12 Important Reasons Why Gay Marriage Will Ruin Society

Some of you may be aware of a Proposition that will be on the ballot in California next week which, if passed, will repeal that state's current allowance of marriages between two men or two women. As a Canadian who has witnessed first-hand the longer-term effects of legalizing gay marriage on a society, I thought it was very important to reprint this list of 12 Important Reasons Why Gay Marriage Will Ruin Society before California voters go to the polls.

1. Homosexuality is not natural, much like eyeglasses, polyester, and birth control are not natural.

2. Heterosexual marriages are valid because they produce children. Infertile couples and old people cannot get legally married because the world needs more children.

3. Obviously gay parents will raise gay children because straight parents only raise straight children.

4. Straight marriage will be less meaningful, since Britney Spears's 55-hour just-for-fun marriage was meaningful.

5. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and it hasn't changed at all: women are property, Blacks can't marry Whites, and divorce is illegal.

6. Gay marriage should be decided by the people, not the courts, because the majority-elected legislatures, not courts, have historically protected the rights of minorities.

7. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are always imposed on the entire country. That's why we only have one religion in America.

8. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people makes you tall.

9. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage license.

10. Children can never succeed without both male and female role models at home. That's why single parents are forbidden to raise children.

11. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and we could never adapt to new social norms because we haven't adapted to cars or longer lifespans.

12. Civil unions, providing most of the same benefits as marriage with a different name are better, because a "separate but equal" institution is always constitutional. Separate schools for African-Americans worked just as well as separate marriages will for gays & lesbians.

The above list was compiled by GatorGSA , a group of people who clearly have their heads screwed on straight, no pun intended.

[In all seriousness, marriage rights for gay men and women in California are seriously threatened by this proposition. The greatest outrage in my opinion is the pouring of millions of dollars into anti-gay-marriage propaganda ads by evangelical groups outside the state who presume to tell Californians what their values are. I can't even imagine the gutted feelings of married gay Californians who may be told for the second time that their lifelong commitment before their family, friends, any Higher Power they believe in, and the world is, sorry, invalidated. The Proposition 8 vote will be an important test of whether the US has made the leap with this election into the 21st century, or has not quite shaken off the yoke of theocracy. After the Presidential contest, Prop 8 will be my second-most-closely-worried-and-watched contest of this election.]

ronnie

Evolution

Old friend Chris Clarke created this image, which is quickly going viral. Almost painfully creative and funny.

Yeah, McCain really made that face at the end of the third debate. Only for a second, but politics - and electronic media - are cruel. And at night, the ice-bloggers come.

ronnie

Field Trip

Kids from the local middle school making rubbings of gravestones in the Old Burial Ground last week.

A very nice lesson plan for a sunny October afternoon.

Whassup now?

Possibly the best, most creative ad of this entire election cycle.



I'm Ronnie Cat, and I endorse this message.

ronnie

p.s. Yes, it is the same actors. Charles Stone, who directed the original Superbowl ad, reassembled them for the political ad.

Fun Fact: Much of Cindy McCain's family fortune was built on, and is still generated by, an impressive Anheuser Busch distributorship.

Talking Cats NOW! WITH SIMULTANEOUS TRANSLATION!

Mad props and a big shout-out to my sister who sent me these two hilarious videos.

First, The Talking Cats:



And now, for the first time, The Translation:



Too funny. Thanks, Sis!

ronnie

"People's lives". And in case you can't tell, those quotation marks are sarcastic.

John McCain lost a lot of women voters (and a lot of male voters) when, during the final Presidential debate, he used sarcastic "air quotes" when describing "the health of the mother" as a rationale for some abortions.

(His use of the neanderthal term "pro-abortion movement" ran a close second. Like the sea monsters on 17th-century mariners' maps [HERE BE DRAGONS], these "pro-abortion" people keep being referenced with no evidence as to their actual existence. I have yet to meet, read, see, or hear remote echoes of anyone, anywhere, who is pro-abortion, as if it was a hockey team or a zoning proposition. Do medical procedures have cheerleading squads?)


I can't speak for all my sisters and brothers, but "the health of a human being" is something I can barely fathom being reduced to a phrase surrounded by sarcastic "air quotes" in any circumstance.


But if go with the flow we must, go with the flow we must. Therefore, I invite you to take full advantage of 23/6's JOHN MCCAIN IRONIC AIR QUOTES-O-TRON to create your own special sarcastic "air quote" moments, as if taken from Senator McCain's own heartless lips.

ronnie

What if they held an election and nobody came?

So. $300,000,000 taxpayer dollars spent.

And for what?

The lowest voter turnout since Confederation, and no practical change to the political situation.

Heck of a job, Stevie!

