I want to say that this post is a little late. I fear though that it will forever be relevant. I’m going to delve into the subject of …
There is no good word to end that sentence. I was going to put ‘tolerance’ but that is a bad word. Well its not a bad word it’s just not right for this context. Acceptance is also not right. Both words are synonymous with ‘put up with’ – what word should fill in that sentence? I don’t know. Answers on a post card please.
What I’m trying to get at is the idea that all humans a valid people. That it doesn’t matter what you look like, your gender, your religion, or your sexual orientation. We should accept all peoples. (Even if you believe that the best Star Wars film was Episode 1)
Naturally this post has been inspired by the recent US Supreme Court decision. I’m British (Welsh) and heterosexual so the decision won’t effect me but it is a very important one. I support equal rights because its the right thing to do.
It seems ridiculous that it has taken so long. People who are against equal rights tend to have two primary arguments that I’ve observed. One is the ‘where will it end’ argument. Some how they have this idea that if two men, or two women, can marry then one day marring pigs will be legal. That argument is so stupid its not even worth responding to. Someone did though, and quite well, because some people need to be told the bloody obvious.
The other argument I’ve heard is even stranger. There seems to be this idea that if someone is gay then they are different from a heterosexual person in all respects. I.e “Joe Blogs is married to a man. I would never marry a man. I would never bite the head off live chickens therefore Joe bits the heads of live chickens.” I swear I have heard this type of things. When Rowling said that Dumbledore was gay there was a commenter that said that he shouldn’t be in charge of a school because of this. Where the fear of equal rights comes from I can’t say. If its not fear then its about the ‘sanctity of marriage’. Then you get people who’ve been divorced and have re-married who are against equal marriage. If the Bible is your reason to be against it you can’t be divorced either.
I’m going to say something now that may be a bit of a stretch but I think its worth mentioning. I think that almost every couple in the world would find their marriage impossible in the right (or rather wrong) time and place.
Think about it. Marriages have been considered impossible because of: race, social standing, nationality, and probably dozens of other reasons. Parental approval would be another one. Now you may need to go back in time a couple of centuries or to the other side of the planet but I bet every couple could find a time and place where they would have been told you can’t marry the person.
I’m sure you’re wanting to know what all this has to do with Snooker and Buffy well let me explain.
Back in the dark ages of the 1990s, for the most part, people in the UK only had four channels. There was BBC 1, BBC 2, ITV, and channel 4. I can remember the launching of Channel 5 – I also remember that they had nothing worth watching.
I watched: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Quantum Leap, Sliders, TNG, DS9, and others. Incidentally I said to a friend the other day ‘With the exception of Quantum Leap all shows I like have rayguns!’ She said that I was like a five year old. My own personal ray gun will soon be completed.
Anyway on occasion these shows wouldn’t be shown. We’d turn on the TV ready to see who Sam Beckett would be this week, what new reality Gimli and the rest would arrive in, or if the Picard Speech would be super effective – but instead two men were pocking balls with sticks – or two women were making grunting sounds as they hit a ball over a net. We’d wait and hope that the match would end. That everyone in the room would realise that snooker was boring or that it would start raining torrentially and the tennis would stop.
If this didn’t happen we’d get something like this: ‘If you’re tuning in expecting to see Buffy the Vampire Slayer that will now be shown next week. Right now were going to stick with the action [sic] here at the crucible.’
This always annoyed me, it still does in someways, this idea that sport was somehow above everything. That what I liked was secondary to this thing. You’d never hear ‘We have to leave the snooker now because its time for Star Trek.’
Obviously I get that sport is very popular. A decision had to be made. Some people seem to see equal marriage the same way. That if we allow men to marry men and women to marry women it will somehow diminish the marriages between men and women. Well if your marriage will be effected by something so trivial then you need to look at your own problems.
Its quite simple with this new law on equality nothing else will change. Equal marriage will not cause the end of civerlisation or the US to explode. All that will happen is equality and happiness.
Unstable Orbit 