But with a few rare exceptions, everyone who has recently tried to promote the opposite side has merely repeated lies. Not smart lies, either. Stupid, obvious, provably false lies. And like I don't want to hear their lies, they don't want to hear truth, my opinion, or my anything really. Because what these people want to vote into law is that they don't trust me, or any woman (prop 4) or gay person (prop 8) to decide what is best for themselves. Only someone who is not me and believes unfounded lies is possibly capable of deciding what is best for me, obviously. And this notion makes me decidedly cranky.
So cranky that I currently couldn't up and write something like this piece on why gay marriage is about civil rights, not marriage. But if you're reading my blog, it's preaching to the choir. I know this, but I need to say it anyway. If you've already written your letter to the editor, I absolve you of feeling the need to read my rant.
I'm worked up today because I saw a bunch of people with prop 8 signs hanging out on a busy street corner. The Yes folks mostly had professionally printed signs. The No folks were holding their own, but had only one pre-printed sign. I don't know what that means, but does make me curious about the state of funding. (I have donated what I can afford.) One of the wacko, yet pro, "yes" signs said "8 = free speech". Another said "8 for the kids". Excuse me, but are y'all smoking crack? I have done lost my patience with your hate and disrespect. Kids are fine with gay marriage if they aren't told to hate, fear, and disrespect it. And make no mistake, they are overwhelmingly told to hate, fear, and disrespect gay people, and to allow others to disrespect someone for their fundamental nature.
Marriage equality is about being able to walk down the street and have ANY adult you see be legally able to pick any other consenting adult to marry and get lots of state and federal financial and legal benefits that every other adult can have. What is threatening about that?
Now that I've been thinkingon it, lack of marriage equality is kind of like male-succession laws where you have to wait until the baby is born to see if it's a useful one or a dud - and the girl continues to be treated like a dud for her whole life. Arbitrarily denying a portion of people the right to marry means that your kids, when growing up, won't know whether they're a fully acceptable adult until they become aware of their sexuality. How is that good for the kids? I've got a pretty good life now because we're trying to be better than that and celebrate all children as equally important regardless of gender on arrival. Because we looked at the way things were always done and said, "believing this doesn't help us."
One of my best friends blogged about coming out to the neighbors, and more, to the neighbor's kid. While it wound up being no big deal, the lead up was a year of anxiety and planning the timing and contingency planning to minimize potential issues. But my friend had to plan around the predjudice allowed to flourish in schoolkids for when her girlfriend could move in. And her son was anxious that his best friend who has run tame in their house since she was 3 would not take it well. Anyone else would have just said, "my mom's getting married". How does this help the kids?
Yep, that's a rhetorical question. And fully believe that if I allow you to make a fundamental choice about how you live your life, and you allow me the same, we will all be better off. And I really don't care to hear why I'm wrong. Because I'm not.
3 comments:
I think most Cdn's have totally forgotten that gay marriage is legal here. The world as they knew it didn't come to an end. I suspect it's still "slammed" in some of the stricter churches... but it's no longer in the news and nobody I know of, discusses it.
I do understand, there's still a lot of legislation that needs to be editted, and hopefully that will get done shortly as well.
S. - who's off to slam her MPP about why the Big 3 automakers who were going under before the slow down are getting millions and respite funding for special needs kids is getting slashed.
there were a few professionally printed no on 8 signs in my neighborhood and now there are a few yes on 8 signs and those people of course have an acompanying mchate sign. I say hate because I continue to see frightening signs of anger being whipped up on the other side, and not your usual tax n spend liberal stuff but the he's not like us he is frightening foreign muslim wacko stuff. If people were truly for mccain because they're conservative fiscally why aren't Barr and Paul in play? What I see is the anyone but a scary black man vote. The ironic thing is I see the mcpow signs on houses that are decidely in need of repair and or funds, why don't these people realize that the GOP has never trickled down for them? My parents were registered repubs and voted for Reagan his first term but woke up and smelled the coffee, or smelled the rising interest rates dwindling savings, and became democrats. Largest deficit ever, largest govt ever, war with no plan, goodbye habeus corpus yeah GOP!! Lorraine
Whew. This is the first post I've put up that I considered taking right down. But then I realized it was part of my need to work through what I want to say so the next time I see a "Yes on h8" sign, my head doesn't blow off. If I get a chance to talk with people, I want them to think I'm a reasonable person. If I'm foaming at the mouth, I won't have a chance.
But the reason I'm not more repentant about wanting to hear about the other side anymore is that I have heard it, and I agree - the wacko-commie-terror-lovin-scary-black-or-possibly-arab-or-both party line makes me sick to my stomach. And, again, batshit insane with rage. So I gotta step back. Like most competetive "reality" TV, I'd prefer not to know that these intellectual midgets with a mean streak are even here.
Sorry to hear about the funding. I hope your calls generate some action. Can you get a newspaper to write a human interest story? Yikes. I hate this "they're too big to fail" stuff. No, clearly they're not. Let 'em go. We'll be better in the long run just promoting businesses that are flexible with the times and providing for our citizens. In any country.
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