Am I Unreasonable?
Logically Obese with
Religious Candy
(Oklahoma City) Would any reasonable American refuse the First Amendment right of freedom of religion to a woman wearing a burka? How about a Jew sporting a yarmulke? Or say a Catholic draping a scapula?
The First Amendment doesn't mention burka, yarmulke, or scapula, but reasonable people get the drift of what is a symbol appropriate to religious observances.
But with the recent rulings from the Supreme Courts of Washington and New York concerning same-gender marriage, there's a new crack opened in the legal logic where there was none before, a canyon to accommodate the prejudice and ignorance accumulated over a lifetime of judicial practice
After reading the summaries of the anti-gay judges (Both states's decisions were not unanimous.) I now know why lawyers go to school so long and when some of them age they become judges: it takes all that training and experience to create loopholes you can drive a truck through and to create the paperwork to cover their asses!
For now the learned majority judges (they morph into "justices" when they get to this high level) have declared that marriage for gay people is impossible because we can't, hold your breath, REPRODUCE! What a talent for the obvious these reasonable people have.
Let's think for a minute. I'm a gay man with a fully functioning set of genital plumbing. Yeah, I could marry a woman under Oklahoma law, but I can tell you right now, I still couldn't reproduce. Would my Oklahoma marriage be annulled? A reasonable judge could set aside the marriage should the woman sue for divorce, but what if she liked the arrangement? We'd STILL be married even though we knowingly have no intention of producing offspring.
This platform the two courts used to deny gay people their human right to affiance with whomever shares their affinity is built with the lumber of ignorance and vituperance that we find in the Old Testament published by the Fundie Christian Clearinghouse and nailed together with gift shop reproductions of the Nails of Christ.
For them, sex means procreative sex, never recreational sex and I say more power to 'em, bang away for babies all you like. Don't expect every reasonable mother to feel so enamored of the prospect of being the next Andrea Yates.
As a gay man, I'm more than just threatened by reasonable Americans who think they can suspend my 14th Amendment right of privileges and immunities under the law. My rights of choice and privacy in the disposition of my property and association now stand thwarted and spurned by reasonable people.
So how is it that only particularly regressive religious POVs are being enshrined in civil law?
Several of the recently passed homophobic laws and amendments, such as in Virginia and Michigan, are being scrutinized by both gay supporters and witch-burners to see if the language contained therein could be used to prohibit ANY kind of legal contract such as powers-of-attorney, living wills, financial trusts, civil unions, or domestic partnerships, because these legal instruments resemble the outlines of opposite-gender marriage.
Remember that marriage is the Holy Book arrangement most straight people perform in houses of their residing god. They hold this ceremony so dear that sharing this undiminishable resource of companionship with gay people is tantamount to the end of the earth. Yet when these same holy straights want to break up, they reverse the process and retain the right to divorce themselves in civil courts, NOT in a church, at a rate of over 50%.
In my opinion, our gay equality movement is in trouble due to the confused information many people have about separation of church and state issues. This is why reasonable people vote in the 70%-plus majorities to deny full citizenship and participation in American life to gay men and women.
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