I finally got around to watching this. Pretty amazing. 6 minutes and 29 seconds well spent! Thanks to Keith Olbermann and to all the folks who have been spreading this video around.
I finally got around to watching this. Pretty amazing. 6 minutes and 29 seconds well spent! Thanks to Keith Olbermann and to all the folks who have been spreading this video around.
I agree, it’s worth watching. And I agree with Olbermann. I’m not gay, don’t have any relatives that I know of who are, but have had some friends who were gay. They were good people, and I was glad for their friendship. They were sometimes unhappy, but I suppose that was because of their experiences of being persecuted, bullied, and the official disapproval of the State, refusing their human rights. Life is too short, and love and happiness too hard to find, for us to prevent others living their lives as they see fit. Olbermann reminded us of the Golden Rule, but another quote, (same source), said, “Judge not, lest Ye be judged.” Both of them excellent, of course.
The whole prop-8 stuff…well, let’s say that I’d have a few things to say to the writers of that.
“Defending marriage” by preventing it? I’ve never understood that. But there are people who think the entire world will end if two gays were able to get married in California – they truly believe this would be worse than World War III.
The biggest problem with the California law (and similar ones passed in other states) is that there is no definition of “male” or “female” in the law. Seriously. Now, for most people that is pretty easy to figure out. Their gonads, chromosomes, sexual organs, and gender expression all agree. So it’s “obvious”. But there are plenty of people who’s gonads, chromosomes, and sexual organs don’t agree. There are plenty of people where these don’t even all point one way or another (such as people born with XXY chromosomes, or a male and a female gonad in the same body, or no external sex organs). Yet these people are ignored because they are inconvenient. So what if they can have marriages that are challenged, as at least “marriage will be defended”. But, that aside, one might think the biggest sex organ is the brain…and that’s still pretty much unrecognized as possibly being in disagreement with the body, too.
In fact, I suspect that many of the people passing these laws would be perfectly happy if every ambiguous person never married *anyone*, so long as it fit their agenda.
Of course this isn’t defined in the law because the reality is that there is no “easy” answer to this like we learned in 7th grade biology. It’s complex, difficult, and messy. And we don’t as a society like that – we want two neat categories with a quick test to determine where to put people (we wouldn’t want to just ask, apparently).
The government needs to stay out of the religion and bedroom businesses. They screw up another stuff without touching those two areas. If someone’s church wants to not recognize marriages of gays, and even preach against it, so be it – the wonderful thing about this country is that we don’t all need to agree (and when we finally allow gays to fight for our country in the military, I suspect we’ll find they’ll fight for the rights of anti-gay churches to speak the message of hate).
Enough on this from me. But it is an issue that gets my blood boiling.