A friend of mine posted this picture on social media last night. It's a picture I've seen before, and it's a damn fine question.
Whenever I see it, I think: You know, lots of straight people have had people try to "vote" on their marriages. A parent or in-law or friend who made egregious attempts to intervene in destructive ways because they didn't agree with one's choice of partner. And if it didn't happen to you, you probably know someone to whom it happened.
Everyone generally agrees (even the people who do it, if someone tries to do it to them) that's a shitty way to behave. Everyone generally understands it's annoying at best, and profoundly hurtful at worst.
And yet there are a lot of straight people who can't, or won't, consider what it feels like to have millions, MILLIONS, of strangers assert the right to do the same thing.
Well, virtually the same thing, except for how they get to cowardly hide inside a voting booth, instead of doing it right to the faces of the human beings whose rights they want to deny en masse.
On principle, I object to the idea of mob rule and empowering the tyranny of the majority by giving people the opportunity to vote on other people's rights. But also? I just straight-up call bullshit on straight people who claim a right to meddle in other people's relationships in a way most of us agree is abusive, when it's not done under the auspices of "democracy."
[Related Reading: Tweet of the Day; Quote of the Day; More on Maine.]
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