A Call to Arms

With every electoral season, it becomes clearer that same-sex marriage is the civil rights issue of our generation. Frankly, it would have been nice to go a generation or so without a civil rights issue, so we could take the time to settle into the changes brought about by this country's last few civil rights issues. You know, maybe try giving women equal pay and treating people of color like human beings, see how that works out. But progress does not stop just because we're still being dicks to one another. If anything, progress simply brings us new groups of people to whom we can be dicks. In this case, the people getting dicked, and not in the method that that they enjoy, are gay people, who have the nerve to want to legally bind themselves to one another as a celebration of their love and devotion. What assholes.

No, I'm sorry, the real assholes here are the ones who are trying to stop gay people from getting married. And there are a lot of them. You may have heard of California's controversial Prop 8, which will be on the ballot this Tuesday. Prop 8, which seeks to officially eliminate the rights of same-sex couples to wed, has been in the news a lot for a variety of different reasons. There have been stories about how the language set to appear on the ballot is intentionally confusing, so that some people may end up casting their vote the wrong way. There have been stories about how Californians are split 50-50 on the issue. There have been stories about how a growing majority of Californians are now saying they're opposed to gay marriage. These are all newsworthy items because California was one of the first states to welcome gay marriage, immediately followed by becoming one of the first states to go, "Psych!" and take all those marriages back. That made Massachusetts the new leader in allowing gay marriage, and when a state like California lets a state like Massachusetts become the leader in any arena, it's news. Massachusetts isn't supposed to be ahead of the curve in anything other than chowder and tea-scented bodies of water.

So there's been a lot of talk about Prop 8, and that's a good thing. Prop 8 is a bigoted, hateful, small-minded piece of legislation. If you can vote in California, vote "No" on Prop 8. No question about that.

But all the news about Prop 8 is masking the fact that California isn't the only state trying to legally dictate who is, and who is not allowed to marry. Arizona has Prop 102. Florida has Prop 2. Both of these call for the elimination of the rights of same-sex couples to get married. Arizona and Florida both have existing statutes that say precisely the same thing, but people in those states are so terrified that gay people might accidentally trip and get married there that they evidently feel the need to upgrade to a law. Florida's Prop 2 is particularly heinous because it would not only ban gay marriage, it would make that ruling impossible to overturn. That's right, the law actually includes a "no takesies backsies" clause. Even more heinous, the language that will be appearing on the ballot makes no mention of that little clause, so anyone who is not familiar with the full language of the proposed law may not realize that they are voting for something that cannot be changed. This is an important distinction, as Massachusetts's decision to allow same-sex couples to marry came after a judge specifically overturned a previously held statute in the state. So Florida is essentially saying, "let's get this one on the books and keep it there. We don't want to end up like Massachusetts. Hell, we all moved here to get away from Massachusetts!"

(There has been a lot of ragging on Massachusetts so far in this post. Understand, I kid because I love. I actually grew up there before moving to New York, and it's a wonderful state. I like to think back to my summers as a kid, when I'd go down to Cape Cod for fried clams, or head into Boston to take in a museum, or maybe just hang out around town and get gay married to a few of my friends. Ah, to be young.)

The issue of gay marriage is one that is near and dear to my heart. It may not affect me directly, although I do have many gay friends who I'm sure would like to be able to marry someone at some point in the future, but it strikes a familiar chord. See, I'm getting married in June. As it so happens, my fiancee is Asian, whereas I am whiter than a bottle of liquid paper in a snowstorm. Of course, this does not pose a problem for us. Sure, there are some culture barriers that our families are going to have to work through, and sure, we get the occassional dirty look when we walk down the street together, but we content ourselves with the knowledge that our kids are going to be friggin' gorgeous. From a legal standpoint, though, there is no barrier preventing us from getting married. But there was, and not too long ago, either.

