Proposition 8

A friend of mine recently posted her thoughts on California's recent proposition 8, and tried to do so in such a way so as to not offend anyone. An impossible goal, I suspect. I applaud the effort. I don't have any such goal, because 1) this is my soapbox, and 2) no one (as far as I know) is obligated to read it. Let's get started, shall we?

(Finding fodder for this post is the easiest thing I've ever had to do.)

The text to be added to the state constitution reads:

"Only marriage between a man and a woman
is valid or recognized in California."

Fourteen little words and so much debate. Very impressive. My favorite fruit company donated $100k towards the anti-prop-8 effort. That's a little depressing in that, in some sense, I contributed towards that. Blah.

Some of the more bizarre assertions I've seen flung around include:

"marriage is a right"

Marriage wasn't instituted by the People's Republic of California, nor this country that we live in. As surprising as it may sound, people have been getting married for more than the past 232 years. If one wants to make an appeal to the purpose of marriage, one is going to need to look back a lot farther than the history of this country. *shakes head in disbelief*


"country founded on religious freedom"

And by "religious freedom", they mean, "do whatever you want". Riiight. Find a good history book and read a few biographies and get back to me.


"voting 'no' on prop-8 is done out of hate"

Wow. As an aside, I love the whole "hate crimes" thing; as though emotional conviction is somehow important: it wasn't just a crime - it was a HATE crime. Right. Conversely, I suppose, if I somehow felt love for a shop-owner in robbing him, I should receive leniency. I suspect its these same people whose votes are swung by appeals in advertising. Sheeple.

I would be no more likely to vote to extend the term "marriage" to encompass same-sex couples as I would to allow three or four people to wed (yeah, you think that sounds outlandish, just wait a few generations). Or a man and a stalk of celery. Or a person and any kind of vegetable, for that matter. I'm not hating celery by not allowing it to marry. Really.

If same-sex couples want all of the (supposed) benefits of marriage, then fight for those benefits: higher taxes (in some cases), divorce, property disputes, pre-nup agreements. I don't understand why someone would want to fight so vehemently to redefine a term which definition has been pretty much static. What's the point? Are you really that bored? I can recommend some biographies....


"bigotry, discrimination, second-class status"

Wow. They set up a whole web site. Here's a snippet from the home page:

Sadly, fueled by misinformation, distortions and lies,
millions of voters went to the polls yesterday and said
YES to bigotry, YES to discrimination, YES to second-
class status for same-sex couples.

Emphasis added. When did tolerance become an inherently good thing? Probably around the same time that discrimination became an inherently bad thing. Every voter should consider himself discriminating - able to go to the polls, read, understand and make an informed decision. But that's all just a tangent about that website's inability to say what they mean.

In this particular case, the *majority* of voters said that they did not want to change the definition of marriage to suit the preference of a minority group. Seeking to over-turn this result is clearly intolerant (bigoted?) of the views of the majority. Right? Or are they going to continue to fight for the redefinition of this term, even though in so doing, they'll be acting in an intolerant manner?

Maybe pedophiles should be able to comb playgrounds and marry little girls without the parent's consent. Don't be intolerant!


"the bible doesn't condemn homosexuality"

The problem here is not that the Bible doesn't clearly and specifically condemn a whole host of sins (including homosexuality), the problem is that if you want to not see this, you won't - no matter what. No one consumed with emotion over a topic is going to heed a rational argument.


"al gore invented the internet"

He was key to some early projects and legislation that ultimately led to what marketing people and others without a clue refer to as "the information super highway", but beyond some initial contributions, this is largely an exaggeration of the truth.