The press has been aflutter about California’s controversial Amendment 8, better known as their Same-Sex Marriage Ban. The outrage on both sides has seen the heaviest of publicity. At first, individual municipalities in Cali allowed same-sex unions at the local level, and then a legislative ban was put into place for the State. Earlier this year, the California Supreme Court overturned this ban, resulting in the issue being referred to public referendum, and some highly-public weddings, including the unfair union of smokin’-hot Portia deRossi to dog-maul Ellen deGeneres; but it has also overshadowed the very same plight in two others states, like Arizona’s Proposition 102.
Who
And what about Florida? Florida’s ballot also sees a similar measure on the ballot. Known as Amendment 2, the measure seeks to re-write Florida’s constitution and define marriage exclusively as the union of a man with a woman. Ironic, that the state which is home to South Beach, Key West, and Fort Lauderdale, which draw in millions of gay travelers and billions of gay dollars every year, should do a sudden about face and slap one of its own heaviest contingencies in the face with nothing but raw insult.
In fact, as a Republican, it calls into question the profitability of such a system: in Florida we should be catering to such social minorities. Gay people are well known for their aesthetic superiority and their ability to perform nearly any task in the job market with aplomb. Without the economic burden of raising children, gays boast the highest disposable income of any particular social segment. However, thanks to rampant social conservatism which affects Florida like a plague, Floridian women still earn less than men; Hispanic, African-American, and Caucasian ethnic groups are still neck-cutting antagonists toward with one another, and Floridian culture stays zip-locked in the shopping malls with a Miami Vice mentality.
Obviously, the freedom to marry the gender of your choice is is going to distress the religious Right the most. But we at the Palmetto Patriot would like to remind America that the whole damned country was founded on the principle of separation of church and state. Not only are we guaranteed freedom to practice whatever religion we choose, but at the same time we ought to be guaranteed our freedom from other people’s religions! What a relief this would be from all the Jerry Fallwells and the Oral Robertses out there who make Evangelical Christianity seem more tyrannical and insane than Shia Islam. What a joy it would be to be free of the hypocrisy of Catholic priests who avow celibacy for life, only to later be caught in child abuse and pornography. America is replete with its own fundamentalist extremists, spiritual terrorism is on the rise. Yes, such extreme conservatism amounts to cultural terrorism.
It is indeed wonderous to recall the days shortly after 9/11 when the USA had a shot at garnering sympathy and support from the whole world. It was magical how nearly every elected official homogenized the American population into one contiguous mostly-White, totally Protestant mass. Such homogenization was essential pretext for the later legislative and military abominations that befell us at home and the world at large, and yet how essential false and fallacious all of it was. It amounted to nothing short of whipping up religious fervor into a froth of outrage against anything that wasn’t WASPy, in a ghastly mirror of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Muslims are the new Jews. And they’re not Muslims, they’re terrorists. Funny, isn’t it, that America should come so close to the nation-state it changed its own foreign policy to defeat?
To bring us back on point, religious sentiment has no place in politics. This is a most Republican point of view, if you paid attention to the last two centuries, and anyone who says or does the opposite is a hypocrit.
You may not approve of same-sex marriages. You may not like homosexuals, and you may not want any of them near your neighborhood, and we’re fairly certain the feeling is mutual. But think for a moment about all those Protestants, Lutherans, Quakers, Calvinists, Pilgrims, and Amish who were laughed out of Europe for their religious beliefs. In certain terms, it is absolutely unfair for us to curtail the rights and freedoms of others, as detailed in and guaranteed by the charter documents of this country, because of collective religious sentiment… and we do emphasize the word sentiment.
On the other hand, whereas marriage rights, laws, and clauses form a unique cultural bridge between church and state, the social institution of marriage can be seen as a tax shelter for those who would choose to breed, and in many cases, indiscriminantly so. Gay couples could single-handedly re-stimulate the economy if they had more of a tax-incentive to join the mainstream. After all, it’s not just procreation that the governement is after, it’s the household: small business, entrepreneurism, even government itself could not exist without the household, and why should we forbid certain groups from forming households? We do not dissolve the marriages of infertile couples because they cannot reproduce. There’s a strong chance that gay couples will have children, one way or another, and there is even scientific evidence that the children of gay couples grow up psychologically better-balanced that the norm.
It has been long-rumoured that Florida’s current Governor, Charlie Crist, is himself gay, and yet he was overwhelmingly elected to office. Should we deny the Governor his God-given right to marry any long-time pool boy or personal assistant he sees fit? Absolutely not.
In the Closet
To summarize, voting for Amendment 2 for religious reasons is tantamount to the Neanderthal practice of clubbing a potential mate on the head and raping him/her. In an economic viewpoint, voting against Amendment 2 is a strong and sound economic statement: more tax breaks for higher disposable income families mean more money pouring through the marketplace and a stronger economy. Plus, it helps to bring Floridian culture out of the dark ages it’s experienced since Fidel took over and Don Johnson re-invented the 3-day stubble look.
So, whereas The Palmetto Patriot takes no official stance on any religious issue, we must sharply say a fervent “HELL NO” to Florida’s Amendment 2 on economic and ethical grounds. In today’s impending doom of an economy, we cannot afford to alienate any social group, and must rise to the occassion. We strongly urge you, our reader to consider both sides of this equation and do the right thing.
L. Grant dePook
Editor-in-Chief
