Maybe it is my abhorance of idiocy in all forms, but I have written about this topic before. Even now four years later, we are still having a debate about gay marriage. I wish we'd all give it a rest ...

The current debate is probably a direct result of my home state of California recently affirming the right of gay couples to get married legally. Opponents of gay marriage are now trying to rewrite the California state constitution to forbid gay couples from getting married. They are doing this by putting on the ballot in November a proposition that would amend the constitution to explicitly forbit it. See this post on John Scalzi's Whatever blog where he cites an article in the San Jose Mercury News. Later in his blog post, he points us to this post by Orson Scott Card in the Mormon Times where Card makes an argument against gay marriage and supporting the proposition that would ban it.

I am a proponent of gay marriage, not only because my brother is gay and I want him to have the same rights as me, but because it makes sense no other way. Religious nutsPeople like Orson Scott Card, who I believe are just bigots, try to come up with all kinds of reasons why I should abhor gay marriage. The latest line of thinking laid out in Orson Scott Card's article is another version of tired "slippery slope" fear mongering. We are told by Card that the only reason gay marriage is now legal in California is because a couple of "activist judges" decided that that was what was best for us. We need to nip the activist judges in the bud because if we don't, our constitutional rights will slowly be snipped and pruned away to nothing.

Card gives some examples of this happening in other decisions handed out by judges. The example he cites is a good one: there are now laws on the books that forbid abortion protesters from kneeling in front of abortion clinics. If true, I think this is a crappy law and should be thrown out (as long as they aren't being violent in the process, which in many cases is unfortunately not the case). I support the right of people to peacefully protest abortion by kneeling in prayer outside of clinics. If somebody is going to choose to kill their unborn baby, they should face up to their decision. I support their right to make the choice (and have indeed in the past had to share in making such a choice, which at the time was completely the right one), but neither do I believe people making such a choice should be coddled and protected from the full ramifications of their actions.

But back to the point, I am having a hard time seeing how any of the above relates to the gay marriage debate. Just because some judge made a bad decision and now people are unable to protest as they see fit, doesn't mean judges should be banned completely from making decisions. We have to be diligent as citizens and when a judge passes a bad law, we should fight the bad decision. But we should not try to stop them from making decisions all together. The judges in California were doing their job correctly when they affirmed the rights of gays to get married: they were interpreting the California constitution in light of a current case and they struck down a law that contradicted it.

So, truck on you gays of California. I welcome you in the sometimes exasperating, but always fulfilling institution of marriage. May you live happily ever after.