we're in the room

Today the Senate defeated the same-sex marriage amendment to the Constitution. It's a relief, but we still have a long way to go to ensure equality for all Americans. As I was listening to the radio this morning, I heard a guy talk about this battle for equality. He wrote a piece called "We're in the Room." I hope that you will take some time from your day and read it. And maybe even pass it on to your friends and family that just might not be as enlightened as you. To all of you who support the idea that Greg and I should be able to marry, thank you for being an ally and spreading the word.

We’re In the Room
By Karel

This column is not for anyone that’s gay. If you’re gay, you can read it, you may agree or disagree with it, but it’s not for you. It’s for your non-gay friends. I want you to scan, fax it, PDF it, Xerox it, however you communicate documents these days, and then broadcast it to those who do not have an affinity for the same gender in a sexual way.

Our President, yes, OUR president, since we are all Americans, has again decided to gay bash and segregate a certain number of tax paying, law abiding Americans by threatening to desecrate the very document set up to protect freedom with an amendment to define a legal contract as being gender specific. But I want you to forget the politics of it for a moment. You see, in the President’s radio address Saturday June 3rd, he invoked the protection of the children again. We must save marriage for the children. OK, let’s talk about the children.

I want you to think of a love song, you know, a really sappy “I love you and must marry you” love song. For me, it’s “That’s the Way I Always Heard It Should Be” by Carly Simon. “Well you say it’s time we move in together, raise a family of our own you and me…you want to marry me, we’ll marry…”

Now think of a kid. Let’s say a 15 year old girl. She’s hearing these love songs, and singing along. She’s listening to her peers at school and her family and she’s bought in to the American Dream. She wants to marry, she wants a family, she wants to pick her wedding dress one day, she wants Luke Wilson to crash her wedding! But then, along the way to sweet 16, she realizes she’s gay, she’s different. It’s not her fault. She didn’t ask for it, she doesn’t even really want it, but there it is. But she still has that vision, that goal, that dream that she’ll grow up, fall in love, have a family, a house, the things we Americans call the dream, happiness.

Then she realizes that her government, her neighbors, her church, they don’t want her to have it. They tell her her entire life this is what she should have, this is what she should want. And she does, she still wants it, but with a woman now instead of a man, not 100, just one, one woman, she wants to meet the right girl, like the girl in her science class that said “hello” to her the other day and her heart just about stopped…as a parent, you may have wondered why she was so giddy that night, why she was on the phone for an hour with a friend behind closed doors laughing away…until she turned on the TV.

There, she saw her President, the leader of her country, tell everyone why she should never have the same things her brother does because she loves someone different. And then the debates start. People come on the news, on television, right in front of her, and they start debating whether she should have what everybody else does, everybody else that happens to not be gay. They talk about how most Americans feel marriage should be protected from her, and wonders, aren’t I an American? Aren’t my parents Americans? My country is against me? She hears how God does not agree with her lifestyle. But her parents always told her god was a God of love and forgiveness, that Jesus preached to the outcasts…could this be the same God? She sees Senators, leaders of the free world, all in front of cameras talking about her life, about how she’s going to be able to live it, and she sits, and she asks, “don’t they know I can hear them? I’m right here? Don’t they care?”

We’re all asking those questions now, each and every gay person in America and around the world is asking, don’t you all get it? We ‘re right here. We’re in the room. We can hear what you’re saying. You talk about it so clinically, and use euphemisms to make yourselves feel better. But what you’re saying is that a percentage of Americans who are different because of a natural state of being different than yours don’t deserve the same things you do. What you’re saying is that kids that want to grow up and love and marry only one person can’t if that person is of the same gender. What you’re saying is that theocracy wins out yet again. And what you’re really saying is that you are so afraid that one day the Supreme Court, or the nation, will wake up and see how unfair and unjust it is that they will, in fact, allow it. That one day, a gay person might actually be able to have some of the things a non-gay person has, and that scares you in to amending a sacred document and spitting in the face of its authors.

And you look in the eye of each and every kid that discovers they happen to be gay, not because they’re weird, but because if you believe in such a thing, because your god made them that way. Perfect, just as they are. As capable of love and goodness as the next person, as holy and sacred as anybody else. As loved by the creator as anyone else. And you will disagree with that creator that loves them and tell them as a society not only will you not grant them equality, but you have such little disregard for them or their feelings that you will go on national radio, TV, newspaper, town square or bar room and make it known and be proud of your bigotry. You will also say to these kids that things like war, balanced budget, port security, boarder security, national politics, dependence on oil, strained relations with the middle east, four million dead in the Congo in the last six year, failing infrastructure, failing health care and failing senior care are all things that are of lesser importance than making sure you know that you will never be equal to those that marry (and divorce) the opposite sex.

You can no longer talk about us like we’re not here. You can no longer talk about Americans and how they feel like you’re in that club exclusively. WE are as AMERICAN as YOU. In fact, we’re more American, because a true American would never touch the Constitution on such an issue. A true Republican would never approve of government growing in such an out of control fashion to want to amend the document for invasion in to personal issues and a true Christian would never approve of excluding two people that want to commit to a loving relationship from that institution but even more would accept that Biblical law has no place in marital law. Only a theocratic neocon struggling for survival would try to make this kind of social policy and Republicans, Christians and Americans are being used in the process. Americans like those you are telling, at age 15 or 50, that their unions not only don’t count, but are so detrimental to society as a whole that the very document used to govern our land must be amended to make sure they never, ever are recognized. That as Americans, they will always be 1/5th less human than you, to put it in terms those familiar with the Constitution will understand.

To codify bigotry is un-American. To do it in the name of the children when it will only hurt many children is hypocrisy. To do it during an election year, again, is shameless. And to act like those you’re bashing aren’t in the room and can’t hear your hatred is naïve. And now, everyone’s hearing it, and seeing it for what it really is. And they all see how ugly it is. This time, we see the man behind the curtain and don’t like the image. This time, we may actually have God on our side.