We win. Again.

If you follow LGBT news at all, you've probably heard that Prop 8 was ruled unconstitutional today. Again. I'd like to be excited, drive up to West Hollywood, wave a rainbow flag and celebrate with the rest of the gayborhood. But I'm a bit less than thrilled because this is the third time we've "won" in court and only one of those times actually led to same-sex couples getting married. All this really means is that we're one step closer to the real win. I know, court cases take a really long time and I need to get used to that.

But for those LGBT people who actually might like to get married, they're being told yet again, wait just a little bit longer. The lawyers have to talk this over just a bit more. Be patient, it'll happen eventually.

In short:

:-/

Prop 8 overturned one year ago

It was one year ago today that Proposition 8 was overturned by a Federal judge, making it legal for same-sex couples to marry in California. Except not really. I used to think that when courts strike down laws, those laws are, you know, not laws anymore. In fact, that's pretty much what happened the last time a court struck down Proposition 8. "But wait!" you say, "That wasn't Prop 8. In fact, that was before Prop 8 even passed!" Right, it was Proposition 22. But see if you can spot the difference between the two:

The complete text of Proposition 22:

This initiative measure adds a section to the Family Code; therefore, new provisions proposed to be added are printed in italic type to indicate that they are new.

SECTION 1. This act may be cited as the "California Defense of Marriage Act."

SECTION 2. Section 308.5 is added to the Family Code, to read:

308.5. Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

The complete text (pdf) of Proposition 8:

This initiative measure expressly amends the California Constitution by adding a section thereto; therefore, new provisions proposed to be added are printed in italic type to indicate that they are new.

SECTION 1. Title
This measure shall be known and may be cited as the “California Marriage Protection Act.”

SECTION 2. Section 7.5 is added to Article I of the California Constitution, to read:

SEC. 7.5. Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.

Prop 8 changes the Constitution, while Prop 22 only changed the Family Code. Much more importantly, Prop 8 has the word "thereto" in it. I think that means they hired more expensive lawyers in the intervening 8 years? Anyway, what was I saying? Right, so it's been a year since this court decision, but same-sex couples still can't actually get married here, because the Proposition 8 proponents are appealing the decision, so there's a stay on the decision. And, the court isn't actually considering their appeal yet because first they need to figure out whether the proponents even have standing to appeal. In other words: It's gonna be a while.

The "just to be safe" argument. And then: The Ask.

I've been watching the marriagetrial.com reading of the Proposition 8 ruling, while also sort of reading along in the official pdf. If you're too lazy to read all 136 pages (although it's double spaced and a fair amount of it is just citations, so it's really more like 60) there are some great summaries at the Bilerico Project and Blogging LA (thanks to Heather for that second link).

Anyway, I was tweeting a couple of my favorite quotes from the decision, and someone responded on Twitter: "Fuck the other half of CA, and dumb bigots." Of course I understand the frustration behind this statement, but I want to be sure to make one thing very clear.

The seven million people who voted for Proposition 8 are not the enemy in this fight. I know this may be hard to believe, but it's true. Watch this ad, even if you've seen it before:



This is the kind of message that voters saw over and over and over again in the six weeks leading up to the 2008 election. It was two full weeks before the No on 8 campaign came up with any response to the message that allowing gay marriage meant the unthinkable would happen -- kids would be taught the shocking truth that gay people exist and sometimes they fall in love and want to get married. I know. Shocking. (Waiting this long was the single biggest mistake made by the No on 8 campaign, according to The Prop 8 Report, something I've been meaning to blog about since it was released last week, about a day before the trial decision came out. Worst timing ever.)

So for two weeks, many people were faced with the following set of facts, or perceived facts:

1. If I vote no on Prop 8, my children might be taught something I don't want them to know, and at a very young age!
2. This is backed up by a very official person with a law degree who is much smarter than I am, as well as by actual facts.
3. I don't know of any negative consequences if I vote yes on Prop 8.