Until 1967, there was no federal law allowing the marriage of interracial couples, and like any issue that is not mandated by federal law, it was left up to the states. Many states didn't care for white people marrying non-white people. Non-white people could marry each other all they like, regardless of what kind of non-white they happened to be, and they were free to produce all sorts of multicolored babies. But the dilution of the white race was a hot button issue for a lot of people. Only in freaky-deaky liberal states like Massachusetts could a white person and a non-white person tie the knot. Thankfully, Richard and Mildred Loving - a white man and a black woman - had the courage to fight for the freedom to love one another, even when the state of Virginia told them they couldn't. They took their case to the Supreme Court, and in 1967, a decision was reached that overturned all bans on interracial marriage across the country. Flash forward forty years, I get to get married to the girl that I love. So that's cool. As an added bonus, if you go around today saying that you believe the dilution of the white race should be illegal, people look at you like you're a racist asshole, which you are. Forty years from now, how do you think we're going to look at people who say same-sex couples shouldn't marry?

See, I don't get the arguments against same-sex marriage. People say it will devalue the concept of marriage. That it will take the meaning away from that union. Um, what? Roughly two-thirds of marriages end in divorce these days. When two people who are really, truly, over-the-top in love with one another get hitched, people say, "those two really have a chance." A chance. As in, "even though they clearly love each other and are hopelessly, senselessly devoted to making one another happy, there is still only a chance that they will manage to die before getting divorced." Everyone else, everyone not so deliriously happy, they don't even have that chance. That is taking the meaning away from marriage. Shows like Bridezilla, which might as well be called Bitter Divorce: The Early Years, where couples treat each other like utter crap right up to, and often through, the day of their wedding, they take the value away from marriage. Shows like A Shot at Love, where men and women alike drink shots of vinegar and put chocolate pudding down their bathing suits for the prize of a serious relationship with a bisexual almost-celebrity, they devalue marriage. But it's not because some of the competitors are gay. It's because everyone on that show is a whore.

Gay people getting married doesn't take the value away from marriage. If anything, it does the very opposite. Allowing gay people to marry just means that more couples - and we're talking about thousands upon thousands of people, here - would be getting hitched. And you damn sure know they wouldn't just be getting hitched because someone got pregnant. Couples who have been together for ten, twenty, thirty, forty years would be getting married. Couples who have literally been waiting most of their lives. These are people who genuinely want it. They want to celebrate their love. They want to make that commitment. They want it. There's no parental pressure. There's no feeling of, "well, I don't wanna break up, so I guess I'd better..." We're talking about people who want to be married so bad they can taste it, all so they can grow old together and spend the rest of their lives with the person who makes them happy without anyone asking them why they don't have a ring on their finger. If that doesn't increase the value of marriage, than either I have a really skewed idea of what marriage is all about, or a lot of angry bigots do. I know they have the numbers on their side, but I'm leaning toward it being the angry bigots who are in the wrong on this one.

People who want to sound like they don't have a problem with gay people, they just don't want them getting married, like to fob off this conversation by saying, "well, they can have commitment ceremonies." If you've been reading this blog regularly, you know that I am a fan of Barack Obama. Also, I look forward to marrying you in June. Yes, it's true, I like Obama. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he clinches it on November 4th, and I weep for this country if he doesn't. But there's one area where he kind of pisses me off, and it's gay marriage. He refuses to support it openly. As Joe Biden spelled out quite clearly and eloquently in the Vice Presidential debate (which was a nice change of pace, even if what he was saying annoyed the crap out of me), the Obama/Biden platform believes that commited gay couples should have all the same rights as married couples, aside from the right to call themselves "married." They can have visitation rights in hospitals - God, how horrific is it that same-sex couples that may have been together for thirty years can't visit each other in the freaking hospital? - they can get tax breaks, they can have all the benefits, but they just can't get married. They can have commitment ceremonies. It's just as good! I'm sorry, but to me that sounds an awful lot like, "Well, you can't have the land you've been living on for a thousand years, but if you still want to keep worshipping some kooky spirits and drinking firewater, you can have this patch of land we've set aside for you. It's just as good!"

