A Wiccan friend of mine posted recently on her livejournal, bitching about a mass she cantored this morning, in which the Priest encouraged everyone to love God and their neighbour, and to vote Republican because gay marriage and abortion are both violations of this injunction, sins akin to slavery.

She commented, astutely:
"When the *HELL* are people going to realize, that when you take peoples' rights away, *YOU MAKE SLAVES OF THEM*!!!!"

This is a very valid point. But I should say that I have some reservations about this statement.

I agree with Ran that one problem we have at present is a drastic excess of rights. Where these two lines of thoughts began to really converge was in a comment by another friend...

"Then mom took the good old "but...but...retirement benefits...insurance...your tax money!" Okay, seriously- how many of us have friends and relatives whose marriages we disapprove of? For heaven's sake- if more married couples actually mean more of a strain on the insurance system/corporate benefits/whatever, then let's stop EVERYBODY from getting married- and that doesn't work, but moral approval of the relationships is the deciding factor on who can and can't, can I please nullify a few heterosexual marriages? It'll be great!"

This, I think, is a really, really important newish, "practical" new take on being opposed to gay marriage: that is, marriage is a priveleged economic status, and one we may not be able to afford to give to everyone. (I really doubt that, even in our system, the economics behind this are justified.) This "argument" exposes a lot of unconscious knowledge of how things work: that, ultimately, our system is built upon a system of scarcity and denial--without the emiseration of portions of the population (independent of how even The System measures "worth"), the "rights" (read: priveleges) we all enjoy would have to go away. We need people to go blind making us fancy wal-mart clothes so we can have a "thriving economy" and have a high rate of wardrobe turnover. We need foods shipped from all over the continent so we don't have to eat squash all winter. We need the destruction of Wild Nature so we can have roads and big backyards that we spend a few hours a month in... when we mow them. (Have you ever tried intentionally creating social space in your yard or garden? Suddenly people are hanging out in bedrooms, the living room, on the porch, in the yard, in the garden... your available socialising space goes up drastically, and people are spending time staring at the sky and realising how hard light pollution really does suck.) We need to raise animals knee-deep in their own shit in cells no bigger than they are, because we need multiple portions of meat at every meal. We need starving people in Brazil to provide us the soya to feed those animals, since they certainly will never graze outside. It makes veal seem ethical--putting the little fucker out of his misery early on.

The thing is, this argument realises that. It makes it clear that the real reason to deny gay marriage is the same reason we deny everything else--it's to silence the victims so we can continue to enjoy our "rights".

Thank God this lifestyle isn't sustainable.