NOT A
BIG DEAL BUT . . .
Turns
out the President and CEO of the 2010 Olympics is gay. (We’re good
at running things – hotels, weddings, cities, Olympics.) And he threw us
a party.
Asked later why he felt it was important to hold a
party specially for the LGBT community, he replied:
“We’re wanting to showcase Vancouver and
British Columbia and Canada, and the LGBT community’s a vibrant part of
our society here. Really we want to celebrate our diversity and the
tolerance of our culture and also showcase ourselves to the world.
There’s also kind of a business imperative here. Gay tourism is
worth 60 billion dollars in the U.S., so there’s some good business
networking that can occur. But aside from that, it’s just a
wonderful opportunity to demonstrate those Canadian values of tolerance and
diversity and what creates such strength in our culture here.”
☞
Our good neighbors to the North. What must they think of the new Governor of
Virginia, who last month specifically rescinded his predecessor’s
anti-discrimination order? It’s now okay again in Virginia to fire a
government employee – however good his or her job performance, however
long he or she has been on the job – simply because of his or her sexual
orientation. And they use, as their slogan, Virginia Is For Lovers? I prefer this
slogan: Boycott Virginia.
And
while I have your attention . . .
SOME
GOOD NEWS OUT OF CPAC (NO – SERIOUSLY!)
True conservatives favor government that doesn’t
intrude on the rights and freedom of the individual. (Barry Goldwater famously
only cared whether a soldier shot straight, not whether he was
straight.) Here a
young conservative makes that point in two-minutes at CPAC. (Most of the
booing comes from one guy near a microphone.) There follow two minutes by a
“natural law” advocate. (Most of the booing comes from . . .
everybody.)
And
if I still have your attention . . .
“GLARRIAGE”
Roberto: “I believe strongly in equal rights
for all. I do not like the use of the word marriage as it relates to a
same-sex wedding. The word marriage means the state of being united to a
person of the opposite sex in a consensual and contractual relationship
recognized by law. Couldn’t we have the same exact thing for people
of the same sex but just use another word to describe it?”
☞
Yes! Just pass a Constitutional Amendment requiring that – for the
purposes of the tens of thousands of federal, state, and local laws and
hundreds of millions of private contracts that refer to “marriage”
– the word you choose will be deemed equivalent.
But
Constitutional Amendments are hard to pass. (The last one, in 1992, though
completely trivial,
took 202 years.)
Also,
“separate but equal” is un-American – in contrast to
“the separation of church and state,” which many consider bedrock
American.
So I
prefer this solution: Let’s set in stone that the government will NEVER
tell a religious institution whom it must or may not marry. But that government
will also never discriminate in issuing civil marriage licenses (or
driver’s licenses, hunting licenses, liquor licenses) based on race,
religion, disability, fertility, sexual orientation, intent to have children,
inability to have children, prior divorce, prior multiple divorce,
near-certain incompatibility, or pretty much anything else.
If
there is an age requirement, it should apply to everyone, equally. If a
sobriety test is required – likewise.
The
good news: more and more people are deciding, What’s it to us if we
allow gays equal rights? Here, indeed, is last Friday’s
Salt Lake Tribune – no less – advocating much the same
approach: “Religion should be kept out of what is essentially a
government-sanctioned legal partnership. And government should not be involved
in religious marriage rites.”
Amen.
GLDD
The
stock dropped as low as $4.36 yesterday on disappointing quarterly earnings. Here’s
the press release. I still like it for the long haul and bought more.