Everyone deserves the same chance at permanence and happiness
Finally tonight as promised, a Special Comment on the passage, last week, of Proposition Eight in California, which rescinded the right of same-sex couples to marry, and tilted the balance on this issue, from coast to coast.
Some parameters, as preface. This isn't about yelling, and this isn't about politics, and this isn't really just about Prop-8. And I don't have a personal investment in this: I'm not gay, I had to strain to think of one member of even my very extended family who is, I have no personal stories of close friends or colleagues fighting the prejudice that still pervades their lives.
And yet to me this vote is horrible. Horrible. Because this isn't about yelling, and this isn't about politics. This is about the human heart, and if that sounds corny, so be it.
If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or the sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not understand. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don't want to deny you yours. They don't want to take anything away from you. They want what you want—a chance to be a little less alone in the world.
Only now you are saying to them—no. You can't have it on these terms. Maybe something similar. If they behave. If they don't cause too much trouble. You'll even give them all the same legal rights—even as you're taking away the legal right, which they already had. A world around them, still anchored in love and marriage, and you are saying, no, you can't marry. What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn't marry?
I keep hearing this term "re-defining" marriage. If this country hadn't re-defined marriage, black people still couldn't marry white people. Sixteen states had laws on the books which made that illegal in 1967. 1967.
The parents of the President-Elect of the United States couldn't have married in nearly one third of the states of the country their son grew up to lead. But it's worse than that. If this country had not "re-defined" marriage, some black people still couldn't marry black people. It is one of the most overlooked and cruelest parts of our sad story of slavery. Marriages were not legally recognized, if the people were slaves. Since slaves were property, they could not legally be husband and wife, or mother and child. Their marriage vows were different: not "Until Death, Do You Part," but "Until Death or Distance, Do You Part." Marriages among slaves were not legally recognized.
You know, just like marriages today in California are not legally recognized, if the people are gay.
And uncountable in our history are the number of men and women, forced by society into marrying the opposite sex, in sham marriages, or marriages of convenience, or just marriages of not knowing, centuries of men and women who have lived their lives in shame and unhappiness, and who have, through a lie to themselves or others, broken countless other lives, of spouses and children, all because we said a man couldn't marry another man, or a woman couldn't marry another woman. The sanctity of marriage.
How many marriages like that have there been and how on earth do they increase the "sanctity" of marriage rather than render the term, meaningless?
What is this, to you? Nobody is asking you to embrace their expression of love. But don't you, as human beings, have to embrace... that love? The world is barren enough.
It is stacked against love, and against hope, and against those very few and precious emotions that enable us to go forward. Your marriage only stands a 50-50 chance of lasting, no matter how much you feel and how hard you work.
And here are people overjoyed at the prospect of just that chance, and that work, just for the hope of having that feeling. With so much hate in the world, with so much meaningless division, and people pitted against people for no good reason, this is what your religion tells you to do? With your experience of life and this world and all its sadnesses, this is what your conscience tells you to do?
With your knowledge that life, with endless vigor, seems to tilt the playing field on which we all live, in favor of unhappiness and hate... this is what your heart tells you to do? You want to sanctify marriage? You want to honor your God and the universal love you believe he represents? Then Spread happiness—this tiny, symbolic, semantical grain of happiness—share it with all those who seek it. Quote me anything from your religious leader or book of choice telling you to stand against this. And then tell me how you can believe both that statement and another statement, another one which reads only "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
You are asked now, by your country, and perhaps by your creator, to stand on one side or another. You are asked now to stand, not on a question of politics, not on a question of religion, not on a question of gay or straight. You are asked now to stand, on a question of love. All you need do is stand, and let the tiny ember of love meet its own fate.
You don't have to help it, you don't have it applaud it, you don't have to fight for it. Just don't put it out. Just don't extinguish it. Because while it may at first look like that love is between two people you don't know and you don't understand and maybe you don't even want to know. It is, in fact, the ember of your love, for your fellow person just because this is the only world we have. And the other guy counts, too.
