in, was that he didn’t wholly believe that we would see an America with full recognition and legal marriage equality among gay and lesbian couples. I argued otherwise. At that point of exchange, one state legally allowed and acknowledged same-sex couple’s right to marry. DOMA was however still constitutional – the federal government could legally overlook many of those rights.

Same Sex Marriage 2014
via nbcnews.com

Today, six years later, nineteen states legally allow and acknowledge same-sex couple’s right to marry, and DOMA has been eradicated.

Same-sex marriage is easily one of the most controversial and bare-knuckled fights any group of any respective community has ever fought. In our lifetime, and stretching back into the history of American rights, the gay marriage campaign is quickly becoming as divisive and as landmark as those of the abolition of slavery and women’s rights. While many did concur with my partner in his vision of a limited America within the span of our lives, and while many still do believe as such, it can be said that the shift in favor of a tolerant America is certainly in occurrence – right before our very eyes.

Why?

Just over ten years ago there were no U.S. states that recognized marriage as anything but between a man and a woman. In the span of only one decade, that number has gone from zero to 19. In each state where gay marriage is still illegal, there are lawsuits pending to challenge the fundamental ethics of the bans enacted. In these past ten years, something has changed. Something came about in the broad scope of politics and the voice of the people. There are certainly many factors at play, and ultimately there is an avalanche of causes leading to the change in overall American attitude. Yet what I believe is simpler: one event largely began to create transformation. Just beyond the past decade, the millennials began to vote. The millennials began to join the workforce. And the millenials were far more unafraid to come out as openly gay and lesbian than those generations before them.

© The Washington Post
© The Washington Post

The statistics are simple and speak for themselves. Since about 2004 there has been a rapid shift in the public opinion across America. The popular opinion that gay marriage should be illegal in America has sharply dropped in the last ten years from 55% down to below 36%, and falling. Contrastingly, the opinion that it should be legal has risen from 41% in 2004 to over 58% today. And climbing.

Ages
© The Washington Post

Where is this opinion coming from? Well, according to statistics, the majority of the rise is attributed to America’s youth. The millennials contribute a staggering 81% in favor of the legality of gay marriage, as opposed to the 44% of those who are in favor over the age 65.

Do politics play a part? Certainly. As does religion of course. And yet regardless of conservatism and strict dogmatic ties, the youth is still bringing forth the turn of the tide. The generations over the years have been very clearly changing in their position and stance on the idea that all couples should be granted the fundamental and constitutional right to marry in this, a free country of tolerance and diversity.

via the Public Religion Research Institute
via the Public Religion Research Institute

Many have no faith in the millennial generation. They believe that integrity and responsibility is veritably non-existent in the course of their futures. Yet it cannot be argued that they are certainly the generation of change, be it for the better or the worse. In the capacity of this particular argument, for those who have gay family and gay friends; for those who have been too afraid to come out of the closet in the past and have done so recently because of the upswing of acceptance nationwide; for those people, it is certainly for the better.

I for one believe that my country, the United States, will legalize and recognize gay marriages in each of its 50 states in my lifetime.

Filed Under: LGBT, OPINION Tagged With: 2014, change, Equality, gay marriage, generation y, lgbt, manhattan digest, millennials, opinion, politics, same love, same sex marriage

Rhode Island very close towards approval of gay marriage

by Ryan Shea

Credit to: Daily News
Credit to: Daily News

Rhode Island is poised to become the tenth state in our union to legalize gay marriage.  The state senate approved a bill extending marriage rights by a vote of 26-12, not a landslide but a great enough margin where you can tell there was a common theme here.  This has even gone so far to have independent Lincoln Chafee, who was Governor when I lived there, and the Senate Republican Caucus has all expressed unanimous support for the bill.

There are of course, the naysayers in all of this. According to CNN.com, The Rhode Island Catholic Conference said Tuesday in a statement posted on its website that it appreciated that exemptions for religious organizations had been included in the bill. “Unfortunately, the exemptions fail to protect individuals and small businesses who believe that marriage is a union of one man and one woman,” it said.

Scott Spear, an advisory board member of the Rhode Island chapter of the National Organization for Marriage, said he would have preferred the fate of the bill be decided in a public referendum rather than by the Senate. “We believe the record of marriage as has existed throughout the history of civilization stands for an empirical truth, and that truth is a marriage is a union between one man and one woman,” he said in a telephone interview.

As much as I want to say Scott Spear has a point here, he really doesn’t.  Yes he can say marriage is between one man and one woman, but love is love folks.  For people to deny gay men and women the right to legally marry someone when the divorce rate in this country is at an all time high and people like Britney Spears can get married for 55 hours in Vegas chapel and have it be legal all for a publicity stunt I have to call bullshit on that.

