“Just as you don’t have to be an animal to support animal rights, you don’t have to be gay to support gay rights.”I have several ready answers, depending on my mood and the tone of my questioner:
- I’m an atheist, but I also blog about religion a great deal…
- I’m not a politician, but I also blog about politics a great deal…
- I’m registered independent, but I also blog about our political parties a great deal…
- I’m male, but I blog about women’s health issues a great deal…
- I can bloody well write about anything important to me.
I blog about things I care about, and I care about some issues more strongly than others. Some hit closer to home, some I'm more familiar with, etc.. In order to keep informed about said “pet issues,” I subscribe to and/or follow many different voices on both sides. As such, I’m able to watch what is going on and hopefully find some glimmers of truth, or at least fact, in the reporting I read. After a relatively short amount of time, you start to recognize the different styles - Red State vs. National Review vs. WSJ, for example.
Now, back to the original question: Why gay rights? Well, it is simple for me: I see gay rights as the main lever with which certain groups are currently attempting to force religious beliefs and/or practices on the society as a whole, in flagrant violation of a variety of Constitutional principles. Apart from the fact that I truly believe in equality, and that the government has absolutely no business dictating what two consenting adults choose to do to or with themselves, I believe this issue is the present-day frontier of the ongoing struggle for equality in my country.
I do not applaud every single thing that I see, nor do I see this issue as being black and white on many different fronts. I look at most things from a philosophical as well as practical standpoint - the ultimate aim is to achieve full equality of societal status and the corrolary privileges and rights that attend upon a federally recognized marriage. Although there have been some recent sucesses, and although we have come a LONG way even since the 90's, only the delusional would claim that the fight is nearly over. There are 43 states to go, at a minimum. We have hopeful signs like the various DOMA lawsuits currently working their way through the courts, and legislative victories like that in Washington State and the (hopefully) successful parallel effort in New Jersey. The recent Prop 8 decision from the 9th Circuit is an example of a highly specific nuance with which I agree, but unlike many I don't feel that that particular decision would be the best to bring to SCOTUS.
All that nuance and cautious optimism aside, my sense of reason (if absolutely nothing else, and there is plenty of that) informs my support for gay equality under law. Every argument against same sex marriage is motivated by religion and/or bias, and therefore improper and out of place in our system of government. Every argument in favor of unequal treatment under the law is also improper and hypocritical, and may also be overtly religious. No argument that I have ever seen against same sex marriage has ever completely avoided questions of faith-based belief, regardless of how vigorously the objection seems to be rooted in something practical like economics or social health.
When religious groups try to impose their narrow interpretations of the bible on the entire population, and particularly when they do this under the guise of “protecting” people from private, consensual behavior that does not affect them in the least, using fear, bias, and misinformation, they are intentionally doing exactly the same thing that prompted our forebears to sail across the Atlantic in the first place.
When such people don't even bother spending time fighting against gay adoption, visitation rights, surrogate parenthood, foster parenthood, or any other of a long list of rights and privileges currently enjoyed both by opposite sex and same sex couples in many states, you know that their true aim is to keep themselves from living in a society which sanctions marital & parental unions which their religious beliefs cannot tolerate.
Once upon a time, they fought against the granting of those rights and privileges, too - and lost. They have accepted those losses for the time being, and have instead focused all their energy on the same final frontier on which I focus: same sex marriage itself. Not just civil unions or domestic partnerships, but marriages. I think the Prop 8 ruling did a fairly good job of emphasizing the importance of "marriage" as both a label and a legal status. It throws into relief a significant subtext which seems often to have been overlooked; people seem to use the term "same sex marriage" without really pausing to think about all that the word "marriage" implies.
Anyway, this post is long enough, and I hope I've made some points for your consideration. I will undoubtedly expand upon them in the future. For now, I feel it important to include the following paragraph, at least for the sake of completeness:
Please note that I do not fight against their rights of free speech or expression. They can believe whatever they want, and speak about those beliefs freely. But the point at which they attempt to force people with different beliefs to comply is the point at which I take a stand, minor though it might be.
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