"How about I give you the finger... and you stop f'ing with the Constitution?"

So the Governor (along with house speaker Thomas Finneran) is supporting a state constitutional amendment to "define marriage as a union between a man and a woman." In other words, prohibit same-sex marriage. I've mentioned it before. And now it looks like it's also going to be coming up at the Federal level as well. Anyway, I started composing a letter. And while doing some additional research, I came across an article which put me over the edge. Basically, it describes an editorial that Gov. Romney wrote in the Wall Street Journal which urges other states to use the constitutional process to ban gay marriages. I've been pretty upset about this issue since it reemerged in the news with the latest Supreme Judicial Court opinion, but on reading the article, I totally lost it. Perhaps ill-advisedly, I called up the office of the Governor and ranted unintelligibly for about a minute. (For the ambitious folks, the number is 617.725.4005)

I actually subscribed to WSJ online just to read it. It was well written. I also found it deeply troubling. And scary.

It generally reads quite fair and reasoned. But it suffers from the same accusations of "judicial tyranny" that I've heard regarding some of the recent Supreme Court rulings. It's interesting to note that ALL of the sources of this rhetoric that I can find appear to be Republican or Convervative Advocacy groups. (see for yourself) He claims that the judiciary is silencing the voice of the people. Funny, I thought it was protecting my voice from the majority. The other part that fails is his argument that opposite-sex marriage==stable society. From the editorial: "That benefits are given to married couples and not to singles or gay couples has nothing to do with discrimination; it has everything to do with building a stable new generation and nation." Bullshit. It has everything to do with discrimination. And prejudice. Strong families can contribute to a stable society. That includes mixed race, mixed religion and same-sex. I'll buy that marriage can strengthen a family, but a marriage and a family are not synonymous. I think in math terms, you could say that their properties are neither commutative nor associative. Denying the right to marriage only adds additional hurdles to legitimize a family in others' eyes because it denies rights while at the same time codifying ideas that breed bigotry and prejudice.

So why bother to say all this, since I've probably said it before, and I've already established that nobody reads this blog? So I can say this: write a letter to Governor Romney. Write to your state representative. Write to Congress. Write to the President. (Yeah, I know, it's mostly pointless. But I keep hoping that with enough personal letters, maybe he'll catch some kind of clue.) And maybe just one more person will get involved. And maybe it's just one more person that we need to turn the tide.