Republicans: Stop thinking about gay sex

A great editorial that totally deserves mentioning on this blog and should be passed around to anyone who pontificates on the evilness of same-sex marriages and the sacredness of heterosexual marriages.

The writer, Jeff Stevens, is reporting about the introduction by a state lawmaker of a proposed amendment to the New Mexico State Constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, and he's none too pleased, but not because he's for or against it, but simply because he feels it's "a colossal waste of time" and resources.

First, he makes the simple and obvious point that Republicans are obsessed with gays (simply because they can use them to win votes at the polls by firing up their religion-crazed base):

It seems to me Republicans spend more time thinking about gay sex than any other group of people in the known world even more so than gay people trying to find other gay people with whom to have sex.

He then ponders whether there are any other more pressing issues that should be debated and tackled before worrying whether gays can marry or not:

Evidently, every New Mexican makes a decent living wage. No child will go to bed tonight with an empty stomach, because they are all well fed. For that matter, no child will go to bed with an empty mind because our education system is tops in the world.

Evidently our streets are free of drugs. Every New Mexican has a job and can feed their families with a $5.15 minimum wage. Our roads are the best in the nation. Everyone in the state has access to affordable health care.

We can only assume such is the case, because Vaughn isn't seeking to amend the Constitution to solve any of those problems. No. The most important item on her agenda is to make sure that gay people can't marry one another in the state of New Mexico.

This, in and of itself, is a great argument, but he also counters the amendment to ban same-sex marriage with a different, more practical one:

How about instead we pass a constitutional amendment that defines a family as a group of people who love one another and don't do harm to each other. That way it would be unconstitutional for people to verbally and physically abuse their own.

But this is the best part of his rebuttal:

Or since, by her own admission, the Bible is the basis for Vaughn's desire to constitutionally define marriage, let's take that definition directly from the Bible.

"Therefore what God has put together, let man not separate." That passage can be found in Mathew 19:16 and if my ability to divine what the author had in mind is worth anything, under that definition, divorce. folks, would be unconstitutional.

We all know that won't work because, church and state issues aside, applying the Bible to modern society doesn't work. The Bible hasn't changed in 1,500 years but the world has.

What a wise and effective argument. His conclusion is astoundingly simple and self evident: the Bible hasn't changed in 1,500 years, but the world has. We see this everyday with our own eyes, and yet, there are people who insist on expecting us to live by it by the letter. That's crazy.

And let's not forget Mr. Stevens' other good point: have all more pressing problems, like health care and poverty, been solved or should we worry about those first?