Proposition 8

I used to be pretty ambivalent about the idea of gay marriage. To me, marriage was a heterosexual institution and the idea of two men or two woman actually having a marriage ceremony seemed almost satirical. At the time, I thought it was making a mockery of both the heterosexual idea of marriage, and that the thought that gays needed to get married at all failed to recognize the possibilities of a committed gay relationship without the support of the state. Who needs cake, tuxedos, and a piece of paper to show they are partners in life? Let the breeders have their gift registries, their photographers, their ringbearers! I'm going to spend that money on something important like....well, apparently, Big Gulps at the local convenience store.

I was also a little hung up on the idea of marriage being a sacrament. In this country, despite our insistence that we separate church and state, we frequently combine a civil ceremony with a religious ceremony. In Mexico, people have one ceremony with the state, and a separate ceremony with the church. They are separate and distinct. I thought, "How can we force a church to accept people to participate in a sacrament when that church disagrees?"

So for a long time I was fine with the idea of civil unions. I thought it would answer all of our needs without inspiring a backlash from social conservatives. It would be a separate, but equal solution. However, when I began to realize that people were spending enormous amounts of time and energy to deny me the rights that they themselves enjoy, I started to think of things differently.

If segragation in the American South in the first half of this century can serve as a guide, then it is pretty clear that separate is never equal. As long as one group is excluded from what the mainstream enjoys, then the excluded group will never be considered equal. I can't think of a single exception in history to this simple assertion. If someone can, please comment.

I have been thinking hard about why straight people would deny gay people the right to marry. And I don't just mean disagree with the idea privately, but be so vehemently opposed as to launch state campaigns costing millions of dollars. Currently, 27 states have passed laws forbidding people of the same sex to marry. Even as the country was voting in its first African-America president, voters in Florida and Arizona decided to change their state constitutions to deny same-sex couples the right to marry, and on the same day Arkansas voted to forbid single, or same-sex couples from adopting.

The only reasons to take the trouble to vote in favor of denying someone else a basic human right are hate and fear. I cannot imagine, and I have tried, how the two gay guys living down the street getting married affects anyone but themselves. I know there are some lame arguments about health care going up if insurance is extended to same-sex couples, but wait.....a nine month pregnancy and hospital birth are pretty expensive also! The simple fact is that people see marriage as between a man and a woman because marriage is supposed to ensure that there are two parents around to take care of the kids. If that is the real argument here, why aren't couples who are infertile, or who choose not to have kids, forced to absolve their marriages after a suitable waiting period. No kids=no marriage license. My brother has married three times and has five kids with four different women. And he can get married three more times if he wants to do so. If marriage is so sacred, shouldn't there be a limit? Two per lifetime?

Recently, a woman named Linda who went to my church died. She had been living with another woman for the past four years as her partner and lover and they shared a house. She died unexpectedly of a heart attack one morning and in just a few days Linda's family had come in from California and her girlfriend was out of the house. She wasn't mentioned in the obituary, she didn't sit in the front row of the funeral home with the rest of the family, she wasn't consulted in Linda's business affairs-nothing. She had none of the rights a legally married spouse would have. You may ask "Well, why didn't she make a will?" The answer is "I don't know", but how many married couples are there without wills? Many, I would suspect. Yet they do not have to leave their homes when their partners' die.

The entry isn't the cogent argument I would have liked to have presented. I can take comfort in the idea that there are others on the Internet and in the media who are presenting the careful, logical, argument I feel I should have presented here. I have always felt, as a gay man, a certain pressure from society. I have always felt I was swimming upstream, as it were. But this is the first time, even though I live in a state where gay marriage is not permitted due to a vote taken two years ago, that I have really felt the impact of having the majority of people, however slim that majority may have been, in a state vote to make me a second class person. I never dreamt that the right to marry, once having been granted, would ever be taken away. I thought it would be a gradual process and the states would fall like dominoes, one-by-one, until one of the last state sanctioned discriminatory policies in this country would be gone forever. I am so disappointed to be proven wrong.