The California supreme court has ruled that homosexual couples have the constitutional right to marry

In a landmark ruling, California yesterday became the second US state, after Massachussetts, to permit full gay marriage. In doing so, it placed discrimination on the grounds of sexuality on the same level as that of racial discrimination.

The court came to its decision on a four to three verdict, striking down two state laws that had limited marriages to unions between a man and a woman. Other state high courts, including New Jersey, New York and Washington have considered the question of same-sex marriage in recent years, but have stopped short of striking down state laws forbidding it. The Connecticut Supreme Court is expected to give a ruling shortly shortly.

Chief Justice Ronald M George, in a statement for the majority, said that given the historic, cultural, symbolic and constitutional significance of marriage, the state could not limit its availability to opposite-sex couples.

“In view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples,” said the judge.

Lawyers for the state (opposing gay marriage) identified two interests to justify reserving the term ‘marriage’ for heterosexual unions — tradition and the will of the majority but Chief Justice George said neither was sufficient. “As an historical matter,” he said, “in this state marriage has always been restricted to a union between a man and a woman. But tradition alone does not justify the denial of a fundamental constitutional right.”

Bans on interracial marriage, he pointed out, were also sanctioned by the state for many years and California was the first state to overturn them, in the 1948 Perez vs Sharp ruling.

About 110,000 same-sex couples live in California and although laws exist to give gay couples rights similar to marriage, most felt that these were still discriminatory.

Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who opposes gay marriage, has stated that he respects the ruling and does not support a constitutional amendment to overturn it.

Neil Giuliano, president of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, stated: “Today’s ruling affirms that committed couples, gay and straight, should not be denied the duties, obligations and protections of marriage. This decision is a vital affirmation to countless California couples - straight and gay - who want to make, and have made, a lifelong commitment to take care of and be responsible for each other.”

If all goes well, this means gay couples should be able to marry in about a month. Among those to benefit from the new ruling will be high-profile couple Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi. DeGeneres announced their intention to marry during taping of her talkshow yesterday, which will be aired today.

Europe lags behind California, with only Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain permitting same-sex marriage. It is also permitted in Canada and South Africa.

Writer Nuala O’Faolain died as she lived - independent to the last

One of Ireland’s best-loved writers, Nuala O’Faolain, 68, died on Saturday. She made a remarkable end.

Diagnosed with terminal cancer just eight weeks ago, she refused chemotherapy and instead embarked on a journey around Europe to say goodbye to her favourite pleasures.

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In the story of Elizabeth Fritzl, there are questions that people are reluctant to ask - or, at times, even to think about

Aside from Josef Fritzl’s lovely little trips to sex resorts in Thailand, and the fact that he bought sexy clothing and underwear while there for his ‘bit on the side’ (whom we now presume to have been his daughter), there are other issues.

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Josef Fritzl is now protesting about his portrayal in the media, saying his treatment of his offspring ‘could have been worse’

Astonishing to believe, but Josef Fritzl doesn’t think of himself as a bad guy. But then I dare say the same could be said of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and any number of Nazis, Colombian drug lords, Argentinian generals and serial rapists worldwide.

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So, Josef Fritzl’s lawyer is trying for an insanity plea, on the grounds that a man must be insane to wish to rape his daughter

I must admit, I don’t think that argument holds much water for me. I don’t think you need to be insane, you just need to be arrogant, without conscience or remorse - in a word, a psychopath.

In times past, he would probably have been called evil. As an atheist, I don’t much like using the word evil because of its religious connotations. After all, much behaviour that was considered evil in the past is now known to be due to mental instability, epilepsy, brain injury and the like. But my personal opinion is that Josef Fritzl knew exactly what he was doing, he just didn’t give a damn. That is not insanity.

His case seems radically different from that, for instance, of Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper. Sutcliffe was was a schizophrenic who heard voices that commanded him to kill and although he was tried as a sane man and convicted (on the grounds of pure vengeance, really) some months after his incarceration he was removed to the high security psychiatric hospital at Broadmoor, where he remains to this day.

