Gay Marriage for All

But Ann--your proposal would rob me of one of the best examples of hypocracy I have to offer my students. Homophobes accuse gays of promiscuity and then refuse to allow them to marry. Don't spoil my fun...Well--actually, go right ahead.

come on down to Jersey, boys! you can get married on the boardwalk!

Thanks Ann!

This whole debate is so unconstitutional; in others words if you are an American, you are protected and deserve the same freedoms as other Americans.

If these clowns continue to take votes from church congregations by promising to ban Gays their Constitutional rights, then Gays should not have to pay taxes,etc.

How can these so called Christians spread such hate and judgment against so many of God's children?

As we turn the corner in the political season from a time when only the candidate staffers are listening to the candidates to the time when half of the people, listen with half of an ear of what half of the candidates are saying; we will soon hear the cattle call of faux-issues.

Certainly the replay of "gay marriage" will be prodded out to capture the attention of the entrenched ardent supporters and the homophobic while the rest of us wait for something compelling to be talked about.

Is it fair to say that most of us agree that any two people brave enough to make a lifelong public commitment should enjoy equal legal rights?

Is it also fair to bifurcate that legal status issue from the religious adornments? (Does not the separation of church and state work both ways)?

If we concede that the legal issues are moot and what is left are the emotions surrounding cultural, religious and social norm debates; then does it not follow that each religious organization can decide for themselves whether such unions are to be recognized and "rite"-fully ordained?

I guess the real hang up is language. Civil unions seems to be seen as shortchanging the relationship to many Gay advocates.

I suggest that we call all two-adult lifelong (or as long as you can until your life is in danger) relationships be recognized by government entities as "civil unions". Then the various orders of social structure (churches etc) can decide for themselves what constitutes a "marriage". The rest of us can decide for oursleves.

Is it not more important what the couple themselves views their relationship as (after the legal considerations are rendered moot)?

Frankly, I think the term Gay Marriage is an oxymoron and those promoting the concept should be careful what they wish for. Marriage has it's burdens and there are many non-gay moments.

Thanks for starting this discussion.

As a relatively new member (under two weeks), I've been surprised to see nothing on this site relating to the gays. I say this as a gay myself (tongue lodged firmly in cheek; I grew up in a place where people actually say that: "Did you hear she's a gay?"). Have not yet run across any members or discussions of the lavender stripe (not that there's anything wrong with that). I've addressed this with the powers that be at TeeBeeDee, and together we're working on some remedies.

But on to the topic at hand. My husband and I (I refuse to call him my "partner"; we don't run a law firm) are the parents of two small children, 6 and 2. And no, they're not children from a previous straight marriage. We planned them and brought them into the world because we both love children, are lucky to have come from close-knit families and wanted to create one of our own.

As for the whole religion question (and I'm always surprised you have to point this out to some people), the term gay Christian is not an oxymoron. Kel and I met at church, we go with our children most Sundays and it was there in 2001 that we stood before friends and family with our 9-month-old Elizabeth and exchanged vows . We called it our gay shotgun wedding. There we stood, in a tableau we may have privately yearned for but never thought possible, as our priest asked God's blessing on our union and our family.

The ceremony had been planned rather hastily, as most shotgun weddings are. We only decided to do it because both our families were flying in from thousands of miles away for our daughter's baptism. We knew we'd probably never have them all together again so we added a surprise to the menu.

We called our event a "family blessing," so as not to frighten the horses or my mother, but to anyone present, it was clear they were attending a wedding. The real shocker was this: our afterthought of a ceremony turned out to be the holiest day of our lives. Standing there, looking into the eyes of this man I loved and lived with, had planned a family and life with, and publicly and before God promising my life to him, I finally "got" marriage.

There are reasons these rituals have endured for eons. Cliche as it may sound, we DID feel different the next day, the next minute in fact. There is something about the ritual of it -- standing before God, family and friends and making that commitment to each other -- that changes the DNA of your relationship.

The ceremony blew my conservative Southern parents' minds. They grew up in a generation in which having a gay child is the worst possible outcome a parent could imagine. Would they go to hell? Would their friends reject them? Would the world reject these children they'd given life to an nurtured for years? For them, the sight of their son standing at the altar with another man was no doubt, among many other things and to put it mildly, a mind-bender. And yet here they were. They showed up. My mother even wore black.

As alien as I know such a ceremony must have seemed to them, they came away from it deeply moved. And astonished, I think. They saw that everyone we cared about was there, loving us and supporting us and praying for us, each of them wishing the best for our family and helping us to get off to a strong start. The day was a sort of miracle for my parents. In watching us exchange vows they relived their own, and in so doing at once understood the depth and seriousness of our commitment to each other and to our family. Understood what was at stake here. I wish America had been there.

A side benefit to all of this was the photo album. We, as most children do, had grown up fascinated with our parents' wedding photos; they provided a sense of comfort and a sense of pride and history, both making us feel a part of something larger and planting the dream of such a day in our own lives. Our kids now have that.

Our daughter does not understand why it is that we can be married in a church (our church, anyway) by God, but not by the state (or "that stupid man," as she refers to our president, which she knows will always earn her a cookie).

California, where we live, has the most progressive domestic partnership laws in the country. So we're lucky there. If anything happens to me, Kel gets the house and kids, no questions asked. If I'm a vegetable, he the one who'll pull the plug. If we split up, he gets half of everything. The sort of thing most couples take for granted. Only gay folk in Massachusetts, who have full marriage rights, are better off. And get this: miraculously, somehow, despite all predictions, the Bay State has not burst into flames.

Just one more thing and I'll shut up. How on earth does my being able to legally marry the person I love, the person with whom I'm hopefully nurturing fine, stable citizens, somehow lessen the value of someone else's relationship? Don't get it.

I'm done.

I have no idea why people are SO scared of gay marriage. It's beyond me. Your story inspires me -Thank you for sharing :)

I would think that many gays might become leery of marriage if they read some of the comments posted here by the straight community. Sometimes my hair stands on end at the level of cruelty, cupidity, stupidity and meaninglessness that is inflicted and conducted in the so-called presently church-sanctioned hetero marriages.

Maybe what you have to fight so hard to have will prove to be better in the hands of the gay community than it ever was in the straight community.

My own feeling about sexuality is that there are two kinds of people I can't stand:

*People who stick their nose in everyone else's business.

*People who stick their business in everyone else's nose.

Sexuality is but one of thousands of factor that make the sum of a human relationship. Frankly, many married couples relate that the best form of birth control is a marriage license!