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| Acceptable Government Intrusion |
It's quite an understatement that there is apprehension among same sex and heterosexual's across the country, due to the Supreme Court's decision to take up the Prop 8 case. Both sides are taking up a unified front but for completely different reasons. Legal experts expected that the court would hear a challenge to the rulings that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional, and most LGBT activists have been relatively comfortable that they'll prevail on that case. However, few legal experts thought that the court would hear the Prop 8 case. The Ninth Circuit Court had narrowed the ruling to apply solely to California, giving the Supreme Court a perfect out to leave the issue of whether marriage is a constitutional right or not to another day, when there would be more acceptance of marriage equality and the court wouldn't be getting too far out front. But the court defied the experts yet again.
Is the fear warranted? That's a tricky question and depends on what it is you're afraid of. Is it quite possible that the court will hand down a sweeping decision upholding marriage bans in over 30 other states, ruling that marriage is not a fundamental right for gays? Absolutely, and if that's what you're afraid of, then be very afraid. Such a ruling could have a broad and enduring impact. It's a possible outcome, but not likely.
Is the fear warranted? That's a tricky question and depends on what it is you're afraid of. Is it quite possible that the court will hand down a sweeping decision upholding marriage bans in over 30 other states, ruling that marriage is not a fundamental right for gays? Absolutely, and if that's what you're afraid of, then be very afraid. Such a ruling could have a broad and enduring impact. It's a possible outcome, but not likely.
Alternatively, there's the issue of standing, which the Supreme Court is taking up again. Do the Prop 8 proponents even have legal standing to challenge Judge Walker's ruling that Prop 8 is unconstitutional, given that the attorney general and the governor didn't file a challenge? If the Supreme Court thinks not, then the case goes back to Walker's ruling and would not apply beyond California.
But none of us has any idea why the Supreme Court took up this case. It only takes four justices to decide to take a case. Did the four most conservative justices believe they could get Justice Kennedy's swing vote? Or did the four liberal-leaning justices decide to take it up, thinking they'd in fact get Kennedy? Or did all nine justices believe they needed to take up the case for various reasons? We don't know, and the legal experts have been wrong on this issue and many others, so don't put much stock in speculation. What we do know is The Supreme Court is putting its own integrity on the line. Should they attempt to turn back the clock or enforce religious doctrine as law they will lose all credibility, at least to those of us that still respect the rule of law, logic, reason and equality for all.
Conservatives, Bible thumpers, bigots, or people that love to quote the story of Sodom and Gomorrah as an argument against homosexuality, should hope and pray that same sex marriage passes nation wide so we can move on to a new topic of conversation. Clearly, this is a fight they will lose no matter how many soggy chicken sandwiches they buy or the fight for marriage equality will go on for another 5 to 10 years and it passes anyway. Politically, this is a fight that conservatives cannot sustain and win on in future elections. This is only winnable in red states, and we know they are the most ignorant and resistant to change. Not to mention the most religious while simultaneously being the most violent, the poorest, maintaining the highest teen pregnancies, and the highest rates of incarceration. That's the Bible belt for you.
But none of us has any idea why the Supreme Court took up this case. It only takes four justices to decide to take a case. Did the four most conservative justices believe they could get Justice Kennedy's swing vote? Or did the four liberal-leaning justices decide to take it up, thinking they'd in fact get Kennedy? Or did all nine justices believe they needed to take up the case for various reasons? We don't know, and the legal experts have been wrong on this issue and many others, so don't put much stock in speculation. What we do know is The Supreme Court is putting its own integrity on the line. Should they attempt to turn back the clock or enforce religious doctrine as law they will lose all credibility, at least to those of us that still respect the rule of law, logic, reason and equality for all.
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| Knocked up & Single, How Dainty |
Conservatives, Bible thumpers, bigots, or people that love to quote the story of Sodom and Gomorrah as an argument against homosexuality, should hope and pray that same sex marriage passes nation wide so we can move on to a new topic of conversation. Clearly, this is a fight they will lose no matter how many soggy chicken sandwiches they buy or the fight for marriage equality will go on for another 5 to 10 years and it passes anyway. Politically, this is a fight that conservatives cannot sustain and win on in future elections. This is only winnable in red states, and we know they are the most ignorant and resistant to change. Not to mention the most religious while simultaneously being the most violent, the poorest, maintaining the highest teen pregnancies, and the highest rates of incarceration. That's the Bible belt for you.
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| Bringing Down Society?! |
What we all have to understand and accept that in a few years, is that our kids PTA will look a little different, there will be people with different families with different experiences and it's time to accept it. The argument that God will reign down judgment is absolutely disgusting and here's why.
