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| Rob's Soapbox | ||
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Congratulations!
You have finally landed on the one page on this entire site (and on the entire internet for that matter) that is purely without bullshit... my soapbox page. There are a lot of times during our show that, whether it's because of time constraints and other obligations, I don't always get to address some issues that I feel don't get the attention they deserve. There are even more times when I just don't feel like waiting until the show the next day to get some things off my chest. Thus, I have started the "Rob's Soapbox" page. If you have clicked on this page looking for someone to coddle your fragile sense of self-esteem, or tell you what you want to hear or to reinforce your outdated world view, then exit this page right now and go somewhere else. If you are in search of the last forum for reason and common sense left in the world, then sit back, relax, and enjoy. I make only one promise with this soapbox page... if you read long enough and often enough, you will eventually be offended. So here's my latest soapbox. Listen up, 'cause you just might learn something... |
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Monday, May 19th, 2008 THE MORE HETEROSEXUALS I SEE MARRIED, This past week the California Supreme Court overturned a voter initiative that had defined marriage in the state as being solely between a man and a woman. With the court’s decision, gay marriages will begin next month and voters will have only one last opportunity to outlaw gay marriage in California; an amendment to the state’s constitution voted on in November, 2008. I have always been against gay marriage. Though throughout my life I have had many gay friends, I always thought that “Civil Unions” were an acceptable compromise. In a civil union, gay couples receive pretty much all of the same legal and economical privileges, breaks and incentives that married men and women do; California has such a policy already in place. My attitude has always been that of wonderment as it relates to why the damn title of “marriage” was so important to the gay community. As a married man, I am the first to acknowledge that marriage is, in the abstract, nothing more than a piece of paper. A commitment to another human being is no more real or solidified by a ceremony and a certificate. Plenty of “married” people treat each other horribly. There in lies the rub. Over the past several decades, as the gay rights movement has grown and evolved, one thing has become crystal clear; other than the fact that they are attracted to their own gender, gay people are exactly like heterosexual people. In other words, they are just as likely to be rude, arrogant, abusive, obnoxious, promiscuous, lazy, self centered, condescending and irrational. God knows all of those qualities make them imminently qualified to be married in America in 2008. I actually wonder how much of the current backlash against gay marriage in our society is homophobia and religion based, versus how much of it is just plain fear over the heterosexual “secret” actually getting out and being made public; most of America marries the wrong person, and most treat each other horribly along the way. Is it possible that we fear that having to publicly acknowledge that we have turned the institution of marriage into a joke will also be a de facto admission of not having a damn clue on the most basic principle of how to treat one another and therefore, much of our argument against homosexuality will be revealed as silly? Regardless of everyone else’s motivations, I am certainly questioning mine. My wife and I engaged in an exercise together this past weekend. We spent nearly an hour thinking of every married couple we’ve both known during our 8 years together. We agreed that we could only count couples we had spent enough time with to ultimately break into one of three categories: - Good marriage: these are the couples that by all account have loving, open, honest marriages in which there is a high level of mutual trust and respect. - Probably good: these are the couples that we simply haven’t been around enough, but seem to have all of the things listed above, pending further info. - Clearly bad: it’s funny to watch unhappy couples pretend to be happy. Bad marriages are so palpable you can taste them from across a room, because there is such a total lack of honor and respect between the two any idiot can see through the charade. Before you ask, no we’re not experts; and I don’t believe there is such a thing. However, we do believe that there is a fundamental underlying sweetness that exudes from two people who are truly happily in love and committed to one another as a single unit. All of us display it (or don’t) in different ways, but it is palpable and undeniable. Recently, my wife and I attended a party (a rarity for me given my unsocial nature) and as we were saying our good-byes an elderly couple that had been together for nearly 40 years asked if we were newlyweds. When we told them we’d been together for eight years, they literally lit up and shared with us that they had been watching us all day and they wanted us to know how rare it was to see couples still treat each other with such caring after being together for 8 years in this day and age. Such is marriage in America today. But I digress. Back to truly happy couples; even when such people disagree, they do so with respect and with an unspoken understanding that it’s okay to not like one another at every moment, understanding that love is never compromised. Love, you’ll remember, is literally defined as the wants, needs and desires of the other person being as important to you as your own. We were able to name off and list a total of 43 marriages we have known in the past 8 years. We really challenged one another to try to give each couple the benefit of the doubt and define their relationship as happy and good. Yet, we constantly came across reason after reason to unequivocally determine it was all a sham. From infidelity to total dishonesty to mental and emotional abuse to a total lack of respect or caring for one another, the reasons were transparent, obvious and many. In the end, the grand total of marriages that my wife and I have encountered was 43. The total, on the high end, of those that we could honestly classify as probably or clearly good marriages: 5. Long before I was a married man, I was stunned at how badly people treat one another and allow themselves to be treated. The difference, of course, is supposed to be that people steered clear of marrying someone who made them feel so bad. Now that I have been married for a while and, by default, tend to hang around primarily married people, I have realized how unhappy most married people are; so where’s the sanctity of the institution that we are all fighting so hard to protect and preserve? It’s the same line of reasoning we have all had to embrace in the past decade in relation to child rearing. Heterosexual couples are so patently bad at raising children, that society finally said “how much worse can gay people be?” and started allowing gay couples to adopt and/or procreate. So far, gay couples, who by the way claim far higher levels of happiness in their relationships and lives, have been demonstrating a more than acceptable level of ability when it comes to parenting. So, I must wonder, why not marriage? Fortunately, I am not beholden to silly religious beliefs which defy logic, reason and fact so I don’t have to ward off those irrational thoughts in this debate. Homosexuality has literally been around forever, and it’s not going away, so I accept that it exists. I also am totally uninterested in whether or not gay people are born gay or choose to be gay; what a waste of time and mental energy that exercise is. Whether they choose to be gay or not, they are gay and they are here, so what’s the point? Do we actually believe that if somebody proves homosexuality is a choice that we are going to then “cure” all gay people? Give me a break. People that argue homosexuality as a deviant behavior are non starters for me. I find this line of reasoning as offensive as I find pro-gay groups equating their struggle to that of minorities in America, which is clearly false. Again, I submit, homosexual behavior has been around en masse since mankind, this is not arguable. Additionally, it is patently unfair and stupid to equate homosexuality to bestiality or incest for a myriad of reasons relating to consent, the inability of certain participants to willingly submit, and medical concerns (and if you’re going to argue that AIDS is a medical reason to ban gays, you are ignorant beyond reproach and have no place in this discussion). So in the end, I remain torn. Perhaps I am just tired of fighting, but it would seem to me that if that were the case, I would at least be able to define for you what it is I was fighting for. Marriage, as an institution is nothing more than a symbolic way for people to commit to one another. Absent love, honor, respect and mutual commitment, such symbolism is as meaningless as all other forms of same. Wearing a pink ribbon on your lapel doesn’t do a god damn thing to stop breast cancer, it just makes you look like you care. Shaving your head to show solidarity with your friend stricken with cancer does nothing to cure their cancer, makes your friend feel victimized and self conscious, and makes you look like you care. Orally committing your love to another human in a pomp and circumstance filled ceremony in front of dozens or hundreds of your friends is meaningless if your behaviors don’t mirror your words for all of eternity. For a moment in time, it makes you feel like perhaps you’ve made it to a certain level of stature in our society but the truth of the matter is that you have to earn your keep. Those of us who wake up every day and work on making our marriage better see through the façade of so many who literally resent the person they are “stuck with.” Tell me again why we’re fighting so hard to keep this “sacred union” between just a man and woman…-----
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