Pligget
Little to say for myself


Friday, August 01, 2003

If you don't like it, sue me.

 
If only we could. How come the Vatican gets away with publishing downright bigotry, and flouts the hard-won equality legislation of every civlised country?

If I were a journalist who printed statements like
"Marriage is holy, while homosexual acts go against the natural moral law."
or
[allowing children to be adopted by gays and lesbians] "would actually mean doing violence to these children"
I'd be branded an evil homophobe, and (one hopes, as a minimum) drummed out of the profession.

I know we're supposed to be tolerant of doddery old people, and to allow the occasional racist or sexist rant - on the assumption that their medication went temporarily out of whack - but why in God's name (to coin a phrase) do we give air time to such immoral poison?

This may sound odd coming from an atheist, but, if God created homosexuals in the first place, who the hell do the Vatican think they are - telling Him that He's broken their law? Why doesn't He pull rank and smite them?

Maybe that would stop the equally rabid Bush:
President Bush announced on Wednesday that his administration was looking into ways to ensure that the term "marriage" would apply only to unions between men and women. Republican Congressional leaders have floated the idea of a constitutional amendment to do just that.
Now, an archaic and increasingly pointless minority of people clinging onto peculiar medieval attitudes in the hope that it will boost flagging attendances at their meetings - like some malevolent perversion of the Sealed Knot - is one thing, but when the most powerful government on the planet (how my heart sinks when I type that phrase out) plans to enshrine that medieval hogwash in law, I get worried.

Being an ignorant Limey, I only recently learned the significance of these constitutional amendments. They are statements which are not only declarations of The Law, but also preclude any possible intervention from the legislature, at any time in the future, which might want to alter or delete them.

What are these people so afraid of, that they want to render a particular noun out of bounds to those who might want to find new uses for it, for all time? Do they honestly believe that elevating such a trivial point to the highest form of legal statement will actually make it eternally safe for them to pick up the soap in the shower?

I despair. I really really despair that there are still people, over the age of four, who believe that homosexuality is some form of contagious affliction that can only be prevented from wiping us all out by spending vast sums of tax-payers' money trying to create a legal innoculation against it. Not to mention the damage they (perhaps intentionally) do in providing notional justification for acts of violence or abuse against gay people. For pity's sake, grow up.

Incidentally, what would be the legal status within the (post-amendment) US of a gay couple legally married in another country? What would happen if, say, a married Dutch gay couple were to emigrate to the US and get into some sort of legal issue - one in which married status would have a significant bearing on the outcome? Would the fact of their marriage be inadmissible in court, since the use of that word to describe their relationship would be disallowed by the constitution?

Put another way, I'm pretty sure that if Dave and Betty from Des Moines were to get married in Holland, their marital status would be recognised back home as being exactly the same as that of Jim and Mary from Kansas City who had got married in The Little White Chapel in Vegas. If there were no legal distinction in Holland between hetero- and homosexual marriage, how could the US legislature make that distinction in the case of Pete and John from San Francisco, who had gone through exactly the same process as Dave and Betty while visiting Holland? To deny their marriage would be to deny Dutch law. It would be equivalent to going over to Amsterdam and arresting all US citizens in coffee shops for possession of marijuana.

I bet the tourist boards in all those countries and provinces with (or planning to have) legal gay marriage are rubbing their hands in anticipation of a huge influx of the pink dollar.

posted by Plig | 00:27 |


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