Archive for the ‘The Politics’ Category

Dear the majority of North Carolina voters,

You don’t know me, I’ve never been to your state and very possibly never will. But I feel like you need you to know that you made a huge mistake today.

You should know right off the bat that I am straight and married and I live in a state that made a similarly awful mistake several years ago that we’ve been trying to undo ever since then. We aren’t perfect either, but I’m happy to say that we’ve recognized our mistake and I’m hopeful that you will too.

History is full of people overcoming mistakes like these.

Hundreds of years ago we had slavery and more recently issues with African American suffrage. People fought tooth and nail to keep their slaves, to prevent African Americans from voting. They quoted the bible, they stood on tradition. They felt that they were doing what was right even when others around them knew otherwise. And do you know what happened? Slavery was abolished and African Americans were allowed to vote. Because eventually cooler, more open minds prevailed.

How about women’s rights? For hundreds of years women weren’t allowed to vote, weren’t allowed in the work force. And when women fought for rights, people quoted the bible, they stood on tradition. They felt that they were doing what was right even when others around them knew otherwise. And do you know what happened? Women got the right to vote. They may still not have completely equal rights, but we have come a long way because eventually cooler, more open minds prevailed.

What you voted on today will someday be in history books. Not because it was a good decision, in fact, because it was the opposite. Some day we will be reading about how you tried to withhold equal rights from American citizens. We’ll read about how you quoted the bible, how you stood on tradition. How you felt you were doing what was right even when others around you know otherwise. We’ll see how you’ve stood on Christianity as your justification when in reality Christ would’ve been horrified by the things proponents of this Amendment have said.

You may have voted against equal rights, but you will not win because the rest of us see your mistake. Our laws are not based on your bible and they are not supposed to be. Our laws are based on the constitution which gives all men equal rights.

What you did today was not a victory. It was a tragedy. It was a mistake that is going to take years to undo. It was a shining example of close-mindedness, of hiding hatred behind religion. I just hope that someday soon you realize that you discriminated against your fellow man in the name of God. I hope you realize that in Jesus’ name you offered hate to your neighbor, instead of love.

I look forward to the day that this Amendment gets overturned. To the day when we stop hiding our hatred behind religion. To the day that equal rights are a given instead of a fight.

With great sadness and frustration,
Katie

I have a lot of loves in my life, and I’ve made no secret of the fact that one of them is politics. I love politics. I love talking about it, I love learning about it. My college thesis was on government/politics. I have always loved to discuss issues and laws. Which is why I find myself in such a strange place right now.

I am just sick of it.

I’m so sick of sad and predictable stories about good bills not being passed because of partisan politics. I’m tired of jabs being made on both sides, of name calling, of seemingly constant back and forth nit pickery. I’m tired of everyone’s motives constantly being questioned and our inability to trust anyone to ever have the country’s best interests in mind, whether justifiably or not.

The truth of the matter for me is that I think Romney or Obama would be fine as president, largely because if we’ve seen anything in the past 4 years it’s that the president has very little power when Congress is divided. My vote will go to Obama because I feel strongly that he has the interests of the middle class at heart and because he is more socially liberal, but I don’t think Romney would be the end of the world. We are looking at two moderates who just lean slightly more to one side than the other. Two husbands and fathers, neither of who are demons, neither of who are out to get you. These are two good men, so why do we spend so much time tearing them apart?

I’m tired of the bumper stickers, of comments on news pieces, of people who cannot simply agree to disagree or who cannot stick to issues. I’m tired of personal attacks that don’t need to be made, of horrible names that these men are being called.

Politics can certainly feel personal. I have some extremely strong feelings about a number of political issues, but my point is no better made with yelling, screaming, name calling and general douchebaggery than it is with calm and rational discourse. In fact, once you resort to any of the above things, I’m done. Your point is lost.

I’m ready for it to be election day, I’m ready to begin the next 4 years and the end of the campaigns. I’m ready for Congress to get their asses into gear, to stop playing games and actually take a moment to consider what this country needs instead of what’s best for their political party or candidate. I’m tired of the games.

I never thought I’d say this, but for the first time in my life, I just want to be finished with politics. I want to bury my head in the sand and not hear or read any of the stories. I want for us to rediscover our basic humanity and come together as a country to focus on rebuilding instead of on separating. I just wish I foresaw that instead of 6 more months of bickering, name calling and other ugliness.

