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Vote No against Hate and Hypocrisy. Protect Real Marriages. No on 8.

(20 Oct 2008 0:23)

There is an ad against Proposition 8 running right now in California that makes me ashamed of some of my fellow Californians. The announcer, in a tone clearly intended to incite fear and hatred, declares ominously, �It�s no longer about tolerance!� The message of the ad is that if we don�t vote for Proposition 8, and overturn the right to gay marriages in California, that �real� marriage will be threatened in some way. Somehow people will be sued and legally forced to accept gay marriages, even if they oppose it on �moral� grounds.

It brings to mind images like George Wallace standing at the schoolhouse doors blocking the children and the kind of racist hate mongers who even this very day spread caricatures of Obama that belong in the abandoned cesspools of 19th century racism.

An awful lot of very bigoted, closed minded, hypocrites hide behind the socially sanctioned veneer of �morality� to justify their hatefulness. I remember the pain I felt when I knew I had lost a friend to that kind of brainwashing after high school. Until then, despite being raised in a very strict �Christian� family, she still was open minded enough to be my friend. But her parents sent her to Bob Jones University and when she came back on her first vacation, she tried earnestly to explain to me that it was completely moral and just that students were not allowed to date black people, because God himself had cursed Noah�s son�s descendants with blackness because his son had seen his nakedness. In the words of Bill Cosby, Riiiiiiiiight! Some people will hide behind the name of God to justify any kind of discrimination against the people their own God would embrace as being just as much his children as they are. I guess being part brown would make me semi cursed?

Since the people shrieking the loudest about overturning gay marriage are so called �Christians�, let�s explore this further. This flawed thinking really applies to all marriages. An awful lot of people who scream the loudest about defending marriage like to hide behind the phrase, �protecting the sanctity of marriage.� They also like to invoke Jesus a lot. Ok, so let�s not take someone else�s word for Jesus. Better to go directly to the source and see what the man actually said instead of what human created organizations interested in controlling human behavior said he said. When you actually go to the source, you find it really doesn�t matter if you�re a Christian or not. If you�re listening to what Jesus was really saying, the answer will be the same. Jesus wasn�t about forcing anyone to be anyone�s victim. He wasn�t about image, he was about real love. That message remains true whether or not he was divine or just a human being with some good ideas.

Jesus didn�t care about image. He wasn't big on titles or social labels. He cared about reality and about what was really in people�s hearts. He didn�t look at the externals. He wanted to know if their actions truly came from love. He had some of his harshest criticisms for people who made a big deal of how moral or pious they were in front of other people, while totally missing the spirit of love. These are the same kind of people who today, would point to a marriage certificate between a man and a woman and use it as proof that they had a good marriage. No matter whether there was any real love there or not. No matter how dysfunctional or abusive it might be. No matter how scared, hopeless or unhappy one or both people were. If a ceremony was performed between that man and woman, it must be something special, and they must fight to the death to force it to remain, even if it kills them. Even if they must resort to very unloving actions to retain control.

There are incredibly beautiful love stories out there. There are people who belonged together, who had their good and bad days, but who are and were so good for and to each other that a years long relationship works. Not the kind that has just externally survived years while dying excruciating deaths privately, not the kind that only presents the fa�ade of success to the world, but the real thing. That is how we should define a true marriage. When people come together willingly and stay together willingly not out of social, financial, religious or abusively controlling reasons, but because it Really works. And because both people really want to be there.

When we stop trying to impose our will on other people and allow the ones who really live the spirit of love together, we can not only be open-minded enough to give and accept love, but have the humility to understand that we all deserve that right. Whether we see each other as fellow human beings on this earth or sons and daughters of a God who is and invented love, who are we to deny the happiness of a life together to a couple that loves each other? If two men, two women or a man and a woman love each other and belong together, who are we to stand in judgment of that and prevent it? If two people make each other desperately unhappy, who are we to stand in judgment and force them to stay together merely because someone�s little fairy tale view of life says that the only way life is supposed to work is that a man and a woman meet, they fall in love and there must be a happily ever after, no matter what? And that the happily ever afters are only reserved for heterosexual couples? There is way too much judgmental nosiness going on about other people�s relationships by people that do not know the real truth about those relationships and who have absolutely no business sticking their noses into or judging them anyway.

I have met some gay people that are so obnoxious that they make it very hard to support their right to be gay. But I have encountered just as much obnoxiousness from straight people. There are gay couples with beautiful loving relationships and some who couldn�t keep a relationship going for a week if you paid them. I have known straight couples whose marriages really worked, ones that didn�t and ones who wasted years desperately trying to project false images of success to the outside world while destroying each other horribly. No gender or combination has a lock on getting it right or wrong. Instead of promoting hypocrisy and hatred, we ought to be doing more to allow those who belong together, gay or straight to marry and support the real spirit of marriage. The kind of marriage that deserves support should never be determined by any other questions than these�is there real love there between both people? Does this really work for them? Let those who belong, be together. Let those who don�t, go, and find peace with someone they can love. The real Jesus would. Why can�t we?

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One of the tactics used by people who promote ballot propositions like this is that they will make it tricky to figure out what a yes or no vote means.

In this case, if you vote yes on 8, you are taking an existing right to marriage away from gay people. You are saying no to equal civil rights under the law.

If you vote no on 8, you are saying no, don't change the law. Let people continue to have equal rights. Let love prevail for everyone.

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October 2008

Vote No against Hate and Hypocrisy. Protect Real Marriages. No on 8.

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