However, there is no indication that Josef Fritzl suffers from the kind of delusions that plagued Sutcliffe. As far as I know, he does have fits or hear voices. His actions seem to imply cold, calculated cunning and intelligence. This is the hallmark of the psychopath or sociopath, that percentage of the population that lives among us, passing as normal human beings, but functioning on a different level, without conscience or guilt. Many leading criminals, including gangsters, are probably psychopaths, but there are also plenty in civilian life - some 1-4 per cent of the population - superficially charming, ambitious at work and often high achievers. They are also liars, act without remorse, shaft their co-workers, cheat on their wives and make other people’s lives a quiet misery.

Of course, I should acknowledge here that the definition of psychopathy is constantly changing, and that different nations, and even different US states, have different definitions of it. In the UK, it is defined as: “a persistent disorder or disability of mind (whether or not including significant impairment of intelligence) which results in abnormally aggressive or seriously irresponsible conduct on the part of the person concerned”. That sounds like a pretty good definition of Fritzl - aggressive enough to commit his crimes and intelligent enough to carry them out. Psychopathic personality traits include callousness, grandiosity and fearlessness, lack of empathy, superficial charm, and inflated self appraisal. These are also all pretty good definitions of Fritzl.

It will be interesting to see if his benighted lawyer can make this defence stick, but I very much doubt it. Meanwhile, his victims must try, piece by piece, to rebuild their shattered lives.

An article from BeliefNet came through to me the other day.

The author, Marianne Williamson, is an ex-minister, so she has beliefs that I don’t share. Nevertheless, we are clearly both trying to understand how you make your place in the world in the second half of your life as opposed to the first.

She has some very valuable things to say about spirituality and you can read the full article here.

Among them are that when you think to yourself that if only you were younger X or Y would be better, it’s an illusion.

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How must it feel to be Elizabeth Fritzl? How must it feel to be her mother?

In this nightmarish tale of abduction, rape and abuse in Austria, how does it feel to enter a cellar as a girl and leave as a middle-aged woman?

When Fritzl’s father pushed her into the basement, she was only 18 years old. It was 1986. Now she is 42 and emerges to a very different world.

All that time, she has spent in one tiny space, seeing no-one, never seeing daylight, being raped and beaten, giving birth to child after child - presumably with no pain relief or medical attention.

Aside from the fact that this should never have happened in a civilised society and the trauma she has suffered in being at the mercy of a psychopath, her father has stolen her life.

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The end of cheap clothing is nigh, and bloody good riddance, say I

The BBC is running a story today entitled ‘The end of cheap clothes is near‘.

It was obvious this was going to happen, as I prophesied a while ago. With a worldwide rise in food prices, not only will everyone from east to west have to curb their clothes-buying to stretch the family budget, land that is currently producing cotton will turn back to food production as the prices for food crops increase.

Every which way, clothing is going to cost more to produce. Even third and second-world workers have seen wage rises over the past few years (gee - I thought they were going to eat straw forever), fertiliser costs are rising, and as transport costs increase because of the oil crisis, clothing will cost more to ship from production site to retail outlet. That means the price increase will be loaded onto individual garments at retail level, so we will be able to buy fewer of them.

Getting on my puritan high horse here, I can’t help thinking that a bit of this could be a very good thing. (more…)

The so-called ‘recession’ is really beginning to bite, and there’s no clearer sign of it than my supermarket trolley

I did the second shop of the week yesterday, and frankly it was painful. Since we downshifted to France, money’s always been tight - not allowing much leeway for clothes, or books or holidays etc, but at least we’ve always been able to eat well. Now, with work fast disappearing into the ether and the strong Euro making our UK earnings sink to a pittance, we’re also being hit by the third whammy of food pricing.

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The French Government today passed a bill to make the promotion of anorexia in the media illegal

It’s a been some time in the making. In contrast to countries like the United States, obesity, although on the rise in France, is not a major problem compared with anorexia, which has been an issue here since the 1970s.

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