This is the second time in ten days I find myself concluding by turning to, of all things, the closing plea for mercy by Clarence Darrow in a murder trial.
But what he said, fits what is really at the heart of this:
"I was reading last night of the aspiration of the old Persian poet, Omar-Khayyam," he told the judge. It appealed to me as the highest that I can vision. I wish it was in my heart, and I wish it was in the hearts of all: So I be written in the Book of Love; I do not care about that Book above. Erase my name, or write it as you will, So I be written in the Book of Love."
Wowzers!!
It strikes me as funny that when people meet Robin for the first time they love her instantly. She is the type of person that can make friends with anyone, hold an intelligent conversation, make you laugh. She is a likable person on an all around basis. Most people don't peg her as a lesbian when they first meet her. She doesn't "look" like a dyke. The only thing they can judge her on in the beginning is her personality and they fall in love instantly. My point is... most people don't even realize how many people they actually know that are gay or lesbian. They think that most people they meet are heterosexual and "normal". The reason is because Robin doesn't announce what she does in her bedroom just as most straight folks don't announce what they do in the bedroom. So why should it matter who Robin loves? She is just like everyone else... right up until the bedroom door closes.
I get judged immediately because I am butch and "look" lesbian. But when people get to know me... past my outer shell, they see that I am the same as them. I just happen to love a woman....
This was an awesome blog! Thank you for posting it. Hopefully it will open more eyes to the discrimination that I face every day.
Love ya girl!
K
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2 years agoExactly!!
"I'm not gay, I had to strain to think of one member of even my very extended family who is, I have no personal stories of close friends or colleagues fighting the prejudice that still pervades their lives."
When I heard this part of Olberman's comment I thought to myself, he just isn't aware of who is and who isn't that he knows. And it doesn't matter, either. What I loved is listening to this opinion.... he was so emotional, and that really struck me since he pr
:::::applauds::::::
Some commentary on Prop 8 - it was largely funded by the Mormon Church (Um, shouldn't dabbling in politics mean they lose their tax-free status? Separation of church and state and all that?). Proponents played on people's fears by running ads telling parents that if Prop 8 was voted down, their kids would be taught in school that boys could marry boys and girls could marry girls. That freaked a lot of people out. They were also told that "we're defining a word, not taking away anybody's rights, they can do what they want, we just want them to call it something other than 'marriage!'" There was a lot of VERY shady campaigning that went on, including phone calls to people's homes using an out-of-context statement by Barack Obama that was doctored to sound like he was supporting Prop 8.
You've seen me make these comments elsewhere, but I'll make them again here. I truly believe that one day we will look back upon discrimination against gays with the same level of shame and horror that we now look back upon the institution of slavery and our general history of unfair discrimination against blacks, never mind the way Native Americans were treated. As far as the larger populace is concerned, I wonder why it is often only in retrospect that some things become so obviously, glaringly WRONG??
If heterosexuals think gays are going to undermine the so-called 'sanctity' of marriage, they need to take a good hard look in the mirror. Marriage ceased to be a sacred union a long time ago, in my opinion, thanks in part to (heterosexual!) people who habitually change spouses like they change underwear. I think it's an outdated institution myself, with more liabilities than benefits, but if gay people want to officially pledge their love and create a legal union via marriage they should have every right to do so. I personally favor the choice of several straight people I know who have said "I won't get married until my gay friends have the same right to do so", and made do with a non-legal, non-religious "commitment" ceremony. If certain people want to make "marriage" an exclusive and exclusionary club, then they're welcome to it. In my opinion, both the state *and* the church need to keep their nose out of my relationships!!
More in keeping with the theme of your blog, even as a young child who was just learning the various meanings of the word "gay", I could never understand why people would condemn others simply because of who they loved. We need MORE love in this world, not less. Go ahead and condemn people for who they hate, who they slander, or who they abuse....but one should never hate another because of who they love!
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2 years ago