Why Gay Marriage Matters

Dear Mr. Meanor:

I recently heard about National “Day without Gays”. What is it?

Clueless

Dear Straight Person:

Day without Gays is simply that. We gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, queer, and other so called different people are a new form of second class citizen. We are marginalized in hiring, housing, adoption and our basic civil rights as human beings and citizens of this country. In the past 40 years we have made huge strides in our campaigns for equal treatment and respect but we are still not there. On the Day without Gays we were called upon to boycott any commercial dealings. We were encouraged to call in to work, not to purchase anything, and let everyone know why we were doing so. Not a lot of us were able to do so in these tough economic times, but the message may have gotten through to some people.

In case it didn’t, there are a few reasons why we were doing this. One of the biggest is that we are denied the right to marry the person that we love. Our loved ones cannot share the rights of straight couples in the fields of inheritance, visitation (both of children and our spouses in the hospital), health benefits, tax benefits, legal protection, and a host of other privileges non-gay couples are able to take advantage of. We do not want or need a redefinition of the word marriage and most feel insulted by “civil unions” that promise a few of the rights of marriage. No citizen of this country or for that matter no human being should be told that they are going to be penalized for loving another human being. We simply want the government to stop a systematic prejudice towards a group of citizens that, apparently, they wish would just go away and stop being difficult. We have survived since the dawn of history and made our own lives bearable despite efforts to destroy us. Social condemnation, legal action, terror, and oppression may be (mostly) a thing of the past but we cannot give up. And we are not going anywhere.

One of the best euphemisms for gay is “family”. Many people were excluded from their family when they came out and made their own families with friends, lovers, and sympathetic people. We are still citizens of a country that claims to respect people’s rights but that cannot even conceive of a family consisting of anything more than two people of the opposite sex and their various offspring. Many people have their own horror stories; a partner in the hospital and being refused entry into the room or the right to help decide on treatment; being refused custody of a child they raised from birth; being ejected from a home they built over a lifetime because they were not a legal spouse. If my partner of 8 years was my legal spouse, I could have had him put on my health insurance. Then he would not have had to make the choice between chemotherapy, medication, and hospital care or making sure that we ate that week. I had no say in anything, even as he was lying in a sterile hospital room by himself because I was not allowed in because his mother said so. The government can recognize the marriage of a couple who met in Vegas two hours ago, but apparently gay people are not able to handle the responsibility of marriage.

We still face discrimination and hostility in everyday situations that we have learned to deal with; not being able to hold hands with our partners on the street, stares in the grocery store, and a thousand others things. We may not ever change people’s perceptions but if we can gain access to basic human dignity in the field of marriage we can make a start on the rest of it. Maybe then nobody will have to watch someone crying outside a hospital room because they can’t go in.