Rick Santorum has been whinging about the recent California Supreme Court decision to legalise same-sex marriage:

The California judges also ruled, for the first time in American legal history, that sexual orientation is just like race.

The California court just declared that those of us who see marriage as the union of husband and wife are the legal equivalent of racists. And openly racist groups and individuals can be denied government benefits because of their views, including professional licenses (attorney, physicians, psychiatrists, marriage counselors), accredited schools, and tax-exempt status for charities. Have fun with the rest.

So, he’s upset that the Roman Catholic Church (and others, obviously) will be subject to legal sanctions if it continues to spread anti-gay hate speech. How sad for it. If the RC Church was openly racist, it would be subject to these sanctions; as it is openly homophobic it should be too. While we’re at it, why not force it to be an equal-opportunities employer, too — where are all the female priests?

Bigotry is not okay just because your God says it is.

So, if you hadn’t heard, the Californian Supreme Court recently overturned a law that banned same-sex marriage as unconstitutional, deeming any law that restricted the rights of homosexual couples to marry to be discriminatory. This is frankly excellent news, as apparently it’s inspired several other states to attempt the same thing.

The utterly predictable reaction of the conservative religious lot, of course, was to rant and rave about the need to protect the sanctity of marriage and defend the family and so on (incidentally, one of the bills attempting to make same-sex marriage legal, in Minnesota, was entitled the "Marriage and Family Protection Act" — oh, the irony). A fun quote from some conservative nutjob: "No matter how you stretch California’s Constitution, you cannot find anywhere in its text, its history or tradition that now, after so many years, it magically protects what most societies condemn," says Mathew Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel. Well, sorry, but a) the fact that most societies condemn it doesn’t make it wrong, and b) the fact that it hasn’t been interpreted specifically as protecting gay people in the past doesn’t mean that it doesn’t — or do you expect it to explicitly list every single group who’re entitled to equal rights? (I’d suggest that California’s constitution may be old enough not to explicitly list women and black people as deserving of rights, and ask if that means they should be considered inferior, but I’m worried he’d say yes.)

Then it hit me. Racist groups like the BNP say that it’s not that they hate people who aren’t white — it’s just that they want to help white people, to defend them in the face of the rampaging hordes of illegal immigrants (and legal ones, and people whose grandparents moved to England in the Fifties, and so on). Homophobic groups like the Catholic Church [1] say that it’s not that they hate gay people, it’s just that they want to protect straight people’s right to get married, and have all sorts of legal and financial benefits (if I remember correctly, married couples in the US get something like 1,000 different benefits that unmarried couples aren’t entitled to).

Bigotry is all the same, no matter who it’s directed at. Hopefully, one day people will learn to keep their neuroses to themselves, and allow the rest of us to live our lives without paying attention to what their imaginary friend tells them.

George Takei (Mr. Sulu in Star Trek, for those of you who don’t know…) responds to homophobic comments by some basketball player:

…I want you to know…that despite your ugly words, we don’t hate you. As a matter of fact, we like you. We like you very much.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Hgg_qsU-8E

Incidentally, I found it rather amusing to see the number of male commenters who had to clarify their "this video rocks!" messages with "but I’m completely straight!". Insecure much?

I meant to post this last night, but forgot. It’s a letter written a few years ago by Thomas Bushnell, explaining why homophobia isn’t like racism.

It’s on his LiveJournal, here.

(Actually, read more of his blog, there’s quite a bit of good philosophical stuff there.)