***
This short NY Times documentary tells the story of a
gay Mormon’s love affair while serving on a mission in Italy.
***
Monday, June 29, 2015
Saturday, June 27, 2015
Friday, June 26, 2015
US Supreme Court Finds Constitutional Right to Same Sex Marriage
***
When I came out 45 years ago,
such a ruling by United States Supreme Court was unthinkable. The progress made
by gay people in America
since Stonewall has been nothing short of astounding.
Gay Marriage Backers Win
Supreme Court Victory
WASHINGTON — In a long-sought
victory for the gay rights movement, the Supreme Court ruled on
Friday that the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex
marriage.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy
wrote the majority opinion in the 5 to 4 decision. He was joined by the court’s
four more liberal justices.
The decision, the culmination
of decades of litigation and activism, came against the backdrop of fast-moving
changes in public opinion, with polls indicating that most Americans now
approve of same-sex marriage.
Justice Kennedy said gay and
lesbian couples had a fundamental right to marry.
“No union is more profound
than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion,
sacrifice, and family,” he wrote. “In forming a marital union, two people
become something greater than once they were.”
“It would misunderstand these
men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage,” Justice Kennedy
said of the couples challenging state bans on same-sex marriage. “Their plea is
that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment
for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness,
excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal
dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”
Chief Justice John G. Roberts
Jr., in a dissent joined by Justice Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, said
the Constitution had nothing to say on the subject.
“If you are among the many
Americans — of whatever sexual orientation — who favor expanding same-sex
marriage, by all means celebrate today’s decision,” Chief Justice Roberts
wrote. “Celebrate the achievement of a desired goal. Celebrate the opportunity
for a new expression of commitment to a partner. Celebrate the availability of
new benefits. But do not celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with
it.”
In a second dissent, Justice
Scalia mocked Justice Kennedy’s soaring language.
“The opinion is couched in a
style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic,” Justice Scalia wrote
of his colleague’s work. “Of course the opinion’s showy profundities are often
profoundly incoherent.”
As Justice Kennedy finished
announcing his opinion, several attendees seated in the bar section of the
court’s gallery wiped away tears, while others grinned and exchanged embraces.
Justice John Paul Stevens,
who retired in 2010, was on hand for the decision and many of the justices’
clerks took seats in the chamber, which was nearly full as the ruling was
announced.
As in earlier civil rights
cases, the Supreme Court had moved cautiously and methodically, laying careful
judicial groundwork for a transformative decision.
As late as October, the
justices ducked the issue, refusing to hear appeals from rulings allowing
same-sex marriage in five states. That decision delivered a tacit victory for
gay rights, immediately expanding the number of states with same-sex marriage
to 24, along with the District of
Columbia, up from 19.
Largely as a consequence of
the Supreme Court’s decision not to act, the number of states allowing same-sex
marriage has since grown to 36, and more than 70 percent of
Americans live in places where gay couples can marry.
The court did not agree to
resolve the issue for the rest of the nation until January, in cases filed by gay and lesbian
couples in Kentucky, Michigan,
Ohio and Tennessee. The court heard extended arguments in April, and the justices
seemed sharply divided over what the Constitution has to say about same-sex
marriage.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs
said their clients had a fundamental right to marry and to equal protection,
adding that the bans they challenged demeaned their dignity, imposed countless
practical difficulties and inflicted particular harm on their children.
The Obama administration,
which had gradually come to embrace the cause of same-sex marriage, was
unequivocal in urging the justices to rule for the plaintiffs.
“Gay and lesbian people are
equal,” Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. said. “They deserve equal
protection of the laws, and they deserve it now.”
Lawyers for the four states
said their bans were justified by tradition and the distinctive characteristics
of opposite-sex unions. They said the question should be resolved
democratically, at the polls and in state legislatures, rather than by judges.
The Supreme Court had once
before agreed to hear a case arising from a constitutional challenge to a
same-sex marriage ban, California’s Proposition 8, in 2012 in Hollingsworth v. Perry. At the time, nine states
and the District of Columbia
allowed same-sex couples to marry.
But when the court’s ruling
arrived in June 2013, the justices ducked, with a majority saying the case was
not properly before them, and none of them expressing a view on the ultimate
question of whether the Constitution requires states to allow same-sex
marriage.
A second decision the same
day, in United States v. Windsor, provided the movement
for same-sex marriage with what turned out to be a powerful tailwind. The
decision struck down the part of the Defense of Marriage Act that barred
federal benefits for same-sex couples married in states that allowed such
unions.