There is only one rational conclusion that can be drawn from these three facts, or even from just #1 and #3: Vote yes on Prop 8! Even if you think the threat to children is unlikely or insignificant, there's no downside to voting yes. It's a win-win. Many of the voters I talk to as a volunteer with Vote For Equality (more on this in a moment) tell me that they're not sure how they feel about gay marriage, or they have no strong feelings one way or the other. Yes, I'm sure many of them are against gay marriage, and just don't want to say so to my face. But I believe that a significant number of them are truly undecided or indifferent. And yet, of the 13.7 million Californians who voted that day, less than two and a half percent were unable to decide, and didn't cast a vote one way or the other on Prop 8. If you don't see the harm in voting yes, why would you ever vote no, just to be safe, just in case those scary ads about harming children are true?

I bring this up for two reasons, First of all, as I said, we need to remember that the 7 million "yes" voters are not the enemy in this fight. Call me naive, but I think the majority of them aren't actually that offended by the idea of a couple of guys making a promise to each other, eating some cake, drinking some wine, signing a piece of paper, and one of them getting to use the other's health insurance. They were just misled and tricked into changing the definition of marriage. It's not their fault. Really.

Secondly, we can convince people that "fact" #3 is not true, because, of course, it's not. Yes, we can rebut the other two facts as well, but if we can show people what marriage means to actual real-life gay and lesbian Californians and their families, then we can win next time. This is one of the central arguments made by the plaintiffs in the prop 8 trial: By denying marriage to a couple, you are sending them a clear message that their relationship is inferior to other people's relationships.

That is what I've been doing with Vote For Equality for the last few months: Having open, honest conversations with voters, both on the phone, and at their front door, explaining to them why I believe we ought to extend marriage benefits--not the separate but equal classification of "domestic partners", but marriage--to all committed long-term relationships. More importantly, Vote For Equality has devoted itself to something we almost never did during the No on 8 campaign: listening to the voters and finding out what their concerns are. Check it out!



We won't always change someone's mind, like Jay did in this video, but with every conversation we have, we'll find out more about that person -- their thoughts about this issue, any ideas they have that are factually incorrect, and any questions they have about same-sex marriage, that we might be able to answer for them. It's a lot of fun, and I believe that if we vote on this again, in California or elsewhere, and we win, it will be largely because of this kind of work. If you volunteered with the No on 8 campaign, and you were frustrated with how ineffective our tactics were, I promise you this is different. We've learned from our mistakes, and we're continuing to improve our approach.

(And if you were at any of the No on 8 actions, you know what's next -- The Ask)

One of the next major events coming up is a phonebank on August 24, where we have phone conversations much like the in-person conversation in that video you just watched. It also happens to be the day before my birthday, and seeing all of you, my huge following of blog readers (okay, so there are like four of you, but still), at the phonebank, would be a pretty awesome birthday present. I know it might seem scary to just call up a stranger and ask them how they feel about gay marriage, but once you get into it, you'd be surprised how much people are willing to talk about it.

If you have any friends or family who might someday want to marry a person of the same sex, please come to this phonebank, for them. I'm sure you know at least one, and if not, then come to this phonebank for me -- for my birthday. There might even be free food! And no using band as an excuse, TMB people. If you leave right after practice, you'll get there on time, even with traffic.

The details:
Vote For Equality voter persuasion phonebank
August 24th, 6:30pm-9:30pm
1125 N. McCadden Place,
Los Angeles, CA 90038

I want to conclude this blog post with a quote from an unlikely source. As they are a project of NOM, you can imagine I don't agree with much of what comes from the Ruth Institute, but they're 100% right about one thing, and it nicely sums up why the work Vote For Equality is doing is so important, and why we can't just sit around waiting for court decisions:

As with other issues, what will decide the “same-sex marriage” controversy in the long run are the attitudes that prevail in society at large, not this or that judicial decision, ballot measure, or piece of legislation.

P.S. I really think if you give it a chance, you'll enjoy this phonebank, or find other VFE actions that suit you better. But if you really don't want to do this, or can't make it on that day, or find that you have more spare money than spare time (hey, it's possible!), then you can also make a donation to Vote For Equality, and that would also make a huge difference. Thanks!

Prop 8 trial transcripts available!

I'm excited to tell you, my loyal readers, that full, official transcripts from the Prop 8 trial, which is currently underway, are available! If, like me, you were excited to watch the videos posted online each night, and disappointed when the Supreme Court of California disallowed the posting of those videos, this is a great way to read exactly what's happening in the courtroom. Several people who are present in the courtroom have been reporting on the proceedings, via blogs or Twitter, but now we can actually get the full transcripts and read them for ourselves. There will also be a video re-enactment posted any day now, based on these transcripts.

