Married to Hate

A high school classmate of mine recently committed to the love of her life. Unfortunately for them, since that love is also a woman the state of Wisconsin decided not to allow them to get married. Instead these two celebrated a Domestic Partnership.

Not only can Stephanie and Alyschia not get married in Wisconsin, but Wisconsin is one of only two states (Delaware is the other) that makes it illegal for them to get married in another state to bypass their state of residences marriage laws. Under 765.30(1)(a) of the Wisconsin Code, if these two lovely ladies decided to go to Iowa and get married, if they decided to continue living in Wisconsin, the state would not only ignore their legally obtained marriage certificate, but could also choose to fine them (each) $10,000 and put them in jail for 9 months.


People that are against gay marriage are on the same side of history as those that opposed interracial marriage, desegregation of school, and anti-suffrage movements. Hate always loses in the end.

I have yet to hear an argument against gay marriage that doesn't center around religion. Everyone is entitled to their beliefs, but when your beliefs start to impinge on others, that's when I have a problem with it.

New Facebook

NOTE: If you're reading this post on Facebook, it is copied automatically from my blog at Down The Digital Trail some things I'd censor more on Facebook may be said less diplomatically because my blog is where I vent.

Everyone today has been bitching about the changes to Facebook and comparing it to Microsoft. Don't get me wrong, I despise Microsoft's business practices, and most everything they do, but this isn't a fair comparison when you look at their business and customer base.

The end user is MS's customer. They have to keep the end user in mind at all times when they make changes to their products. If a user doesn't like a change and decides to stop buying Microsoft products, or computers with MS products on them, MS stops getting money.

Alternately end users are a commodity for Facebook (and Google). Their business is to collect data their users enter through various channels and sell it to other companies either for market research, direct advertising, or for other reasons. If any and all changes FB makes are getting you to put in more data, and more valuable data for their customers. If making a change causes them to sacrifice a small number of users, but allows them to get more valuable data, it's a net win for them. (Yes I am aware there is a point where they could have too small a number of users to be valuable to their customers, but we're no where NEAR that threshold.)

This post isn't to tell people to stop complaining, or just roll over and "enjoy it" if you don't like the changes, by all means speak with your digital feet and go somewhere else. However, you have to know what the business of the service you're using is, and weigh the benefits you get out of the service against the sale of your data and the way they collect it.

Instead of comparing FB to MS, a better company to compare them to would be a TV station. They sell ads, and they gather data in the form of ratings to say what your watching, and what you buy. If a show isn't generating ads, or getting the viewers the advertisers on that show want, the station must, and will change the show.