Three “guest bloggers”

You know, sometimes it just way easier to let other people do the blogging, especially when they say things so devastatingly well. And so, this Friday I’ll send you to three treatises that are just like that: terrific material well written, giving me more time to be lazy get some work done.

Item one is from a bloke who calls himself Honeybakedham. He writes in response to the McCain/Palin criticism of anyone opposing them as not being “real Americans”. Honeybakedham and others like him, he says, are certainly real Americans:

I believe that any two people, being of different sexes or the same, who are in love and desire to be married, have a fundamental right to be so. And I am an American.

I am opposed to the war in Iraq. And I am an American.

I believe in protecting a woman’s right to reproductive freedom. And I am an American.

[...]

I am a “REAL” American.

And I believe that any aspiring candidate to any high office, regardless of ideology, does not deserve that office if they cannot recognize that we are all Americans, regardless of our own political views or philosophies.

Item two is a personal plea from a friend of mine, Thom Watson, who asks for help from everyone, in and out of California, in defeating Proposition 8 and allowing him and his partner of five years to retain the option to marry:

There is an unfair ballot proposition in California that, if passed, will take away my fundamental rights. This is really important to me. Will you help me defeat Proposition 8?

Jeff and I have been together for five years. We love and support each other in the same way as families all over the country; we share the same joys and the same sorrows, we have the same dreams and the same fears. We intend to spend our lives together, and we hope to be married next year. The California Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that it is unconstitutional in California to deny us the right to marry, just as it was the first court to rule, in 1948, that laws prohibiting interracial marriages also were unconstitutional. It is the constitutional duty of the court, in fact, to safeguard the rights of minorities, and that is what the California Supreme Court did.

California’s Proposition 8, however, now would take away our constitutional right to marry. It would take this right away only for same-sex couples and it would write discrimination directly into the state constitution.

Item three is another post against Proposition 8, this one from a straight woman in California who goes by the moniker Green Yogurt. She doesn’t understand why there’s a problem here; she “doesn’t get it”:

There are a slew of commercials about this. Here’s the gist of them: little pigtailed girl runs up to her mom (who naturally, is in the kitchen), and says, “Hey, guess what I learned in school today! A king can marry a king and when I grow up, I can marry a princess!” Cut to the mom looking horrified.

Probably no surprise to anyone who knows me, that “I don’t get it.” These commercials are aiming to say two things:

1. Children shouldn’t know about gay people.
2. Gay people shouldn’t be allowed to marry.

I understand neither of these. Should children not know about handicapped people? Should white children not know about black children? Should children not know anyone who is in any way different from them? Different religion? Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I thought there was something about stimulating children’s brains by exposing them to different things.

Especially if you live in California, please help my friend Thom, help my other friends out there, help actor George Takei, help all Californians — and, ultimately, help the rest of real America — ensure that any two people who are in love and want to get married... can.