revisionspiral
I'm pissed off and I vote
posted Thursday, 9 November 2006
56% of people who voted in Colorado are bigoted enough to want discrimination written into their state constitutions. On Tuesday, seven states (Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin) passed anti-gay marriage amendments to their constitutions.
Why do so many people feel that the institution of marriage could actually be threatened by making it available to more people? Is the institution that fragile? It has withstood millennia of adultery and domestic abuse, but allowing gay people to marry would somehow hurt it? Come on.
Is my marriage somehow worth less or somehow in peril if gay people can marry? Of course not. My marriage gets its strength and its value from my husband and me, not from anyone else. If the married couple next door divorce or cheat on each other or beat each other up, is my marriage threatened? No. The fact that some marriages fail does not make my marriage more or less likely to fail—that is determined by my husband and me. While most people would agree with me that the failure of many marriages does not diminish the value of my marriage, many of these same people would—based on the success of these anti-gay marriage amendments—argue that the value of my marriage would be affected by allowing gay people to marry.
If churches choose to not marry gay people, that’s fine—that’s a religious issue. But marriage is not purely a religious arrangement; it is a legal arrangement, and for many couples, including my husband and me, it is only a legal arrangement. For a state to allow religious ideas (“the Bible says marriage is between one man and one woman”) to determine who can engage in legal arrangements seems to violate the concept of separation of church and state.
And the entire argument completely overlooks one simple but crucial fact: making it impossible for gay people to marry will not stop gay people from being gay, being in stable relationships, and, perhaps most importantly, voting.
Why do so many people feel that the institution of marriage could actually be threatened by making it available to more people? Is the institution that fragile? It has withstood millennia of adultery and domestic abuse, but allowing gay people to marry would somehow hurt it? Come on.
Is my marriage somehow worth less or somehow in peril if gay people can marry? Of course not. My marriage gets its strength and its value from my husband and me, not from anyone else. If the married couple next door divorce or cheat on each other or beat each other up, is my marriage threatened? No. The fact that some marriages fail does not make my marriage more or less likely to fail—that is determined by my husband and me. While most people would agree with me that the failure of many marriages does not diminish the value of my marriage, many of these same people would—based on the success of these anti-gay marriage amendments—argue that the value of my marriage would be affected by allowing gay people to marry.
If churches choose to not marry gay people, that’s fine—that’s a religious issue. But marriage is not purely a religious arrangement; it is a legal arrangement, and for many couples, including my husband and me, it is only a legal arrangement. For a state to allow religious ideas (“the Bible says marriage is between one man and one woman”) to determine who can engage in legal arrangements seems to violate the concept of separation of church and state.
And the entire argument completely overlooks one simple but crucial fact: making it impossible for gay people to marry will not stop gay people from being gay, being in stable relationships, and, perhaps most importantly, voting.
And?
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