Thursday, January 8, 2009

Time to Mobilize

This Saturday at 12:30, there will be a rally at the downtown square in Springfield, MO to protest the Defense of Marriage Act. This is very important. We need to keep this issue in the public eye and not let them sweep it under the rug. Hateful irrationality and bigotry are like cockroaches: they don't do well in the light.

It takes a very backwards mind to take something so aggressive like a belief that you have the divine right to insist that everybody else live by your arbitrary standard, or an attempt to enforce that belief via (supposedly) secular law, and call it "defense". What are you defending? In Denmark, civil unions with the same rights as marriage have been around since 1989, and other Nordic countries followed suit in the 1990s. Same-sex marriage was legalized in the Netherlands in 2001. Amazingly, somehow, some way...religious freedoms, families, marriages, and the governments of these countries continue to flourish, and there have been no reports of ANYONE trying to marry their family pet. Incredible, right?

Well, religious people do not have the right to insist that we march to the beat of their mythological bunkum, and it's high time we started marching in order to drive that point home. There is no defense with DOMA, prop 8, or any similar bill; there is just bigotry dressed up in velvet. Calling it "defense" is their way of trying to coat the piece of poop that is discrimination with a pretty layer of paint to hide what it really is. Newsflash: it's still a piece of poop, and a layer of paint doesn't hide the stench.

I detest proud discrimination as I detest everything evil (and I especially detest the engines for such evil). As I have said before: there will be no more hiding behind your sacred beliefs. In order to be a bigot, I will do everything in my power to make sure you have to stand up in public with your badge of hate and defend your bigotry - and you'd best believe I'm gonna make it sting when I do. I've noticed that fewer and fewer people who have the courage to thump their bibles at the polls possess the fortitude to stand up in public and bear some actual criticism. It's amazing how pious certainty can fade really quick outside the privacy of the voting booth, isn't it? Only in the safety of the darkness, absent of the light of reason, do these people demonstrate the courage of their convictions. Fucking cowards. Fucking trolls.

Not sure who said it, but it's very true: all that is required for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing*. I'll be there Saturday, and I encourage you to be there as well.

* Apparently it is attributed to Edmund Burke, though there is some question about whether that phrase or some approximation were actually his writings. What he did actually say though was, "Whilst men are linked together, they easily and speedily communicate the alarm of any evil design. They are enabled to fathom it with common counsel, and to oppose it with united strength."

Good shit. Thanks to dad, for that piece of info.

1 comment:

Jeff said...

I am now very disappointed that I'll be unable to attend, being in Chicago and all that. This post was very inspirational. Good luck at the rally.