Mayor: What do you mean, "biblical"?
Dr. Raymond Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath-of-God type stuff.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Exactly.
Dr. Raymond Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling.
Dr. Egon Spengler: Forty years of darkness. Earthquakes, volcanoes...
Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria.
-Ghostbusters 1984
I am in a cruddy mood today. I have been in a cruddy mood all weekend. Someone once said, I love mankind, it's people I can't stand.
Well, that's the way I feel right now. First Kansas residents will be allowed to vote on a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage on April fifth. Signs saying:
Protect Marriage
April 5th
are going up in yards all over town.
It seems that allowing couples, other than the one man and one woman kind, to marry will destroy the "sanctity of marriage". The fact that for every 7.5 marriages last year there was 3.8 divorces doesn't seem to have any effect on it though. The "sanctity of marriage" I mean. I guess I don't understand what "sanctity of marriage" means to proponents of same sex marriages if these numbers are correct.
Next, the congress and George W. Bush have decided they, and only they, have the right to decide when a person dies. Quality of life does not matter to them only the "sanctity of life" is important. Of course they are the ones who get to decide what "sanctity of life" means.
Since the issue of a patient's right to decline life-sustaining treatment was decide in the Karen Ann Quinlan case back in 1976 what Bush and Congress have done is disgusting. They are prolonging the life of a woman who has stated that she never wanted to continue living if she ever found herself in the vegetative condition she now in. They are doing this because they can and then calling it a culture of life decision. Again, only they get to decide what the phrase exactly means.
Why have these two things pissed me off? Because I don't want a government that thinks it can regulate personal life decisions. If I want to get married and I am a person of legal age getting married to another person of legal age in a civil ceremony, then that is no one's business but mine and my partner. The conditions under which I am willing to live my life are also no one's business but my own.
I know a lot of conservative people, including Bush and those control freaks in Congress, feel that the "moral fiber" of society is breaking down but, damn, get a grip, letting people decide for themselves what kind of life or death they want is not going to lead to dogs and cats living together. You are the ones creating the mass hysteria.
Note: Since I wrote this I found out the Kansas Legislature voted against the marriage amendment . Living out here on the western edge of the state we get Denver news quicker than we get Kansas news. Even though the amendment was defeated the yard signs remain.
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