Monday, July 12, 2004
The Heights of Stupidity
Let me make this real simple for the asshats in Washington (including the Chief Asshat himself) who would ammend the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. And I'm not calling it gay marriage, 'cause that's what it ain't -- there's nothing to say, and no reason at all, that two straight men or two straight women shouldn't be able to marry, either.
But... the lesson in Constitutional Law for y'all. Why does the Constitution exist? One very, very simple reason, and no more -- the Constitution exists to tell the Government what it can or cannot do to its employers (and owners), the People of the United States of America. It's pretty evident just on reading the Bill of Rights. After all, the Second Amendment does not say, "Every man between eighteen and fifty shall own a gun." It says, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." (Incidentally, at the time of the framing, "well regulated Milita" meant men between eighteen and fifty. Well, technically, white men who owned land.) Okay, the Constitution may be a little comma-happy at times, but the point is clear. It is the law by which the State, not the People, must abide.
Even the Thirteenth Amendment, which established the income tax, did not say, "All income earners must pay tax." Instead, it allowed Congress to determine the method and means of collecting said tax. Prior to that, Congress and the Executive were not allowed to tax income, because the Constitution did not reserve that power to them.
There has been exactly one experiment in using the Constitution to control the behavior of people, and it went down in crashing flames thirteen years after its passage. I'm speaking, of course, about the Eighteenth Amendment, that ill-advised experiment that created Prohibition. It was a stupid, stupid idea that only accomplished one thing -- it created the organized crime mobs in this country and made famous the many petty gangsters of the 20s and 30s, thereby giving Martin Scorsese a film career decades later. (Okay, maybe that last bit isn't such a bad thing, although I still hate GoodFellas. And ask yourself, if Spike Lee only made movies depicting African Americans as gang-bangers, don't you think he'd be crucified? But I do digress...)
The point is this: Prohibition turned out to be such a bad idea that it became the only amendment ever repealed by another amendment, less than a generation later. It was a bad idea because it tried to warp the Constitution into something it was not and shall never be.
Ultimately, the CW is that this amendment won't pass for two reasons. First, the issue of same-sex marriage is really only important to raving fundies who are Onanistically fascinated with everyone else's sex lives. (If you don't think that Fred Phelps doesn't secretly whack it to gay porn every night, you're way too naive.) Second, to most other people, the subject is a non-issue. They just don't care whether same-sex couples can get married or not. Rightly, they look at the question, wonder, "How does it affect me?" and then realize it doesn't.
And it doesn't. Because, despite all the shibboleths put up by jackasses like Rick ("Foamy, post anal-sex mattress stain") Santorum, same-sex marriage has absolutely no impact on "traditional" marriage, nor on familes, nor on anything else. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Bupkiss. This isn't about taking rights away from male-female marriage. It's about giving the same rights to everyone, regardless of which gender they chose to love -- the right to jointly own property, merge incomes and assets, parent step-children, visit in the hospital, assume power of attorney, inherit real proprty, etc., etc., etc. That's really what it's all about. It's not about telling the straight people what they cannot do. It's not about "destroying family", as Santorum woul have you believe. Quite the contrary. It's extending the definition to family to legally include families that have been excluded for far too long. Contraray to what the asshats in Washington would tell you, any loving, committed relationship is a family.
Quick comparison -- J-Lo has been married how many times now, and for how briefly? Britney was married for, what, four hours? Fine, upstanding examples of male-female, asshat-sanctioned ceremonies that somehow buttress the whole concept of family. (COUGH. Yeah, right.)
Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon -- activists, lesbians, and partners for fifty-one years. Fifty-one years that they had to wait until, last February 12th, they became the first same-sex couple to have a legal, government-sanctioned marriage.
Hm. You think they'll get divorced in a few months? Not likely. Because they demonstrated the true value of marriage for five decades. Love and committment, no matter what. At any point during that time, either one of them could have walked, without penalty or red tape. Neither one of them did, despite neither one of them being legally bound to the other.