Here is the link to the transcripts. Thanks to Karen Ocamb for posting it on her blog, LGBT POV!

I'm only a little way through the first day so far, but I'll leave you with a quote from Ted Olson, attorney for the plaintiffs (which are the people opposed to Prop 8 which means they're in favor of same-sex marriage -- I know it can be confusing!) in his opening statements:

We wouldn't need a Constitution if we left everything to the political process, but if we left everything to the political process, the majority would always prevail, which is a great thing about democracy, but it's not so good if you are a minority or if you're a disfavored minority or you're new or you're different. And that's what happens here.

Prop 8 and violence against GLBT people

As with any major event, there's been a lot of traffic on Twitter this week because of Perry v. Schwarzenegger, better known as the Proposition 8 case. The supporters of Prop 8 (that's the people who are against same-sex marriage) asked the court not to broadcast the proceedings, or even make them available on YouTube, because they feared it would create a "media circus" (though I'm not sure the mainstream media spending more time on this issue is really a bad thing) and more importantly, that their witnesses might be intimidated or threatened by people who recognized them from the video of the court's proceedings. Most people seem to believe this is only an excuse, and that the real reason they don't want cameras is that they don't want the general public to hear the arguments for SSM expressed eloquently and carefully by the very intelligent team representing the plaintiffs and the pro-SSM witnesses they've called to the stand.

However--and this is what a lot of the people on the pro-gay side don't seem to want to admit--supporters of Prop 8 were intimidated and harassed right after Prop 8 passed. I remember seeing pictures of a Mormon church in Los Angeles being vandalized, and thinking that whoever did that, acting out of anger and desperation, was setting us way back. There were huge crowds of people in the streets that Wednesday night, and while I'm sure the huge majority of them were peaceful, there were lots of acts of violence and harassment not just against the people who put prop 8 on the ballot and ran its campaign, but against the individual citizens that voted for it. If that's what happens to individual voters, imagine what could happen to someone trying to defend Prop 8 in federal court.

My point is not to encourage groups like Protect Marriage to continue playing the victim (they do plenty of that without my help). And I hope it goes without saying that I don't mean to encourage anyone to commit acts of violence, vandalism, harassment, etc. against anyone. But it's conceivable that some witnesses really did have legitimate fears about cameras in the courtroom.

The reason I bring this up is that there's a very popular trend on Twitter tonight of posting videos like this describing hate crimes that have been committed against gay people. I guess the implication is that laws like Prop 8 encourage hate crimes, or at least encourage the kind of thinking that occasionally leads some people to commit hate crimes. I tweeted "Not liking all the RTing of this video http://bit.ly/6hI1oh Do people think homophobia / hate crime will disappear if we strike down #prop8?" To expand on that a little, if this case eventually goes in our favor, we'll never hear the end of it from the anti-gay-marriage crowd about "activist judges" who are "overriding the will of the people" and so on. Eventually, we would like broad societal recognition that gay relationships are equal to straight ones, not just government recognition. I worry that when we're posting these videos, people will say that we're equating everyone who is for Prop 8 with anyone who's ever killed a gay person. If we ever want people like Protect Marriage and NOM to accept gay marriage, we need to stop thinking of them as the enemy and start thinking of them as someone who is wrong but well-intentioned. That means not implying they're responsible for the occurrence of hate crimes.

Twitter user @california411 then said to me: "@tbreisacher No read the SCOTUS ruling- the US Supreme court is protecting the perpetrators of violence towards GLBT's" thus confirming my worry. You might say that attitudes like those of the Prop 8 supporters are related to the attitudes that lead to hate crimes. But that hardly means that SCOTUS was directly protecting the perpetrators of violence.

Someone named @nutrioso reacted to the videos more or less exactly the way I expected the anti-gay-marriage side would react: "Hmmm...looks like the lefties are displaying their penchant for civil discourse by swamping Twitter with irrelevant propaganda. #prop8" Basically, no one made it clear, at least not to this person, what the connection was between hate crimes and Prop 8.

