A parable: two guys walk into a bar. It is an ordinary bar with ordinary run of the mill people. Nothing special, nothing fancy, just a place to go and enjoy yourself with the surrounding company and atmosphere. The men are nice looking, well-dressed, well-groomed, dignified; not flashy, but not dingy either. They casually walk up to the bar to order their first round.
“Bartender, we’d like to order two cognacs, please” says the first man
The bartender takes a moment to look at them, smiles a little half smile then almost undetectably shakes his head as he turns to prepare their order. Upon returning to the two men, the bartender serves them two bottles of Bud Light.
“Excuse me, sir” says the first man “this is not what we ordered. We ordered two cognacs”
The bartender, a little taken aback, looks at him and his partner and says “Oh, I’m sorry, but we can’t serve you cognac, we can only serve you this” motioning to the bottles in front of the men.
The men then turn to observe the other bar patrons as the bartender goes about his business. They assume the bar is simply out of cognac, but remain confused as to why Bud Light was the instinctual second choice. Almost immediately, they see a man and a woman sitting at a table nearby slowly sipping on glasses of cognac as they chat with each other.
The second man motions to the bartender and asks “excuse me, it looks to me like those two over there” motioning to the couple at the table “are drinking cognac. I don’t mean to pry, but did they happen to get the last of it?”
The bartender again smiles a half smile and says “oh no, we have lots of that here, it is one of our more popular drinks, so we pretty much have an unlimited stock of several varieties.”
Second man then responds rather abruptly “well, now I really don’t understand, we ordered cognac, exactly like they are drinking, twice, and you explicitly told us you couldn’t serve it. So do you have any or not?”
Bartender says “yes, we have lots of cognac, but like I said I can’t serve it to you”
Looking rather insulted, but still patient for a logical explanation, the first man asks “well would you mind telling us why you can’t serve it to us?”
The bartender, sensing the men’s growing aggravation gets very serious and looks the first man in the face and says “ok, well it is pretty simple: those two over there are a man and a woman so I can serve them whatever they like. You two, however, are two men, and I can’t serve you cognac, but as a consolation I can serve you Bid Light. Do you know what I mean?”
The first man snaps back and says “Frankly, no, I don’t understand. What the hell is so special about the two of them that they can drink what they want, and we have to drink what you choose to allow us to drink?”
The bartender, not wishing to upset the men further tries to console them “Gentlemen, I am very sorry, I understand you would like cognac, but Bud Light will get you drunk too, so how about we make all of our lives a little easier and just enjoy your beer, after all the end result is the same.”
The second man, unimpressed with this response, inquires further “explain to me again why we can’t have what we ordered; I am still not understanding”
“Ok, it is like this” The bartender says becoming exasperated himself “If I serve you the same thing as those two, it cheapens the drink. Cognac is a classy drink and it is my responsibility to make sure it stays that way, but if I serve it to you it takes away from the quality of the drink as a whole and effectively keeps those two from feeling the stateliness they feel by drinking it.”
Proud of his articulate answer the bartender turns to go back to work when he is stopped by the second man again.
“So, because they are a man and a woman, they are allowed to drink it, but because we are two men, we can’t because of the value of the drink itself?”
“That’s right” says the bartender frankly “because if I serve it to you, I don’t know who else will end up drinking it; maybe kids, maybe animals, who knows where it will end up?”
“Well I don’t think that is very fair. I mean we are two grown men, we are citizens of this country, we have jobs, we pay our taxes, what is the difference?”
Wishing to appease the two men the bartender comes to a compromise “alright, how about this: I will take a quick poll of everyone in the bar tonight to see how they feel about you two drinking cognac? Does that sound fair?”
Every so often a political issue sweeps across the landscape of American popular culture that polarizes the nation with inexplicable force for inexplicable reasons. Supreme Court justices? Social Security benefits? The deficit? Gun control? None of these hold a candle to the firestorm that is the gay marriage debate. The gay marriage debate has set water-coolers boiling across the nation in the course of the last four years. It has caused turkeys, stuffing, and most-likely silverware to be hurled in frustration at Thanksgiving dinners. It has even been partly responsible for breaking-up heterosexual relationships. It is a debate that has recently taken center-stage on this country and has left its mark on every office, every home, and every school from Maine to California, and now, this blog. Let us reflect and refract as necessary.
