Today is the Martin Luther King holiday in the USA.
It got me to thinking. Right now, gay people are probably
the last group in the US where people think it’s ok to oppress us.
I read recently a gay bar was raided in Atlanta. There are
beatings and murders of gay people on the streets. There is bullying of gay
kids in schools to the point where the kids commit suicide.
All this is a supposed “Christian” country where the main idea
behind the religion is “love” and “treating your neighbor as you would like to
be treated.”
Also there is the gay marriage issue.
Now, I have lived with the same man for a long time. In May,
it will be 21 years. We have a monogamous relationship; own a home together;
and argue just like any other couple.
But the big difference is that we don’t have a piece of
paper to say we’re a couple or that we’re married. That means, if something
happens to one of us, we can’t automatically make medical decisions for the
other. If one of us dies, the surviving partner will have to pay inheritance
taxes on the home, the joint checking account and the joint savings account;
even though it is jointly owned property that both contributed to.
Will lack of that piece of paper stop us from loving one
another? No! Will our inability to marry prevent us from having sex? No!
When I did some research, I found that the reason government
got into marriage was to promote stable families which in turn promoted stable
communities. Well, wouldn’t gay people in stable relationships add to stable
communities?
When I hear bigots on TV screaming that the LBBT community
wants “special rights,” I think, “Wait a minute! The only ones here that have
special rights are the heterosexuals with special rights granted through
marriage.” We’re just asking to have
those same rights and protections.
When I die, it is fundamentally unfair to tax the man I have
had a relationship with for 21 years just so that he can keep the house we’ve
paid for together.
When I hear people saying we shouldn’t have marriage, I think
they are really saying that they don’t approve of gay sex.
Guess what, we don’t have to have marriage to have sex. So, get over it. What will benefit GLBT
couples and communities as a whole is stability and equality.
Call it what you will, but GLBT people deserve to have the
1000+ laws protecting their relationships that heterosexual couples have protecting
theirs.
