I just received a recorded message from the Protect Marriage Coalition of California Voters asking that I sign a petition stating that marriage is between a man and a woman.
I hung up.
It is none of my business if two men or two women decide to marry. This represents no threat to me and has zero effect on my marriage to a man.
It's just meanness to deny people the right to seek happiness in their own way when it hurts no one. We would all be better off if we kept our noses out of other people's business in general and their relationships in particular.
It has been said that you cannot legislate love, which is usually cited as a rationale for vicious racist laws.
However, in the realm of marriage, you really can't. And shouldn't. People love whom they love, and no government or religion has the right to mess with it, in my view.
Years ago, I saw a powerful movie, "The Crying Game," which made me realize that we fall in love with a person's soul and that gender is secondary.
Most of us seek potential partners of one sex or the other. (In the 70's, everyone seemed to be bisexual and since I was not, I felt inadequate.)
As a heterosexual person, it has never occurred to me to fall in love with another woman. But those who do should have the same rights I have.
If passed, the Protect Marriage Amendment would add new language to the State constitution:
“Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”
People who live together and care for one another should be afforded the full rights of marriage, which include not only recognition that their union is valid, but health insurance benefits not presently available to them as they are to opposite sex domestic partners.
It is wrong to consider anyone a lesser being, and to arbitrarily treat their love as invalid.
Our nation is at war in several places, many people here at home are living in the streets, children are being abused. It would be well to put our collective energy toward solving these problems and leave marriage in the realm of individual will, where it belongs.
