Marriage Equality in Iowa

This is great news. We now have three judicial acts(IA, MA, CT), and one legislative act (VT). Should Speaker Murphy allow H5744 to go to a full vote we may just see a legislative in RI too.

I liken the process of marriage equality to a snowball. It starts off tiny at first, but by the time it gets a third of the way down hill it is the size of a car.

Ultimately I see a U.S. Supreme Court challenge coming. This will play out just like Loving v. Virginia played out.

The whole thing makes me wonder about the obstinacy of the likes of Murphy, Codega et al. There are three points of attack I’ve seen from the opposition:

1) It would limit the rights of the religious class.

No it wouldn’t. There are specific limitations built into the marriage laws and in the proposed changes to the pre-requisites in RI State Senate bill S0136 and House bill H5744. Throughout my discussions with the Rev. Codega the same argument has been brought up time and again.

One of the more famous arguments was regarding the church property in NJ. The case in point comes from Mount Laurel, NJ and the church in question was Methodist. The property in question is a beach pavillion, not a consecrated church building. In fact the corporation that owns the pavillion is the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association and I’d lay odd that it is on the tax rolls of its host community.

Another limitation they bring up is the hate speech laws. A clear example of what would and would not qualify as hate speech:

Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 wouldn’t be classified as hate speech because they are biblical quotations. However using those passages to incite violence against gay people, that would be hate speech.

2) What about the children?

Another constant argument is that poor little snowflake would be irreconcilably crushed to find out that two men or two women can be as normal as their single parent. The most ridiculous of these cases is that of Robb and Robin Wirthlin.

Note Robb talking about the impacts of marriage equality. That these people participated in the Yes on 8 debacle makes me not like them very much at all.

And YouTube has a Yes on 8 group, look at their logo quickly and tell me what it looks like.

Yes On 8 Group Logo

Would you say a well defined set of pectorals?

I’ve often said if you want to bring out every stripe of hater just run a black lesbian cripple for office. You cover the racial, homosexual, misogynistic and anti-disability angles in one person.

That is another lesson many of the religious fail to understand. Walk a mile in someone elses shoes. Try to have some empathy, to understand where the other person is coming from. That’s sort of how I’m dealing with the Rev. Codega, he specializes in collecting the lost among Catholics. I find that a laudable mission. But don’t use it to trample my rights.

3) The Parts don’t fit.

To paraphrase the gay moralist John Corvino, oh yes they do. Funny how that happens isn’t it. You’d think that a god who hates gay acts so much would have designed it so the parts wouldn’t fit. Once again another fine quote in that respect from Neil DeGrasse-Tyson, who would build an amusement park in the middle of a sewage treatment plant.

The argument also brings to mind the image of doing it in the dark, under the covers, and quietly. Hell I like ear splitting sex. Holler and moan all you want, just turns me on more. And it doesn’t have to be in the dark and under the covers.

Which brings up another thing. Straight people can be every bit as freaky as gay people. I feel sorry for people who’ve never been sexually liberated. They really don’t know what they’re missing.