Despised Minority In The Land Of The Free
If you think it’s only marriage they want to take from us, you are sadly mistaken. Note this exchange in the chamber of the U.S. Supreme Court, buried within a legal debate about monuments in public parks…
Justices Grapple With Question of Church Monument as Free Speech Issue
WASHINGTON — The hypothetical questions were flying at the Supreme Court on Wednesday, and that was not a good sign for Summum, a small church that wants to place a monument to the Seven Aphorisms of its faith near a Ten Commandments monument in a public park in Pleasant Grove City, Utah.
The questioning suggested that the justices were finding it hard to identify a principle that would compel the city to accept the Summum monument without creating havoc in public parks around the nation.
The justices start tossing out various examples of what can and cannot be excluded…and then this comes up…
Would it be all right, Justice John Paul Stevens asked, for the government to exclude the names of gay soldiers from the Vietnam memorial?
This was rhetorical on Stevens’ part. Stevens is one of the sane justices on the bench. But its prime fascist jumped on it gleefully…
Mr. Joseffer had to be pressed to answer the question about excluding the names of gay soldiers. In the end, he said the First Amendment’s free speech clause, at least, places no limits on whom the government chooses to honor.
Justice Scalia agreed. “It seems to me the government could disfavor homosexuality,” he said, “just as it could disfavor abortion.”
This wasn’t even about homosexuality. This was just an aside from Scalia…nothing more. But dig it. If the government wants to exclude the names of gay soldiers, who gave their lives for their country, from the Vietnam memorial, that would be fine by Scalia. And never doubt it, this would also be fine with Roberts, Thomas and Alito.
There is no bottom here. There is absolutely no bottom here. You could say that gay people are to the religious right, as Jews were to the fascists…but that would be ignoring history. In fact, gay people died right alongside of Jews in the concentration camps. There were not as many of us, and it was harder to systematically round us up because gay is not an ethnicity. We have always been, and always will be a diaspora…many of us hidden from view. But we were just as hated back then, and clearly, sickeningly, frighteningly, we are just as hated by them now.
If the day ever came when these modern day fascists achieve enough power to do with us as they have always wanted to, it will be a race to the bottom of the human gutter, and there is no bottom.
November 13th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
It certainly IS a weird issue, and I’m not really sure what the full ramifications are. There certainly IS the important angle of the government "allowing" official state insult to Gay people (And other groups, maybe) and the message that sends that "It’s OK to hate Gay people, as long as it’s couched in religious expression". I personally think that if you are going to have the 10 commandments in a public space (Parks etc) then you have to allow for the Star Of David, and the…whatever the Muslims have, and of course the Subgenius Stark Fist of Retrieval.
Here in the Epicenter Of Hate, Topeka, Phelps has long petitioned the local gubment to let him erect park benches that say "God Hates Fags". (In our parks, you can sponsor, or buy a park bench that is engraved with "In loving memory of…(Your Grandma, Uncle, Son, whoever)" or some such thing.) So Fred wants to have park benches that tell the world that someone who had died of AIDS is going to hell. Fred ALSO wants to erect a monument in Laramie WY to Matthew Shephard ‘memorializing’ Shephard decent into hell, and how God laughs when Fags are murdered.
So THAT certainly IS a sticky issue. Can the state institute a "Compelling principle" to allow Fred to do that *on public property*? And maybe more importantly to the example you set out with Summum, can the state find compelling principles to NOT allowing it?
Who actually PAYS for such statues and memorials is beside the point. (Fred wants to pay for HIS "memorials" I think the park benche engravings cost like $150 bucks, and is also a means for the Parks Dept to raise the money to buy and have benches in the parks, which cost way more then $150)
So do we allow EVERYTHING, which INCLUDES Fred’s memorials? Or do we allow NOTHING (Which would include any memorial to Gay soldiers or AIDS victims or Flying Spagetti Monsters)?
I think the Gay Marriage issue is very similar: Allow it all, or allow nothing. If the state is going to segregate out Gay marriages, then they (we) need to segregate out ALL marriages. I have YET to see any "Compelling State Interest" to be involved in the Marriage business at all. Either the church need to get out of the marriage business, or the state does. I think the answer or "Compromise" is obvious: The state should ONLY issue licenses that recognize a "Domestic Partnership", and churches should ONLY perform the ceremoneys of their own design, and the church can recognize whatever it wants to, but the state HAS to recognize ALL domestic partnerships.
I personally don’t care if the Baptists, or Mormons or Rastifarians churches "recognize" my marriage or union. I don’t care how much they dissaprove of it for whatever reason. But it is the GOVERNMENT that the rights and benefits come from and are granted (Power of Attourney, Medical, Taxes, and the other special rights given to married people). We can certainly find and have our OWN churches, or Gay Friendly churchs that can perform our ceremonies. Marriage should be between a couple and the government, not Fred, or Dobson.
You cannot petition the government through prayer.
November 13th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
I just discovered some deep past "Devine Ignorance" from my Discordian religious demandments. I have sat down and given it some soulful excreMeditation, and decided it is the right thing to do:
I am going to post-humously marry Mormons. All of them. I have been given the camand, and the calling, that I should take the ENTIRE Mormon church as my bride(s), even the male ones, post-humously.
I hope the church is OK with this. I mean "Until death do you part". They’re already dead, so they are up for grabs.
I know this is going to cause some problems with the Mormons geneological data base, but this is what a magic talking cock roach told me to do, right before he flushed the magic toilet paper on which where written the SubGenius concordences (After I had translated them, in toungue, for a secretary who was hidden behind the shower curtain.)
God has called me to do this. It is ultimately why he didn’t want Gay marriages….he wanted to save them all….for marriage to ME.
November 15th, 2008 at 5:18 am
Bruce, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE post this as a diary at PHB – this needs to be read by more people.
November 17th, 2008 at 4:31 am
Hahahahaahahaahahahaaa Bruce! All hail the Discordians!!!!!!
You marry those motherfuckers, and then you know what to do next. :-)