Why The Gay Issue Should Matter to Us All

When I brought this up a week or so ago, at least one reader responded, "So why do we have to care if gays get full government acknowledgement of their marriage so long as they can be together?"

Well, I'd agree. I personally do not believe that the government should be in the business of being involved in marriage, whoever is involved. Yet it is. Since it is, unless and until the feds acknowledge gay marriage, gays are not fully equal under the law, and are subject to much different standards when it comes to survivorship, tax status, etc. AS long as the feds have pushed their way into sanctioning heterosexual marriage, there is inequity in only acknowledging heterosexual marriage. That inequity is not only unconstitutional, it's not a good idea.

But here's why it matters to me personally, as a straight woman who chooses not to be married. The so-called religious right doesn't like gays. But they're just one of a very long list of people they don't like, including "people living in sin", Democrats, liberals (no, liberals aren't all Dems and all Dems aren't liberals), people who think, librarians, Jews (except that they feel Jews are a necessary evil in "end time" mythology, people who choose to worship a different God or no god at all, the press, people who don't own guns and shoot people, ... let's face it: hate and intolerance is their thing. Jesus might have preached love, but love isn't what these people want. This was a problem before, but with the feds basically handing over the government to the religious right, it's everyone's problem now.

Many heterosexuals would like to ignore the gay marriage issue because it makes them uncomfortable. I suppose I can understand that.

But here's the thing. If we allow these people to consign gays to a lesser status, we're just as guilty as the people pushing this through. Let the religious right "win" to prevent gay marriage, and the religious right will try to push through even more ridiculous stuff. George Bush the 1st actually said once that atheists and agnostics, for example, should NOT have the same rights of citizenship as Christians because "their lack of faith means they don't believe in anything." Huh? And he's a lot smarter than his son.

I do not think it's ridiculous to presume that if gays are not given equal status under the law for marriage, we might see legislation introduced that could repeal voting rights for women and/or people of color, change rules to reduce the "rights" of Jews, Muslims, and other non-Christians (and remember, the religious right DO NOT consider Methodists, Lutherans, Catholics, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Unitarians) Christians. Listen to the hate speak. It's there. It's broadly applied to anyone who doesn't look like them, worship like them, believe like them, live like them.

I didn't always feel this way. But I never envisioned what we've done since 2000. If you think I'm being too extreme here, stop to consider that these people feel they have a right both to control one of the organs of a woman's body (imagine if they tried to control a penis!) and to change the definition of science.