I guess the point I'm really making here is that if you're going to post something about the GLBT community being victimized, in a Prop 8 discussion, it would be wise to show the connection between that victimization and Prop 8, as clearly and carefully as you can. And remember, the "other side" is not your enemy -- they are just someone who doesn't yet understand why marriage is so important to GLBT people. In the event that we have to fight this issue (or another GLBT issue -- yes folks, gay people do care about things other than getting married!) at the ballot box, we need every vote we can get. Out of the millions who voted to take marriage rights away from us, most of them did so with very good intentions and were simply misguided. Let's help those who are willing to listen to see our side of the story.

USC Ally Discussion: Pro-Gay Marriage and Anti-Homophobia Intervention Strategies

I went to this event today. Here's the full description:

Ally Discussion: Pro-Gay Marriage and Anti-Homophobia Intervention Strategies
Featuring Jade Agua, Assistant Director for Asian Pacific American Student Services and Rev. Jim Burklo, Associate Dean for Religious Life
12- 1 pm
WPH 403
On the day the California Supreme court begins to hear arguments about Propostion 8, USC Allies will learn intervention strategies on how to combat homophobia and also advocate for marriage equality. Some topics to be discussed how to use religion in favor of gay marriage and how to start these conversations with our friends and family.

Basically we just talked about the different anti-gay arguments that tend to come up a lot, particularly those that were used during the prop 8 campaign, and the best ways to combat them. I took some notes along the way, so I just wanted to post some scattered thoughts and good quotes.

• The first thing Jim talked about was how his own homophobia was cured over the course of about 20 minutes, as a result of a close friend coming out to him. It's important to represent ourselves and the gay community as real people so that people can't think of us as "those people up in the Castro"--we're just people like everyone else. Later on, someone mentioned that people associate homosexual couples with sex. They see gay families as an environment where innocent children are surrounded by sex all the time. Seems to me, the solution is probably to make gays seem like ordinary people.
  
• When he was growing up, gay rights was a nonissue, in the sense that it wasn't something people thought about or talked about at all. Sometime soon, it will be a nonissue, in that nearly everyone will just agree that same-sex marriage is okay.
• He believes that the people and the churches will lead this movement. (Obviously not all churches, but some of the more "progressive" ones.) Then the law will follow. This goes against the feeling I had recently, "There's no point in us fighting much more right now. It's the court's move at this point." That was largely an excuse I made to myself anyway, because I was sick of doing campaign work.
• Jim moved on to talking about the Bible. The type of same-sex relationships we're talking about (committed, monogamous) are never mentioned in the Bible. Jesus himself didn't mention homosexuality at all. He does, however, have something to say about divorce. In any case, progressive Christians are not required to believe everything the Bible says.
• Jim and Jade did a little role-play, Jade playing a yes-on-8 voter who is uncomfortable going against the Catholic Church. Jim reminds her that even the Catholic church admits that you must listen to your conscience--the voice of God within you--when it is in conflict with the Church.
• He also emphasizes religious freedom. No one wants there to be an official religion of the state. One of the students in attendance (who was half of an adorable gay couple) points out that this argument must be approached very carefully, because the yes voters want their children to be "free from having the beliefs of others forced upon them." A great point about that: Teaching kids about something is not the same as teaching them that it is good or they should do it.
  
• There are a lot of sins in Leviticus that no one would ever seriously suggest we legislate against. I didn't catch the title, but there's a book about someone who tried to follow Leviticus literally for one year. Supposed to be very funny.
• More on the Bible: St. Paul condemns homosexual relationships. But he also condemns heterosexual relationships, advises everyone not to have sex at all, unless absolutely necessary. He's also completely opposed to marriage and family life. (If I understood correctly, reproduction isn't necessary because the second coming of Jesus is only a few years away.)
  
• The slippery slope argument: If we let gays get married, how do we know this won't open the door to pedophilia, incest, etc. The key is to point out that we're talking about consenting adults. Children and animals are not in that category. Also, remind people that those are completely separate, unrelated issues.
  
