Here's a question:

Since when do people get to vote on whether other people, or groups of them, should or shouldn't have the same rights as everyone else?

The question is really backwards, because what has happened in the history of this country is that sometimes people have gotten to vote on giving other people rights (not taking them away), like women getting the right to vote, or in another well-known case, when states used their laws to deny basic rights to certain groups of people, the federal governement has attacked them with weapons (the Civil War), defended them with armed guards (think school desegregation), or simply said "This is the way it is from now on" (enforcing voting rights in the south.) So how does it happen that the people of California (or anywhere else) get to decide if gay people can marry?

There are marriage laws, judges interpret the laws. They saw the laws have got to apply the same to everyone, then case closed, no? We actually vote now on whether some people should be treated, as a class, differently than some other people? When the hell did the put that in the Constitution? (I never said I wouldn't rant about other stuff, just about the election.)

I've said it before: gay marriage doesn't hurt a single person. (I'm not talking about pedophilia, which is perpetrated mostly by men who consider themselves straight.) Not a single married person, not a single child, not anyone. People who think that if children see gay people happy it will entice them into that "glamorous" life, I'm sorry, have got their heads up their asses, or else, for some reason, they are people to whom gay life seems glamorous. It's not glamorous, it's just life. Taking out the trash and helping kids with homework is no more intrinsically interesting for gay people than it is for anyone else, and no one is going to be enticed into being gay if s/he isn't going to be anyway. This is not like changing political parties where you study the issues and make a conscious decision. Switching sides in the homosexuality debate is all about the ick factor, as in "Ick! I'm not doing that!" and it works both ways, whether you're a gay kid someone's trying to "turn straight" or a straight kid succumbing to the fabulous attraction of a gay life, including all the legal penalties and potential hate crimes. I'm reading these stories about people thinking that maybe, maybe they can finally have the legal commitment with their partners that they deserve to, but now wait, everyone else gets to chime on on who you can sleep with. It's disrespectful and degrading, for all concerned.


WATCHING L/O:SVU :: ENTRY #1775