What a day.

From the news:

The State of Georgia is removing the word, "evolution," from all it's school's textbooks citing that it is, "a buzzword that causes a lot of negative reactions."

Coming from a state that maintained the Confederate Cross in its state flag until 2001, the show of concern over negative reaction rings just a bit hollow. Maybe it's just me.

Okay. Fine. You don't want to offend. I want the words "God," and "Jesus," and "Christian," and "religion," removed from all textbooks as well. I know those words cause a negative reaction in me. This is ludicrous. What are they going to replace it with? Darwin's theory of "shit happens?"

In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Brandy McKenith, aged seven, was suspended from school for saying the word, "hell." Now, she was speaking from a religious viewpoint, and when a classmate of hers said "I swear to God," Brandy told them that it was a swear and not to say that otherwise she would, " . . .go to hell."

Now, um, wait.

Okay, the little girl has been brainwashed by her Christian parents. She was spouting religious convictions at school, and we all know how I feel about that, but c'mon!

Prime Time television is satiated with the word, and I'm not even talking about after the good old FCC cut-off time of ten p.m. Any episode of almost any sitcom can produce the word, "Hell." And you know what? They're not even using it in the biblical sense. So, when a little girl repeats a word that the bible uses over and over and over again, she gets suspended?

I think old Brandy should have told them to, "Fuck off."

Are we so afraid that we let syllables injure us? Unless it's super-sonic or piercing or of a decible level incable of being produced by the human voice, they're not injurous.

And last, but certainly not least, this:

The path has been cleared by the Supreme Judicial Court for same-sex marraiges in the state of Massachusetts. Ruling that there is, ". . . no rational basis for prohibiting same-sex couples from the benefits of marraige . . ." provided by state law, the path has been cleared for gay marraiges as soon as May of this year.

But if you think that that is the last word on the subject, you're kidding yourself.

"The court has overstepped its boundary and has not let the legislative process to unfold (sic) the way it has on other issues," said state Representative Eugene O'Flaherty.

Um, overstepped its boundaries how exactly? By ruling on constitutional law? By prohibiting discrimination? By stating that religious beliefs did not fall within the context of "rational?" (Well, maybe that last was a little over the line, but it's true, so the line is subjective. Religious adherents only will define it one way. And typically, its a very narrow definition.)

Representative O'Flaherty has vowed to initiate a call for an amendment to the State's constitution to outlaw gay unions. It wouldn't even get a vote until 2006.

With Bush's vow to take action if courts continued to overstep their bounds on this issue pending, how long can it be before we see the fallout on this?

And one other thing. Politicians have avoided the "legislative process," on this issue like the fucking plague. Well, now they're going to have to finally take sides, aren't they?

Me, I'm grinning like a madman at that prospect.

I hope beyond all reason to hope that this county hasn't slid so far into one narrow viewpoint that it's willing to write discrimination into the Constitution.

But if they did, then at least Georgia could reintegrate the Confederate Cross into its flag.

Joseph Haines, signing off from The Edge of the Abyss.