8 is H8

I was strolling through West Hollywood the other day when I came across a license plate that read, "8 IS H8." Now, for those of you who don't know, West Hollywood is a supremely gay neighborhood, like Chelsea in New York City, and the 8 on the license plate was referring to Prop 8, the proposition in California that prevents homosexuals from getting married. And for those of you who are retarded, this license plate was expressing the fact that Prop 8 is hateful, hence the "H8." This made me think of two things:

1. It reminded me of how fervently I despise personalized license plates, or "vanity" plates, as they're otherwise known, and more aptly, I must say, because if you have one, you are vain and a douchebag. I mean, the lengths that these people go to to try to express something that's neither funny nor clever is mind-boggling. So many of these plates are entirely incomprehensible because so many of the letters essential to literacy are missing. You know what, if the one you wanted was already taken, move on, man. It's clearly not that original anyway.

Here are some recent winners:

"4 G-MA." I'm sure Grandma is really proud.

"SCPRNCS." It took me a minute too, but then I remembered I live in Southern California where people actually think USC is a good school. It's SC Princess. Yes. I know.

"SPRFCL." Superficial, of course, though it should stand for super-fecal, because you are a piece of shit for putting this on your car.

"BORJWAH." This one just enraged me when I saw it. I was behind this person at a light, and wanted to get out of my car, rip their plate off, and beat them in the face with it like Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz beats Nazis with a baseball bat in Inglourious Basterds. I looked up "bourgeois" just to have some fun with this, and it said, "middle-class," or "dominated by materialistic pursuits." Wow. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Finally, I have to confess, I did see one that I actually liked one time. I remember it like it was yesterday. There I was, on one of LA's crowded freeways, when I see a license plate that's clearly personalized, but too ridiculous to figure out: "FTBKPSY." My blood immediately begins to boil as I pull up alongside this heathen to see what kind of mental midget wastes her time and money on such an indecipherable public display. And there she was, in all her glory, an obese black chick, with long acrylic nails, shiny sunglasses, happy as hell, singing her ass off. And all at once, it hit me. Her license plate stood for . . . FaT BlacK PuSsY. Amazing. And I love her for showing me that even stupid things can be done well from time to time.

2. But I digress. Back to 8 IS H8. The second thing it made me realize, though I didn't want to admit that it had this impact on me because I want to discourage vanity plates, is that it reminded me of how infuriating the whole Prop 8 issue is. Eight really is hate! It's kind of crazy when you think about it. Prop 8 is a hate crime perpetrated by the government, that specifically targets and discriminates against them homosexyal types (that's not a typo; I'm just being a jackass because I feel like that's how a bigot would say it). Any other acts that discriminate against people for being members of a specific group, based on race, or sexuality, or gender, or religion, among other things, are considered hate crimes.

So why isn't Proposition 8 a hate crime? Oh, wait, because in the bible, that was written, and repeatedly revised, by man, God said being gay is bad. I forgot. My bad. God, who, if you actually read the bible, you'd know would be serving several consecutive life sentences for all of his innumerable hate crimes, said being gay is bad. It's absurd! I actually had (tried to, at least) a conversation with someone who vehemently opposed gay marriage. When I asked her why, she said, "because, well, what's next? People can marry their pets?!" And I said, "actually, that probably wouldn't bother me either, as long as they weren't sexually molesting their pets, but how about we just limit marriage to HUMAN BEINGS!" In her defense, she actually did get really quiet and said, "I hadn't thought of that."

Then again, what do I know? I'm just a Jew who's going to hell because I haven't accepted Jesus Christ as my lord and savior. Religion wins again.