Awareness and Solidarity

The topic of gay marriage came to the Supreme Court the other day and I was greeted by a bombardment of images of pink equals signs on red backgrounds. It's a valid gripe, no group (moral authoritarian heterosexuals) has the right to bully on the minority (homosexuals who wish to get married) to force a specific definition of a term. Any reasonable person, I think, can understand this. Despite this though, I found myself getting extremely annoyed by the number of folks posting the equals signs in show of support.

Since it's popularity, I believe in the 90s (please correct me if I'm wrong), I've always been bothered by such symbolic acts of compassion. I think celebrities started doing it at various awards shows. Now the NFL has their players wearing pink shoes for breast cancer awareness (ridiculous). Please don't misunderstand me, the causes are valid. I'm NOT shitting on the cause. I'm shitting on the "notice me, I care about the boobies, I'm aware!" vibe that the whole act gives off. Does this affect anything thing. Does this make anyone feel any better because we're all sitting being aware and telling the world we are.

For those that don't do such outward acts, do they have less compassion? Are they heartless? Do they wish to see the Troops suffer, or more children with autism wander aimless and erratically with no care and support?

If a politician doesn't wear a flag on his/her lapel, are they un-American? (I think that came up a few years ago in the news, as a legit topic...no joke).

Priorities...
Another thing that sort of bugged me about yesterday's group histrionics (if you will) are the priorities of many of those that posted their equals signs up. Again, not shitting on the issue, it's a valid one, and I sympathize and support the cause. But one might assume that this is the most grave and serious issue facing the country at this point if they had logged into my Facebook page, from what I witnessed. Of all the shit, the scandal, the theft, the violent imperialism abroad, the continued infringements of rights, this is the one that gets most attention. This is obviously because the media chooses to hype up such controversy as it pretends to make the two political parties, outwardly seem different. And like a poorly informed and over sensitive populous, we feed into and hyper focus on just one injustice. (Why weren't people pissed off when the president legalized assassinations on American citizens? Everyone sort of STFU'd on that one, prolly not as cool to bust on Obama - um, not a conspiracy theory either.)

So, as everyone gleefully, and maybe impulsively threw up an (cool) equals to demonstrate their deep caring and sensitivity, some questions seem to have been lost in all of this. Why are we arguing this in the first place? (in other words) What is the origin of our government's restrictive marriage laws? Would taking the government out of the marriage business hurt anyone, or might it be a simple way to find common ground in an overly yet understandably divisive topic?

God forbid people mind their own business and let others live their own lives without a government dictating what is or isn't proper.