Missy and Biff flew to South Puffin for vacation this week.
It’s a good time to be here. Unlike Michigan’s Upper Peninsula we don’t have six inches of snow on the ground. Even North Puffin is still in the throes of yack with temps in the 30s, a day full of cold rain, and ice floes on the rivers.
Missy works for the state but lives to fish and ride motorcycles. She been a little concerned of late because Vermont Governor Jim Douglas wants to cut about 10% of the nearly 8,000 state employees to help with the state budget shortfall. She wears a lot of makeup and loves her bling. I think she might believe the gold and sparkles attract fish. And, as Dolly Parton says, “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.”
“I’m not worried about my job any more,” she said.
Cool, I said. Why not?
“All the State Houses can talk about is gay marriage,” she said, “and the fact Jim promised to veto it tonight.”
The Vermont State Senate rejected using a statewide referendum for a gay marriage bill because they did not want the divisive debate; they passed the “Act to Protect Religious Freedom and Promote Equality in Civil Marriage” on a 26-4 vote instead. The House gave the measure final approval on a 94-52 roll call vote. They are just six votes shy of the 100 needed to override the veto.
I never liked civil unions because they take us back to the days of segregated schools and segregated washrooms and segregated water fountains. “Separate but equal” is both deceitful and untrue. There is nothing “equal” in the comparison of a civil union with a civil marriage.
Legislatures across the land are too busy with side issues like steroid use and gay marriage to spend much time on the single deciding issue of 2009: my wife on three-fifths time and my WalMart stock dropping.
2009 is not going to be “the year that Vermont fixed the state economy (or didn’t).” 2009 won’t be “the year that Vermont passed universal health care (or didn’t).” 2009 won’t even be “the year that the United States Congress returned the Dow to 14,000 (or didn’t).”
Nope. This is going to be “the year that Vermont made gay marriage the law of the land.”
Thank goodness for that. The Vermont legislature has already shown it has no clue about running a mom-and-pop grocery let alone running a state. In that, they take after their brethren, the Barney Rubble brigade inside the Beltway.
I like Jim Douglas. I’ve known him for years and I understand he would really like to get the legislature to concentrate on the problems at hand.
Jim is wrong about the focus, though.
He should indeed veto S.115 but he needs to find something else to distract the legislature pretty quickly; the legislators won’t stay busy for more than another week overriding the veto. I recommend a year-long investigation into Mickey D’s involvement in professional football. Have you seen the size of those guys? They didn’t get that big at the salad bar.
It wouldn’t hurt to convince Congress to underwrite a nationwide study of mushroom management, too. We’re already in the dark.
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Not sure where you were going with this, Dick… But let’s get one thing clear: gay marriage has never and will never produce children normally. Sure, I supposed gay guys might be able (somewhere, somehow) to adopt a child. And gay women can get artificial insemination. But children will be the exception to the rule by far.
Marriage, and particulary the laws relating to marriage, is largely about children, and making the environment (social and ecconomic both) friendly for raising kids. Tax breaks, worker benefits have all historically offered advantages to those who are married. Why? Because raising kids is (a) necessary to prevent extinction, (b)a key ingredient to a growing economy, and (c) EXPENSIVE for the parents. Marriage without childrem is largely just recreational, but in heterosexual unions, it is the exception.
These benefits are needed by people married in conventional heterosexual child-producing relationships a HELL of a lot more than in gay relationships. If you arbitrarily legislate equality of gay union and conventional marriage, gays will get a lot of benefits they don’t usually need, generally, and WHICH AREN’T IN ANYONE’S BUDGET! Remember, this can have implications on taxes, job benefits, Social Security and who knows what else. Are you SURE you want to push more money to the liberal side during the worst recession since the 30’s???
This is NOT a good idea, on a pragmatic basis. And I dont need to get into the moral issues….
This blog was an “aw shit.” And you know what that does to “attaboys.”
Bob
Bob, you may as well be talking to a tulib bulb. I sat across a table from the blogmaster and listened with tense restraint as he pontificated on that premise. Only because I was on probation for violent assault against an NFL linebacker was I contrained not to throw Asbestos Dust’s drink in his face. (Not my own, of course, because I would never waste a drop of Jack Daniels on a matter of principle)
Moderates and liberals see marriage as merely a civil matter, nothing else. They do not sign on to the moral aspects of it. And you cannot change a sow’s purse into a silk ear, or however the old platitude goes.
Homosexual people have the same rights as normal people to whatever the law gives them. It is the American way. Besides, I love to see those guys try to catch the bouquet.
And the way they squeal is a hoot. You can hear them all the way to North Puffin.
–George Poleczech
What goes in Vermont is true across the country. Arizona has a looming $3B deficit and the roof is ready to fall in, but the priorities here are gays and guns. Or guns and gays. Get guns into the schools, churches, bars, diners, and parks, and get gays out. The budget problems will solve themselves.
Dangerous Bill
Three billion dollars is a big deficit to blame on traditional marriage. Will letting homosexuals get married help lower it?
As for guns, unauthorized guns are already in the schools, churches and parks, etc. We read about it every day, and any sensible citizens opposes them being there. But, do they contribute to the AZ deficit, too?
Lordy, I need to go back to money school and learn how things really work .
Wrote out a stunning comment, then decided it made a better blog entry.
http://lizarddreams.scribblinlizard.com/archives/2009/04/iowa-stubborn.html
Damn, I’m good.
You liberals have really stepped in it this time.
gekko wrote:
> Marriage *today* is about forming a
> family unit for a broad perspective of
> civil and legal issues. It is, by its
> own nature, a moral thing.
I reply:
Now, see, that’s where we go off track. Marriage today, like marriage centuries ago, is a contract that governs transfer of property from one generation to the next.
Once upon a time, the transfer was guaranteed by the guy with the big stick which, while interesting from an anthropological (and even evolutionary) standpoint, has nothing to do with procreation in this sense.
Now that we have governing bodies in the form of states, the transfer is guaranteed by the guy with the judicial robes and the state gets its cut. Usually in cash rather than flesh.
Understand this. The state sanctions marriage. A church, any church, sanctifies it. It is perfectly legal to have a civil marriage without the presence of God. OTOH, the opposite is not true.
But my point had nothing to do with marriage and everything to do with keeping our elected representatives busy so they could not screw up anything else.
Dick wrote:
“Understand this. …It is perfectly legal to have a civil marriage without the presence of God…”
That is a fault of state, not of God. To enhance that wrong by perpetuating a human perversion that one may support does not make it right. And one can interpret *right* any way they choose.
–George