The Windsor decision was based partly on
federalism grounds, with Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion stressing that
state decisions on how to treat marriages deserved respect. But lower courts
focused on other parts of his opinion, ones that emphasized the dignity of gay
relationships and the harm that families of gay couples suffered from bans on
same-sex marriage.
In a remarkable and largely
unbroken line of more than 40 decisions, state and federal courts relied on the
Windsor
decision to rule in favor of same-sex marriage.
***
Saturday, June 20, 2015
Why Your Cat Thinks You’re a Huge, Unpredictable Ape
***
Why Your Cat Thinks You’re a Huge, Unpredictable Ape
by Nick Stockton
Oct. 27, 2014
Shingles isn’t my condition;
he’s my cat. I love him like crazy, but he gets under my skin.
I’m not alone as a conflicted
cat fancier. Tony Buffington is a veterinarian at Ohio State University, and he recently told me many
cat owners are constantly frustrated by their feline companions. Even though we
feed them, clean up after them, and pet, hug, and hold them, Buffington says
that few of us know how to listen to our cats. This can make things
more frustrating for them than for us. That’s because no matter how much
we love them, cats are our captives, domesticated aliens with no way
of explaining their customs, or of interpreting ours.
Dr. Buffington (a great name
for your next kitten, by the way) sat down with me to explain how to
listen to cats. These aren’t just tricks to score more cuddle time, but
ways to create a more harmonious home that could improve your cat’s health. For
years, he’s been studying the root causes of interstitial cystitis,
a painful and chronic inflammation of feline bladder tissue. His research
indicates a stressful home environment may cause the condition, and perhaps
other chronic cat diseases as well. He believes the best cure is learning to
listen to your cat, giving him choices, and reducing the environmental factors
that trigger his stress response.
You are a huge, unpredictable ape
You hear
the unmistakable sound of claws on couch. You snap, shout, squirt water,
and maybe even throw a pillow. It’s all futile, because eventually he’s at it
again. Your cat isn’t ignoring you, Buffington says. He just doesn’t know
how to connect your negative reinforcement with his behavior. This is
because cats evolved as solitary hunters with little need for reading social
cues, especially those for behavior modification.
“How the hell is
your cat supposed to know that you’re yelling at him because you want him
to stop scratching the couch?” Buffington says. Without the cognitive ability
to connect your outburst to their scratching, cats see only chaotic aggression.
“To the cat, you’re this crazy primate who is attacking him for no
reason,” he says.
Instead of discouraging the
act, you become an object of fear. What’s more, your cat becomes frustrated,
and eventually stressed, because you constantly interrupt natural feline
activities like raking his claws or jumping on something high. “Cats get sick
when they want to express their natural behaviors and they can’t,” he said, and
will continue to do the thing when you aren’t around.
“The way to train a cat is
through their environment,” Buffington said. For example, put two-sided
tape on the corner of your couch, or tinfoil on the kitchen counter. Then, put
the now-more-attractive alternative nearby: A scratching post covered with
catnip, or the awesome cat tree you built from scavenged driftwood. When
your cat does the thing you want her do to, reward her with a treat,
or affection. “You let the house provide the negative reinforcement, while
you provide the positive reinforcement,” Buffington said.
Feline feng shui
In those few hours each day
where he isn’t sleeping, your cat is a little bundle of energy that wants
to move through your home as harmoniously as possible. But you’ve
disrupted his flow by placing the food dish next to the refrigerator, the
litter box by the dryer, and his favorite cardboard box alongside the sliding
glass door leading to the yard.
You might be deaf to the
fridge fan or the spin cycle. But Buffington says it sounds like a monster
growling at them while they eat or poop. Put the dish and the litter box in
quiet, calm places where kitty has an escape route if he feels threatened
(i.e., not in a closet).
Sights also can
be stressful. Cats are curious about other animals, but if there is no
visual barrier between the dogs, cats, goats, horses, or
alpacas outside, the cat will feel threatened. “Cats don’t understand
glass, but they do understand height,” Buffington says. Give your cat access to
high places, like a cat tree or bookshelf, where she can observe in peace.
Leave Fluffy’s tummy alone
Sights and sounds aren’t the
only things in your house that assault your cat’s senses. Humans are much more
touchy-feely than cats, and we sometimes find their fluffiness irresistible.
But cats, like us, want some say in how they’re handled. “Would you
appreciate it if someone was always picking you up, hugging you, rubbing you?”
Buffington says.
The best bet is to let Fluffy
guide the interaction. If she’s rubbing some part of her body against you,
she’s given you permission to pet that part of her.
