The post in which I offend everybody
It has been almost 24 hours since the California Supreme Court rendered its decision to allow same sex marriage. I wanted to make a post on this yesterday, but, ultimately, I decided to give myself a 24 hour period in which I could watch the reactions from all sides. I wanted to see if the situation would play out as I had predicted it would.
Sadly, even my most pessimistic prediction of the reaction fell short of the reality.
Before I go into the analysis of my observations, I want to make one thing explicitly clear: I whole-heartedly oppose the idea of government sanctioning of same sex-marriage. However, I also whole-heartedly oppose the government sanctioning of opposite-sex marriage.
I will give all of you a moment or two to allow the red haze of rage to fade and to pull yourselves together.
Feel better? Probably not, but I shall continue anyway.
Despite my objection to government recognition of marriage, I do support the California ruling. My support of the ruling stems from a Constitutional basis rather than from personal bias. Laws regulating marriage are already on the books, but those existing laws discriminate against same-sex couples merely to pander to the prejudices of the majority. These laws are in direct violation of the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution which guarantees that all citizens are equal under the eyes of the law.
As a strict Constitutionalist, I support the California Supreme Court’s ruling. I would be even more supporting of a ruling that would tell Uncle Sam to get out of marriage all together, but the likelihood of that is practically non-existent. There is revenue to be made in granting blessings on matrimonial unions, and the Government will not willingly part from that revenue.
More disturbing, though, is the reaction from those who oppose the ruling. It would be a gross understatement to call the reaction vitriolic. In fact, the reaction is such that even Fred Phelps would be jealous of the rhetoric.
Such a reaction has caused me to reevaluate my opinion of religionists, which is sad, really. I happen to know a few very decent people of Christian faith, but what I have seen over the last 24 hours combined with the experiences of my youth makes me wonder if they are decent people in spite of their religious beliefs rather than because of them.
Even more, if such all-consuming hatred towards others is as prevalent as what I have been witnessing, then perhaps it is time to reevaluate some decisions I have made in the past – decisions that I would rather not revisit because it would mean going back to living in a state of mind that I spent many years trying to shake off.
I am not going to go too much into the details of that mindset, but in a previous post, I had mentioned that I had survived affiliation with a couple of churches, and I was not speaking metaphorically. I would rather not go back to constantly looking over my shoulders and worrying from which direction the next attack would come.
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