same-sex marriage

Here is the LA Times article I found on crazy religious people who decide to fast and pray all day, every day, to end abominations like gay marriage and abortion. Even stranger, they set up shop in the Castro (?!!). Suspicious!

First, this is pointless. If the deity to whom they are praying exists, and is paying attention, that deity is likely irritated to be bothered so frequently by the same boring request all the time. If you were this God, and were omniscient and omnipresent, don't you think you would send some sort of sign to these misguided souls? "Hey, I heard you the last 931 times you asked me to squash your evil desires for the gay leather daddies and bears walking under your window. I know what's in your heart. You keep saying 'end the abomination of gay marriage,' but I'm omnipresent, and I see what you do in your free time when the other commune members aren't looking and know that you have a secret account downstairs at Castro Gulch to pick up your hot bareback porn. Could you lay off? Earth is falling apart, and there's a lot of other planets in the galaxy that probably need my assistance. Thanks, have a nice day, and shut up. Oh, and come out of the closet already. I actually don't care, by the way."

Second, what? If you're going to fast and pray all day every day to bring a righteous end to a horrible wrong, why not pick a more worthwhile wrong? I could think of a few things that would warrant a lifetime of prayer. World hunger, lack of access to clean water, war, AIDS, poverty, land mines, the depleted environment, endless greed propped up by capitalism...? Hello?

Third, I am unsurprised by this freaky cult/church being headquartered in East San Diego County. There are fewer scarier places I can think of.

Lastly, this is my personal invitation to you to vote no on Prop 8, which truthfully has more to do with our precious California Constitution than it does with marriage. I generally hold unfavorable views toward marriage, and I agree that it is probably outdated and almost certainly not all it's made out to be. But I really love our Constiution, and so should you.

Did you know that California once had "Alien Land Laws" which barred all "aliens ineligible for citizenship" (ie, all Asian immigrants, particularly Chinese immigrants who were laying down the railroad) from owning land? It lasted until 1946 when the California Supreme Court finally woke up and held that those laws violate the Fourteenth Amendment. Check out Sei Fujii v. California.

My point is this: it is the Supreme Court's job to interpret the constitution and sometimes overturn legislation when the legislation (Prop 22, or the Knight Initiative) sucks. The whole "will of the voters" argument is a bad one. Google Loving v. Virginia and Brown v. Board of Education, if you're not already familiar with those cases. If the California Constitution gets amended, it will open the floodgates for every other wacked-out group with enough money to be inspired to put their cracked-out initiative and further ruin our constitution.

By the way, the California Supreme Court is largely populated by Republican-appointed judges. Check out what our Chief Justice had to say about the court's decision here. Please note: he was appointed by Ronald Reagan back in 1972. He's not some radical Berkeley tree-sitter named Zorba. He's a well-educated, experienced judge. And he put it better than I could: "the ultimate will of the people is the Constitution."

So, I leave you with this: don't be an intellectual loser. No one is going to come into any church and force church officals to marry those pesky gays and lesbians. No church is going to lose its tax-free status. No school is going to start indoctrinating kids into the evil path of homosexuality (although I would like to point out that the vast majority of homosexuals have heterosexual parents...so if you're gonna push the "defect" argument, you may as well nudge it over to the defective breeders who popped us gaylords out). And if you really want to protect the sanctity of marriage, I fully expect that you also oppose divorce and seek to amend the constitution to that end as well. Doesn't sound so exciting now, does it? Vote no on prop 8.

The Upcoming Election

It's hard not to get excited about the potential for our upcoming federal and state elections.

It's hard not to daydream about the possibility of a world where the middle name of the president of the United States is Hussein, where the Republican party may face a severe majority in the Senate to match its deficiency in the House of Representatives, where same-sex marriage will be protected in California.

It's also hard not to get frustrated when the Republican presidential candidate and vice-presidential candidate keep throwing around the term "Second Holocaust," as if there has been only one Holocaust, as if Jews are the only people who can suffer a Holocaust. As if there haven't already been myriad Holocausts all over the globe. As if indigenous people haven't experienced genocide on every continent on the planet.

Real Clear Politics has the current Electoral College at 353 Obama, 185 McCain. I can't wait. I'd take a simple majority, but I'm salivating over a Republican slaughter, like the way Larry Craig gets all hot and bothered over illicit homo airport bathroom sex.