The Bauer Confidential

I’ve been happy to let Matthew do the political postings around here.  I care about politics, but I don’t really care to discuss them.  I also believe that we vote anonymously for a reason, and that how I vote is my business and no one else’s.  Additionally, I know that most of the people who read this site either agree with my political leanings already, or could not possibly be convinced into seeing things my way even if I harassed them for years; I fear building animosity especially among my family and friends.  You can see why I was never on the debate team in college and why I don’t volunteer for campaigns.

All of that being said, after watching the returns last night I have a lot of hope that things in our country will be changing for the better.  I’m not an emotional person, and I didn’t tear up at the eloquent speeches, but a piece of me understood why a lot of people were so moved, and I shared with them a pride in our country that I haven’t felt for a while.  In my opinion, the most important thing Obama said during his speech last night was this: “And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too.“  It was painfully obvious that the current administration did not feel this way, and many of us have suffered for that.  Our country needs, and I think craves, unity and solidarity.  As Obama, and others have said, “There is more that unites us than divides us.”

Yet for me, yesterday only feels like a partial victory, and there are two very divergent reasons for that.  I’ll only focus now on my biggest disappointment with this election cycle, and that is California’s Proposition 8.  If you don’t support gay marriage, you probably shouldn’t read past here. 

A few months ago the polls were all saying how there was no way this would pass; people in California would not pass a constitutional amendment to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry after the supreme court had said the constitution guaranteed that right.  Then the TV commercials came, the scare tactics, the bigotry.  They’re going to teach your children about gay marriage in schools, they said.  Gay marriage devalues traditional marriage, they said.  They cursed the “activist” judges.  Gay marriage will affect your religious freedoms, they said.  And more about the kids; your kids will learn that a boy can marry a boy and a girl can marry a girl, you should be scared about this, they said.  And people were.  And their ministers and priests told them how to vote, held rallies and fund raisers, took money from out-of-state religious groups, and claimed they weren’t infringing on the separation of church and state.  And people forgot about the constitution and the founding values of our country, people forgot that discrimination is wrong, people felt justified in their bigotry because gay marriage would hurt the children.  By a slim majority, California became the latest in a long line of states to write bigotry into their constitutions under the veil of “protecting” heterosexual marriage and the children.

What I will never understand is how the rights of two people, who are neither I nor my husband, could ever devalue our marriage?  Couples who cheat and lie don’t affect my marriage.  Couples who divorce and don’t uphold their vows don’t affect my marriage.  How could same sex marriage be any more damaging to “traditional” marriage than any of the thousands of affronts to the sanctity of marriage that heterosexuals have been inflicting on the institution for millenia?  And using children, that’s low, that’s slimy, that’s sad.  What’s the saddest is that all of these arguments, these tennents of discrimination, are expoused by people who claim to be religious, most of them Christians.  They don’t see the irony in claiming to follow the teachings of Christ, and yet not only discriminating, but codifying their intolerance in the law in addition to teaching it to their children.  Have they forgotten “Judge not lest ye be judged?”  I won’t argue about the bible’s stance on homosexuality, and how ironic it is that people pick and choose what they believe and uphold as it suits them.  If you think God believes homosexuality is wrong, and you follow the bible, then you should leave it up to him to settle it with his children once they pass-on, that’s his job, and not yours.  There’s no astrisk in the bible next to “Love thy neighbor” that stipulates “Unless he is different from you.”