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Friday, June 15, 2007

Massachusetts Legislature Ratifies Earlier Court Decision: No Special Rights for Straight Couples, Equal Rights For All

Anti-gay bigots failed in their latest effort to get a Constitutional ban of same-sex marriage on the ballot in Massachusetts. It only takes 50 votes out of a possible 200 to get such a measure on the ballot, and this failure to overcome even so low a bar among lawmakers yesterday should be treated as a de facto legislative ratification of the earlier court decision that famously granted all citizens of Massachusetts equal access to the legal status of marriage, whatever the gender of one's partner. The next election providing the bigots an opportunity for a repeat effort at this sad gambit is in 2012, by which time another half decade will have elapsed without any frog plagues from an antigay god, without any consequent obliteration of heterosexual matrimony, but instead with a proliferation of boring queer couples being generally boring in a matrimonial fashion weaving their way into the fabric of everyday Massachusetts life.

As the politics of homosexual panic falters as the gift that keeps on giving for the Christian Talibanists of Movement Conservatism, I fully expect them to turn their hysterical attentions ever more conspicuously over to comparably idiotic panic about clone armies, designer babies, and human-animal hybrids (you know, medical research to cure diseases and ameliorate avoidable suffering). Anything to stall progress in its tracks as the world strains against the feudal, patriarchal, superstitious constraints that define the fundamentalist "pro-life" death-cult.

2 comments:

jimf said...

> . . .another half decade will have elapsed without any
> frog plagues from an antigay god. . .

Well, but if the Republicans lose the next presidential
election that will be a sign from God that He has abandoned
us to degradation and defeat. And to wardrobe malfunctions
on TV (how come they never happen to **guys**, darn it?).

jimf said...

Wardrobe malfunctions in history:

http://www.anvari.org/fun/Misc/Why_MonaLisa_is_Smiling.html