No on 3

It’s pretty clear that most people in the United States are uncomfortable with gay marriage. I have no idea why, other than ignorance and fear. I’ve not heard one valid reason why consenting adults shouldn’t be allowed to marry.

This year, the religious are going crazy, crazy, crazy with legislation to keep marriage “as we’ve always known it.” An amendment to the State Constitution is being proposed. If the initiative passes, it will be overturned, but nevertheless, the conservatives feel their marriages are threatened.

Even crazier, the Mormons are all about limiting the marital rights of others, even though at one time, certain states passed an extermination order to kill Mormons precisely because of their marital doctrines, amongst other things.

It is the opinion of Blurbomat that consenting adults should be allowed to enter marriage. Gay or plural, marriage is the right of the citizenry. Not “civil unions” or any other such thing. Marriage. Despite common sitcom plot structure and media stereotyping, marriage falls under the “… and pursuit of happiness” part of what is left of the Constitution. If one brings God up into the discussion, it doesn’t make the argument against gay marriage stronger, because God’s will is subject to wide debate and not known for certain. Blurbomat doesn’t need the state to “protect” my marriage. That’s between me and my spouse to figure out, not the government. Or your God.

Open, tolerant cultures do better than closed, scared ones.

Sadly, it is in such times that great opportunity to lead and rise is lost. Those that preach intolerance and forgiveness and faith miss a wonderful opportunity to include others when they marginalize those who believe differently. It doesn’t take more than 30 seconds into the debate over marriage rights to see that it’s about God. If you believe in God, why don’t you want your brothers and sisters to be happy? If they want to marry, to show their love, why would you deny them this? Because of stories from an old book, which may or may not be true, despite what you might think? We don’t live in ancient times. We live today.

These are dangerous times, but Blurbomat believes that it’s time to stand up and say let go of fear. Time to stand up and say that people deserve to be happy. People deserve to not live in the margins. People deserve to be accepted into the mainstream. Except for the indie fundamentalists who are always hipper than the rest of us and living in the mainstream is totally selling out.

In our lifetime, people have died for freedom, whether we want to see it as such or not. When people died in New York, in Washington and Pennsylvania, they died because they live in a free country. They died not to celebrate fundamentalism. Not to celebrate religious intolerance or partisanship. They were taken prematurely from this life because of freedom. Freedom to not believe in one God but many. Freedom to not even believe in God. Freedom to say that our elected leaders are morons. Freedom to say that the system is flawed. Freedom to go to any church they wanted or none at all. Are their lives for naught?

We should imagine a future that is full of hope not fear. And to make that future happen. With our vote. I’m voting against Proposition 3 in Utah. Gay marriage should be allowed in this country.

Has anybody heard an argument against gay marriage that makes any sense? Is there a valid reason to stop consenting adults from marrying?

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  • Mia

    Beautifully said, Jon. Thank you for those words. A threat to the rights of one American is a threat to us all.

  • http://bethology.blogspot.com Beth

    Dude, goosebumps. I live in England but just mailed off my Absentee Ballot to Kentucky and I voted NO against the proposed state constitution changes regarding marriage. I didn’t do the absentee ballot last time around, and look where that got all of us. I decided this year, I can’t complain if I don’t do something about it. Makes me sad to think that I am voting despite living an ocean away — and how many people just won’t bother going to the polls on the day?

  • http://www.anjaskoglund.com Anja

    Thank you for saying this in a time of ignorance and fundamentalism. And we over here in Europe are crossing our fingers for the election.

  • http://www.anjaskoglund.com Anja

    ElectionS, plural!

  • http://www.spacemonkeys.ca/blogs/tamara/ Tamara

    I live in Canada, and the debate seems to have been a bit more open up here. I totally agree that people should be free to marry whoever they want to, so everyone please keep in mind that the next paragraph is NOT my personal opinion, just an argument I have heard that at least, on the surface, makes more rational sense.

    Some people say that allowing gays to marry is the start of a “slippery slope” — if it were allowed, others could make arguments based on the freedom of religion or freedom of association (both are guaranteed in Canada) that they should be allowed to enter into polygamist marriages, marriages with minors without parental permission, marriages with their dog. Changing the definition of marriage to include many different permuatations places a strain on the tax system, the immigration system (if people are using it to get green cards), the social security system, health and dental insurance rights (would you bring a friend into your marriage who needed an expensive operation), etc. etc. in having to deal with the legalities of who has what rights in what cases. As most conservatives are in favor of smaller government, they don’t want to hire all those extra civil servants to redo all the forms and rewrite computer programs and deal with everything.

