"What Is It To You?"

This is just a brief post, I'm pressed for time today, but I had to talk about what is on my mind again and again as I contemplate the 2008 elections. I'm really angry that my great joy in the election of Barack Obama, a win I feared would be negated by the same sort of dirty tricks that so terribly marred the 2000 and 2004 elections, was robbed from me within hours by the sorrow I feel over the passage of four horrible anti-gay and -lesbian measures (in Arkansas, Arizona, California and Florida).

Keith Olbermann of MSNBC managed to put my feelings into very eloquent words, which anyone can find on YouTube: just input Olbermann Proposition 8 into the YouTube search feature. Less than seven minutes, a special comment at the end of his "Countdown" program, that brought me, my very stoic spouse and my tough as steel mother to tears. "What is it to you?" he asked the people who supported these terrible anti-GLBT measures.

I too ask, what is it to these people, these homophobes? Why do they feel threatened by whom others choose to love? Why do they need to enshrine their revolting bigotry in our state constitutions?

Now, I'm a rational being. I know that part of the problem is that many people just don't want anyone to see that there are plenty of workable alternatives to a "traditional" heterosexual male-female union, complete with male dominance, female subordination and so forth, and served with lashings of ostentatious hard-line Christianity (or Judaism or Islam). But "traditional" religions and people must feel very weak indeed to think they need to "ban" (as if one really could) any kind of human relationship other than the stereotypical "Adam and Eve" one. And what's worse, I think many voted on these awful measures without much thought at all, or with a feeling of self-righteous superiority.

I think it's deeply despicable to tell two women or two men who happen to love each other that our country, supposedly all about freedom, equality and the pursuit of happiness, denies them all the benefits (far more than a thousand, under law) of marriage and the recognition of a stable family unit. And jeopardizes or restricts (or denies) their rights to raise their children, care for each other in sickness, inherit from each other upon death, etc.

What's particularly troubling is that so many of us appear to be so weak, with egos so fragile, that we think we "need" some "out-group" that it's "O.K." to discriminate against. And since it's no longer O.K. to dump very publicly on women and non-white (straight) males, these elements seem to cling all the more stubbornly to the demonization of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders.

Let me put this very simply: Who you love, or are sexually attracted to, does not determine whether or not you are of good character. These are independent things. Heterosexuals range from wonderful to absolutely awful, and so do non-heterosexuals. Being gay (or L, B or T) does not make you inferior, evil, lesser, or sinful. It may, given our larger society's ugly tendency to assume that being gay (or lesbian, bi-sexual or transgender) DOES make you inferior, evil, lesser, and/or sinful, make it harder to feel good about yourself and develop a healthy self-esteem that can make it easier to do the right thing. But all of that hasn't stopped my gay and lesbian friends from creating shining examples of honorable, positive, loving, decades-long marriage. And I'm going to go on saying "marriage," and fighting for their right to BE legally married just like I am, as long as I live.