Philosophical Musings

Sometimes I can't shut my mind off. This can either be good or bad, depending on your perspective, but usually when something bothers me (or alternately excites me) I can't just ignore my emotions. I have to talk about it, get it off my chest, rave about it or write about it....because my mind can't let it go.

This week, I'm very disheartened. In a world where everything is uncertain, where history was made, where some hope of progression was finally attained, I feel that a huge step back was taken in the state of California (and other states as well). I'm not sure how many of you know this, but California had a proposition up for vote that would ban gay marriage. Earlier in 2008, the CA Supreme Court had allowed for gay marriage, and opponents of this allowance effectively entered this proposition on the ballot. Well, it passed by a narrow margin. Since gay marriage had been approved, thousands of gay marriages had taken place across the state...and now these unions will also be brought into question. Will they be recognized as official unions? Or will we take another huge step back and deny basic rights to those that believed that they would finally be allowed the same equal treatment as any other couple who loves each other?

Of course, I have a more personal investment in this. However, what I can't wrap my mind around is why this proposition had advocates. Aren't we past all of the prejudices? There was once a time where African Americans were enslaved, where blacks couldn't eat in the same restaurants as whites, where blacks and whites couldn't get married....and now, in a time where we should be celebrating breaking through racial and prejudicial barriers, we take a step backward. We deny the basic right to marry to a group of people whose only apparent "sin" is that they happen to love someone of the same sex.

Really? Really. This is a sin?

In a world where heterosexual couples mistreat each other, beat one another, don't support each other, and cheat on each other.....we judge homosexual couples simply because they love each other. This is not to say that homosexual couples don't have their share of drama and hurt, but why is one group treated as if their behavioral and sexual choice is RIGHT and the other is inherently wrong? Who are we to say what is right? Who are we to place those limitations? And who are we to judge?

I heard an argument recently that defended approving the ban because "marriages have been between a man and a woman for thousands of years". I found myself scoffing at this defense of why one would approve this ban because I was trying to figure out why it makes it right because we've been doing it this way for so long...because if we went by that argument, then we'd still be enslaving human beings because of the color of their skin, we'd still be accusing and hanging women of witchcraft on the town square, still be terrified of every other religion besides Christianity...

We live in a ridiculous world and sometimes I really just want to grab people by the scruffs of their necks and try to shake some common sense into them. In a perfect world, every one of us should have equal rights....but in our world, in this ridiculous world we dictate, an entire sector of people have just been denied a basic, beautiful right.

And this makes me sad.