This one was incited by hearing that morality was one of the main reasons that voters gave for choosing Bush, and seeing so many states vote for a state constitutional ban on same sex marriages. (WHY~~?! What is WRONG with you people?!) Also by hearing all those sound-bytes of people being "so proud of the president for being openly religious." I think they meant openly Christian, but maybe I'm being overly cynical... Hahaha.
Arrgh. Okay... I respect people's right to believe what they want to. I really do. And I don't think religion is a bad thing in principle... But I do hate when people try to push their religion on others, or, worse, try to enact public policies that force their values on others. Wasn't this country founded on the premise that church and state should remain separate? I once heard someone say "but that's not in the constitution". And that kind of scared me. It really shouldn't matter whether it's in there or not.
And how is gay marriage a threat to family values or the sanctity of marriage? It makes absolutely no sense to me. Does two men getting married somehow invalidate a marriage between a man and a woman? make it less sacred? Will the sight of two women getting married make children suddenly start deciding that they're all gay because now gay marriage is legal, huzzah!? I would think the existence of places like Las Vegas, shows like "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?" and the general social acceptance of premarital sex would be a much greater threat to any sanctity that marriage may have retained after the advent of Divorce.
What are these people so afraid of? From what I can tell God created marriage, as we think of it today, for procreation and to prevent fornication. Meaning that by their standards there should be NO premarital sex, and NO sex at all without the aim of procreation. But nobody is lobbying for the banning of premarital sex, nor would any sane person try to prevent a married couple, should they so choose, from having sex while using prophylactics. It's so bloody hypocritical to stick to the "man and woman" part so tenaciously.
And all this debate between "Marriage" and Civil Union. So damned pointless. It's just a *name*. You know what they should do? They should cease to make marriage a legal institution at all. Any legal union between two people should be made a civil union, and states should no longer recognize marriage as legally binding. Let the religious sects handle "Marriage" as they will. Then everybody's happy. People of all sexual orientations would have equal rights under the law, and the church would not be forced to recognize gay marriages... not that they would be even if gay marriages were legalized, but maybe this way they would shut up about it. And if some radical sect of whatever religion decides to acknowledge gay "Marriages", so be it. People can recognize or not recognize it as they will, and it will have no significance in any legal capacity. But as it stands now, marriage holds with it certain legal rights, and I can't understand why anyone would think it's okay to withhold those simply because of the gender of a couple.
On the bright side, I truly believe it is only a matter of time before gay marriage is legalized. I believe that these are just the death throes of the older conservatives on this issue, which were exacerbated by what happened in Massachusetts and California. This is just the conservative backlash and it will die down sooner or later.
 Skatzzi · Sat Nov 06, 2004 @ 08:39pm · 2 Comments |
