David Boies and Ted Olson join forces to press for same-sex marriage
David Boies and Theodore Olsen, two of the best appellate lawyers in the United States, and opposing counsel in Bush v. Gore, are now jointly representing plaintiffs in a case challenging California’s ban on gay marriage.
Mr. Olsen had, until becoming an advocate for same-sex marriage, impeccable credentials as a Republican and conservative. Wikipedia describes him as a “major figure in the conservative legal movement.” ((Theodore Olson entry on Wikipedia, accessed 16 January 2010.))
Support for same-sex marriage is, of course, consistent with a number of threads in conservatism: respect for individual choice, the liberty interest in persons having maximal control over what John Stuart Mill called “self-regarding” acts, and the proposition that the government shouldn’t, for the most part, intrude on private decisions.
Likewise, there enough “leftists” and “progressives” – even “feminists” who’ve taken homophobic and anti-sex or anti-sex-worker positions that equal those of, for instance, Kenneth Starr, who accepted the assignment opposing Boies and Olson – after Olson had declined.
It’s nice to see conservatives actually be conservative. Perhaps this is a tipping point; it’s certainly a milestone.
See Margaret Talbot’s outstanding piece A Risky Proposal available at the website of The New Yorker ((and in the print edition dated January 14, 2010)).
Brilliant Images from Vlad Gansovsky
We found this brilliant image indirectly, and it doesn’t appear on Vlad Gansovsky’s site, but we’re pretty sure it’s his, because of the photo credit, and because the rest of his work is just as good.
Dima-Lena - by Vlad Gansovsky
His work is broadly divided into three categories -
We’re looking forward to seeing and sharing more of Mr. Gansovsky’s work.
heartfelt kisses and more on vivthomas.com
Until today, we’d never heard of Viv Thomas. Then we saw this clip of a beautiful M/F couple making love, and we were hooked. We suspect you will be, too.
dirtyheartblues – entranced
dirtyheartblues is a kinkster, a blogger, and she’s running ubuntu on a Dell laptop and apparently making it work. (Which makes her cool, attractive, and smart – and braver than me – because I haven’t made the Linux jump yet myself). Here’s her post Revelations and Apologies:
To my kinky side: I’m sorry. I have neglected you for oh so long, and I must pay my penance.
You never had a priority – everything else in my life was just so much more important, from unfulfilling jobs and ridiculous schedules to sitting on the internet and vegging for hours at a time. This is a sin, and I have only recently recognized its gravity.
I went to COPE this weekend, and what was expected to be simply a grand play party with some lessons thrown in turned into a full-blown deep sea expedition into my own psyche. Play morphed into something completely new and, at the same time, something intensely familiar. I remembered what it was like to be absolutely in love with what I’m doing right now.
There were two classes and two scenes that really helped to drive this home. I discovered that I was, in fact, not the only person that found the absurd and ridiculous sexy. I found a process to thinking about identity and relationships with others, and how to differentiate between the essence of my being and the driving core to my life. I experienced the absolute joy of being secure in my desires, as well as the confidence to request them and the freedom to relish them completely as they are fulfilled.
Finally, I shared the shock of unleashing a previously untapped appreciation for play that, until my ego and established thought processes had been pushed aside, I never thought I would actually do – let alone relish.
I am grateful for all the people that helped guide me to these realizations. A few had very limited to no contact whatsoever with me, while some were intimately involved with the process (though unaware at the time). Without the instructors’ willingness to put themselves out there and share their experiences, some of us would never be inspired and driven to grow.
I feel revitalized and scrubbed fresh, all aglow with the effort of thousands of tiny sharp lessons and questions to cut away the needless complications.
Thank you.
We’ll have to follow this woman: dirtyheartblues.
