Because I miss her, I wish I’d learned of her work years earlier than I did, and because Molly Ivins’s insights in 2004 are still more relevant than what most commentators who are actually alive have to say.
(Video is about half prepared talk, half Q&A, and filled with both the brilliantly funny and the stunningly prescient. Her comments about how the internet will change the political system speak directly to the events of the 2008 election.)
So way back in 2005 the Texas legislature, in its alarmingly finite wisdom, passed an amendment to the state constitution to outlaw gay marriage. So eager were our elected representatives to protect us from the loathsome evil of same sex unions, it seems they may have overshot the mark somewhat and protected us from all marriage. The Democratic candidate for attorney general, Barbara Ann Radnofsky, has pointed out that a clause in the amendment seems to ban marriage entirely.
This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.
This sentence is now a part of the state’s constitution. So it is to be supposed that, for any existing marriages to be legal under Texas law, one must somehow make the argument that traditional marriage is neither similar nor identical to itself.
How I dearly wish Molly Ivins was around for this one.
EDITED TO ADD: For a sense of who Molly Ivins was, and for how absurd things sometimes get on the floor of the Texas House of Representatives, I recommend this nine minute excerpt from the documentary Dildo Diaries about the bizarre doublethink nonsense that underlies our state’s sex toy laws. Which actually seem comparatively sane in light of this marriage thing. (Probably NSFW.)