Yesterday's Washington Post:
Today's:
How can these two completely divergent opinions coexist? In the same country, at the same time? It is scary to think that we, as a county, have a contingent of people who are moving so far backwards when the younger generation is, overall, pretty accepting of differing beliefs, sexuality, etc. Live and let live - if it's not hurting you, why do you care if other people do it? I understand feeling uncomfortable about the thought of a man marrying another man - it's not "traditional" marriage. But, if they love each other just like a man and a woman, why not get married? As long as they're not trying to marry *you*, why do you feel it's your place to legislate their behavior?
This is something that continues to perplex me. This class of politicians wants less government, less controls over their lives - their right to own guns, to have or not have insurance, to not pay taxes (and consequentially not receive the government services that those taxes fund...) - but they want extreme government intervention in women's reproductive rights, contraception, and homosexuality. Why are these things the government's business, but taxes, social security, health care, etc. are not? I would really love to see a logical, constitution-based argument for that.
The argument that controlling gun ownership and use is for public safety is sound, as is paying taxes to support government-provided services, such as highway maintenance. If gay people get married, who is harmed? Who is being protected by preventing their happiness, by treating them as second class citizens? It has been all over Facebook today, but I'll reiterate it here - what is being done in North Carolina and other places is an eerie reenactment of the 1960s civil rights era, something we learn about in school today and can't figure out why it took them so long to fix what was clearly an injustice, and why it required so much violence and hate. Our children and our children's children will read about the homosexual/transexual/transgender civil rights era of the 2000s and 2010s, and most likely will ask us what was wrong with us, in our time, that we couldn't accept people for who they are.
