I have always steered clear from political issues on my personal blog. Partly because up until lately, I've never cared too much about politics and wasn't very informed on issues. Since moving back to the US, both me and my husband have taken a renewed interest in politics. A lot of it has to do with the novelty of it; the United Kingdom has an interesting political system with multiple parties, but in Scotland, politics were boring to discuss - everyone votes Labour. Well, until a few years ago, when the Lib Dems took a lot of Scottish votes away from Labour. And things are cooking up in Scotland right now anyway with the referendum for independence coming up this fall. Politics were just starting to get interesting when we moved back to the US.
My entire family is Republican. While I can't identify completely with the Democrats, I can identify with them a whole lot more than the Republicans. Democrats are centrists, even slightly right leaning, in UK terms. Republicans are next door neighbors to the far right fringe end of the Conservatives and the Tea Party? BFFs with the fascist BNPs.
All that to say, for a British citizen (Scott) and a former British resident (me), being Democrat is pretty rational.
(Yes, there are other independent parties in the US. Unfortunately, the US two party system barely allows for these independent parties to get any recognition. And unfortunately, most of these independent parties are utter loonies anyway. I do hope for a day when the two-party system can open up like the British system to allow seats in Congress and even perhaps the Presidency to be held by a number of non-Republican, non-Democratic, new party leaders.)
(Even if that means a looney gets a seat.)
Anyway, I had a point when I started writing here, which I have veered a nice little ways away from it. I came here talk about same-sex marriage.
So, I've never had a major problem with gay people or gay marriage. All the years I was a Christian, I believed the homosexual lifestyle was wrong, but if someone wanted to live it, it didn't affect me at all. It wasn't my problem or my concern. I believed people were born with a "tendency" towards being gay, but that God could "deliver" them out of it, much like people born with tendencies toward alcoholism or violence could be delivered. When asked about it, I was truthful that I believed it was a sin, but that was between them and God, and really had very little to do with me, unless you personally wanted my prayer. Furthermore, I never went so far to say that gay people were going to hell, just that their actions displeased God. But we all displease God with our actions, we are all sinners, and I didn't see the sin of homosexuality to be any different than my own sins of gossip, occasionally drinking too much, and pride. A gay person could be a Christian, albeit a deceived one, but still eligible for salvation, as far as I could tell.
So even in my evangelical days, if someone asked what I thought about same-sex marriage, my answer was always, "I don't." Just let them get married. What's the big deal? It doesn't affect me.
This stance began to change though. Over the years, as the subject gained greater media and societal attention, I observed the pain that the debate, and the issue of homosexuality itself, was causing my gay friends. I had friends who had to choose between their careers in the military or happiness with the love of their lives. I saw friends cut off from their families and/or communities. People I knew, friends, even extended family members were being heralded as immoral, licentious, shameless degenerates on the sole grounds of who they loved. While from a Biblical standpoint, I still couldn't say it wasn't sinful, I was very certain they were entitled to the same rights as anyone else, and absolutely did not deserve to be hated, attacked, treated as lepers or burned at the stake like the Salem witches (who also didn't deserve such a fate). I heard careless, flippant comments by straight people complaining that they didn't get any special rights or attention for being straight, that they didn't feel the need to declare to the world their sexual orientation, so why did "those people" feel the need to?
Because you don't have to declare anything. You can hold hands with your husband and your two-point-five biological children in public and not receive a second glance. You have the luxury of silently declaring your sexual orientation every day in everything you do with zero retribution. You don't need special rights or attention, because you already have them.
Why do homosexuals feel the need to "declare" their sexual orientation? Could it be because they have spent years, if not decades, pretending to be something they are not, being bullied by the peers and castigated (quite possibly physically) by their parents and other adults, and just want to finally break free from all that bondage? Or perhaps, maybe some of them are actually "declaring" nothing. Maybe they are just walking hand and hand like you are, but you see that as flaunting something, declaring their sexual orientation, when really, they are just quietly living their everyday lives.
Either way, I realized my "live and let live" stance wasn't going to cut it. No one's was. If I wanted to see equal rights for all law-abiding people, it was going to take an actual stance. A pro-same-sex marriage stance.
This, of course, conflicted with my religious beliefs to an extent. I started defining my position as "morally opposed but legislatively in favor". As my faith slowly disintegrated, this stance disintegrated with it, into simply "in favor", for the supposed immorality of it had been tightly intertwined with religion and nothing else. However, the "morally opposed but legislatively in favor" is the position I wish more evangelicals took.
It's impossible - actually, no it's not impossible, it's just difficult - for an Evangelical Christian, or a member of any religion that objects to homosexuality to look at it from a strictly human rights perspective. It's difficult, because Christians (in particular) believe they own the rights to marriage, or at least their religion does. They believe that God created marriage, and therefore God has the sole say on how it is administered.