Other feline behaviors are
tricky, because they appear to be an invitation for petting. The classic is
when Fluffy exposes her belly. When you go in for a rub, she bites and
scratches you. “Exposing her belly is not a trap the cat is setting,”
Buffington says. “The cat is biting you because they feel violated and
afraid.” A cat’s belly is its most vulnerable body part, and exposing it is the
cat letting you know she trusts you—not that she wants a belly rub.
That’s not the only place
that’s off limits. Have you ever been petting your cat and all of a sudden
she slinks off to the other side of the room, cowers behind something, and
stares at you?
“If your cat is acting weird,
then something probably triggered this behavior,” Buffington says. Perhaps you
kept petting the base of her tail, because she kept raising her butt. This
area is filled with nerves, and being pet there can be overstimulating,
much like being tickled is to us. Also, being cradled is not normal for cats.
If your cat is curled up in your lap, it’s not necessarily an invitation
to be picked up.
What’s that? Your cat is
totally fine with you picking her up, snuggling her, and rubbing
her angel-soft belly? That’s fine. Nobody’s jealous. Just stop
talking about it.
You want your cats to be friends more than they do
Shingles and I recently moved
into a house with two other cats, and my roommate and I have been trying for
months to get them to play. It hasn’t been going well. Time and again, we put
them in the living room and watch as mild curiosity turns into panic and
fighting.
Buffington says we’re
doing this all wrong. Start slow, he says, by rubbing each cat in
turn with the same dry towel to get them used to each others’ scent. Before
introducing them, make sure each cat has eaten, pooped, and received affection
from their respective owners. In other words, ensure they are comfortable. Once
the cats are together, let your cat know you have its back by giving it lots of
affection. Don’t pressure them to mingle, and make sure each has an
unimpeded escape route.
And if your cat isn’t feeling
the play date and decides to bail, let him go. Buffington says one of
our biggest misconceptions is that cats need to be around other cats.
In the wild, cats hunt alone, and they don’t share. Other cats aren’t
friends; they’re competition.
Your cat cares about you
Your cat is not as
indifferent about you as she may seem. She wants to bond, and the best way
to do so are with petting, food, and play. If your cat doesn’t like to
play, you might be doing it wrong. If you’re using a laser pointer, don’t wave
it like you’re at a rave. Move it at natural speeds and let the cat catch it
occasionally. The same rule applies with the feather-on-a-string toy.
Shingles used to cry
incessantly whenever I left for the day, and I worried that leaving him home
alone was making him neurotic. Buffington suggests I create little rituals for
coming and going. “Before you leave, you can call to the cat, give
him some affection and let him know you are saying good bye,”
Buffington says. And he says to have a similar ritual for coming home. “Some
married couples survive on less than an hour a day of contact. Your
relationship with your cat can survive on 10 minutes a day, as long as it’s
really quality,” Buffington says.
***
Sunday, May 10, 2015
Republican Presidential Candidate Marco Rubio’s Billionaire Benefactor
***
Billionaire Lifts Marco Rubio, Politically and
Personally
By MICHAEL BARBARO and STEVE EDER
MAY 9, 2015
MIAMI — One day in the State
Capitol in Tallahassee, Marco Rubio, the young speaker of
the House, strayed from the legislative proceedings to single out a lanky,
silver-haired man seated in the balcony: a billionaire auto dealer named Norman
Braman.
This man, Mr. Rubio said in
effusive remarks in 2008, was no ordinary billionaire, hoarding his cash or
using it to pursue selfish passions.
“He’s used it,” Mr. Rubio
said, “to enrich the lives of so many people whose names you will never know.”
As it turned out, one of the people enriched was Mr. Rubio himself.
As Mr. Rubio has ascended in
the ranks of Republican politics, Mr. Braman has emerged as a remarkable and
unique patron. He has bankrolled Mr. Rubio’s campaigns. He has financed Mr.
Rubio’s legislative agenda. And, at the same time, he has subsidized Mr.
Rubio’s personal finances, as the rising politician and his wife grappled with
heavy debt and big swings in their income.
Now, with Mr. Rubio vaulting
ahead of much of the Republican presidential field, Mr. Braman is poised to
play an even larger part and become Mr. Rubio’s single biggest campaign donor,
with an expected outlay of approximately $10 million for the senator’s pursuit
of the White House.
A detailed review of their
relationship shows that Mr. Braman, 82, has left few corners of Mr. Rubio’s
world untouched. He hired Mr. Rubio, then a Senate candidate, as a lawyer;
employed his wife to advise the Braman family’s philanthropic foundation; helped
cover the cost of Mr. Rubio’s salary as an instructor at a Miami college; and gave Mr. Rubio access to
his private plane.
