The battle over the federal law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman appears headed for the Supreme Court after an appeals court ruled Thursday that denying benefits to married gay couples is unconstitutional. In a unanimous decision, the three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston said the 1996 law deprives gay couples of the rights and privileges granted to heterosexual couples. The court didn’t rule on the law’s more politically combustible provision – that states without same-sex marriage cannot be forced to recognize gay unions performed in states where it’s legal. It also wasn’t asked to address whether gay couples have a constitutional right to marry.
Michelle and John, Andy and Steve, or Rebecca and Tiffany… Really, who gives a shit! Isn’t marriage to celebrate A commitment of love? Gay or Straight, it is an Exercise of legal acknowledgement. Social opinion wasn’t invited to the party!
This week, President Obama, publicly backed measures to acknowledge gay marriage. Congratufuckinglations!!! Finally, the President I voted for because I was told that he was the “most liberal Senator in U.S. History” finally, 3.5 years later, took a stance that was all the way to the left – so far that it made three left turns in the process, which in the end, has you headed in the right direction!
Immediately, the outrage started pouring in, generally all following a religious stance of how God doesn’t agree with Gays… blah blah blah… choke on a dick… blah blah blah blah… I spent a good part of my Thursday and Friday debating with a former classmate who was in the top 5% of our graduating class of one of the top 50 High Schools in the nation, a National recipient of the Blue Ribbon School of Excellence, a genius haven (for which I also attended), who academically excelled like very few, and for who, as a result of this cognitive ability to think, I would have hoped had different ways of processing the world. However, she played the religious card, and took the stance that gay people should not be married and were unfit to raise children, so much that this single wedge issue might dictate how she votes in the upcoming election
I am a straight male, married to a beautiful wife, and have two daughters. I am not personally affected by gay marriage at all. And, as a result, I, for the most part, completely mind my own business as to the decisions of others in regard to their sexual orientations. But when I see someone taking such a firm stance against a group, as the above referenced person has, I have to fight the battle for mankind running in the human race. More so, because this person is a Black, Muslim Female – three strikes in the history of social acceptance – who has taken her belief in God, and interpretation of a book written about his word, and consciously elected to perpetuate the same intolerance that 1) black, 2) Muslim, and 3) women have had to endure, and projected this same intolerance and discriminatory attitude towards gay people.
Really? Going back to my last post on the Greatest Trick, it is amazing how insensitive God really is! Anyhow, so what is the issue with gay people getting married? Marriage, in the United States at least, is a recorded legal agreement that is only recognized by the State. You can get married in a church all you want, and it means jack shit, and it doesn’t mean anything. Your legal rights as having been married before God are the exact same as gay couples who are not legally allowed to be married = NONE. With that, God has no place in this conversation at all, which moves the dialogue to the States who are the ones who dictate whether gay marriage is allowed or not.
And so I ask again: What is the issue with gay people getting married? And, again, I ask, if you are not gay yourself, how does this legal acceptance affect you at all? The entire idea of marriage is for two individuals who love one another to take record of this commitment, and thus be able to serve as one anothers’ legally recognized “go to” in case of an emergency. This is strictly politics at its best, at a very micro level – requires signatures, dates, and all that other “legally binding” crap – like it having to be notarized and all. Marriage, in a completely non-romantic way, is a legally binding contract between two individuals. Thus, with all the romance removed, who cares if it is two men, two women, or the traditional male/female entanglement?
The idea that Brenda and Susan have been in love for 20 years, live together, share bank accounts, and everything else a traditional heterosexual couple does, but when Susan gets in a terrible accident and is unconscious in a hospital on life support, Brenda has no legal right to be at Susan’s bedside, and cannot make important decisions on the state of Susan’s life, is wrong on every level. Take it one step further where they may be one of the lucky couples who have been allowed to adopt a child (will cover this part of the conversation a bit more, shortly), and Brenda is not allowed to collect on Susan’s life insurance policy, which is money that Brenda might be depending on to keep the roof over her head, and support their child together. Why!?!?!
