Why I Won't Support the Marriage Amendment

Are homosexuals really attacking the sanctity of marriage?  Are they taking something that is pure and holy and defiling it with sin?  Is it even possible to define what a marriage really is between two people since every relationship is different?

Well it's all a load of crap.  I'm a Roman Catholic so the teachings of my Church are that marriage is between one man and one woman until death do you part.  Yet the divorce rate in this country is around the 50% mark.  Even for Catholics, the divorce rate is still around 50%.  So what's the point?  Is it just a tag line to say that marriage is a holy sacrament?

And considering that most young people you meet are having casual sex long before they ever go down the aisle where is all this respect for heterosexual marriage?  Look at the statistics and you'll find that many people are waiting until they get older, out of college, and well into their career before even thinking about marriage.  It's just not as important as it used to be.

So what would an amendment do?  Make another empty declaration about how high we hold the sacrament of matrimony?  Our actions have spoken louder than that.  If we as Christians want people to respect marriage then we should start by respecting it ourselves.  Take divorce off the table as an option in your own life.  Stop fornicating and stop teaching your children to fornicate before they get married.  Marriage is a life-long, self-sacrificing commitment between a man and a woman, it's not a bumper sticker.

Return of the Gatekeepers

The entertainment companies will not stop until they have the power to shut down websites they don't like. Entertainment companies are running a failing business model and need a new way to prop it up. For 50 years TV companies could tell America what to watch and when to watch it. They reveled in that power.

You see, laws already exist to protect copyrighted content and have it permanently removed from websites. This new law is not designed to duplicate that. The new law would give the power to the entertainment companies to shut down entire websites instead of just removing any contested content. Why would they want to do this?

The big entertainment companies have lost control over what America watches because they are competing with a large volume of independently created content. They can't make you watch their content if you're watching something else.

When they have the power to shut down entertainment websites then they can use that leverage to force companies like YouTube into "profit-sharing agreements." These agreements will be not only to create new income streams but also to shape and manipulate what content is preferred and promoted without even having to pay for the advertising.

To bring it all home, the big picture here is not for the entertainment companies to control their own content but to control how and when and where you can access independently created content. This will return their status to the gatekeepers of American entertainment. Their purpose is to increase their own viewership with a business model mandated by the United States Government.