According to The Washington Post, President Bush will endorse the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment. In doing so, he parts ways with a majority of Americans who do not believe we should write discrimination into the US Constitution. Amending the Constitution to discriminate against same-sex couples and our families is shameful - and we need to make sure that our elected officials know it. . You can go here to sign a petiton to support the right of every American to marry the individual of his/her choice.
Even though I am heterosexual, I have always had gay friends. I become friends with people who share my creative interests. I have danced with both gay men and gay women. I'll dance with anyone who's a good leader.
Having been educated in Catholic schools until I went away to college, I never even knew what homosexuality was until during my sophomore hear in college, when a female classmate decided she had a crush on me. I didn't know that at the time; I just figured she wanted to be friends, and so I was friendly to her. It wasn't until she invited me up to her room, and I went, and she asked me to sit on her bed, and she tried to kiss me that my perspective on the sexualities of the human species began to broaden. I remember stuttering out some lame excuse and stumbling out of her room. It took me a while to process what had happened; I didn't want to hurt her feelings, and I didn't have any idea how to handle the situation. So I tried to avoid her. But she was always there. I even found her sleeping in my car. I finally gathered up the courage to tell her that I wasn't interested in her. It was all so awkward, so painful for both of us. No one was really out of the closet then; no one really wanted to talk about what it's like to be gay.
How different it all is now. Last month, when I ran into one of my gay friends/former colleagues and her partner at a movement workshop, we all hugged and asked about our kids and what we were up to and how our kids were doing. (My friend had a daughter through artificial insemination, and she and her partner are raising the girl together; they are a loving and committed family in most most nurturing sense of the word.)
It seems to me that, if there is such a thing as a human soul/spirit, it is gender-neutral. Marriage is the joining of spirits, the connecting of souls. What matters is how you join your lives, not how you join your bodies.
This world is full of so much violence and hatred and abuse and fear. We should support and celebrate any human union that is founded on caring and love and respect.
