On this day in 2003 The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the state's ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health. This resulted an a great wailing and gnashing of teeth among assorted priests, sacerdotes. their acolytes and faithful followers who had become habituated to the bizarre intrusion of these types into everybody's lives. Nobody knows the time at which religionists began exerting control over people's love lives and sex lives, but we do know that it wasn't always the case and was seemingly also never everywhere the case. Some simply chalk it up to the rise of patriarchal religions and cultures and the concomitant rise of cultural phenomena such as primogeniture, the treatment of females as chattels and/or currency, the use of females as "wives" to cement political alliances and the like. Others suggest that it was simply a con job somehow perpetrated by the priestly classes to gain control over one of peoples' primordial drives simply for the sake of the power or to profit from its displacement or sublimation. Whatever the cause, the Massachusetts court did not find that imposition of the religious dogmas of various groups upon the populace as a whole without any underlying rational purpose was a legitimate governmental purpose:

This court concluded that barring an individual from the protections, benefits, and obligations of civil marriage solely because that person would marry a person of the same sex violated the Massachusetts Constitution in that such a marriage ban did not meet the rational basis test for either due process or equal protection, where the Commonwealth failed to identify any constitutionally adequate reason for denying civil marriage to same-sex couples.

This decision was quite possibly the thin edge of the judicial wedge against such rationally purposeless laws, though the battle to impose them on society continues, with prohibitions against abortion being an obvious example.

Somewhat apropos to the questions and issues above, on this day in 1302 Pope Boniface VIII issued the Papal bull Unam sanctam. I'll let the wiki take it from there:

Unam sanctam[a] is a papal bull that was issued by Pope Boniface VIII on 18 November 1302. It laid down dogmatic propositions on the unity of the Catholic Church, the necessity of belonging to it for eternal salvation, the position of the Pope as supreme head of the Church and the duty thence arising of submission to the Pope in order to belong to the Church and thus to attain salvation. The Pope further emphasized the higher position of the spiritual in comparison with the secular order. The historian Brian Tierney calls it "probably the most famous" document on church and state in medieval Europe.[1] The original document is lost, but a version of the text can be found in the registers of Boniface VIII in the Vatican Archives.[2] The bull was the definitive statement of the late medieval theory of hierocracy, which argued for the temporal as well as spiritual supremacy of the pope.[3]

Uh, Huh

On this day in history:

1095 – The Council of Clermont began: leading to the First Crusade

1302 – Pope Boniface VIII issued the Papal bull Unam sanctam, creating a papal dictatorship in both the secular and spiritual realms.

1803 – The Battle of Vertières, was fought, leading to the establishment of the Republic of Haiti

1865 – Mark Twain's "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" was published

1872 – Susan B. Anthony and 14 other women were arrested for voting while female

1883 – US and Canadian railroads instituted five standard continental time zones

1903 – Panama gave the US exclusive rights over the Canal Zone in the Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty.

1909 – The US sent two warships plus some marines to set up a base in Nicaragua for attacks on the government of José Santos Zelaya. This was in part because Nicaragua was a threat to create a shipping path between the Atlantic and Pacific competing with the Panama Canal.

1910 – Black Friday: Three hundred suffragettes marched to the British Parliament iwhere they wr attacked, beaten, and some even sexually molested by cops and crowds of male citizens. Calls for a public inquiry were rejected by Winnie Churchill. *

1928 – Steamboat Willie was released, eventually leading to our obscenely extended copyright laws

1961 –JFK sent 18,000 soldiers to South Vietnam as, heh, "advisors".

1978 – The Jonestown massacre went down, making a meme out of kool-aid

1985 – Calvin and Hobbes was published in ten newspapers

1988 – Reagan signed a bill into law allowing the death penalty for drug traffickers.

1993 –The US House of Representatives. approved NAFTA. Thanks Bill.

2002 – United Nations weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix arrived in Iraq but GWB and his entire cabinet were able to lie the US into war on Iraq all the same..

