(Tegan Quin of the band Tegan and Sara)

 

She shouldn’t have to go unmarried.  It’s her right at the Canadian level to marry whom she chooses, she doesn’t have to wait on the rest of the world to come out of their dusty closets in order to get married.  But she does and so does her sister, they like the picture above states, in solidarity they will remain unmarried.  

People are making many of those choices for us without asking what we want first.  What we want are equal rights, but because the majority of the people live their lives with noses stuck within pages of “a book written thirty-five-hundred years ago” (Same Love by Macklemore), they can’t see beyond their religion’s doors.  They just assume what is written they should abide by instead of passing their own judgement individually separate from their church and/or their god.  But marriage isn’t about god or religion, people who do not partake in religious traps, such as Atheists (I am not conformed to any religion but find my beliefs to transcend into Atheism) can marry without so much as a raised brow but when two loving couples who happen to be either male or female, want to marry…oh no you can’t do that, it’s not Adam and Steve it’s Adam and Eve.  Seriously folks, that is getting really old.  Can’t you come up with new material?  

The bible, I have read a few times, is a good read but if you believe the stuff that is written in there, seriously? you do believe what is written? Walking on water, dividing the seas, breaking a loaf of bread to feed thousands, making a man from dirt and a woman from his rib, and a snake who appears to be able to talk telling Adam and Eve to eat the apple…really? Floods and angry gods and all the animals two by two on a boat built by Noah to escape the floods.  We have men riding a chariot to heaven, talking donkeys, a slingshot wielding boy who takes down a giant.  Then god has his son who is killed, slung up on a cross, died for all of our sins, comes back to life and the good of man and humanity is restored.  

So then you have to read between the lines and find all the sins, all the sins of the flesh and mind of man.  Sins so many…but one sin, small yet so mighty, the one where all the anger and the judging derives from….”You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.”  However, the misconception of us sinners under rainbow law is that it is not preached in the bible that homosexuality is a sin.  It is not about our feelings or tendencies, it’s the actions.  The sex part that gets everyone’s panties in a bunch.   The sexual wedgie.  That wedge between how we are seen in the public eye.  

So what about Same Sex Marriage? What does it say in the bible about two consenting adults of the same sex who are in love and want to cement that love to each in a simple thing called marriage?   There is no mention of same-sex marriages or partnerships in the bible, either for or against.  Many Christians oppose the legalization of same sex marriage because they confuse the distinction of roles pertaining to gender and what they see as sin filled behavior to which they will spew that it’s a perversion in god’s eyes.  Others will view our demands for equal rights to what they have learned from the bible about avoiding judgement of choices people make and act with kindness and respect for all people…if the latter were true everyone would be able to be married to the person they love regardless of gender and regardless of whether it is Adam and Steve or Adam and Eve.  

It shouldn’t matter…but it does.  Our countries leaders are at each others throats over that little 4 letter word as LOVE.  They see two woman together and their view of Love becomes perverted, they see what they want to see and will take sides with others who also see LOVE as ugly, but cannot differentiate between what is right and wrong.   The main focus stems from what they hear from the churches and the bible, and cannot separate church from state.  If religion was left out of the conversation we wouldn’t be here demanding same rights as our straight friends and family who do not have a clue (well unless they are bi racial couples, then maybe) what it feels like to be told your kind of LOVE is not accepted.  

 

 

I met my wife in 2000, in a lesbian chat-room on Yahoo. We chatted and sent emails back and forth getting to know each other better.  We talked on the phone for hours and made plans to meet over the course of three years.  We met, we got attached, we fell in love, we lived a life as a couple and in 2011, in New York, we married.   A year later, we moved to a state in the south that was stuck in the old ways of what many people thought, that same sex marriage is an abomination.  Where LOVE was defined as wrong, bad, ugly, disgusting and completely taken out of context.  Where marriage definition declared it was about one woman and one man….again, get new material.   There you go again going against your god and judging differences.  Isn’t that what makes our country unique all the differences in people.  The races, the cultures, languages, and the characteristics of what makes us all different, that melting pot we were taught about in school.  Does this not matter?

What happened to this country we call home? Once a great nation filled with freedoms and people who have given their lives for those freedoms that some take for granted.  Once gay couples started asking for more specific freedoms, SCREEEEEECH!!! Hit the brakes…hold the phone!!!  Specific freedoms?  You mean we can have more than what we have already? Like what?  How about the freedom to marry the love of our lives? Maybe allowing two gay men to adopt children? Giving closure to a grieving lesbian who lost her partner of 20 years, don’t they deserve that?   But I thought DOMA was struck down and we are given that right to marry already? Not in every state, out of 50 states in the U.S of A only nineteen allow gay and lesbian couples to marry – CA, CT, DE, HI, IA, IL, ME, MD, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NM, NY, OR, PA, RI, VT, and WA and Washington, D.C.  Not a lot out of 50, but it’s a start.  There are however, fourteen states that are going through the court systems as we speak (or as I write) and rulings have been in favor, these include AR, CO, FL, ID, IN, KY, MI, OK, TX, UT, VA and WI judges have struck down marriage bans, and in OH and TN, judges have issued more limited pro-marriage rulings.  

Many people ask us why do we want to get married so bad, it is just a piece of paper and a ring that declares marriage.  It is more than just a simple paper or what ring we wear, it’s beyond that.   Like infinity?  Sort of, you find someone who rocks your world, you fall in love, you date, you move in together, you love that person with all your heart, body and soul, you ask them for your hand in marriage and you go to the clerks office and register but are turned away because they don’t allow your kind to get marriage.  So you declare this an outrage and you have the right to sue and in waiting for a verdict you fight for your freedoms…the Specific ones? Yes the Specific ones! The ones that matter to you, the ones that define your personal character of who you are…a lesbian woman or a gay man…as well as bi or transgendered.  Our differences that make us all unique but only same in body parts (other than what defines gender) and skeletal diagrams.  But how does this separate you from a man and a woman who want to marry or already are?  Because it doesn’t matter what a man and woman couple looks like, they can be covered head to toe in tattoos or one is Asian the other is Black, they can be millionaires or live in filth on the street, homeless and hungry, strong or weak, religious or not, a Democrat or a Republican…to them it doesn’t matter because that are not gay.  But gay people can be all those things?  Oh sure, they can be but I described what a man and woman together can be.  They are not gay.  Once you implicate you are gay or lesbian, people can’t look beyond what you look like.  They can’t see the forest for the trees.  They can’t see the intertwining LOVE we have for one another.  They just can’t see us beyond the labels that society has placed on us…homo, fag, dyke, pervert, queer…sinners.  In demanding that place in which we want to have the right to marry, many who have seen us as those labels have begun to see as much more.  They have started to notice that we are angry and frustrated and they are starting to see that we too have needs and wants…or in other words….Specific Freedoms?  Yes.  

In gaining those freedoms, is when that paper and that ring mean something.  That is why it is important.  Right?