Sad

Two things happened this week, amid all my hope, to make me sad. First, Proposition 8 and similar referendums in several other states were passed to remove and limit the rights of my fellow country-persons who happen to also share a different sexuality from me. This makes me sad because I don't understand at all how such a thing can even be happening in this country.

If we remove religious objections to homosexuality, what other grounds are there preventing two adults from marrying one another and sharing the legal and tax benefits Corey and I enjoy? Since we have separation of church and state in our country, how are we letting religious interpretations of a marriage affect our legal interpretations of the same institution? There are a lot of things, legal things, that go against my spiritual views and there are also a lot of religions practicing in our nation that hold views very contrary to mine. And that's all ok, because we have separation of church and state and these things don't affect my tax bracket or the cost of my car insurance.

I wonder if we're letting vocabulary get in our way? Would it make people feel better if we referred to all legal unions (those performed not by clergy but by judges and things) as civil unions...even those unions of one man and one woman? I just feel so sad about the whole situation.

The other great sadness of my week is the return of cigarette smoking to the rugby bar. They filed for and obtained an exemption to the Clean Air Act, so the little divey bar is now a smoke den again. I hear that the bar has lost great amounts of business from regular customers who now go elsewhere to sit and drink over a nice, smelly cigarette. I know that the team does not make up the bulk of the clientele and that we have to think first of keeping the bar profitable. But now that it's smokey again I can't really go there and enjoy myself. I just can't go back to that. So I feel like that's a second hole in my heart this week.

Perhaps something fantastic will happen and our president elect will enact a sweeping, nationwide civil rights law allowing all persons to wed whomever they love and banning smoke from all places where humans have to breathe inside closed walls...like Great Britain! I love how Elton John is allowed to be married to his husband and not have to worry that his sequin pants will get stinky if they pop to the pub for some mushy peas after a long day at the piano.