Freedom to Marry

27th of April 2008

FREEDOM TO MARRY

The magnitude of this issue has grown so far out of proportion and driven by two sides fearful beyond recognition that the other side will win. Lies and disinformation are the tactics used to cause fear in this battle over rights and privileges that were granted by our founding fathers. Fear tactics have been used to control societies for centuries and with far more precision than is currently being forged.

You see, the side of RIGHT will always prevail victoriously when faced with evil and vengeful people. Currently both sides are claiming that they are right and will prevail triumphantly, however, only one side may claim success and that side will have truth and courage as its companions.

Rectitude can never be claimed while people are being oppressed. So how can both sides allege virtue as they declare with conviction that their way of life is being attacked? It doesn’t matter what is cleaved when you force others into subjugation. That which you cling may be a book, but each and every book may be replaced with another claiming to be of more authority than the one before. It behooves the question, how can one grouping of words make such a difference in a war stripping away the very rights and privileges that you hold dear to you and yet would gladly deny others?

Our two opposing sides are the Religious side of indifference and those Homosexuals seeking the freedom to share their love with another person of like sexual preference. The religious right feels that gay and lesbian people will diminish the love they share with their married spouses. They cleave to their Holy Books (the Bible, the Quran, the Tora and others) quoting verses that denounce homosexuality and even more dubiously asserting how marriage is between one man and one woman. I have yet to successfully have any religious zealot explain to me how the marriage of two gay men or two lesbian women threatens the sanctity of the matrimony between a man and a woman.

If anyone can shed light on how the wedding between one man and one woman is shaken to its core if two men or two women are able to also share vows of love for their spouses promising themselves to their partners? For centuries homosexuals were persecuted as being perverse and sexual predators. It doesn’t matter that according to the psychiatric association 85% of all child molesters are self identified heterosexuals. The gay community is said to recruit others into its midst or that we choose to live this way. The religious right cannot accept that a gay man is born instinctively loving another man. If they acknowledged this to be factual, that would mean God created gay men and lesbian women in his image and therefore perfect just as they are and homosexuality can’t be wrong.

Before you send me emails telling how the words in these religious books are righteous words given by God to worthy men and are absolute; let me disarm these arguments immediately. These books are truly great books, however they are written by men. Men are fallible and thereby may have made mistakes during their interpretations and or how they experienced or perceived the word of God. While I’m not able to argue against the Tora and Quron; I can assert that the Bible was argued over and constructed by 300 religious leaders and politicians around 325 AD. They chose what chapters make up the New Testament. The Council of Nicia edited and reorganized what we know as the Old Testament. So how do we validate the authority of the Bible when so many men argued for years over what was to go inside this book? Even if this argument is not substantial enough to make the most devout Christians wonder, I can then take words that were written in a book twisting them, emphasizing them differently and espousing a completely different set of meanings for the very same phrases and we aren’t even talking about the interpretations of those words.

Logic tells us that while religion is an amazing and wonderful thing in our lives, it is used and exploits people by oppressing and denying even the most basic rights. Such as the right to love whom you choose to love. I would think since Love is the foundation to the Church, Jesus Christ wanted us to be a party too; how can any religion denounce the rights of two people who simply want to share that love together? What can justify the refusal and the fight against the joyous celebration that two people wish to share?

In two documentaries focusing on each side to this fight, the religious right claims the Bible says marriage is between one man and one woman. I’ve read the Bible from cover to cover and can’t find those words written inside its pages. How can Christianity fear the love two men or two women wish to share for a lifetime?

I can respect an opposing point of view, even though it is against my own. I can admire a person who sees things differently than I do and can find a way where we are able to live our lives with our values in deference and honor. I would never try to oppress their thinking (yes I might try to rationalize their thoughts to my way of thinking); however, I would never denounce their principles because they differ from my own. I can value our differences without oppressing them based on our dissimilarities because I can live the principles that the Bible stand for – LOVE, HONOR & RESPECT.

No matter what side you reside on, think about the following: how does the love two other people share detract from your own? How can you justify the bigotry held within your heart that perpetuates the denial of two other people and the love they share? How is denying their love going to strengthen your own?

The religious right wants the rest of society to believe that the love two men or two women share degrades the matrimony a man has with his wife. They want everyone to believe that two men or two women cannot make good parents and that marriage is set forth for procreation only. Actually, more than 45% of all people, gay or straight, are unable to produce. If you are straight and cannot have children, does that mean you are aberrant, wrong and bad just like gay and lesbian people are? Why then does religion absolve two kids of opposite sex who crawl inside the back seat of a car even before they hold a license to drive only to share in a single sexual act that produces a child? As long as they don’t have an abortion, they’re forgiven because they’ve proved their heterosexuality. My question is how many gay men are married to women and have children, but slide out a couple times a month to have sex with other men? Many do…the numbers are staggering, but two men can’t wed because it will disintegrate the sanctity of marriage between one man and one woman. The only thing that can destroy the vows two people take is themselves. There is nothing that can limit what two other people share and there is nothing….I repeat nothing else that can minimize what you share with another human being except one of those two people. Two men or two women exchanging vows and living in a loving relationship can in no way diminish the love you share with your wife or husband.

To exasperate the subject further, some see that the denial of these rights is incorrect, but they cannot agree by allowing two men to marry; however they comfort themselves by granting separate rights like domestic partnerships. How can any group be happy with separate but equal rights when there is no equality in the rights granted? You cannot marry, but we will let you share in domestic partnerships. There are over 1900 rights that a man and a woman immediately received when they say “I Do”, yet Domestic Partnership only grants some 400 to 600 of those rights. What are we to do with the number of rights that are denied to the gay community? How is it fair and justified to say we hear your plea for justice and equality only to be granted separate rights that are not and will never be equal? Equal Rights means that each person has exactly the same abilities as every other person!

I must ask again, how can the religious right deny and oppress other human beings if the only thing they fear is fear itself?

Everyone Deserves the Same Rights & Privileges

Let Love Flow Freely

Your humble servant – Todd M Dobson