My, aren't we a ranty-pants today?
I was reading a NY Times article comparing the vibe of the crowds at Obama rallies vs. at McCain rallies when I came across this paragraph toward the end:
People at McCain and Palin rallies often accuse Democrats of just wanting handouts. “A lot of people on the other side just want free money,” said Susan Emrich, at a McCain-Palin rally in Hershey on Tuesday. A real-estate agent, she wears a T-shirt that says, “I’m voting for Sarah Palin and that White Haired Dude.” Ms. Emrich would like to attend another rally later that day in nearby Shippensburg, but can’t. “I have to work,” she explains. “I’m a Republican.”
To which I say: fuck you. I work damn hard for my money, and I have never asked for a handout. Do not act as if Democrats are lazy, welfare-sucking good-for-nothings. I swear to god, I'm going to choke a bitch.
I'm worried as hell that Prop 8 is going to pass. My parents are going to vote yes, even after I tried debating/arguing with them against it. My dad's argument? "It's not natural." I fail to see how that justifies discriminating against an entire group of people and precluding them from equal protection under the law. For the longest time, people thought interracial marriage wasn't natural either. Now we're about to vote for a man who is a product of mixed heritage for president. It's not an issue of it being unnatural, it's an issue of people not getting past their traditional/conservative ideas. Homophobia is the new racism.
The other argument that I've heard is that homosexuality is not natural because only a man and a woman can procreate. A man being with a man is not how nature intended things to work, and same thing goes for a woman being with a woman. I fail to see how that is relevant today. It's not like the human race is in danger of going extinct and we need all hands on the procreation deck. Quite the opposite, in fact. What does procreation even have to do with marriage? If I get married, am I required to procreate? Is a childless heterosexual marriage not really a marriage?
Then there's the complaint about activist judges striking down a law passed by the voters in California. Well, isn't the purpose of the court system to protect minorities from the willful discrimination of the majority? Or at least to uphold the constitution, which says that all citizens have equal protection under the law? The court was merely doing its job of enforcing the constitution. That's why Prop 8 wants to write a heterosexual definition of marriage into the state constitution: to prevent the court from striking down the law as unconstitutional. It can't be unconstitutional if it's part of the constitution. Some people have said that the court should not disregard the voice of the people, but I think we've learned from the Civil Rights Movement that some things cannot be left to a majority vote. To be cliche: what is right is not always popular; what is popular is not always right.
I also recently read the ridiculous argument that gay marriage is not a civil right because the US Constitution says nothing about gay marriage. Ummm....I don't think it was an issue back in the 1700s. Moreover, I don't believe the Constitution says anything about heterosexual marriage either. These are the same people who say we should interpret the Constitution according to the way the Founding Fathers intended it, not according to the fickle needs of today's society. Well, the Founding Fathers also decided to count black people as 3/5 of a person, which I suppose was generous back then but would be outrageous today. I don't see how people can completely ignore the context of the current times.
Oh, and don't even get me started about the whole education thing. Oh no, little Christina is going to turn into a lesbian because she learns that some people are homosexual! Or little Bobby is going to be confused! He's going to think that homosexuals are as good as heterosexuals! We can't be teaching our kids about tolerance and acceptance now can we?
And oh yeah, we must protect our children from homosexuals, because all homosexuals are pedophiles. (Just look at Michael Jackson!) Never mind that most pedophiles are heterosexual men. You'll get it once I draw one of those Venn diagram things with the overlapping circles. If all widgets are wodgets but not all wodgets are wickets, then.......oh never mind.
The only part that I can sorta understand and sympathize with is the religion part, ironically. If my religious beliefs tell me that marriage is between a man and a woman only, then I have the freedom to believe that. However, my problem with people who use religious beliefs as the reason why they want to ban gay marriage is that they are imposing their beliefs on others. This is my same problem with pro-lifers. They want to take the choice away even when not everyone shares their view.
Part of me also thinks that the religion thing is just a convenient excuse to hate people. I mean, slave owners used to use the Bible to justify slavery. It sickens me that people want to write that sort of hatred into the state constitution. When people were debating an amendment to the Bill of Rights that would define marriage as only between a man and a woman, I remember someone saying that such an amendment would be the first time that the Bill of Rights denied rights rather than expanded upon them. Can you see the horrible irony there? My fear is that if this succeeds in such a liberal state as California, then other states will fall in rapid succession.
I've been thinking about the idea of the government no longer recognizing any marriages at all, only civil unions for both heterosexual and homosexual couples. If the argument for protecting marriage is because it rests on a religious belief in the immorality of homosexuality, then why not divorce the religious from the civic and issue civil union licenses instead of marriage licenses and leave the religious part up to the churches? That way people who believe that homosexuality goes against their religion can practice their version of religion and people who don't believe homosexuality is immoral can practice their brand of religion. There are so many different interpretations of the Bible anyways. The civil union licenses would guarantee the same rights for heterosexual and homosexual couples under the law, but without the religious context of marriage, which can be taken care of privately. You would separate the public (legal rights) from the private (religion). I believe in Germany they've always done the civil ceremony and the wedding/religious ceremony separately. My German textbooks said that a couple would first go to city hall to get their marriage license in a civil proceeding and then hold the wedding afterward. Has there been any talk of something like this? I doubt it, since some people would probably see it as "eradicating marriage." Really, it's about separation of church and state.
