Yesterday's News.

Two big things occurred yesterday that matter way more in the long run than the harping follow-up coverage of the second presidential debate.

1.) We're pushing past playing politics with gay rights:

The Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional because it discriminates against same-sex couples, a second federal appeals court has ruled.

In this country, we've seen plenty of past political campaigns avert course to attract and repel Americans with this hot-button political issue of "gay" marriage.  Somehow, we've given people the idea that majority vote matters on whether people get the Constitutional Right of the equal protection of our laws.  It's gotten ugly...

Yesterday, a second federal court pushed through the idea that the illegality of Defense of Marriage Act could be settled simply under the law, without creating the need for people to campaign and lobby and woo fellow citizens to grant them "special" rights in recognising on the federal level the marriages in legal jurisdictions.

Plus, looking ahead to what one day what this might one day lead to:
Instead of allowing the State to present any weak reason for distinguishing between biologically infertile women and men (who are currrently permitted to marry) and not allowing homosexuals that same protection of the law because, if left alone, they could never form a biological offspring family, the court said nope -- legally, the State would have to come up with a better reason than that.

I think if we don't vote state by state on whether or not it's legal for a woman to have the right to choose whether she wants to bear a potentially deformed baby, we don't have the right to deny couples who wish to marry, but simply can't produce biological offspring in their couplings because they have same-sex genitals, the same as others.

It's not special rights.  It's allowing the same opportunity to similarly situated people.
Gays aren't inherent victims.  Just taken advantage of by the law.

Yesterday's ruling set out to even up the playing field.

"Two appeals courts have now found the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional. The issue appears to be headed for the Supreme Court — possibly as soon as the current term."

 

Edith Windsor, whose case led to an appeals court striking down the Defense of Marriage Act.

Shannon Stapleton /Reuters /Landov

 

The Associated Press reminds us that "the law, which denies federal recognition of same-sex marriages and affirms the right of states to refuse to recognize such marriages, was passed by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton after it appeared in 1993 that Hawaii might legalize gay marriage. Since then, many states have banned gay marriage but several have approved it, including Massachusetts and New York."

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2)  Newsweek magazine shuttered its print edition in a foreboding trend.

Like the Midwestern steelmills of yore, the printing press dinosaurs are roaring to fall -- the big ones, but not the smaller presses that serve a local sports and community discussions market.  Here's some rare worthwhile thoughts of Sullivan, one of the first online pundits to exploit the trend and serve himself up online:

You no longer control the gate through which readers have to pass and advertisers get to sponsor. No gateway, no magazine, no revenue - and massive costs in print, paper and mailing. I know a bit about these things, having edited a weekly magazine on paper for five years and running this always-on blogazine for twelve. It's a different universe now.
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The reason is that these huge corporations, massive newsrooms, and deeply ingrained advertising strategies become interests in themselves. No institution wants to dissolve itself. Getting that old mindset to accept that everything that it has done as a business and editorial model is now over, pffft, gone, is very, very hard.  

But they often cannot adjust because they are too big to move so quickly and because new sources of information and new flows of information keep evolving, and because no one really wants change if it means more job insecurity.  

We're human. It's not pleasant realizing that the entire business and editorial model for your entire career is kaput.
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 The good news is that the savings from this can be plowed back into [online] journalism if revenues from subsscriptions and advertisements revive.

Here's to hoping ...