Gay Grey’s Anatomy actor TR Knight threw his heart and soul into this year’s election, so you can be sure he’s feeling pretty blue about all the anti-gay electoral action, like the fact that Proposition 8 passed:
As I write this, I just read the concession from No on Prop. 8. I find it difficult to put the sadness I feel into words.
I know that gay people will one day gain all the rights due us as American citizens. I know that the people who stand in our way today will be the people the majority will later mock as foolish and bigoted. I was speaking to an African-American friend tonight. She told me, “It takes so long. But people will come around. You have to continue to fight. It just takes a very long time.”
I hope I can muster the patience and keep my anger focused so I can continue to fight. Fight clean. Fight with just the truth. And never let myself spew the kind of hate I encountered on that Tuesday in November as we peacefully fought for our civil rights.
George Takei, who played Sulu on Star Trek, also vowed to keep on fighting: “There are going to be heartbreaks, setbacks and sacrifices to be made. But we will soldier on.” Indeed we will. And what a fabulous army we make!
PROTECT MARRIAGE AUSTRALIA
gays can be equal as soon as they start producing children. remember folks, without reproduction we wouldn’t be here!
ChristopherM
So you’re saying elderly couples and the infertile aren’t equal either? Funny that you aren’t trying to pass laws against them.
Paula
TO ALL WHO OPPOSE SAME-SEX MARRIAGE:
I think you’re good people, like me. I pay my taxes that support my schools and religious institutions so they can give back to the community. I don’t hurt anyone and only try to help. I oppose people who try to infringe on religious freedoms, and I don’t seek to infringe upon what “marriage” means to you. I appreciate that most of you DO approve of ‘domestic partnerships’ and ‘civil unions’ for gay people, but please listen to why that doesn’t work.
The federal government gives married people about 1000 rights. The state gives them about 400 additional rights. The reason the government is involved in marriage at all is to promote and protect stable, happy families as basic units of society. Obviously marriage is not solely for procreation, as we do not remove that right from you if you are infertile, elderly, or choose not to have children. When you marry, you are automatically entitled to those 1400 rights, including the right to visit a spouse in the hospital, be added to your spouse’s insurance policies, acquire property with your spouse and automatically inherit it if your spouse dies, and many more. These 1400 rights are not simply and easily written up in a single civil document, nor always enforceable; for instance, a person under a state’s domestic partnership can’t force the IRS to give him the tax benefits afforded to married couples. It is extremely complex and doesn’t always work; I am aware of gay people whose partners died and the deceased’s hostile family successfully asserted their ownership of everything in spite of the contract, leaving the survivor destitute. Imagine children being involved, and a deceased partner’s hostile family takes your children from you because your civil contract didn’t stand up in court proving you were next of kin! In Arkansas, the majority just voted to prohibit unmarried people from adopting, meaning a gay person can’t even adopt their partner’s children to ensure that if their partner dies the children will remain with the surviving parent they love!
‘Civil unions’ and ‘domestic partnerships’ permit OSTENSIBLY most of the 400 state-afforded rights of married couples, but NONE of the 1000 federal ones, and I can tell you from personal experience that the state ones are NOT equal. Just one example is that to get on my partner’s insurance policy, we had to provide our certificate of domestic partnership, copies of financial records proving we had co-mingled finances and lived in the same home for at least two years, and more. If I died, my partner would have to wait at least two years to add her new partner to the policy to prove the relationship was ‘real’. Married people don’t even need to provide a copy of a marriage license, and if their spouse died today, they could add a new spouse tomorrow. This is only one example out of MANY.
Other rights are specific to helping children of married people, including ensuring automatic inheritance rights, the right of a non-blood related parent to pick up a sick child from school, alimony and child support to help with their care in the event of divorce, and many more. No matter the makeup of the family or how it comes to be — be it traditional nuclear, or grandparents raising their grandchild, or a blended family resulting from divorced people remarrying, or single parents, or adoptive parents, or childless couples, or gay couples — ALL of these people deserve the same rights so they have the best chances of happiness and contribution to society.
