Write to Marry Day

October 29, 2008

Write to Marry Day

I support same-sex couples being granted the right to marry, and therefore I oppose measures like California’s Proposition 8.  (I seriously doubt that’s a surprise to anyone reading this.)  To be honest, it seems so simple and straightforward to me: either America’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans citizens are equal to its straight (or bi-partnered-with-the-opposite-sex, or closeted) citizens, or they aren’t.  This country was founded, in part, on the ideal of equality, and throughout the country’s history our understanding of who is deserving of that equality has broadened, expanded.  My belief is that that is as it should be.  Everything in me rails against the notion of “equality for me but not for thee.”  I think there’s room in the equality tent for everyone.  If, then, I can marry my current partner — which, legally, I can — I want that same right to be extended to everyone else, gay or straight.  I’ve been to weddings where I’ve wept with joy and I’ve been to weddings where I’ve shifted uncomfortably in my seat — why should I not be able to do one or the other or both or something in between at the weddings of my beloved lesbian and gay and bi friends?  What kind of sense does it make to tell someone that they can’t enter into a legal marriage with their chosen partner because they’re different?  How the hell does Pam and Kate getting married denigrate heterosexual marriage?  To the religious zealots, social conservatives, etc. pushing Prop 8: how does two people of the same sex deciding to get married even have anything to do with you?

To my Californian readers: please vote on Tuesday, and please, please be sure to vote against legislated inequality by voting no on Prop 8.

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