It's bullets over broken promises on Bullet Sunday!
• Tweet! Did you know the incomparable Elizabeth Hurley is on Twitter? It's true! She tweets fairly regularly about all kinds of stuff... but mostly about being Elizabeth Hurley, which is reason enough to follow her...
No tweets yet on the burden of being the most beautiful woman on the planet, but give her time.
• Better! I saw this video on Blair's Corner this past Wednesday, and it won't leave my head. Of all the inspiring "It Gets Better" videos floating around, this one sums it all up beautifully...
How can anybody watch this and be okay with a society that fosters such senseless hatred? As councilman Joel Burns says, it's not just about gay kids... it's about any kid that gets bullied just for being different. Six years ago somebody wrote to me from a life of pain and non-stop harassment. It broke my heart then, and the recent rash of teen suicides has brought it all back again.
Things have to change. Things have to get better. But it's not going to happen magically. We have to work for it by rejecting hatred and intolerance wherever we find it, and creating a world that embraces compassion and understanding. Though not always. I am quickly losing my compassion and understand for people who use religion and politics as an excuse to enforce a culture where kids are driven to kill themselves. They can just go fuck themselves.
• Beaver! Even though Leave It To Beaver was before my time, I remember it very well from reruns. "June Cleaver" is an American institution, a national treasure, and the epitome of television moms...
So when I heard that Barbara Billingsly had died I was understandably upset. Oddly enough, it's not June Cleaver that I most remember her for...
Go cups cut out to da Big Man, Big Momma. We fallin' out now you got your boots on an have a ball.
Huh. Feels like Monday.
So... the wholly abhorrent Proposition 8 initiative in California banning same-sex marriage was found to be unconstitutional, and an injunction against it was issued by a federal judge.
There will, of course, be people who are outraged at the decision.
There are, of course, people who believe that allowing two people of the same sex to marry is "redefining marriage as it has existed throughout the millennia across all cultures, races, and societies and defeats the purpose of marriage which is to produce the optimal family unit for having children."
Or whatever.
I honestly don't give a shit.
I'll redefine a WORD over making somebody redefine WHO THEY ARE any day.
Because this is The United States of America, and if two consenting adults want to be married they should get to be married. That's what our vaunted "freedom" is all about. The government has no fucking business dictating that somebody has to deny their sexuality in order to marry. They just don't.
It's not human. It's not fair. It's not right.
And it's certainly not America.
Because allowing two people of the same sex to marry does nothing... nothing... to take away from the people who choose to believe exclusively in "traditional marriage." Those people can still have marriage. They don't have to redefine a damn thing to keep what they have. They don't even have to personally acknowledge same-sex marriage if they don't want to. Just so long as they do acknowledge that their personal views don't get to redefine other people in a country which is supposed to guarantee life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for ALL its citizens. They don't have that right. They just don't.
And when I hear people say... "Just because I don't believe in same-sex marriage doesn't mean I'm a hater!"... the only thing that runs through my head is this...
You kinda are...
Because an aversion to somebody so intense that it strips them of their right to decide for themselves who they marry and forces them to adhere to a set of rules which makes them unequal in the eyes of the law is the very definition of hate, plain and simple.
HATE
a: intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury.
b: extreme dislike or antipathy, loathing.
Merriam-Webster Online. 4 August 2010
It's time to end the hate...
And to those who still wallow in it, bring on your inevitable appeal.
Because even more inevitable is the eventuality that this country will one day move past your absurd, antiquated, and ridiculous bigotry to fulfill the promise of a nation built on ideals of freedom.
I think we're due.