Well, it’s official.
President Obama has just stated (or rather restated) his support for the legalization of gay marriage in an interview he gave to ABC news.
Much will be said about the historic importance of this positive development, but what I must admit is even more fascinating to me is the opposition to this rational and very overdue statement; and I believe that as the general elections are fast approaching, this issue, and the opposition to it, will be in the news quite often.
In an earlier article about birth control, I mentioned how it never fails to amuse me to see the same exact people who shout hysterically against government regulation on one hand, shout even more hysterically FOR government regulations on the other. The same exact point can be seen in the gay marriage debate as well.
One of the most common types of opposition to gay marriage is the sentiment that granting it legal permission somehow imposes gay marriage on all the “decent hard working Americans” who don’t much care for it. This, in other words, is another way of saying that allowing people to conduct a private event that has to do with their own private lives, somehow becomes something that is imposed on all the people who are not involved in it and who should neither care nor even know about it. And what is even more fascinating is the claim that the freedom for same sex couples to marry should be denied in the name of – freedom.
I must be missing an entire childhood of irrational indoctrination into a religion that is brimming with imaginary crimes, in order to understand arguments of that sort. If we try to follow this kind of reasoning, we will discover that religious Jews are imposed upon every time someone drives a car on Saturday or has the nerve to eat a ham sandwich. We might also discover that the beef industry is an enormous imposition on all Hindus, and while we’re at it – how dare we force honest and decent Mormons to have to live among people who enjoy a cup of coffee in the morning or a glass of wine with dinner?
Just because you do not care for another person’s personal preferences, doesn’t give you a right to make it illegal. I don’t much care for people who base their lives on bronze aged tribal Middle Eastern campfire legends, but this does not give me the right to deny them the right to privately worship their imaginary deities. Wouldn’t it be nice if they returned the favor?
Seth Rogen summed it up quite nicely via Twitter, where the young actor, writer, producer stated that “Claiming that someone else’s marriage is against your religion is like being angry at someone for eating a donut because you’re on a diet”.
Today is a day to celebrate, and I raise a glass and salute the president, but it is also time to get ready for what is probably going to be quite an interesting election season.