Just legalize everything

This sudden spate of liberal legislation feels surreal. This newspaper has been advocating for the gay community, legalization of marijuana, increased taxes on foreign-owned businesses (like corporate casinos and mining), and a path to citizenship for immigrants for as long as we can remember.

Unfortunately, because we’ve also been advocating civil disobedience in the case of marijuana legalization, we can’t really remember when that started, but trust us, we were for common sense reform of fascist laws long before anyone else thought the idea was cool.

However, since none of this stuff—pot legalization, gay marriage legalization, mine tax reform or immigration reform—has actually passed, please allow us to add our voice to the freedom-loving cacophony.

Nevada should join Colorado and Washington in making recreational use of marijuana legal. At the very least, this state should make it easy for sick people to get their medicine. Reno should be prepared for the land planning issues of dispensaries, and we should go these other states one better and create a reciprocal agreement that enables card-carrying individuals to consume their medicine here, and people who are state-recognized medical marijuana producers elsewhere should be able to sell their produce here. It’s good business, good civic planning and good karma to help sick people.

People should be able to marry who they want. That seems obvious. After the Supreme Court enjoyed the oral … arguments … on the topic last week, it also seems as though that court is unwilling to make sweeping changes to the laws of the land. We’ll know soon enough, but we were also disappointed that one argument near and dear to our hearts wasn’t made. In the Nevada Constitution the prohibition reads like this: “Only a marriage between a male and female person shall be recognized and given effect in this state.” Shouldn’t this sentence at least be modified to include non-hermaphroditic men and women? Something like “Only a marriage between two people shall be recognized and given effect in this state”? How much more logical can we be, for pity’s sake? If we’re going to restrict definitions, it seems clear we should restrict the meaning of “person” to mean one individual. And that’d also proactively prohibit polygamy (although to be truthful, we’re not altogether sure that polygamy should be forbidden among people older than 18).

As far as a path to citizenship, again, we’re only looking for reason. Why isn’t there a statute of limitations for illegal immigration? In the vast majority of cases, these individuals that the haters among us want to send away have never been formally accused of a crime. All other things aside, aren’t people with a demonstrated ability to be law-abiding citizens the very people we want at the front of the line? If the law was broken when they illegally passed into this country, can’t we accept that after seven years, enough time has passed in a common law definition of statute of limitations? In other words, you may have demonstrably broken the speed limit seven years ago, but nobody would say it is just to cite you now.

Finally, with regard to the mines. No business deserves a constitutionally established exception to being responsible citizens. Nevada has been treated as a colony to railroads, corporations and foreign-owned mining interests long enough. We want corporations who treat our land like a $2 whore to pay their $2.