I wish I had heard about this protest, scheduled for tomorrow, a bit earlier so I could have helped spread the word sooner, but late is better than never. A gay couple from West Hollywood is calling for gays and gay rights supporters, like me, to take the day off from work tomorrow to protest referenda in California, Florida and Arizona banning same-sex marriage. These referenda were passed in the aftermath of the California Supreme Court decision last year that declared laws banning same-sex marriages were unconstitutional. The supporters of same-sex marriage now want, and this is the proper way to deal with this issue, federal legislation protecting the civil rights of gays and lesbians.
Contrary to what the religious fundamentalists may say, marriage is first and foremost a legal social contract that provides certain legal responsibilities and privileges to the married couple. It is not a religious arrangement unless the couple decide to make it such and there is a religious ceremony in addition to or in lieu of the civil ceremony. My wife and I were married in the Cook County court house in 199. We would have liked a church wedding, but there were issues back then that made a church wedding impractical. We are planning our church wedding for out twentieth anniversary in 2011.
Does that mean we feel we are less married than, say, someone who was married in St. Peter’s Basilica performed by the Pope himself, or married in Westminster Abbey in London by the Archbishop of Canterbury, or married in the National Cathedral in Washington, DC by the late Billy Graham? Not really and we certainly have not been denied any legal marital rights because the Roman Catholic church, my wife’s childhood religious affiliation, does not recognize our marriage because I have been divorced and therefore, considers our three children to be bastards. This is from a religious institution with a history of clerical pedophilia and institutional cover-ups of that history. Guess what I think about their opinion of my marriage! Read the rest of this entry »