I really think we can do better.

Ever since I caught wind of the latest Rush Limbaugh absurdity, I have been irritated. Truly, seriously, endlessly irritated. I need to tell you upfront, I really, very seriously, dislike Rush Limbaugh. I think he thrives off the type of attention he’s getting, I think he has zero remorse for anything he’s done and most of all, I think he’s wrong about 100% of the time. But that’s not really why I’ve been irritated, it’s because I’m finding that I’m not sure I’m any better than him.

It is entirely and completely unacceptable to me that Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a slut and a prostitute. And yes, you can play the, he didn’t actually call her that, he said she was being one, but frankly, when my husband says I’m acting like a bitch, it isn’t any less offensive than if he were to outright call me one. The point is the same, what Rush said was entirely out of line.

I won’t even get into how entirely uneducated his rant was because clearly he believes that birth control is like erectile dysfunction medication and must be taken only when having sex, therefore the cost of birth control is directly related to the amount of sex. And he also seems to struggle with where insurance companies get their money, which, hint, it’s not from your taxes. But anyway, that is neither here nor there.

It was wrong and no matter whether you are Republican or Democrat, you need to see that. Calling a woman a slut is wrong. Period.

And you know what? His apology was pathetic. His apology was his way of saying that he’s sorry that everyone is pissed off at him. He’s sorry he used the word slut. He’s not sorry that he thinks she’s one, he’s not sorry that he implied she’s one, he’s just sorry that he used that word. It’s like the time my sister called my mom a bitch and when asked to apologize said, “I’m sorry for calling you what you are.” And I think it’s fair to say that Rush’s apology went over about as well as my sister’s did.

But there’s another issue here, and that’s whether we’re being fair about our outrage. Rush Limbaugh is far from the first person to publicly name call when it comes to politics. Hell, just last week I called Republicans in Congress assholes. I’m not particularly outraged with myself, but I am kind of plagued with a feeling of hypocrisy. How can I be so upset about what Rush said but think that my name calling is okay?

On the same token, it’s not acceptable when democrats call republicans names, and for the most part, I think everyone understands that. It’s not okay to call Sarah Palin terrible things or insult her children, no matter how stupid her political opinions are. It’s probably not okay for me to call Santorum all the things I want to in my head, simply because we disagree on every political and personal item in the universe.

There’s just something about politics that makes us completely lose our rational heads.

This was made clearer to me last week with all of the articles praising Andrew Brietbart’s death. Look, this shouldn’t have to be said, but I don’t give a flying fuck how much you disagreed with or hated a person, unless he’s responsible for genocide or the downfall of civilization, you do not celebrate when a 40 something year old father and husband dies suddenly. It doesn’t matter how awful you thought he was, it doesn’t matter if he celebrated when someone else died. Two wrongs do not make a right and they never will.

It’s time we take a look at the rhetoric we’re spouting and consider what it says about us. Instead of telling you why I was disgruntled with Republicans in Congress (which, warning, would be a very long post), I took a shortcut and called them assholes. Rush Limbaugh is so (wrongly) passionate about depriving birth control to women across this country that instead of discussing his position rationally like an adult, he called a relatively innocent young woman, and every other woman in this country who would like to have her birth control covered by her insurance, a slut.

And I would say that we all need to stop for a minute. We all need to think, we need to collect our thoughts and present our problems with the issues, present our problems with a candidate’s position. No one’s mind is being changed by name calling, but you might actually succeed in making a difference by discussing the issues. You might actually bring about change if you take the time to discuss something like an adult instead of flinging insults like a child.

I’d love to see us all learn a lesson from Rush. Learn to think before we speak, learn to respect others, even if we disagree with them. Republican or Democrat, we’re all human and we all deserve respect from our supporters and opponents. Maybe it’s just me, but I’d love to see an election that isn’t rife with insults and instead is filled with passion to make positive changes to our country.

My political affiliations are no secret. I am a bleeding heart liberal. I try not to vote along party lines, but I have yet to encounter a situation where I don’t fall to the left of the issue. I voted for President Obama in 2008 and I will be voting for him again in November proudly. I believe that he has done the best possible job a man could do inheriting the mess our country and economy was in and the pile of worthless Republican assholes in Congress.

