A few days ago, CNET.com posted an editorial about the founder of WordPerfect and his donation of a million dollars to support California’s Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage.  I couldn’t help but think of the Barenaked Ladies’ song “If I Had A Million Dollars,” in which the Canadian ban muse about what they would buy or do with that large sum of money.  While I don’t think I’d be as carefree with a million bucks as BNL, I sure as heck wouldn’t spend it trying to deny people the right to get married.  The way I see, Joe and Tim or Lisa and Anna wanting to get married has no bearing on my life whatsoever.  In fact, I’d probably congratulate them for finding someone with whom they want to live for the rest of their lives. It saddened me to think that someone with a million dollars to spare donated that money to a deny people a chance at (legally) being together, which, if you think about it, is a ridiculous “proposition” in the first place.  What right does the government (or anyone, for that matter) have to tell me or anyone else who they can and can’t love?  Now, religious institutions are a different story.  But marriage, in the eyes of the law, shouldn’t be about sex or gender.  It’s about paperwork and taxes and insurance.  So what if it’s Michael or Michelle?  Alex or Alexis?  On paper, “Chris” marrying “Chris” could be a man and woman, two men, or two women.  On paper, does it really matter?

Reading that article also got me thinking about what could have been done with that wasted (yup, I think it was wasted) million dollars.  Instead of promoting a silly ban on something the government shouldn’t be allowed to regulate in the first place, that money could have (among other ideas):

– funded more cancer and AIDS research;

– given many underprivileged high school students a chance to attend college;

– fed hundreds of families in third world countries;

– helped out some homeless in this very country;

– helped get some struggling citizens out of a financial bog;

– funded research toward alternative and/or renewable energy sources;

– pumped back into the economy to help the US get back on its feet;

– helped me buy a house, settle my debts, treat my parents to something nice, and put a little away for a rainy day.

But all those ideas are hypothetical, of course.  It was Alan Ashton’s money to do with as he saw fit.  He and I have very different views…and even more vastly different bankrolls (that he even has a bankroll is the primary difference.  I just with he would have used that money for a more constructive cause.

(Oh yeah…and WordPerfect?  Who uses that program any more?  Can’t say I miss having those little templates over my keyboard telling me what Shift-F7, Ctrl-F4, or Alt-F11 did.)