No matter how many romantic issues, encounters, debacles and debates I have in my life, none of them will compare to being denied my rights to sufficiently and wholly express my love for another person. I am (fatally, sometimes) attracted to men, and often times I've wondered what my life would be like if that were not the case. Usually in a joking manner, like, "having to deal with another woman? yeah right we are awful!" But on top of that, how would my life really truly be different? I know my family is loving and accepting and they would love me for the person I am regardless of my sexuality, but what about when I aged a few more years (lets say a lot of years) and was ready to get married? What happens then? In my home country, in my home state, in the state I was born in where marijuana is decriminalized and we still can't seem to get a grip on our judicial system and our prisons are overcrowded to the point that gymnasiums are being made into makeshift barracks, if I wished to marry another female it would be barred by law. Regardless of my own personal sexual preferences, I cannot fully comprehend why laws like these are in places. Why issues like Proposition 8 even need court cases, why they can even be passed in the first place.
You cannot marry the person you love because marriage in an institution that has been between a man and a woman in our nation's history. You know what else was institutionalized in our nation's history? Racism. Lynchings. Sundown laws. Laws against interracial marriages and relations. Should we keep these things on the lawbooks in our country because they are part of our nation's historical laws? Does it make any more sense to abide by these laws than it does to deny same-sex couples marriage equality?
You cannot marry the person you love because you cannot have children together. There are 40,000 children of same-sex couples in California alone. These children's parents deserve equal rights when it comes to being able to marry just as they had equal rights when adoption or procreation were the case. Does this mean, then, that we should not allow sterile men and women to marry? Or if a couple has chosen to not have children, should they be stripped of their marriage license? Should we deny people over a certain age the right to marry or remarry because they are no longer able to procreate? Is that any more logical than the former argument?
I try my very best to consider each point of view in any current issue, regardless of my personal stance on the matter. After considering each side of the marriage equality issue, I cannot find one single factual substantial piece of evidence that would even remotely persuade me to want to deny a same-sex couple the right to marry. I don't find that personal beliefs or religious values should override logic, lawfulness, or infringe on another person's individual rights. If I disagree with another person's lifestyle choice, what right do I have to override their personal choices based upon my own judgements and beliefs? What makes my opinions and values more important than theirs? Personal values, beliefs, and ideas of normality have no place in this argument, and it seems that the base of all persons who disagree with marriage equality is founded upon those very principles. To pass laws that dictate the way another person lives their life while causing no harm to you or your personal status is asinine. Marriage is love, love is marriage, and any two human beings who love each other and want to express that love through legally bound vows should lawfully be able to do so. I don't see any other way around it. Humanity is a simple concept.
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