California Supreme Court Overturns Ban on Gay Marriage
As you probably already know, the California Supreme Court shot down California’s attempt at banning same sex marriages, prompting ultra conservatives everywhere to ask for God’s forgiveness for the state’s sin, and then to ask that it disappear into the Pacific Ocean.
So I found myself in the company of an old drinking buddy when this one came down, and over a very long lunch that included way too many cocktails, we got down and dirty with the issue. After your standard Perez Hilton and Tom Crews jokes, he turned a serious face and asked me, “Jake, where are you on this issue?” Now I don’t know if it was the tone in his voice or the beer bottle he stood poised to break over the bar and hold against my neck, but for some reason I felt the need to be bluntly honest with the man.
In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m a pretty conservative guy, some close to me would argue perhaps too conservative. But this is one of the few issues where I have to get off the conservative train and go my own way. Yes, my Republican friends, I hate to break your hearts, but I was one of the twenty five percent or so that voted against Texas’ constitutional ban of same sex marriages. Allow me to explain why.
First, I reject the movement on the argument that we must protect the sanctity of marriage. What sanctity of marriage? We live in a country that rides the fifty percent line when it comes to our divorce rate. That means that when you walk down the isle and look your loved one in the eye and say I do, essentially what you are doing is flipping a coin to see if it will actually work out or not. Furthermore, let us not forget popular reality shows where complete strangers are paired up for instant marriage, all for the viewing audience’s pleasure. If we are not to take marriage in America any more serious than we do, then, to me, you can not say that there is a sanctity in place that we must protect.
My other pitfall with the argument is that, in my eyes, marriage is just an invisible term meant to describe two people who have chosen to live their lives together (so long as that coin comes back heads). But it is by no means a distinction that is needed for two people to live their lives together, and in that light, it’s not going to stop same sex couples from being attracted to the same sex. It’s not going to stop them from living together and conducting their lives as if they were married. Bottom line, it’s not going to rid America of the same sex culture.
What did conservatives really think? That after we passed the ban that every gay person in the state would wake up the next morning, look their partner in the eye and say, “Well, the people have spoken and we can’t get married. Looks like this gay thing didn’t work out, we might as well go strait.” No! It wouldn’t and didn’t change their lifestyle, so why even bother in the first place?
Upon hearing this argument, my friend loosened his grip on that beer bottle and asked me about Texas, are we going to see the same here?
Sadly for Glen Maxey, since he desperately feels the need to keep his name in the papers even though he can’t win as much as dog catcher in this town, I don’t see that happening. Primarily because I fail to see where you can attack the constitutionality of Texas’ ban when we rewrote our constitution to accommodate it. A move, that unless I am mistaken, California neglected to take. It would not surprise me if someone tried in Texas’ courts. But in the end, I think the only option to repeal Texas’ ban would be to elect 100 like-minded house members and 21 like-minded Senators to put taking our ban off the books before the voters, and hope that the public would agree.
So there you have it, I have committed a sin in the eyes of my Republican brethren. But I can’t help it. You see, same sex couples are going to stay same sex couples no matter what. And really, so long as their not at it in my living room, why should it even matter to me in the first place?