Need a reminder?

SAN FRANCISCO - A girl in pigtails bounds into the kitchen after school and asks her mother to guess what she learned that day. "I learned how a prince married a prince, and I can marry a princess," she exclaims to her mortified mom.

This television advertisement for a ballot initiative that would ban same-sex marriage in California urges voters to "protect children" by approving the measure.

There's not a word about education in Proposition 8, but what public schools will be required to teach about same-sex marriage has emerged as the central issue in the campaign...

Go here for more, if you can stand it.

I knew there was a reason I, as a rule, avoided US "news." And again I ask, what is wrong with these people? I mean, I have the academic take. E.g., It's really about gender; people aren't worried about same-sex relationships per se. They're worried about how it disrupts the gender binary. But, that just doesn't help when I try to imagine why people spend so much time and money hating/fearing/discriminating against people whose lives don't really affect them at all. Maybe these people - and those like the woman in the video over at Moved to Vancouver - just have to focus on something besides their lives. Maybe they're so freaked out about health care, the economy, mortgages, and so on that it gives them something to keep them distracted. All I know is that they piss me off.