    Now I don’t agree with this at all — the argument is based mostly on hypothetical consequences that I think are quite far-stretched. No one is actually proposing polygamy or child marriages or anything like that, so why bring it into the argument? I think the fundamental reason they are against it is, as you say, a religious one, but they know that they’re not allowed to actually say that up here and so they get into these crazy hypothetical arguments.

  • http://www.filemagazine.com/ beerzie yoink

    > Has anybody heard an argument against gay marriage that makes any sense?

    No.

    > Is there a valid reason to stop consenting adults from marrying?

    No.

  • http://cursingmama.blogspot.com CursingMama

    Wonderfully said.
    I have yet to hear a non-religious, non-biggoted valid reason why gay marriage should be banned; other than corporations complaining about the increase in benefits which is really not so much my problem.
    I wish I lived in Utah so I too could VOTE NO TO PROP 3

  • http://jbsides.blogspot.com/ Jodi

    Amen to that! ;)

    I don’t know what people have against other people getting married. It is in no way going to affect you or me if the gay neighbors finally get a legal paper stating they are married.

    It really irks me that people hide behind religion to stop this from happening. The truth is they are afraid but not willing to admit it.

    Stand up for our country and our pursuit of happiness and VOTE on Nov 2!

  • http://heather-anne.com Heatheranne

    Thank you! My husband and I have spent a lot of time talking about this issue because we both get so pissed off about it. It really blows me away that it’s even an issue.

    I find it ironic that all these people who oppose it try to paint this picture of gays being promiscuous when statistics show that gay relationships last longer than straight ones.

    Why the fuck shouldn’t gays be allowed to marry and raise kids? Why deny another human those joys?

    I used to believe that America stood for equal rights.

  • HazelEyedPisces

    Spoken like a TRUE leader, Jon. Bravo!

  • http://stingthebee.nu Jim Renaud

    I could make a devil’s advocate point that gay people have a right to marry now. Any gay man could marry a woman. So that right isn’t taken away from anyone. That’s about the only semi-rational argument that I’ve heard.

    Honestly, gay marriage doesn’t make me feel uncomfortable. A gay couple raising children kind of makes me feel uncomfortable, but I do realize that this feeling isn’t really rational and probably a prejudice that has been engrained in me. This is an area I have to work on in overcoming stereotypes and my personal prejudices.

    With all that being said, it doesn’t matter if people think gay marriage is right or wrong or makes them comfortable. A ton of things make me (a neurotic freak) pretty uncomfortable like episodes of Fear Factor when they have to eat all that crap. I’ll never watch that show. I even think those shows are dumbing America. I can even make points that those shows are “wrong.”

    However, it shouldn’t matter what some 29 year old neurotic white guy like I thinks or even more scary, “believes” when it comes to regulating people’s rights to their pursuit of happiness.

  • http://www.babywhiteley.com/ Courtney

    I have also heard this argument before. But what blows my mind is the thought that there are people out there that may actually believe that someone would want to marry an animal. I mean, can they honestly think to themselves…“I’m just afraid if gay marriage is allowed, then my daughter will come home with a squirrel she met and want to take it’s paw in marriage. She is quite fond of animals. What would our grandchildren be like?” I mean, is this actually happening? Are there people seriously thinking this? If this is the case, then we have major problems. And they’re worse than we thought.

  • Tammie

    Right on… Even if I wasn’t for gay marriage, I would still vote no. My boyfriend and I share domestic partership rights (he works for a pretty progressive company) and I know we’re not the only ones. This issue affects everyone. Besides, the “sanctity of marriage” thing is a crock of shit. I know plenty of so called “christian republicans” whose marriage I wouldn’t want to emulate in a million years. Hypocrites!

  • http://www.babywhiteley.com/ Courtney

    Oops…sorry, it took a while for me to post that. The argument I am referring to is the point made by Tamara.

  • http://www.secondnegative.com Greg

    Why is it that conservatives preach smaller government and less regulation right up until the time they want to restrict you from doing something?