See, I can censor myself.

But I’ll also be completely honest with you, I don’t really dislike Mitt Romney. He and I don’t see eye-to-eye on every issue, but he doesn’t scare me. I don’t foresee the downfall of civilization should he win office. As much as the GOP hates it, Romney is actually kind of socially moderate and if I can’t have socially liberal, I’ll take that as the next best option.

Especially when the other contender is Rick Santorum. I don’t believe you can even call him conservative because I think that is an insult to conservatives everywhere. I believe he’s running on the Closed Minded platform. I do not exaggerate one little bit when I say that this man scares me to my very core.

Rick Santorum is opposed to all birth control, well, except natural family planning, which by the way, is totally a form of birth control. The whole point is to allow you to have sex without getting pregnant if you don’t want to, which spoiler alert! is exactly what birth control does. Just because this kind can’t be purchased, swallowed or donned, does not mean it’s not birth control. Though with 8 children, I think Rick and his wife might be doing it wrong, I’m just saying.

He has recently spoken out as being against pre-natal testing because though it can save the lives of children and mothers, it could also cause some mothers to have an abortion. Which when the alternative is a diagnosis that is incompatible with life, or a condition where a child will suffer horribly for several years before dying a painful death, is actually not the worst case scenario, it turns out. Or it isn’t for normal people, I guess. Because Rick Santorum would rather save the life of a child who literally has no chance at life, he would rather deprive testing that could detect treatable defects than risk a woman deciding to spare a child with a severe birth defect a life filled with pain and disease. What a freaking saint he is. Someone canonize him already.

He is opposed to gay marriage, and has even been quoted as saying that it would make the country fail. He says this on religious principals, which is so funny, because I’m fairly sure that Jesus was actually much more in favor of loving your neighbor instead of bad mouthing them and saying that they would cause the downfall of a country. Frankly, Mr. Santorum, I’m pretty sure your sad closed mind is much more likely to make this country fail.

Oh and this just in, he’s also opposed to separation of church and state, except when discussing the Obama administration’s requirement that insurance provide birth control for employees of Catholic institutions, in which case he is a firm believe that government should stay out of religion. And he gets bonus points for repeatedly misquoting JFK, who, another spoiler alert! was also Catholic, a fact I’m fairly sure completely escapes our friend Rick.

I just cannot wrap my head around how he is still a contender. How anyone could, in good conscience, think that this man would lead our country in the right direction. I guess unless you believe backwards is a good way to go, in which case, you got the right guy.

America, I implore you, stop this crazy train now. Don’t let Rick Santorum have even the tiniest of chances of running our country into the ground, of forcing religion down the throats of people who have no desire to have it. Don’t let him take away prenatal testing or decide when and how women should be able to choose to have families or dictate whose marriages are acceptable and whose aren’t.

Please. We can do better than this. We have to do better than this.

Mitt Romney’s tax documents were released today and a lot of people are up in arms about it. I’ll just fill you in ahed of time about me. I’m a very liberal Democrat who fully plans to vote for Obama again this year because I like him and think that he is doing the very best job he possibly can in the situation presented to him. You are welcome to tell me why this is a bad idea, but until a Republican candidate comes along that isn’t homophobic, doesn’t tell me what to do with my uterus and doesn’t want to make this the United State of Jesus Christ, I won’t be persuaded.

Anyway, back to Mitt Romney and the outrage. I am not one of the outraged. Yes, Mitt has off shore accounts, yes he only paid 14% of his yearly income in taxes, but the fact is that it was totally legal. And I can’t blame Mitt for that.

I blame Congress.

There have been many, many attempts to change tax policies. The people have spoken, repeatedly, and they want the wealthy to be taxed more to help manage the deficit. And yet, the Republican caucus continues to block all attempts to, you know, raise revenue for our badly indebted country because they are protecting the extremely wealthy. Like Mitt Romney.

Mitt Romney simply did what was legal. He paid what he was supposed to pay and he has legal bank accounts. Sure, keeping bank accounts in the Cayman Islands is totally smarmy, but we’re talking politicians here. If you’re not expecting them to do seriously smarmy things you’re kidding yourself.