Now, the debate with my high school friend was less about gay marriage, and more about the idea that gay couples are not suited to raise children together. Now, the reason, which also took the argument of God, again, also included a distinction on how it is biologically impossible for two men or two women to produce a child, and thus, because of this, they are not meant to have children themselves. Enter here, the amazing world of adoption! Enter here, the idea the two loving adults want to provide a loving home to a child in need of permanent love in their lives. Enter here, the fact that with 50% of marriages failing, leaving two single parents, there are tons of single parents who make up those who still appose gays raising kids. I would assume that two loving parents are better than one, regardless of sexual orientation.
The fun part of this dialogue with my former classmate, is that although she disagrees with the lifestyles of gay people (shit, it isn’t my cup of tea either), she says she doesn’t hate gay people. and has gay people as friends. So, with this, ultimately she is saying that I will have gay friends, but I don’t think you should have the same rights as “I” do. I equated this stance back to the days when a white restaurant owner would tell a black person: “Hey, I’ll serve you food, but you need to pick up your plate from the back door and you have to eat outside.”
We have completely been desensitized to the vast array of family dynamics, with the clear exception to gay parents who still are miraculously the only ones who are “unfit” to provide love, somehow? How is having two separate single parents, or step parents higher on the ladder of “good for a kid” than having two loving same sex parents? And, introducing the God argument back into the debate, for those who ALSO get married, and take their vows before their Gods: isn’t getting divorced worse than being gay? Ideally, you are breaking a promise you took with your partner, before God, and thus are a complete hypocrite to then have any opinion on the lifestyle of someone who wants to keep their promise to their partner, who just happens to also be of the same sex (not to say that 50% of gay marriages won’t also end in divorce – the numbers are not there to know this or not, YET).
And, the best part of all of this, is that nobody ever asks a child raised by two gay parents what their thoughts are on this topic; what they feel about how their upbringing went. They are never invited to the discussion. Instead, a bunch of hateful, biased individuals, with no true perspective, make the decisions on the ultimate ability for the possibility of the legalization and recognition of gay marriage to even is proposed for ballot initiative. This is like when Congress invited a group of men to speak about women’s reproductive rights and contraception, without having a single female’s perspective on the panel. What makes this even better, is that these are probably the same people who either 1) go home and jack off to lesbian porn – okay so long as they don’t want to marry each other, or 2) are closeted homosexuals themselves (until outed, of course) – Ted Haggard, Larry Craig, Mark Foley for example. And, the word is out about Charlie Crist who was the Florida Governor who oversaw Florida becoming one of the States to Constitutionally add an amendment BANNING gay marriage. Do you think that this is over-compensation to try to cover up his own gay urges? Watch the documentary Outrage (2009) for more?
At the end of the day, we as a people need to become more tolerant of others, even if at the expense of our own personal prejudices. The idea of perpetuating this much hostility and hate towards any group of people, at this point in the history of our world, is just childlike. And, what makes this even sadder is that the USA is at the forefront of most of the hate worldwide. We are the least tolerant and accepting nation there is, I personally think, and I just think that is pretty fucking “gay” of us, which is why more and more the rest of the world is growing intolerant of US (perfect how “us” and “U.S.” share the same letters).
- The TOKEN WHITE GUY
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The fact that this has become even a topic of contention says how barbaric and uncivilized we are as a society, culture and country.
How can we say we are a free country and we don’t give freedoms to some that we give to others?
How can we advocate going around bombing the shit out of other countries because they make laws based off of their holy books (example, Islamic countries) and then turn around and attempt to make legislation based off of their cousin mythology, The Bible.
We, the US, are liars and hypocrites. And have always been. But this is the same country that killed the Native Americans through holocaust and genocide, enlsaved, murdered and made less than humans Africans for centuries, and… I could go on and on. Are we not surprised?
What else is left to say? As long as we withhold rights from others that we give to ourselves, then we are not a free society, or a democracy, or any of those other lofty ideals we try to beat everyone else over the head with.
We should let gays experience the same misery of marriage that the rest of us deal with. 
In a free society with equal rights for all, this wouldn’t even be a discussion.
But that, we are not.
From LE PROVOCATEUR BON VIVANT SAVANT
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This is what happens when there is a separation of Church and State… What does God say? *drops mic*
