I gotta rant
I've got so many things I want to blog about this week but no time for it all. That's a switch. I'm going to do a post on the sleepover last weekend, but I want to wait a bit on it. I just had to blow off some political steam from two things I saw today.
The first is the ongoing saga with North Korea and nukes. First today I see that N. Korea has stated they will consider international sanctions an act of war. I'm sorry, but I think their leader si pulling a Bush, that is, come up with some reasonable sounding excuse to attack somebody. I think N. Korea really wants to nuke someone but just needs some provocation. Kind of like Bush invading Iraq. THEN I read later how John McCain is blaming Bill Clinton for N. Korea getting nukes! Because if Clinton hadn't blown it and come up with some good policy to keep them from developing missles/nukes back in the 90s we wouldn't be in this mess. Never mind that the Bush administration, while categorizing North Korea as a member of the Axis of Evil has done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about it! What I want to know is if Bush really thought that both Iran and North Korea were really part of some unholy, evil, alliance of doom, they why the fuck are we dicking around in Afghanistan and Iraq? Oh yeah, cause if we attacked either of them it would be an even bigger mess than the one we're in.
The thing that really got me shaking my head and wondering what people were thinking was a bumper sticker I saw. It said "Save traditional marriage, vote yes on the Marriage Ammendment". So I had to wonder, how exactly would an ammendment decreeing that marriage only be between a man and a woman save traditional marriage? Just how many people out there are thinking to themselves, "well, if they let those homosexuals get married, then my marriage don't mean nothin' so I'm getting divorced".
Let's just look at the divorce rate now for traditional marriages. Over 50%, right? And this is without letting gay people marry. Just how much worse can it make it? Perhaps thier worried that if more couples, of any sexual persuasion, are getting married, then they'll probably get divorced too and make the statistic even worse? Or that the law will force churches that don't believe in gay marriage to marry them anyway?
The crux of it, which is too logical an arguement for the Religious Right to consider, is that we're talking about legal marriage here, meaning a legal contract between two persons, that results in each person recieving certain benefits and rights under the law. Same as any other legal contract that can be drawn up. I once emailed someone on the difference between spiritual marriage, which is the real bond between two people, and legal marriage.
What my conservative brethren fail to realize and will never admit, is that they are trying to legislate morality. And since when has the government been responsible for, let alone capable, of legislating morality? Let's look at this for a moment. Prostitution is a moral issue, is illegal (almost everywhere in the US) and yet it goes on anyway. Has the law deterred anyone who wasn't already predisposed against it? What about drugs? Same result. Let's look at serious crimes, like rape and murder. How many murderers have you heard of that thought about the legal consequenses, up to and including death, before commiting the act and thought they'd better not?
So what is the function of the government? Well, I think Jefferson said it best in the Declaration of Independence. The government's job (among other things) is to protect man's inalienable rights, including "life, liberty, and the perfuit of happineff". Where's the moral judgement in that? Life, ok, laws against murder. Liberty, again, laws protecting people's rights to do what they like, as long as they don't imping in other's perfuit of thier life, liberty, and happineff. And the perfuit of happineff. Ah, that's a little more sticky. But again, what makes me happy may not make you happy but as long as I don't affect your life, what do you care anyway?
I have been accused of moral relativism before, for believing as I do. Because I think it is the place of the family and church to teach morals, not the government. And I also believe that you can seperate the two. As in you can make something I find immoral legal. As in one of the above examples, I find prostitution to be immoral. It goes against all of my beliefs. But who am I to push my beliefs on everyone by making a law about it? What would happen should it be legal everywhere? Less crime and disease perhaps. And maybe morally outraged people could do something constructive, like try to teach the younger generation about how immoral they find it and try to convince others with sound arguements and two way discourse that it is immoral and maybe we could make it obsolete instead of illegal. I know, I'm a hopelessly optimistic dreamer.
But isn't that what Conservatives really want anyway? Freedom from government? Freedom to do their own thing without outside interference? What the fuck to they care anyway if Johnny wants to marry Steve, and Emily wants to marry Jane? Why can't they teach thier kids, if they believe in God and Jesus, that God teaches men and women should be married to each other, but that not everyone believes that and that God will figure it out when we all die, but our job is to love your neighbor as yourself and that everyone, even those you disagree with, is your neighbor.
