Hmm...marriage. There's lot's of reasons people want to get married, including love, good sex, convenience, reproduction (not just for pleasure's sake).
Personally, i feel that marriage is a representation of love and dedication, something America has lost sight of in the past...well...70 years?
Involving marriage in politics is like mixing whiskey with milk - it just plain doesn't mix. So far we as a country have tried to place religion and politics hand in hand, and to little or no avail. A country who's politics are based on acceptance and known as the "melting pot" who then decides that CERTAIN things just don't fit in...well that's textbook hypocrisy.
Isolating one particular group out of a set of rights guaranteed to everyone is blatant bigotry and goes completely against the fundamentals of this country.
It truly is a sorrowful sight when one can compare the basis of marriage to the actions of our government, a hypocrisy which lies heavy on the heart's of those it effects.
History has proven that those who possess this peculiar quality we have labelled homosexuality are, in fact, equal in every respect to those who judge, and often, condemn them. History has proven this in the past with African Americans, along with the Jews. Unfortunately, history has also taught us that for these people, it takes time and, often, much suffering to procure the status of an "equal."
Proof of the historical competence and exceptional abilities those who deem themselves homosexuals is evident throughout almost every period in history.
A list of such people:
Alexander the Great
*Macedonian Ruler, 300 B.C.
Socrates
*Greek Philosopher, 400 B.C.
Sappho
*Greek Woman Poet, 600 B.C.
Hadrian
*Roman Emperor, 1st-2nd c.
Richard the Lionhearted
*English King, 12th c.
Saladin
*Sultan of Egypt and Syria
Desiderius Erasmus
*Dutch Monk, Philosopher
Francis Bacon
*English statesman, author
Frederick the Great
*King of Prussia
Lord Byron
*English poet, 18th c.
Walt Whitman
*U.S. poet, author, 19th c.
Oscar Wilde
*Irish author, 19th c.
Marcel Proust
*French author, 20th c.
Colette
*French author, 20th c.
Gertrude Stein
*U.S. poet, author, 20th c.
Alice B. Toklas
*U.S. author, 20th c.
Federico Garcia Lorca
*Spanish author, 20th c.
Cole Porter
*U.S. composer, 20th c.
Virginia Woolf
*English author, 20th c.
Leonard Bernstein
*U.S. composer, 20th c.
Pope Julius III
*1550-1555
T.E. Lawrence
*English soldier, author, 20th c.
Jean Cocteau
*French writer, director, 20th c.
Charles Laughton
*English actor, 20th c.
Marguerite Yourcenar
*Belgian author, 20th c.
Tennessee Williams
*U.S. Playwright, 20th c.
James Baldwin
*U.S. author, 20th c.
Andy Warhol
*U.S. artist, 20th c.
Michelangelo
*Italian artist, 15th c.
Leonardo Da Vinci
*Ital. Artist, scientist, 15th c.
Christopher Marlowe
*Eng. Playwright, 16th c.
Herman Melville
*U.S. author, 19th c.
Horatio Alger, Jr.
*U.S. author, 19th c.
Tchaikovsky
*Russian composer, 19th c.
Willa Cather
*U.S. author, 19th c.
Amy Lowell
*U.S. author, 19th & 20th c.
E.M. Forster
*English author, 20th c.
John M. Keynes
*English economist, 20th c.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
*Australian mathematician, 20th c.
Bessie Smith
*U.S. singer, 20th c.
Noel Coward
*English playwright, 20th c.
Christopher Isherwood
*English author, 20th c.
Pier Paolo Pasolini
*Italian film director, 20th c.
Yukio Mishima
*Japanese author, 20th c.
Eleanor Roosevelt
*U.S. stateswoman, 20th c.
Julius Caesar
*Roman Emperor, 100-44 B.C.
Augustus Caesar
*Roman Emperor
Harvey Milk
*U.S. politician, 20th c.
Bayard Rustin
*U.S. Civil Rights activist, 20th c.
James I
*English King, 16th-17th c.
