Friends of Ours: Gay Marriage

06/21/2011

Hollywood Actor Takes Child Bride

Doug Hutchison, the 51-year-old Hollywood actor whose film and TV credits include The Green Mile, Lost and 24, apparently betrothed 16-year-old aspiring country star Courtney Alexis Stodden at a Las Vegas ceremony last month, and their wedding photo has been splashed on news sites all over the world wide web.

Frankly, I'm among the many cynics populating the comment threads to this story who are incredulous about the bride's minor status and the marriage itself, and dismiss it as a publicity stunt akin to the balloon boy. Indeed, why release such a story unless the aim is publicity? At a time when celebrity is its own goal which can be achieved without underlying merit, this pair may even outdo Lady Gaga for becoming famous by offering nothing more than calculated and feigned outrageousness. I don't want to see President Obama's birth certificate; rather, I want to see the bride's birth certificate and the purported happy couple's marriage certificate. The pair may have pulled off the media hoax of 2011.

However, assuming it's all true, how on God's green earth can a 16-year-old girl -- someone not even qualified to vote and just old enough to drive -- marry a 51-one-year-old man? In fact, most states allow child marriages with parental consent where the youngster is 16 or 17, and many states allow child marriages with judicial consent even where the youngster is under 16. I thought child brides were something that existed only in tribal villages across the Middle East, and yet in America a judicial imprimatur is available to approve them.

And yet a pair of sweet old men who have been together for 61 years are denied the right to marry over fears by others that they will somehow devalue the institution.

07:49 PM in Gay Marriage | Permalink

07/13/2010

Many Tea Party Members Support Court Ruling Striking Down Federal Ban On Gay Marriage

Although the likes of Keith Olbermann and Janeane Garofalo smugly attempt to marginalize the Tea Party movement by falsely stating that it is populated by anachronistic racists, homophobes and rednecks, the fact is that many actually are supportive of the recent U.S. District Court decision out of Massachusetts which struck down the federal ban on gay marriage -- signed into law by President Clinton and defended in court by President Obama, incidentally -- as reported by Sandhya Somashekhar for The Washington Post:

[M]any said they back the decision because it emphasizes the legal philosophy of states' rights. * * * "I do think it's a state's right," said Phillip Dennis, Texas state coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots. The group does not take a position on social issues, he said, but personally, "I believe that if the people in Massachusetts want gay people to get married, then they should allow it . . . ." * * * Everett Wilkinson, state director for the Florida Tea Party Patriots, agreed: "On the issue [of gay marriage] itself, we have no stance, but any time a state's rights or powers are encouraged over the federal government, it is a good thing." * * * Wilkinson said "several hundred" of the group's supporters are gay.

Indeed, perhaps expressly thinking of those ignorant fools Olbermann and Garofalo, Burns Strider wrote over at The Huffington Post that the Democrats have wrongly concluded that the Tea Party "folks must all be racist, conservative, backward crazies":

Polling has also showed that the majority of Tea Party activists do not think government should support any set of moral values or define marriage. And a sizable majority of Tea Party activists are pro-choice. Think about that. Most Tea Party members hold positions that, in our completely un-nuanced political speak, make them "pro-gay and pro-choice."

It's a shame that Olbermann and Garofalo never listened to Bob Dylan because as he sang in "The Times They Are A-Changin": "Don't criticize what you can't understand."