Seemingly Unrelated Rant

Lots of people out in the Bloggosphere use their blogs a forum for spewing out their two-bit opinion on various topics upon which they're not generally qualified to comment in any meaningful way.
I have as many two-bit opinions on stuff that I'm not meaningfully qualified to comment upon as anyone else.
Probably more, in fact.
I generally refrain from that sort of behavior on the grounds of lack of authority on [whatever] topic, and also, why should anyone give a shit what I think?
On the other hand...
An appalling number of people seem to give a shit about what dumbasses like Glen Beck and Sara Palin think, so why not me?
Besides, I'm pissed.
A couple of weeks ago a judge in California overturned Proposition 8, putting an end to legalized discrimination against who knows how many tax-paying and law-abiding citizens of the state of California, by allowing them to enjoy the same benefits of legal marriage that Kate and I do.
An effort to overturn a similar measure in Wisconsin failed, much to my embarrassment, though not to my surprise. The judges in California evidently have bigger balls than the judges in Wisconsin.
So, of all the things that could bother me, why is this the one that I choose to rant about?
Because of the arguments in that the Right uses to justify the denial of what the constitution defines as a fundamental right.
The arguments boil down simply to institutionalized meanness against people that are perceived as different, simply because the particular difference in question makes some folks uncomfortable.
We're going to have to teach Sam values of some sort. That's why this rant is only seemingly unrelated. In reality I think it's quite relevant.
How's this for a value:
We don't deny anything to anyone that the granting of costs us nothing and harms us not at all.
It's true that I have lots of Gay friends, by the way, but this isn't really about them. They don't need me to defend them, in any case. This really is about the world I want my son to grow up in, and the fact that the one that we have now isn't it.
Kate and I got married in 2000 in a civil ceremony that had a very little bit of religious overtone, and in which nobody uttered the word "god" in reference to the Judeo-Christian version of that particular entity. I can't remember if anyone actually said "god" or not, but our friend Brad read a traditional Native American poem that may have had the word in it, but I don't think it was referring to the same god you find reference to in a church or synagogue, if it was there at all, and it might not have been.
I completely understand, by the way, that marriage as a religious institution is governed by a different set of rules, and support the right of those institutions to decide what they will sanction within the boundaries of their religion as religious marriage. I'm free to choose not to practice those religions, and as long as that remains true, I could care less how they feel about my marriage to Kate, or whether or not we're married in the eyes of whatever religion. I'm certain they could care less about what I think of them, so we should be able to very happily coexist. But marriage is also a civil institution in this country, and that's a different story.
Anyhow...
We had a Justice of the Peace, a County Clerk or something. In exchange for one hundred bucks cash he stood up and pronounced us married. He said some other stuff too, but I can't remember what it was.
That hundred bucks, plus a license fee of forty or so, got us a piece of paper that results in Kate and Sam being covered by my health insurance, our property being jointly owned with minimal fuss, the right to visit each other in the hospital in the event of emergency, breaks on our taxes, and any number of other rights that our Gay friends can't enjoy in the state of Wisconsin.
It's embarrassing.
Here's the thing that I'm going to try to make Sam understand as soon as I can, and why this is relevant:
Being married is hard. It's really hard, actually. It takes tremendous work, constant attention, lots of communication and compromise (two things that Kate will tell you I struggle with), and statistically the odds of it succeeding are less than fifty percent.
All of that is true right now here in the great state of Wisconsin, where marriage is constitutionally limited to one man and one woman.
We gain nothing, not as a country, not as a society, not as a fucking species, by denying civil benefits of marriage to two people that love each other simply because the two people are of the same sex.
None of the pundits, politicians, or other people spewing hatred out there have satisfactorily explained, as far as I've seen, how our odds for a successful marriage worsen, or how our successful marriage gets harder than it already is, if two men or two women are allowed to enjoy the same civil benefits that Kate and I enjoy.
Assault on marriage my ass.
Marriage is an assault on itself. Always has been. The notion that letting Gay folks get married is somehow an attack on the institution is stupid.
It's thin camouflage for an infantile display of state sanctioned petulance against a group of people because they're superficially different than the mainstream.
Okay, the difference isn't superficial, but wouldn't it be great if it was?
How can all those allegedly "conservative" people that allegedly want to be left alone themselves be so consumed with what goes on behind closed doors in the bedrooms of other consenting adults? It's fucking hypocritical. Also, a little creepy.
I'm going to do my damnedest to teach my son not to be a fucking hypocrite.
Kate and I have a very good marriage, by the way, but that's in no small part because we know that it's hard. We expect it to be hard, and we work at it. We'd work at it if we didn't have the piece of paper (we did for a number of years), but the benefits that come with piece of paper are nice. We're happy to take advantage of them. It would just be nice if in our allegedly civilized country, those benefits weren't just limited to the "right" kind of people.
Here endeth the rant.
This past weekend we threw Sam in a lake. I'll describe it next time...