I’ve been sort of watching the whole gay marriage thing with the appropriate amount of eye-rolling. All throughout the campaign season here in Florida we had cheesy commercials on TV that were ranting about the Florida Marriage Amendment, also known as “Proposition 2” and “The Marriage Protection Amendment”. The ads were designed to scare the hell out of the so-called mainstream by raising the specter of gay men in ass-less pants having sex in public parks.
No, I never saw any such thing in any of the ads. But the people in the ads were so squeaky clean, upstanding and, by implication, Christian that clearly anyone who disagreed with them was a dirty pedophile. Not surprisingly, a majority of appropriately frightened Floridians voted the amendment into law.
Personally, I don’t see this as a gay issue. If any of the idiots who voted for this would have taken a moment to inform themselves, the language of the amendment actually reads;
“This amendment protects marriage as the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife and provides that no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized.”
Please note the part that reads “no other legal union”.
You know what that means? These idiots not only banned gay marriage, they banned any form of civil union. That means that one man and one woman who live in a long-term relationship have no civil rights whatsoever in regard to their union. This means that the idea of “domestic partner” has been thrown out with the bathwater. So if I get sick and have to go to the hospital, my girlfriend could make no decision whatsoever regarding my care. I’d lay on my deathbed until my ex-wife could fly down to Florida to pull the plug and carry off all of my worldly possessions.
This is the big lie that so many people have bought into. In the great, hate-filled fear of gay people getting married, they’ve essentially screwed anyone who isn’t married. This is a theological argument, hammered through by uninformed idjits whose hatred of gay people was manipulated through propaganda and feat-mongering. The delicious irony is that many of the people who voted in favor of Proposition 2 were voting against their own interests. Many of them will find later on that they have no rights whatsoever where the lives of their domestic partners are concerned, because these idiots thought they were only voting to keep gay people from getting married. Doh!
It’s amazing, really, that in the 21st Century, in the year 2008, we’re still arguing about this crap. Who the hell cares if gay people get married anyway? You can only object to it from a theological perspective. There is no practical reason that gay people should not be allowed to be married. You can only defend such a prohibition from a religious perspective. There’s no secular argument that could possibly stand up to scrutiny.
I look at it simply, from a realistic perspective, as with everything else. If you expect gay people to have to same responsibilities and obligations as straight people, they should have the same rights. Every single one. If gay people are expected to pay taxes just like everybody else, they should be allowed to get married like everyone else. Simple as that. You know, it wasn’t so long ago that it was illegal for a black person to marry a white person. Did that make any sense? Well, obviously, it did make sense to some racist individuals or it would never have been law. This prohibition against gay marriage is driven by the same kind of hatred.
Whether or not gay marriage or gay sex is wrong is not the argument here. If there’s anything wrong about being gay, I figure that’s between that gay person and God. It’s certainly none of my business. And it’s none of your business, either. I don’t see how two men getting married is any worse than a Catholic marrying a Protestant, or Democrat marrying a Republican, or yes, a white marrying a black. It’s none of our business. And by God, if someone is born with a certain set of rights because they had the good fortune of being born an American, they should not have some of those rights taken away from them because they turn out to be attracted to people of their own sex.
And don’t you dare come back on me with that tired old argument about “if we let gay people get married, the next thing you know there’ll be people marrying dogs and goats”. Shut up, you knuckle-dragging dipshit. A dog or a goat can’t consent. We’re talking about two consenting human beings who know full well what they’re doing. Don’t insult me by insinuating that two men getting married is the same as some guy marrying a dog, just because your first sexual experience was probably with your sister. We’re not all as twisted as you.
In the end, what it all boils down to is religion. There is no secular argument here. As I said, the only argument you can have against gay marriage is a religious one. Therefore, in my book, it’s an invalid argument. My experience has been that religion (and by that I mean all religions) has brought the world nothing but bloodshed and pain. Therefore the equation is simple – Religion = Misery.
We’ll all be better off when human beings grow beyond this genetic predisposition to believe that whatever rock or ghostly spirit that they’ve chosen to worship is the One True Manifestation. Someday we might overcome religion and have a chance of finally getting down to the business of loving our neighbors, no matter their race, creed, sexual orientation or political affiliation. It’s our religions that give us the capactiy to hate. It’s our religions that allow us to justify killing those people across the valley because they’re different from us.
You might think I’ve gotten off-track with this argument, but I don’t think I have. I think it’s all the same thing. Simply put, there are some Americans who are being denied the same rights as other Americans because they’re different. And those differences are being defined by a hatred that comes from religious ideology, not practical necessity.
To all those who voted for Proposition 2 in Florida or Proposition 8 in California, I’d like to say that you should enjoy your moment in the sun. Your hatred has led you to stifle the rights of other Americans. That makes you an enemy of freedom. I can only hope that at some point in the hopefully not too distant future, human beings may grow beyond such knuckle-dragging idjits such as yourself.
