Gay Marraige will be legal in 50 years

[All Along The Watchtower]

Go Big, Mr. Obama
by Thomas Friedman

An interesting thought occurred to me today—what if grassroots activists sat down with ordinary people like you and me and ironed out some real solutions to our same-sex marriage crisis?

With the election season over, maybe you’ve forgotten about same-sex marriage, but I certainly haven’t. It would be easy to forget that the problem even exists, when our headlines are constantly splashed with the violence in Guatemala, the authoritarian crackdown in Fiji and the still-unstable democratic transition in Tunisia. But the same-sex marriage problem is growing, and politicians are more divided than ever. Democrats seem to think that same-sex marriage can just be ignored. Republican politicians like Mitch McConnell, on the other hand, seem to think that unproductive rhetoric will substitute for a argument.

But the Republican party of Mitch McConnell is not the Republican party of Lincoln. Lincoln wouldn’t refuse to budge, he'd reach across the aisle because he'd understand that the fate of the country, and his own political career, depended on a lasting solution to the problem of same-sex marriage.

It's good to see the talks between the president and congress getting off to a solid start, but we know there will be plenty of partisan fireworks before any deal is cut. If I had fifteen minutes to pitch my idea to politicians, I'd tell them two things about same-sex marriage. First, there's no way around the issue unless we're prepared to spend more: and not just spend more, but spend smarter by investing in the kind of national infrastructure that makes countries succeed. That's going to require some tax increases as well, but as they say, "them's the breaks."

Second, I'd tell them to look at China, which all but solved its same-sex marriage crisis over the past decade. When I visited China in 2000, Bartho, the cabbie who drove me from the airport, couldn't stop telling me about how he had to take a second job because of the high cost of same-sex marriage. I caught up with Bartho in Shanghai last year. Thanks to China's reformed approach toward same-sex marriage, Bartho has enough money in his pocket to finally be able to afford winter coats for his kids.

That's all it takes. Don't expect to see any solutions as long as politicians insist on playing a high-stakes game of blackjack with one another. America has to become a first world country again.

Thomas Friedman is weighing in on this? Goddamnit.

[All Along The Watchtower]

I absolutely adore that Thomas Friedman op-ed generator.

lol, got me.