"Couple thoughts on some of the inane and downright asinine things I have heard in regards to the overturning of Prop 8 yesterday. If you are a rabid fan of Prop 8, you may wish to stop reading because I promise, you won’t like what I have to say. In fact, you may un-friend me over it and I will just have to live with the rejection somehow. It’s been all over a ton of peoples pages and rather than go on a long winded rant on their page, I’ll confine it to a note on mine. :)
First and foremost… Popular vote does not trump civil liberties. Period. Am I the only one who took American history? Read the bill of right and the constitution people, every single American should know them. More than that, as an American you should UNDERSTAND THEM. They are amazing documents, probably two of the most amazing pieces of paper ever to come out of a government (and maybe the last two useful ones, lol). Your rights are not given to you by your government, they are not at the whims of the crowd, they are not negotiable. They are yours. No one has the right to take them from you. The law of the land will uphold them even if they are not popular. All the people who think popular vote ought to trump civil rights, I ask this; If it was YOUR rights, would you feel the same way? I wonder what Socrates would say, popular vote didn’t turn out so great for him. But hey, it was the majority vote right, who was he to argue with them? It was only his life.
While marriage isn’t life in the same sense it is very much so in another. It is the life you live. This bill denies people the right to live like everyone else. To have a spouse that has the legal and financial securities straight people take for granted. Not to mention some people are still romantics at heart. For them marriage represents the love and commitment they have for one another, the hopes they have for their shared future. It is a symbol of the lives they joined to form a new life they will live together. How dare they want to do something like that when it offends total strangers who will never even meet them. What were they thinking? (A better question of course is “How dare someone try to deny another that joy and RIGHT because they are too busy worrying about everyone but themselves.”… But no one seems to ask that one.)
If tomorrow the government said “Starting now no woman over the age of 35 may marry. Marriage is purely for procreation, women start to have fertility problems at that age.” people would be up in arms. There would be a million arguments that marriage was more than an excuse to breed. That adoption and fertility treatments are available and most importantly, that people do not have to have children to share their life with someone else. Yet one of the first things I hear against gay marriage is the “They can’t make a baby naturally.” So what? Neither can a lot of people. Having been a surrogate and an egg donor I can attest that the inability to have a child naturally does not negate the ability to be an amazing parent, nor does it mean you shouldn’t be a parent. After seeing the foster children my mom cared for when I was young, I can also say in the strongest possible terms that the ability to produce a baby does nothing to infer the ability to parent. Plenty more people don’t want to be parents, even if they are perfectly capable of doing so.
My favorite- “Marriage has always been a man and a woman and is a covenant with G-d.” Marriage pre-dates the religions most fervent in their support of Prop 8, it was a property transaction, not some sacred bond. A woman was chattel, her father traded her off to another man like cattle. Once married she had no rights, no say, she was a vessel for offspring and a servant basically. Times change, the world evolves. Women are no longer property, at least in this country. Marriage is a partnership now, not a property transaction. Just because something has always been a certain way is no argument against changing it if it is wrong. Lincoln seemed to agree, slavery had been the norm since the countries inception, that did not mean it was right. A deplorable practice, allowed to fester and become common place until everyone accepts it is still deplorable.
The context for most of this argument is a 2000 year old book that has so many mistranslations and flat out changes made that many of the key points aren’t even what the original writers wrote down. I know this may come as a shock to some, but the world is a very different place than it was 2000 years ago. The US is also very different than the middle east where that book originated, both 2000 years ago and today. The cover of Time magazine this month illustrates that in a jarring and tragic way.
(Homework assignment for those of you who don’t believe me. Look up the scriptures for the prophesies of the messiah, Billy Graham’s website has an easy to navigate layout for this. Then go to the Torah and look at what the actual scripture says. Amazing how a couple words can change the entire meaning of a passage, isn’t it? One of my favorite examples; they took the word for “young woman” and used “virgin” instead. If you notice there are a few missing from the original, you can thank the first X-tian Roman Emperor for those. He had his scholars make a few up and add them to the scripture.)
But if that is going to be the basis for all choices, when do we bring back stoning your children for talking back? Who is going to jump back into the slave trade? Sacrificing animals anyone? What about killing your wife because she displeased you? I could go on. Bottom line, either you take all of it as a hard and fast rule or you don’t get to use it to defend being an asshole. Picking what is convenient then dismissing the rest is not only hypocritical, it is a lie. It clearly states things throughout that book that no one adheres to because common sense and current law forbid it, yet it is held up the second it is useful for a particular argument. Slavery is in the bible, it is wrong. Everyone agrees with that. Homophobia is in the bible, and you know what? IT IS WRONG.
