New York Governor Announces Gay Marriage Bill, Washington State Extends Same-Sex Rights, Alberta Government Abhors Transgendered, Tea Bagging Blowout

New York Governor David A. Paterson, as promised, introduced legislation Thursday morning that if passed will legalize same-sex marriage in the Empire State, and he made the announcement according to all reports with great eloquence and a kind of political poetry, drawing an analogy between the exclusion of gay men and women from political and social equality and the struggle by the LGBT community to attain equal right to that of the African-American civil rights and the Suffragette movement of the early 19th Century. Governor Paterson is expected to assume a larger role in the gathering of votes needed to pass the bill, aided in part by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who spoke at length about the state having no right to decide who and who can not marry, adding that it was “not the state’s place to define marriage in a way that excludes a segment of the population from the legal benefits associated with marriage.”

The Washington State Legislature Wednesday passed into law a bill that expands the rights and privileges of same-sex domestic partners, now afforded gay couples in the state all the benefits and rights enjoyed by married heterosexuals, including employment and labor rights, as well as access to health benefits and pensions.

The Alberta Government last week announced it was eliminating access to gender reassignment surgery from the province’s health care coverage – as cost cutting measure, it said, as the Premier Ed Stelmach led Conservatives posted a deficit for the first time in over thirty years. Wednesday, twelve transgendered individuals filed human rights complaints in protest. Health Minister Ron Liepert late Tuesday evening said the province will honor forty-eight gender reassignment candidates already preparing for surgery, but that gesture seemed more like an obvious political calculation meant to distract attention from what the government intends to do.

Yesterday, tax day in the United States, was also a day of protest by a coalition consisting mostly of conspiracy theorists, racists, and right-wing extremists demonstrating President Barack Obama’s purported raising of taxes (which is in fact a fallacy), the day given the unfortunate name tea bagging day, with tea baggers from all over gathered to tea bag various government figures. It was grotesquely embarrassing to witness. Rachel Maddow, ably aided by Ana Marie Cox, however, explain it all or at least try to, with the intrepid Ana acting as roving reporter among the tea baggers themselves.

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