Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

Skipping over the fact that it's highly disturbing that he thinks he's a prophet or messiah, let me point out a really obvious truth: God should not speak through the President. The American People should be speaking through the President. That's his job. He's not there to be god's emissary. He is there to represent the people of the United States.

Of course, this recent bunch of anti-gay marriage pushes make it pretty clear that the US government represents one deity only, and that their responsibilities to that deity outweigh their responsibilities to the people. It's all fine and good to say “civil union is fine, after all, marriage is a religious institution between a man and a woman”, but it's a fallacy. The fact is, gay marriage was permitted by the Catholic Church until the 1500s, and is still permitted by many faiths around the world including active Christian Churches inside the United States. So the truth of the matter is that the anti-gay marriage movement has little to do with attitudes on homosexuality (that's just a symptom), and much more to do with forcing a state religion onto the subjects of this modern theocracy independent of their beliefs.

Not that this is anything new. Remember when Utah wanted to join the Union (well, remember it from school at least)? At that point polygamy was perfectly legal in Utah (as it was in many parts of the world, and still is, since there are cultures and faiths that accept it as a valid way to live). However, the federal government refused to allow Utah to join without first banning polygamy, which they did, thus allowing the government to force a specific religion on the people.

Don't forget that both polygamy and homosexuality are common (and often healthy) in a historical and international context, and looking at the world more broadly, also extremely normal in the animal kingdom. None of this has anything to do with morals, ethics, concerns about society crumbling, issues of what's “normal”, or anything like that — it is literally the government officializing its state religion.

I've just posted the second half of the image update (on my predicted schedule for a change) with about 2,400 new images (4,000 new pictures this week thanks in part to all the BMEfest photos). Thanks to everyone who helped out, and thank you to Dita (and her supercute baby Chiya) for being the cover models.

So as you know, today the US senate narrowly defeated (by ten/twelve votes) the attempt by Bush (also supported by about 40% of Americans in the polls) to advance a new amendment to the Constitution specifically banning gay marriage. However, Republicans promise that the fight to ban the “unamerican” practise of gay marriage is far from over. Republican Senator Cornyn (likely driven by a lifetime of homophobic jokes due to his name) said,

There are two things I don't get about this whole “debate”. First of all, why in the world would anyone care who someone else marries? It makes no difference to me if someone else gets married to someone that's the same gender. Hell, if I'm butting my nose into other people's bedrooms, I'd probably rather see two good looking gay dudes than some typically unattractive out-of-shape hetrosexual. But the point is that it's none of my business… I think Pierre Trudeau (former Canadian PM) put it best when he said of government laws on homosexuality, “the State has no place in the bedrooms of the Nation.”

Admittedly his ex-wife was getting brown showers from Mick Jagger at the time, but still, I just don't get why anyone could care less what strangers decide to do with their social lives. Why is any of this even an issue? They say it could lead to someone marrying their dog. Hell, who cares about that? If someone wants to marry their dog it's fine by me too as long as I don't have to marry a dog as well.

The second reason that I think it's extremely weird that Bush is pushing for an anti-gay amendment to the Constitution is that it really makes Americans look like a bunch of backwards closed-minded hicks to the rest of the world. Due to the actions of the Bush Cabal, Americans are already the most universally hated people and country on the planet, so why also try and make them the laughing stock of the world? I believe Americans are good people, but if they keep letting their government betray them like this, the odds of a happy ending to their story will eventually dwindle to zero.

As a point of trivia, John Kerry has also said he'll block any attempts to legalize gay marriage. Yeah, he supports some wishy-washy “civil unions” crap. Bullshit. You can't give one group special rights because they decide to stick their cock into a different hole. Either have marriage for everyone who wants it, or for no one. Admittedly Kerry is opposed to the Constitutional ammendment, preferring instead to send all the gays to Hawaii and letting the mainland states ban it… Remind anyone of when the Northern states banned freed slaves from entering, and instead conspired to send them to Haiti and Liberia?

In this upcoming election, here are your choices and the stances these old friends (literally, except for that pleasure droid Edwards of course) have taken on issues that I've discussed here recently:

If you read the last line and said, “hey, that does make sense”, please forget my name. If you have to blame anyone, blame that rebellious bastard Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the following in 1787:

That's how Jefferson and his buddies defined what it means to be American. Those were strange times back then — it must have been weird to believe in freedom so passionately. What an alien concept that has become. Oh well, times change, right?