I'm feeling quite well, thank you for asking. I've checked with my relatives in San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, New York City, Reno, and Miami. They have suffered no ill effects. Friends in Oregon, upstate New York, Houston, Atlanta, and Chicago also seem to be fine. How about you?
I'm not really surprised that family and friends across the country haven't displayed any symptoms yet, but I did ask each of them if they are concerned. They had no idea what I was talking about, and, despite all of the dire warnings in the media the past few months, you probably don't either.
I'm referring to the doom-and-gloom, devolution-of-society-as-we-know-it, catastrophic predictions of the End of Days, brought about by the spate of gay marriages. To listen to the critics, you might believe that our families, our neighborhoods, and the very fabric of our lives, are all being overturned by the joining of xx and yy chromosomes, instead of the old-time-religion xy.
Outbreaks of equal rights have been reported throughout the country. Massachusetts will be the first state to legally sanction same-sex marriages in May, and nothing can be done to stop them until 2006. By then, others will follow. Alarmists would have us believe that we have been cast back to Sodom and Gomorrah, and there aren't enough shakers to hold all of the salt.
Well, naysayers, it's not as if we've done such a great job with the current system. Given the 5700+ years of modern civilization, we still have a heterosexual divorce rate in excess of 50% and rising. And I have yet to hear about a single family that was destroyed because of someone else's gay marriage.
To head off the spate of letters and emails proclaiming marriage to be a "privilege" rather than a "right", in fact neither is correct. Marriage is a union created by state law. And the 14 th Amendment to our Constitution (if it hasn't yet been changed by President Bush) grants the equal protection of the laws to everyone within the jurisdiction of any state. That's Everyone.
This has become more of a fight over semantics than a battle to prevent same-sex unions. In fact, if you substitute that word "union" for "marriage", the joining is already legal in half-a-dozen states, and many others, including Pennsylvania, offer limited legal rights and protections. The only battleground left is the spelling of the arrangement: u-n-i-o-n, or m-a-r-r-i-a-g-e.
So how in the name of Sappho can this concept of same-sex (choose your word) tear asunder the families of the 260 million or so of us who still cling to our heterosexual roots? What do we have to fear from granting the equal rights of marriage to same-gender couples? Are we so unsure of our own sexuality, and our own family strength, that we must eliminate any other belief but ours to preserve our way?
I have spent time recently in New York City and Key West, Florida. For decades these cities have had one of the highest concentrations of gay and lesbian residents. You might find some of the locals eccentric. But the population does not seem threatened, demoralized, or unstable. There is no hint of gender-catastrophe. In fact, for the most part you can't tell who is gay, who is straight, who is married, who is "unionized", and who is homophobic.
Gays and lesbians are not the first minority groups to seek equal rights in our Land of the Free. Women, people of color, and the poor all went through similar struggles. And, amazingly enough, the exact same arguments now being used against gays were concocted for each of those other groups. "Giving ____ equal rights will destroy our society!"
The civil war was fought over states' rights. Southerners, with a cotton and farming-based economy, swore they needed slavery for cheap labor. They saw emancipation - equal rights for slaves - as the end of their world. They lost, they adapted, all is well.
In the early 1900's, women had no vote. In fact, not so long before that they had been regarded as no more than possessions. And the argument for denying equal rights to fifty percent of our population? It will destroy our society! If you let 'em vote, the next thing you know they will want to run for office, work in our businesses, and make their own decisions. A woman's place is pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen.
Despite emancipation, and the granting of equal rights to all races in 1870, several southern states found clever ways to prevent the poor from voting. They enacted "grandfather clauses" (you can only vote if your grandfather did), and poll taxes, which the poor could not afford. Why? Allowing the poor to vote will destroy our society! What if they banded together and voted one of their own into power? What would it do to our families?
There used to be laws against interracial marriage. And how about the fears of so many religious and ethnic groups that intermarriage would destroy their societies: think Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, and the Sharks and Jets in West Side Story.
See a pattern here? Change always comes slowly, and fear-mongers pop up in every generation. But America has somehow survived the many predictions of societal destruction, and we will somehow survive families with same-sex parents.
So what do we tell our young children, who innocently want to know why Tommy has two mommys? Well, you could tell them that families are composed of PEOPLE, and if they love each other, and respect the rights of others, then we will be doing much better than we are today.