I'm late to comment on this, but it was a sorry sight indeed to see the die-hard Christianists in the Senate trot out their "pink herring" for its annual flogging. I forget where I read the so-called Marriage Protection Amendment tagged as a "pink herring", but it's apt. This may just be my own subjective impression, but the whole issue just seemed tired, and losing its magic to rouse the "base". I think even the base is starting to see it as just a transparent political stunt, a piñata brought out of the closet only during election years. The attitude of many of the Senators seemed to be a collective eye-roll, here we go again, can we get back to business now?
Meanwhile, Daniel Henninger, a Wall Street Journal opinion editor, made a completely assinine comment about some woman in India marrying a snake, and if we allowed gay marriage then how could we prohibit people marrying snakes? (Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan) This just shows how some people of normal intelligence simply lose all grip of rationality when it comes to this issue. People just completely blur the concepts of making personal vows for religious or personal reasons, versus entering into a legal relationship pertaining to financial interdependency and joint agency. Here in America, the law simply has nothing to say about anyone's ability to make personal vows of lifelong loving devotion. If someone wants to enter the temple of some animalistic religion and make such vows to a snake, no US law will stop them. It's a free country. What is at actual issue is the government-sanctioned relationship that entitles a married couple to such things as being legally responsible for one another's support, being able to make one another's medical decisions, and other such practical matters. Nobody, not even practioners of bizarre animalistic religions, are talking about holding snakes financially responsible for debts, or letting snakes make medical decisions on behalf of incapicitated persons. There are perfectly obvious reasons why legalized gay marriage could not possibly lead to legalized inter-species "marriages". Get a grip already.
Friday, June 23, 2006
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2 comments:
Sorry, this is quite unrelated to the posting but it was late and I had to ask, are you a "Log Cabin Republican?"
Me, a Log Cabin Republican? Um, no. I have no love for either of the two major political parties, and eschew the common-but-false left-right dichotomy.
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