Negligent Use of a Dangerous Mind: if i had known that wisconsin was this much like the south, i wouldn't have come here

Thursday, December 08, 2005

if i had known that wisconsin was this much like the south, i wouldn't have come here

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel online:

"Madison - A constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman and prevent the state from recognizing "substantially similar" relationships is one step away from a statewide referendum, after the Senate advanced the measure Wednesday."

Honestly...who cares? Who really, honestly cares that we want to allow gay people to say that they're married and get tax breaks? To be perfectly honest, most marriages between a man and a woman aren't that sacred either - you've got your infidelity and your "irreconcilable differences" and the fact that you're a celebrity who became more famous than your husband...so who really, truly cares? As much as it is a religious bond, marriage is a legal contract. (There's that stupid "C" word again.) Do we really want the legislature wasting their time on these sort of social "contracts" instead of worrying about what to do about gang violence in Milwaukee and drugs in schools and how to keep illegal immigrants from blowing up our buildings? And while most governments around the world are based on faith initiatives, I think that history has proven that religion belongs NOWHERE NEAR the political process - need I remind everyone of the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, the Holocaust, Northern Ireland, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the current war on "terror"?

See, that's the funny thing about religion - the one thing that people are truly willing to stand up for is their faith. And when you have two conflicting faith-based views on an issue under the control of the same legislative body, there's bound to be problems. While we can be thankful that gay marriage is a relatively minor issue, what happens when Roe v. Wade gets overturned? Do we say that, because the Bible says that killing is wrong, and because our nation was founded by Christians, that therefore we should define life as beginning at conception?

I just don't think that it's a good idea for us to create more laws prejudicing against people with different lifestyles and belief systems. If you think about it, our country was not so much founded on religious beliefs as it was founded by a bunch of people whose society was prejudiced against them. Think about it: the Puritans were kicked out of England for being religious nutjobs, and a good number of the first colonial settlers were adult males that bought land over here to make a name for themselves because the social system in Stuart Britain was such that only the first-born male could inherit. So why not embrace the differences that make people unique?

Meh. I just needed to rant about something that I'm remotely interested in (read: NOT law school) for a while.