On a personal note, I swore I would never write an article about a political issue, and in a sense, I am keeping with that promise. Every so often a political issue emerges from the woodwork that is so fraught with controversy it transcends political and social culture to become popular culture. Popular culture in the respect that it becomes a conversation piece for virtually every sect of the mass population from the obvious homosexuals to heterosexuals, from Democrats to Republicans, from students to teachers, young and old, rich and poor, every race, every creed, every one has an opinion. It is one of the few issues where it is simply impossible to not have an opinion. This is not to say that everyone thinks about gay marriage every moment of the day. In fact I suspect anyone who thinks of it or any single issue every moment of the day is critically insane. But gay marriage has been so widely reported and so widely discussed over the past four years that it is difficult to imagine anyone not having an opinion.
If you happen to be someone who voluntarily entered the Theodore Kaczynski life of luxury by shutting yourself out of society to build homemade "presents" and have somehow avoided the question, it is time to end your silence: how do you feel about the prospect of homosexuals gaining the right to marry and have their marriage recognized as equal to that of heterosexual marriage? It is simple. So simple that it is impossible to say “I don’t know” to this question. It is impossible to say “it depends” It is impossible to not know enough information to answer. It is so simple that it has to be popular culture because you don’t have to know anything to have an opinion. Either you feel that consenting homosexual adults should have the right to marry or you don’t. It couldn’t be simpler, and yet it has, as always, become far more complicated.
The debate is no longer about gay marriage, the debate is about you, it is about me, it is about “we the people,” and it is about the United States as a whole. Should there be a Constitutional law for or against it? What does gay marriage do to affect the institution of marriage? What does it do to families? Is a civil union the same thing? What does the Bible say? How would a bachelor party work? Now we have ourselves a complex debate, and complex debates are how relatively simple issues become convoluted so much that the core question no longer becomes recognized or even relevant, and the real issue becomes about two polarized stances. All of a sudden if you are in favor of gay marriage then it means you are against the Bible or you are against family values or you are against the natural order or you are in favor of pedophilia. If you are against gay marriage you are against freedom of choice or you are against love or you are against civil rights or you are for segregation. If you are opposed to gay marriage you must be a bigot and hate America. If you support gay marriage you must be gay and hate America. Gay marriage is no longer about gay marriage, gay marriage is about you and your relationship with America, and there is no right answer. But there is also no wrong answer. Everyone believes themselves to be right which means everyone else must be wrong. The debate is incredibly complex even though the debate is incredibly simple.
And the best part is this: the whole thing is utterly ridiculous, and before I die, I hope the rest of the country figures that out. In fact, I know the rest of the country will figure that out.
As I write this, the debate continues over California’s proposition 8 or the “California Marriage Protection Act” which would add to the California constitution a clause that only a marriage between a man and a woman will be recognized in the state effectively making marriage between same sex couples illegal. The act was voted for and passed in November 2008 until August 4, 2010 when Judge Vaughn R. Walker overturned the act in the case Perry v. Schwarzenegger, which is now currently pending appeal by the ninth circuit court of appeals. The amount of money spent on campaigns for and against prop 8 total $39.9 million and $43.3 million respectively as of the 2008 ballot initiative making it the highest funded campaign outside a presidential election. The debate has spawned commercial campaigns on both sides and even a mock musical. Did I say ridiculous? I meant completely insane. Let’s take a trip back, way back to a simpler time: 1920.
1920 was not that long ago. Fewer than 100 years. 12 years prior was the last time the Cubs won the World Series. Let me repeat that: 1908 was the last time, not the first time, but the last time the Chicago Cubs won the World Series. In 1920 Hitler was on the rise, the US struck down the invitation to join the League of Nations which they had created, and Warren G. Harding was elected President. Something else happened that year: The nineteenth amendment was ratified on August 26, 1920 guaranteeing women the right to vote. Again, let me repeat: in this country, the United States of America, women were not given the right to vote in an election until 1920 whereas white men had been granted the right to vote since the Constitution was adapted in 1787. That doesn’t even include the pay equity act, the right to own property, or the still un-ratified equal rights amendment. Women were not and in many was still are not treated as equal to men in this country.
