Just Like Old Times

I don't use the word "evil" lightly, but California's Proposition 8 joins such discriminatory laws as the Chinese Exclusion Act and the anti-miscegenation statutes enforced by many states over the years. What century is it? I can't even get my mind around the evil and hypocrisy that got this prop passed.

I did compartmentalize lots of the propositions in this election, and voted against ones I otherwise would have supported were it not for the taxation or debt that would have been required. I'm all for helping sick kids, but two billion dollars is two billion dollars.

Had this been a pro-gay marriage initiative with some ridiculous outlay of funds for survivors' estates or whatever, I would have said, "Shea and Noriyko, I love you guys, but I can't see spending all that money on the Gay Marriage Monument (formerly Treasure Island)." But Prop 8 had no economic impact one way or the other. It was an exercise in hatred, pure and simple.

Many churches supported the measure, and their sheep-like followers lined up obediently to take away the rights of their neighbors. Now I ain't church-goin' folk, but I know a little. The hateful ignorance of these "Christians" is in direct opposition to the commandments Jesus said were the most important of all:

The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: 30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. 31 And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these. (Mark 12)

Certainly anything Jesus stated as simply and directly as these two commandments should take precedence over the old adulterer-stoning guidelines of a thousand years before. But if the literal-minded lemmings need old school commandments, how about "Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart." Have we progressed at all?

The religious people in question should be ashamed of their bigotry, since our grandkids will shake their heads at the ignorance and hatred that supported Prop 8, the way we can't even imagine how whites owned human beings or how fear-mongering labor unions got Congress to ban immigration from "undesirable" countries.

Jon Stewart joked about all the Mormon money coming into California to support Prop 8, "'Cause if there's one value the Mormon church has always held dear, it's that marriage must be between one man and uh..."