{"id":238,"date":"2004-03-07T17:33:00","date_gmt":"2004-03-07T16:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/2004\/3\/sanctity_shmanctity.html"},"modified":"2004-03-07T17:33:00","modified_gmt":"2004-03-07T16:33:00","slug":"sanctity_shmanctity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/2004\/03\/07\/sanctity_shmanctity\/","title":{"rendered":"sanctity, shmanctity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over the last couple of weeks, there&#8217;s been an unbelievable amount of talking and bitching and whining and fighting and debate over the topic of gay marriage.  It goes without saying that I find this distressing &#8211; in fact, I can&#8217;t work out whether it&#8217;s more depressing than irritating, or vice versa.  I have never been able to understand why anyone would care who anyone else sleeps with (unless of course you&#8217;re involved with the person in question), or why the gender of newlyweds should have any bearing on the validity of their marriage.  <\/p>\n<p>Even more appalling to me is the backing argument that&#8217;s constantly parrotted by the proponents of this new constitutional amendment banning gay marriage: we must <i>preserve the sanctity of marriage<\/i>.  First off, has anyone seen the latest <a href=\"http:\/\/www.divorcereform.org\/rates.html\" title=\"statistics\" target=\"_blank\">divorce statistics<\/a> for this country?  I&#8217;m one of them, for god&#8217;s sake, and so are roughly half my friends.  Sanctity of marriage, my ass.  But divorce isn&#8217;t even the best example of this.  Let&#8217;s take a look at recent issues of TV Guide.  There&#8217;s <a href=\"#\" title=\"the bachelor\" target=\"_blank\">The Bachelor<\/a>, <a href=\"#\" title=\"the feminist answer to the bachelor\" target=\"_blank\">The Bachelorette<\/a>, <a href=\"#\" title=\"oh, the humanity\" target=\"_blank\">Joe Millionaire<\/a>, <a href=\"#\" title=\"even more shameful\" target=\"_blank\">Mr. Personality<\/a>, <a href=\"#\" title=\"odious\" target=\"_blank\">My Big, Fat, Obnoxious Fianc\u00e9<\/a>, and of course the crowning glory of recent television shows that make you ashamed to be alive: <a href=\"#\" title=\"is there anything about this that *isn't* wrong?\" target=\"_blank\">The Littlest Groom<\/a>.  If there&#8217;s going to be a push in America to make marriage a more cherished and respected institution, I suggest we start by arresting all the producers who agreed to air these shows, and offering therapy and\/or sterilization to their rabid fans.  Because you know, this country is scary enough with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bushorchimp.com\/\" title=\"we've all seen it, but that doesn't make it any less alarming\" target=\"_blank\">Chimpy<\/a> at the helm.  When we can marry off total strangers for cash prizes on national television without anyone batting an eye, but couples who honestly love one another aren&#8217;t able to make the same lifetime committments just because they happen to have matching genitalia&#8230; well, it&#8217;s days like this when I pull out the UK passport and stare at it wistfully.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over the last couple of weeks, there&#8217;s been an unbelievable amount of talking and bitching and whining and fighting and&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/custom-deluxe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}