Should Mitt pay more? Ethically and in terms of what’s best for the country he wants to lead, yes, absolutely. He should pay the same tax rate as his constituents. He should not be able to hide money away overseas, but this is the legal hole we dug, now we need to lie in it without blaming him.

We need to lie in it or we need to get outraged at the people who made this possible. Don’t yell at Mitt, I am an absolute believer in giving taxes to the government pay for social welfare programs, but just like anyone else, I wouldn’t pay a dollar more than asked. And I don’t expect Mitt to be any different.

Write to your congressman, tell him or her that you want fair taxes, that the wealthy should never pay a smaller percentage of their income that low and middle class families. If you can’t see how wrong that is, then I can never understand you.

We absolutely need to do something different in this country. We need to get rid of these Bush era tax cuts. They don’t spur the economy, they allow millionaires to keep more of their money that the middle class and they are preventing us from pulling in valuable revenue.

I’m not asking you to agree but for the love of all that is good, don’t vote for Newt Gingrinch because of Mitt Romney’s taxes (I mean, really don’t vote for Newt at all, but definitely not for this). Being rich and smart is unfortunately not a crime, no matter how frustrating it may be to those of us who don’t fulfill the former attribute.

Blame Congress. And in November, elect officials who are going to represent the will of the people, not the will of the elite.

On Monday, the state of Michigan was set to pass a new bill to protect kids from bullying. The law, named “Matt’s School Safe Law” was championed by a Michigan family whose teenage son, Matt, committed suicide after being bullied for being gay. Michigan is one of only 3 states that don’t have anti-bullying laws, so this whole thing sounds pretty great, right?

Wrong.

First, Michigan Republicans added some special provisions to the bill. They only agreed to pass the measure if it did not require schools to report bullying, didn’t train teachers to handle bullying and couldn’t punish principals if they didn’t do anything to stop bullying. So basically, they only agreed to pass it if it was a bullying law that did absolutely nothing to stop bullying.

But wait, it gets worse.

Because not only did they make it so that bullying doesn’t need to be enforced, but they also added a special provision. Bullying is illegal and is punishable…except if it’s done with religious motivation.

I’m just gonna let that sink in for a second.

In Michigan it’s illegal to bully unless you have a moral objection to something someone is doing. Hmmm, what kind of bullying could they possibly be protecting? Oh right, the exact kind that motivated this law. The head of the American Family Association told reporters that this religious protection was necessary for bullying because they didn’t want this bill to be “a Trojan horse for the homosexual agenda.”

The homosexual agenda.

I’m pretty sure this agenda currently consists of: prevent gay teenagers from being bullied, get closed-minded Republicans to stop hating them, be allowed to get married like all other consenting adults.

THE HORROR. Please write more laws to protect me from these horrible people and their terrible intentions.

This bill that was supposed to protect kids from bullying and was supposed to literally save lives, is now the most impotent, ass backwards law there has ever been. This law gives kids a free pass to bully gay kids if their religion opposes homosexuality. Or if they say it does.

I am trying so hard to be relatively balanced, but I am so angry at these Republicans that I can hardly see straight.

How can these adults in government possibly think that this protects anyone besides bullies? It doesn’t allow schools to crack down on bullying, it protects bullying of homosexual kids. They may as well make all bullies in charge of schools. At this point, that would hardly be worse.

I cannot begin to imagine what Matt’s parents must be feeling right now. They set forth to do something really great with their loss. They planned to protect other families from the hell they’ve been forced to live with. And their legislature, no, the Republicans in their legislature, took their mission and flushed it down the drain. They took something with the ability to do so much good and made it a Trojan horse for the homophobes, the religious zealots and the bullies of the world.

These are not the people that need protection.

If you are not outraged by this, I truly question your humanity. That any adult can stand aside and let kids get bullied to the point that they see no option except to take their own lives is disgusting to me. That we can protect that bullying is even more reprehensible. If another teen in Michigan dies like Matt did it will be the fault of the Republicans in Michigan who cared more about stopping some imaginary homosexual agenda than protecting teenagers in their state.

This is a tragedy.

(The information above comes from these two sites and my deep seated anger.)

You guys, I have tried so hard to not be political lately, but I have run out of self-control. I basically have 2 back-to-back political posts in my mind and since election day is tomorrow, I figured I should get this one out first. The other one is less pressing and a lot less dividing. So I can bring us all back together after dividing us tonight. You are welcome.

