Well, I’ve been waiting for it and it’s finally happened- a local government has banned marriage.

As in straight AND gay.

I’ll give you a moment to digest that.

…

You good? Okay then.

See, it’s like this- a county board in Oregon decided that since their own legal system hadn’t clarified the issue of whether or not gay marriage in Oregon was legal, in the interest of equality they were going to ban ALL marriages. The last marriage license was granted on Tuesday, and now if anyone in the county wants to get married they have to go somewhere else.

I personally think it’s an interesting move, and one that is much needed. See, the once-fair question of whether or not equality amongst sexualities extended to marriage or civil unions or whatever has now escalated to an overblown, outrageously ridiculous and overhyped media event and we need a classic overreaction like this one to put a spotlight on the absurdity of it all. Moreover, neither side in the debate has exactly come off smelling like roses. Local governments that have been allowing marriage licenses to be granted to gay couples have been doing so oftentimes against the laws of their states. Hard to hold onto the high horse when you can’t even follow the law you swore to protect- and agree with it or not, it’s still the law. On the flip side, the ultraconservative side has done a little overreacting of their own by suggesting a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. I hate to bring up the point that the last constitutional amendment that banned any activity got overturned about 12 or 13 years later. You may remember this one- Prohibition. See, it’s tough to get the nation behind an amendment to the Constitution that denies rather than defines for any long period of time.

Now, I’m not going to sit here and tell you my personal beliefs on the matter. I know that you don’t really care how I fall on this issue. But whether we agree on this one or not, I think we all just want to see this go away and be dealt with.

Oh, and one more thing- bad form on both sides to try and make this such a huge issue. We have bigger fish to fry, and we all know it.

Out.

Posted in General |

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 25th, 2004 at 6:30 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.