Another common one- “The sanctity of marriage will be compromised”. I look no further than our very high divorce rate to tell you that heterosexual people have done a fine job of destroying the sanctity of marriage without homosexual peoples help. Considering the divorce rate of the primary religious groups opposed to this are similar to the nation as a whole, they don’t get to hide behind that in my opinion. If you could show me say a 20% or less rate of divorce and childlessness for a group, I *might* listen to the sanctity and baby clause from them because at least they would actually be living that reality.
If the sanctity of marriage is really a primary concern, why aren’t these people out trying to ban divorce? Wouldn’t that make more sense? If you want to preserve marriage, remove the ability to end it. Ta-Da! It hath been preserved, Hallelujah! Oh, and make adultery a felony while you’re at it, and of course blow up Las Vegas. Because any place you can get a drive through wedding at really ought to be sacrilegious, right? Ask me about the sanctity of Brittany Spears 50 something HOUR marriage. I personally was moved by the depth and love that must have been before G-d, not to mention how fruitful they were, it was a beautiful thing.
I have never been able to grasp why people who claim to be fervently against homosexuality spend so much time thinking about it. If I was repulsed by it as they claim to be, I would not waste a single second thinking about it or about gay people or pretty much anything in regards to being homosexual. I wouldn’t even own “The bird cage”. If I am repulsed by something, I avoid it. I don’t obsess over it. I always wonder if maybe the loudest shouts come from the back of a very dark closet they desperately wish to remain in. That is just me though. Wide stance anyone?
I look at it this way, I’m repulsed by adult material that has midgets in it. As such, I don’t spend my days thinking of little people in compromising situations. I don’t ever rent or buy it. I avoid places that a stray naked little person would be chilling at. (I’ll miss you Tijuana.) I don’t drag my son to an adult video store and picket outside about how my deity is going to smite little people lovers for liking something “unnatural” because I have decided that I am the final answer on all things natural and unnatural. As well as knowing what my deity thinks explicitly so I can speak for him/her. Additionally, no one in this country has ever supported anything unnatural. Ever. All those animals in nature that have the same inclinations were actually made that way by the media. True story, dolphins watch the news and become fabulous.
A side note on the “natural” argument. If being gay did not come naturally to some people, they would be straight. The idea that it is a choice is a joke. Who would CHOOSE to be the object of unending harassment, bigotry and hatred? Who would choose to be a second class citizen in their own country even though they work and pay taxes like everyone else? Who would choose to be the object of socially acceptable ridicule while being told that their relationships with the people they love are not acceptable? No one. That also implies that sexual orientation on the whole is a choice, which means to me that the other person on the other side of it is saying they chose to be straight, because you can’t be born that way obviously. So, they can control the fact they feel sexual toward a member of the opposite sex and never act on it or feel it. If the porn industry is any sign, straight men lack control over it. Just saying.
Perhaps the energy and financial pool these followers of “forgiveness and redemption” have at their disposal would be better spent improving the world around them instead. I would be willing to bet that their G-d would prefer they feed hungry kids, clean up polluted areas, maybe build some schools or some other worthwhile project with all of those resources. With the amount of money spent trying to push Prop. 8, there could have been an amazing amount of worthwhile projects implemented. What better way to show your children that you mean what you say than by ACTUALLY practicing what you preach.
I just cannot believe a deity who says “Thou shall not judge” being too keen on them wasting their time and money worrying about what total strangers do in the privacy of their own lives. I do not mean this to condemn religion. I believe very strongly that people are entitled to their beliefs and should do what makes them happiest in their life; as long as it doesn’t encroach on the right of others to do the same. Cause no harm and live your life in a way that at the end you can look back and be proud of the way you navigated through the craziness of this world. If someone wants to be a devout x-tian, more power to them. Want to be a Hare Krishna? Good for you. Want to be an atheist? Have fun. Want to tell me how to raise my child or who I should love? Go fuck yourself.
Luckily for me the religious argument is actually moot. Because this is a democracy, not a theocracy. This country was founded on the principle of religious freedom, which means the freedom to practice any religion you choose or NONE AT ALL. My life and the lives of others don’t get to be decided by someone else’s dogma. Our rights should be and will be upheld even if they are not the popular thing at that moment in time. For that I will thank G-d, Buddah, Jehovah, the Flying Pasta Monster, or no one at all and just be happy I was born here where that is the case. Because in the end that is what matters. The arguments might be stupid. They might be flimsy and circular and nonsensical. Not one of the people regurgitating them or their hatefulness might have half a thought in their collective Borg mind, but that is okay because they don’t get to make the choice for me or anyone else. "
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