There, I made up my mind

Initially, I didn't have an opinion about same-sex marriage. Partly cause I didn't have any data to justify an opinion, and more importantly because I completely don't care. But now, thanks to the constant vociferations of same-sex marriage supporters, I've made up my mind.

Officialy, I'm now AGAINST gay marriage.

Not because I give a fuck if gays get married. Cause I don't. But just because the pro-gay-marriage lobby's arguments are straight douchebaggery.

Now you might think, the argument that the constitution seems to support gay marriage would be persuasive. Except it's not! You know why? Because in the case of polygamy, the Supreme Court already ruled that while it IS unconstitutional to outlaw polygamy, we're gonna do it anyway because it's in the best interest of society.

WTF???????

Well, whatever. There's your precedent. We're allowed to discriminate for the greater good of society.

Now some make the argument that gay marriage is NOT against the greater good because gays are no shittier parents than straights.

Really? Prove it.

In the case of polygamy, the "greater good" argument comes from the perception that polygamy somehow implies child abuse. Data supporting this view has never come to my attention. You know what HAS come to my attention though? The amount of child sexual abuse in Native communities. According to my former therapist, in some reserves as many as 96% of female children get molested. Therefore Natives should not be allowed to get married. Oh wait, that never stopped them having children! So let's just stop them having children. OMG THAT'S SO RACIST!

Ok, so you can't keep people from breeding no matter how high a percentage of sexual abusers are in their demographic. Unless their religion supports polygamy. So you can discriminate on SOME protected grounds and not others. Likewise in France, by the way, the Supreme Court has ruled that anti-semitism is illegal but anti-islamism is perfectly fine because, you know, freedom of speech.

What the FUCK are you talking???

Ok, so clearly, discrimination is perfectly fine, no matter what laws you have to the contrary.

So do we have good reasons to prevent gay marriage "for the greater good"? Who cares! It's not like we have good reasons for the rest, either. But my theory is, the conservatives (small C, people with conservative views, not the Cons) are right. All this behavioural stuff about spitting on morals, expressing oneself, not being told what to do, "celebrating our diversity", is all detrimental to society. In my considered opinion after reading history for three years, I think it is healthy for a society to have a mutually agreed and STRICT standard of acceptable behaviour. "Morals", if you will. "Morals" are good for society. And "morals" have to be conservative, by definition, because if they change all the time they're no longer a mutually accepted standard, they're just a fashion.

So am I against gay marriage because I favour conservative morals? No. Like I said, I don't care whether gays get married or not. The battle for a moral society was already lost a long time ago anyway; gay marriage is a symptom of it, not a cause. What I'm saying (and I don't expect you to read and understand it instead of having a knee-jerk reaction) is that it's actually a more valid "greater good" argument than the thing about polygamy.


Second reason why the pro-gay-marriage argument is douchebaggery is that it's not about "equality." Nobody wants "equality", and nobody has it. And those who talk about "equality" for gays are not agitating for the legalization of polygamy, or for the right of women to wear burqas and hijabs, or for treating the mentally ill with respect. And that's just three examples. In fact, I personally know at least one person who is pro-gay-marriage, anti-letting Muslim women dress themselves, violently anti-anyone who has a religion, and doesn't think twice about insulting me for having sought treatment for my bipolar disorder. Apparently, then, supporting gay marriage isn't about equality, and it doesn't make you a decent person, either, contrary to a popular line of thought. But to stay on the topic of this particular reason, I'm against gay marriage because the equality argument is just raw hypocrisy.


And third reason why the pro-gay-marriage argument is douchebaggery: because much of it is limited to calling non-supporters names. Such as bigots. Oh yeah? Buddy, you just lost every argument, EVER. Just as soon as you thought you could prove yourself right by proclaiming that the other side is "assholes and bigots" and whatever else you want to call them, you're out of every argument, ever. Because obviously you don't know how to have a conversation. Also because people adduce this argument because they have no rational ones: they're just certain they're right. And as we know, certainty comes from random chemical activity in the brain, not from being actually right.

And, you know what, I've just had enough of your bullshit. You want to call people bigots and assholes because they don't agree with you? Fine. I'm rubber, you're glue. I'm quite satisfied with you calling me a bigot. In fact, I'll take is as a compliment. You know why? Because I now have no respect for you and I'll be happy to make sure I'm not on your side. Why am I against gay marriage? Because YOU insulted the non-supporters instead of debating politely. Because I WANT you to think of me as an asshole and a bigot. Because I definitely do not want to be on your good side.


