Gay Parents / Strangers & Custody Rights

Aside from the acceptance of a perverse lifestyle as normal and the granting of custody of children to those who promote and engage in perversion, the recent court rulings on 'equal protection' for homosexuals opens a gaping hole in the structure of the family. Not simply in a moralistic conceptual way, but in a tangible way that will undoubtedly show itself soon.

The Mercury News writes: "The rulings strengthened the custody rights of non-biological parents in same-sex unions and clarified the uncertain legal landscape for thousands of gay couples across California who decide to have children." What the rulings actually do is to grant the possibility of custody rights to individuals who have no legal marital or even domestic-partner connection to the children. Again from the Mercury News:

"Now, the high court has extended that principle to custody feuds like one unfolding in Santa Clara County for Linda Hulberg, a Morgan Hill woman who has been seeking parental rights for two years from her former partner. Hulberg was in a three-year relationship with a woman who bore twin boys, and acted as a co-parent until their 2003 breakup, according to court papers." (Gay parents gain key custody rights, Howard Mintz, San Jose Mercury News, Aug. 23, 2005)

Consider what's being said here: a woman who was friends with another woman for three years and acted as a "co-parent" during those three years can have access and even custody of the woman's biological children. The article of course quotes the 'conservative' viewpoint as: "By saying that children can have two moms, the court has undermined the family." While true, it misses the larger picture that basically anyone who has lived in one's house or even occasionally taken care of another's children can have potential custody rights of those children. Consider the implications...

Can the teenage babysitter who has come to one's home for the past five years, thus acting as a 'co-parent' (definition questionable of course), claim custody rights after her/his termination? Can the nanny who has fed, watched over and taken care of one's children claim custody rights over them? If a three-year relationship without any legal status can grant one rights to custody over one's kids, how can the state, who feeds, teaches, cares for and raises one's children, five days a week, for more than a decade through the public school system not qualify for custody?

Another ruling "gives gay partners the same protections as married couples in terms of how they are treated by businesses." This will of course play into the state's anti-discrimination policies and thus again put pressure on churches and businesses that believe homosexuality to be perversion and incompatible with employment...

Email as a blogging tool...

For those who use Blogger as their blogging system, I highly recommend using Outlook or some other HTML-capable email system to blog. Aside from being easy as sending an email, it also makes placing images and the like a breeze. To enable this feature in Blogger, go to Blogger and log-in, then go to the Settings tab and select "Email", choose a "mail-to-blogger address" and then start blogging!

This post and the previous one were both done in this manner.

Konfabulator

A while ago I downloaded this program called "Konfabulator" which promised to add some of the functionality of the Mac OS to Windows XP. The program was not free, at the time, and there weren't man 'widgets' (the mini-aps built for Konfabulator) that interested me.

Things have changed. Konfabulator was bought recently by Yahoo! and now version 2 is free, plus there are many wonderful widgets available.

To the left is an example of my current desktop with various widgets. You can see a calendar widget, weather, miniMail, system monitors etc.

The one caveat to these cool aps is... they all use memory and each one shows up as "konfabulator.exe" in your task manager. This makes it hard to determine which to close if one is acting wonky.

Other than that, they don't take up a lot of memory, and are quite useful and attractive.

Micah as a Lego
Here's a cool link to the 'minimizer' which you can use to define your self as a lego person.

Now, as to my prolonged absence from the IRC world... I'm on a forced break because of misuse. Don't be like me!