I hope everyone has seen this that Rob wrote, titled "Someone show me the difference." It's short, eloquent, and right.
In addition, there was a West Wing Episode -- I think it was either last season or the one before -- where some right-wing talk show host (a woman) was saying stuff that was against homosexuals, and the President had the best response I've heard. It so directly applies to this entirely stupid legislature being proposed, I wanted to quote it, but I can't find it.
The gist is that a lot of the people proposing the ban against gay marriage are citing Biblical references in Leviticus as justifying why it's wrong. Aside from the minor little detail that one religion can't legislate our Constitution, and that all people have equal protection under it, The West Wing did something even better -- it had President Bartlett pull out quotes from the Bible / Old Testament about how it was right that a man could sell his daughter, or I think, in another case, stone his wife to death if he didn't like something she did. There are plenty of old testament examples of things in vogue then which we would be horrified about now... and I wish I knew that episode to quote.
Posted by toni at February 26, 2004 03:49 PMActually, I remember when that episode came on I groaned pretty strongly, because a lot of that scene was taken from an e-mail that was being passed around at the time. So it shouldn't be too hard to find a copy of that e-mail via Google... something about oxen, as I recall.
Posted by: Diane Patterson at February 26, 2004 03:59 PMNow that's funny, because I had never seen it. (So yeah, I'd have groaned too at the rip-off.) Still, it's such a perfect counter-agrument against the people who want to try to pull out the religion card. (Of course, common sense and the obviousness of the whole "equal protection under the law" thing having bypassed that group entirely.)
Posted by: toni at February 26, 2004 04:08 PM