同性結婚
For possibly the first time in my entire life, I have risen at 8:30 on a Sunday morning to make myself a proper breakfast of eggs, toast, corned beef (the can didn’t have a key attached; some improvising with pliers and two nails was called for), juice, and tea. This is not a move toward self-improvement on my part, heaven forfend; I just have to go into the office today.
Since I’ve been bustling around the kitchen to
Outlandos d’Amour
, I figure this is a good time to note the recent New York same-sex marriage ruling. Michael has his thoughts and a link to the PDF file of the original decision. The gay marriage debate merry-go-round started to bore me long ago, not because the issues aren’t important but because participants have a tendency to talk past each other repetitiously and VERY LOUDLY about small points without first finding common ground on the basics.
I’m happy that our relationships have support from a lot of straight people, though I disagree that this is the way to channel it. On the other hand, however sincerely people may idealize marriage as sacred, it’s hard to fault those who argue that it’s evolved into essentially a loving relationship between two people who happen to want to be in it at the time. That is the way it’s actually been practiced for the last few decades, after all. (Blech, and speaking of Baby Boomer solipsism and self-indulgence, we’ve arrived at “Born in the 50’s”…no, not me, do it to Julia! JULIA!…where’s that remote?) Perhaps if people who object to gay marriage were willing to work as publicly and strenuously to reform divorce and custody laws, it would be harder to dismiss them as just prejudiced against queers.
A proper breakfast?
Heh. When I was in Japan, I stayed with a fairly poor family (it’s my preference to stay with families when I made the investment in an educational trip.) In any case, I was with them for two and a half weeks, and I saw nary an egg nor a piece of bacon.
I had cuttlefish soup. And it was for breakfast. And I hated it. And I was too polite to say so.
Itadakimas.
私はあなたの新しいタイトルを愛する。そして私は日本語に書かれる同じ性の結婚を見ることを愛する。
どういたしまして、マイケルねえさん。俺、うちの世界の読者にこのサイトを喜んでいただければお幸せだわ。;)
As far as breakfast goes, I do sometimes make myself the grilled fish/rice porridge/miso soup kind. If you’re in a bit of a hurry, though, it’s easier to worry eggs and corned beef around in a pan for a few minutes.
Oh, I can deal with fish for breakfast. I’m from eastern Canada. It’s all fish.
It’s just, well, cuttlefish. Cuttlefish is like eating, well, the jelly you find in canned meant. It’s f**king gross, pardon my french.
Actually, the people I know of who oppose same-sex marriage are working, publicly and strenuously, to reform the divorce and custody laws … check http://www.familyscholars.org/ and http://www.marriagedebate.com/ for details. And they were doing so before same-sex marriage became a serious suggestion. It should be impossible to dismiss these people.
Many SSM advocates like to claim that all their opponents are bigots. It would be charitable to assume that they haven’t ever listened to what their opponents really say — but in that case, one can’t rely on them for a true account of the state of the argument …
I know that’s true of the people who are actually involved in PAC’s and the like; I was talking more about the debate in general, which includes members of the wider public who just want a say. In my experience, which is admittedly incomplete, people in general think a lot of divorces are not morally justifiable but don’t seem to be eager to agitate for tightened divorce laws. Ditto for custody laws, except for people who know someone who was a direct horror-story victim.
As far as accusations of bigotry go, well, yes, they’ve become a substitute for thought for just about everyone with a grievance. I don’t like to see people on my team doing it, but it’s not exactly a maneuver we invented.
The people at the Family Scholars Blog are very good people. Elizabeth Marquardt and David Blankenhorn are skeptical of same-sex marriage, Tom Sylvester is sympathetic to the idea. None of them are anti-homosexual in their motives. They are concerned about the long-term effects on marriage and the family. These are kind of people I respect and who we must listen to and persuade.
Out of curiousity, and because I love machine-translated Japanese-to-English, I ran the two comments in Japanese through my translator. The first one (Michael’s) made sense, for the most part. But Sean’s reply just made me laugh. I suspect it’s related to his already ‘poetic’ and parenthetical way of writing anyhow.
“How doing, Michael well. We, rejoicing this sight in the reader of the world inside, if it can receive, the わ which is happy. ;)”
I’m wondering where I can get some of that kanji, the one which is happy.
“The world inside”? The madam inside will love that one.