Better Things to Do
If you’re an American Citizen (like I am), then you know that our government makes some bad, but not-entirely arbitrary decisions about who is allowed to work in this country. It also makes some entirely arbitrary decisions about who is allowed the full participation in the human condition. Until yesterday, for instance, gay people could not openly serve in the military. Today they can. What the Federal government does not allow, however, is a recognition of marriage between two adults who are of the same gender. If your spouse happens to have been born in another country, the United States Government is going to give you a whole lot of arbitrary problems.
I spent yesterday looking for an LGBT friendly immigration lawyer. This was rather emphatically not my job. Finding a private lawyer for someone (so they can sue the government!) is not (as far as I know) the job of any State or Federal employee. But I am a human being, and I was dealing with another human being, and he was in pain. What the hell else would be the moral course of action?
Making arbitrary distinctions among citizens is assuredly and literally the opposite of the proper function of government. Government’s proper function is to find equitable distributions of scarce resources. Love is not a scarce resource! Being straight, gay, or bi, or trans, or queer, or questioning, or terrific… these are not scarce resources. Indeed, to think of these qualities as “resources” is to radically misunderstand the term.
Where is the upside to all this regulation and red tape? We’re making productive citizens less productive. In some cases, we’re turning away would be citizens all together. This is governmental madness. We need to fix it.
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