Equal right to marry

I'm currently taking Constitutional Law in my second semester in law school, which is an American Bar Association-required course.

The Constitution is said to be the basis of the law of this land, and it does and doesn't enumerate some of the basic things we enjoy or are denied. Sometimes, the issues we talk about in class get pretty personal, and pretty exhausting to discuss.

Recently, we finished our section on the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The Equal Protection Clause state, "... nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

A lot of the gay rights issue, like marriage, are discussed under this clause. We discussed the Proposition 8 case that got ruled in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. We also discussed a case called Windsor v. United States which is traveling through the 2nd Circuit. Windsor is a Defense of Marriage Act case, where a widow was charged a $350,000 estate tax when her wife passed away. Heterosexual couples are exempt from this tax.

We watched an arguably biased video by the ACLU (who represents Ms. Windsor) about this case, and it really struck a personal chord with me. I'm a pretty politically-minded person. I love current events and keep up with matters regarding legislature and elected officials. But I've always had a birds-eye-view approach to these matters, where I take myself out of the whole equation when forming opinions about certain issues. This included the right to marry for same sex couples. I believed in their right to marry from a macro standpoint of equal rights to all, and the effect that marriage has for practical matters like entitlement benefits.

Recently, I had a paradigm-shifting experience that turned all of this into a pretty personal matter to me.

Without going into too much detail, I had a sudden realization about the basic fundamental emotional basis of this marriage issue. In our crazy lives, it's a rarity to even find friends that you want sticking around for a lifetime. Sometimes, you don't even like your own blood family members, for one reason or another. It's such a miracle when two people find each other and know in their hearts that their lives are going to be together. This event should be celebrated. It should be praised through the roof, and should be held as the standard of what the "pursuit of happiness" is supposed to be, which is such a fundamental element of the American ethos.

When you find someone you want to spend the rest of your life with, it's one of the few times in your entire life where such certainty has never been so crystal clear. Yet, for the government to step in and legally devalue this basic fundamental certainty... it just breaks my heart. The pure unfairness of it all puts a knot in my throat. How can you take away from something that is so few people get to enjoy and yet everyone wants?

Until now, I skipped this emotional part of the gay marriage issue, which is essentially the heart of the battle (no pun intended). I still believe in the practical policy rational for gay marriage. But I now believe it to the core on the emotional end, and sincerely hope that everyone gets to enjoy the full extent of the love they were so blessed to find.

25 things

I jumped on the trend-wagon, and wrote this note 3 years ago on Facebook:

1. I find eating the same things over and over and over again, very comforting. I eat the same breakfast and same lunch and same dinner for months after months. I don't get bored, and I enjoy every bite. ( If you're curious, it's banana and peanut butter sandwich for breakfast, savory oats with salad for lunch, and butternut squash curry-thing and hummus sandwich.)

2. I don't like eating out consecutively. I don't like eating out for lunch and for dinner on the same day, nor do I like eating out for 2 consecutive dinners. Of course, there are exceptions, like when I travel.

3. I sound like a boring food person, but I actually love to cook and like to bake different things. I also love to read food blogs and look at food pictures.

4. People mention how sociable I am, but I am actually a loner. My life outside of work is often spent alone, and I don't find that sad. I can't imagine wanting to spend all my time with another person.

5. Because of #4, there are only 3 people in the world (besides family) that I can be with for about 12 hours in a day.

6. I was a kleptomaniac when I was in 3rd grade. I stole all sorts of things from my classroom, like pencils, Mr. Sketch pens, and prizes that the teacher had. I did that for an entire year, and my teacher never noticed because I was such a Good Little Asian Girl. Mrs. Sutherland, if you're reading this, I'm very sorry. Just to let you know, I returned everything that I could find that I stole, back into your desk at the end of the year.

7. My mom and dad think I was a Latina in my past life because of my Spanish.

8. I apparently used to do Dolly Parton imitations when I was a kid, after watching Steel Magnolias. My dad thinks that my aptitude for imitations also helped me with my Spanish.

9. I secretly find pictures that couples take of themselves while kissing to be kind of annoying, especially when it's done multiple times, and during non-important events. I mean, I understand if they just got engaged.

10. When I was in 2nd grade, I had a specific outfit for each day of the week, which I repeated each week. My Friday outfit was my favorite, which was a green plaid skirt, a white blouse, a pink cardigan, and my gold heart locket from the book, "The Magic Locket".

11. My left side of my face is my good side. That's why most of my profile pictures are of my left side.

12. I don't like board games. They're too long. I especially hate Monopoly.

13. I weigh less now than I did when I was 15.

14. I think I might have the strongest arms in my office. I'm DEFINITELY stronger than my sister. There's evidence.

15. I secretly get annoyed when men approach me and ask me if I need help with carrying things, or moving things, when I'm managing just fine. I especially find this annoying when it's older men who offer the help, and when they try to carry what I was carrying, I could see them suffering. I love my dad, because he acknowledges that I'm stronger than him, and makes me carry all of his shit. I might have sabotaged possible dates, because some of these "offers" may have just been pick-up lines.

16. I hate driving. I constantly have flashbacks of car accidents, especially the noise of cars clashing. I go out of my way to not drive, and walk every where on weekends. This includes trips to Costco and Target, which are easily 3-4 miles round trip walks.

17. I can't work in silence. I have to have noise. I can concentrate more in a coffee house with constant noise, than a library.

18. One of my favorite things to do in the whole wide world is to eat sushi with my family. I don't enjoy eating sushi with anyone else as much as I do with my fam bam. I also am a sushi snob and will judge you if you claim to be a lover of sushi and order only things like a crunch roll, or worse, a Philadelphia roll (an abomination). I also am a firm believer that the quality of sushi is determined by the rice.

19. If I could have any job in the whole world, I would be a journalist. Or an expert. Can you be a professional expert? I think a journalist can fall in that category.

20. Ice cream and frozen yogurt are not my dessert of choice, because it melts. I feel like I have to eat it quickly, because I don't like ice cream soup.

21. Whenever I fill these things out, I always can think of more things I don't like, than things I like.

22. I ran 7 miles in 58:20 this Thursday. Personal record!

23. If there were to be an apocalyptic attack on earth, I'd rather perish with the rest of society, rather than be the few that survive. I find the responsibility of procreating for survival and rebuilding houses and buildings and finding food and water to be too stressful.

24. I WILL live in New York City some day.

25. I used to imagine myself as an undercover something. An undercover princess, an undercover ninja, an undercover descendant of someone famous. I still secretly hope that I am a secret descendant of someone crazy and notorious, and my crazy and notorious genes will suddenly show it's self. This is why "Sally J. Freedman As Herself" is my favorite book of all times.

MAN!

Here are some amendments: #4 is not entirely true anymore, and because of that, #5 isn't either. And I definitely fulfilled #24!

You all should look back and see what you wrote!