Friday, March 17, 2006

Marriage Schmarriage

One of the big news items here is whether to have Minnesotan voters decide whether gay marriage should be outlawed on the November ballot. This issue drives me nuts. Whoever wants to be married should be able to be and the bigots that want to limit the right should just mind their own business since it doesn't affect them anyway. There are a lot of issues that no one is talking about though. Consider:
  • Why don't we start campaigning to scrap the institution of marriage altogether. This would have the extra bonus of challenging the whole construct of the nuclear family and force us to develop some alternative methods of health care coverage since so many people are covered by their spouse's insurance.

  • Why are Republicans against gay marriage? You'd think they'd be all for increasing the tax base by counting so many dual-income-no-kids couples in a higher tax bracket. Not to mention the boon to the economy as thousands (millions?) more people bought into the industrial wedding complex at 12-50k per wedding. Let's get some estimates on this people!

  • When do a lot of these kooks that are against gay marriage ever have to deal with the issue in real life? A lot of them probably think of gays as some kind of mythical creature, like unicorns, since everyone gay they encounter is probably in the closet or is a larger than life creation of the media.

  • Let's figure out an alternate way to deal with some of these marriage issues. For example, legal agreements that are recognized by hospitals in case of emergencies, adoption law reform, working to validate gay couples in our circles of family and friends since there are fewer formal opportunities to do that, etc.

  • Lobbying for a ballot measure to legalize gay marriage instead of letting the fearmongers drive the debate.

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