Late June 24, 2011, the NY senate passed an historic bill legalizing same-sex marriage. I am not gay myself. I am in no way impacted by this vote, positively or negatively. Nonetheless, it brought great pride to my heart to see our society take a baby step forward toward social progress and equality. There are many things in this world that make us all facepalm. It is an amazing feeling to see something happen that we can look upon with pride and admiration.

Our country has a long history of discriminating against people who are different from us. People who we may have a difficult time understanding. Blacks, Irish, Jews, Native Americans, Chinese, Japanese, other Asian groups, Eastern Europeans, Italians, Latinos, Catholics, Muslims, and Women have all been discriminated against at one time or another in this country. Many of the same bigoted acts and statements made towards same-sex couples were made toward the above mentioned groups. History repeats itself time and time again. Thankfully with each new generation we always seem to get closer and closer to tolerance and acceptance of all people.

The fight isn't over. There are already groups around the country threatening to fight back. But we can all sit back and celebrate this victory.

Today I am proud to be both an American and a New Yorker.

Great Job NY Governor Cuomo, you stuck to your promise and fought to push this bill through.

Clinton tried to catch Bin Laden after the bombing of the Towers. Bush tried again after 9/11. Obama, first term, bombed and killed Bin Laden. We have the body and DNA tested it.

God bless America, God bless the troops, God bless the agents that executed the attack, and God bless the President.

Birthers and others have been BS-ing abut this dumb issue for the longest. In 2008 Obama released the short form of his certificate.

Well now he has given us the long form. So can we now focus on more important things like the economy, wars, health care, education, and our role/place in a globalized 21st century world.

There is a bill floating around congress that could give the gov't the right to blacklist and block sites that they deem to infringe copyrights. The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) is very vague in its wording and can potentially cause sites like youtubeto be blockedeven though it will be advertised as a way to stop illegal file sharing. Recently youtube beat viacom in court when viacom sued for infringement. With this bill viacom could easily have youtube blacklisted. The biggest fear is that it is a very close step to net censorship by the US gov't. Something China already does.

There is an online petition from Demand Progress that will be sent to congress to fight against the bill. If you believe in the cause sign the petition below and call/email your state representative.

http://demandprogress.org/blacklist/coica