So, I'm not impressed with the stance that Obama and Biden have taken on this issue so far, but I understand it. Unlike may other hot button issues, gay marriage is not as clearly divided down party lines as you might imagine. Sure, Democrats are more likely to be liberal, and thus more likely to support gay marriage - in theory. Bring it up, and suddenly a lot of people who are very open-minded about all sorts of other issues start to clam up. It would be wonderful to have a candidate, a legitimate candidate, that is, come out and say that same-sex couples should absolutely be able to get married. But in a close election, and an important one, sometimes you have to play to the crowd. If Obama said he believes gay people should be able to get married as they please, he would not be ahead in the polls right now. That's a sad fact, but a fact all the same. Likewise, he has not made a big deal over his position - which he made public in the days long before this campaign truly began - that marijuana should be decriminalized. Sure, in the midst of this massive economic crisis, it might make sense to promote the country's largest cash crop, the legalization of which would create thousands of new jobs and billions of dollars in tax revenue while simultaneously easing the tax burden that we all pay to keep hundreds of thousands of nonviolent offenders in prison, but he can't come out and say all that and still expect to win. Sorry, got off on a tangent there. The point is, sometimes in politics, you have to say certain things if you want to have a shot. After all, you can't govern if you're not in office. So I understand. I don't like it, but I understand.

What I don't understand is people just straight up don't like gay people. Because it's one thing to say same-sex marriages would devalue the concept of marriage, which is already a load of horse shit, but it's another thing entirely to just not like gay people just because they're gay. And let's not kid ourselves into thinking that a huge percentage of the people who are going to be supporting Prop 8, Prop 2, and Prop 102 on Tuesday aren't just homophobes, pure and simple. Okay, I'm overlooking the people who say that same-sex marriages devalue marriage because God says gay people are wrong. But people who take that stance are the kinds of people who like to say that doing anything in any way other than the way set forth by their particular religion are going to Hell. So, technically, those people should probably also think that Jewish people shouldn't get married, since we sure don't do it right. And maybe they think just that. I don't know. I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about people who just hate gay people.

Now, I'm not going to try and feed you a line about how my liberal brethren and I live wholly without prejudice. That's crap. Everybody has their prejudices. I certainly do. I recognize it in myself, and I get mad at myself for it. But in recognizing it, I try to make sure that it is not affecting the way I live my life, and certainly not affecting the way anybody else lives theirs. For instance, let's pick a random group. Say, circus clowns. I wouldn't say that I'm actually prejudiced against circus clowns - a little scared, maybe, but not prejudiced - but let's work with that example. I might give an involuntary glance over my shoulder if I think a circus clown is walking behind me. I might avert my eyes while walking past a pack of circus clowns. But come Election Day, I'm not going to go into the voting booth and vote for legislation that strips rights away from circus clowns. I recognize my prejudice, and I recognize that it's my problem, not theirs. They shouldn't be penalized just because I get the willies whenever I see a rainbow wig.

So I don't get it when people who hate gay people, and are perfectly aware of the fact that they hate gay people, vote to strip rights from gay people. I guess it's because they think that they're right to hate gay people. But that's just idiotic. Hating someone for doing something that doesn't affect you in any way whatsoever is never okay. It's okay to hate terrorists for being terrorists. By virtue of them being terrorists, they try to kill you. That affects you in a fairly serious way. It's not okay to hate Muslims. They just want to live their lives and practice their religion freely, which is one of those pesky things our country was created for. If a gay person blows up your house, it's okay to hate that person, but you're really hating people who blow up houses. It's not okay to hate someone for being gay. That has nothing to do with you.

