Tired

California's odious Proposition 8 (amending the state's constitution to ban same-sex marriage, striking down California's current status as one of the only states in the nation where same-sex couples can legally marry) is ahead in the polls. This is due in part to the Mormon church pouring millions into pro-amendment advertising; the amendment was (narrowly) losing in the polls prior to the Mormons getting involved. This can still be won.

Guys, I've donated more to this than I've ever donated to a political cause in my life. Because it's wrong. No one is being harmed in any way by what their neighbors across the street are doing with their personal lives. This is about bigotry, plain and simple. It's about one group of people with money and power trying to impose their own morality on other people's personal lives. Alaska has one of these amendments (it passed in '99) and I'm still heartsick that I didn't do more at the time to try to stop it.

The Netherlands, Canada, Belgium, Norway, Spain, and South Africa allow gay marriage; Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and the U.K. grant civil unions. As with slavery and female suffrage, it looks like the U.S.A. is slipping behind the civil rights curve yet again, letting the rest of the world lead the way while we pay lip service to freedom while utterly failing to live up to the ideals that this country is supposedly founded on.

And I'm angry and disgusted that so many people are spending so much money to disenfranchise their neighbors and co-workers, their sons and daughters, their doctors and lawyers and salesclerks and dogcatchers. None of the people who were married this summer (some of whom I know; people I like and respect) deserve to have that taken away from them. And those who aren't sure yet, and those who have yet to meet and fall in love, deserve to have the same choice that my husband and I did: to wed, or not. How can any thinking, feeling human being look into the eyes of a man or woman in love and say, "No, you can't marry your sweetheart, like I married mine; you shouldn't have that right"? I cannot wrap my mind around that. It simply doesn't make any sense to me.

If you want to toss a few bucks into the fight, the donation page is here. You can also volunteer to staff phones.

Other states contemplating similar measures this election:

Florida - Prop. 2 would amend the state constitution to ban not only same-sex marriage but civil unions and other "substantial equivalent" arrangements - contribute here to "No on 2"
Arizona - Prop. 102 would amend the constitution to limit marriage to opposite-sex couples - despite a state law already on the books that prohibits the state from allowing same-sex marriage or recognizing marriages performed elsewhere.

(no subject)

On a more cheerful note, I have been dying today reading this series at Slactivist: one guy read Left Behind so that you don't have to, and has been posting snarktastic commentary, a few pages of the book at a time, for the last four years. He's finally done (with the first book, anyway) and it's hilarious, as well as completely scary at times, considering that some people actually believe these wacko things. You don't have to start at the beginning; in fact, I started at the end and have been working my way backwards. For one thing, the conclusion is the best part, wherein the blogger points out that Left Behind actually is a book-length treatise that inadvertently proves, through its total illogic, that the literal Armageddon of Revelations could not possibly happen:

This is the great and insurmountable failure of Left Behind. It set out to be a work of propaganda, a teaching tool meant to demonstrate -- the authors would say to prove -- that the events it describes could and indeed will really happen. Yet their attempt to present a narrative of such events instead demonstrates -- I would say proves -- that these events could not and indeed will not ever happen. It proves that the weird and contradictory events of their check list could never happen in a world anything like the world we live in, or in any other imaginable world. It proves that their supposed prophecies will never, and can never, be fulfilled.

The whole thing is really not anti-religious at all; in fact, the blogger mentions from time to time that he does believe in God and I get the general idea that one of the things that annoys him most about the book is its complete and utter subversion of everything that's good about Christianity:

The authors follow some strange twists of logic to arrive at the idea that "love and peace and unity and brotherhood" is the message of the Antichrist. The idea seems to have its roots in the biblical warnings against false Christs, passages like Matthew 24:4-5, "Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many." For these impostors to "deceive many," their claims must seem plausible, so they must talk like Jesus. A false Christ, in other words, would likely talk about the same things that Jesus Christ talked about -- love and peace and understanding and brotherhood. But this talk will be fraudulent, the false Christ wouldn't really mean any of it.

Somehow L&J seem to have lost sight of the fact that the words of such frauds should not be taken at face value. (I think this is partly due to their reflexive antagonism against "works righteousness," which leads them to emphasize words over deeds.) They are not on the lookout against the deceptions of disingenuous false leaders, but rather against anyone with a message of love and peace and understanding and brotherhood. They've gotten so caught up in guarding against wolves in sheep's clothing that anything in sheep's clothing is viewed as the enemy. So all sheep must be shot on sight.

It ranges from insightful to blackly funny to surreally hilarious. One of my favorite bits so far, from the commentary on a scene in which the Antichrist tries to subvert our (supposed) hero the journalist:

The scene above could be read aloud every year at the White House Correspondents Dinner for the edification of the journalists assembled there. This is how you should respond when some politician gives you a chummy nickname or invites you to a barbecue or lets you sit next to him on the bus or otherwise threatens to co-opt your independence by making you feel like you're just part of the team: You should jump back, point at them, and scream "Antichrist!" until they get the picture.