The Uncultured War
March 3, 2004
By Rush Roberts

What the hell is a 'culture war'? So gays want to get married, and all of a sudden the Apocalypse is near? I just don't get it.

Contrary to what right-wing fundamentalists would have you believe, homosexuality is not a creation of television and the "liberal" media. People have been gay for thousands of years. They can't help it, and the vast majority of them do not want to force their practices upon unwilling masses (unlike aforementioned zealots).

And contrary to what the extortionists posing as Christians might have you believe, there is no "homosexual agenda", and it is not a "disease", nor do people choose to be gay. Why would someone knowingly choose a lifestyle that encourages ridicule and has in the past run a higher risk of terminal disease?

The recent controversy over the gay marriage situation in San Francisco has been blown out of proportion more than Janet Jackson's breast and Monica Lewinsky's famous dress stain combined. There can't be a culture war without an established culture, and its difficult to claim that our country in its brief and turbulent two hundred twenty seven and one half years has had time to settle down on one particular culture, especially when it was founded as a haven for those of any culture who felt downtrodden and needed a new start.

Think gays in George W. Bush's America feel downtrodden? Me too.

One might say that the entire brief history of our country has been one long culture war: the revolutionary colonials vs. the aristocratic monarchy of Great Britain, the agrarian south vs. the industrial north, the rebellious progressive youth vs. the straightlaced establishment in the 1960s. come to think of it, our country's history seems to focus mainly on wars, with culture finishing a distant second.

Yes, America seems to enjoy the "war" part of the phrase much more, and at time it seems that the goal of our culture is quite simple: whoever ends up with the most toys wins. Whoever gets the second-most toys earns our protection and patronizing respect, while those content to simply play with their own toys are just plain shit out of luck, as we say in Texas.

Meanwhile, we mock and slander civilizations thousands of years older than ours. Being more technologically advanced does not make us more sophisticated. But we have more guns, so we don't care. Such a fine example, a shining beacon we are in the world, that we can afford to invade countries on a whim, but still treat certain members of our citizenry as second-class.

So forget all the buzzwords, the "judicial activism", the "culture wars", the "homosexual agenda", all the typical rhetoric you hear on the news intended to rile people up and get them arguing, and ask yourself the only important questions involved with this issue: will letting gays marry adversely affect our country? Will it harm you directly? Will it make any difference to you if two people you don't even know who have lived with each other for decades and are committed to each other are granted legal marriage status? How does this hurt anyone?

Ask yourself if you really want to live in a country where the Constitution is tampered with on the whim of a paranoid weakling under pressure from religious extremists. And to all the Billy Grahams, the Jerry Falwells, the James Dobsons, if you really want to live in a country where the government strictly follows the tenets of an ancient religion, do us all a favor and take your bigot rhetoric elsewhere: catch the next plane to the Middle East, and don't let the Statue of Liberty hit you on the way out. You can't build a culture by pushing people down.