Just another equality rant

Some news today on the status of civil unions in Oregon and the ongoing battle for civil rights:

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Less than a month after same-sex couples started taking advantage of a new law allowing them to register as domestic partners, two Republican state legislators filed a proposed initiative that would repeal it.

Rep. Sal Esquivel, R-Medford, and Sen. Fred Girod, R-Stayton, are chief petitioners for the initiative filed late Friday with the secretary of state's office. Opponents of the civil union law say it undermines a measure approved by voters in 2004 that amended the Oregon Constitution to declare that marriage is only legal when it's between a man and a woman.

"People need to weigh in," Esquivel said.
...

Esquivel and Girod are supporting the initiative on behalf of opponents organized by Marylin Shannon, a former Republican state senator.

Shannon's group is the one that failed to gather enough signatures to refer the law to voters. Now it must collect 82,769 valid signatures from residents by July 3 to put the initiative on the fall ballot.

Basic Rights Oregon, the state's largest gay-rights group, said it would fight any attempt to overturn the civil unions law.

"Folks behind this effort are really out of step with Oregonians," said Jeana Frazzini, executive director.

One of these days I'll wake up in the morning and be free of the gushing nausea that accompanies this brutal American vision of humanity. Somewhere trapped in this endless cycle of presumption and misguided faith and self-righteousness, we just keep hacking away at reason, slowly dimming any flicker of hope that we can embrace individualism and acceptance. All these people are asking for is a little bit of dignity, a little bit of liberty, and a little bit of understanding.

Let's talk for a moment about bigotry. Right now in this supposedly enlightened society of ours, a class of people is struggling for the basic freedom to come together in unity, only to be rejected by a government that works tirelessly to restrict freedom. It's a fucking sad state of affairs.

Our society has institutionalized the idea of love, packaging it up in a series of tax breaks and handing it exclusively to the "normal" people. Of course, the people who don't fall under this carefully crafted definition of "normal" continue to fight and fight to win the same rights enjoyed by the rest of society, only to be challenged again and again by the savage hysteria of Christian social crusaders.

Homosexuals can't fight (openly) in the military; they can't exchange vows under the watchful eyes of our bloated political system. And the only reasoning anybody seems to be able to come up with for this great injustice goes like this: There's a man in the sky who watches us all and wants our money, and he says two people of the same gender can't love each other for some reason. Hilariously, this man in the sky that we can't see also apparently has a penchant for dictating social policy. It's like a cosmic joke, and way too many people are laughing.

But I can feel change in the air. The abnormal people -- gay, atheist, black, female -- our day is coming. We will win this fight. And when we do, the defeated forces of oppression will look to the sky for answers and hear the deafening roar of silence.