KinkySexLink and LadyEvyl’s virtual empire
We’ve added Kinky Sex Link to our blogroll, for more reasons than we can maintain in our brain at once:
It’s a kick-ass sex blog, written by a large-ish group of interesting people; founded by LadyEvyl; upon whom we would have a crush for, again, multiple reasons:
- she’s a gorgeous, funny, pervy, smart woman;
- She makes and sells beautiful collars, floggers and, we think, other things, too (EvylTies)
- She has a sex toy store with things other than her own creations, FunSeXXXToys
She’s persuaded (seduced? coerced?) a whole bunch of other people into writing for her on Kinky Sex Link, most of whom are new to us, but one of whom, who we refer to as Mr. Axe, whose work we like to read, and who we’ve wanted to meet since we read his first post.
So check out Unspeakable Axe – feel free to tell him we sent you; and make sure you spend some quality time at LadyEvyl’s little on-line empire – you don’t want to make her mad, I think. Start with KinkySexLink.
Candle – on FetishNation.com
Candle - on FetishNation
Interesting thread about the future of 2257 prosecutions
An interesting thread about the future of 2257 prosecutions at Model Mayhem, a site which is new to me. While I’m not sure about all of the predictions about the Obama administration’s behavior with respect to adult content producers – some thoughtful people there who write well – and dig hard for evidence.
As it happens – found the thread while trying to do similar research about the Administration’s first year.
Crash Pad Contest at KinkySexLink.com
Kinkysexlink is having a KSL Crash Pad Contest - the prize is
The queer sex DVD Crash Pad Series: Rope Burn, volume 4(a $40 value) plus a 20$ gift Card for Babeland(US and Canada)
So head on over to, http://www.kinkysexlink.com, whose proprietress, http://www.ladyevyl.com is also the mistress of http://www.funsexxxtoys.com and http://www.ladyevyl.com/store
Apologies for our extended absence
Some months back, we discovered rather suddenly that our hosting company, which we were generally quite happy with - had a strict “no adult content” rule.
Instead of calling, or emailing, or shutting down the site, our hosting company suspended the entire account. Requiring us (me, actually) to delete every uploaded image in hopes of satisfying them. (I think I downloaded them – but just now can’t find them.
Our new host – HostGator – has been outstanding. Their Transfer Team – apparently the web-hosting equivalent of an organ transplant group, smoke jumpers, or some sort of comic-book tech whizzes (let’s hope they never become evil, or we’re going to be in big trouble). The backups they were restoring from (the mediocre backups for which I was responsible were corrupt -and after valiant efforts, they apologized that they weren’t going to be able to restore posts and pages.
I sent in a feedback report a bit later – saying I thought that the result was likely out of their hands but that I thought their work was oustanding. By that time, they’d tried to restore my blog, and had, in fact successfully moved Diary of a Kinky Librarian to Hostgator as well. Before, I think, I’d sent it, I checked in to find that – absent missing images – the content is pretty much intact.
One of the nicest things to come out of writing this blog is that the Kinky Librarian, Herr Master Doktor and the Girl from Kansas (GFK) and I have become friends, and I’ve also become their technical support department (with limits;I’m sorry to say that I don’t know how to fix a Sybian. Yet.
So to all the lovely people who were so supportive when I started this silly blog – thanks again. Without that encouragement I might have just packed it in. And we’ll be saying thanks to all of them individually and collectively, privately and here on the blog, in the near future. Not least Nadia, the librarian of my dreams, and Ian, who’s a better person and a far better artist than he’ll admit to.
- Max
Test Post – the case of the disappearing toolbar
In this case, thetoolbar in the Post | Edit window had disappeared. Using the Mudbomb WYSI-Wordpress plugin, I seem to have gotten some functionality back.
Maybe we can actually post today.
Max
Leather Yenta (Lolita Wolf)
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- The Last ChipDon Quixote and I ate dinner at the Empire Diner with an old friend of his. I had the grilled salmon, he had the chili and the friend had guacamole. The waiter had the same snotty attitude that most Empire Diner waiters throughout time seem to have. But the food was good [...] […]