What about the period of time between 1955-1968 during the American civil rights movement? What about the fact that racial segregation in all public places was the law of the land until 1954, and even since African-Americans have continued to be treated as inferior citizens?
We look back now, or at least I hope we do, and consider our nation’s past mentality as ridiculous. How did we legally treat women as inferior? How did we legally segregate races? How did we ever consider “separate but equal” status humane? More than that, how did opposition to these issues exist? The darkest secret of all is that opposition did not only exist, but opposition was the majority mentality. A majority of Americans opposed integration. A majority of Americans opposed universal suffrage. A majority of Americans believed that certain races and a certain gender were inferior and were to be treated as such by law. We’ve come a long way, baby, but we still have many rivers to cross, and one of those rivers is rainbow-colored.
It is so simple. It is so simple it is ridiculous. It is so ridiculous that it must be the kind of debate reserved for only the most incendiary and provocative of public figures to spit mouths full of gasoline into an already burning fire of American society.
Believe it or not, but homosexuality is real. People really are homosexuals and homosexuals really are people. In this country we not only have the right, but we have the responsibility to treat everyone equally, and I am yet to see any evidence that a person’s sexuality makes them any less than deserving of all of the rights and privileges guaranteed by our United States Constitution. I am yet to hear a logical argument opposing gay marriage. Opponents like to say that the Bible calls homosexuality an abomination, but the Bible also says that a women were put on Earth to serve their husbands (Genesis 3:16) and that a woman shall be summarily executed if she is not a virgin when she weds (Deuteronomy 22:20), so something tells me the Bible isn’t too tolerant as far as marriages go. Some like to say that gay marriage destroys the sanctity of marriage, but with a current divorce rate of 40%, and with fairly recent highly rated television shows like “Rock of Love with Brett Michaels” and “Joe Millionaire,” heterosexual marriage is far from sanctified. Some will say that gay marriage is a threat to the American family and family values, but I have never once witnessed the actions of a neighbor affecting my or anyone else’s family structure except perhaps the affect of helping me realize how much I hate Hispanic music at 7am on a Saturday.
A popular argument is that a civil union is comparable to marriage and available for homosexuals as an alternative, but that is the biggest load of garbage yet. As soon as you tell a person that they aren’t suitable for one option, but are qualified for another with different rights and privileges, you are immediately classifying them as inferior. It is the same flawed reasoning behind the Jim Crow laws of the first half of the 20th Century. “Separate but equal” status is inherently flawed and imbalanced as was determined in Brown v. Board of Education more than 50 years ago in 1954. Telling anyone they can’t get married but can have a union as consolation is no different from telling a person they are inferior and are not deserving of the same rights as others. Nothing could be simpler. Nothing could be more ridiculous. Yet nothing could be more convoluted or skewed.
Homosexuals will be allowed to marry in every state in the United States. Gay marriage will be nationally recognized in this country in my life-time. This is a fact that I know for sure. I know this because we progress as a society. What may be debatable today will be an unquestionable way of life in the future. We evolve. We improve. We accept and we grow. Someday, somewhere, someone in the not too distant future will write a poignant piece about our next social hurdle and they will use the gay marriage debate to illustrate our turn of the century short-sightedness. They will cite the bible debate. They will cite the family values debate. They will cite the majority opposition. They will also cite the ridiculousness of the debate as a whole.
“Bartender, we’d like to order two cognacs, please” says the first man
The bartender takes a moment to look at them, smiles a little half smile then almost undetectably shakes his head as he turns to prepare their order. Upon returning to the two men, the bartender serves them two bottles of Bud Light.
“Excuse me, sir” says the first man “this is not what we ordered. We ordered two cognacs”
The bartender, a little taken aback, looks at him and his partner and says “Oh, I’m sorry, but we can’t serve you cognac, we can only serve you this” motioning to the bottles in front of the men.