In summary, why I'm now against same-sex marriage:

1) because people think there is a valid argument against polygamy, hijabs and Islam;
2) because discriminating against some minorities and not others is discrimination squared;
3) and because the pro-gay-marriage crowd has been using abuse instead of arguments and I choose to be on the opposite side.

So go ahead and call me a bigot. I'll take it as a compliment.

Shortest political opinion ever

NDP leaders went to meet Idle No More people arriving in Ottawa. Stephen Harper went to meet his rental giant pandas arriving in Toronto. I would say both made exactly the point they wanted to make.

Sometimes you can't even find the brass on the sinking ship

In the Northwest Territories news today: "An organ donor registry for the territory is long overdue, said Range Lake MLA Daryl Dolynny" (NNSL). Because according to him, the lack of organ donor registry is "truly hampering our ability to help those who need organ transplants".

Yeah... Well that's why you shouldn't elect pharmacists with no relevant experience to government, yes? And maybe also not ones with personal agendas? Not that organ donation isn't generally considered an admirable personal agenda. And yeah, it's very sad that Dolynny's buddy's young son died for lack of a heart transplant. (I know that because the buddy is the miserable scum I was working for in Yellowknife three years ago. See, NWT politics are such a cesspool of personal allegiances and rancour.)

Ok, but let's be realistic.

First of all, the Northwest Territories has no capacity to harvest organs. In British Columbia, which has 107 times the population of the Northwest Territories and 31 times the budget (but only 7 times the federal transfers, mind you), organs are collected by the "organ retrieval team", a highly specialised mobile unit which is on call round the clock and travels to whichever hospital has the donor, because even in BC, most hospitals do not have the personnel and equipment to perform the organ procurement surgery. The Northwest Territories could neither afford such a team, nor mobilise it quickly enough, nor contract a team from south. You're not gonna get BC's team to fly to Fort Resolution to source organs.

Second, you pretty much have to die in hospital if your organs are going to survive long enough to be transplanted. And generally you have to die suddenly, not after years of degenerative illness. According to statistics from Organ Donation New Zealand, nearly 80% of organ donors die of trauma (i.e. "accidents") or intracranial hemorrhage or thrombosis. If any of those happen to you in the Northwest Territories, you're almost certainly not going to live long enough to reach the hospital, because the response time from emergency services is far too slow.

Third, once you're in the hospital and your brain is dead, your body is maintained with drugs and machines while the paperwork gets done and the organ team scrambles. Somehow, I think a medical team that can kill someone with a colonoscopy is not gonna be super successful in keeping the dead alive while doing paperwork really really fast. (Actually, the paperwork itself would be a stumbling block. GNWT employees aren't noted for their speedy and accurate completion of paperwork.)

In the real world, according to BC Transplant, less than 1% of deaths can result in potential organ donation. Taking out the 80% who would not have made it to the hospital in the NWT, that's less than 0.2% of deaths. The Northwest Territories have a death rate of approximately 3.9 per thousand per year and a population of 43,300 (Statistics Canada) so that gives us about 0.33 eligible donors per year. Of whom zero can actually be accessed by an organ collection team.

So yeah, let's spend a pile of money on an organ donor registry so that once every three years or so, a doctor can tell himself "hey, we could have used these organs if only we had an organ team."

Seriously, Northwest Territories, you should really start electing people who have some kind of understanding of reality. And who can think of something beside themselves. Oh wait... All those people moved south. Oops, sucks to be you! Haha.

Who's a bigot now?

About 28% of people in the world are Muslims. Almost two billion people. Almost one in three human beings.

On the other hand, the percentage of gay people is variously estimated somewhere from 1% (self-reported to Statistics Canada in the census) to maybe 8.2% (Americans Have No Idea How Few Gay People There Are, The Atlantic, 2012-05-31). So let's even be generous and say 10%. One in 10 people.

Why am I on about this? Because if you're pro-gay rights and anti-Islam, you're discrimating against three times more people, at the very least, than if you're pro-Islam and anti-gay rights. But maybe as much as thirty times more. You think the anti-gay marriage people are reactionary bigots and you can insult and belittle them because you're so fucking right... but you're by far the bigger bigot.

That's pretty funny. To me, that is. Probably not to you pro-gay-anti-Islam-name-calling bigots.