Queen Anne
*English Queen, 18th c.
Marie Antoinette
*French Empress, 18th c.
Melissa Etheridge
*U.S. Rock Star, 20th c.
Pope Benedict IX
*1032-1044
May Sarton
*U.S. author, (1912 - 1995)
Edna Ferber
*U.S. author, 20th c.
Elton John
*English Rock Star, 20th c.
Margaret Fuller
*U.S. writer, educator, 20th c.
Montezuma II
*Aztec ruler, 16th c.
Peter the Great
*Russian Czar, 17th-18th c.
Langston Hughes
*U.S. author, 20th c.
Pope John XII
*955-964
Madame de Stael
*French writer, 17th-18th c.
Martina Navratilova
*U.S. tennis star, 20th c.
Greg Louganis
*U.S. Olympic swimmer, 20th c.
Billie Jean King
*U.S. tennis star, 20th c.
Roberta Achtenburg
*U.S. politician, 20th c.
Barney Frank
*U.S. Congressman, 20th c.
Gerry Studds
*U.S. Congressman, 20th c.
Hans Christian Andersen
*Danish author, 19th c.
Tom Dooley
*U.S. M.D. missionary, 20th c.
J. Edgar Hoover
*U.S. director of the FBI., 20th c.
Frida Kahlo
*Mexican artist, 20th c.
Suleiman the Magnificent
*Ottoman ruler, 15th c.
Rock Hudson
*U.S. actor, 20th c.
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz
*Mexican author, 16th c.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
*U.S. author, 19th c.
Candace Gingrich
*Gay Rights activist, 20th c.
Margarethe Cammermeyer
*U.S. Army Colonel, 20th c.
Zoe Dunning
*U.S. Military Reservist, 20th c.
Tom Waddel
*U.S. M.D., Olympic star, 20th c.
Kate Millet
*U.S. author, 20th c.
Janis Joplin
*U.S. singer, 20th c.
Rudolf Nuryev
*Russian dancer, 20th c.
Waslaw Nijinsky
*Russian dancer, 20th c.
Ernst Röhm
*German Nazi leader, 20th c.
Dag Hammerskjold
*Swedish UN Secretary, 209th c.
Aristotle
*Greek philosopher, 384-322 B.C.
Paula Gunn Allen
*Native American author, 20th c.
Angela Davis
*U.S. political activist, 20th c.
June Jordan
*U.S. author, activist, 20th c.
Rainer Maria Rilke
*German poet, 20th c.
James Dean
*U.S. actor, 20th c.
Montgomery Clift
*U.S. actor, 20th c.
Baron VonSteuben
*German General, Valley Forge
Edward II
*English King, 14th c
To say these people are subhuman is to say practically every leader in history was inept and mentally unqualified to hold any position of importance. Where would we be without the Caesars, Alexander the Great, or the great thinkers Aristotle, Da Vinci, Plato? Where would our literature be without Emerson, Hughes, Whitman, Tchaikovsky, or Wilde(my personal favorite)?
To say these men and women are unequal, a crime against God, or a plague to society, is to say that many of the greatest minds ever on this Earth were nothing. This is, of course, bigotry and hypocrisy at its finest.
The ignorance and unfounded hatred that exists within America is an ever festering wound to our culture, and only further tarnishes whatever image we have portrayed to the rest of the world. Perhaps the worst aspect of this issue is the proximity of it to our lives. The flagrancy and connection this topic has to our thoughts is due in part to the fact that the controversy is one that is modern.
This isn't an issue that has been decided decades ago; it isn't an issue that our age of reason and logic and acceptance has already come and gone, it exists today and the very people around us have spoken out openly against logic, against reason, against the fundamentals of our country.
Will this be an old lesson learned anew, that people who have different tastes, ideals, and thoughts are actually equal to us, despite the imagined savagery and foreign nature of them?
I am personally mainly upset with the fact that even today, our supposedly educationally advanced and superior society has decided to ignore history, ignore facts, and live by the same unsubstanciated belief that only certain people can be counted as equals.