The money has flowed both
ways. Mr. Rubio has steered taxpayer funds to Mr. Braman’s favored causes,
successfully pushing for an $80 million state grant to finance a
genomics center at a private university and securing $5 million for
cancer research at a Miami
institute for which Mr. Braman is a major donor.
Even in an era dominated by
super-wealthy donors, Mr. Braman stands out, given how integral he has been not
only to Mr. Rubio’s political aspirations but also to his personal finances.
Mr. Rubio, 43, is unabashed
in acknowledging the influence of Mr. Braman, a commanding and litigious figure
with so much clout in Miami
that he almost single-handedly recalled a sitting mayor.
In an interview, Mr. Rubio
described Mr. Braman as a father figure who had given him advice on everything
from what books to read to how to manage a staff. After Mr. Rubio’s father died
in 2010, Mr. Braman called every other day to check in.
Pressed on his financial ties
to Mr. Braman, Mr. Rubio said in an interview that he saw no ethical issue.
“What is the conflict?” he asked. “I don’t ever recall Norman Braman ever
asking for anything for himself.”
He acknowledged that Mr.
Braman had approached him about state aid for projects, such as funding for
cancer research, but said that he had supported the proposals on their merits.
The reliance on Mr. Braman is
likely to put a spotlight on the finances of Mr. Rubio, who ranks among the
least-wealthy candidates in the emerging Republican field. Mr. Rubio left the
Florida House of Representatives in 2008 with a net worth of $8,351, multiple
mortgages and $115,000 in student debt. In his latest financial disclosure
form, for 2013, he reported at least $450,000 in liabilities, including two
mortgages and a line of credit.
Mr. Braman and aides to Mr.
Rubio have declined to say how much personal financial assistance he has
provided to Mr. Rubio and his wife, directly or indirectly, but it appears to
total in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In a series of interviews at
his office in downtown Miami,
above showrooms of shiny BMWs and Rolls-Royces (he also sells Cadillacs, Audis
and Bugattis), Mr. Braman praised the Rubios. He recounted what he described as
“excellent service from them” over the years, and said he wanted nothing in
return for his financial help.
“I’m not going to be an
ambassador or anything like that,” he said.
Mr. Braman — a former owner of the Philadelphia Eagles; the
chairman of Art Basel, which stages art shows;
and a collector who owns works by Andy Warhol,
Alexander Calder and Picasso — emphasized that there were limits to the
friendship.
“I also have a yacht,” Mr.
Braman said, “that Senator Rubio has never seen.”
Mr. Braman has the manner of
a man accustomed to getting what he wants. He was vacationing in France one summer when the mayor of Miami — not the one he
had recalled from office — informed him that he would seek to raise taxes. Mr.
Braman hung up the phone, turned to his wife and declared: “Goodbye, I’m
heading back to Miami
to fight this.” He returned home and led a successful campaign to block the
increase.
“If you’re going to do
something, you do it all the way,” he said.
As early as 2008, Mr. Braman
made a bold prediction, captured in a video tribute to his friend: Mr. Rubio
would be the first Hispanic president of the United States. Seeing that through
in 2016, Mr. Braman said in one of the interviews, is “part of my legacy.”
The partnership began in the
early 2000s when a Miami
lawmaker introduced them. Mr. Braman, himself the son of immigrants, was
instantly drawn to the story of Mr. Rubio, a child of struggling Cuban
refugees. By 2004, Mr. Braman and his wife had donated $1,000 to Mr. Rubio’s
State House campaign, the first of many contributions.
Mr. Rubio quickly emerged as
a dogged champion of Mr. Braman’s most cherished cause: state funding for a Miami
cancer institute that bears the Braman family name.
Florida’s governor, Jeb Bush, had vetoed the funding in 2004,
incurring Mr. Braman’s public fury. “Frankly, as a very active Republican, I’m
ashamed of him,” Mr. Braman said then of Mr. Bush.
Mr. Rubio did not let it happen
again. The next year, he secured the cancer funding over Mr. Bush’s objections.
“Marco,” Mr. Bush wrote in a somewhat grudging email to a lobbyist at the time,
“strongly wanted the Braman Cancer money.”
Soon, Mr. Rubio became a
regular visitor to Mr. Braman’s office on Biscayne Boulevard. By the time Mr. Rubio
was elected speaker of the House, the youngest in Florida’s history, Mr. Braman
felt close enough to show up at the 2005 celebration in Tallahassee and deliver
a memorable — and valuable — token of affection: a framed Revolutionary War-era
American flag. It hung, on loan, in Mr. Rubio’s office for the entirety of his
tenure as speaker.
