Appropriate Responses

Over the weekend, I had to take Hunter to his guitar lesson, where he learns the answers to such timeless musical questions as, which metal riffs played over and over endlessly at maximum volume in the basement, are most pleasing to my parents' ears?

At the bottom of our hill, at a big intersection, were about 30-40 people, spread out on all four corners, holding "Yes on 8" signs.  Proposition 8, here in California, would if passed outlaw gay marriage.  You know, to protect "real" marriage, between a man and a woman, with a 50% divorce rate, with the ability to dump a plain first wife if she is sick and get a new rich glamorous wife, the way the Lord intended.

These people looked normal enough, although I consider them bigots who ought to know better.  Just because gay sex is dirty, it's no dirtier than straight sex.  As Woody Allen once was asked, is sex dirty?  His reply: if you do it right it is.  Anyway as I've said recently, I think most of these people just are afraid of gay people, just like they were afraid of black people years ago (or still are).  Does this give them the right to say who can marry?  Even if their "good book" supposedly tells them homosexuality is an abomination?  No. No.  No.  Nein, danke.  We have a little thing in this country called separation of church and state, and that means, to me, in a very basic way, that if the defense of a law is because the Lord says so, then that law is to be struck down.  Which, even if the proposition passes, the California Supreme Court will do, again, if there's any justice.

Well.  As Hunter and I drove by, I complained aloud to him that there was no good way to express one's disapproval with the views the sign-holders were advocating.  Honking, of course, is interpreted as support.  "I could spit on them," Hunter offered helpfully, although there was no denying the tone in his voice -- spitting on people with the approval of one's stepdad would be cool.  No, no, I intoned schoolmarmishly, I do not approve of spitting on people, even if on some karmic level they deserve it.  With any luck, Jesus will spit on them in heaven.

But what could we have done?  Yelled at them? I didn't have a sense of what would be appropriate.  If we opened our windows and booed, it wouldn't have been very loud, and might well have been interpreted as cheering for Kevin Youkilis or Bruce Springsteen.  Maybe we could have stuck out our tongues (see Fig 1) but they might not have noticed.  Perhaps the old Bronx cheer?

None of the above occurred to me until it was too late.  So, I just stewed impotently as I drove away, like usual.  Quite the example for young master Hunter.