Jun4

The Marriage Amendment

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The Marriage Amendment

Coming up for a vote.  Soon.  They would have us believe.  All our fine lawmakers who cheat on their wives and marry and divorce multiple times are working hard to eliminate the scourge of same-sex committed couples.  The religious right would have us believe that allowing gay marriage would send us down a slippery slope – opening the floodgates to polygamy, and, horrors, interspecies marriage!  Yeah, right.  More likely, we’ll see a slippery slope in another, far more direct course.  Make gay marriage legally impossible, then make gay sex illegal, then make homosexuality illegal, and then you can work on making premarital sex illegal, (although our government bigwigs will draw the line at extramarital sex, since that would put a crimp in their own lifestyles!).  Bit by bit, this would allow them to impose a few more religion-based restrictions.  After making homosexuality illegal, you can then restrict other kinds of consensual sex.  After making homosexuals illegal, you can make other kinds of people illegal.  This drives me nuts.  OK, if you don’t want to call it marriage, fine.  Make a new kind of legal partnership that allows two people who love one another to share the legal benefits; not just health care, but dual parenthood, power of attorney, rights of inheritance, property rights, hospital visitation, etc.  All things that married people get for free, and even take for granted, which are available now to committed couples only if they want to spend years in court and tens of thousands of dollars on legal fees.  Committed couples raise children, and adopt children (taking them out of a horrible situation, in most cases – gay couples adopt hard to place children at a higher rate than straight couples.)  Committed couples purchase property, and improve that property, benefiting entire neighborhoods.  Committed couples invest in the quality of life in their towns, becoming involved in politics, associations, and volunteer organizations that do good works.  How restricting couples from making a commitment that results in more positives than negatives is viewed as a good thing just boggles my mind.  It’s a wholly personal-religion-based point of view that should not be allowed any basis in law. 

Jun3

Mission: Pond!

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Mission: Pond!

I spent pretty much the whole day working on the pond.  I spent part of that standing in the pond.  The fish are not afraid of the pond vacuum, or my legs.  I couldn’t get every bit of debris out, but I ended up replacing almost half the water, and getting out almost a gallon of goo.  Maybe more, since a lot of it was particles too small for the mesh bag to capture.  I’ve decided that next year, the vegetable garden is going closer to the pond outlet.  Heh.  I only hope that the pond water doesn’t make the vegetables smell like pond.

So now the fish can be seen, and they’ve been very amusing.  The 3 inch koi look like they’re almost 4 inches already.  It’s been only a week and some!  The shubunkins have been bullying them around – that situation will change soon enough, I’m sure.  Dennis, the biggest shubunkin, was chasing Kyle, Audrey’s koi, and Kyle jumped straight up out of the water and back in.  Those little guys are pretty fast.  They’ve all been ambushing each other from behind the plant pots, lying in wait behind them until another fish comes by, then darting out from between two pots.

And in other pet news, Toby’s off to the vet again.  The fur is coming off her head and neck in tufts, and the skin looks awful – and her chin is getting gross again.  The worst of it is that all this stuff is itchy, and she wants us to scratch it for her.  I love this cat, but. . .ewww.