Oh, no… not again

Just in time for the upcoming presidential election, the non-issue of gay marriage is resurfacing. Thanks to a recent California Supreme Court decision, a law banning gay marriage in that state was struck down — once again, something for conservatives to rally around.

This is an issue for candidates who have nothing else to talk about. It’s an issue for candidates with no new ideas. It’s an issue for candidates who are embarrassed to talk about their own records, or the record of their party. It’s an issue meant to distract from real issues. And, it’s an issue that has nothing to do with “morality” or “preserving family values” but rather an issue with a single purpose — to gain or keep political power. Opponents of gay marriage KNOW it won’t undermine the moral fabric of the United States. Hell, there are too many other ways to do that, and we’ve done just about all of them

For instance, we’ve perpetuated a health-care system that leaves tens of millions of people without health care. We’ve allowed our infrastructure to decay. We’ve left education as an afterthought. We invaded a country that did nothing to us and ruined our credibility as a the leader of the free world. We are a country that would elect an idiot as president simply because he was opposed to gay marriage. What jerks we are.

We need to put first things first. We ought to also acknowledge that, like it or not, the Constitution already guarantees equal rights for all, under the law, via the Fourteenth Amendment. For that reason alone we should realize that any law that prohibits marriage based on gender is already unconstitutional… like it or not.

Personally, I don’t care who gets married. If two people love each other, who am I to tell them they can’t marry? If two men or two women marry, my world won’t come to an end. I won’t feel a thing, except happiness for them, wherever they are. I won’t feel the kind of pain that I feel when I go to the grocery store or gas station. I won’t feel the kind of shame I feel when I hear the news about more deaths in Iraq. My heart won’t ache like it does for the young mother who can’t get health care for herself and her children because she’s poor. I won’t be embarrassed as I am when I hear how poorly our students fare compared to students from other industrialized countries. I won’t worry as I do when I drive across a highway overpass, wondering if it will collapse.

Can you imagine someone putting all these considerations aside when making their choice come election day, selecting instead someone who will make them safe from gay marriage? I sure can’t.

Our flawed electoral process

I’m thinking of a scenario where we arrive at the Democratic convention with no candidate having enough delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot, with delegates digging in for the best deal, with the possibility of a deadlock looming. In steps Al Gore , who wins the nomination by acclamation, without having spent a penny.

This sounds great to me, and to those who cry foul (perhaps the losers), to those who say Gore didn’t drag his ass around the country for over a year eating rubber chicken, I say sure he did… in 2000, when he was robbed of victory.

But there’s still something wrong with this picture. Consider all those millions of dollars spent during the primaries, and for what? What will we have to show for it? Nothing.

There is only so much money in the econosphere, and never mind where it came from. When money is spent, it’s supposed to buy something useful. What’s useful about campaign advertising? And, when money is spent, it’s supposed to juice the economy. How is this spending juicing the economy? True, in the overall scheme of things, the multi-millions being spent on campaigns might be a drop in the bucket, but one thing can be said for sure — all this spending does not assure that the best person will win. And that, folks, should be the desired goal.

What this spending does assure, however, is that whomever is elected will be beholden to people other than the voters. Take Hillary, for example. She’s getting money from the insurance industry. Which means whatever health-care plan she comes up with, insurance companies will be part of the plan. You can bank on it. There’s no way she’s going to push for a universal, single-payer health insurance plan when she’s accepting money from the very companies that such a plan would do away with.

We’ve staked our future on a flawed electoral process. It’s been this way for a long time, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that we’re all losing out because of it. Would we be facing a climate crisis now if the system wasn’t flawed? Maybe not, if elected officials hadn’t been purchased by big oil and coal companies. Maybe, when the alarm was first sounded, our leaders would have done what they were supposed to do — lead.

Bush’s major accomplishment?

It’s still early to be able to say for sure, but based on the trends so far in the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary, George Bush may have accomplished something positive after all: he may have energized American voters.

The turnout in Iowa was huge, and with eight hours left in the New Hampshire primary, precincts were reporting they were running out of ballots. Good news, eh? Well, maybe it’s a sign that people are starting to take the process seriously.

People are turning out because they’re angry, plain and simple. Many have woken up to the fact that you can’t leave such an important decision to so few people. We have to believe that when everyone participates, ultimately the best person will be elected because the majority of eligible voters cannot be stupid enough to elect someone who’s incompetent. Setting aside for a moment the fact that Bush actually lost the popular vote in 2000, it’s still important to remember that despite a personal lifelong record of failure he received a fair number of votes at all. Would he have been in the race had more people voted? I tend to think not. I think he energized a hard-core conservative constituency, one that does not reflect the beliefs of most Americans in general. I believe that many of the Americans who didn’t vote in that election regret not having done so, and are perhaps determined now to make up for it.

That lack of participation cost us dearly, and perhaps the chaos that ensued woke people up. Let’s hope so.