Imagine what kind of world we'd live in then.
The first is the ongoing saga with North Korea and nukes. First today I see that N. Korea has stated they will consider international sanctions an act of war. I'm sorry, but I think their leader si pulling a Bush, that is, come up with some reasonable sounding excuse to attack somebody. I think N. Korea really wants to nuke someone but just needs some provocation. Kind of like Bush invading Iraq. THEN I read later how John McCain is blaming Bill Clinton for N. Korea getting nukes! Because if Clinton hadn't blown it and come up with some good policy to keep them from developing missles/nukes back in the 90s we wouldn't be in this mess. Never mind that the Bush administration, while categorizing North Korea as a member of the Axis of Evil has done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about it! What I want to know is if Bush really thought that both Iran and North Korea were really part of some unholy, evil, alliance of doom, they why the fuck are we dicking around in Afghanistan and Iraq? Oh yeah, cause if we attacked either of them it would be an even bigger mess than the one we're in.
The thing that really got me shaking my head and wondering what people were thinking was a bumper sticker I saw. It said "Save traditional marriage, vote yes on the Marriage Ammendment". So I had to wonder, how exactly would an ammendment decreeing that marriage only be between a man and a woman save traditional marriage? Just how many people out there are thinking to themselves, "well, if they let those homosexuals get married, then my marriage don't mean nothin' so I'm getting divorced".
Let's just look at the divorce rate now for traditional marriages. Over 50%, right? And this is without letting gay people marry. Just how much worse can it make it? Perhaps thier worried that if more couples, of any sexual persuasion, are getting married, then they'll probably get divorced too and make the statistic even worse? Or that the law will force churches that don't believe in gay marriage to marry them anyway?
The crux of it, which is too logical an arguement for the Religious Right to consider, is that we're talking about legal marriage here, meaning a legal contract between two persons, that results in each person recieving certain benefits and rights under the law. Same as any other legal contract that can be drawn up. I once emailed someone on the difference between spiritual marriage, which is the real bond between two people, and legal marriage.
What my conservative brethren fail to realize and will never admit, is that they are trying to legislate morality. And since when has the government been responsible for, let alone capable, of legislating morality? Let's look at this for a moment. Prostitution is a moral issue, is illegal (almost everywhere in the US) and yet it goes on anyway. Has the law deterred anyone who wasn't already predisposed against it? What about drugs? Same result. Let's look at serious crimes, like rape and murder. How many murderers have you heard of that thought about the legal consequenses, up to and including death, before commiting the act and thought they'd better not?
So what is the function of the government? Well, I think Jefferson said it best in the Declaration of Independence. The government's job (among other things) is to protect man's inalienable rights, including "life, liberty, and the perfuit of happineff". Where's the moral judgement in that? Life, ok, laws against murder. Liberty, again, laws protecting people's rights to do what they like, as long as they don't imping in other's perfuit of thier life, liberty, and happineff. And the perfuit of happineff. Ah, that's a little more sticky. But again, what makes me happy may not make you happy but as long as I don't affect your life, what do you care anyway?
I have been accused of moral relativism before, for believing as I do. Because I think it is the place of the family and church to teach morals, not the government. And I also believe that you can seperate the two. As in you can make something I find immoral legal. As in one of the above examples, I find prostitution to be immoral. It goes against all of my beliefs. But who am I to push my beliefs on everyone by making a law about it? What would happen should it be legal everywhere? Less crime and disease perhaps. And maybe morally outraged people could do something constructive, like try to teach the younger generation about how immoral they find it and try to convince others with sound arguements and two way discourse that it is immoral and maybe we could make it obsolete instead of illegal. I know, I'm a hopelessly optimistic dreamer.
But isn't that what Conservatives really want anyway? Freedom from government? Freedom to do their own thing without outside interference? What the fuck to they care anyway if Johnny wants to marry Steve, and Emily wants to marry Jane? Why can't they teach thier kids, if they believe in God and Jesus, that God teaches men and women should be married to each other, but that not everyone believes that and that God will figure it out when we all die, but our job is to love your neighbor as yourself and that everyone, even those you disagree with, is your neighbor.
Imagine what kind of world we'd live in then.
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