Marriage Equality Now

A letter showed up yesterday from a gay friend. I've excerpted some pieces of it here.

Wow, last night was crazy and historic…and while I feel proud to be living in a time of such passion, change and essentially history I can't help but feel a bit of a personal defeat.

... In four states last night there were four measures against who I am as a person. Florida, Arkansas, Arizona and California. Florida, Arizona and California voted to ban gay marriage while in Arkansas there was a vote to ban gays to adopt children.

I feel so hurt and so disappointed and so discriminated against and I don't even live in these states. I feel like someone just told me to go sit in the back of the bus or to drink form a different fountain. To be told that people like me, people like me who did not choose the way they are, are not fit and able to adopt a child is probably one that hurts to most. The gay marriage does not surprise me, in fact I think our states and country needs to go in baby steps but still, to know that states are going to ratify their constitution to put in a measure that will remove rights rather than provide rights makes me sad and yes angered.

My mom still loves me for the way and I am and really It's a great day to be an American but not so great day to be who I am!

I think it's also important to quote from Andrew Sullivan's "My Big Fat Straight Wedding:"

The wedding occurred last August in Massachusetts in front of a small group of family and close friends. And in that group, I suddenly realized, it was the heterosexuals who knew what to do, who guided the gay couple and our friends into the rituals and rites of family. Ours was not, we realized, a different institution, after all, and we were not different kinds of people. In the doing of it, it was the same as my sister’s wedding and we were the same as my sister and brother-in-law. The strange, bewildering emotions of the moment, the cake and reception, the distracted children and weeping mothers, the morning’s butterflies and the night’s drunkenness: this was not a gay marriage; it was a marriage.

My own nuptials next month are lessened, when my gay friends who love each other can't get married. How difficult has it been to invite a friend to a ceremony that they themselves cannot participate in?

Marriage equality needs to happen. Here's hoping California overturns Prop 8 in 2010. And that Washington starts moving that direction soon.