Austin, Texas

A few weeks back I took my first work-related trip of the year. My frequent flier status has dropped to Silver so I was only upgraded on one leg, but at least I'm still a Hilton Gold member, so I got free breakfast. Yay!

Anyway, it was nice to visit a warm place in early April. Today, April 23rd, it snowed a new more inches here in Minnesota. We expect rain in May, but hardly freezing temperatures. So .. Austin.

I have to admit this is a pretty nice city. One thing I tend to notice is how clean a city is, and this was a relatively clean one. While as spic and span as Dallas or Nashville, it far surpassed Chicago or New York or Los Angeles or San Francisco, where the garbage and litter blows around in the streets. In Austint he trash wasn't evident until I went for a run and got up close and personal with the parks and side streets.

And while on that run around Lady Bird Lake (a widening of the Colorado River) I encountered thousands of other runners participating in the Austin Capital 10k. I ran against on the flow, on a dirt trail next to the street they were running on. It was pretty thick with people for a couple miles; I didn't know it at the time, but they had 25,000 participants.

Austin is known for it's music, which my co-workers sought out. I found some good beer instead. The hotel bar had a belgian triple on tap, as well as a claimed Old Rasputin Imperial stout. I commented that it tasted more like an irish stout, and the bartender said something about getting the nitrous out of the lines. The next night I stopped in for that triple and she pointed out I was right ... there was Guinness in the tap lines from the previous keg.

I was only in Austin a few days for the COMMON conference and I didn't have a car or time to explore much more than that. Overall the city left a good impression on me, and knowing that it is at the eastern end of the Hill Country, I might consider coming through here on the motorcycle some day.

Gay Marriage

I apologize for not posting much, this little guy has been restricting my travel and keeping my hands full:

So anyway, this post is a little political. That's your warning to stop reading if you don't care.

I received the following postcard in the mail from some outfit called Minnesota for Marriage:

That group must think that there are some really stupid people out there. They imply that preventing gay marriage will prevent committed gay and lesbian couples from raising children.

They seem to think that a gay couple will say "gee, we can't get married, so let's not raise a child together."

Anyone who believes that has to be an idiot.


Restricting homosexuals from marriage or civil unions will not force them into heterosexual relationships just so they can raise children. They will raise the children anyway, without the benefit of a legal marriage or civil union.

In the real world the gay or lesbian couple will find a way to adopt, use a surrogate, or enroll friends to have children with/for them. They will raise the children together, whether or not they can call themselves "married" or if they can form a civil union.

I'm not suggesting that children don't benefit from a mom and a dad. A loving mother and father is ideal. But not all families are perfect; it's better to be a single mom than an abused wife. It's better to divorce and raise children jointly than to fake a loving marriage "for the children" (they'll either grow up with a wierd idea of what love is or lose respect for mom and dad). And it's better for gay/lesbian couples to establish a marriage or civil union than to raise their children in a socially-accepted but legally-ignored relationship.

It seems disallowing gay marriage would actually hurt children, by not recognizing the relationship of their parents. Just like marriage creates additional commitment and stability to traditional marriages, it does the same for gay marriage, and that's to the children's benefits.

If the goal of "Minnesota for Marriage" is to ensure every child has a mom and dad, then they should be advocating for making single parenthood illegal. That is FAR more common than gay marriage will ever be.

I am not going to counter all the arguments this group (and other's) make against gay marriage. I just wanted to point out how stupid this postcard is.

To date I have not seen a single worthwhile argument for why marriage should be restricted to a man and a woman. It's not even consistent with Republican values of smaller government and increased personal freedoms. The only argument it seems to revert to is "I think God hates gays, and I like God, so I'm going to hate gays too". There is simply no coherent justification for limiting marriage to a man and a woman.

I have many conservative and/or republican friends. With one or two exceptions, none of them believe that it is the government's role to decide whether two committed adults should be able to enter a legally-recognized monogamous relationship, and is one of the three issues which prevents me calling myself a republican (the others are their refusal to differentiate science from political opinion, i.e. calling creationism "science" and denying climate change, and their inability to handle the budget any better than the democrats).

Enough ranting, I've lost enough sleep on this issue already. When the hell is spring going to arrive anyway?