Thursday, March 11, 2004
Same-Sex Marriage 

Is there an activity that is less of a threat to our "moral fabric" than marriage between people of the same sex? NO! Yet Bush and the goons at the American Family Association are all warm about it destroying our way of life. (See also nogaymarriage.com)

They would like you to believe that same-sex marriage is just another step in the decline of our moral and religious values--a decline that drives the Internet porn industry, child sexual abuse, rape, murder, the alarming rise in "liberal" media, and bare breasts during the Super Bowl. Please.

Bush would like you to believe that a few irrational homos and a bunch of irresponsible judges are creating a crisis that can only be dealt with by constitutional amendment. All right-thinking people, he says, know that marriage is ONLY something men and women can do with each other. The American public, though, is really a lot more tolerant on this issue than the RE-PUB-LICK-CANS would like you to believe. AFA had to remove an online poll they conducted, when the overwhelming support for a constitutional amendment, which they hoped to show to Congress, did not materialize.

Here is why there should be no legislation about gay marriage, and furthermore, why it should be perfectly legal:

• Marriages are "civil" arrangements anyway. You can have all the ministers, priests, and shamen you want to conduct your wedding, but you ain't married until you have that license from the state that says it's legal.


• Virtually all objections to gay marriage are on religious grounds, which makes a constitutional amendment or any other legislation a de facto establishment of religion, and therefore UNconstitutional. I don't care if there are 5 million religions with scripture that says it's wrong. If there is just one religion that says it's OK, then the government oversteps its bounds by creating any prohibitiion.


• What your religion does is fine with me, but your religion can't tell my religion what to do.
  
• I thought the RE-PUB-LICK-CANS were all about states rights? How can they say the federal government has any roll here?


• FREEDOM! What two consenting adults do with their lives is nobody else's business.
  
• What values can possibly be threatened by same-sex marriage? (To steal a little from Bill Maher) Love? Honesty? Fidelity? Monogramy?


• I can't help but think that part of the conservative objection is purely financial: business execs don't want to pay partner benefits to all those gay couples out there.

Whew! Glad I got that off my chest. Now, get out there and marry to your heart's content!
posted by Steven Harris @  8:09 AM Comments-[ comments.]