I protest.

Yup. I'd go on to say that anyone who says Gays have no right to fight in the military are bigots and America haters. After all, which group of Americans better understands the reason they're defending America? (Well, that's assuming the military were used for just reasons.)

I thought Clinton should have stood his ground on the Gays in the military issue, and told anyone who couldn't handle it -- from Generals and Admirality down to clerks -- to get out because they don't understand what they're supposed to be defending.

And then there was the "God, Homosexuality and You" brochure. A stack of those goddamn things showed up at work several years ago. I complained immediately and at length to three levels of management. My employer refused to do anything about it but my wife resolved the problem by summarily throwing them in the garbage. Repeatedly, until the bigot, whoever it was (coward too, since they never identified themselves) quit trying.

Grrrr. Nothing pisses me off more than the issue of bigotry. I mean REALLY pisses me off.

"What IS IT about people who claim to love America but clearly can't stand Americans?" -- Annette Benning in "The American President"

What really bugs the bejabbers out of me is that most of these rabidly bigoted morons do not have the first clue about the Constitution. One has to point out Section 1 of the 14th Amendment: All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

They usually counter with something trite like marriage has always been a man and a woman. To which they must be reminded that is a religious perspective and the government only sees contracts, not religious institutions -- since the First Amendment clearly says, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.

If they don't like it, they can move to a country without the freedoms from persecution that the U.S. Constitution has extended to them for so long. Maybe they'd be happier in China.

(p.s. glad to see you blogging regularly!)

Ah, yes, the "due process" amendment. Funny how the Right so often overlooksignores that one.

They probably wouldn't like it so much in China, either. All marriages are "civil unions" there. The religious/social wedding is entirely separate from and unrelated to the legal process. Ultimately, to get married in China, one fills out the proper forms and has them stamped appropriately by the proper functionaries. And that's pretty much it as far as the government is concerned.

Of course, China has other problems, like denial of the presence of homosexuality, for example. My wife (who is Chinese, by the way) swore that China has very few if any gay people. I've had to tell her many times that they're there, they're just hiding their sexuality from societal disapproval. (Which disapproval, incidentally, carries much more weight there than a Westerner can easily understand.)

I say let's ship them all to Iran. They should fit right in with the ultra-right-wing mullahs. Heh.

Oh, and thanks. I just have to find something I'm angry enough about to write about it. Life has been demanding an inordinate amount of time lately, and work is about to swallow me whole for the next few weeks.

Heh. I'd suggested China for exactly that reason; its government is in the business of denial, has been quite adept at it. These right-wing ideologues wouldn't cotton to any Islamic culture simply because they're Islamic -- although in truth, the far right's insistence on regressive cultural behaviors is so very Taliban-ish.

Hope you'll be able to juggle the blog with the workload. It's a challenge, this blog-addiction!

I finally went through on talkleft.com's message board and read all your comments after I made a long post about this very page in my site.

I understand that you are full of righteous indignation over this topic, but you offer no one you've preached to so far any moral highground that validates your opinion.

Before you go all ballistic on me over this, think about all of this objectively. There is two ways to look at this issue, as I see it:
A) Gay marriages should be illegal because a majority of the public has spoken on it.
B) Gay marriages should be legal because the majority of the public has spoken wrongly on it.

Here is the fundamental flaw in all your rants: you come at everyone with a moral superiority (that I'm not even going to argue whether or not it's right), but your entire rationale behind this rests on pitting your moral superiority vs. the majority of American's moral superiority. It's not just Judeo-Christian values, but most other religions too, that look down upon same-sex marriages.

If you ever want to convince the public that time-honored religious beliefs are wrong about same-sex couplings, then you are going to have to play a delicate game of apologetics that validate your point of view. You will not be able to win friends and influence people by calling them bigots. Don't you see how unpalatable your arguing position is? It's like Christians trying to convert people to Christianity by calling them Godless pagans and they will forever burn in hell if they don't change.

People don't want to hear that. You make yourself sound like an extremist, even if you aren't.

I have to say, most of what I read of your posts were inflamatory to me, and insulting to my intellect, and I don't even disagree with you. I'm a completely open pallette on the subject, I could've cared less before the debate was opened, but if your arguments for same-sex marriage are what everyone on your side of the fence is saying, then I want no part of being on your side of the fence.

There is two ways to look at this issue, as I see it:
A) Gay marriages should be illegal because a majority of the public has spoken on it.
B) Gay marriages should be legal because the majority of the public has spoken wrongly on it.

Here's a thought experiment: Remove the word "Gay" and replace with "bi-racial".

A) would represent the sentiment of a majority of the American public on the topic of mixed marriages mid-century. B) is the truth of it, that in this democracy where all humans are created equally and endowed with the same inalienable rights, that even a majority cannot assert its will upon a minority by removing their rights.

"Bigotry" is merely a label for a bias against another person and their rights simply because of attributes the subject cannot change. People cannot change their race nor their sexual orientation; these are in-born, congenital traits. They have a function and purpose for the perpetuation of the human race or else these in-born traits would not exist in percentages approaching or exceeding 10% of the total population.

Another thought experiment: change "Gay" to "blue-eyed". Let's assume that a majority culture wanted to breed out the minority of undesirable blue-eyed people in a culture. Is this bigotry? Hmm. Should this ever be legal? Are these blue-eyed people somehow possessing less rights to control their lives than the brown-/green-eyed? Hmm.