Up on the Soapbox

I consider myself a reasonable intelligent person. And a reasonably reasonable person. And I cannot figure out what the fuss is about.

I have had some gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgendered friends and acquaintances. Other than occasionally startling me (as when someone looks mostly female but has subtle left-over masculine traits), I find them to be remarkably like everybody else. Some are flamboyantly extroverted; others are pretty introverted and quiet. Some are awfully neurotic and others seem rather remarkably stable and secure. They raise children, they fight, they make up, they fall in love and out of love. Their relationships are generally complex and occasionally baffling, but no more than other people’s. (12 years after my mother’s death and 22 after my dad’s, and I’m still trying to figure out *their* relationship.)

So all the fuss about gay marriage just has me scratching my head. It’s not that I haven’t heard the arguments. I have. Ad nauseum. But they don’t help. So what if there’s an odd, probably weirdly translated Bible verse that seems to suggest the Judeo-Christian-Islamic god thinks less of gays. It doesn’t affect me in any way. I belong to none of those three related belief systems, so I don’t feel bound by their sacred text. (Including the part about not eating shellfish or wearing cotton and wool together.) I figure, if someone else chooses to accept one of those belief systems and wants to interpret that verse in that particular way (which I find to be a bit of a stretch, logic-wise), fine. They should not be gay or lesbian or, I guess, not admit that they are.

But why should that affect government policy? I mean, we haven’t made it government policy that one can’t wear different kinds of fiber at the same time. (Which is just as well for us sock knitters, as a lot of the best sock yarn is a combination of two or more different kinds of fiber. That would wipe out more than half of my stash, I think!) If someone else wishes to enforce that rule for themselves, fine. (I’ll take all your mixed fiber sock yarn and give it a good home, OK?) But even the extreme Fundies of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic would probably find it silly to insist that everyone in the country follow that rule.

It seems to me to be very different when we get to deciding who benefits from some of our social prejudices. Different as in, it’s even more important that the religion of a few, or even of many, does not decide on government policy.

Our society has decided that the structure of “family” is a good basis for our way of life. I suspect that’s arguable, but I’m actually fairly comfortable, for myself, with that. We base our society on that. We attempt to reinforce the strength of that structure by according those who live within in special rights and privileges. (There are many places online with lists of those rights and privileges, but let’s mention up front the ability to combine financial status and to make decisions about other family members when they can’t make the decisions themselves.) If we’re going to continue to make this sort of relationship the basis of our society and to accord it special privileges, shouldn’t those rights and privileges be, theoretically, available to all?

Yes, I’ve heard Fundies say that gays and lesbians are as free as the rest of us to marry one person of the opposite sex. But they themselves don’t marry for the sake of acquiring those rights and privileges, generally speaking. (Or they wouldn’t admit that they do.) Instead they, like most of the rest of us, choose this form of relationship with a person for whom we hold great affection. And we marry and hold our relationships together on the basis of that affection. Why should a gay or lesbian person marry someone of the opposite sex when they don’t feel that affection for them? Is that really what we’re suggesting?

But. Even if a religion chooses to deny the sacrament of marriage on the basis of the genders of the people involved, I don’t see what that has to do with government policy. My religion, for example, holds nature sacred and believes that every person has inherent worth and dignity. I may believe that our country would be better off if we governed ourselves on that basis (in fact, I *do* believe that), but I don’t get to demand it. Suggest it, yes, but not demand it.

Oh, I’m probably being as clear as mud, here. One of my online friends has a lesbian couple as friends who have been together for many, many years. They’ve been through the wars, on the front lines, even, on the topic of whether they should have the same rights as their heterosexual friends. They evidently made the front pages of a lot of newspapers after the recent ruling in California. I don’t think that they are really all that different from the couple in my church who are celebrating their 50^th wedding anniversary this weekend. And I don’t think our government should treat them differently.

I’d like the government to get the hell out of our bedrooms and back into the business of policing big corporations, where they actually belong. Boardrooms, not bedrooms.

(picture of me, climbing down off the soapbox and heading for bed)