I was panicked last night: I thought I'd finally run out of topics to blog about.  The every-three-days schedule, which I had originally thought would last a few months, was beginning to seem too frequent.  Yes, we had another big snowstorm yesterday, and it snowed throughout the night.  After two months of winter with almost no snow, February and March have sent us over our normal winter snowfall by several inches.  But how often can I talk about winter and find appropriate quotes from Frost and Dickinson? 

I think that talking about my health becomes quickly monotonous: nothing much changes.  Friends tell me that they like and want the updates, so here goes, though skipping this paragraph is encouraged.  On the plus side, I think my appetite has improved.  (And having friends bring a scrumptious berry pie certainly helps.)  I take something to enhance the appetite, and it seems to work for breakfast and lunch.  Most of the food may not taste the way it used to, but I still can eat.  Dinner is more problematic, but I can usually manage to eat something, if not as much as Mohamed would like.  The diarrhea and nausea continue with perhaps less of the former (I gulp Imodium) and more of the latter.  And certainly fatigue remains a major problem.  I usually sleep for an hour before lunch, take a two-hour nap after lunch, and then fall asleep on the couch sometime in the evening, though with the TV on and Kimber's nails clicking against the hardwood, that nap isn't very deep.  It's no wonder I don't get bored; I'm not awake long enough.  And everything seems to take longer to accomplish.  Just getting my tuches off the couch to take a shower or to carry a load of laundry to the washer requires several minutes of summoning my energy.  But all of that has been the "new normal" for so long that it's no longer new.  There won't really be any news until April 19th, when I have the full battery of tests again at KU Med.  For the first time in nine months (we used to do this every three months), in addition to the CT scans and other tests, I'll have full skeletal x-rays.  The secondary tumors have been stable (though the primary kidney tumor has been growing again for the last six months), but the question is whether, even though they haven't been growing, those tumors have been eating away at the bones.  It was, after all, because of the destruction of my left scapula and right femur that the doctors discovered the cancer in the first place.  So until the 19th, there really isn't going to be anything new (I hope) to report.


“Under the Constitution, the regulation and control of marital and family relationships are reserved to the states.”
— U.S. SUPREME COURT, SHERRER V. SHERRER (1948)

The big news of the upcoming week for LGBT Americans are the two cases that the Supreme Court will consider: the constitutionality of DOMA and the more complicated consequences of California's Proposition 8.  Just to review: the first case would potentially strike down the 1996 law, signed by Bill Clinton, that denies over a thousand federal benefits to couples who are legally married in the nine states and the District of Columbia that recognize same-sex  marriage.  For Mohamed and me personally, this would have immediate consequences.  When we were thinking of going to Iowa to get married, it was frustrating to try to explain to many friends that a marriage would have absolutely no legal benefits--not for income tax purposes, not for inheritance, and most importantly to us not for Mohamed's immigration status.  If we were a heterosexual married couple, Mohamed's path to citizenship or permanent residence would be easy.  As a same-sex married couple, there would be no change whatsoever in Mohamed's visa status.  It seems that the chances that the Court will strike down DOMA are fairly good.  For liberals, the vote is easy, whether it's based on liberty or equality arguments.  For conservatives, who in theory want to prioritize state law in matters where the Constitution is silent, the vote should be easy as well.  The Sherrer quote comes not from a liberal, but from the arch-conservative George Will in an op-ed piece urging the Court to strike down DOMA.  There are many, many amicus curiae briefs, from business, labor, even NFL players, among others, urging the Court to overturn DOMA.   Justice Kennedy seems to be the swing vote (though as the ACA decision showed, the Court isn't always predictable these days), and his past positions seem favorable to the "right" decision.  But there is also talk that since philosophically both liberals and conservatives should find something to object to in DOMA, perhaps the Court will, as in Brown v. Board, find common ground for a more decisive conclusion.  (I have little faith, however, the Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, who aren't known for consistency to principle, will really vote with the liberal wing.)  At any rate, there is a lot of optimism about this case, and there will be a lot of disappointment if the Court upholds DOMA.

The Prop 8 case is much more complicated with a number of possible outcomes.  The first possible decision is that the SCOTUS can rule broadly that laws prohibiting same-sex marriage are unconstitutional, thus invalidating the forty state laws and constitutional amendments prohibiting same-sex marriage.  With one stroke of the pen, marriage equality would become the law of the entire country.  I don't think many observers of the Court think that this is likely.  One vote that will be interesting is that of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who, while probably sympathetic, has had a tendency throughout her judicial career of defining issues as narrowly as possible and avoiding such broad decisions.  A second possible favorable outcome (there are others, but they are less likely) is a more narrow ruling, like that of the 9th District Court, that strikes down Proposition 8 in California, using the argument that a state cannot give constitutional rights (for a brief time, same sex marriage was legal in California and roughly 18,000 California same sex couples are legally married in that state) and then take them away.  Of course, there is no guarantee that the outcome will be favorable at all, and the Prop 8 case is definitely unpredictable.

Although the decisions won't actually be issued until June, the arguments before the Court usually provide a pretty good indication of how the Justices are thinking--usually, but not always, as the ACA case proved.  In any case, this is a momentous week for the LGBT community and the long journey along the "arc of justice."