October 15, 2004

Rocked my vote

I sat down last night and filled in the little bubbles on my ballot like I was taking the SATs all over again, but in this case I got to choose the answers. And my answers are right, damnit! I was glad to get it out of the way (and I wanted to be sure it'd have time to get to Oregon before the deadline), so now it's just fingers crossed that Bush is booted out and that the Oregon constitution isn't admended to exclude gays from marriage. Those are my two biggest worries of what their outcomes will be.

In the process of voting last night, I was reading the voters' pamphlet and there was a series of ranting religious arguments in favour of the gay marriage issue, Measure 36. My ire was just starting to rise when I realized that they were actually taking the piss out of your typical right-wing, conservative, Christian, anti-gay statement. The series of four arguments were written by a certain M. Dennis Moore, representing such imaginary groups as "The Beaver State Defense of Beaver Coalition" and the "Traditional Prejudices Coalition". In connection, there is a similarly tongue-in-cheek website (of course) at oregondogma.org. Actually, I see now that the website is run by a group called the Special Righteousness Committee that apparently "has been placing satirical, tongue-in-cheek 'Arguments in Favor' of religious-right ballot measures in the official Oregon Voters' Pamphlet since 1992." I'm guessing from the year (and their name) that they were spurned to action by Measure 9, which sought to stop gays from having any "special rights" (because they get tons of perks, you know). Anyway, check out the website. There are links at the top where you can read each of the arguments that the group placed in the voters' pamphlet.