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Saturday, May 12, 2012

G-BFFS (or, the One Time Hannah Decided to Voice her Sociopolitical Opinion)

For the past week or so I have hardly talked about anything but homosexuality. Not necessarily because I want to, but because of things that are going on in my life, as well as President Obama's random declaration of support for same-sex marriage, and the blast-from-the-past allegations of bullying leveled against Mitt Romney.

This is frustrating because it's one of the few topics I cannot discuss objectively. I rarely get emotionally involved in politics, but this is, as they say, a "hot-button" issue for me.

I have an unusually lengthy list of gay men in my life -- all of them have been close friends, people I've dated, or both. In the past 7.5 years, I've had relationships with 15 different dude-lovin' dudes (not counting their significant others, those who are/were bisexual, bi-curious, just plain horny, etc). So, when people bring up the civil rights issue that is same-sex marriage, I don't see things in terms of "normal people" and "the gays." I see my friends.

I know Mormons are supposed to be all "sanctity of marriage" and stuff, but I just can't bring myself to think that way. Although I still have this weird, secret dream that Spencer and I can be Julia Roberts and Rupert Everett a la My Best Friend's Wedding, if he meets the man of his dreams, I want them to be able to get married. I want them to be able to adopt kids. I want them to get all of the same benefits as heterosexual people who love each other, because that's what this should all be about, anyway.

Today, some guy on the news said that marriage "has always been defined as a union between a man and a woman, and that's why it shouldn't change." I seem to recall a time when the phrase "all men are created equal" meant, quite literally, that civil rights only applied to men. Obviously, as society grew and developed, we had to adapt the traditional phrasing to include not only women, but people of non-white ethnic backgrounds. But we didn't make this adaptation in word choice, we made it in definition. The quote still reads "all men are created equal," but we've decided that it means "all people."

As far as I'm concerned, it's about time we did the same thing for "marriage." I'm not saying that religious institutions should be forced to perform ceremonies for homosexual couples, but as far as governmental regulation goes, everyone deserves to be treated equally.

Anyway. The primary reason I decided to type this all out is that I haven't really had a chance to voice my opinion on the matter in all the time I've been discussing homosexuality, because I've mostly been talking to my grandma. She's a lovely lady, and she's very open-minded for someone her age, but it's difficult for her to consider gay relationships as being valid in any way, shape, or form -- and that makes real discussion somewhat impossible. So I've had these ideas floating around in my brain, needing to be expressed, and I realized this was probably the best place for such a thing.

I guess it just boils down to the fact that most people get so hung up on sexual orientation that they forget about a human being's capacity to love. And if love is the basis of marriage, I don't get what the problem is, here.