Why do they care?

 

 

Yesterday, pinned to my Stressless recliner after a busy day, I let "The PBS News Hour" roll over me.  I wasn't really paying attention until a large woman with a unicolorous chestnut bob and a reflexive smile appeared on the screen, mad as hell about gay marriage being legalized in New York.  I couldn't see her feet, but I'll bet she was stamping them.

She's not buying it.   The PEOPLE don't want gay marriage, POLLS show the majority of people opposed,  EVERYONE  in the state should vote on the issue,  and Republican legislators SOLD OUT their principles in New York.  She suggested darkly that the naughties in the New York Legislature were going to get theirs.  She repeated "one man, one woman," several times, and she declared that the definition of marriage is a "very foundational issue."

This woman turned out to be Maggie Gallagher, CEO of the National Organization for Marriage.  Doing a little research, I found that she also wants litigation permitted against spouses who commit adultery, and she's opposed to civil unions and domestic partnerships.  A my-way-or-the-highway kind of gal.

Later, I watched another PBS program, "A House Divided," about Abraham Lincoln and his dotty wife. In last night's episode much time was devoted to making the distinction between Frederick Douglas's position on slavery, which was that whatever the American people wanted was what should prevail, and Lincoln's, which was that it was a moral issue, a matter of right and wrong, and not an issue to be taken to the people for a final opinion. 

Here in our two-personl democracy, we are unanimous that a Lincoln-type position on gay marriage is the correct one. It's a matter of fairness, democracy, right or wrong.  We've spent a certain amount of time at dinner and on long car drives puzzling over why anyone would give a damn who's married to who and how it could possibly affect our own relationship.  We are mystified.