It's About Love

There are days that you can sit down and write a blog and the words flow out of you like a flood. An unstoppable force. Then there are blogs like this one. I have written this one a hundred times in my head. It is different every time. Not better, not worse, just different. I used to be a very religious person. Not just religious but fundamentally religious. There was no room for gray. Everything was black and white. I think we all have periods of insanity during our lives. I am pretty sure that one was mine. I have walked away from organized religion. I don't know if there is or isn't a god. It really doesn't matter. I will do the best I can every day and when I am dead I will find out what happens and where we all go. We do all go somewhere even if that is just in the ground. This blog isn't about religion it is about gay marriage.

I wanted to attack the religious folks out there who make it a sin to be gay. They want to cherry pick verses out of the Bible while they claim every verse is the inspired word of God. If you want to believe that being gay is a sin I can't stop you or change your mind. Okay, it's a sin. Don't let a gay couple get married in your church. If another church wants to let them get married in their building what is that to you? How does that offend your beliefs. If they offend you pray for them. Maybe someday they will be as "enlightened" as you are.

Senator Portman from Ohio got a lot of flak for changing his position on gay marriage after his son came out and announced he was gay. Carol and I have a gay son. You can claim all you want that it shouldn't change your position on gay marriage or the sin of homosexuality. Good luck with that plan. I know that there are lots of folks out there who believe being gay is a choice. The question I cannot answer is a simple one. "When did I choose to be straight?" I don't remember making that choice. I always found women attractive. When I think about sex (if you believe some research it is every 7 seconds) it is always with a woman. Thanks Carol. Now you know I think about you almost 10 times every minute. As a parent we want our children to be happy. If being gay and finding someone who loves him makes my son happy then that is all I want. That is all Senator Portman is saying.

I wanted to attack people who wanted to prohibit gay marriage as a part of their political beliefs. Those folks are generally Republican and that is my current political affiliation. I find myself increasingly at odds with what they stand for so who knows what the future holds. Anyway it would seem gays and Republicans would be a somewhat natural fit. Like peas and carrots. Different yet complimentary. Republicans hate abortion. Gay men aren't making babies so abortion would be off the table. The lesbian woman who brought the issue to the Supreme Court did so based at least in part on the fact that she had to pay several hundred thousand dollars in estate taxes because she and her partner were not allowed the spousal exemption. Apparently Republicans are okay with a gay tax.

In the end I rejected all of those approaches and focused on something I read the other day on Facebook. Generally I find most of what I read on Facebook to be a waste of time. I am retired so I have lots of time to waste. So I read it anyway. This is what I read.

"Maybe it's me guys. But, I've always found it weird to worry and obsess about who other people have sex with.
It's about love. It's always been about love."
Brittany Gibbons

Gays aren't asking us to recognize their sexuality. They are asking us to recognize and accept their love. They want us to grant them the same rights and privileges straight couples have under the law. The recogniton straight couples have based not on the sex they are having but on the love they profess for each other. If you go to a gay wedding, and I have, you do not see two people professing their desire to have sex with each other (we have bars for that) you see two people professing their love for each other. I never felt like that had any negative effect on my marriage or on the institution of marriage. They are two people in love. Let them get married. What they do behind closed doors with their genatalia is none of our concern.

So when you consider gay marriage all I ask is that you keep one thing in mind. It's about love. Thanks Brittany. You said it better in three words than I have in this entire mess I call a blog. If you want to learn more about Brittany she has a site called Brittanyherself.com.