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New York, 10:46 PM
Mon Nov 9
67 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/04/09
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It should be now, of course. No one should have to wait for equality. It's disgusting and unfair that civil rights issues like this take as long as they do, have as many setbacks as they do, and require so much work and frustration and disillusion.
There's no way to change every mind, but it's heartbreaking to see something that should never, ever, be up to popular vote...be legitimized in some way and go counter to the basic tenants of our system. Which is that the rights of the minority should NEVER be subject to the whims of the majority. That is a fundamental issue in our system. The fact that many people seem to believe they have the right to decide what version of equality other people get to have saddens me. Something is broken in anyone who believes that.
I wish I could tell my LGBT friends that this will change soon. That this fight will not have to go on for years, or decades, and we'll see this in our lifetimes. I hope that we will. I think we move for change in the world faster than we used to. I can only hope we do. And continue to fight for it.
Bigotry will, I think, always exist. But we can't ever let it dictate our lives and access to equality. So we'll always have to fight. And though it's frustrating and discouraging...it's worth it.
Don't give up.
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Maine has the 2nd highest divorce rate in the country (only beaten by Nevada).
Maine allows first cousins to marry.
Maine recognizes the Universal Life Church (that free site on the internet) for marriages. And lawyers. Virtually anyone can perform a marriage ceremony in Maine.
30% of Maine children are born out of wedlock.
Now, I'm not concerned by any of those except the cousins part, but what pristine institution of marriage are the Yes on 1 people referring to? #gaymarriagemaine
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Nevertheless, I see you are right to point out that I am prejudiced against first cousins marrying and making babies. #gaymarriagemaine
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Fight for the rights associated with marriage, go for civil unions, worry about semantics later.
And hopefully they go to SCOTUS for this. I'm tired having to read shit like this every year. Leaving the rights of the minority to the majority is just pointless. #gaymarriagemaine
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As a liberal Jewish girl, I love it. LOVE. IT. #gaymarriagemaine
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I'm a heterosexual woman and I don't see how gay marriage would send the US to hell in a handbasket. I have yet to hear a cogent argument against gay marriage that doesn't basically boil down to "traditional marriage would be destroyed" and/or "the bible says so!" #gaymarriagemaine
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This is an argument that can only be used by those churches with a rigorous policy of virginity until marriage and fidelity thereafter, but there are still a few of them around.
The solution here is for those churches to stop recognizing civil marriages without a prior or subsequent church marriage, not for those churches to seriously expect the state to look after the religious interest of a small community in preference to the civil rights of a larger community. Especially when the state has explicitly removed itself from the business of religion.
But I think that this (semi-understandable) ecclesiastical argument is bolstered by prejudice against gay people, political opposition of a group as traditionally likely to vote Democrat as the religious are to vote Republican, and a desire on the part of churches to unify their membership against what is perceived as the corrupting influence of the larger society.
I wish they'd go back to persecuting video games and Marilyn Manson, don't you? #gaymarriagemaine
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I personally cannot fathom why someone would want to take away another person's rights. Almost makes me want to sign that petition in CA to put a new prop on the ballot to ban divorce. Take THAT, you right-wing hypocrites!
But guess what Americans? You may have many many rights, but you DON'T have the right to deny civil rights to others! Check out Loving v. Virginia!
These "traditional" Americans seem to have forgotten that the tyranny of majority cannot rule America at the expense of the minority, a true and real basis of the creation of the Constitution.
Let's quote Jefferson: "All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression."
Ug, the lawyer in me wants to strangle these people with the Constitution and its Amendments! #gaymarriagemaine
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[ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com]
"Conservatives pride themselves on their skepticism, and generally dismiss liberals as soft-headed Utopians. But in so many ways, political conservatism is Utopianism for the powerful. It isn't broadly skeptical of human nature, so much as it's broadly skeptical of people its agents don't particularly like. Hence the sense that Americans are intrinsically "good people," that this country "is the best nation that ever existed in history," that the South is home to "the greatest people that have ever trod the earth," and that the murder of four little girls in Birmingham was the work of a "Communist" or "crazed Negro," which had "set back the cause of white people."
Hence the notion that those voting against gay marriage, are not actually, in the main, motivated by bigotry, but a belief in tradition and family. But very few people would actually ever describe themselves as bigots. We think we know so much about ourselves. This is a country--like many countries--which is deeply riven by ethnic bias, gender discrimination. And yet we don't seem to know any of the agents of that discrimination." #gaymarriagemaine
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