GOP and their political meanderings...

Okay, I'm going to put my little two cents in here. And all at the risk of sounding incredibly stupid or dumb, because I know I don't have all the answers.

Let me present this as I am, a straight single white male. I will also say that I am a moderate, usually leaning toward pragmatic. I also voted for the incompetent prez in office, but then I felt at the time that Kerry was the worst of the two evils (please, GOP or Democrats, bring me a good presidential candidate in the next election).

The GOP keeps bringing up this sonuvabitching marriage amendment, basically defining marriage as 1 Man and 1 Woman right in the Constitution. I honestly have only one major argument against this: This entire thing seems to be a CULTURAL issue. There have been polls taken and somewhere in the neighborhood of 70% of people support this amendment. Now, this is one of those statements that will get me called stupid or dumb, I am ASSUMING that even as short a time as 10 years ago, this would have been 80% or 90%. That is why I call this a cultural issue. The Gay and Lesbian "agenda" has been one of education, from what I can see. They are only trying to teach us straight folks one thing, and it's pretty simple really. Outside of their sexuality, they are just like a straight person. They eat, sleep, shit, wear cloths, need health care, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah. Guess what? They're right. They don't deserve special rights, but they do deserve the same exact rights that a straight person deserves. More succintly, they deserve the same rights that ANY HUMAN deserves. And, from my point of view, thank goodness that they're finally educating the rest of us (too bad they have to spend their time fighting/educating us instead of spending it enjoying themselves living life).

Can anybody name another CULTURAL amendment that was ever passed? Can anyone say PROHIBITION? Is it just me, or was that a bit of a miss in our thought process back in the day?

Now, marriage. What exactly is it? Well, from what I can see of it, it represents two different things to people (yes, I am oversimplifying things, so bear with me). One, from a religious standpoint, it is a PROMISE (church legal) to stay together until death do you part. Umm, okay, so outside of your own morals, there is nothing too brutal happening here. Religon is supposedly seperated from state, so if there is a religon out there that will support gay marriage, shouldn't be a problem for anyone else from a different religon if two gay people want to get married (because it's none of the other folks f*cking business, thank you very much). Two, from the legal standpoint. This one gets a bit sticky, but I don't see where the problem is here either. Two people, LEGALLY married, well, they are attached in so many ways, you can't describe them all here. Who are they bothering when they do this? Heck, if anything, we get to tax them more (marriage tax penalty), so it increases our federal revenue. I'm all for that, being single and all! :) And it kills another bird by allowing them to get proper health care without having to look for the progressive employers out there.

I guess what I'm saying is that a Constitutional amendment is the completely wrong thing to do right here. From my point of view, so is a law written by a state or other entity to ban gay marriages. But if that is what the majority thinks is what we need, that is what they need to try to impose, because a law is more easily changeable. Soooooo, long story short...

What the f*ck good is this going to do for all of the other issues this nation is facing? We are involved in an unpopular war (yes, it is still a WAR, even though end of "major hostilities" has been declared by our incompetent U.S. prez), there are a sh*tload of homeless folks, our economy is strong but showing signs of getting into trouble, hate crimes are still rampant, health costs are out of control, domestic abuse is still out there, so on, so forth, etc. Can we please try to tackle something that will actually help someone other than the extreme religious schmuck who thinks that the USA is causing God to bring the end times down on us because our gays are getting married? WTF!?!?!

And on a personal note: I never liked the Senator from my home state, Russ Feingold much. That is until he walked out of the committee hearing on bringing this issue to the floor. I know it was probably a bit grandstandish, but to have the balls to step out and basically say "F*ck this, this is a waste of time to even discuss" impresses the hell out of me. That's a couple of good things he's done lately...