Quote:Do you really think that everyone is upset just because of a word?
Quote:So people should be expected to change the entire word for everyone, because a few clerks refuse to do their job, and they might do their job if a word was changed (although it's doubtful, I'm sure they'd find another reason to oppose it.) It's not just the word they disapprove of. They disapprove of that 'lifestyle'. I'm sure we'd still be talking about a middle-aged female Cartman in Kentucky even if the word was changed.
You know what? I give up. I'm not advocating capitulation to homophobes. Screw them. I'm talking about taking a divisive issue and finding a solution that most reasonable people on both sides would see as a fair solution. Go find and watch that video I posted about earlier, then tell me that that isn't a reasonable man who wants to reach out to homosexuals and integrate them more into the church and community, but do so in a way that doesn't compromise a central tenet of his belief system. You don't even have to invest 20 minutes in watching it; if you spend a few minutes with Google, you'll find it on his blog. It's the most recent entry on the front page. That's the type of person that I think was pushed just a little farther away from center by the verdict.
Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and their breed can stand off to the side shouting about all the reasons that homosexuality is immoral, against nature, a threat to America's youth, whatever, and nothing will change that until they draw their last breath. The vast majority of this country, at this point, is comfortable (at least) with homosexuality. It's not an unspeakable evil, but many of them still have reservations about certain religious concepts being applied to situations that fall outside of what their beliefs allow for. It's 10 PM and I have work in the morning, so I'm not going to bother digging up poll numbers, but I suspect that you'd find that many of the 40% of America that listed themselves as against same-sex marriage are actually fine with the concept of two members of the same sex living a committed, lifelong relationship with each other. I don't know, maybe I just give people too much credit in assuming that we all, at our hearts, want to be reasonable, but part of being reasonable is learning to find solutions that grant equal rights to everyone, even if not everybody is happy with the rights granted.
And see, that's kind of the point for me. The government should never have issued "marriage" licenses in the first place. They should have been issuing "civil union" licenses all along, but since the state governments back in the 19th century never could have imagined that two men or two women would want to marry each other, they had no reason to secularize the terminology. Had the Supreme Court undone that mistake and changed all government unions going forward to civil unions, with the term "marriage" being left to the private sector, everyone would have the exact same rights that they do today, but lots of people, including that pastor in Virginia, would have walked away feeling less marginalized by the outcome.
