Screw Ken, Barbie wants same-sex marriage

I say good for Archie comics. In the recent Life with Archie #16, a soldier, Kevin Keller, serving in Iraq gets injured. While recovering at a hospital, he meets and falls in love with an African-American male doctor. The two tie the knot and grace the cover of the comic. This is not the same Archie I grew up with. Jughead was a moron, Veronica was nasty, and Archie always got into trouble for being generally quite stupid. All those silly Republican candidates down in the US seem to take every opportunity to promote marriage as being “only between a man and a woman” – I say give them a copy of Life with Archie to read between debates. I doubt it’ll change their minds but it’s worth it to see how offended they’d be.

While the acceptance of same-sex marriage is beyond what many politicians’ and plenty of average dull normals would deem as morally OK, I was pleasantly surprised to see that this stuff can be addressed with young children. Leave it to a ten year-old to take the moral high ground and see same-sex marriage as simply a matter of respecting human rights. Period.

Hit the road, Ken.

Back in December, the local Amnesty International group held an essay and art context to celebrate International Human Rights Day. I helped judge the entries from Greendale Elementary. After picking winners in each category, my Amnesty colleague showed me an entry from a fifth grade girl. It was a large maquette filled with Barbies holding signs advocating for equal rights. There was the right not to be discriminated against because of colour (that was a Black Barbie holding up the sign, and she basically looked a lot like the white Barbie, including the ridiculously impossible measurements that defy reason), the right to be treated equally as a woman, and – my favourite – two Barbies expressing their right to marry each other. “We have absolute right to marry each other!” read the sign between the lovestruck dolls, a heart with an arrow drawn just below the words. They certainly looked happy. I say good for the youth of today, who seem to have no trouble understanding that when two people love each other and want to marry, they can. It’s a simple as that.

The artist of the Barbie maquette won in the newly-created Outstanding Art category.

Update: The Pope says that gay marriage undermines “the future of humanity itself.” As if I needed another reason not to believe in religion.