The men then turn to observe the other bar patrons as the bartender goes about his business. They assume the bar is simply out of cognac, but remain confused as to why Bud Light was the instinctual second choice. Almost immediately, they see a man and a woman sitting at a table nearby slowly sipping on glasses of cognac as they chat with each other.
The second man motions to the bartender and asks “excuse me, it looks to me like those two over there” motioning to the couple at the table “are drinking cognac. I don’t mean to pry, but did they happen to get the last of it?”
The bartender again smiles a half smile and says “oh no, we have lots of that here, it is one of our more popular drinks, so we pretty much have an unlimited stock of several varieties.”
Second man then responds rather abruptly “well, now I really don’t understand, we ordered cognac, exactly like they are drinking, twice, and you explicitly told us you couldn’t serve it. So do you have any or not?”
Bartender says “yes, we have lots of cognac, but like I said I can’t serve it to you”
Looking rather insulted, but still patient for a logical explanation, the first man asks “well would you mind telling us why you can’t serve it to us?”
The bartender, sensing the men’s growing aggravation gets very serious and looks the first man in the face and says “ok, well it is pretty simple: those two over there are a man and a woman so I can serve them whatever they like. You two, however, are two men, and I can’t serve you cognac, but as a consolation I can serve you Bid Light. Do you know what I mean?”
The first man snaps back and says “Frankly, no, I don’t understand. What the hell is so special about the two of them that they can drink what they want, and we have to drink what you choose to allow us to drink?”
The bartender, not wishing to upset the men further tries to console them “Gentlemen, I am very sorry, I understand you would like cognac, but Bud Light will get you drunk too, so how about we make all of our lives a little easier and just enjoy your beer, after all the end result is the same.”
The second man, unimpressed with this response, inquires further “explain to me again why we can’t have what we ordered; I am still not understanding”
“Ok, it is like this” The bartender says becoming exasperated himself “If I serve you the same thing as those two, it cheapens the drink. Cognac is a classy drink and it is my responsibility to make sure it stays that way, but if I serve it to you it takes away from the quality of the drink as a whole and effectively keeps those two from feeling the stateliness they feel by drinking it.”
Proud of his articulate answer the bartender turns to go back to work when he is stopped by the second man again.
“So, because they are a man and a woman, they are allowed to drink it, but because we are two men, we can’t because of the value of the drink itself?”
“That’s right” says the bartender frankly “because if I serve it to you, I don’t know who else will end up drinking it; maybe kids, maybe animals, who knows where it will end up?”
“Well I don’t think that is very fair. I mean we are two grown men, we are citizens of this country, we have jobs, we pay our taxes, what is the difference?”
Wishing to appease the two men the bartender comes to a compromise “alright, how about this: I will take a quick poll of everyone in the bar tonight to see how they feel about you two drinking cognac? Does that sound fair?”
Every so often a political issue sweeps across the landscape of American popular culture that polarizes the nation with inexplicable force for inexplicable reasons. Supreme Court justices? Social Security benefits? The deficit? Gun control? None of these hold a candle to the firestorm that is the gay marriage debate. The gay marriage debate has set water-coolers boiling across the nation in the course of the last four years. It has caused turkeys, stuffing, and most-likely silverware to be hurled in frustration at Thanksgiving dinners. It has even been partly responsible for breaking-up heterosexual relationships. It is a debate that has recently taken center-stage on this country and has left its mark on every office, every home, and every school from Maine to California, and now, this blog. Let us reflect and refract as necessary.
On a personal note, I swore I would never write an article about a political issue, and in a sense, I am keeping with that promise. Every so often a political issue emerges from the woodwork that is so fraught with controversy it transcends political and social culture to become popular culture. Popular culture in the respect that it becomes a conversation piece for virtually every sect of the mass population from the obvious homosexuals to heterosexuals, from Democrats to Republicans, from students to teachers, young and old, rich and poor, every race, every creed, every one has an opinion. It is one of the few issues where it is simply impossible to not have an opinion. This is not to say that everyone thinks about gay marriage every moment of the day. In fact I suspect anyone who thinks of it or any single issue every moment of the day is critically insane. But gay marriage has been so widely reported and so widely discussed over the past four years that it is difficult to imagine anyone not having an opinion.
