{"id":291,"date":"2004-02-21T07:49:00","date_gmt":"2004-02-21T07:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chrisandjanet.net\/blog\/2004\/02\/21\/"},"modified":"2004-02-21T07:49:00","modified_gmt":"2004-02-21T07:49:00","slug":"291","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chrisandjanet.net\/blog\/2004\/02\/21\/291\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t really think about gay marriage all that much in my day to day life, because I&#8217;m not gay, and I am married. But recently, I seem to keep butting my head against this issue wherever I turn as something that needs to be thought about. (I should probably mention that we live exactly 121 miles from San Francisco.)<\/p>\n<p>I think the main problem is not the whole gay vs. straight dilemma, Christian morals, or &#8216;American Values,&#8217; but rather, the fact that in our society over the last <a href=\"http:\/\/www.taxhistory.org\/Articles\/1913_form_1040.htm\">91 years<\/a>, taxes and social benefits have been deliberately structured to benefit married couples who own property and bear children.<\/p>\n<p>Now, after several thousand years, marriage has a lot of baggage associated with it. I guess the bible folks still think the man and the woman cleave together to become one flesh. I think there may even be an element of &#8216;Adam gets his rib back,&#8217; which neatly mirrors the ancient Greek ideas about needing both halves to make the Platonic whole, which in the vernacular becomes &#8216;my better half.&#8217;  (Despite the fact that Greek philosophers were generally homo-pedophiles.)<\/p>\n<p>So my bottom line is, I think they&#8217;re fighting an uphill battle to call it &#8216;same-sex marriage&#8217; but I believe with all my heart that serious same-sex alliances should be granted all of the rights and privileges of temporarily married wannabe breeders, or else the straights shouldn&#8217;t get any special treatment. (As long as the Government wants to reward me for gettin&#8217; hitched, buyin&#8217; a house,  and gettin&#8217; it on, that&#8217;s fine, but let&#8217;s spread the love, OK?)<\/p>\n<p>My very best and only real friend in the world was a gay man who lived a confused life filled with shame and died of AIDS about 10 years ago, so don&#8217;t you dare even ask me about a special amendment to the constitution to document our idiocy about same-sex couples.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t really think about gay marriage all that much in my day to day life, because I&#8217;m not gay, and I am married. But recently, I seem to keep butting my head against this issue wherever I turn as something that needs to be thought about. (I should probably mention that we live exactly &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/chrisandjanet.net\/blog\/2004\/02\/21\/291\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chrisandjanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chrisandjanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chrisandjanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chrisandjanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chrisandjanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chrisandjanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chrisandjanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chrisandjanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chrisandjanet.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}