On SlashDot recently there was a post concerning Google’s announced support for repealing or overturning Proposition 8.  Google placed its opposition to discriminating against same-sex couples in marriage in the context of being able to entice the best workers to its California workplace, but immediately the commenters on SlashDot began to bellyache at the hypocrisy of being concerned about recruiting good workers at the same time they’re laying people off.  As if the two things are mutually exclusive.  I guess most SlashDot visitors are very young and haven’t been through many recessions. 

But reliably came the calls from ersatz libertarians to get government out of the business of marriage.  Civil Unions they say, are a workable compromise.  People are just getting hung up over a word they say.  Never mind that making all civil marriages civil unions just isn’t going to happen politically.  Our enemies don’t want us to have even civil unions.  This isn’t a fight over a word or none of these anti same-sex marriage amendments would forbid civil unions too and nearly all of them do.  That wasn’t accidental.  The word people are getting hung up over in this fight isn’t ‘marriage’, it’s ‘homosexuals’.

From the Salt Lake Tribune comes this little article, ostensibly to show that Utahns (read: Mormons) aren’t so bigoted after all…

Poll: Utahns back some gay rights, but not weddings or adoptions

While Utahns aren’t ready to let gay and lesbian couples exchange wedding vows or enter civil unions, most are willing to give them broader legal rights to inherit property, visit a partner in the hospital and ward off employment discrimination…However, the poll shows overwhelming opposition (70 percent) to any changes to the Utah Constitution that would allow same-sex partners to enter civil unions…

Well isn’t that lovely.  You want hypocrisy?  It’s not in Google taking a stand for human decency, even as it has to lay off workers.  It’s here, right here, in all those righteous people who think that respecting the love and devotion of same-sex couples in sickness makes it okay to rip their lives apart in health.  If you believe that homosexuality is a sickness, a perversion, an abomination to God that will lead to the destruction of the family and western civilization, then what sense does it make to give same sex couple’s any rights?  All that says, is they know goddamned well that same sex couples love each other every bit as much as opposite sex couples do.  All this says, is that they don’t want to be thought of as the gutter crawling butchers of other people’s hopes and dreams that they are. 

This is their way of saving face, nothing more, nothing less.  It’s the equivocation of bigots trying to look at themselves in a mirror and deny the blood on their hands was something they did willingly, deliberately, knowingly. We don’t hate them…look…we’re willing to let them visit their sex partners in the hospital…  How does that make sense when homosexuals are destroying the family and western civilization?  It doesn’t.  It’s an admission of guilt.  It exposes the bedrock of animus toward gay people that motivates them more then simply denying gay people all legal status does.  Ignorance sees only monsters when it looks at gay people.  It takes shame to know that kicking them in the face isn’t something you want to be seen doing.

And even those moral runts only constitute a bare majority of the whole in Utah.  After the critical roll the Mormon church played in passing Proposition 8 became known, Mormon church leaders averred they had no objection to granting same sex couples some small rights, and the democratic opposition in the state promptly took them at their word, proposing legislation to grant them just that.  They call their work, without any apparent sense of irony, the "common ground" bills.

While Senate President Michael Waddoups, R-Taylorsville, doubts Utahns would change the state constitution to permit civil unions, he said he would entertain bills on more-expansive legal rights for gays.

"The fact that anybody wants [wider rights] is grounds to pursue it and investigate it," said Waddoups, adding that he would ensure the Common Ground bills get a fair debate if they make it to committee or the Senate floor.

But opposition certainly will follow from Utahns such as poll respondent Maureen Johnson.

"I don’t believe they should have any rights at all," said the South Jordan resident. "The Lord says the man is made for the woman and the woman is made for the man."

Well thank you Senator Waddoups, R-Taylorsville for entertaining the idea that gay people ought to have rights.  The compromise between right and wrong is indifference to either right or wrong.  The compromise between living in freedom and living in a police state is I agree to put the handcuffs on myself and pretend I had a choice in the matter.  The compromise between love and hate is to put the knife into your own heart and spare hate the trouble.  The word that describes the "common ground" between free people and tyrants is Battleground, not Peace.  Just ask the shades that walk at Shiloh.

Common ground is that we are all equal in the eyes of the law.  Once upon a time that was the American compromise.  We all had different faiths, came from different lands, were raised in different cultures.  But as far as the law was concerned, we were all Americans.  The religious and fascist right have waged a decades long scorched earth war to shred the American ideal of equality, so that they might rise above the rest of us and rule over all.  Because they are the favored of God.  Because to rule over the heathens is their God-given right.  No…duty. 

Take up the Godly Man’s burden…
Ye dare not stoop to less…

And now we, who believe in the American dream, are in a pitched fight to retake what was once our sacred common ground: liberty and justice for all.  Equality is the common ground.  What’s equal to marriage, is marriage.