Still Second-Class Citizens

I would ask that you read this story (and I also found this analysis to be interesting, though it is a bit dated) and then consider the following (and this is addressed in particular to any red state life forms who may be reading this).

You can get away for now with wrongfully demonizing gays and lesbians in this country and denying them the right to civil unions with the attendant legal rights and benefits of a heterosexual couple (notice I didn’t say marriage…I’m sure this comes as no surprise, but I share John Edwards’ view on this; I am opposed to gay marriage, but I am also opposed to any federal legislation to ban it, and I am DEFINITELY in favor of same-sex couples receiving the benefits I mentioned above, and they should most certainly have the right to adopt also).

You can get away with making same-sex couples engage in this stupid chase across the country to find a place where their union can be legally recognized and enforced. This is what happens when you make this a state-by-state matter, though I grudgingly admit that that may be preferable to federal legislation.

Now is where it starts to get tricky.

With the Supreme Court we currently have, it is only a matter of time until Roe v. Wade is overturned. They will have lots of time and opportunity to find a way to make this happen. Then, access to abortion will become a state-by-state matter.

My question is this: will we punish our mothers, wives and daughters the same way that we are punishing gays and lesbians, making them go state to state to find a health-care provider who will allow them to terminate their pregnancy? Or will we throw the same, holier-than-thou, self-righteous claptrap in their faces too? And why not prosecute and imprison them when they get there, since that is what Pat Robertson (who has been strangely quiet lately, I now realize), James Dobson, Ralph Reed, and all the other self-appointed moralistic phonies want anyway?

In that event, maybe Massachusetts, for example, wouldn’t become “the Las Vegas of same-sex marriage,” as Bushco waterboy Mitt Romney so sarcastically put it. Instead, it could become the epicenter of a real life, full-blown, health care emergency if women trying to end their pregnancies all decide to go there. And will Romney and his sympathizers engage in moralistic grandstanding in that event, when emergency rooms and outpatient facilities are swamped from the volume of patients?

I would like to think that our politicians on the federal and state level are thinking about that (even in South Dakota, which I know is a stretch, as well as hoping and praying that they do the right thing by ALL couples regardless of their sexual orientation). I am also hoping that they will enact legislation and advocate in our courts for those who seek simple, basic fairness.

This is my hope. Maybe someday it will be reality.