I’m not Keith Olbermann’s biggest fan.  Honestly, even today I feel like his passion is sometimes misdirected, but his comments supporting same-sex-marriage [ no on Proposition 8 ] are spot-on, and he deserves accoldades for his passion, professionalism and journalism.  Take a minute to hear his word and try to explain how you could possibly justify voting to change the constitution to segregate a portion of the population based on their sexual preferences.

Ranter

Deirdre Bourdet, left, and Leslie Caccamese spent Saturday with hundreds getting married in San Francisco, March 2004.

There are so many reasons that I’m proud to live in California, and a few that make my stomach turn.  I’ve used this blog to show my support for the rights of gay couples wanting to get married in California, and although I thought that I’d done my piece to help, seeing the press today brings tears of frustration to my eyes and renews the anger that I feel towards the majority of Californians that consider it acceptable to legislate discrimination.  Where is their conscience?

Right now my biggest hope is that I won’t have to explain to my daughters that we live in an environment that discriminates against people because of the color of their skin, where they go to church or their sexual orientation.  I hope that my daughters will know that all Americans share the same rights and privileges under law because we, as a country, have voted to maintain those rights.  Ultimately, I hope that our “don’t ask, don’t tell” military will continue to defend those rights so that someday it might be possible for all world citizens to share those same rights.  For now, I’ll tell them that how Connecticut does it is right and that California will catch up at some point in the future – hopefully sooner rather than later.

Reading through some of the political pieces that are out there and even trolling through craigslist.org, the arguments against gay marriage are so far out there it’s difficult to completely understand how people can put those words together and still sleep at night.  Seriously, to clarify for those of you looking to support the ban on gay marriage, this isn’t going to get rid of gays, force your children to be homosexual, teach gay sex in school, or change what it means for you to be married to your husband or wife.  It’s not going to change anything for you – other than allowing you to sleep at night because you know that you’ve worked to uphold the constitution.  If your religious beliefs that are impacting your beliefs of what constitutes husband and wife, I would recommend that you look really deep and make sure that the institution that creates your church is translating the words of the bible correctly and not interpreting them to meet what the church wants to continue their stranglehold on it’s flock.

For those of you that continue to support equality for everyone and the rights of gays to marry, I applaud you and wish you success.  I will continue to fight from my stand here and in the community until we have distanced ourselves from the blight of discrimination.

Ranter