Homophobic Bigotry and the Oregon's Voter's Conscience

In 50 years folks will look back at our time like we look back at the 50s and wonder "How could people have been so ignorant and closed minded and bigoted and intolerant?".

Courtesy: San Francisco State University

(SALEM, Ore.) - Less than 1/2 of 1 percent. Not a very wide margin but enough to keep the religious right's challenge to HB2007, Oregon's Domestic Partnership law, from putting the rights of thousands of Oregonians on hold.

This is the finding of the Oregon Secretary of State's office after checking the validity of signatures on petitions submitted by ex-State Senator Marylin Shannon and her slavic church backed homophobic zealots.

The likelihood of their challenge to SB2, the anti-discrimination law, making it to the ballot is even slimmer since they submitted hundreds fewer signatures for that challenge.

Ex-State Senator Shannon has vowed that even if they failed here they would seek referendums on the ballot through an initiative drive.

Well, that means they would need roughly 82,000 valid signatures instead of less than the 56,000 this time around, and they would need to be arguing to REPEAL the laws, not just stop them from taking effect.

By the time of the election in 2008 the laws will have been in effect for nearly a year and everyone will be able to see they did not cause the planet to explode. Even if they managed to make it to the ballot their chances of passing such hatemongering statewide is virtually zero - look at the track record of the OCA as a bellweather. Even measure 36 would not have passed in all likelihood if the Oregon Family Council who sponsored it had not gone to great lengths to state during the campaign that it in no way barred civil unions or domestic partnerships or anti-discrimination protections.

I have watched the hatemongering homophobic bigotry in Oregon since the 1980s when the OCA was running around like Chicken Little screaming that unless the state banned abortion and denied the equal rights (mislabeled as 'special rights') of homosexuals the State and the nation would immediately burn in perdition or something equally dire.

It seems to me that such folks do not have much faith in heterosexuality or the attractive power of heterosexual unions. That in the free market of ideas such concepts could never compete unless they were the only options allowed. Very pessimistic if you ask me.

I know for an undisputed fact there was never a time in my life that I was attracted to anyone of the same sex. I have always been heterosexual as long as I have had a sexual orientation (in other words at 5 years of age I did not care about it one way or the other). But I know for a fact I never had a choice in the matter. The only folks who get to choose are bisexuals, and that just qualifies them as bisexual.

And to rant that marriage is for only one man and one woman smacks of the racist days when interracial marriages were banned with folks saying any man and woman OF THE SAME RACE can marry. By limiting marriage to only one man and one woman we are doing the same thing to GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans-gendered) folks that the laws against interracial marriage did against interracial couples. When you love someone of a different race how much value is there when someone tells you that you can marry anyone you want OF YOUR OWN RACE? The same applies to a GLBT person whose love does not happen to be of the opposite sex.

The 'slippery slope' argument of the homophobes does not hold water. They try and equate same sex relationships with everything from necrophilia (sex with the dead). pedophilia (sex with children) and bestiality (sex with animals). However their illogic falls apart when you look and see that neither the dead, children or animals are deemed capable of forming informed consent like two consenting adults, gay or straight, can do.

Now they might have an argument with polygamy, but if you ask me even though more complex a legal hairball so long as all involved are adults and in full knowledge they all consent to the arrangement I see no legitimate justification for the government to interfere and to ban polygamy. Harmful polygamy/bigamy is where some involved are not fully aware of the entire situation and have not consented to it. As this is harmful and a violation of basic contract law there is justification for legally proscribing such situations. But as far as polygamy goes that is as far as it goes. No slippery slope. Just a puddle.

Right now only two groups have 'special rights'. Heterosexuals who can marry and homophobic organizations who due to exemptions in SB2 have the right to discriminate against innocent citizens.

So we still have a ways to go. But steps in the right direction are still a good thing, so long as they are seen as part of the path to the destination and not the destination itself.

In 50 years folks will look back at our time like we look back at the 50s and wonder "How could people have been so ignorant and closed minded and bigoted and intolerant?".

So no matter how shrilly the religious right and their bigoted foot soldiers howl and shriek, it is clearly the death rattle of their outdated ideology as it tumbles into the dustbin of history.