Olbermann on Proposition 8

Keith Olbermann doesn’t understand. He states as much in his diatribe response to the passage of California Proposition 8. Olbermann says:

If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or the sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not... understand. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don't want to deny you yours. They don't want to take anything away from you. They want what you want -- a chance to be a little less alone in the world.

Poor Keith.

What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn't marry?

There is no law that says that homosexuals can’t marry, that would violate the notion of equal protection under the law. The law says that a person cannot marry someone of the same sex. As such, it applies to all people.

If this country hadn't re-defined marriage, black people still couldn't marry white people. Sixteen states had laws on the books which made that illegal... in 1967. 1967.

Allowing black people to marry white people did not redefine marriage. It extended the benefits of marriage to a subset of people who should have had it to begin with. Marriage remained a union of one man and one woman. That is the key difference that makes Olbermann’s argument groundless.

Quote me anything from your religious leader or book of choice telling you to stand against this. And then tell me how you can believe both that statement and another statement, another one which reads only "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

I don’t like to be told that I’m wrong. Nobody does. But if I am wrong then making me aware of it and standing in the way of my wrong direction is exactly what I’d want someone to “do unto me”. This duality, this notion that making another person uncomfortable is a greater wrong than any you may perceive is precisely the weak-spined moral relativism that fosters the very “impermanence and fly-by-night relationships” that Keith bemoans near the opening of his editorial.