My last gay marriage post?

It's been some time since I've written on the whole gay marriage issue, but when I started on this blog, I wrote about it frequently.  I also found myself debating with anti-gay marriage people quite a bit, finding myself getting rather upset.  I'm not sure if it was their inability to see how completely unfair their stance was or whether it was their inability to see how completely illogical all the anti-gay marriage arguments are.

I figured that I'd write about it again today since apparently something or other happened involving gay marriage that's pretty significant.  For those living under a rock and cannot access Facebook, The Supreme Court of the United States made two major rulings regarding the issue.  The first one was that the "Defense of Marriage Act" (Was there ever a title more Orwellian?) is unconstitutional.  Apparently, there's something about the U.S. Constitution where you're not allowed to discriminate against other people.  The other ruling was in regards to California's Proposition 8.  If I understand it correctly, the ruling wasn't so much that Prop 8 was unconstitutional, as that had already been determined by another court.  The ruling had more to do with the fact that those who were appealing to have the ruling overturned basically didn't have a legal leg to stand on - mainly because it would have no impact on their lives.  So, that puts the final nail on Prop 8's coffin.  (Please feel free to comment and correct me if I've goofed up the details here.)

I'm not sure why I've been so passionate about this issue.  I'm  not gay myself, and if I am, my denial is REALLY deep.  There isn't anybody close to me who's gay.  I guess the closest I get to that is I have some students of whom I'm fond who are gay, and I've made a few friends online who are gay as well.  (I've even had them - yikes! - in my house, where they pressed their gay agenda on to my son; now he likes watching Tinkerbell movies on Netflix.)  I guess I just don't like it when people are being treated unfairly.

Obviously, this isn't the end of this issue.  There are still states with laws against it.  There are still homophobes out there.  But this is pretty significant, and it's pretty hard to imagine that the wind is going to start blowing in the other direction on this issue.  The genie might still have a couple of feet in his lamp, but his head, arms, and legs are out - he ain't gonna go back in there.  Shoot, even Newt Gingrich has admitted that there's no turning back on this issue, and he said that before the Superior Court's ruling.  (He had said years ago that this whole gay marriage issue was a temporary sort of thing that would eventually go away.)

You'll forgive me if I'm feeling a bit smug right now.  My past entries on this issue were always full of assurance that we were on the winning side of this issue, and I cannot imagine how anybody could see it otherwise.  To those who continue to be against it, let me assure you that your lives will not change at all.  If the definition of marriage to you is "one man and one woman" then more power to you.  As far as I'm concerned, that's the definition for me as well, but unlike you, I don't care how other people define it.  But let's stop talking about "redefining" marriage and the changing of "traditional" marriage.  This is an institution that has been redefined over and over again.  Was there a dowry involved in your wedding?  Was the father really "giving away" the bride as though she was a piece of property or was it just a nice thing to have him take part in the ceremony?  And for Pete's sakes, if you're going to talk about "Biblical" marriage, then shut up and actually read The Bible and find out what that really means, because it isn't what you think it is.  To sum it all up though, it was put best by a fella named Dave Holmes, who wrote on his Twitter account:  "As we celebrate today, let's spare a warm thought for our opponents, who have lost absolutely nothing."

My son, Logan, is going to be three years old.  He's going to see what will no doubt be his first wedding in a year.  It will be between a man and a woman, but I like to hope that in his lifetime, he'll see ones between couples of the same sex.  More importantly, I hope that when he's told that there was once a time when gay people couldn't get married, his first reaction will be complete incredulousness - kinda like the one I felt when I first heard about black people once having separate drinking fountains.  I couldn't even fathom why, much less how, that could even be true.