Letter to RedEye: Gay Marriage

Well, another letter in to the RedEye. This one, I'm kind of hoping DOESN'T get published, because my friends read it - and most of them are gay. So if you hadn't guessed, this is a "gay marriage" thing. Which, frankly, means that my opinion doesn't really matter at all. I'm not gay. I'm not even married. I can't even manage to land a girlfriend - so I really have no say in what's right or wrong about gay marriage in the first place.

So of course, when the Boy on Boystown guy opens the floor to gay marriage debate - I jump at the chance to make a fool of myself. It's the problem with being a realist. "Should" just isn't a huge part of the process - because what matters most to me is what "is" and what "will" be rather than what "should" be. SHOULD gay marriage be accepted? Probably. WILL it? Probably not - at least not for a while yet. I'm in favor of it, really I am. But you know what scares me the most about gay marriage?

The inevitability of Gay Divorce Court on TV.

Anyway, here's the letter I sent:

Whenever I'm faced with the actual question of whether gay people should be allowed to get married, I have to quote Kinky Freidman by saying, "I support gay marriage because I believe they have the right to be just as miserable as the rest of us." In all seriousness, I do believe that homosexuals should be allowed to get married - same as the rest of us.

However, the real question isn't one of SHOULD it be allowed, but WILL it be allowed - and I have to say that I doubt it will be happening anytime soon, no matter how many "should"s you throw at it. The fact is that marriage is, as was pointed out, a government institution (despite its pseudo-religious history). Which means that government gets to decide, and it's been made evident in many ways that the government (which is made of elected officials who REPRESENT the country) is not ready to accept homosexuals at a level that allows for them to officially marry. Maybe once there are a decent number of elected homosexual representatives in the government (openly homosexual BEFORE election), gay people will be able to have a better chance of beneficial legislation.

My question back to you is why aren't homosexuals trying to make lemonade out of the lemons that they've been handed? If marriage is exclusive to opposite-sex couples, and civil unions are exclusive to same-sex couples, why is it that the fight is to ignore civil unions and rally for marriage instead of rallying to get benefits and government legislation attached to civil unions? If the only reason for wanting marriage instead of civil unions is the various governmental benefits in the marriage package, why not fight harder to get pieces of that benefit package added to civil unions (if not the whole thing in time)? Why not even go for DIFFERENT benefits or MORE benefits? I think that the civil union is only a weak/unacceptable version of marriage because few are fighting to make it any better. In many countries, civil unions have benefits similar to marriage (and a few have equal benefits) - so why does it seem like here in the USA there would still be a homosexual uprising if civil unions provided the EXACT SAME benefits as marriage but had a different name because of the difference in gender-combinations?

Rally the troops to buff up civil unions and leave marriage alone. Besides, if you follow the news you'd see that when it all comes down to it, gays already have the right to get married. They just aren't able to marry each other yet.

Aaron Samuels, 23, Bridgeport

I'm sure there'll be a flood of comments on how wrong I am or how wrong my logic is. It really doesn't matter to me - like I said, my opinion doesn't matter in the long run. I'm not gay, and I'm not getting married anytime soon.

But let's face the facts - how can gays expect to be given equal rights from the legislative branch when the truth is that the POSSIBILITY of a representative being gay coincides with being asked to step down and resign. You've seen it in the news - and while people are supposedly more against him for the criminal nature of his sexual transgression, the fact that it was of the homosexual persuasion is what's raising all of the eyebrows and shaking fists... If a senator has to protect his career by announcing (denial or not) that he is NOT GAY - what chance do gay people REALLY have at this point to be taken seriously or as full equals in every sense of the word?

No, that's not how it SHOULD be. It SHOULD be different. But this is what it IS and HAS BEEN. Maybe in the future, things WILL be different...