Save Marriage (For Everyone)

I try to keep politics out of this blog. After all, it's much more fun and uplifting to share my love of music and pass along album recommendations than it is to remind you just how dangerous it would be to have a corrupt moron a heartbeat away from the presidency. Still, I did want to take a moment to urge, to beg, my music-loving friends, whether in California or otherwise, to do what they can to help shut down Proposition 8, the hate-mongering initiative that would eliminate the Constitutional right of gay couples to marry. It is a campaign based on hate, on fear, on ignorance, on bigotry; there is simply no rational reason -- none -- why the gay couple living next door to me should be denied the hundreds or even thousands of rights that my wife and I enjoy simply by virtue of the fact that we were able to go to city hall and get a piece of paper that says we're legally married.

And that's all this is about. Denying rights to some couples based on their sexual orientation. It has nothing to do with religion -- religious groups remain free to decide what form of relationships to bless. The religious concept of marriage is wholly unrelated to civil marriage; religious marriage is a fine thing, but the state can no more convey rights on people based on a religious ceremony than it can extend special privileges to individuals based on whether or not they were baptized or bar mitzvahed. Civil marriage, in contrast, is simply a license that says the state will give certain privileges to a couple -- the right to visit your loved one in the hospital; the right to miss work to take care of your sick spouse without losing your job; the right to enjoy employment-offered health benefits extended to family members; and so on. And, of course, whether the couple in question is straight or gay is utterly, wholly irrelevant to whether those benefits (and, conversely, legal liabilities) should be extended to the couple.

Now, for those bigoted morons ... er, Prop 8 proponents who claim that allowing gays to marry somehow "threatens" marriage, let me just note that my wife and I have gay friends, gay neighbors (as noted above), gay coworkers, some in long-term committed relationships, some of whom have documented civil marriages as they're presently entitled to under the California Constitution, and, while we thank you for your concern, we want to ensure you that our own marriage is doing just fine. That's right -- astoundingly, while gay marriage is viewed by some as destroying the very fabric of marriage, my own non-gay marriage somehow, mysteriously, has survived. And our stright friends? Also doing quite well. No sudden need to all run out and get divorced now that those dang gays are getting married. Perhapts the narrow-minded nutjobs worried about the threat to the insitution of marriage might want to focus instead on what's so wrong with their own marriage that they see it being threatened by what their neighbors are doing.

And then there's the kids. Contrary to what the Yes on 8 idiots argue, my two children, despite the daily exposure to "teh gay," have inexplicably not yet turned gay themselves. I know, I know, it's shocking... but having raised them to believe in equality, and having exposed them to our gay friends, and having them go to school with children of gay couples, we have nonetheless utterly failed in our secret mission to turn our kids into a pair of raging homos. Darn, what went wrong?

So, please, please, send some cash to the No on 8 campaign. Today, before it's too late.