Gay Maine

I know a lot of my liberal friends are distraught over the latest vote on gay marriage. The citizens of Maine, in an unusually high turnout for a minor election, voted against homosexual unions in that state this Tuesday past. What I would like to say to both my liberal and conservative friends and readers is that this matters not at all in the greater scheme of things.

Allow me to expound.

In nearly all two-sided arguments there are four positions. Your position (+), their position (-), your position from their point of view (-), their position from their point of view (+) and, of course, the mirror image if you are them and they is you. As the graphic below illustrates.

In the case of gay marriage, those positions are approximately:

A. Marriage is a right that should be available to all persons regardless of race, color, creed, national origin, sexual orientation, number of limbs or facial warts.

B. Marriage is a sacred bond between a man and a woman only; despite the fact that over 50% of marriages piss on this sacred bond in the foam of divorce.

C. You are godless, soulless heathens who seek to destroy the very fabric of the nation; somehow that fabric is not freedom, but is in fact marriage.

D. You are close-minded bigots, who couldn't handle freedom if it came gift wrapped and delivered on a rainbow bus.

I believe I have captured the essence of the various positions. But as I said before, it doesn't matter. Why you ask?

Every state in the nation, yes even Arkansas and Mississippi will eventually vote to legalize gay marriage. Every single one. What? Why? How?

Well folks, I hope this doesn't come as a shock to all you breeders out there, but you have birthed and raised a generation of children who are not bigots. They don't care who is gay or straight or even who is black, yellow, white or brown. While they may still believe that heterosexual marriage is sacred, they don't believe they should impose those beliefs on others. Yes, even you right-wing fascists are donating sperm and ovum to children who actually believe in liberty and justice for all.

I know, I know that kid down the street is just as big a red-neck as his daddy; but he is a member of a dwindling minority. The attitudes on gay marriage will change as these children become voters and express their will that basically adheres to a policy that they should not legislatively impose their will on others. And don't look now but many of those kids are already eighteen and they are registered to vote.

Now I realize that I have once again slammed social conservatives here, by defaming them with words like bigot and red-neck; I have also defamed Mississippi and Arkansas, when it was Maine which prompted today's rant. So allow me to balance the scale.

You liberals, particularly you gay liberals. You are now going to point out that this change will be too late for you. You want to be married now. Actually what you really want is to have the societal recognition of your union and the accrued benefits of marriage. But! I do not have those rights available to me. You see I am a single-American. I chose not to marry, so I will never receive the tax advantages, health care benefits and other social protections of a married person.

But wait you say! I at least have the choice, as a heterosexual single-American I could get married. False logic! Freedom of choice should not give rise to specialized freedoms available only to those who make the politically or socially correct choice. Certainly I think you should have the right to marry but stop your whining about inequality unless or until you tell me that you will renounce the unequal benefits that arise to marriage persons. Go ahead and marry the person of your hearts choosing but renounce the elevated status that marriage gives you over those who make a different choice. You understand the words "different choice" right? The words are: with liberty and justice for all. It doesn't say marriage makes you special or privileged.

We are all equal and free when there are no more down-trodden minorities but also when no group is a privileged minority.

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photo credit: glca.com

Writin' 'Bout Writin'

One of my favorite things to do is to take a set of facts and use them to imagine how the world might work. In writing about some of these ideas, my aim is not to be correct — how can I be, when the answer isn’t known? — but to be thought-provoking, to ask questions, to make people wonder. - Olivia Judson

That is actually a very recent quote from an opinion piece in the NYTimes by Olivia Judson. I like the way she writes, although recently I have been reading books and articles with styles I do not care for. It seems that like John Cage music there are some disconnected writing modes that really ring some reader's cerebral chimes. I am discovering that reading the discordant makes it oh so much easier to analyze the style if not the attraction. Right now I am plowing through Neil Stephenson's Cryptonomicon with it's over 1100 pages. Back when I was working in the cyber-reality, I enjoyed the darkness of his virtual world in Snow Crash, but his herky-jerky story line in this work is distracting. Yet, I persevere because I am trying to master the craft of reading a work I truly admire without getting lost in the author's world.

I want to see beneath the fiction and discover the structure that allows a reader to fall so deeply into the created world. I have read the Mars Trilogy at least three times trying to follow the seamless character transitions. I strive to some day be able to read Blake and understand how his hallucinations can become mine. Until then I will scribble away at my several nascent books and articles, hoping they will someday emerge into the light of public scrutiny and paint worlds yet unseen for my readers.

A Mix and Match Rant

Two items cross my path in the last forty-eight. Hmm, perhaps it was their paths that crossed. Whatever, I have been putting in a clump of hours on the Matusow screenplay and in that light I was interested in an article link sent to me by three separate friends. The title is: No I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script. If you are considering a screenplay, novel, short story or even a blog; I cordially invite you to read it. To my friends, buddies, pals and family members who will be getting our screenplay in a few weeks, thanks in advance and if you read this psot, maybe please thank-you also read the article.

Item two is a quotation from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig:

There is an evil tendency underlying all our technology - the tendency to do what is reasonable even when it isn't any good.

Now I'm no Luddite, my life has been dramatically changed by the personal computer and the internet. But all great advances have a dark underbelly. OK, most of them do; I haven't done an exhaustive list. And it is not just reasonable outcomes that can fail to be accretive to the good of humanity. There are simply less than satisfactory non-accomplishments that abound because of our really big technocracy. The primary culprit in today's rant is writing. Sure start a blog, write every day or twice a year; good for you, get it out, say it, write. But that does not make you a writer.

As the article says: "It rarely takes more than a page to recognize that you're in the presence of someone who can write, but it only takes a sentence to know you're dealing with someone who can't. By the way, here's a simple way to find out if you're a writer. If you disagree with that statement, you're not a writer. Because, you see, writers are also readers."

Mind you I say this as an apprentice writer. No not a writer yet, despite having a book and a couple of hundred articles on poker out there plus several fiction pieces floating about the interwebs. But I am an aspiring, apprentice writer. Nasty (unpublished) comments I get on this blog regularly remind me of my shortcomings, real or imagined by my faithful if cranky readers.

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photo credit: FlickrPhotos