Fair warning, this'll probably be the first in a series. As a rule, I'm a fairly content individual, but there are a few things that actually do make me want to hit things, or hit myself with things.
This week? It's been the commenters on the DMN. Specifically, the slackjawed mouthbreathers who turned this story about the Gay Rights march in Oaklawn into a discussion rife with homophobia, and completely filled with jawdroppingly awesome untruths.
The conversation veered - and stayed - on gay marriage. More than one person insisted the law in Texas didn't ban it, and that there was a lot of fuss about nothing. A simple Google search could've cleared that astounding misconception up, but since the poster couldn't even spell discriminatory correctly, I'm assuming there were challenges that precluded such an experiment with the truth.
But really, I do not get this debate about gay marriage. The government (and I'm veering dangerously into Trey Garrison territory here) has no business being in the marriage business. Marriage is a religious ceremony. Government (if I'm recalling my constitutional knowledge correctly and completely forgetting the past eight years) isn't supposed to be engaged in religion.
The simple solution? The government gets out of the marriage business, and begins offering civil unions to everyone, for legal purposes. You get your civil union at a courthouse, and then it's up to you - and a church - to hash out any marriage ceremony you might want.
The answer seems so simple that there's probably something I'm missing. If I'm not, why hasn't it happened?Labels: blog comments, Dallas Morning News, gay marriage
