Political rant

[cnoocy]

Apparently the right has their, um, undergarments in a twist over the idea of gay marriage. It's just so dumb. Though I suppose if I can make an electronic copy of a song and that counts as stealing from the person who still has the original, then for, say, Ian McKellen and his partner to get married somehow reduces the power of my cross-gender marriage. Feh, I say. If you want to defend marriage, enact the following law:
A couple who wishes to become married must allow two weeks to elapse between getting their marriage license and their wedding. At no point during this period may either of them appear on a television show that deals in any way with their marriage. That deals with attention-seeking celebrity marriages and marriage reality shows. It means it's harder to elope, too, but I don't know that that's a bad idea. I suppose I'm actually fairly conservative about the purpose of marriage, but liberal about relationships.
Perhaps I've offended somebody.that would be interesting.

Comments

[canadianpuzzler.livejournal.com]

I have no doubt that the intention was otherwise, but, well, this looks like a good way to start a flame-war in the comments section of your livejournal. Indeed, your last sentence seems to indicate that you wouldn't mind if it happened.

My opinion in part (and probably in the most relevant part) is as follows: Regardless of one's political/philosophical/religious affiliation, it is not practical (and I can't see it being desirable either, from a legislative standpoint) to enact legislative differentiation between heterosexuals and homosexuals. That being said, gay marriage is not the same thing as marriage is under the traditional definition. Perhaps it should be assigned to a perfectly good word looking for a meaning - perhaps "kwyjibo"?

[fuldu.livejournal.com]

I think the difficulty here is that, no matter what you believe, the implementation of any sort of pertinant law is a legislative nightmare. On the one hand, as homosexuality has become more accepted in American society (and I emphasize more, since clearly it isn't yet accepted fully), the idea of passing a law defining marriage as opposite-sex runs the risk of creating the kind of firestorm that right now looks about two days away. On top of that, the idea of passing a Constitutional amendment (which I doubt would be necessary in the short run, but see the comments in my recommendation below) is beyond ludicrous and is only going to become more difficult with time.

But, there are two prominent ways of implementing same-sex marriages that have been suggested. The first, which I would support, is just calling a marriage a legal bond of two people, regardless of their genders. The country is not ready for this, even if there are certain areas of the country that might be. The second, civil unions, opens the whole can of worms that tahnan mentions about laws differentiating straight and gay relationships. To me, any law like that has a tint of "separate but equal" and should be approached very, very carefully, even if it is, as I feel to be the case, the only one that would actually be implementable the federal level under current conditions.

My recommendation to either side would be just to leave it alone and make sure that your guy gets elected in '04. Unless a Constitutional amendment is enacted, which would semi-permanently fix the outcome, this is a question that is going to be decided by the Court regardless of what legislation is enacted. Don't bother wasting time, energy, and political capital on pushing the legislation through when the Justices will be making the final decision. Use those resources in making sure the Court has a balance that will make the decision you want to see.

In another vein, I really like Ballad of Mary Magdalene, cnoocy, but I prefer the cover by Dar Williams on the Cry, Cry, Cry album she did with Shindell.