Flibbertigibbet

Republicans Make Me Sick

Yes, I voted for George Bush, but Republicans really make me sick lots of the time.

Case in point: I just heard Georgia's soon-to-be, new, Republican Speaker of the House, Glenn Richardson, obviously emboldened by the 78% popular endorsement of Georgia's state constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage, say that "marriage by any name is between a man and a woman" and that civil unions are "out of the question."

Who the f!bomb are these people to say what I will and will not do with my stuff?

Straight folks! Wake up! This applies to you, too!

The government is not concerned with your romantic affiliations.
The government is not concerned about whether or not you have accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior.
The government is not concerned with who yanks your crank.

What the government IS concerned with is your property and who is allowed to do what with it.

Marriage, from the government's perspective, is NOTHING more than short-hand for a very complex contractual relationship between you and someone else and its impact on your respective property.

That's right! As unromantic and callous as it sounds, marriage is just a contract. Gay men can marry gay women at any moment and the government of the state of Georgia will honor and defend your respective rights in that contractual relationship. But if parties of that agreement are of the same sex, the state will not.

How is that fair to ANYONE?

Try this one on for size, my hetero-readers: As a gay man, I might marry a lesbian. Together, the state will afford us benefits and all kinds of niceties. My lesbian wife can then have an affair with ladies and I can go romp with the men-folk.

Under ordinary circumstances infidelity is grounds for divorce. Given that we are both professed homosexuals, however, does it not stand to reason that infidelity is even expected given that we are not inclined to consummate our marriage physically and that is well known by all upon formation of the union?

Does that or does it not fundamentally alter the 'institution' of marriage?

Only if you think it's more than a contractual relationship about property.

But Republicans prefer to delude themselves into thinking that marriage is "a fundamental building block of our society" and that gay marriage will "undermine the very foundation of western civilization."

Pardon me, ladies and gentlemen, but that is complete bullsh!t. Marriage is not a fundamental biulding block of our society. Gay marriage will not invalidate heterosexual marriage nor will it desanctify those so-called holy unions.

There is no rational argument against allowing gay people to enter into the same sorts of contractual arrangements as heterosexual people.

The only argument that could be made in opposition to state-recognized gay marriage is that the state should not recognize marriage as a contract different from any other regardless of what kinds or amounts of people form those contracts. I even think that there are terms of the marriage contract, particularly those regarding mutual ownership of property, that are not rationally defensible.

But so long as the state is in the business of recognizing marriages, there is no reason gays should not be allowed to join the fun.