Who Do You Love?

Let's start with the ironic parts. Like the fact that the Georgia legislature refers to their amended bill as "religious freedom." House Bill 757 Pastor Protection Act, which would enable religious leaders to refuse to perform same-sex marriages, and the First Amendment Defense Act, which critics have said would allow tax-funded groups to deny services to gays and lesbians. While the "protection" is apparent in this amended bill, it's hard to find the freedom. I suppose the hard-working lawmakers in Georgia are concerned that pastors, along with other officiants, need to have someone looking out for them when it comes time to deny those men or women who have the bad taste to show up in the wrong couplings and ask to be married. They don't want to be in trouble with the government of the federal kind because they didn't perform a gay wedding. Freedom, as we are reminded by Rhodes scholar Kris Kristofferson, is just another word for nothin' left to lose but still doesn't fully make sense out of this.

And then there's that ongoing friction between intent and outcome. Republicans, who brought this steaming pile of legislation to the fore, are the party of small government. They would, they say, like it if Government stayed out of their people's business as much as possible. Except when it comes to things like who dates whom and gets married to whom and may eventually have grownup decisions to make like wills and mortgages together. Especially on the off chance that it has anything to do with sex which is exactly the kind of thing that Republicans have shown an overpowering willingness to toss aside that whole church and state thing to ensure that men and women continue to have separate bathrooms and pastors are protected. You know, courageous stuff.

Who will do battle with these forces? How about some super heroes? Marvel and Disney, which amount to a good two-thirds of all the entertainment dollars flowing in and out of our economy, have announced that the passage of such a law will cause their great big beast of a company to cease to do business in Georgia. Who needs a bunch of grown men in tights running around saving the made up world from invading space aliens? Well, the Georgia Film Commission, for one. All those Hollyweird dollars would really go a long way to helping move that state's slumping economy along with the jobs that would be created could be a game-changer. That's what a boycott does. It stops money. The stuff that has "In God We Trust" written all over it. Curious how this all starts to come together, isn't it?

Ultimately, haters gotta hate, which is kind of discouraging. But the good news is this: lovers gotta love, and I love me some super heroes. You know, in that platonic men in tights kind of way that would still be legal even in Georgia.