reframing gay marriage

Let me propose a hypothesis to you. Most of the people who voted to outlaw gay marriage don’t really care about gay marriage at all. They care about their own lives and the rising divorce rate, resulting from the tumult and chaos that is part of our changing society. The thing is, even if homos didn’t exist, society would continue to change and they’d still be unhappy. Divorce rates are high for totally unrelated reasons. A successful response would be listening to the concerns that people are voicing, and how the Republicans successfully sold people on it, then designing something that actually addresses people’s concerns rather than resisting the proposed Republican “solution”.

Talk about the rising divorce rate, and how it can be reduced. Say, mandatory waiting times for marriage with offers of education or counseling. Then point out how outlawing gay marriage will hurt straight people by creating unstable marriages as gay people deperately try to conform, until they can’t take it anymore, and end up killing themselves or divorcing their spouse.

Our fundamental values are right.

Ranting about the stupidity/malice/inattention/thoughtlessness of the American public accomplishes nothing except piss people off. They are real people. They matter.

The failure to identify and address people’s concerns is where the Kerry/Edwards ticket lost. It’s not about having the answers. It’s about providing people with a warm fuzzy. On the bread and circuses front, the dems need more circuses.

do I stay or do I go now

Advantages to staying:

  • Maybe I can make a difference in the way things turn out.
  • Much less of a headache.

Advantages to going (to one of a few industrialized nations, most prominently Canada):

  • better educated citizenry
  • gay marriage
  • less drug paranoia.
  • healthier economies
  • universal health care
  • better development of alternatives to petro
  • better development of alternatives to car
  • more (local) environmental conservation

Just a few thoughts, time for class, back in a few.

A note of cold comfort

No, the sky is not falling, but it is pretty overcast.

Here’s the consoling thought, as a citizen of the world: America won’t be “the world’s only superpower” for long. Indeed, if current trends continue, it’s debatable whether we’ll be a superpower at all.

The real price of oil is on the rise. It is highly likely that this is due to a combination of factors: supply is either plateauing, dwindling, or becoming more difficult to tap while demand is rising throughout the world, both of which trends seem more likely to accelerate than to reverse. Much more so than other nations, America is incredibly dependent on that oil. Especially for its war machine.

We are spending enormous quantities of money on a foreign war, with no end in sight, no significant outside support, and a reduction in volunteerism and voluntary continuation in service. Somewhere along the line, there was a notion that war was profitable. It is, if you’re not the one fighting it. Our economic dominance originated in the world wars, which devastated much of the industrial capacity of western europe, while draining their coffers for our military hardware. As europe rebuilt their economic capacity, they were going to catch up, simple economics tells you that. But fruitless foreign wars, inflationary tax cuts, and record unemployment will only speed the process along.

Finally, any of you who believe Richard Florida’s work (see: “Rise of the creative class”) can guess where the focus of intellectual property creation will migrate: outside our borders. We’re not much noted for our brains, anyway.

So, buck up, mis amigos, it ain’t all bad.

Voting

Thanks to a little last minute assistance from the star tribune, I was informed on every judicial candidate and I voted a straight democratic ticket based on what they said, and who supported them, rather than based on party affiliation alone.

Soon to go to class … unprepared =/ Which will leave me a very small step ahead of the many students who won’t go at all.

For the undecided voter

I offered this to . If you’re still trying to decide which presidential candidate to vote for (I’m sure you’re a rare bird reading this journal), I encourage you to check out http://www.selectsmart.com/president . It is, as best I can tell, a non-slanted test for you to express your views of how things ought to be and get back your results. If you have questions about what any of the questions might mean, I, and I’m sure others, would be glad to field them. I dearly wish that such a thing existed for local candidates. Unlike berkeley, we don’t have a sample ballot with detailed information mailed to us.

Also, it’s totally rockin’ that the guy who wrote my OS textbook is the one running http://www.electoral-vote.com/