Huzzah! Anyway, on a more serious note, I want to step off of the homeless topic for just a moment and express how disgusted I am with the California Supreme Court. As of yesterday, it would seem that they are leaning towards allowing Prop 8 to stand (thereby banning gay marriages), although they will not void the 18,000 same-sex marriages performed last year, thereby allowing them to keep their legally married status. By the way, these are the exact same justices that legalized gay marriage last year, prompting the hasty passage of Prop 8 by California voters (by an incredibly tiny margin, I might add!)

So which one is it, Supreme Court? Some gay people get rights where others don’t? There’s going to be a two-tiered system in California for gay marriage?! Honestly, I can’t believe this whole mess. Gay marriage is a civil rights issue, in fact the civil rights issue of our time, it should never have been left up to the people to vote for or against at all. If women’s and black civil rights issues had been left up to popular vote, who knows how much longer it would have taken for them to be granted fully equal legal status, or even if it would have happened at all?

I don’t care what your religion is. Religious objections should never have been brought into it, and yet, the Bible is all I hear quoted from pro-Prop-8ers. Separation of church and state, people. If your religion doesn’t want to recognize or perform gay marriages, nobody is forcing them to. By the same token, it is absolutely unconstitutional to force your religious beliefs upon others who do not happen to agree. Homosexual individuals are harming absolutely nobody. They just want to exist, be who they are, and claim the same set of rights that the rest of us are granted (legal marriage confers over 1,100 more rights than a civil union)! More power to them. They aren’t trying to “turn” you gay, or impose their “gayness” upon you, they just want to live and let live. Hell, I personally have a moral objection to abortion – I think if I ever had one, I would find it difficult or impossible to forgive myself. Do I have the right to foist this belief upon others, deny them their legal right to choice? No. It is their legal and moral right to choose, according to their personal beliefs. I believe abortion is wrong, so I simply prevent unwanted pregnancy. Don’t like gay marriage? Don’t marry a gay person. Freedom of religon is a two-way street. You want protection for your personal Christian beliefs? Then you have to accept that the rest of the nation is protected as well, in that nobody is going to force them to accept your religion, or any religion at all, if they so choose. If your God is really so all-powerful and he has an objection, I’m sure that he will deal with it himself, in his own due time. So leave it up to him and stop interjecting religion into politics.

Look, I have a friend who is gay and in a long-term relationship, who has been counting the days until he can finally marry his partner. One of my little sisters is a lesbian. How could I invite them to my own wedding, walk down the aisle in their line of sight, taking full advantage of the rights I was granted and they were denied, simply because they were born with a different gene than I was? How can I look them in the face?

You make me sick, California Supreme Court.