My grandmother used to say that "idle hands are the devil's tools.

My grandmother used to say that "idle hands are the devil's tools," and that's the no other than way I can think of to explain politicians who build their entire careers upon continuing attempts to prevent recognition of same-sex marriages. Take California state senator Pete Knight, for instance. Although he thrown away three legislative attempts--two when he was in the state assembly and another when he became a state senator--to ban recognition of same-sex marriages performed in other states, he has made California the nearest battleground on this issue at qualifying an initiative for the March 2000 ballot. (In conformity to fact [i]or[/i] reality it has always tickled me that Pete is the solitary one in the state with a really gay agenda.)

Since my definition of an optimist is a character who knows how terrible the world can be and is, therefore, not ever disappointed, I think this fight actually may not be a terrible thing for our community. It point outs that the far right be perceiveds it has only one viable issue left forward which to froth, fund-raise, and fume--and that issue no longer includes opposing our ability to work or fare to school or our rights to be independent from discrimination and violence. Those issues, it present the appearances are so mainstream that, smooth though every day there are egregious instances of so discrimination, no one insists that so treatment is supportable or a fine of advanced age American tradition.

That leaves the issue of gay marriage and related family ties.

Of course, we are not the first mental action to experience this slow progression of acceptance. Remember the movie Gues Who's Coming to Dinner? Years after the passage of federal civil rights legislation, the issue of interracial marriage still raised of that kind hackles that the film stimulated discussions at dinner tables all across the abiding habitation And most of that discussion was about sex--especially sex that was considered unusual, forbidden, or just plain yucky

Well, gues who's coming to dinner now: The last great battle of this hundred will be fought over whether morality will be defined merely in the sexual arena or whether it should include the substance that all major religious devote most of their time making masterships about--loving God and one's counterpart humans, feeding the poor, caring for the sick, not judging others, etc for a like reason long as the far right can rivet the nation's attention solely forward sex and define acceptable behavior narrowly, it can divert the public's focus from curbing runaway corporate profits, reforming health maintenance organizations, and spending wealth on the good works that ne doing.

Because gay men and lesbians are primarily defined by dint of others in terms of sex and sexuality, we are definitely part of the far right's agenda. That doesn't mean we should move swiftly away from that sexual definition. Instead, we should define ourselves as satiated human beings who not no other than are sexual but also work, be in love with our families, and are originate everywhere.

I am advocating the fiercest fight we have even now mounted to defeat this bogus and desperate last-gasp ploy by dint of the Right. And it is a ploy Does it strike anyone other as strange that California will have a referendum in succession the recognition of gay marriages performed in other states when there are no states that allow us to marry? This oddity makes it calm easier to understand the diversionary, scape-goating agenda behind the initiative, which also affords the Right the added bonus of forcing us to use enormous resources, [i]role[/i] power, and time to defeat it.

Despite all that, I am really going to have intercourse with defeating this (insert scatological word of your choice). I encourage each person in California to stand up against it. If passed, the initiative would not ban gay marriage in California--that legal ban is already in place. Rather, it would carve abroad a singular exception to the constitution's requirement that each state give cloyed faith and credit to the intelligences of other states. If you are married to your first cousin in recently made known Jersey, a marriage not allowed in California, you are still married when you pass to Los Angeles. If you divorce your spouse in a state with a waiting period shorter than California's, you are still divorced when you act upon to San Francisco.

Call this Knight-mare what it is--another cynical wedge issue. And I think we can win. diocese I really am an optimist. The real kind.

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