Friday, March 12, 2010

Friday Soapbox

Today's soapbox has two parts.

1. The D.C. Council passed gay marriage legislation last week, paving the way for couples to marry this week. I am a firm believer in marriage equality and am a very proud District resident this week. The ceremonies and their participants were heavily covered, as they should be, and the stories were truly beautiful.

I will simply never understand why people want to deny couples together for 5, 10, 20 or more years the right to make the same commitment as straight couples. Don't tell me it ruins the sanctity of marriage -- look at the divorce rate. Don't tell me a religious reason. I'm religious too, but there's a reason we have separation of church and state. Don't tell me it's not natural.Though please do tell me how letting two men or two women marry is going to affect the value or importance of your marriage. I mean, it's garbage, but I would still love to hear an explanation.

(Photo by Bill O'Leary/Washington Post.)

2. The Washington Post ran the above picture on their front page, leading 27 to cancel their subscriptions. The Ombudsman wrote a blog post addressing this, and why he and the Post stand by their decision:

"Did the Post go too far? Of course not. The photo deserved to be in newspaper and on its Web site, and it warranted front-page display...News photos capture reality. And the prominent display reflects the historic significance of what was occurring. The recent D.C. Council decision to approve same-sex marriage was the culmination of a decades-long gay rights fight for equality. Same-sex marriage is now legal in the District...There was a time, after court-ordered integration, when readers complained about front-page photos of blacks mixing with whites. Today, photo images of same-sex couples capture the same reality of societal change."

As far as I'm concerned, love is love. And in this case, too much of it can't be a bad thing.

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