It may seem a surprise to open this page and see a political piece at the top, but what may be even more surprising is what has prompted my political outrage: the Kardashians. Namely, Kim Kardashian filing for divorce from her NBA player husband a mere 72 DAYS after their wedding day. 72 days. That's it. That means her marriage was shorter than most middle school relationships. They didn't even spend a single significant holiday together as a married couple. She said in a statement that she decided to end her marriage "after careful consideration." Really?! How long could she possibly have thought about it? I bet I give more careful consideration about what to wear on a date.
The news made me very angry. Irrationally angry. Not because I'm angry that poor Kim and Kris couldn't make it work. But angry because of all the "sanctity of marriage" bullshit that right-wing conservatives throw out there when arguing against same-sex marriage. Let me get this straight. Two people that are in love, who have quite possibly been living together for years, raising children together, and are tax-paying, contributing members of society can't get married (and thus enjoy the legal benefits coming from their legal union) because they happen to be the same gender, but these two publicity generating media-whores can? (For more on their media whorishness, please read this amazing piece by Rob Delaney.)
I imagine Kim's train of thought as she made the decision to marry this basketball player mere months after they first started dating: "It's been awhile since we had a marriage or a baby in this family to drum up a firestorm of publicity. Maybe I should get married and have an over-the-top million dollar, made for E! tv wedding (which I will sell the rights to for $17.9 million), then start the buzz that it's America's own royal wedding!" (You're famous because of a sex tape. Please do not insult royalty or America by making that claim.) But somehow, in this crazy, mixed-up world, Kim Kardashian is allowed to get real-married for a TV show, but gay people aren't allowed to get real-married for real. Something just ain't right.
The hypocrisy of the right-wing is something that never fails to get me riled up, and while Kim really has nothing to do with it, she's just the most public example of everything that is wrong with it. If you want to protect the sanctity of marriage, that's fine. But don't you think you should go after the near 60% divorce rate? It seems to me that the only thing that's destroying the sanctity of marriage is married people. But then again, the far-right, and most especially the Tea Party, is nothing but hypocrisy. I don't understand why they aren't called on it more often. All they do is scream for less and less government, but they only want less government when it comes to their money. When it comes to "social" issues, such as gay marriage, abortion rights, and the death penalty, they want more government. They don't want the government involved in telling people what to do unless it's telling people whom to marry and what to do with your unwanted pregnancy. Abortion is murder, but the death penalty isn't? How is that not a double standard? And while we're at it, the Tea Party and their constitutional fundamentals want to use that constitution to ban gay marriage. The last I checked, the constitution was to give rights, not take them away.
They use Jesus to back up their claims and to get votes. I find this fascinating, because I'm pretty sure if Jesus were around today, he would vote Democrat, and believe it or not, he didn't say a single word about gay people. Those who quote the Bible in order to prove their anti-gay stance just sound ignorant, but I don't think it's a coincidence that the more educated you are, the more likely you are to vote Democrat. (Fact. Look it up.)
Maybe it's because I'm on the other side of the pond, and watching the current political situation from afar, but it's downright embarrassing. The rest of the world thinks we're religious crackpots who can't separate religion and politics and are a nation taking huge steps backward instead of forward. To this, I say that England really has no one to blame but themselves, as America was founded by religious crackpots escaping persecution and continued to grow as Europe dumped their unwanted in the New World. (Yet another reason why the Republicans' villeinage of immigrants is also hypocritical: we were all in their shoes at one time or another.) But I also say to them, don't worry. We're not all right-wing crackpots. Michelle Bachmann's campaign is crumbling because people realize that having a racist homophobe for a president is soooo 1847, and Rick Perry's polling numbers are plummeting because, well, he started to talk and people realized he is an idiot.
It may seem like a stretch that I went from a Kardashian divorce to a rail against the right-wing, but the way I see it, if gay people aren't allowed to get married in order to protect the sanctity of marriage, then Kim shouldn't be allowed to get married (and divorced) twice before the age of 31. It also may be embarrassing that the Kardashians are so obscenely famous for contributing absolutely nothing to society, and it may be embarrassing to witness the Tea Party from abroad, but the fact that I can say my peace about the situation and not be punished for it is a beautiful thing. God bless America.
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