Passing the Torch

Spain becomes the third country to legalize gay marriage, the other two being Belgium and Netherlands. But the words of the Spanish Prime Minister, Jose Luis Zapatero, seemed especially significant:

'We were not the first, but I am sure we will not be the last. After us will come many other countries, driven, ladies and gentlemen, by two unstoppable forces: freedom and equality.''

Why comment on this? - three reasons come to mind: 1) gay rights is not a "gay" issue, it is a human rights issue and perhaps even a barometer of the enlightenment of a given society; 2) freedom and equality are the twin beacons of American values... but the current administration, with its commitment to the Guantanamo gulag, its subversion of the Geneva Convention (if you are a freedom-loving country, can you really dissolve human rights by inventing a magical category lacking them entirely, e.g. "enemy combatant"), and its torture-by-hire policies, is behaving as if these twin beacons were shattered along with the twin towers; 3) Europe, stodgy and aristocratic, generally lagging behind, seems now to be picking up the torch. If we are only humble enough to recognize the example and follow.

What's In a Name?

Quite a bit, as it turns out. For instance, an hour's worth of web searching reveals that the name "Basye" is actually of Biblical origin... related to the daughter of Pharaoh who had Moses plucked out of the river while the future leader of Israel was grooving dangerously in his basket of Nile reeds. Basye is also related, apparently, to "Bas-sheba" or Bathsheba, the seventh daughter.

Trés cool.