(If this was true, why are Christians allowing members of other religions to marry each other? And why are they allowing divorce?)
God created marriage between a man and a woman, they maintain. Therefore marriage between a man and a man or a woman and a woman is against God's law.
Okay, fine, we'll grant you that belief. We'll even grant you the belief that homosexuals going against this plan are going to hell. You are welcome to believe that. "It's a free country", Americans love to say.
And that's the point.
It's a free country for you to think gays are going to hell. And it's a free country for gays to be gay. And therefore, it should be a free country for gays to get married.
Our country is not, despite what is touted through the right-wing media, a "Christian country". It was founded on freedom of religion, the freedom to believe or not believe whatever one wants. Our forefathers may have been primarily made up of deists and various brands of Christian, from Anglican to Unitarian, (though not all, Jefferson, for instance, had decidedly very un-Christian beliefs), but they were clear that this is NOT a "Christian" nation. America is not a theocracy. The Christian definition of marriage should not be the only definition in a country where freedom from such restraints used to be our crowning glory.
Christians and other religious people, or people simply anti-gay (I am purposely steering clear of the word "homophobic" because while it is a correct description for many anti-gay people, it isn't quite fair on all of them), have further reasons they use against same-sex marriage. They believe that it is detrimental to society and detrimental to children. I can only assume, since this was never a position I totally understood, that that is position comes from the stereotypical concept that kids need both a motherly mother and a fatherly father to get the balance right. While I rarely see that stereotype play out perfectly in even heterosexual marriages, I assume the assumption is that in same-sex marriages, kids miss out on one or the other.
The profound misconception here is that women always act like "women" and men always act like "men". Therefore, in a heterosexual couple, there are equal and opposite traits that culminate in a completely wholesome companionship.
This speaks to absolutely nothing of the truth or reality.
In heterosexual couples, you have women who can be described as having one or many of these stereotypically male traits: domineering, authoritarian, outspoken, unemotional, tough, competitive, sexually aggressive. Men can be described in stereotypically feminine ways: nurturing, gentle, soft-spoken, irrational, emotional, submissive, accepting. Some couples are so similar that there is hardly any opposing characteristics; both man and wife can be calm, gentle, soft-spoken, passive and nurturing with no authoritarianism, outspokenness, aggressiveness, or, say, confidence. Conversely, some couples are both domineering, assertive, loud, imposing, authoritarian, strict and judgmental, with no signs of gentleness, irrationality, softness or perhaps compassion. All of these are, of course, generalizations, but they hopefully get the point across.
Again, I'm speculating, but I assume the Father-Mother scenario assumes a give-and-take of masculine and feminine traits that round out a family. This is simply not the case in many, if not most, relationships.
And in homosexual couples, the scale isn't tipped the other way. Two women do not equal two emotional roller-coasters and door mats. Two men do not equal two dictators and workhorses. Same sex or different sex - at the end of the day, it's just two individuals coming together to form a partnership. Some are great matches, some are bad ones.
There is also that study that was in the media a while back, claiming that children with homosexual parents fared worse than children with heterosexual relationships. This would be compelling indeed, if the study had been a good one. As it turns out, it was a terrible study that pretty much just showed what we already knew - children from broken families fared worse than children with families intact. Turns out, it had pretty much nothing to do with whether the parents were gay or not, but still together or not.
So, in a few short words, yes, it's complicated. Sort of. It's extremely difficult to untangle oneself from the net of cognitive dissonance. It's easier to hold to the black and white than to sift through the many shades of grey (no reference to that awful book intended). But really, it's not a complicated matter. People should have the right to marry who they love, as long as both parties involved are consenting adults. It only gets complicated when people make it that way, trying to create slippery slopes and outlandish resulting outflows. (That's not to say deciphering all the possible outcomes is wrong. Legislation definitely needs to be written in such a way that it does not inadvertently allow for things that would be problematic.)
It may clash with your religious beliefs. You have the right to dislike it. But two total strangers getting married only affects you insomuch that you may possibly one day have to explain why Jonny has two mommies to your child. It does not creep into your marriage and defile it. It really has very little, if anything, to do with you at all.
But it means everything to the people who want to marry and can't, who want to express their undying love for each other by committing to a lifelong union, for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. Who want to know their best friend and soul mate will be cared for financially when they die through life insurance plans and inheritance. Who want to be parents, who want to be parents that raise their kids in a secure home, with family health care policies and legal custody for both parents, and no discrimination.
For you, it's about a religious principle and someone else's possible afterlife. For them, it's about basic human rights and their own quite literal, very tangible day-to-day experiences.
If affects you little. It affects them in every way. Isn't there a way to be morally opposed, but legislatively in favor?
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