Consider This

By LC Van Savage

This week’s column; where to begin? I never write about anything political because I’m not smart enough or savvy enough to pull it off. I’m always far too short on research and facts and far too long on knee-jerk, and I suppose I’ll be accused that this column is all written with my knees. So be it. I’ve been accused of worse.

But knowing that about myself, I still have to write it. I’m awfully saddened by the recent voting against the human rights of people who simply want to be married and to enjoy the same rights and privileges as one-man, one-woman marriages have. “Same-sex marriages.” That very phrase apparently shoots cold terror into the hearts of all citizens who cannot and will not ever be other-centered; it’s literally against their inner religion. Thus I’ll write about this, send it in, and hope for, well what? At the moment “hope” is pretty dim and I know this column will be considered a poor-loser whine. That’s cool. I have the right to whine after all, have I not? I also know people are getting “sick and tired” of this issue. That’s because they are heterosexual and can’t/won’t relate.

I feel terrible disappointment because once again, Gay people have been denied what straight people get to have automatically without ever having to fight for it. Gays just want what we want, but they can’t have those freedoms of choice and yet it’s the basic right of straight people to have them.

Yeah, I’ve read all the arguments as to why Gays should not be allowed to marry even though it’s really no one’s business, and in thousands of homes where there are two parents of the same sex, there are children who are happy, strong, and well-adjusted-- but I guess they don’t count. I guess there can only be happy kids if they have two parents of opposite sexes. Or perhaps two divorced parents of opposite sexes. Or perhaps a “properly” married couple of opposite sexes who frequently beat each other or their kids nearly to death. All is well I guess, as long as these kids have married parents, one male, one female.

Well, I’ll tell you one thing; of the Gay couples we know who have kids, I just wish we’d done half as good a job at raising our children as they did and do at raising theirs. Their kids, ours too, grew up to have responsible, productive lives and great families and guess what folks? No one ever “forced” those children to “become Gay.” Can’t happen. Not possible. Read about it; this news isn’t new.

And of course the really big argument against all this, they tell us, is the Bible which the YES people insist says within the pages of that sacred rule-book that marriage cannot ever be between two people of the same sex. (Must be one of the newer translations. I don’t think I ever read that part.) Yes, the Good Book they so solemnly thump, that 2000 year old book that tells us amongst many hundreds of similar tales we must emulate, a woman who is discovered to have not been a virgin when she married must be stoned to death. Deuteronomy 22:22. (If people abided by the Bible today and followed that rule, we’d be clear out of stones.) Was that the Good Book on which they relied? The book that amongst many, many other things speaks of two naked people, an apple and a talking snake making the world the bad place it is today? That book? Wow. But at least one person in Eden was female and the other was male. Heterosexual, right? Do we know that?

And let’s chat about all those commercials stating our kids would be “taught homosexuality in school” or the really horrifying fear that marriage between two people of the same sex will also be “taught in the schools” along with the students being educated on what Gay people do in the privacy of their bedrooms. What? I mean what???? Have straight marriage and straight sexual habits been taught in our schools all these years? It has? What’s the name of that course? No one told me. Our kids never said a word. How odd! But, according to those scare commercials, homosexual marriage will be a taught subject. You’re kidding, right? Would special teachers be hired to teach those courses? Betcha they wouldn’t be Gay.

So can someone out there tell me why this vote thing has happened? I am sick and ashamed today that the world thinks that in my beloved Maine we’d do this kind of thing to good people who love one another and only want what rights we get to have by birth. They are once again not allowed to have normal freedoms, normal lives, or normal acceptances, so say the YES folks.

Maine took some pretty bad hits on all major networks the night after it happened, while lots of the self-righteous leaders of the YES mobs insisted on camera their YES campaign was not at all about hate. Oh come on. Please.

I can just hear the people from away saying once again that Maine is a backward state where no one does anything except to carve seagulls or make quilts and that the residents certainly don’t keep up with the times or the Times and probably don’t even read any newspapers at all. So wrong. Maine is such a progressive, educated and glorious place to live, extremely productive and modern where it has to be, and has everything anyone could ever possibly want to live a healthy, safe, informed and good life. So please tell me why Maine can’t do the right thing and grant equal rights to everyone? Who really was behind this huge fight? Who had all the money and the clout? Who promoted the fear? I know. You know.

Look. Marriage is about love, right? But the YES vote is about fear and hate. I will try to sympathize with those who fear, but I have no sympathy for those who promote groundless hatred. Religions preach love and acceptance, do they not? So because of this vote, may I infer that they are failing in what they preach?

Why do some humans feel entitled to deny the rights of other humans? They seem to have a genuine problem, do they not, in being able to walk in another’s moccasins, and particularly in Gay moccasins?