• Jade: "The traditional family is a myth. Somebody made it up in the 50's and they've been promoting it on TV ever since."
• This is important: According to some study, people don't vote for rational reasons. Their votes are usually based on emotional reasons. This of course goes back to the common complaint that the no on 8 campaign should have used actual images of gay couples. But with that in mind, what are the appeals to emotion that we can make? The suicide rate among GLBT kids is still relatively high. Not that we can change that overnight, but the way the government/society treats them might have something to do with it.
• http://www.soulforce.org/ is a resource for gay Christians. Jim described it as "PFLAG for evangelicals"
• Rick Warren is slowly beginning to change his stance. He's removed all the anti-gay language from his website and invited Melissa Etheridge to speak at his church. This was news to me!
• I think the most annoying argument I hear is that prop 8 is the "will of the people." Democracy is not the same as majority rule. There's a reason we have courts and a Constitution.
• Jade recommends talking to the yes voters you know, and who may be persuadable, not worrying about the far "right wing" people.
  

If you have friends who voted yes, and you probably do, talk to them. It's not easy, but it's necessary. No matter what happens 90 days from now, we should continue to fight, and dispell the myths from the campaign that many people still believe.

"The politics of division"

I just got an email from Equality California, one of the big gay-rights groups in California. I'm getting increasingly frustrated with them, and the other groups that fought against prop 8 this year. The latest scandal is that Barack Obama has asked Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration, and this has gotten the gay community into one of their big hissy fits, because he was a vocal proponent of proposition 8.

The email is actually from Geoff Kors, the director of EQCA, who apparently was invited to attend Obama's inauguration...

It is extremely disappointing and hurtful that President-elect Obama has chosen California Rev. Rick Warren, who actively supported Prop 8 and the elimination of existing civil rights for LGBT Californians, to give the invocation at his inauguration.

Accordingly, I have decided to decline the invitation to attend the inauguration as I cannot be part of a celebration that highlights and gives voice to someone who advocated repealing rights from me and millions of other Californians.

I was looking forward to hearing a speech by the new President about his vision of a new America and an end to the politics of division where one group is pitted against another.

I can't say that I'm particularly happy with Obama's choice, but I would definitely call this an overreaction, which represents my biggest problem with the gay-rights movement right now. People seem to be absolutely unable to see that just because someone disagrees with us, doesn't mean they hate us. I'm sure the accusations against Warren have some truth to them, and I'm sure if I did some research, I could find several things he's said which are extremely offensive to the gay community, and are probably flat-out lies. But if we want to end "the politics of division," how do we do it? Refuse to attend an event where someone who disagrees with us is going to speak? Accuse our opponents of "actively working to divide Americans"?

Obama and Biden were both on our side on the issue of prop 8. Let's not forget how meaningful that is. I doubt any politician could afford to oppose prop 22, and that was only 8 years ago. Now Obama is trying to demonstrate that he understands where the other side was coming from. He's trying to make those opposed to same-sex marriage feel like Obama is not their enemy. As hard as it is to hear, the people who are against same-sex marriage are people too. They're not stupid, or hateful, they just have differing opinions. And by the way, they also represent some 52% of California voters. The only way they're going to go away is if we can convince them to change their minds. For many people, this may impossible. Rick Warren may be one such person. But for the director of one of the biggest gay rights groups in the state to make a refusal like this... to me, it just seems like a huge step in the wrong direction.

Here's my prediction. Warren's invocation will include something like, "Let us unite as Americans" or "Let us put aside our differences, as we welcome a new era in American politics" or something like that, urging Americans to come together. That clip will be posted on youtube, and GLBT people will post the link over and over on their blogs, facebooks, etc., with comments like "Oh, how ironic. He wants us to be united, after he used his church to divide us," followed by some kind of insulting, divisive comment about Warren, his church, or Christianity in general.

Daily Trojan: "Pro-gay rights and pro-proposition 8"

In today's Daily Trojan, Kartik Sreepada, a student who voted yes on 8 tries to explain why. I recommend you read the whole thing, but I want to address some of the main points. First, though, I want to stress again that I fully respect the views of nearly everyone who voted yes on 8, because I know they did so for genuinely good reasons. I think they made the wrong choice, of course, but I do not want to label them as bigots or imply that they think of me as a second class citizen or any such thing. Anyway, here we go:

I recalled the succinct words of Vice President-elect Joe Biden during the vice presidential debate.

“Barack Obama nor I support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage... That is basically the decision to be able to be left to faiths and people who practice their faiths,” he said.

