shut up - "now make our clothes and fix our hair!" or why I'm indifferent about gay marriage but against Prop8

12/05/2008
good ol' Ltran found this and alerted me to it several days ago. I have found it highlighted a couple other places now, L u were so fashionably early!

what is it? well, if you aren't addicted to the Internet like I am then I will fill ya's in via this quick and short article from Gay.com (a website I usually hate by the way...):

Jack Black, Neil Patrick Harris and a host of headlining stars lent their time and talent to a hilarious three-minute video written and produced by Marc Shaiman (Tony-winner for Hairspray).

The clip portrays a frolicking group of gays, lesbians and supporters celebrating the dawning of the Age of Obama and turning the page on an America that values diversity and freedom for all. Margaret Cho, Andy Richter and Maya Rudolph play members of the happy gay group.

Unfortunately their parade is rained on by a conservative Christian group (including John C. Reilly as a pastor and Allison Janney and Kathy Najimy as his wives) introducing and supporting Prop. 8.

After they remind the gays the bible considers gays and lesbians an abomination, Jack Black appears as Jesus to remind them the bible also considers tasty shrimp cocktail an abomination.


ok:

it is my opinion that marriage is a spiritual institution and as such the federal government of the United States, or any nation really, has no business "authorizing" or "legitimizing" marriages. Do you think during the roman empire's first 300 years of dealing with Christians that Christians were in any way worried about whether the Emperor acknowledged their marriages or not? If the government feels that it is worth their effort to encourage long term monogamous relationships among adults via a great number of legal policies that only apply to those who are "married" then they can very well do so by authorizing civil unions - regardless of gender and make sure that those laws are available to any two adults who want to be recognized by the government as having made a legal contract to live together as one.

That is why I am fine with New jersey's current legal situation, the Supreme Court of New Jersey said that you can call it whatever you want but the government has to give the same rights and responsibilities regardless of gender. Fine. Now, let's just get NJ to acknowledge that marriage is the business of Churches, Synagogues, etc etc and not at all something that the earthly government ever had the actual power to "legitimize" in the first place. Anyhow, in the case of Prop 8, California began to allow gay marriages in May of this year. Last month they changed their mind and banned gay marriages. This leaves 18,000 married persons in California in a legal limbo, since it is not possible to retro-actively apply a law (see: "grandfather clause") and yet no new marriages are allowed.

This creates an inherent in-equality in that 18,000 same sex couples are married in California but anyone who missed the deadline is denied the same and equal right. This is tricky legally and constitutionally and I don't think it is now possible to go backwards. In 50 years gay marriage will be a legal right in this country. We can drag our feet and spend gazillions of dollars and countless hours fighting it or chose to go and focus on something else of importance. Ok, that's it, all I myself have to say about marriage vs civil unions vs nothing.

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die


and yes, yes, yes, i know that the phrase "separation of Church and State" is not in the Declaration or the Constitution but the phrase comes from the personal letters of the author of those declaration and co-author of the Constitution, Thomas Jefferson, in his descriptions and interpretations of what the American Republic was intended to be and was a well established idea at the time. ("In God we trust" and "one nation UNDER GOD" were not part of either our currency or the Pledge until the 1950s - what does that tell us about a drift in priorities since the colonial times?) If you need to know more about how non-christian many of the founding fathers were please, feel free to look it up, it's easy to find.

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