I'm confused by all the ruckus going on in the States (or various states I should say) about allowing gay marriage.
I live in the Northwest Territories of Canada and here gay marriage has been allowed for years. In fact, some of my friends and co-workers are married homosexuals. Has it had any measurable effect on our society? Has it caused our "morals" to erode and all the local children to turn into hell-spawn? Nope. In fact, I can't notice a damn thing different about our society other than maybe a few more folks are happy now that they have the same rights as anyone else. Now, before gay marriage was allowed here we went through some of the same political and legal wrangling I see south of the border.
There was a lot of bluster from some religious groups about the "gay agenda" and how if it was allowed we were just a hop skip and a jump away from legalizing pedophilia and human sacrifice on main street. Well, a couple years after we allowed the so-called abomination of gay marriage it's really illustrated how utterly ridiculous the counter arguments all were. Our economy was unaffected by it, the schools and other institutions were unaffected by it, and it exposed the anti-gay marriage crowd for what they really were: Fear-Mongerers!
Most of the opponents of gay marriage here were heavily involved with various churches, and generally speaking the church is really good at fear-mongering. I remember growing up in a southern baptist church where they had me and all the other six year olds terrified we were going to go to hell for some obscure reason unless we obeyed without question. Anywho. I suppose it stands to reason that any group would use the tools at it's disposal that it's most comfortable with, so they tried the 'ol fear card yet again.
A lot of hot air and blustery ensued, and now that some time has passed since we went down the path of evil (or whatever you want to call it) it's plainly evident that all of the arguments against it were nothing but hot air.
I also think that as a society we've got much bigger fish to fry than whether or not gays should marry, but the topic serves a convenient excuse for a distraction from more important and more complicated matters. Like for example the fact that our entire economic system is practically falling apart at the seams and is not in any way sustainable in it's present form. Or maybe the fact that after decades of playing "the great game" around the world we've painted ourselves into a pretty ugly corner facing a newly re-armed Russia and China that are not in much of a mood to negotiate right now. Those topics, however are much more difficult and uncomfortable to tackle, so let's just stick to the good ol' arguments so we can ignore the real issues facing us.
Those good 'ol arguments presently are:
1) Abortion
2) Gun Control
3) Gay Marriage
4) Creationism vs. Evolution
Any of the above issues are based on fear-mongering more than anything else and don't lead to any kind of productive discussion, and completely IGNORE the real problems we are being faced with right now!