Happy 13th

Happy Friday the 13th.

Sorry. I just had to say that.

So, the higher courts have annulled all those Evil Gay Marriages performed in San Francisco earlier this year (cause we all know how Dangerous those Little Old Ladies are. Frickin' Terrorists). The closer it gets to election time, the more exhausted I'm getting with politics, so I'm not going to rant much except to say that Every God-Fearing Republican should *love* the idea of *more* people getting married. More people getting married means more people with combined household incomes, it means more children with more than one parent, it means a better economy (more wedding dresses, tuxedos, receptions, ceremonies, more work for flower shops, bridal shops, catering companies). It means more people are going to get sucked into the outwardly appearing monogamous pair-bonding ritual. The royal "we" can get that much bigger. On the other side, all of us hippies can rah-rah the great blanket of hetero instituitions now available to everyone, in a free and democratic sort of way. You know, the sort of way that includes, um, everybody.

To be honest, I didn't form a real stance about the issue of same-sex marriage (aside from: yea, whatever) until I thought of it this way: If I was born a man, and I wanted to marry a woman, I could. But because I'm born a woman, if I want to marry a woman, I can't.

And then, suddenly, my feminist lens clicked down over my vision, and lo and behold, I realized I - as a woman - was being denied one of the rights of citizenship. Regardless of whether or not I ever wanted to marry a woman (I do not personally believe in getting married, myself), society was telling me I couldn't because of the sex I was born with. Regardless of whether or not I want to be a lawyer, or graduate from Harvard, I want to have those rights. I want to be able to own my own property, earn my own income, and be financially independent of father/husband/son. In other words, I want to be considered a full human being and an American citizen.

One of my buddies got into a heated debate with a Mormon friend of hers about whether or not the Mormon church would ever perform same-sex marriages, if such unions became legal at the government level.

The Mormon vehemently replied, "The church would never do that!"

I'm sure they said the same thing about interracial marriages fifty years ago.

Institutions are not monolithic. There are no absolute truths.

And, on a final political note of news, this amuses me:

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