I realize that I'm probably preaching to the choir, but writing all that out made me feel much better.
People at McCain and Palin rallies often accuse Democrats of just wanting handouts. “A lot of people on the other side just want free money,” said Susan Emrich, at a McCain-Palin rally in Hershey on Tuesday. A real-estate agent, she wears a T-shirt that says, “I’m voting for Sarah Palin and that White Haired Dude.” Ms. Emrich would like to attend another rally later that day in nearby Shippensburg, but can’t. “I have to work,” she explains. “I’m a Republican.”
To which I say: fuck you. I work damn hard for my money, and I have never asked for a handout. Do not act as if Democrats are lazy, welfare-sucking good-for-nothings. I swear to god, I'm going to choke a bitch.
I'm worried as hell that Prop 8 is going to pass. My parents are going to vote yes, even after I tried debating/arguing with them against it. My dad's argument? "It's not natural." I fail to see how that justifies discriminating against an entire group of people and precluding them from equal protection under the law. For the longest time, people thought interracial marriage wasn't natural either. Now we're about to vote for a man who is a product of mixed heritage for president. It's not an issue of it being unnatural, it's an issue of people not getting past their traditional/conservative ideas. Homophobia is the new racism.
The other argument that I've heard is that homosexuality is not natural because only a man and a woman can procreate. A man being with a man is not how nature intended things to work, and same thing goes for a woman being with a woman. I fail to see how that is relevant today. It's not like the human race is in danger of going extinct and we need all hands on the procreation deck. Quite the opposite, in fact. What does procreation even have to do with marriage? If I get married, am I required to procreate? Is a childless heterosexual marriage not really a marriage?
Then there's the complaint about activist judges striking down a law passed by the voters in California. Well, isn't the purpose of the court system to protect minorities from the willful discrimination of the majority? Or at least to uphold the constitution, which says that all citizens have equal protection under the law? The court was merely doing its job of enforcing the constitution. That's why Prop 8 wants to write a heterosexual definition of marriage into the state constitution: to prevent the court from striking down the law as unconstitutional. It can't be unconstitutional if it's part of the constitution. Some people have said that the court should not disregard the voice of the people, but I think we've learned from the Civil Rights Movement that some things cannot be left to a majority vote. To be cliche: what is right is not always popular; what is popular is not always right.
I also recently read the ridiculous argument that gay marriage is not a civil right because the US Constitution says nothing about gay marriage. Ummm....I don't think it was an issue back in the 1700s. Moreover, I don't believe the Constitution says anything about heterosexual marriage either. These are the same people who say we should interpret the Constitution according to the way the Founding Fathers intended it, not according to the fickle needs of today's society. Well, the Founding Fathers also decided to count black people as 3/5 of a person, which I suppose was generous back then but would be outrageous today. I don't see how people can completely ignore the context of the current times.
Oh, and don't even get me started about the whole education thing. Oh no, little Christina is going to turn into a lesbian because she learns that some people are homosexual! Or little Bobby is going to be confused! He's going to think that homosexuals are as good as heterosexuals! We can't be teaching our kids about tolerance and acceptance now can we?
And oh yeah, we must protect our children from homosexuals, because all homosexuals are pedophiles. (Just look at Michael Jackson!) Never mind that most pedophiles are heterosexual men. You'll get it once I draw one of those Venn diagram things with the overlapping circles. If all widgets are wodgets but not all wodgets are wickets, then.......oh never mind.
The only part that I can sorta understand and sympathize with is the religion part, ironically. If my religious beliefs tell me that marriage is between a man and a woman only, then I have the freedom to believe that. However, my problem with people who use religious beliefs as the reason why they want to ban gay marriage is that they are imposing their beliefs on others. This is my same problem with pro-lifers. They want to take the choice away even when not everyone shares their view.
Part of me also thinks that the religion thing is just a convenient excuse to hate people. I mean, slave owners used to use the Bible to justify slavery. It sickens me that people want to write that sort of hatred into the state constitution. When people were debating an amendment to the Bill of Rights that would define marriage as only between a man and a woman, I remember someone saying that such an amendment would be the first time that the Bill of Rights denied rights rather than expanded upon them. Can you see the horrible irony there? My fear is that if this succeeds in such a liberal state as California, then other states will fall in rapid succession.
I've been thinking about the idea of the government no longer recognizing any marriages at all, only civil unions for both heterosexual and homosexual couples. If the argument for protecting marriage is because it rests on a religious belief in the immorality of homosexuality, then why not divorce the religious from the civic and issue civil union licenses instead of marriage licenses and leave the religious part up to the churches? That way people who believe that homosexuality goes against their religion can practice their version of religion and people who don't believe homosexuality is immoral can practice their brand of religion. There are so many different interpretations of the Bible anyways. The civil union licenses would guarantee the same rights for heterosexual and homosexual couples under the law, but without the religious context of marriage, which can be taken care of privately. You would separate the public (legal rights) from the private (religion). I believe in Germany they've always done the civil ceremony and the wedding/religious ceremony separately. My German textbooks said that a couple would first go to city hall to get their marriage license in a civil proceeding and then hold the wedding afterward. Has there been any talk of something like this? I doubt it, since some people would probably see it as "eradicating marriage." Really, it's about separation of church and state.
I realize that I'm probably preaching to the choir, but writing all that out made me feel much better.