California’s Proposition 8 states thus:

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

Something is very wrong with this proposition, and not for reasons you might expect. The biggest issue I see with far-reaching legal ramifications is that Prop 8 fails to define “man” and “woman.” Any number of potential  cases could pose challenges to this amendment and raise interesting legal questions for “traditional” marriages in California:

1. Two women want to marry; one whose chromsomes are XX and the other whose chromosomes are XXy. The woman with XXy chromosomes, it could be argued, is genetically male, and legally a “man.”
2. A woman undergoes sexual reassignment surgery, making the transition to life as a man, and wants to marry a “natural-born” woman—this has already happened in Oregon with the famous pregnant man Thomas Beatie. Would this be legally allowed in California?
3. What if this same female–male transgendered person instead wanted to marry a man? How would California respond under the new amendment?
4. What if one or both of any two betrothed people were born intersex? How would California deal?

I tossed this idea around with some of the faculty at Northeastern University School of Law years back when other bans were being proposed: nobody had heard of any such precedent and it was an interesting line of argument. If I were the lawyer of a California couple looking to get hitched, I would mount a challenge of this sort.

Should any such challenge make it into the courts and prompt a decision that defines “man” or “woman,” that decision would alter the state of marriage in California … for everyone. Marriage could blow wide open with simple affidavits of gender, or cinch down with required genetic testing for chromosomes.

What could the “tajous challenge” mean for the future of sex, gender and marriage? Give me your comments!

This is a truly amazing, heartfelt public statement. This guy was clearly struggling with some deeply conflicting emotions in making the decision he made. 

I recommend that anyone who’s still feeling that politics has degenerated into a series of cold, calculated power moves and perpetual campaigning (this can’t be a good move for his re-election outlook in conservative SD) should watch this clip and be reminded that it’s not all that way.

San Diego Mayor Stands Up For Marriage Equality

Corporations who play this game of economic musical chairs are in for a rude awakening – because the music just stopped. 

This, a pithy line from Umair Haque’s take on the world financial crisis happening right now, sums it up. To put a finer point on it, he says this:

the macro crisis isn’t really a financial crisis, an economic crisis, a liquidity crisis, or a solvency crisis. It’s an institutional crisis: the economic institutions of capitalism are in shock.

Haque uses Starbucks as an ongoing example of the wrong way to proceed, as well as the right opportunities for re-forming the economy of the future.

And in the comments, something from Ethan Bauley  really struck a chord with me:

Design is everything. MBA should be renamed MBD: Master of Business Design. Holistic business design that balances all disciplines is the future of value creation.

This concept isn’t new. BusinessWeek named Bainbridge Graduate Institute—with their MBA in Sustainable Business—among the top design schools in the world.

Read more of Haque’s article: Why Traditional Recession Tactics Are Doomed To Fail This Time »

Bainbridge Graduate Institute + MBA in Sustainable Business »

I’m shocked by this, but not surprised. If you are in Colorado, you have exactly till the end of Monday to make sure you’re properly registered to vote. Even if you think you’re fine, double check your Colorado voter registration by clicking here. 

Read more about the travesty in action here »

—UPDATE 10/8/2008—

Hallelujah! The New York Times’ Ian Urbina reported this on the saga:

Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times.

States’ Actions to Block Voters Appear Illegal on New York Times » 

—UPDATE 10/10/2008—

Double huzzah! More from Ian Urbina of the New York Times:

Colorado election officials said Thursday that they would review the way the state removed voters from the rolls and in the meantime encouraged voters to check their registration information to ensure its accuracy. … 

The announcement came in response to an article in The New York Times describing how election officials in Colorado and eight other states were screening voter registration applications or removing people from the voter rolls in ways that seemed to violate federal law.

Colorado to Review How It Purges Voters’ Names »

DJ Shissla Spins

San Francisco DJ Jim “Shissla” Shissler has a new website up at Shissla.com. A longtime collaborator with pARTicipate and a host of other art events, he’s also a kickass underground DJ. You can find some of Shissla’s music mixes for download here.

The contents of the Denver Community Museum are generated entirely by submissions from the local community. Exhibitions will change on a monthly basis. One month before an exhibition begins, an open call for participation is announced in the form of a Community Challenge, describing a particular creative project.

And … they have Pecha Kucha Night! If you haven’t heard of pecha kucha, learn it, know it.

Denver’s art scene is in that wonderful stage of nascency, like when babies are cute and only full of potential.

City-data.com