    Hetero’s have already made a travishamockery of marriage, which makes it difficult to listen to all the recent crap about sanctity. They want to use the law to exclude. Where I come from, thatís par for the course.

    In other news, I’m considering kicking my girlfriend out and marrying my cat.

  • http://rachel_wilder.livejournal.com Rachel

    Excellent entry. This is such an important subject and I hate to see civil rights being hijacked. It’s like they’ve blown it so out of proportion that we have a progressive candidate like Kerry having to back away from marriage. I think it’s really interesting that an administration like Bush’s that’s so obsessed with family values has stopped both of my siblings from being married: my sister because she’s gay and my brother because he and his SO can’t get jobs that would offer health insurance to cover them and the baby they’re having any day now. The only way they can be covered is if they aren’t married. That’s great family values.

  • http://humanwrites.blogspot.com Daniel

    Doesn’t is make you wonder what it is in our elected officials’ minds that empowers them to believe they can stiffle the rights of others to marry who they choose? Where is that intolerance and arrogance coming from?

    And I totally agree with Greg: the heterosexual version of marriage about which these folks are so psychotically defensive is not what it was in the 50s. We now have swingers and deadbeat dads and dozens of other variations on the same themes. Is this worth alienating the gay world?

  • Brandi

    As an openly gay american, all of this is SO important to me. I’m glad people care. Jon you could be the spokesperson for the tolerant and sensible set.

  • http://www.joh3n.com joh3n

    We here at joh3n industries support the blurbomat platform on this issue.

    Also, we would like to point out that ‘travishamockery’ is an awesome word, and that Greg should get props for it.

  • Abby

    “It is the opinion of Blurbomat that consenting adults should be allowed to enter marriage.” That’s also the opinion of my 6 yo daughter. We were discussing what a family is (got on that topic because we were talking about policics and what people believe) and she was VERY vehament about the fact that people should be able to get married to anyone that they want. She was upset when I told her that this wasn’t the case in most places. She has 2 friends who have 2 mommies, and has naver known anything different.
    Well said, to both Jon and my daughter!

  • Tracy

    Well, gay marriage would *totally* invalidate my hetero marriage because… um… well, see, they’d be GAY, and yet they’re married, and so you can clearly see that… um… well, it’s just bad. I know it is because W told me so, and he’s a good Christian man. I know he’s a good Christian man because he tells me so All. The. Time.

  • http://ozzilynbean.blogspot.com Oz

    you won’t get any arguments from me. My partner and I are seriously considering moving to Massachusetts at some point in the future–the only state that has gay marriage. Vermont and others with civil union are considerations, but we really groove on Massachusetts going ahead and calling it marriage.

  • Angie

    You write beautifully.

    I am with you on the idea that gender shouldn’t be an issue in determining who is allowed to marry, but I’m stuck on pluralism. With the way rights, benefits, and marriage are tied together in this country how would logisitics play out for a more-than-two marriage without an unlikely overhaul of the system? I can too easily imagine a situation where one working person has 8 or 10 spouses and wants employer paid benefits for all of them. Allowing two women or two men to marry doesn’t change how we do business very much as we are used to the idea that ever person gets a spouse. Allowing groups to marry would instigate some larger changes that I don’t think we’re ready for. Yet.

  • Laura

    Amen, Jon! We can use all the straight-ally help we can get…

  • Steve

    Someday someone is going to have to explain to me, a gay white male, business owner, educated, financially secure AND in a most wonderful relationship, why I can’t have the same legal rights others have as far as marriage.

    I personally could care less what word you use. I could care less if we have to make up a new word for it, but for me having the legal right to make decisions concerning the well-being of my partner means more than a word. He and I have taken every step possible to make sure that we are responsible for each other as much as the law would allow. But … there’s still that stigma that is attached to our relationship that it’s bad.

    As for children, why is it that you feel that a gay couple can’t raise a child? My partner and I would probably raise a child better than most straight couples. We could surely provide a very loving home, a stable home. A home that gives just as much, if not more considering the situation, than any other family.

    When you preach to me about how Brittany, or any other public figure shouldn’t be chastized for a 55 hour marriage and then get it annuled just because they were drunk is freakin’ crazy. Santicty of marriage is bullshit defense for uneducated, homophobic losers.

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