I always loved the image in that William Carlos Williams poem.
The beginning of that poem came to me today as I thought about an email from my daughter that said:
so Massachussetts is poised to pass an amendment that bans gay marriage, but allows for civil unions — get this — *with all the same rights and priviliges of marriage*. In other words, they can get married, they just can’t call it “marriage”. So it’s not REALLY the institution of the marriange union that they hold sacred, it’s the WORD marriage they hold sacred. It’s so ludicrous
It seems to me that so much of what America is about depends upon the separation of church and state. Right now, the issue of gay marriages is being complicated by the unAmerican blending of the two.
Each religion has the right to sanctify — or not — gay marriages. That is totally separate from having government, the law of the land, legalize them. The fight on the religious front is a whole other fight, but everyone keeps lumping it all together. Legal marriage provides certain rights to the legally married partners.
Religious marriages need to be looked at as the religious sanctification of the legal bond. Religions don’t have to do that if they don’t want to, but that shouldn’t affect the legal rights of the married pair.
Thanks to the neocons, who are insistently imposing religious doctrine on legal issues, the American public is losing perspective. It should be a simple matter of rendering unto Ceasar.
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with
rainwater
beside the white
chickens
It’s really a red and white issue.