by Trevor Miller
So, I hear you’ve gone ahead and passed Amendment 1, putting a ban on gay marriage right into your state constitution. Well done, your decision will be remembered by future historians centuries from now. Of course, it will be remembered in much the same way as today’s historians remember your 1875 constitutional amendment to ban interracial marriages, but hey, you’re getting in the history books, and that’s what matters, right? I mean really, what would history be without the bad guys doing their thing to stir the pot? You wouldn’t have – oh hell, let’s just get it out of the way and move past the low hanging fruit – you wouldn’t have WWII without Hitler, and without WWII, you wouldn’t have most of the 20th century’s history, or at least the history you remember from the movies you’ve seen. You wouldn’t have had the Cold War without the Commies, you wouldn’t have had the Fall of Rome without the Huns, and you wouldn’t have had Gandalf without Sauron. All the best stuff from history comes as a direct result of people banding together and struggling against the bad guys of their age, marching to the drumbeat of history toward the future, against the forces that would bring oppression and hatred to the world. I mean, it’s no invasion of Poland or sacking of Rome, but Amendment 1 is a pretty good crack at the whole oppression and hatred thing, I have to hand it to you.
s. Oh, and the way you wrapped it up in your holiest robes of protecting religious freedom? That was your master stroke; I have to hand it to you. Nothing stirs up fear of the unknown and foreign like a solid appeal to “tradition” under attack, and the pompous self-righteousness you managed to get behind this amendment was one for the books, I have no doubt. Decades from now, people will be talking about just how much scripture had to be twisted or ignored in order to come up with a “biblical” definition of marriage. Never mind that St. Paul advised against getting married at all unless you simply couldn’t resist the temptations of your flesh, and may have himself been a “friend of Dorcas”, if you get my meaning. Never mind that Jesus himself never married, that all of the Patriarchs of the Old Testament were polygamous, that a fair few of the brides in that Old Testament were slaves or taken as prizes from conquered territories, or that pretty much all of them were viewed merely as chattel, not as equal partners in a state-sanctioned union which invested property rights and tax benefits. No, all of that is beside the point, and we should be looking at the First Couple, Adam and Eve (not, as they say, “Adam and Steve”); they of Genesis, he of the earth and she of his rib, given to him as his helpmate in life. And after he had lain with her, and she had born him two sons, one of whom killed the other, the younger son took for himself a wife who was totally not his sister, or maybe she was, but that’s ok, because who else was he going to marry, right? (OK, now the marrying your cousin but not your gay cousin thing starts to make a little more sense.) But forget about Cain; Adam and Eve, that right there is our model for marriage, one man, one woman, and that’s it. Of course, had there been more than one woman or man on the planet when that marriage took place, who’s to say what might have happened, but that’s beside the point, and quit bringing up bothersome questions.
So, I hear you’ve gone ahead and passed Amendment 1, putting a ban on gay marriage right into your state constitution. Well done, your decision will be remembered by future historians centuries from now. Of course, it will be remembered in much the same way as today’s historians remember your 1875 constitutional amendment to ban interracial marriages, but hey, you’re getting in the history books, and that’s what matters, right? I mean really, what would history be without the bad guys doing their thing to stir the pot? You wouldn’t have – oh hell, let’s just get it out of the way and move past the low hanging fruit – you wouldn’t have WWII without Hitler, and without WWII, you wouldn’t have most of the 20th century’s history, or at least the history you remember from the movies you’ve seen. You wouldn’t have had the Cold War without the Commies, you wouldn’t have had the Fall of Rome without the Huns, and you wouldn’t have had Gandalf without Sauron. All the best stuff from history comes as a direct result of people banding together and struggling against the bad guys of their age, marching to the drumbeat of history toward the future, against the forces that would bring oppression and hatred to the world. I mean, it’s no invasion of Poland or sacking of Rome, but Amendment 1 is a pretty good crack at the whole oppression and hatred thing, I have to hand it to you.
s. Oh, and the way you wrapped it up in your holiest robes of protecting religious freedom? That was your master stroke; I have to hand it to you. Nothing stirs up fear of the unknown and foreign like a solid appeal to “tradition” under attack, and the pompous self-righteousness you managed to get behind this amendment was one for the books, I have no doubt. Decades from now, people will be talking about just how much scripture had to be twisted or ignored in order to come up with a “biblical” definition of marriage. Never mind that St. Paul advised against getting married at all unless you simply couldn’t resist the temptations of your flesh, and may have himself been a “friend of Dorcas”, if you get my meaning. Never mind that Jesus himself never married, that all of the Patriarchs of the Old Testament were polygamous, that a fair few of the brides in that Old Testament were slaves or taken as prizes from conquered territories, or that pretty much all of them were viewed merely as chattel, not as equal partners in a state-sanctioned union which invested property rights and tax benefits. No, all of that is beside the point, and we should be looking at the First Couple, Adam and Eve (not, as they say, “Adam and Steve”); they of Genesis, he of the earth and she of his rib, given to him as his helpmate in life. And after he had lain with her, and she had born him two sons, one of whom killed the other, the younger son took for himself a wife who was totally not his sister, or maybe she was, but that’s ok, because who else was he going to marry, right? (OK, now the marrying your cousin but not your gay cousin thing starts to make a little more sense.) But forget about Cain; Adam and Eve, that right there is our model for marriage, one man, one woman, and that’s it. Of course, had there been more than one woman or man on the planet when that marriage took place, who’s to say what might have happened, but that’s beside the point, and quit bringing up bothersome questions.
