2008-11-15 
 

necessary post

I can't stop coughing and sneezing and my body has sprung a constant snot leak that finally turned into a minor migraine this morning. I didn't get to go in to Boston myself as I planned, but I have to say my piece to the tens of folks who read this. Not because I feel I need to change your mind, most of you are already on my side, but because it needs to be said in as many places and with as many voices as possible and I will not be a silent Who.

Today there were rallies. in Boston. As you can read in the article, some folks ridicule us for speaking up here in Massachusetts where our right to marry is still valid.

To those folks and also to those who are saying that the voters in California already decided and we should leave the protests to them, I have this to say. The incredibly large sum given to the proponents of prop 8 by the Mormon Church which is located in Utah nullify any of your out-of-state support arguments. As for the vote, it was a rather narrow margin that allowed that bill to pass. If it hadn't been for the hate-filled, negative advertising funded largely by out-of-state agencies that blitzed the airwaves the week before the election, the majority may have cemented the marriages of my friends in California vs. putting them into a state of uncertain limbo.

I am for equality. I'm not looking for the government to force churches to accept gay marriage...just that they be recognized by the government the same way that my brother's recent union to his wonderful wife is recognized. If that means taking away his right to marry and coining a new word for those rights, I'll be happy about it. Marriage, they argue is a religious thing...so coin a new word for it...say PARTNERING or some such, and let that be what we call it from now on...for everyone both gay and straight. I want to be very clear here, recognizing civil unions - while a step in the right direction - is too close to a certain "separate but equal" philosophy that still leaves me as a second class citizen. It's marriage (or partnering if that's what it takes)or nothing. We will keep marching, we will keep standing up for ourselves, and we will eventually win. As I pointed out in an earlier post, this seems to be a generational issue and I have no doubts that it's a matter of years, not decades before this becomes an issue to be studied in history books, not current events.

So to all my brothers, sisters and siblings in-between who went out in support of equality today, I say thank you. I couldn't make it in person, but I was there in spirit. We're here, we're queer and we're going to be equal!

Labels: dose of mikey, linkage, politics, rant, san francisco, the gay

* posted by me at 9:16 PM

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