I am going to follow Elle's suit and do a rare, serious post on a political issue that's been bugging the hell out of me, and I feel like ranting about.
When Prop 8 actually passed in California, I honestly felt sick to my stomach. I could not believe that people could really vote to "Eliminate the right of same sex couples to marry." People voted to eliminate the rights of other human beings. It's disgusting.
What's even more disgusting are the narrow-minded, homophobic, and hypocritical arguments employed by the religious right against same-sex marriage.
For example (and this is a popular one), it would harm the institution of marriage. Let me translate this for you:
Your heterosexual marriage will somehow be less valid if we allow same sex couples the same rights.
That is just absurd. First of all, marriage is nothing more than a societal construct and tax shelter. It isn't some union ordained by god. In fact, it used to come with a dowry so that men could get some value out of having daughters - it was a business transaction! Furthermore, if anything is harmful to the "institution of marriage" it's the fact that Britney Spears can get married for 56 hours on some bender in Vegas to a guy with the same real name as George from Seinfeld.
Next, people like to say, "if we let a man marry a man or a woman marry a woman, what's next? Will I be able to marry my dog or my toaster?" My response to anyone who actually asked me that would as follows:
Sir/ma'am, the fact that it even crosses your mind to marry your dog or toaster makes me very concerned for you. Furthermore, I cannot believe you are equating a human being with a dog or toaster - and I don't give a crap what Leviticus says about it.
Finally, there is the argument about how it will lead to the degradation of the American family - because then same-sex couples will be able to more easily adopt unwanted children who will otherwise potentially live our the rest of their days in foster care or worse. Please, please homophobic religious conservatives, save the children from a loving set of parents who will provide for them and give them a real home! After all, how can anyone possibly be happy and healthy with 2 moms or 2 dads? It must be better for them to live in foster care or group homes.
It is also shocking to me on the prop 8 front that the two groups who helped pass this horrible proposition are two groups that not that long ago were persecuted with regard to marriage. African Americans voted in huge numbers to pass prop 8 - and it wasn't that long ago that anti-miscegenation laws were still on the books. And, of course, the LDS church threw insane amounts of money at this campaign. Mormons - who were also persecuted for their marriage practices - you know, polygamy? Wasn't that long ago in the grand scheme that Mormons were polygamists...
If religious conservatives don't want to allow same sex couples to get "married," then the state should get out of the f***ing marriage business. We all get domestic partnerships (with the same partner benefits and tax credits) or we all get marriage. I am sure there is some legal nuance I am getting wrong here, but didn't Brown v The Board of Education of Topeka Kansas tell us that the doctrine of separate but equal is inherently unequal?
If you live in DC and feel like I do about this issue, then I would like to encourage you to come out and show your support. There's a march Sunday starting at 11 am. Now, I avoided every single protest in my 4 years at Berkeley - so I am not some crazy, protesting, bleeding heart. But, I think it's important that people turn out and finally say it's time to get our heads out of our asses and give all of our citizens equal rights. This isn't about sexuality - it's about equality.