So Mississippi is voting on Personhood. The idea is that the instant an egg is fertilized it is a person.

If you cannot see through this as an obvious way that a religious organization is trying to make abortion illegal than you are blind. Because it is blatant. I’m not going to argue abortion with you because there are no winners in that debate and I just don’t feel like engaging it. Plus, there are enough reasons why this law is wrong that I don’t even have to.

For starters, there are about 800 things wrong with having people vote on what goes on in a woman’s uterus. I’m sorry, but I do not want the uneducated moron living next door to me having ANY say on my reproductive organs or health ever. Nor do I want them having a say about my children. Just no. This is not an issue that should be voted on at all, but especially not considering how vague the measure is. It doesn’t specify how far things could go, which is intentional so that if passed (and I fear it will be passed) they can make a whole host of things they don’t like, illegal.

Beyond that, there is an obvious issue of not knowing the moment of conception. You have no idea that an egg has been fertilized unless you’re doing it under a microscope.

One of the big things that keeps being brought up is how if you murder a pregnant woman you get charged with a double murder, and therefore, a woman who has an abortion should also a murderer. But I just wonder how far we can take this. If a woman drinks alcohol before she knows she’s pregnant, can she be charged with child endangerment? I mean, if the two cells in her uterus is a person, isn’t she endangering their wellbeing? Shouldn’t she be arrested and jailed?

I am personally not able to use any birth control except an IUD because of concerns about the pressure in my head. And under personhood? I might not be able to use it anymore. Some IUDs work by not allowing fertilized eggs to attach to the uterine lining, and while I get that a lot of people are offended by this kind of birth control, I am not one of them and I want my IUD back. And since we don’t want 800 kids within 8 months of each other, we’re going to need some birth control. Or would you rather pay for food stamps for my family? I know that conservatives love government welfare! Surely that’s better than a contraceptive device that wouldn’t let two cells attach to my uterus. Additionally, Plan B wouldn’t be available for purchase anymore since it would technically cause the death of a 2 celled “person.”

As far as in vitro fertilization is concerned, you’d never be able to discard fertilized eggs that cannot be used. And more troubling, “personhood” could make it illegal to use embryos for stem-cell research which is vital to finding cures for hundreds of terrible diseases.

Above all else, this movement just plain doesn’t make sense. A fertilized egg doesn’t have nerve endings. It doesn’t have organs. It doesn’t have a heartbeat. It doesn’t have arm buds or a brain. My cat is 8000 times more of a person than a fertilized egg is. I think if we’re going to start giving 2 celled organisms this many rights that we should also no longer be allowed to squash bugs or euthanize pets.

I beg of you, see through this veiled attempt to end abortion and let that issue be dealt with in court. Don’t let people vote to make decisions for your reproductive health. Don’t let religious zealots hamper the ability for us to learn invaluable information about diseases and treatments that could save real people who are living among us today.

No one wins if this amendment passes. Especially not women.

Please vote no on “personhood.”

So, before I say anything, I need you all to understand that I am a bleeding heart liberal. I voted for Obama and I will vote for him again next November. I oppose the death penalty with my whole heart, am pro-choice and opposed to religion being all up in my government. I don’t like guns and I don’t think that everyone should be able to drive to Walmart and get one. I want the wealthy to be taxed the very same percent as the middle class and I cannot understand how anyone is opposed to that.

And as far as I can tell based on what I’ve read, I support the Occupy Wall Street movement. With one exception.

I am a full time graduate student. My husband is a relatively newly graduated doctor. We are basically connoisseurs of student loans. When I finish with grad school in May, between the two of us we’ll just a hair shy of $500,000 in debt for our educations. That is no chump change. And though my husband has good earning potential (not as great as you think), I will probably never exceed $65,000 a year no matter how long I work.

And so it is from this perspective that I whole heartedly disagree with the protesters who are trying to get the government to forgive student loans. And ESPECIALLY the ones who are comparing it to slavery. Student loans are NOT slavery. And not only is it moderately offensive to say that, it’s also just stupid.

