election day is fast approaching, and i can hardly believe it.
note about the main event: i really hope obama takes the presidency - simply because mccain's running mate, the absolutely moronic sarah palin, should never ever be allowed to have any say in running one of the most powerful and influential governments in the world. anyone who insists that they have foreign policy experience because they can "see Russia" from an island in Alaska or because Alaska is located right next to Canada is fucking ridiculous in my book. people say that bill clinton barely had any foreign policy experience either, and neither does obama, but obama has joe biden, who has a lot more experience in the sector of foreign policy. who does sarah palin have? obviously not her advisers, who haven't kept her up to speed with current events, or even bothered to send her out of the country to see the world until recently. and today there was just another story about how she said her First Amendment rights were being threatened because the mainstream media kept criticizing her every move. um, last time i checked, the First Amendment protects the right of the press to say whatever they want about public figures as long as it's not defamation or slander. and actually, the mainstream media doesn't even NEED to make up shit about palin to make her look bad - she just magically does it on her own. that being said, i feel like her nomination is still a big step for women in general - but she was definitely NOT the highest qualified female candidate for the job. seriously.
i'm still not too sure about the deal with the propositions, but i know for sure that i want to vote NO on PROP 8. and if you live in california, i am of the belief that you should vote 'No' on Prop 8 as well. prop 8 is relatively simple to understand - it seeks to eliminate gay marriage from California entirely and define marriage as strictly between man and a woman. but whatever your personal stance on gay marriage is, the government should not be allowed to legislate what "correct" pairing of genders constitutes a marriage. individual churches are already allowed by the state to perform or not perform gay marriages, and the California Superintendent already said that teachers will not have to teach about gay marriage in schools (although i don't see why that would be "bad" anyway, since we're all about the tolerance, right?). therefore, i don't really see a point to banning gay marriage - prop 8 is completely useless and abso fucking lutely discriminatory against one group of people in society who are simply born with a different sexual orientation than the majority. but let's play devil's advocate, since i'm bored at work and i don't feel like being productive.
Pro argument number 1: "Kids are just meant to be raised by both a man and a woman so they can experience the full spectrum. Being raised by just fathers or just mothers would lead the kids to miss out on seeing the entire picture and only leave them with one half of it."
And who designated that kids are "meant" to be raised by both a man and a woman? Does that mean single-parents don't do a good job with their children? Kids will also go to school, visit their friends' houses, etc. They experience the full gender spectrum in that sense, too. It's not like they're ONLY ever going to be exposed to one gender throughout their entire life, that's kind of impossible unless they become... hermits, for lack of a better term.
Pro argument number 2: "Not only are gay couples completely incapable of giving birth to their own child, but they also don’t have the correct composition needed to raise a child properly."
Infertile and elderly heterosexual couples are also incapable of giving birth to their own children. Should we ban their marriage as well? Furthermore, the ability to bear children is not a qualification for marriage - you don't need to provide proof of childbearing potential to your partner when you want to get married. Also this assumes that people should only be interested in marriage because they wish to produce children, but people get married for all sorts of reasons (or lack thereof). for example, remember Britney Spears' 55-hour marriage debacle? (or her equally disastrous marriage to KFed?) certainly there are people who will want to be married in order to have children, but that's not a reason to deny a whole group of people the right to marry based on what anatomical parts they have.
Pro argument number 3: "So because everybody deserves the right to marry who they want to marry, what about a man who insists on marrying his sister? Does he deserve the right to marry her as well? Should we allow incest marriage because everybody deserves the right to marry who they want to marry?"
Ah, the slippery slope argument. If we allow gay marriage, what's next? Incestuous marriage? Marriage to animals? Fortunately, all of this is non-sequitur with respect to Prop 8, since the text of the proposition only concerns gay marriages. However, I'm pretty sure allowing gay people to get married isn't going to inspire thousands upon thousands of heterosexuals to suddenly want to marry their relatives, or animals for that matter (although since an animal will never be a consenting adult, that won't be applicable anyway). Actually, I still continue to be puzzled by the fact that pro-Prop 8 people say that the value of their marriage will be decreased because gay people are allowed to marry. Well, let me be straight - no pun intended - this is actually pretty disturbing to me. People used to say the same exact thing about inter-racial marriage. "Our marriages will be de-valued because we're allowing blacks/asians/latinos to marry whites." Nowadays, this kind of language would be criticized to no end, but what are we doing today? We're replacing the word "black" with "gay," and attempting to deny a minority a right that heterosexuals themselves take for granted. Marriage is being devalued because heterosexuals no longer respect its sanctity; this has NOTHING to do with the fact that homosexuals want to get married. In fact, I would think that homosexuals wanting to become monogamous and have long-term relationships would actually STRENGTHEN the institution of marriage, but - oh wait - they're ... homosexual. And, by the way, a man marrying his sister or his mother is a heterosexual union. So technically, if prop 8 PASSES, incestuous marriage would still be allowed. Also, incestuous marriages have also been proven to have adverse effects on the genetics of the offspring, for example, Egyptian pharoahs and their brethren eventually all had rampant genetic disorders because they never married outside of their gene pool. A homosexual marriage would still be a marriage between two people of different genetic compositions, decreasing the chances of adversely affecting their offsprings' genes.
hm, i suppose that's it for now. if you think of more pro-Prop 8 arguments that we could discuss, feel free to let me know.
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