Now can we just call it “marriage”? In a huge victory for marriage equality, U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman ruled today that Michigan’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional: IT IS HEREBY DECLARED that Article I, § 25 of the Michigan Constitution and its implementing statutes are unconstitutional because they violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to […]

Your tax money hard at work…being wasted Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette’s fight to preserve our state’s bigoted same-sex marriage ban was dealt a significant blow yesterday when professional opinion-holder and philosophy student Sherif Girgis was barred from testifying as an “expert” in the marriage equality case of April Deboer and Jayne Rowse: A judge barred an Ivy League law […]

The ban on same-sex marriage in Michigan can tear families apart [left to right: April, Nolan, Jacob, Jayne, and Ryanne] Tomorrow the trial of April DeBoer vs. Rick Sndyer begins. This trial has implications not on for our state but for the entire country. Although it started as a suit to give same-sex parents the same sorts of adoption rights […]

Share the Love Late last year, Anne and I traveled to the home of Jayne Rowse and April DeBoer, a same-sex couple with adopted children who find themselves at the center of a fierce legal battle over marriage equality and adoption rights for same-sex couples in our state. Our interview got a lot of attention and spurred me on to […]

AND THEY DIDN’T EVEN USE ALL CAPS!!! LOLOLOL. You might think you have some rabid tea partiers in your area, tea partiers that are the worst of the worst, more steeped in vitriolic tea than anybody else’s tea partiers. You might think you have the most over-the-top, unhinged, detached from reality tea partiers of all of the unmoored tea partiers […]

As regular readers know, we run quarterly fundraisers at Eclectablog to raise funds to run the site and, more importantly, pay the writers and photographer. Although we do run ads, we are largely dependent upon your generosity for our blogging income. I thought it would be nice to have a look back at 2013 to give you an idea of […]

Listicle this 2013 was a big — no, a HUGE — year for Eclectablog. Although we had more visitors in 2012 thanks to the presidential election, we experienced tremendous growth in 2013. In May, we brought on the extraordinarily gifted writer Amy Lynn Smith. Her coverage of health care issues and women’s issues has been stellar and she’s brought a […]

Ain’t NOBODY happy ’bout this Eclectagraphic by Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog I’m on record as someone who supported Detroit going into bankruptcy from the very first days of that idea being discussed. As I pointed out in an op-ed at AnnArbor.com, Chapter 9 bankruptcy offers protections for a municipality that the imposition of an Emergency Manager does not. […]

The ban on same-sex marriage in Michigan can tear families apart [left to right: April, Nolan, Jacob, Jayne, and Ryanne] A few years ago, what started as a family vacation in Ohio nearly ended up in a fatal car crash for April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse. The two nurses had their three adopted children with them and the close call […]

The desperation is getting palpable While Governor Rick Snyder met with billionaire Warren Buffett and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein in Detroit yesterday, another group of wealthy moneymen were across town filing a motion with the federal judge asking that he take action on their behalf in Detroit’s ongoing bankruptcy saga. The banks that are owed money by Detroit are […]

It’s a good gig if you can get it See updates below. The Snyder administration recently gave three of its investment experts massive pay raises, making them some of the highest paid members of his administration. One of them, chief investment officer, Jon Braeutigam, makes more than the Governor and the Lt. Governor combined! The State of Michigan quietly increased […]