Why Interracial Marriage Should Be Legal

 This is what my Facebook looks like.

Oh wait, I mean gay marriage. You were probably thinking something along the lines of, "Whaaaaaat? But interracial marriage is perfectly legal! Why would anyone argue otherwise?"

Which is exactly my point. Why would anyone argue otherwise? Why wouldn't interracial marriage be legal?

So, what's the difference with gay marriage? Why would anyone argue that gay people can't marry one another? Why wouldn't gay marriage be legal?

As WTF as this seems now, it's the same thing.

Interracial marriage has been legal since the late 1960s. My parents were alive then. Alive and old enough to know what that meant. That's really not that long ago.

Maybe I'm spoiled having lived my whole life in relatively liberal Southern California, or maybe I'm just a young, flaming liberal who was ruined in college and now likes going against tradition for the sake of being rebellious. But I'm going to be able to marry my boyfriend, who is of a different race/ethnicity/color/whatever feature you want to focus on, and it'll be OK because he's also a different sex than I am. No one will bat an eye at our colors because it won't matter to anyone. 

Interracial marriage has been legal for 45 years; long enough for most people to accept that it is a little ridiculous to prevent two people who love each other from getting married just because they have different skin colors.

Beyonce is awesome.

Here are the most ridiculous arguments against gay marriage:

• Gay marriage is icky! (Gay people don't think so. Actually, a lot of people don't think so.)
• The Bible says gays shouldn't marry! (That's nice, but it has nothing to do with the law or my beliefs.)
• Once gays can marry, pedophiles can marry children! (Children are not consenting adults and therefore cannot make those kinds of decisions about their lives.)
• Once gays can marry, anyone can marry anything! (Dogs, inanimate objects, and anything outside of a consenting adult is, again, not a consenting adult and therefore cannot make those kinds of decisions about their lives/shelf lives.)
• Gays can't have kids! (Some straight couples can't have kids. Or don't want kids. That doesn't affect their ability to marry. Or adopt.)

Stunningly, our Supreme Court is dedicating an extraordinary amount of time debating whether or not laws that bar same sex couples from marrying is constitutional. Which seems really silly, doesn't it?

When the United States of America was in its infancy, all sorts of people came here from all over the world looking for freedom (in fact, they still do). They come here because the laws say "all people," "created equal," "liberty and the pursuit of happiness," and no where in any law, any proposition, any part of the Constitution say "except for." Nothing that says "except for gays." Or "except for [insert qualifier here]." It's equality this, and equality that, and freedom and liberty and opportunity and unalienable rights and blah blah blah.

So... since when is it OK to discriminate against gay people? When did that suddenly change? And why is this something that needs debate?

Have a gay day!

Yes On 8

One of the worst stereotyping I do is towards someone driving a car with a Yes on 8 bumper sticker. But the other day I saw the worst yet: an innocent-looking bumper sticker with two very wholesome child faces and the words "I want a mommy and a daddy please!" This particular sticker shared a bumper with a regular Yes on 8 sticker, which just infuriated me (you're so against gays marrying that you're declaring it with two bumper stickers?!), and the woman driving looked like a choir singer. There are several reasons the bumper sticker I saw is one of the dumbest things around, and I'll illustrate these reasons:

First, the bumper sticker implied Prop 8 was about gays having children. Getting married, believe it or not, is not the same as having children. Just because gay citizens want the same rights as all other citizens to marry the person they love does not have anything to do with anybody being a parent. Prop 8 was about whether we should allow same sex couples to marry one another and get the benefits of being married, like financial benefits and beneficiary benefits.

Second, the sticker implies a gay couple must be married in order to adopt children, which is untrue: a gay couple is allowed to adopt children (or at the least a gay couple is not expressly prohibited from adopting children) in the majority of our states. For that matter, adopting children together is not contingent upon marriage regardless of your sexual orientation.

Third, the sticker implied all children have both a mother and a father, that both the mother and the father want the kids, and that both the mother and the father will be present for the child's life, which is COMPLETELY UNTRUE. Parents leave their kids all the time! Parents get divorced and move far away, parents die, and parents are just fucking absent. Children do not always have a mother and a father when the parents are straight, and probably not even the majority of the time (am I being too cynical?).

Fourth, the sticker implies that if a kid has a straight mother and a straight father (regardless of if they're married), both parents will actively take on the role of parents, which means caring for and acting in the best interest of the kid(s). This implication is that all children are wanted and all straight parents do a good job (which is why we don't have a foster system in the first place! Oh wait...).

Fifth, and this is something the makers and displayers of this bumper sticker may intend, the sticker implies divorce should be against the law. If marriage is what we do when we want kids, then divorce really has no place in our society. So if gays can't marry because they shouldn't have kids, then straight married couples should not be allowed to divorce.

There are probably a host of other reasons why that particular Yes on 8 bumper sticker is dumb as shit, but these are the most glaringly obvious. It pains me to see, in this day and age and especially in this state, people so opposed to other people's existence or ways of life that they have to proclaim it in loud yellow in their cars. One day, hopefully in my lifetime, we'll look back on this time of gay oppression and think how dumb we were...

Prop 8 Overturned!

Using this again.

Looks like we might have done something in the right direction, for a change. California Proposition 8 has been overturned!

