I know we generally reserve that post title for deaths, but the so-called 'Marriage Amendment' passing in North Carolina is like death. Not only does it give Constitutional backing to bigotry, it also extends to all domestic partnerships, gay or straight. I love the south and my twenty years here have been the best of my life but the bible-thumpers have seriously gotten under my skin this time around. How dare a bunch of people who believe in fairy tales get to make the rules for all of us.
6 comments:
Ugh. Sorry to hear it, Dave.
It drives me crazy the way the right stokes resentment in its base over extending rights to others. So an oppressive majority in the South feels victimized by efforts for equal rights by a minority. Republicans here effectively want to live in a Christian theocracy, ignorantly invoking the founding fathers as they wave their flags.
"Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its laws or its songs either."
- Mark Twain
I came happily bounding down to Nashvegas, Bible Belt after a decade in New York City. I can't say I'm surprised by my current environment, but it is frequently unsettling how everyone here just assumes I think the same crazy shit they think.
The momentum of history encourages me. Racially mixed marriages, even racially mixed military seemed unthinkable to the natives not so very long ago. "Unnatural" arguments comically echo in the fundamentalist spew characterizing the North Carolina gay marriage debate. I think Southern opposition eventually gets obliterated on this, right? The young people here simply know better. No matter how backwards it seems now.
Me, I'm still pissed at Clinton for signing the Defense of Marriage Act. I try to go to the big Human Rights Campaign fundraiser every year. [It's where I got my signed Emmylou Harris Gibson]. I've thought of marriage as a marker for all of the other important rights that gay couples get hosed out of - joint and second-parent adoption, hospital visitation, housing rights, insurance benefits, etc. Multiple state charts here.
Hopefully North Carolina is a notable instance of the dying throes of the ignorati -- depending whether or not you think they're outbreeding the damn intellectuals.
What Eric said.
It's why I'm glad Obama finally 'came out' in support of gay marriage. I think he knows he was risking being on the wrong side of history on this one. He won't risk his black electorate base over this one issue even though it is one that they fundamentally disagree with him on.
That is a great Mark Twain quote!
Post a Comment