Day: November 19, 2003

“Marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman. Today’s decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court violates this important principle. I will work with congressional leaders and others to do what is legally necessary to defend the sanctity of marriage.” — George W. Bush, November 18, 2003

Thing is, if it’s truly a sacred institution, it doesn’t need protection. And certainly not from the likes of Georgie Boy. There’s nothing in the court opinion that says a church has to allow same-sex unions. Want to hang on to that out-dated and hopelessly flawed interpretation of scripture? Go right ahead. Nobody’s stopping you. Nobody’s saying you have to let gay couples get married in your church if you find them icky (and you wrongly think the Bible’s clear on calling them icky, too). What the Massachusetts court opinion said was this:

Marriage is a vital social institution. The exclusive commitment of two individuals to each other nurtures love and mutual support; it brings stability to our society. For those who choose to marry, and for their children, marriage provides an abundance of legal, financial, and social benefits. In return it imposes weighty legal, financial, and social obligations. The question before us is whether, consistent with the Massachusetts Constitution, the Commonwealth may deny the protections, benefits, and obligations conferred by civil marriage to two individuals of the same sex who wish to marry. We conclude that it may not. The Massachusetts Constitution affirms the dignity and equality of all individuals. It forbids the creation of second-class citizens. In reaching our conclusion we have given full deference to the arguments made by the Commonwealth. But it has failed to identify any constitutionally adequate reason for denying civil marriage to same-sex couples.

There is, with extremely good reason, a separation between church and state. You can preach whatever sort of morality you want; what you can’t do is impose it upon the rest of the nation. You don’t have the right to create second-class citizens. You don’t have the right to deny basic rights to others because you think the Bible tells you to. (That the Bible tells you to do a lot of other things you completely ignore is actually incidental.)

If a religious or political leader came out and said that interracial unions were an abomination against god and should be outlawed, he or she would be rightly laughed out of office. Why isn’t this exactly the same thing?

I’ve had this problem before (I knew those archives were good for something), but I’m still not sure I understand it. I’m trying to change the page numbering in an MS Word document. When I tell Word to start the numbering at 142, it starts at 143. When I think maybe I canl trick it by starting at 141, it starts at 141. Why will it only start where I want it to when that isn’t where I want it to start?

Having typed this, I realize, of course, that I’m going to be lumping this together with three other files and will no longer need separate page numbering for each. So it’s sort of moot. But it’s still strange.