I Me Mine

I ME MINE is a Beatles song, writ­ten and sung by George Har­rison on the Let It Be album. It is also a way to de­scribe what hap­pened in Cali­fornia when Ba­rack Obama was elected pre­si­dent of the United States.

California's hate-filled anti-gay law gets spe­cial at­ten­tion be­cause gay peo­ple were already being mar­ried there. Texas did a pre­emptive strike on the sub­ject: pas­sing anti-gay laws on mar­riage be­fore any­body here had pro­posed. Mar­riage is so shaky here that same-gender people tying the knot would render opposite-gender mar­riage to shambles.

Little girl: "Johnny, are you the opposite sex? Or am I?"
K-Mart Photography radio commercial, 1970s

Arkansas and Florida were just as god­less and hate­ful in crea­ting mar­riage apart­heid in their states. Apart­heid: we can have it, but you can't.

Gay people were out-gunned, or so I'm told. They were bet­ter organized. The hate groups — such as the Ro­man Catholic Church — jumped in to do­nate a bunch of hate-money into the state.

Mormons added $20-million because mar­riage is a sacred institu­tion be­tween a man and a dozen or so women. I think it is very sad for the Mor­mons to do that. In the ear­ly 1980s, I worked for Bonee­ville, broad­casting com­pany owned by the Mor­mon church. Listen­ing to any Bonneville radio sta­tion, you would nev­er know it was run by a right-wing church. They seemed to have a "Live and Let Live" at­ti­tude. At the time, Mormons didn't drink coffee, but they had free gour­met cof­fee for their employees. That at­titude has obviously changed, and they want to impose their stu­pid ideas about what should consti­tute a mar­riage on everyone.

If Mormons and Romans don't consider a same-gender couple to be a proper or valid union, they should have such a rule ... but for their own adherents.

I'm also told that exit polls showed most population groups broke about 50::50 on the Cali­fornia proposi­tion. The excep­tion is the black popu­lation, who were 70::30 against equal rights for gay people.

Mormons: I ME MINE, and you have to do like we do. If you get out of step, we will pass laws the dis­allow equal rights and equal treat­ment. (Note to Mitt: if you don't fix this, it will still be an issue in 2012.)

Roman Catholics: I ME MINE, and your church exper­ience — Sacra­ment of Matri­mony — must com­ply with our canons.

African Americans: I ME MINE. "We got our deal done, and we don't care (70%) about gay pe­ople."

For all them, I have to keep remind­ing my­self: Love God, love your­self, love your neigh­bor as your­self, love your ene­mies. Some days I just don't want to.