A sad day…

For those of you who don’t know, Texas (my home state) was one of the states where a Constitutional amendment was being voted on this November to determine if same-sex marriages should be forbidden or not. Needless to say, it passed. It wasn’t so much that it passed, but that it passed with such an obscene majority of 76%.

I knew it would pass: I wasn’t kidding myself. What saddens me is that it passed with such vehemence, with such a mandate; that so many people either hate homosexuals, believe them to rightfully belong in a lower class of citizenry (with less rights than heterosexuals), or truly believe that two people of the same sex getting married somehow diminishes the meaning of the marriage of people of opposite genders.

Same-sex marriage was already illegal in Texas: as far as I knew, that wasn’t even being under threat of being repealed. Making this into a Constitutional amendment just seals the vault with concrete, and by writing into the state Constitution just says out loud: “We don’t want gays here in Texas” (which may very well be true, come to think of it).

What I can’t fathom is how people can’t seem to leave personal and religious prejudices at home when they go to vote: regardless of whether your church says same-sex relationships are (to quote the Bible) “abomination,” or whether you “like” homosexuals, what does that have to do with what your secular State should allow within its citizenry? What can’t more people make the distinction between what they like, and what should, fairly, be written into law? If everyone could make their pet peeves into law, believe me, no one would be able to do anything anywhere!

This is the relevant part of the amendment (you can read the full text here):

“Sec. 32. (a) Marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman.
(b) This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.”

By the way, I find it hilarious that the State cannot “recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage” because, unless basic algebra has also been repealed in the state of Texas, marriage is identical to marriage! (This means, I guess, that Texas can no longer recognize marriage, same-sex or otherwise).

I guess I’ll have to wait for a fair, level-headed pundit to explain to me yet how two people of the same gender getting married (and having all the legal benefits thereof) is an affront to our society, or how it hurts “family values.” Family values should be about unconditional love, about companionship, about caring for someone else, sometimes even at the expense of your own well-being: when someone can convince me how this can intrinsically never be the case in same-sex marriages, I’ll be the first to vote against them.

Thoughts? 🙂

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