Saint John [UPDATED]

That big girl is the Jewel of the Seas, a Royal Carribbean cruise ship docked at Saint John yesterday afternoon as I left a work commitment to return to Fredericton in time to (dispiritedly) vote. Not a great shot; but not a lot of places to actually stop and take a photo in Saint John's cramped olde-fashioned downtown. Cruise ships stopping in Saint John is a relatively new phenomenon, but there's been a lot of talk about the injection of cash these folks give the economy when they do. Yesterday for the first time I saw for myself - area around the docks was simply packed with people, on a Tuesday mid-afternoon, everyone from actors in costume offering guided hikes of the neighbourhood and architecture to food vendors to souvenir vendors, and hundreds - perhaps thousands - of cruise ship passengers wandering about. Every restaurant patio was full, every sidewalk crowded. (The crowds began further up the street I was on, near the bow, where the passengers disembarked and were greeted.) I can only imagine what the City Market, a recommended destination for the passengers, was like.

Them with a burning interest in the Port of Saint John, and whether or not it is hosting a cruise ship, can do so from anywhere in the world thanks to this webcam.

ronnie

The Mouse and the Elephant Hold a Vote

All y'all south of the 49th Parallel have no doubt been somewhat distracted these past few weeks, but those of us up here in the Great White North are also having an election.

What you also may not know is that a small amount of speculation about the timing of the election call - Prime Minister Stephen Harper broke his own rules about observing fixed dates for elections by calling it for October 14 - revolved around Harper (who was ruling over a minority government at the mercy of the Liberals, NDP and Bloc Quebecois) wanting to avoid being forced to face an election in the shadow of an "Obama Bounce", the perceived rise in fortunes of the Liberal Party if Barak Obama won the US elections.

See, Harper's Conservatives are considered friends of G.W. Bush's Republican Party; Harper's neocon politics, it was mused, would give him limited access at best to an Obama administration. And good relations with the US are always better for Canada than poor relations; we are, as Pierre Trudeau famously said, like “a mouse in bed with an elephant…no matter how friendly…one is affected by every twitch and grunt.” So the Conservatives didn't want the pesky Libs or NDippers voting against a confidence bill and forcing them to face an election in the warm glow of an Obama/Biden victory and a Progressive Morning in America.

And further to that theme, here is what passes for negative campaigning in Canada these days; the Liberal Party was running this ad on the CBC website when I snagged it. So just being depicted in the company of G.W. is a liability in not only the US (Obama's ads include shots of McCain in a golf cart with W.) but in Canada. Interesting what a shadow your country and your election are casting over ours. (The website on the ad, BushHarper.com, by the way, is home to two ads comparing Harper and Bush's policies. The one on foreign policy [read: Iraq] is particularly biting.)

I must say that I feel a bit bad about the use of Old Glory as a very pointed backdrop to this image. What did she ever do to deserve that?

ronnie

PS: If you're interested, there's a very good condensation of the current Canadian political situation in this Slate article.

The Electoral Limbo

How low can the bar go?

"I think she strung together complete sentences, understandable sentences, sentences people could understand what she was saying."

McGraw Milhaven, host of "The McGraw [Radio] Show", on CNN's American Morning, speaking - approvingly - of Sarah Palin's performance in the Vice-Presidential debate.

ronnie

Oh, ya. Ya.

Salon commentor direcorrector on Sarah Palin:

"She seems like a bizarre hybrid of Marge Gunderson and Evita."

ronnie

Regina, too.

Regina [UPDATED]

My new job gifted me with two things: 1) a BlackBerry equipped with a (rather poor) camera and the capacity to email the resulting photos to my blog, and 2) the opportunity to travel a lot more. The result has been a fun game of taking a photo (sometimes good, sometimes not) of whatever place I happen to find myself in and have it pop up on my blog.

Today it's Regina, Saskatchewan, The Queen City. I'm pleased 'cause I've been to Manitoba and Alberta but somehow managed to miss Saskatchewan until now. And although Brent assures me in the comments below that it is "nowhere near as nice as Saskatoon" - Saskatoon, then, must be a treat, because Regina has been both pretty, accommodating and full of pleasant prairie people, who are exactly like pleasant maritime people, only different.

There's some discussion of the finer and odder points of the photograph itself in the comments section below, and I suggest you check it out, as Sherwood has become a fearsome creature of great skill with the photo editing and restoration and such-and-such, and I am afraid that any day the 9/11 Conspiracy Folks will abduct him and press him into their service.

UPDATE: I just remembered after updating the blog post - the big "dust speck" to the right of the tall building on the horizon was a hot-air balloon! It was part of the reason I took the photo at 6am this morning - perfectly clear to the naked eye - but with the activities of the day I completely forgot about it until I gave the large version one more look.

ronnie