2003 – The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the state's ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional and gave the state legislature 180 days to change the law. This made Massachusetts the first state in the United States to grant marriage rights to same-sex couples. (Goodridge v. Department of Public Health)

* Churchill was called the Home Secretary, but nobody ever saw him take dictation

Some people who were born on this day:

The art of advertisement, after the American manner, has introduced into all our life such a lavish use of superlatives, that no standard of value whatever is intact.

~~ Wyndham Lewis

1787 – Louis Daguerre, physicist and photographer, invented the daguerreotype
1810 – Asa Gray, botanist
1836 – W. S. Gilbert, playwright, poet, and illustrator
1860 – Ignacy Jan Paderewski, pianist, composer, and politician

1861 – Dorothy Dix, journalist and author
1882 – Wyndham Lewis, painter and critic
1882 – Frances Gertrude McGill, pioneering forensic pathologist
1899 – Eugene Ormandy, violinist and conductor
1899 – Howard Thurman, author, philosopher and civil rights activist open thread,
1901 – George Gallup, statistician
1908 – Imogene Coca, actress, comedian, and singer

1909 – Johnny Mercer, singer, songwriter and producer, co-founder of Capitol Records
1927 – Hank Ballard, singer and songwriter
1928 – Sheila Jordan, singer, songwriter, and pianist
1936 – Don Cherry, trumpet player
1944 – Edwin C. Krupp, astronomer, archaeoastronomer, author, Director Griffith Observatory
1945 – Wilma Mankiller, activist, social worker, and first female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation
1946 – Chris Rainbow, singer, songwriter, and producer
1950 – Graham Parker, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1950 – Rudy Sarzo, rock bass player
1952 – John Parr, singer, songwriter and guitarist
1953 – Jan Kuehnemund, rock guitarist
1957 – Tony Bunn, bassist, composer, producer, and writer
1960 – Kim Wilde, singer & songwriter

Some people who died on this day:

As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress.

~~ Marcel Proust

1247 – Robin Hood, heroic outlaw in English folklore; nothing about him, including his existence, is known with any certainty, except, it seems, his death.
1922 – Marcel Proust, author and critic
1952 – Paul Éluard, poet and author
1962 – Niels Bohr, physicist, and academic,
1965 – Henry A. Wallace, agronomist and bureaucrat,
1969 – Ted Heath, trombonist and bandleader
1972 – Danny Whitten, singer, songwriter, and guitarist
1976 – Man Ray, photographer and painter
1994 – Cab Calloway, singer, songwriter and bandleader
1999 – Doug Sahm, singer, guitarist, bajo sexto, and fiddle player. Sir Douglas, Texas Tornado.
2004 – Cy Coleman, pianist and composer
2010 – Brian G. Marsden, astronomer
2013 – S. R. D. Vaidyanathan, nadaswaram player and composer
2014 – Dave Appell, singer, songwriter. and producer
2016 – Sharon Jones, soul and funk singer

Some Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such:

Apple Cider Day
Occult Day
William Tell Day

Today's Tunes

Goodridge v. Department of Public Health

Louis Daguerre

WS Gilbert

Johnny Mercer

Hank Ballard

Sheila Jordan

Don Cherry

Chris Rainbow

Graham Parker

John Parr

Jan Kuehnemund

Tony Bunn

Kim Wilde

Marcel Proust

Cab Calloway

Sharon Jones

Sir Douglas Sahm

Tornado Doug Sahm

Bajo Sexto Sahm

Alrighty, lookout! Doug Sahm, Leon Russell, Jerry Garcia & Friends: 2&1/2 Hour Jam

Ok, it's an open thread, so it's up to you folks now. So what's on your mind?

Cross posted from http://caucus99percent.com

Open Thread, Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, Marcel Proust, Wilma Mankiller, Cab Calloway, Doug Sahm, Hank Ballard, Sheila Jordan
, Sharon Jones