In Mr. Braman, a Republican
with a strong distaste for wasteful government spending, an ardent commitment
to Israel
and a seemingly limitless bank account, Mr. Rubio found a devoted sponsor.
When Mr. Rubio geared up for
re-election to the House, more than a dozen individuals and companies linked to
Mr. Braman, including his Honda and Cadillac dealerships, gave Mr. Rubio $500
each, the maximum donation allowed under Florida law.
When Mr. Rubio decided to
write a book laying out a conservative vision for Florida’s future, Mr. Braman said, he
chipped in money to pay for its publication.
When Mr. Rubio announced his
signature legislative goal, an initiative to slash property taxes and raise the
sales tax, Mr. Braman contributed $255,000 to the advocacy group lobbying for
the changes, becoming by far its largest donor.
Mr. Rubio said the flow of
donations from Mr. Braman had no effect on his decision-making as House
speaker, adding that he would never give preferential treatment to a donor. But
in 2008, when Mr. Braman sought the $80 million for the genomics institute at
the University of
Miami, a large taxpayer
grant to a private college, Mr. Rubio delivered the opposite message: Mr.
Braman’s request, he said, had tilted the scales.
Usually, Mr. Rubio said at a
news conference at the time, he would have laughed off such an eye-popping
pitch. “But when Norman Braman brings it to you,” Mr. Rubio said, “you take it
seriously.”
Later that year, when Mr.
Rubio left state government, determined to shore up his finances before running
for the United States Senate, he landed a teaching job at Florida International
University, agreeing to
raise much of his salary through private donations.
Mr. Braman gave $100,000,
according to records he shared with The New York Times. Dario Moreno, who
oversaw the university center where Mr. Rubio worked and who taught classes
with him, confirmed that Mr. Rubio had raised the money from Mr. Braman.
In the spring of 2010, as Mr.
Braman was donating heavily to Mr. Rubio’s Senate campaign, his company, Braman
Management, hired Mr. Rubio as a lawyer for seven months. According to records
provided by Mr. Braman, the company paid Mr. Rubio until a week before he was
sworn in as a senator.
Four months after Mr. Rubio
left the payroll, Mr. Braman hired Mr. Rubio’s wife, Jeanette, who had little
professional experience in philanthropy, and her company, JDR Events, to advise
the Braman foundation. Mr. Braman declined to discuss her compensation.
Mr. Rubio said the offers of
work from Mr. Braman had a simple motivation: “We are close personal friends.
They trust us.”
Mrs. Rubio’s job, fielding
and vetting requests for donations to one of Miami’s
biggest charitable foundations, has given her a major profile in the world of Florida philanthropy.
An internal Braman foundation
document makes clear that Mrs. Rubio has become a crucial gatekeeper. “On
hold,” read a notation next to a pending donation. “Wait to hear from
Jeanette.”
At times, the foundation’s
work has coincided with Mr. Rubio’s own globe-trotting political needs. In
2013, when Mr. Rubio traveled to the Middle East,
Mrs. Rubio joined him, with the Braman foundation paying for her travel.
According to Mr. Rubio’s aides, she was conducting work for the foundation
abroad.
On four occasions, Mr. Rubio
has traveled on Mr. Braman’s private plane, reimbursing him each time.
Mr. Braman acknowledged
seeking the occasional “small favor” from Mr. Rubio’s Senate office. There was
the daughter of the woman who does his nails, Mr. Braman recalled, who had an
immigration problem, and the student from Tampa
who wanted a shot at military school. In both cases, he said, Mr. Rubio’s staff
was quick to respond. (Mr. Rubio’s staff said it had decided not to recommend
the Tampa
student.)
Mr. Braman seemed conflicted
about his reputation as civic power broker, at once boasting of his ability to
draw a high-ranking Miami
official to his office with a single phone call and seeming anxious that he not
be viewed as entitled.
“I don’t consider myself a
fat cat,” he said. “Don’t make me out to be a fat cat.”
As he spoke in his office, an
aide interrupted, presenting Mr. Braman with a yellow sticky note. The Florida
Senate was about to vote on a bill he had sought, granting auto dealers like
himself greater leverage over car manufacturers.
“That was fast,” Mr. Braman
said.
Moments later, another
adviser popped his head in, declaring victory. “Thirty to four,” he said of the
vote, with a fist pump.
***
Friday, May 8, 2015
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