The Maine Event

There are some days that you wake up, listen to the news and wish you could just go right back to bed, because the world you’re waking up to is just too screwed up for you to participate.

In a giant step backward for mankind, the learned voters of Maine voted to repeal the state’s law that allows gay marriage.

Now, I don’t have a personal dog in this fight, but I do have several dear friends that do. And no matter what organized religion tells you, they are no threat to anyone or anything. All that hooey about gay marriage being a threat to the institution is just one more red herring to distract the masses from the underlying discrimination behind the whole opposition.

Another red herring is that churches can be forced to marry people that are at odds with their teaching. A church will always be able to administer to its members in any way they see fit. Wherever churches refuse to perform gay marriages, new ones will spring up that will. It’s more of an anti-competition stance than it is a moral one. The whole argument is so stupid, it’s laughable. But that’s all the anti-progress camp has to offer, when their position is so weak on the facts.

The way I learned it back in Catholic School, (cold chill runs down back) Jesus himself was always a beacon of inclusion. He administered to everyone. The only people he ever shunned were those that were in it for themselves… Those that were out to make a buck in his name… Those that screwed people all week, but sat up in the front of the church on Sunday.

Who does that sound like to you?

To me, the issue absolutely crystal clear. Science has shown overwhelmingly that being gay is an inherent trait. People are born that way. To discriminate against someone for a birth characteristic should be illegal in every circumstance. It’s exactly like telling people with blue eyes that they can’t get married. Or people with dark skin, red hair or a bad attitude. America is not supposed to the kind of country that imposes arbitrary standards. We do… but we’re not supposed to.

More importantly, this is not supposed to be a country where a mob can legalize discrimination. That’s all this election was… a civilized mob, bent on driving a minority back into the shadows. A mob, whipped to a frenzy by religious bigots who see their role in society diminishing. What is it about us as a people that we have to have someone to shit on? Do we really need to persecute someone else just to make ourselves feel better? Feel more righteous?

If it were left to popular vote, the civil rights legislation of the 60’s would never have come to pass. Issues relating to equality and non-discrimination need to be taken out of the hands of those who get their world view from a book of two thousand year old fairy tales, which was written and sanctioned by men in power and a vested interest in keeping it that way.

You want to keep marriage sacred? Ban heterosexual marriage. They’re the ones with the 50% divorce rate. Or, make living together for 2 years a required activity. That will eliminate all the quickie marriages and the inevitable divorces that follow once the “shiny” wears off. This would eliminate most celebrity weddings as well, which can’t be a bad thing. That ought to put a nice J-hook in the old divorce rate bar graph.

Oh, but I bet the religious folk won’t like that either… after all, they still pretend that we’re all supposed to “save ourselves” for marriage.

OK, I’m drifting…

When I hear about this whole kafuffle, I think about some of my friends… fine, upstanding and very cool people. The go to work, they pay their taxes and they keep a nice house. They are wonderful, doting, supportive parents. There’s nothing about them as people that should prevent them from marrying the mate of their choice and being just as miserable as the rest of us. And whatever it is they do with their lives, I don’t see how it has any iota of an effect on the institution of marriage. Good marriages will be good and bad marriages will be bad, just like they’ve always been.

I’ve had enough of the busy-bodiedness of our culture. Would it really kill us to just get the hell out of each other’s goddamned business?