What I would like to see the FEDERAL government do is create one proto-marriage type of relationship (‘civil union’?) that applies equally to all people who want it, including granting them all 1400 of the rights and responsibilities that “married” people currently enjoy, and then simply leave the word “marriage” for religiously-inclined people who want to further consecrate their relationship according to their religions. I think that is what the MAJORITY of us all want. Unfortunately, the federal government is currently leaving the issue to states to decide, so we are stuck wrestling for the one word that currently encompasses all 1400 of those rights, and that word is “marriage”. Granting the existing rights encompassed by one word to a minority is a lot easier than changing 1400 laws to encompass them. That’s really all there is to it, see?
I understand many of you are afraid that legalizing gay marriage will lead to your children being forced to learn in school that homosexuality is “normal”. I will be the first to agree with you that homosexuality is NOT “normal” – the parts don’t fit and we can’t make babies. But consider that in one out of every 100 live births, a child is born with ambiguous genitalia (intersexed). If God creates 1% of babies that way, why do we then do surgery to “correct” them to one sex or the other and make them “normal”? God made me abnormal too – I’m among the small percentage of people whose wiring is crossed so I’m attracted to my own sex. My abnormality doesn’t lead me to hurt anyone. The worst law I’ve ever broken is the speed limit. Learning that homosexuals exist isn’t going to turn any child homosexual, but it will help the small percentage born with this abnormality to feel less alone. That’s really the worst that could happen. All the same, currently in California no child can be forced, against the will of their parents, to be taught anything about homosexuality at school.
As for the slippery slope arguments that legalizing gay marriage will automatically lead to legalizing polygamy or incestuous marriages, those forms of marriage existed throughout most of recorded history but are too impractical or undesirable for the vast majority of Americans to even consider today. As for legalizing gay marriage leading to legalizing people marrying pets or children, these can’t even give informed consent. Please stay off the slippery slope; the ONLY topic we’re asking you to agree on is legalizing gay marriage.
We gay people and our families are being hurt by laws as they stand, and all we are asking for is the concession that the word “marriage” include us so we may enjoy its rights – and responsibilities. I will leave you with the words of Mildred Loving, who wrote this forty years after her 1967 legal case struck down laws barring interracial marriage:
“Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the ‘wrong kind of person’ for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry.”
(Barack Obama should take notice, since he supports “Separate But Equal†rights for gays – but was born in the US at a time when his own parents’ marriage was not recognized in many states.)
Peace.
ChristopherM
@PROTECT MARRIAGE AUSTRALIA:
Religion is a choice too. Perhaps we should stop protecting all choices.
For that matter, you are choosing to spend a lot of time on a gay website…what exactly does that say about you?
PROTECT MARRIAGE AUSTRALIA
i’m here to inform likely readers of the facts. the fact is, you’re a sinner OUT OF CHOICE.
also…another fact is that prop 8 passed. WE WON! get over it already!
ILOVEZ
How come this PROTECT MARRIAGE AUSTALIA is reading gay blogs? I have a feeling he is closeted gay & looking hot boys pictures on Queerty.
This is crazy! This fight isn’t over yet till we win!!
Alexa
Being gay or straight is not a choice, as you well know. Even if it was, so what? What gives you the right to impose your choice of religion on me? A gay or lesbian couple marrying has zero impact on you, except to offend you. To borrow a phrase so often aimed at us, keep your religion where it belongs, in your home.
Jaroslaw
AS another person said on another post – Marriage is a choice too! Democracy is about treating people equally.
Note that Australia said “…you chose to be a sinner.” We are not voting on religion, we are voting on civil rights, butthead.
Benjamin Franklin said (and I’m paraphrasing) Religion is free to persuade people to their cause but when they need government enforcement, I think their cause is not just.
THINK ABOUT THAT – and I don’t think anywhere here will propose that Australia is smarter than Ben Franklin!
marco hussein channing
“homosexuality, on the otherhand, IS a choice.”
RELIGION is a f*cking choice!
So under that same line of reasoning, we are entitled to do away with religious rights, like freedom of religion and tax exempt status.
Jessie
Sigh. Apologies on behalf of sane Australia, Queerty.
Chris
“First they ignore you,
Then they laugh at you,
Then they fight you,
Then you win.”
-Gandhi
harshi
@Chris:
aww man thnx that made me smile!
so true.
we will continue to fight!!
however long it takes..it will happen!