Open Mic June 29

Surely, the most impor­tant news this week is that 65% of Amer­i­cans think Obama would han­dle an alien inva­sion bet­ter than Rom­ney.  Of course, 21% of them would also call on the Hulk to deal with it, and only 8% would call on Spiderman.

Of course, most of us are still stunned by yesterday’s shock­ing result.

No, I don’t mean the Supreme Court deci­sion on health­care, I mean super­star Rafael Nadal los­ing in the 2^nd round at Wim­ble­don to some Czech player named Rosol who ranks about 100^th. Could this be the year a Brit (Andy Mur­ray) finally wins on his native grass?

A few years ago, issues of gay rights didn’t mat­ter to me much, out­side of gen­er­ally pre­fer­ring fair­ness to unfair­ness. Sure, I mostly sup­ported equal rights, but it just wasn’t that impor­tant to me.

Then, sev­eral things hap­pened to draw my focus to the very real unfair­ness that homo­sex­ual Amer­i­cans face. One of my best friends from high school finally got a sex change after years of depres­sion and fear of per­se­cu­tion and humil­i­a­tion for feel­ing out of place in a man’s body. She totally turned her life and out­look around by find­ing accep­tance, and I’ve been so happy for her. Then, one of my cousins moved to Iowa so she could marry her long-​​time part­ner. I never real­ized how much such things mat­tered until I got to talk to the two of them together. And, more recently, one of the guys in my brother’s Army unit (“Mike”) opened up after DADT was repealed. The oth­ers all “knew” though no one said any­thing, but they all par­tied like frat boys when he finally mar­ried his part­ner this year.

But it’s Mike’s hus­band that has my atten­tion today. DADT pass­ing was a tremen­dous boon to those gay men and women who want to serve and defend our nation, to be accepted as hon­or­able sol­diers who are will­ing to give their all for our coun­try. How­ever, my sister-​​in-​​law told me that she accom­pa­nies Mike’s hus­band when­ever he wants to shop at the base com­mis­sary, because he tech­ni­cally can’t go on his own.  He also doesn’t get spousal ben­e­fits or base hous­ing. See, because DOMA is still in exis­tence, even here in Iowa, Mike’s hus­band can’t get any of the ben­e­fits that mil­i­tary fam­i­lies would nor­mally be enti­tled to receive. Given the sac­ri­fices that these Amer­i­cans make, I think this is a hor­ri­ble way to treat the fam­i­lies of men and women who are serv­ing our country.

Repeal­ing DADT isn’t enough. DOMA needs to go, too. For the sake of Mike’s hus­band and all of the other fam­i­lies of gay servicemen.

@Max

The odds on that were only +1/​2 for Italy against a rel­a­tively young Ger­man team.

Italia’s win wasn’t quite so shock­ing, con­sid­er­ing they’ve absolutely owned Germany’s ass in big matches on the pitch. From the 1970 World Cup “Game of the Cen­tury” where Italy win 4–3 over West Ger­many, to the 1982 World Cup final, and the 2006 semi-​​final. Italy have con­sis­tently had Germany’s number.

Ten­nis pun­dits are refer­ring to Nadal’s loss as the biggest upset in Ten­nis his­tory, and they aren’t just being hyper­bolic. Nadal hasn’t gone out of a Slam this early since Wim­ble­don in 2005, and never to some­one like Rosol, a 26 year old with a los­ing record on grass who’s never made it this far before.

Roger Fed­erer almost lost today, too… Down two sets to a French­man. But, like the champ he is, he pulled out the five-​​set win.

Mak­ing Brad Gilbert pre­scient, because yes­ter­day he said that the dif­fer­ence between Nadal and Fed­erer was that Fed­erer never lost these sorts of matches. (Hence his record for the longest streak of con­sec­u­tive Slam semis reached.)