And a handful of fundamentalist wingnuts in Washington want to say that that kind of commitment, that kind of love, the strength of that bond, is somehow so dangerous that it must be banned.
I have one word for that...
Bullshit.
But... the lesson in Constitutional Law for y'all. Why does the Constitution exist? One very, very simple reason, and no more -- the Constitution exists to tell the Government what it can or cannot do to its employers (and owners), the People of the United States of America. It's pretty evident just on reading the Bill of Rights. After all, the Second Amendment does not say, "Every man between eighteen and fifty shall own a gun." It says, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." (Incidentally, at the time of the framing, "well regulated Milita" meant men between eighteen and fifty. Well, technically, white men who owned land.) Okay, the Constitution may be a little comma-happy at times, but the point is clear. It is the law by which the State, not the People, must abide.
Even the Thirteenth Amendment, which established the income tax, did not say, "All income earners must pay tax." Instead, it allowed Congress to determine the method and means of collecting said tax. Prior to that, Congress and the Executive were not allowed to tax income, because the Constitution did not reserve that power to them.
There has been exactly one experiment in using the Constitution to control the behavior of people, and it went down in crashing flames thirteen years after its passage. I'm speaking, of course, about the Eighteenth Amendment, that ill-advised experiment that created Prohibition. It was a stupid, stupid idea that only accomplished one thing -- it created the organized crime mobs in this country and made famous the many petty gangsters of the 20s and 30s, thereby giving Martin Scorsese a film career decades later. (Okay, maybe that last bit isn't such a bad thing, although I still hate GoodFellas. And ask yourself, if Spike Lee only made movies depicting African Americans as gang-bangers, don't you think he'd be crucified? But I do digress...)
The point is this: Prohibition turned out to be such a bad idea that it became the only amendment ever repealed by another amendment, less than a generation later. It was a bad idea because it tried to warp the Constitution into something it was not and shall never be.
Ultimately, the CW is that this amendment won't pass for two reasons. First, the issue of same-sex marriage is really only important to raving fundies who are Onanistically fascinated with everyone else's sex lives. (If you don't think that Fred Phelps doesn't secretly whack it to gay porn every night, you're way too naive.) Second, to most other people, the subject is a non-issue. They just don't care whether same-sex couples can get married or not. Rightly, they look at the question, wonder, "How does it affect me?" and then realize it doesn't.
And it doesn't. Because, despite all the shibboleths put up by jackasses like Rick ("Foamy, post anal-sex mattress stain") Santorum, same-sex marriage has absolutely no impact on "traditional" marriage, nor on familes, nor on anything else. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Bupkiss. This isn't about taking rights away from male-female marriage. It's about giving the same rights to everyone, regardless of which gender they chose to love -- the right to jointly own property, merge incomes and assets, parent step-children, visit in the hospital, assume power of attorney, inherit real proprty, etc., etc., etc. That's really what it's all about. It's not about telling the straight people what they cannot do. It's not about "destroying family", as Santorum woul have you believe. Quite the contrary. It's extending the definition to family to legally include families that have been excluded for far too long. Contraray to what the asshats in Washington would tell you, any loving, committed relationship is a family.
Quick comparison -- J-Lo has been married how many times now, and for how briefly? Britney was married for, what, four hours? Fine, upstanding examples of male-female, asshat-sanctioned ceremonies that somehow buttress the whole concept of family. (COUGH. Yeah, right.)
Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon -- activists, lesbians, and partners for fifty-one years. Fifty-one years that they had to wait until, last February 12th, they became the first same-sex couple to have a legal, government-sanctioned marriage.
Hm. You think they'll get divorced in a few months? Not likely. Because they demonstrated the true value of marriage for five decades. Love and committment, no matter what. At any point during that time, either one of them could have walked, without penalty or red tape. Neither one of them did, despite neither one of them being legally bound to the other.
And a handful of fundamentalist wingnuts in Washington want to say that that kind of commitment, that kind of love, the strength of that bond, is somehow so dangerous that it must be banned.
I have one word for that...
Bullshit.
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