this is rant, for the record

The Coming Gay Marriage Witch Hunt - this really is nothing new at all, but hilarious quote from worried homophobe:

Same-sex marriage is, of course, not the first issue to divide Americans. Slavery, segregation, and abortion led to civil war, vigilante violence, and massive protest movements.

But opponents of same-sex marriage say that even in those instances there was détente after passions cooled. One-time segregationists remained in the upper echelons of American public life through the 1990s. This time, opponents of same-sex marriage fear that supporters will not be happy until their side has been run out of polite society and forced to retract their previously held views.

I want to go on the record here, correct my interpretation if I'm reading this wrong: segregation/racism was a much better social movement because racists got to keep their social and political power for, count it, over a fucking century (according to the article). In polite society.

Jesus Christ, this is a crisis; people may not be invited to fucking tea because they're obnoxious. Let me weep.

Something struck me about this that's bothered me: it's the much touted right to be heard. It appears most often when people speaking Bullshit-esque are pouting about the language barrier that prevents people from caring what they have to say.

Much like the rights of trees who fall in the forest to make a sound, there is no fundamental right to be heard, because that would necessitate violating my God-given right to not have to listen. Free speech your ass out among the leaves, sunshine; I'm not hanging around the forest to listen.

I've spent the last two weeks learning Medicaid policy for the aged and disabled in which a sample case I worked allowed a man to enter a nursing home facility and receive Medicaid without even having to make a copay despite the fact his resources were upward of two hundred thousand dollars, while a woman who receives less than 1100 in RSDI total has to pay nine hundred dollars a month for the same thing.

When rich politicians talk about cutting welfare, they talk about welfare queens and single mothers and eighteen thousand kids each, but for some reason, they're very silent, very silent indeed, when it comes to the legal basis of how the wealthy can hide their money using special clauses in policy created specifically for them so when they need nursing home care or community care, they don't have to pay a thing toward it while a man or woman who have worked their asses off all their lives sometimes get denied the help they desperately need at the most vulnerable and fragile point of their lives.

Is this polite society?

You know, sorry, I ran out of tears; see, I'm worrying about actual real things, like my kid having the ability to get married and not be killed for being who he is, my mother being safe and well in her old age if God forbid she becomes fragile or ill, the current nightmare that is the job market, paying down my student loan and my credit report, and unnumbered elderly, disabled, and poor people who get denied help.

I don't understand the priorities of a life lived that can possibly, by any stretch of hte imagination, give a flying fuck about what a woman does with her own body to the point of trying to outlaw their access to it, about what people who you will probably never meet who may or may not be of the same sex entering into a legal union, how the color of someone's skin, their ethnicity, their country of origin, or their sex has any bearing whatsofuckingever on what kind of person they are, much less care so much that PACs and societies are created to combat it.

But all of that--all of that--makes more sense than an article where a homophobe is deeply, sincerely worried they won't get invited to the best parties.

Find a fucking forest and talk until you go hoarse, I don't give a shit; you want to be heard, say something worth breath.

Note: This has been a very enlightening two weeks of my life.