First, by voting yes on 8, you redefined marriage. Admittedly, the existing definition had only been in place for a few months, but by voting yes, you are taking a stand on the issue and redefining marriage. I would also like to point out that Obama and Biden both supported NO on 8. (Biden: "If I lived in California, I'd clearly vote against prop 8. ... I think it's regressive, I think it's unfair."; Obama: When you start playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that's not what America's about."

I think there is a misunderstanding going on here. Civil marriage--marriage as recognized by the state of California--is not a religious institution. A couple may be both legally married and married in a religious ceremony, but the two do not have to go together. The CA Supreme Court decision in May made it very clear that the ruling only affected civil marriage. It had no effect on the marriages of any individual church, just as a change in any church's definition of marriage would have no effect on civil marriages. Of course the official definition of marriage as recognized by any particular church is up to the leadership of that church. There is no reason this should be the same as the definition the state offers, and of course it's not the same in many cases.

I truly do not understand how allowing same-sex couples to marry violates separation of church and state. The only explanation I can think of is that Sreepada seriously misunderstood the way our state handled same-sex marriages between June and November this year. Going on:

While the California Supreme Court’s acceptance of gay marriage appeared to grant complete equality to gays, it undemocratically undermined another pillar of our Constitution: the separation of church and state. The decision could have led to a dangerous rift between religious institutions and our government, possibly putting patriots at odds with the religiously faithful.

First of all, there seems to be a very common sentiment that any time a court overturns an existing law, it is undemocratic, simply because that law itself was created through democratic means (either a legislature, or a ballot measure). The foundation of our government is "by the people, for the people" but it is also a system of checks and balances. And a very important part of that is the ability for courts to rule that a law is unconstitutional. You may disagree with their decision, but striking down laws is part of their job--it's not unconstitutional for them to do it.

But to address the real point being made, I fail to see how the decision undermined the separation of church and state. I can only imagine that this view resulted from a misunderstanding of what allowing same-sex couples to marry (again, I'm talking about civil marriage, not marriage in the eyes of any specific religion) did and didn't do. It did indeed create a "rift" (to put it nicely) between several groups and individuals, as did prop 8 being on the ballot, as did its passage. I don't see how that makes it wrong or right. It just means this is a controversial issue.

After this, Sreepada tries to elaborate on how same-sex marriage undermines the separation of church and state. There is an argument about religious leaders being "forced to act against their faiths," which did not happen during the period when same-sex marriage was legal here, and would have continued not to happen, regardless of the outcome of prop 8. Then it is claimed that marriage is "not a legal concept." Certainly, religious marriage is probably older than civil marriage, but then the idea of trading goods for money has existed much longer than any California laws regulating businesses. Does that mean that a business is not a legal concept? No, it just means that it may have different meanings in different contexts. And one of those is a legal definition. Marriage is most certainly a legal concept.

In time, maybe the Supreme Court will declare the term “marriage” unconstitutional. When that moment comes, it will be a victory not just for equality, but the separation between church and state.

Perhaps this sheds some light on what was really meant. It's not that marriage isn't a legal concept, but rather that it shouldn't be one. That is, it is a religious concept which the government has become involved in, so its become a legal concept. Maybe it would be better left to the churches, and the government should just stay out of it. While the idea of eliminating civil marriage altogether is a bit radical, it would certainly be equal. All couples would have the same rights under the law.

Basically, this person seems simply misled or misinformed. If you think you understood him better than I did, please tell me.

Finally, an update

Since the last time I posted anything of substance:

* I turned 21. That went pretty much how it should have gone.
* Classes have started again. I have two Physics classes, both of which started off kinda slowish, one much more than the other, but are now starting to become legitimately challenging and fun.
* I'm an SI Leader for Physics 152. I don't think I'm doing so well with that, but it's hard to know. I think I'm slowly improving.
* I've been working hard on the no on 8 campaign, which now has a small but mighty corps of volunteers here at USC, with phonebanks two days a week.
* I did the USC Programming Contest again, but I didn't really prepare for it at all, like I did last year. Did very badly, but it was also a tougher contest than the last one. And we all got t-shirts!
* I've agreed to help Elizabeth with a journalism project that will require some programming. I'm not even sure how I want to do it. It's the kind of thing that would be web-based in real life but Javascript is meh and other web programming languages I don't know at all. So I'm going to see if I can build up a proof-of-concept in Python. I guess.

Next post will be something about prop 8 I think.