John Boehner's At it Again, But What Else is New?

Over-compensation. That's all I'm sayin'. 

Here we go. Once again, John Boehner is pretty much begging the Supreme Court to find DOMA Constitutional. The good news is he's lost FOUR times in a row now in the federal courts. I guess this is his last ditch effort at trying to prove a point. I invite the delightful gentleman to try. However, before I get too deep into this, I'd like to explain a few terms for the readers among us who aren't familiar with United States politics.

DOMA is the Defense of Marriage Act, which basically says that if you're gay and get married in a place like New York which allows gay marriage and you move to somewhere like Georgia where it's considered unconstitutional, Georgia is not legally required to recognize a same-sex union. It also defines marriage as between one man and one woman on a national level. That means no tax benefits for us. Yippee. 

Now then, John Boehner is the current majority leader in the United States House of Representatives. That makes him the Speaker of the House-the head honcho if you will. He is also a conservative and the biggest pain in the ass this side of the Mississippi when it comes to LGBT rights. And just for the record here, his name is pronounced "bay-ner." I get a lot more satisfaction, personally, calling him plain old "boner." Immature? Perhaps. 

That mallet is just too hard to look away from....

The United States Supreme Court is one which is petitioned to hear literally thousands of cases per year. There has to be at least 5 of the 9 judges willing to hear the case in order to, well, hear it. I firmly believe that they will choose to hear the DOMA case for one reason and one reason alone: civil rights. Sure, we LGBT folk aren't exactly segregated. We can hide our sexual preferences a little bit easier than our skin color. That doesn't make our issues any less important and I'll tell you why. 

Our basic rights are violated on a daily basis.  John Locke said that every man is entitled to "Life, liberty and property." Thomas Jefferson tweaked that a little when writing the Declaration of Independence to say "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The intent was the same. When open or "out" members of the LGBT community walk down the street, they're subject to an array of violations on these three basic principals. 

Life: Men, women and children are bullied to the brink of suicide. Some are even murdered. There goes civil liberty numero uno. 

Liberty: Some would see us stripped of our rights. Hell, they're already trying to completely take marriage away from us. If they succeed, what do you think will be next? That electric fence that the North Carolinian preacher wants us so desperately to live in?

Property/Pursuit of Happiness: This one's a bit tricky. Are gay and lesbian couples often denied apartments, housing loans, etc just on the basis of their sexual orientation? Absolutely. Honestly, it doesn't really happen enough to make a huge impact, though. We're certainly not rioting on the streets-picket signs in one hand and pitch forks in the other-demanding equal housing. 

Is it weird that a lesbian is fascinated by a hate monger's giant gavel?

It could easily be argued that the infamous pursuit of happiness means freedom. Our freedoms are stripped from us daily. The sad thing is just happens to be that we don't even realize it. It's like slowly turning the heat up on a boiling frog; you gradually increase the heat so he doesn't jump out. That's a weird analogy. Let me try it this way: we don't realize we're abnormal until society shoves it in our face and screams that we're abnormal. Queue freaked out frog. Once society decides what the majority thinks is "right" the rest of us minorities are shoved in the back of the room, ignored. 

It's terrifying to me to think that people like John Boehner would rather ignore issues like education and the continuously tanking economy and focus on same-sex marriage. Are you serious? Do we disgust you that much? Is your faith so important to you that you would go out of your way to make other human lives miserable? Do you realize how hypocritical that makes you? Geez, it makes me want to glitter bomb people and flip tables everywhere I go.

I've gotten a bit long-winded with this one, so I'll leave you with this: John Boehner is a coward. He's trying to distract people from the real issues at hand by shoving the blame in another direction. The Supreme Court will never find blatant discrimination Constitutional. That's just asinine.