SAY WHAT? 3/27/13

While watching the news coverage for the decision on the Prop 8 and DOMA, both concerning the right to same sex marriage, I felt compelled to throw my 2 cents in.

Now I'm no liberal nor conservative but nobody should be barred from marrying who they want. People had and will continue to debate on the subject. Not allowing equal access to marriage is discriminatory, point blank. Most proponents of that define marriage as between a man and a woman are in some way affiliated with religion. It is looked upon as a stigma or curse of some sorts. However, recent polls have found that the majority of Americans are for same sex marriage.

It's not the main thing of this writing. What I wanted to comment on was something someone said. It was a lawyer for one of the couples and he said, "This may be [or is] the last piece of major civil rights legislation." Say what! I was shocked to hear that. Why, ex prisoners can't even vote in most states. Ain't it a fundamental right of democracy that all its citizens vote or have access to? There was 7,076,200 people in the correctional system, including probation, parole, prison, or jail at the end of December 2010. [1] And with most of that population consisting of "Latino" or/and "black", what does that say? Ain't that a civil rights issue? I don't hear nobody in the media making a fuss about that. Housing... jobs... education... all these fields are uneven, more so discriminatory.

Like I said in the beginning, I'm all for equal marriage, I do have an issue with the institution of marriage and what it promotes. Hopefully the supreme court "justices" will do what's right and give LGBTQ their full benefits that come with marriage. I guess it says nothing that legislation will get passed before the equal access to vote for "ex-cons" does. (And that's concerning same sex marriage). Talk about some "democracy"!

NOTES: Prisoners in 2010. Correctional Population in the U.S. 2010 Bureau of Justice statistics. Published 2011.