The scary reality of gay marriage

The scary reality of gay marriage

I used to be a conservative. Mind you, a Canadian conservative of the "red Tory" variety, which is to say financially conservative, reasonably liberal on social policy. But gay rights just weren’t something I ever thought about. Completely beyond my purview. If I knew any gays, I didn’t know I knew them, though in retrospect a couple of my favorite teachers in high school were almost certainly gay.

One day in the late nineties, on Salon’s Table Talk, I got into a debate with David Ehrenstein about gay rights. In particular, "don’t ask, don’t tell". I didn’t see what the big deal was. I grew up nice and repressed in a pretty old-style protestant boarding school, and came out of that subculture where holding hands with your girlfriend in public, let alone making out, is considered in bad taste. (I’ve since changed my, er, mind on this). But at the time, I couldn’t see what the big deal was. I didn’t talk about my romantic life with my co-workers anyway.

Those who’ve dealt with David know that he can be pretty short with fools, but he was immensely patient that day, walking me through "perhaps you don’t hold hands or kiss in public, but you’ve seen others do it. Do you think gays shouldn’t be able to do what straights can do". It took a bit longer than that, over a dozen exchanges. It’s not easy to get simple things through to people, even me. But eventually something clicked and I saw it as an equality issue. "Why shouldn’t they be able to do what I can do, even if I don’t do it?"

Ever since then I’ve been pretty hardcore on gay rights. I can’t see why they shouldn’t have the right to do anything that anyone else does, and I don’t see that how they have sex is anyone’s business but theirs. One of the most famous sayings in Canada, from ex-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau is "the State has no business in the bedrooms of the nation". Certainly I don’t think anyone has the right to determine what I do in the bedroom. Given that, how can I condone them restricting anyone else? If it’s between adults and consensual, it’s no one’s business.

Likewise, if I loved someone and couldn’t see them in hospital, or have the right to leave my loved one what I chose in the case that I died, I’d be livid. This was brought home to me when I was in hospital myself, no family in the city, and my friends had to fight to get into the ICU to see me (in fact, the only one who got in did so by lying and saying he was my brother).

At one point I even had a huge fight with my father over the issue of gay marriage and didn’t speak to him for almost 6 months as a result. (He wound up thinking I must be gay since I’m not married and if I weren’t how could I care so much about the issue? I let him think so, since it forced him to rethink his beliefs about gays. My mother, needless to say, did not approve of my methods, but my Dad is now pro gay marriage.)

All of which is a long way to say that if there’s a ballot issue in your state related to gay marriage, I hope you’ll vote for the side that allows gay marriage, and that if you can donate or give some time, I’d appreciate it.

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