There is quite a bit of commentary, at least in the sports world, today surrounding some inflammatory anti-gay comments made by a spokesman (now former) for the NBA. I'm at a loss as to how this can be such a big deal in a society that keeps offering up anti-homosexual bills, laws and ammendments, and, more appallingly, passing them. Is it then acceptable to pass laws that actually damage a group of people just as long as you don't say that you don't like them on national television? I'm sorry, but doesn't this seem all ass backwards to any of the rest of you? Granted, his comments don't help, but isn't the bigger issue taking a bit too much of a back seat to one bigot's comments?
Perhaps I am not shocked by one person's comments because I witnessed millions of you acting together in a voice that declared a large group of our brothers and sisters to be subhuman during multiple election years. When millions of you fail your fellow man, or even actively stab them in the back, what's one more voice? Just one voice that will blow over in a week and be forgotten while hundreds of thousands have to deal with the bigotry that has made it on the books. One voice undoubtedly denounced by many of the same hypocrites that either actively helped or passively watched while these atrocities hit the books.
The reality is that he has a right to his opinion, and the right to voice it. I would strongly defend both. Even if I think his comments portray him as an ignorant ass. Even the Ku Klux Klan has the right to express their opinions. We are just sensible enough not to allow them to do it through legislation.
Is this an excessively harsh comparison? Ask the woman who sits helpless as the very decisions that might decide her lifelong partner's life or death are made by doctors who can only legally take the advice of a family that disowned the patient years before. Ask the same woman who watches all of the shared property she had with that partner dispensed by the same family as they see fit, just days after she was barred from the funeral. While she faces all of this, what do you say to her? "It was God's will?" Somehow I suspect this will not cut it. I suspect she would ask, as I myself wonder, how you could worship a god so cruel as to want people to suffer this way.
Before some of you get all defensive about that, bear in mind that I haven't pointed fingers at any religion yet.
I have heard many arguments against gay marriage and several associated rights. The only thing that allows me to retain even a modicum of faith in humanity is the strong belief that so many of you actually fail to see the significance of the issue. The
HRC does not call themselves the "Human Rights Campaign" simply because it is a catchy name. It is a human rights issue, and a more significant one than many of you blow it off as being.
This goes beyond a question of who kisses who. At best it is a question of second class citizenship. At worst, as subhuman classification. When you have voted on, or ignored the many referendums and candidate positions on this issue, have any of the following aspects of the issue crossed your mind?
As a legal institution, marriage conveys many basic rights in one package.
Example for NY. There are also thousands of Federal laws revolving around rights of spouses.
That refusing marriage rights to homosexuals does in effect make homosexuality illegal? 26 states still have laws against adultery (sex out of wedlock). As such, refusing homosexuals the right to marry means refusing them the right to engage in intimate relationships. Of course, that is what people are trying to do, isn't it?
What puzzles me is why. It would seem cut and dried. If you have a problem with the concept of homosexual relations, don't get involved with them. If you have a problem seeing that homosexuals exist, that is unfortunately your problem, not theirs. Racists don't have a right to enforce any laws keeping other races out of their field of vision.
The reality is that no matter how uncomfortable it makes you, your right to swing your fist ends at the other guys nose. Not approving of an activity does not give you the right, in and of itself, to legislate it away.
But what of the concept that the majority speaks in these bills and laws? It doesn't matter. Yes, in a democratic society, I just said that the majority's opinion doesn't matter. Restriction of the basic rights and equality of an entire group of people, even if everyone else agrees, is against the very principles this nation was founded on.
I did say
just because. I point this out because here is where people like to throw out the questions of pedophiles, murderers etc... This is a foolish and uneducated argument. There is obviously a clear cut difference between a relationship between consenting adults, and victimization as is the case in these latter examples.
Now if one group wanted to just step up and say, "give me over one thousand legal rights, otherwise you infringe upon me" it would be stupid. That isn't what I am talking about. I am talking about equality. Out of love I went through the process of marriage. Out of practicality I signed a paper that said that it was legal. This gave me all sorts of rights I would never even think of until and unless I needed them, as it would any other man marrying any other woman. Yet a woman, with the same driving reasons as myself could not sign that paper with another woman.
Why? Because you are squeamish about it? Because it is unnatural? (Biology in regards to animal homosexuality and the basic principles of pheromones and hormones have clearly refuted this.) Because it is against God's will?
That last is between you and your God. Just bear in mind the quote from Senator James Raskin: “People place their hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution; they don’t put their hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible”.
Marriage has implications both religious and political. These two don't always agree. I know many legally married couples (heterosexual) whose marriages are not recognized by a church. I see no need to do this any different.
This is at the crux of the issue. If you are morally opposed to homosexuality based on your religion, fine. But without political reasons, how can you stand against it politically?
As long as this nation has not formally declared a state religion, we cannot legislate as if it has one. This issue must remain a political one.
I was informed in one conversation on this topic that the reason a person voted against the pro gay marriage candidate was that topic. When asked what impact my cousin's marriage had on her, she not only openly admitted she knew nothing about it, but that she saw no direct impact and wouldn't be likely to. However, it would have a grave social and cultural impact. She couldn't define what that impact was, just that it would exist. This is true, but then she admitted voting, so change alone must not frighten her. After all, women voting made a cultural and social impact. She doesn't seem ready to give that up yet.
Despite some of the realities I lay out here, I know the core is going to be the hard part to change. So many of you have the luxury to look at this issue as just a simple question of sexual ethics. I do not.
Many of you see a flip of a switch at the polls and a point for your side. I see the tears, the anguish, the lives destroyed. Sometimes even lives lost.
As the reports come in, many of you see numbers. I see faces and tears.
How do you sit back and watch, and help the destruction of the lives of your sons and daughters, sisters and brothers and think that your god can be smiling at it?
Those of you who are married will likely lay your heads on your pillows tonight with barely a thought of this post. With no concerns of what horrors might wait around the corner that you haven't thought of and prepared for that will tear your family apart. You will lay your heads down in comfort with the one you love.
I will likely lay there, as I have many times before, rolling my wedding band around my finger and feeling somewhat nauseous at the thought that one gold band and one piece of paper crossed all of the "t's" and dotted all of the "i's" for me in barely a blink. That this was all it took for me to not only be allowed to join my wife's side when she was rushed to the hospital last week, but that is also made my presence an assumed fact.
So sleep well, and go back to ignoring the issue until the next flip of the switch or the next loudmouthed ball player puts a blip on your screen for a moment. That's just life, or something close to it.
Labels: bigotry, gay marriage, human rights