What further surprises me is why of all the New England states Rhode Island was the last one to jump on this bandwagon.  When i lived there, there seemed to be more gay bars in downtown Providence than their were straight ones, and Gay Pride is a really huge event as well.  To a certain degree though, Rhode Island is a very unique state in that there is a lot of cow country there and then it gets really industrial once you hit the Providence area, so it might just be the old fashioned thinking people who had a large say in this. It is also run by several Democrats so the thought of this taking so long truly has baffled me.  Nevertheless, it seems to be going in the right direction.

Iowa, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Washington and the District of Columbia allow same-sex marriage. Their combined populations, based on U.S. Census estimates for 2012, represent 15.8% of the U.S. population. Let’s keep the number of states rising everyone, if these ten states can figure it out the other forty should be able to as well.  That’s all.

 

Filed Under: BREAKING NEWS, OPINION, POLITICS, REVIEWS Tagged With: britney spears, democrats, gay bars, gay marriage, lincoln chafee, marriage, national organization of marriage, providence, republicans, rhode island, same sex marriage

Is Macklemore the new Eminem?

by Ryan Shea

Credit to Wweek.
Credit to Wweek.

I don’t think that title is really premature in saying what a lot of people are thinking.  Macklemore really can be the next Eminem if he plays his cards right.  The Seattle native continues to take 2013 by storm again last night with his performance of his new single “Can’t Hold Us” featuring Ray Dalton at the 2013 MTV Movie Awards.  Many said that was the highlight of the night and this is a  freaking movie award show (then again it’s MTV, so we are lucky it wasn’t a Best Teen Mom Shore Buckwild Show).

Macklemore was known by many a hip-hop tastemakers for a while now but no one really understood who this guy was until late 2012 whe a song about a thrift shop came into play.  Little do people know this guy, who turns 30 later this year, has been in the game for over a decade now, right around the time that Eminem broke through.

He released his first full fledged EP back in 2000 under the name “Professor Macklemore”.  He quickly dropped the professor aspect of things but substance abuse plagued his chances of really becoming the star that he is today.  These substances had him relapse on a number of occasions, most recently in 2011.  Yet during this time he released some truly amazing music, such as “The Unplanned Mixtape” and “The VS Redux” in 2009 with his constant companion and DJ Ryan Lewis.  That is some of his best work in my opinion, as you can tell what he was going through during that time.

Now with his album “The Heist” in full swing, “Thrift Shop” topping the charts for weeks and his subsequent song “Can’t Hold Us” climbing up the charts, we gotta wonder, is he the next big thing? The next Eminem? Let’s weigh this in and see.

Going beyond race, Eminem truly defines what an MC is and how, at least for my generation, he was our Kurt Cobain.  He was our Elvis Presley, he was our Michael Jackson.  He was a movement in itself for the simple fact that he went so far outside the boundary lines of what an artist is supposed to do and speak from his heart on what he was going on.  “The Marshall Mathers LP” and “The Slim Shady LP” are in my opinion two of the best hip-hop albums ever with the former being the best one to be released in the new millennium.  He has even impressed as a featured artist on other people’s tracks, most notably Drake’s “Forever”.  He truly understands his gift of gab and uses it to its best extent.

What i just wrote is something that Macklemore is getting the hang of.  “The Heist” is an amazing second album and is reminiscent of things that Eminem did.  They both have that juxtaposition of being able to do funny songs (Thrift Shop) and then serious ones that really make you think (Wings).  The stand out track here is “Same Love”, written in the support of same-sex marriage.  It’s truly an amazingly written song and something really out of left field when it comes to a straight dude and hip-hop head writing about a very controversial topic.  This can parlay to any of the controversial topics that Em wrote about, including anything from “Love The Way You Lie” about domestic violence and “Stan” about a deranged fan.  Regardless, they make you think, something other rappers can’t seem to make you do.

So what is the verdict overall with this? Macklemore could no doubt be the next Eminem in my book.  No doubt, even though he has been in the game for a minute, that he will be all over the Best New Artist categories at a ton of award shows and be on everyone’s forefront similarly to how Eminem is.  Could they do a duet one day? Only one can hope.  For me, he’s got it in him to go the long haul.  Best of luck to him in the future.

Filed Under: BREAKING NEWS, ENTERTAINMENT, MUSIC, OPINION Tagged With: 2013, buckwild, eminem, hip hop, jersey shore, macklemore, marshall mathers lp, mtv movie awards, ray dalton, ryan lewis, same sex marriage, seattle, slim shady lp, teen mom, thrift shop

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