Just a few thoughts about yesterday’s decision by the state of Maine to not legalize gay marriage.  These quotes are from Maine’s Stand for Marriage website, which I will NOT direct traffic to here:

If Question 1 fails and LD 1020 is allowed to take effect, marriage will be redefined to be about any two consenting adults without regard to gender, the focus being only about what the adults want for themselves, and not what is best for society as a whole…The reliance on marriage as an important fabric of society will no longer matter…

This is so weird to me! Americans hate communism, but this sentiment is a fully communist sentiment. The point of marriage is ONLY about what the adults want for themselves. I didn’t say “I do.” to “society as a whole”. I said it to ONE person, and it wasn’t for the greater good, it’s because he has a big penis I love him. Also, if I didn’t have the state’s permission to marry him, I’d have done it anyway. Spending my life with Rob is worth going to jail for. I’m so thankful that isn’t the case.

A wealth of examples have been identified by legal scholars who have pointed out the conflicts that will arise between the rights of people who sincerely disagree with homosexual marriage, and the rights of homosexual couples to demand that the state enforce gay marriage whether people support it or not.

I agree that the rights of people who sincerely disagree with homosexual marriage need to be protected. Case after case have already been brought to court involving wedding professionals (especially photographers and clergy members) who refuse to work on gay weddings, citing their religious beliefs – or their simple disgust – and this is not right.  (Sidenote: although it angered as a human, I also support Ken Bardwell‘s decision to refuse to marry two people of different races as being his right as an American citizen.)  But they’re wrong; LD1020 was written with clauses put in specifically to protect those people.

Most troubling is the impact on children, particularly as the public schools begin the process of indoctrinating them on the subject of homosexual marriage.

These consequences are not hypothetical – they have already occurred in states like Massachusetts where homosexual marriage has been legalized.

In Massachusetts, which legalized homosexual marriage, children in second grade are taught in public schools that “same-sex marriage” is the same as traditional marriage, that they can grow up to marry either a boy or a girl, that either option is the same. What’s more, parents cannot opt their children out of such “instruction.”

Well, that’s what you get when you ask the government to educate your children. They get taught things the state thinks is best, not the parents.  Also, I’m calling a foul: shameful use of quotes to make your concerns seem about something more sinister.

In the end, the losers yesterday are the people who are stopped at the emergency room doors as their loved ones lay dying just beyond, the parents who loose the rights to their children because they aren’t “really the parents”, and the families who don’t have the protection that I’ll get to have as a mom when I have kids.  It’s so scary.  It’s so wrong. Where’s the protection for those that need it the most?

I leave you with this. It’s from Ireland’s campaign to legalize gay marriage.

Oh, by the way.

When I wrote my post on gay marriage, my personal feelings were so far beside the point I didn’t bother bringing them up, because, really, I can just go fuck myself with my feelings, and so can everyone else for that matter. No one needs MY permission to consider themselves married, our yours, or the pope’s, or the govenment’s or anyone else’s.

But since I was asked: if you are an adult and would like me to view you as married to another adult (and they feel the same way about you, of course!) I will. In MY eyes, you don’t need a license from the government, or to have had a ceremony in a church, or at all, or be any specific religion or religions or a certain race or color or gender. If you tell me you’re married, you are.

And do I wish that the government would allow gays to marry? Yeah, because in this (shitty) system we live in, it will make your life so much easier. Being legally married means that you can adopt a baby, or have one “the old fashioned way” and be able to keep the child that you raised but that isn’t biologically yours if your spouse dies. It means the government steals less money from you taxes you less. It means that, god forbid, you won’t have to spend the last five minutes of your spouses life pleading at the doorway of an emergency room to see them before they slip away forever after a sudden car crash. I get why this license that I have is so sought after. There’s good in the bad. It’s a lot of pitiful offerings from a horrible system, but it’s what we have.

Well, wait. It’s not what YOU have. You’re gay, and so was your husband, so you’re the one fighting the court system from ripping your family apart because it was his sperm that made your daughter. That sucks. It sucks so hard, and it’s criminal. I get it. And I’m so, so sorry. But, like the black folks have said for years: we shall overcome. Not everything. And not always, of course; even the black folks are still hated sometimes (a lot). But eventually we’ll get somewhere. We shall overcome.

UPDATE: I guess my point was that, rather than have more people opt into a bad system we should make a new system altogether; one that could not, by nature, exclude anyone.

PS -
Ditto Keith Olbermann

I have a house full of people who came from all over to visit with us here in New York, including two who attended the protest against Prop. 8 in lower Manhattan today. Of course it sparked loads of conversation, and I guess now is as good a time as any to talk about my feelings on gay marriage.

This is what I believe with every fiber of my being: I disagree with the idea of government being a part of marriage. The ONLY reason I am legally married is because it was important to Rob and our families. Since the beginning of human civilization, marriage has always been in the eye of the community, not the government. If the community did not recognize you as married, you were not. If they did, you were. The government stepped in relatively recently, and began issuing licenses for marriage as a way to keep tabs on people and control them. You know how I feel about that. (Thumbs down!) Remember, “license” is another word for “permission”. If the government didn’t approve of two people getting married, they would not give permission.

At some point, a government issued license became the hallmark of “marriage”, NOT the social recognition it always had been throughout human history. What this did was allow certain people who would have NEVER gotten society’s permission to be married to wed, most notably inter-racial couples. (Interesting to note, a mere 42 years ago, MY inter-racial marriage would not have been recognized by the government as valid.) That sounds fantastic, but it also changed the definition of marriage to be “a state of monogamy recognized by the government” instead of a covenant between two people in the eyes of God/god/whatever religion and community.

The problem now is that when people who wish to be married cannot by legal terms, society will not allow them to be married, either. Two people cannot just say, “We are married.” and have their community say, “Yes, they are.” which is how it SHOULD be, and IS in a truly free society. Now, they have to prove that the government has given them permission to be married before society will recognize them as married. It’s backwards and reversed. It’s not changing anything in people’s hearts, either.

If the government eventually allows two people of the same gender to marry, there will still be people who say, “I don’t care. I will NEVER recognize those creeps as married!” Conversely, if they never do, there will always be people who will accept, without the least bit of hesitation, two women saying, “We are married.”

I would like to see us taking marriage, in all its forms, away from the government, and putting it back in the eyes of society where it belongs.