Brokeback Mountain. Did you see it? Yeah, me neither. But that was just because I was extremely busy. No, really…I was. But aside from being a huge hit and a critically acclaimed film, Brokeback Mountain took the issues of gay rights and prejudices and shoved them in our faces. Well, someone, or in this case something, needed to do it. We’ve become a society that faces our problems by pretending that they don’t exist. Elsewhere in the world, masses of people demonstrate, march, even revolt over the things they believe in. While we sit idly by and hope things work themselves out. Now there are those that form coalitions and groups to protest in an orderly and legal fashion but I’m not here to discuss them. I’m here to discuss the rest of us.

What is your stance on gay marriage? Do you think it should be legal? Do you think it should be legal with limitations, like a civil union? Do you think it should be outlawed? Or do you just not care? Think about it.

I personally think that it is hypocritical for the government to claim a same sex couple cannot be married. Isn’t that discrimination? The same governing body that passes laws for equal opportunity this and that wants to ban the right of two individuals that love each other to live in holy matrimony? I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t make sense to me.

Now we’ve all heard “President” Bush (don’t even get me started) proclaim that by not legalizing same-sex marriages, he is ‘protecting the sanctity of marriage.’ How about the divorce rate? Are those nearly 2 million people that were divorced, last year alone, protecting this sanctity? If he really wanted to protect his well-publicized Christian ways, he would just make divorce illegal.

Well that’s just ridiculous, right? But if it doesn’t make sense to make divorce illegal, why does it make sense to ban same-sex marriages? I know what some of you are thinking, ‘Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.’ But, wait a minute, last I checked the U.S. Constitution, church and state were to be separated. If you recall, this is the primary reason for the debate on whether our children should still say the Pledge of Allegiance. (For those of you who forgot or never knew, the pledge is recited at the beginning of each school in unison day by the school children. The last sentence states “…one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty, and justice for all.”) Or maybe the reason for the debate is because the pledge is untrue. Justice for all? Who are we kidding?

By Eman Penn

Those who stand for nothing fall for anything. -- Alexander Hamilton