If you happen to be someone who voluntarily entered the Theodore Kaczynski life of luxury by shutting yourself out of society to build homemade "presents" and have somehow avoided the question, it is time to end your silence: how do you feel about the prospect of homosexuals gaining the right to marry and have their marriage recognized as equal to that of heterosexual marriage? It is simple. So simple that it is impossible to say “I don’t know” to this question. It is impossible to say “it depends” It is impossible to not know enough information to answer. It is so simple that it has to be popular culture because you don’t have to know anything to have an opinion. Either you feel that consenting homosexual adults should have the right to marry or you don’t. It couldn’t be simpler, and yet it has, as always, become far more complicated.
The debate is no longer about gay marriage, the debate is about you, it is about me, it is about “we the people,” and it is about the United States as a whole. Should there be a Constitutional law for or against it? What does gay marriage do to affect the institution of marriage? What does it do to families? Is a civil union the same thing? What does the Bible say? How would a bachelor party work? Now we have ourselves a complex debate, and complex debates are how relatively simple issues become convoluted so much that the core question no longer becomes recognized or even relevant, and the real issue becomes about two polarized stances. All of a sudden if you are in favor of gay marriage then it means you are against the Bible or you are against family values or you are against the natural order or you are in favor of pedophilia. If you are against gay marriage you are against freedom of choice or you are against love or you are against civil rights or you are for segregation. If you are opposed to gay marriage you must be a bigot and hate America. If you support gay marriage you must be gay and hate America. Gay marriage is no longer about gay marriage, gay marriage is about you and your relationship with America, and there is no right answer. But there is also no wrong answer. Everyone believes themselves to be right which means everyone else must be wrong. The debate is incredibly complex even though the debate is incredibly simple.
And the best part is this: the whole thing is utterly ridiculous, and before I die, I hope the rest of the country figures that out. In fact, I know the rest of the country will figure that out.
As I write this, the debate continues over California’s proposition 8 or the “California Marriage Protection Act” which would add to the California constitution a clause that only a marriage between a man and a woman will be recognized in the state effectively making marriage between same sex couples illegal. The act was voted for and passed in November 2008 until August 4, 2010 when Judge Vaughn R. Walker overturned the act in the case Perry v. Schwarzenegger, which is now currently pending appeal by the ninth circuit court of appeals. The amount of money spent on campaigns for and against prop 8 total $39.9 million and $43.3 million respectively as of the 2008 ballot initiative making it the highest funded campaign outside a presidential election. The debate has spawned commercial campaigns on both sides and even a mock musical. Did I say ridiculous? I meant completely insane. Let’s take a trip back, way back to a simpler time: 1920.
1920 was not that long ago. Fewer than 100 years. 12 years prior was the last time the Cubs won the World Series. Let me repeat that: 1908 was the last time, not the first time, but the last time the Chicago Cubs won the World Series. In 1920 Hitler was on the rise, the US struck down the invitation to join the League of Nations which they had created, and Warren G. Harding was elected President. Something else happened that year: The nineteenth amendment was ratified on August 26, 1920 guaranteeing women the right to vote. Again, let me repeat: in this country, the United States of America, women were not given the right to vote in an election until 1920 whereas white men had been granted the right to vote since the Constitution was adapted in 1787. That doesn’t even include the pay equity act, the right to own property, or the still un-ratified equal rights amendment. Women were not and in many was still are not treated as equal to men in this country.
What about the period of time between 1955-1968 during the American civil rights movement? What about the fact that racial segregation in all public places was the law of the land until 1954, and even since African-Americans have continued to be treated as inferior citizens?
We look back now, or at least I hope we do, and consider our nation’s past mentality as ridiculous. How did we legally treat women as inferior? How did we legally segregate races? How did we ever consider “separate but equal” status humane? More than that, how did opposition to these issues exist? The darkest secret of all is that opposition did not only exist, but opposition was the majority mentality. A majority of Americans opposed integration. A majority of Americans opposed universal suffrage. A majority of Americans believed that certain races and a certain gender were inferior and were to be treated as such by law. We’ve come a long way, baby, but we still have many rivers to cross, and one of those rivers is rainbow-colored.
