By now, you all know that
Iowa and
Vermont have legalized gay marriage and that
Washington, DC, is close.
Great.
I’m thrilled that chauvinism and bigotry stemming from questionable morality are finally being beaten down by logic and humanity and equality.
It tells me that in a few decades (but hopefully not even that long), we’re going to be laughing about this. Laughing, and shaking our heads. How preposterous—and embarrassing, really, and arbitrary, and ridiculous—to ban people who love each other from getting married because they happen to both have penises or vaginas and not one of each.
You know what else is like that? Slavery. Voting rights for women. Interracial marrying. Segregation. The idea that a black man cannot become President. And now they’re all gone. (Well, mostly. I do live in Chicago, after all. I’m not so unrealistic as to pretend that segregation doesn’t still exist.)
(For that matter: The idea that a woman cannot become President. The idea that an atheist or a Jew or a homosexual cannot become President. Let’s hope these become ideas of the past in the near future.)
I was reading today on Wikipedia about the
Montgomery Bus Boycott (about which my lovely wife incredulously had to remind me) that stemmed from Rosa Parks’ perfectly reasonable desire to sit in a bus seat of her choosing (how dare she?). Regarding the racial hierarchy governing seat assignments pre-boycott:
Under the system of segregation used on Montgomery buses, white people who boarded the bus took seats in the front rows, filling the bus toward the back. Black people who boarded the bus took seats in the back rows, filling the bus toward the front. Eventually, the two sections would meet, and the bus would be full. If another black person boarded the bus, he was required to stand. If another white person boarded the bus, then everyone in the black row nearest the front had to get up and stand, so that a new row for white people could be created.
Things like this make me shake my head and wonder how people can be so incredibly stupid and yet convince themselves that they’re acting perfectly rationally and free from delusion.
And when I say things like this, I’m really talking about BANNING GAY MARRIAGE.
I have an honest question. If you’re reading this, and you support gay marriage bans, what’s in it for you? What point is there for you to spend your time and effort preventing people from doing something that would make them happy and that would in no way affect you or your life?
