Straight Talk Express...How Fitting

Abortion rights, economic viewpoints, ideas on alternative energy sources, 2nd amendment interpretations, health care plans, and tax ideas aside, one of my biggest problems with Republicans is their medieval opinion about gay rights, especially in regard to gay marriage. Isn't it funny how a party can claim to be the party of the people, yet take a firm stance against granting certain basic rights to a significant portion of the population? The Republicans' denouncement of gay marriage is yet another reminder of how out of tune they are with most of America.

I think it is perfect that John McCain's tour bus is called 'The Straight Talk Express,' because that's exactly what it is, straight talk. It is a rolling 'not-welcome' wagon to the roughly 25 million Americans who identify themselves as homosexual. 25 million of our brothers and sisters that John McCain, Sarah Palin, and their potential Supreme Court justice selections will not lift a finger to help in terms of equal rights or unprejudiced lawmaking. It is a 'hate talk express.'

Doesn't this all seem familiar?

'Legalizing this type of marriage necessarily involves (the) degradation of conventional marriage, an institution that deserves admiration rather than execration.'

'When people like this marry, they cannot possibly have any progeny, and such a fact sufficiently justifies those laws which forbid their marriages.'

Sound familiar? The fact is, the above quotes are not about gay marriage at all, but instead are from the 1940's and 1950's and regard interracial marriage. These quotes were from a U.S. senator and a U.S. appeals judge, and there are many others like them. Today, interracial marriage is not only legal but is socially accepted and relatively common, as it should be. I don't think you'd hear any current politician trying to make a case against interracial marriage, and if they did they should be stomped out and deported.

Yet Republicans today are using the exact same arguments against gay marriage that rednecks and bigots were using against interracial marriage 60-70 years ago. Why isn't there more of an outrage?

Who is it hurting?

Why shouldn't my gay and lesbian friends and family members have the same marriage rights that I have? What's the difference to John McCain if I marry my girlfriend or my lesbian friend marries her girlfriend? Does he sleep better knowing that I'm allowed and they aren't?

What he and others who share his viewpoint need to understand is that homosexual couples are going to be together whether they're married or not. He's not going to change their minds. He's not going to discourage their feelings. They will continue to be together, continue to love each other, and continue to be valuable members of society just like any heterosexual person. Why not allow them to be together in the same legal sense we allow everyone else?

What I would like to see more than anything is the end of conservative people's obsession with the private lives of others. Live and let live. Be happy that your neighbor is happy. Don't try to control their private lives, the part of their lives that takes place consensually behind closed doors. If Republicans are the great Christians they claim to be, they should take what Jesus actually taught to heart:

'Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measure to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when there is the log in your own eye?

You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.'
- Matthew 7.1-5