It is so simple. It is so simple it is ridiculous. It is so ridiculous that it must be the kind of debate reserved for only the most incendiary and provocative of public figures to spit mouths full of gasoline into an already burning fire of American society.
Believe it or not, but homosexuality is real. People really are homosexuals and homosexuals really are people. In this country we not only have the right, but we have the responsibility to treat everyone equally, and I am yet to see any evidence that a person’s sexuality makes them any less than deserving of all of the rights and privileges guaranteed by our United States Constitution. I am yet to hear a logical argument opposing gay marriage. Opponents like to say that the Bible calls homosexuality an abomination, but the Bible also says that a women were put on Earth to serve their husbands (Genesis 3:16) and that a woman shall be summarily executed if she is not a virgin when she weds (Deuteronomy 22:20), so something tells me the Bible isn’t too tolerant as far as marriages go. Some like to say that gay marriage destroys the sanctity of marriage, but with a current divorce rate of 40%, and with fairly recent highly rated television shows like “Rock of Love with Brett Michaels” and “Joe Millionaire,” heterosexual marriage is far from sanctified. Some will say that gay marriage is a threat to the American family and family values, but I have never once witnessed the actions of a neighbor affecting my or anyone else’s family structure except perhaps the affect of helping me realize how much I hate Hispanic music at 7am on a Saturday.
A popular argument is that a civil union is comparable to marriage and available for homosexuals as an alternative, but that is the biggest load of garbage yet. As soon as you tell a person that they aren’t suitable for one option, but are qualified for another with different rights and privileges, you are immediately classifying them as inferior. It is the same flawed reasoning behind the Jim Crow laws of the first half of the 20th Century. “Separate but equal” status is inherently flawed and imbalanced as was determined in Brown v. Board of Education more than 50 years ago in 1954. Telling anyone they can’t get married but can have a union as consolation is no different from telling a person they are inferior and are not deserving of the same rights as others. Nothing could be simpler. Nothing could be more ridiculous. Yet nothing could be more convoluted or skewed.
Homosexuals will be allowed to marry in every state in the United States. Gay marriage will be nationally recognized in this country in my life-time. This is a fact that I know for sure. I know this because we progress as a society. What may be debatable today will be an unquestionable way of life in the future. We evolve. We improve. We accept and we grow. Someday, somewhere, someone in the not too distant future will write a poignant piece about our next social hurdle and they will use the gay marriage debate to illustrate our turn of the century short-sightedness. They will cite the bible debate. They will cite the family values debate. They will cite the majority opposition. They will also cite the ridiculousness of the debate as a whole.
Will homosexuals be allowed to marry? Yes. Will they endure all the difficulties inherent with sharing one's life with another? Absolutely. Will a significant percentage of homosexuals who marry end up divorcing? Of course. But will an even greater percentage survive the hysteria and spend the rest of their lives in a loving caring relationship with all the rights and privileges given to them by this great nation of ours? Damn right. I know this because love is simple. And I know this because love is complicated.
1 comment:
"To unequal privileges among members of the same society the spirit of our nation is, with one accord, adverse." --Thomas Jefferson
There are so many points to make on this issue. It's impossible to cover them all, but you made a great case.
Never mind that monogamy is completely unnatural - there is adultery in every culture on the planet. Our modern society has us all so far removed from each other we can't even treat people with the respect they deserve because we are unable to see them as people in the first place!
I'm pro-choice on everything - as the Libertarians say. If two consenting adults (or five consenting adults, for that matter) want to enter into a "marriage contract" no one should have the right to stop them.
It should be a non-issue. People need shut the blank up and focus on real issues. And they should read the Consitiution while they're at it! The bible has as much place in this debate as "Green Eggs and Ham" - THIS IS NOT A CHRISTIAN NATION!
Thanks for getting me started first thing in the morning! Great blog :)
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