n a t b s

“Maine is one of the most secular states in the nation, it’s socially liberal, they had a three-year head start to build their organization and they outspent us two to one. If they can’t win there, it really does tell you the majority of Americans are not on board with this gay marriage thing.” -Maggie Gallagher, president of the National Organization for discrimination Marriage [nyt]

A majority of Americans are not on board with “this gay marriage thing?” Guess what?  I don’t care. The majority of American’s tend to be complete morons when it comes to most issues. And I can live with that because that’s democracy. However, on certain issues they’re just wrong. That quote above might as well say “the majority of Americans aren’t on board with this integration thing” or “aren’t on board with this abolition thing.” My point, is that when it comes to certain moral issues, ie the oppression of certain groups, I don’t really care if the majority of Americans are bigoted, we need to do the right thing. Hopefully the courts will do what’s right.

I guess it can be tricky to decided what’s right and what’s not.  But I think the golden rule is really the way to determine that, and also the declaration of independence “all men are created equal.”  Basic equality is already codified into our law anyway, it’s called the equal protection clause. So I think all these bans on gay marriage are already illegal. There is a guy taking this case to the supreme court, and ironically it’s the same man who represented Bush in Bush v Gore. So hopefully the court will do what’s right so these people can get on with their lives, and we’ll let the bigots make peace with gay marriage on their own time. It’s not fair to the homosexual community to tell them to keep waiting, eventually the bigots will see the light. Fuck that, we can’t sit back and let bigots control our country. Freedom should not include the freedom to oppress.

I should be.  I need to keep my job.  Without a job I will loose my home and I’ll starve.  I’ll become a wretched degenerate, sneered at by business men, harassed by teenagers, and pitied by the compassionate.  Living in a subway station I’ll beg for money and I’ll get some. I’ll turn the money into food and spirits to ease my pain. And despite the fact that 6 million other Americans are also unemployed I’ll still hear that callous timeless heckle: “Get a job!”

But I’m free.

Free to choose servitude or slum, McDonald’s or Wendy’s, paper or plastic, Amex or Visa, Jet Blue or Delta, Democrat or Republican, Yankees or Red Sox, hybrid or regular, low sodium or vitamin fortified, United Health or Oxford.  Yes, it’s glorious to be a free human living in a world of choice.  Simply glorious.

“Whoever can see through all fear
will always be safe.”

You know, religious folk like to talk about faith a lot.  They have faith in God, yadda yadda bs.  Here’s the thing; I don’t think these people have any faith at all.  I think that faith is a tool to use against fear.  So, when something scary is happening you can have faith that you’ll get through it.  But these same faithers also want to control everything.  They want to go to war because they have no faith in other forms of coercion.  They want to legislate morality because they have no faith in people to be good.  When faced with a fear, they always choose the most direct coercive action, they never let things play out.  Sometimes, if you overreact to something you make things worse.  Sometimes your overreaction blinds you to the fact that what you’re afraid of really isn’t as threatening as it first seemed.  So you start walking these paths of fear, and once you do that you have lost control of your own life because anyone can get you to do anything just by eliciting frightening consequences for not listening.  Eg. “We have to invade Iraq or we’re all gonna die”  or “We have to let the govt buy up shitloads of bad debt, or we’re all gonna die.”  And when they put it like that, we always listen. We need to stop being so easy to manipulate.  We need to have faith that we don’t always need to control everything.  Because we can’t control everything.  And taking the scarier rout is what we call a leap of faith.