Stolen

I have stolen Athenae's complete post. I hope the bigots in Ashland County, WI, are proud of themselves.

Immoral Values

All you've done is deny people health insurance.

Its two largest cities, Dane County and six school and technical college districts offer health insurance and family leave benefits for domestic partners, according to Action Wisconsin, a gay rights group.

"One of the first things we'll see is a challenge to domestic partner benefits offered by public employers in this state," said Josh Freker, a spokesman for Fair Wisconsin, which opposed the amendment.

The University of Wisconsin System, which has sought domestic partner benefits to help it recruit and retain employees, may have also been dealt a setback in its effort to secure them from lawmakers, Freker said.

Madison City Attorney Michael May concluded in a legal analysis last year that "a number of benefits that flow to unmarried domestic partners" under city policies likely would be declared void if the amendment passed. The legal counsel for Dane County reached a similar conclusion.

And while we're on the topic, honest to fucking God. Way to make my entire home state look like a bunch of stupid hicks. From a purely selfish straight-girl standpoint, way to make it that much harder for me to defend you to my Illinois friends who already think you're a bunch of backwoods, cheese-eating, deer-shooting, pelt-wearing drunks too dumb to live somewhere sensible where it doesn't snow two feet in October. Way to help me out there. Crackheads. If I didn't love you so much, if you weren't assuredly my people and home to everything I really love, I'd pull an Atrios and declare a boycott.

But there's too much about you to admire for that:

We transformed this so-called wedge issue into an issue that united Wisconsinites of all backrounds. We have made equality and fairness for gay Wisconsinites something that is embraced by many organizations, leaders, and average citizens.

Thank you to the thousands of gay and lesbian people who did not ask for this fight, who did not want to become poster children. You chose to interrupt your lives so that one day our children will know a world without discrimination.

You bravely stepped up to put your lives on display.

Thank you to all of you who like me aren’t gay but made this issue your own. Thousands of you refused to stand by silently while your friends, families, and citizens we will never meet were attacked with this amendment.

Together, all of us stood shoulder to shoulder—grandmothers, farmers, ministers, school teachers, and many, many more of us from all walks of life.

And although we didn’t win we ran a historic effort that changed Wisconsin.

You know what, bigots? You don't get to punish loving people just to be mean, just because it makes you feel better to kick somebody else in the face. You don't get to feel better doing that. You don't get that free pass. You know what you just did? You riled up a whole lot of people, and those people work, and when you look at what we did with Congress in just about six months, you think really hard about what we're going to do to your entire "family values" smokescreen in the next two years. You think really hard about who you want to be on that morning when it all comes crashing down. Because we already know who we want to be.

Donate to make more cheeseheads less prejudiced.

A.

UPDATE: Donate here.