Gays Are Us

Why do we give a damn if two gay people marry?  On the face of it, marriages should be the least of the problems between gays and others, including closeted gays. There is no passage on gay marriage in the Bible; the religious aspects of the dispute are a smoke screen. The historical one-man, one-woman argument in the land of divorces and single parents is absurd, especially when it comes from a Mormon who tells us that humans have always married that way. How many wives did Solomon and Joseph Smith have? The claim that people marry in order to procreate is upside down. Most people marry for love and companionship, and in some cases kids come later.

Yesterday it occurred to me why certain confused people among us oppose same-sex marriages. I recognized something in myself. There is a considerable difference between tolerance and full acceptance. Let's start with ignorance. My father, a machinist, was a racist, but for some reason he was fine with gays and Jews. My mother once told me that he did not grasp what gays did for sex. Thanks to my parents I grew up tolerating gays. I believed they had rights. I didn't care if they married, but here is the change. I started to think about it. If gays can marry and raise children, then they aren't different. They are us. They really are us. That whips the bigots into a frenzy: gays are us.  




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