Still, if you're determined to hate gay people, even though their lifestyle has absolutely nothing to do with you, and they would probably like to avoid your company just as much as you would like to avoid theirs, then why wouldn't you be in favor of gay marriage? I mean, the big fear about gay people is that they are going to constantly hit on you and try to sodomize you any time you turn around, right? That they just roam the streets, looking for some unwilling mangina to pillage like Vikings with better hair? If that's your fear, why wouldn't you want them pairing off? It seems to me that the more gay people marry, the less they theoretically prowl around looking for action. The fear can't be that they'll give birth to legions of gay kids, because, well, durf. And it can't be that they'll adopt kids and turn them gay, because they can already adopt kids without being married. And I think everyone can agree that you don't have to be gay to be a terrible parent. In fact, I'd have to wager that being gay actually may improve parenting, because gay parents tend to know that the eyes of society are watching them, waiting for them to screw up their kids so they can use that as an excuse to persecute gay people some more. so, if you hate gay people and want them out of your hair ("hair," here taken to mean "anus"), vote "No" on Prop 8, Prop 2, and Prop 102. Get them off the streets and into committed marriages!

All kidding aside, this is a serious issue. Obama is ahead in the polls right now, and that's great, but the election is still days away, and at this point, every day counts. Every speech, every casual remark caught on tape, every affiliation, and every accident can make or break this election. Plus, polls only mean so much. By that I mean, I have never been polled, nor has anyone that I know. So it's not like every single eligible American has been asked how they plan on voting. This is still anybody's game.

With that in mind, understand that Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who has openly declared her intentions of expanding the powers of the office, and whose running mate is perhaps more death-prone than most, has stated a number of times that she would support an amendmant to the United States Consititution that officially prohibits same-sex couples from marrying. This has been a historic election, but that would truly be historic. The Constitution has been amended twenty-seven times, and never before have any of those amendments stripped civil rights from a targeted group of people. In fact, they have only granted civil rights to targeted groups. I'm talking about rights like citizenship, voting, and the right to not be a slave; and I'm talking about groups like black people and women. Never before has the Consitution been amended in any way, shape, or form that affects the legal definition of marriage, nor has it ever mentioned homosexual people or homosexuality. So that would be a first. Just so you know what's at stake, here.

A big part of this election is the notion that we have to restore our nation's credibility to the world. President Bush has done immense damage to our reputation as a nation of peacemakers and leaders in the arena of human rights. Over the last fifty to sixty years, we've established ourselves as the world leaders in seeing places in the world where people are persecuted unjustly and putting a stop to that persecution. We're supposed to be the crazy country where people go to practice ways of life that would have gotten them killed elsewhere, and to pursue happiness in whatever form their personal happiness may take, so long as it does not inflict harm upon others. We're supposed to be setting an example for every other nation on the planet when it comes to granting fair and equal rights to people of all stripe. And now we have a woman who is dangerously close to the White House who believes that the Consititution - the supreme law of the land over which no other law has any sort of power - should be changed to say that gay people can't get married.

That's pretty scary. In case you haven't heard, she's also highly unqualified in a number of other areas, too.

So, what can you do about it? Well, vote for Obama/Biden, for starters. But more to the point, you can help prevent these vicious, mean-spirited, bigoted propositions from becoming laws and stripping basic rights from people who wholly deserve them. Twenty-six states already have laws banning same-sex marriage. Not statutes, laws. You can help stop three more from joining them.

If you live in California, vote "No" on Prop 8. If you know someone who lives in California, call them and tell them to vote "No" on Prop 8.

If you live in Arizona, vote "No" on Prop 102. If you know someone who lives in Arizona, call them and tell them to vote "No" on Prop 102.

If you live in Florida, vote "No" on Prop 2. If you know someone who lives in Florida, call them and tel them to vote "No" on Prop 2. Also, maybe tell them to demand that their legislators make it perfectly clear when a proposition includes a clause that would prevent it from ever being overturned.

If you would like to donate to the fight against these propositions, or you want to learn more, please visit noonprop8.com.

If you haven't seen it, you should also check out this Youtube video, which takes a highly inspirational excerpt from a speech by Harvey Milk and sets it to music and animation. Harvey Milk was the first openly gay American to be elected to a public office, sitting on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He was shot to death at the age of 48, 10 and a half months after taking office. This is a terrific video, and I highly recommend checking it out.

Vote with your heart on Tuesday. Vote for sensible, intelligent leaders. Vote for freedom for all, not just for some. Vote for the right of all people to express their love, regardless of gender.