RL Achievements and ToW

[EofS]

What if you need acupuncture to deal with mental health issues?

[Jessi]

THIS PHOTO SAYS IT ALL, REALLY

[EofS]

Not that it's visible in that res of the photo, but I do think the county you live in has a wonderful name!

(Also, massive congratulations. I think you knew that though ;0)

[Fjorab_Teke]

YAY!!! Congratulations!!!

[Madge]

Woo!!!! <3

[TCStarwind]

Congratulations!

[Color Wheel]

Congratulations! I hope you two are very happy together.~

[Wingsrising]

Awesome! Congratulations to you both.

[Kantark]

Congrats you guys! :-D

[Jessi]

Haha E, we're pretty convinced all the Native American tribes from this area once had names that ended in -ish. XD We have Snohomish (our county for those that don't know, since it's not visible in that picture), Samish, Stillaquamish, Suquamish, Swinomish, Snoqualmish, Sammamish (my favorite!) and lots of other ishes. We also have fun things like Mukilteo, Yakima, and Wenatchee. It makes trying to pronounce various places around here fun at least!

Thanks for all the congrats, everyone ! We're pretty excited to officially tie the knot in a few days :D

[redsea_]

Congratulations Jessi! You and your wife look very beautiful and happy!

I'm also very jealous of all you Washington folks with your nifty rights. Don't get me started on the calls Basic Rights Oregon made during this last election cycle. They pretty much made the decision to shelve the gay marriage debate here so that the homophobes wouldn't come out of the woodwork in support of Romney. It wasn't a very courageous choice.

[Madge]

Gay marriage is ridiculous in how the politicians are treating it. Even over here, one of our senators is a lesbian (with a long-term partner and recently they had a daughter), and for the longest time she had to say she didn't support gay marriage and made up all sorts of bullshit reasons because politicians must do what their party says.

Ever since the Labor party allowed its politicians to have a position (and vote) based on their opinion rather than the party's politics (called a conscience vote, not sure if you guys have them in the states?), she's been a vocal supporter of gay marriage. Drives you NUTS. Politics, amirite?

[Wingsrising]

Ever since the Labor party allowed its politicians to have a position (and vote) based on their opinion rather than the party's politics (called a conscience vote, not sure if you guys have them in the states?), she's been a vocal supporter of gay marriage. Drives you NUTS. Politics, amirite?

That's my new thing I learned today: I'd never heard of a "conscience vote" -- not because we don't have them in the United States, but because that's pretty much all we have in the United States.

So they actually MAKE people vote on party lines? Huh. What happens if they don't? Here the party can do things like take away committee assignments or not give someone money for your re-election campaign if a Congressperson really pisses off the rest of the party, but I don't know how common that actually is. (I mean, if they don't give you money for your campaign, then you probably won't get re-elected, which means your replacement will be from the other party.)

[Madge]

I don't know what happens if they don't vote on party lines. They are generally used for things like abortion, where the party supports it but some of the members would not be comfortable voting in its favour.

I think if the Liberal Party (our conservative party, just to confuse you even more) allowed a conscience vote on gay marriage like the Labour party has we might have been in a better position for it.

Wikipedia has a bit of information:

In many liberal democracies ... the elected members of a legislature who belong to a political party are usually required by that party to vote in accordance with the party line on significant legislation, on pain of censure or expulsion from the party

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscience_vote

Australian marriage equality statistics:

http://www.australianmarriageequality.c ... rmpstands/

For the senate, we need 39 in favour; at the moment we have 32 pro, 27 against, and 17 undecided. (The senate tends to be full of more small parties; we have 31 Labor ("left" wing), 34 Coalition (right wing), 9 greens (super left-wing), 1 independent (Xenophon, left-wing), and 1 Democratic Labor party (super right-wing).

For the house of reps, we need 76 people in favour; at the moment we have 47 pro, 69 against, and 34 undeclared. (At the moment, the house of reps is 71 Labor, 72 Coalition, 1 greens, 5 independents, and 1 KAP (right-wing))

[Jazzy]

I think in the UK, which is likely what Australian law is based on, you can "lose the whip" if you don't vote on party lines on certain specific issues (those falling under a "three-line whip"), but it's by no means actually guaranteed. Losing the whip means that you're no longer counted as a member of that political party, and the party won't endorse you at the next election. However, that doesn't mean you'll automatically lose the next election - probably because there are far stricter limits on election campaign funding in the UK (we looked at the billion-dollar figures for the US election with absolute horror) so you can win a seat with relatively limited funds*. And being a sitting MP (one who is currently in Parliament) means that people know your name, and when it comes to re-election time, will often vote for you even if your party no longer supports you. Examples of people who have lost the party whip and have been elected anyway include one of the Mayors of London (wasn't selected as the official Labour candidate, stood for election anyway as an independent, won), a similar situation for a Scottish MP (existing Labour MP, wasn't selected as the official Labour candidate for a new Scottish Parliament seat, stood against Labour and won), and George Galloway (expelled from party, won two subsequent elections).

I would expect to see free votes on things like abortion, gay marriage - basically, anything involving religion. If the vote isn't free and people are supposed to vote on party lines, most often people will abstain rather than vote against the party. And if you're going to vote against party lines, you're fairly safe if you can get a large rebellion going, since you can't punish everyone who's disobeyed the whip...

*For future reference, the maximum any party is allowed to spend on a single seat here (a "seat" being one place in the country electing an MP) is £30,000. We have approximately 650 seats, and three major political parties. As you can see, there's no way to get anywhere near billions of pounds of spending.