I wrote a lot about Prop 8 and gay rights last year (March 2009, April 2009, May 2009, August 2009, September 2009). I'm still amazed that in 2010 there's even a question of gay rights, that people don't see the parallels to the civil rights issues of the 1960s.

I can see religious conservatives sitting in their bedrooms at night, after putting their young kids to bed, talking fearfully about this great country's downfall. They'll be nearly in tears, saying how they just don't understand how people could think that homosexuality is OK, disgusted at the thought of gay people being allowed to marry each other, terrified of their beautiful, innocent children having to grow up in a world where marriage is meaningless, where God is dead and where family values are forgotten.

I can also see gay couples siting in their bedrooms at night, too worried to sleep. They'll be nearly in tears, saying how they just don't understand how people could so blatantly discriminate against their love solely because they're of the same gender, disgusted at the thought of being second-class citizens, terrified that they'll never be able to live in a world where love is what counts, where all men are created equal and where marriage is recognized.

I can see myself sitting in my sister's living room one day, telling my nieces and nephews how I voted against Prop 8. I'll be proudly smiling as I explain that back in my day gays weren't allowed to marry each other, how disgusted the idea made me, that I was terrified they would be born into a world where love was only valid if it was between a man and a woman, where marriage was a privilege for the straight and where they would be treated differently for how they love.

I know in my heart that day will come, that we'll look back on this time and shake our heads at the ignorance. Now we're one step closer.

Follow-Up

1. In my May post about Egypt's decision to kill all their pigs to stop the spread of swine flu I pointed out that now the trash collectors won't have a reason to collect trash if they don't have any pigs to feed it to. Egypt was supposed to set up a more modern trash collection system, but forgot one crucial aspect: Egyptians are accustomed to having their trash collected by a person going door to door every day. So all of a sudden they have to take out their own trash to communal dumpsters? Nah, they're gonna let the trash pile up in the streets, while the Christians sit back and laugh (as much as you can laugh in poverty) at the government for not thinking this one through. Best part is middle class neighborhoods are covered in trash, not just the poor communities. And the Egyptian government has ADD, according to Sabir Abdel Aziz Galal, chief of the infectious disease department at the Ministry of Agriculture:

"The main problem in Egypt is follow-up. A decision is taken, there is follow-up for a period of time, but after that, they get busy with something else and forget about it. This is the case with everything."

But Egypt doesn't stop there. They've decided to close down all schools until October to cut down on a potential swine flu outbreak. Because keeping kids in their trash infused neighborhoods is safer than school for one week.

2. In my April and May posts about gay rights I lamented Prop 8 passing/being upheld and decided to hope for the best for the future. I'm beginning to think the future I hope for is a very long way off...

Bell Shoals Baptist Church, a mega-church group in Florida with thousands of members, has banned Pepsi vending machines and encouraged its fellowship to boycott all Pepsi products. They've contracted with Coca-Cola instead because Pepsi accepts gays. Terry Kemple, President of the Community Issues Council and homophobe, says the church is sending Pepsi a message that the money they spend on refreshments is not going to go towards a company that will happily "trample on what we consider family-values (video)." The church also contributed about a million to support Prop 8, on the other fucking side of the country.

Funny thing about contracting with Coke... They're on the Human Rights Campaigns (HRC) list of 100% Pro-Homosexual Corporations for 2 years! How's that for doing your research and making a point? Here's a nice alphabetical list of American pro-homosexual companies. Support at will.

Proposition 8

Made me so happy!

I'm not surprised at all that the ban on same sex marriage was upheld today. Asking California's Supreme Court to lift the ban based on a technicality was a long shot, and a move that controversial wouldn't be decided based on a technicality. So it'll either go to the US Supreme Court or back to the ballot. Since justices decided to keep the validity of the existing same sex marriages this might be a court case: the law is going to have a hard time discriminating against only some gays. 

Pre-march crowd.

A rally was organized at Balboa Park today in protest of the courts decision, followed by a march, and I went to check it out and take some pictures. A rather large turnout gathered on the grass lining Sixth Street; some brought dogs, some brought signs and some brought bottles of water to hand out to the marchers. I filled out a post card to President Obama saying why I believe in marriage equality. I took forever to think of something clever to say, but the nearly blank card began with "I believe in marriage equality because" and all I could come up with was something about how the Declaration of Independence doesn't say "except for gays."

Coolest sign there.

I was asked to say into a video camera, in 15 seconds or less, how the ruling affected me. I said something very lame and once I got back home I realized I should have said: "The ruling makes me feel like I am a better person because of my sexual preference, but that is not how I want to be judged. I'm sure homosexuals don't want to be judged for their sexual preferences either."

Yay St. Paul's!

Last week a few California voters shot down several propositions aimed at reducing the state deficit from 20-something-billion-dollars to 15-ish-billion-dollars. Shouldn't we be doing everything we can to raise money in this time of need? Gay marriage won't save our state, but an influx of weddings would certainly help our economy. Who knows, maybe with the revenue and taxes generated from gay marriages we wouldn't have to take as much money from our schools. Ha, I'd love to see research on that.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

To my homosexual friends and neighbors: One day we'll look back on all this and be ashamed and embarrassed that we thought you were second class citizens and our kids and grandkids will be amazed you didn't have the same rights as everyone else way back when. When the baby boomers start falling we'll be heard, and we'll make it right. Eventually...

Props!