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| So Only Gays Get God's Wrath? |
There has been untold death and destruction since the beginning of time and God has allegedly intervened once with the flood. However, he has sat idly by with wars, the holocaust, genocides, the enslavement of generations of people, child molestation, mass suicides, child murders, untold suffering, famine, terrorism, assassinations, ethnic cleansing and yet somehow THIS, same sex marriage will be the one thing, the tipping point, that will cause God to act. These are the same people that picket and yell about smaller government unless it's about who to have sex with or what's going on in my uterus, then the government knows what is best. These are the only people that have the direct line to God, they must take sacred poops.
For some strange reason the concept of the right to pursue happiness is foreign to them unless they are black, male, female, straight, Christian and white. Everyone else can piss off. The pursuit of happiness is the fundamental underpinning of the American collective psyche. How in any way can a marriage between two of the same sex harm anybody else's right to pursue happiness? Therefore, how can any fair minded human being deny two of the same sex to pursue their desire for happiness? Oh right, there will be the plagues and locusts and frogs, let's not forget the plagues, locusts and frogs.
The Church has tried desperately to convince us that America was founded on Christianity just beccause we have "In God We Trust" splashed across our money, even though our founding fathers have made many statements against Christianity:
1. "Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man"- Thomas Jefferson
2. "The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs." -Thomas Jefferson
3. "And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors."- Thomas Jefferson
4. "There is not one redeeming feature in our superstition of Christianity. It has made one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites."- Thomas Jefferson
5. "Lighthouses are more useful than churches."- Ben Franklin
6. "The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason."- Ben Franklin
7. "I looked around for God's judgments, but saw no signs of them."- Ben Franklin
8. "In the affairs of the world, men are saved not by faith, but by the lack of it."-Ben Franklin
9. "This would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it"- John Adams
10. "Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange belief that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionally or invented absurdities, or of downright lies."- Thomas Paine
11. "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."- James Madison
Doesn't sound like they intended this to be a "Christian Nation". It sounded like they intended for individual freedoms where one could chose whatever God they wanted to serve, who they wanted to associate with, what they wanted to say without fear of recriminations. If the Supreme Court holds back progress and denies gay Americans their basic human rights, then their decision would have the same moral force as Dredd Scott v. Sandford or Plessy v. Ferguson, and the Justices who voted for it will leave a legacy of shame. Either way, the movement for full equality will be galvanized. The rationality however won't be for crackpot religious reasons.
A marriage is nothing but a legal contract between two adults. Don't believe me, just try to get a genuine divorce via a priest instead of going through the legal means, i.e. a judge. What people are trying to ban is the religious theater that is somehow needed to make people feel whole.
For some strange reason the concept of the right to pursue happiness is foreign to them unless they are black, male, female, straight, Christian and white. Everyone else can piss off. The pursuit of happiness is the fundamental underpinning of the American collective psyche. How in any way can a marriage between two of the same sex harm anybody else's right to pursue happiness? Therefore, how can any fair minded human being deny two of the same sex to pursue their desire for happiness? Oh right, there will be the plagues and locusts and frogs, let's not forget the plagues, locusts and frogs.
The Church has tried desperately to convince us that America was founded on Christianity just beccause we have "In God We Trust" splashed across our money, even though our founding fathers have made many statements against Christianity:
1. "Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man"- Thomas Jefferson
2. "The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs." -Thomas Jefferson
3. "And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors."- Thomas Jefferson
4. "There is not one redeeming feature in our superstition of Christianity. It has made one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites."- Thomas Jefferson
5. "Lighthouses are more useful than churches."- Ben Franklin
6. "The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason."- Ben Franklin
7. "I looked around for God's judgments, but saw no signs of them."- Ben Franklin
8. "In the affairs of the world, men are saved not by faith, but by the lack of it."-Ben Franklin
9. "This would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it"- John Adams
10. "Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange belief that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionally or invented absurdities, or of downright lies."- Thomas Paine
11. "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise."- James Madison
Doesn't sound like they intended this to be a "Christian Nation". It sounded like they intended for individual freedoms where one could chose whatever God they wanted to serve, who they wanted to associate with, what they wanted to say without fear of recriminations. If the Supreme Court holds back progress and denies gay Americans their basic human rights, then their decision would have the same moral force as Dredd Scott v. Sandford or Plessy v. Ferguson, and the Justices who voted for it will leave a legacy of shame. Either way, the movement for full equality will be galvanized. The rationality however won't be for crackpot religious reasons.
A marriage is nothing but a legal contract between two adults. Don't believe me, just try to get a genuine divorce via a priest instead of going through the legal means, i.e. a judge. What people are trying to ban is the religious theater that is somehow needed to make people feel whole.
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| I'm Too Sexy For My Shirt |
Just know that Charles Manson can get married but "Adam and Steve" can't because they are a threat to society. Truly laughable...