Before I go any further, I need to acknowledge that I understand that there are many new graduates who cannot find a job and I do wholeheartedly believe that there absolutely need to be better ways to defer loans for those are unemployed. Forbearance is not a reasonable option in this economy and so for those struggling to pay their loans back while unemployed, my heart goes out to you. But other than that, I cannot feel sorry for people with student loan debt. You are not slaves. You chose your school and it was no secret what the cost would be.

I don’t expect every student to be able to get scholarships or hold a full time job, that’s unrealistic. But it’s not unrealistic to expect students to pay back the money they borrow for their education. That’s called being a grown up. You make promises, you keep them. You say you’re going to do something, you do it. This is not slavery, this is adulthood. Suck it up and deal. No one expects you to enjoy giving away a chunk of your income, but you don’t get to go to college for free because you don’t want to pay back your loans.

I abhor the idea of paying back loans for the next 20+ years, I hate that we won’t be able to own a house for quite some time because our student loan payments will be prohibitively high. But I knew that when I chose my graduate program. I knew it was more expensive than other programs, I knew it was a serious financial commitment and I plan to stick by it. I made a choice and though following through with it sucks, I’m going to do it anyway. Life is a series of choices and it’s time to take responsibility for them.

I can only hope that more students, including my fellow bleeding heart liberals, can grow up and do the same. No one’s asking you to like it, but for the love of God, stop comparing it to an institution that forced a race of people into manual labor against their wills. You should know it’s not the same.

Or maybe we should be talking to your schools about teaching American history a little more thoroughly.

Picture: CNN iReport

The year was 1965. A man fell in love. His partner loved him back deeply, and they decided to commit their lives to one another. The only problem was that the government in the state they lived in forbade their marriage.

You see, the man was an African-American and the woman was Caucasian. They were citizens of the United States, he was allowed to vote, to fight for his country, but he could not marry the woman he loved.

People called their love unnatural. They couldn’t explain it. It wasn’t something they chose, it was something they felt. They were in love just as every other couple they knew, and they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together in a marriage. Just as all other citizens of the US were allowed to.

Some people hated him. They quoted the bible. “When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites . . . you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them . . . Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son.” Deuteronomy 7:1-4 (Abridged)

But they pushed on. They fought on. And in 1967, the Supreme Court of the United States declared in the decision of Loving v. Virginia that:

“Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival…. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law.”

And so they married. And lived a long life together.

———–

The year is 2011. A man fell in love. His partner loved him back deeply, and they decided to commit their lives to one another. The only problem was that the government in the state they lived in forbade their marriage.

You see, the man was in love with another man. They were citizens of the United States, they were both allowed to vote, to fight for their country, but they could not marry the person they loved.

People called their love unnatural. They couldn’t explain it. It wasn’t something they chose, it was something they felt. They were in love just as every other couple they knew, and they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together in a marriage. Just as all other citizens of the US were allowed to.

Some people hated them. They quoted the bible. “If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.” Leviticus 20:13.

But they pushed on. They fought on. Only, unlike the African-American man, the hatred has not slowed, the progress has not been made. These men, in love with one another, not trying to convert any other men, not sexual deviants, just two men, in love, still cannot marry. The Supreme Court has not yet said that “Marriage is one the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival.”

Oh wait. Yes they have.

50 years ago the Supreme Court granted the right to marry to interracial couples, saying that the anti-miscegenation laws were a violation of the constitution, despite public outcries and outrage. And now, all this time later, we see how awful the earlier laws were. We see how unfair and discriminatory they were. We see how we have wrong. And yet, we continue to commit these wrongs even today.

I can only hope that in the next few years we wise up, we learn from our past mistakes and we expand marriage to include same sex couples. To let them have the “basic civil rights of man” granted to all other Americans.

Maybe then freedom will truly ring throughout this nation. Maybe then we will stop hating each other for our differences and celebrate those differences as the stuff makes our country great.

I was talking with friends on twitter today when someone retweeted this:

When I read it, I literally gasped out loud. I was shocked that someone would be so outspoken and proud of this opinion.

But what bothered me the most was the tone. This person sounds as though they are God’s personal confidant, as though they know exactly what is right and wrong. After many people tweeted back at him for his statement he tweeted again.

And all I can say is, bullshit.

Just because you don’t use the word hate, or don’t use slurs, doesn’t make it not bigoted. Just because it was done in such a calm manner, it doesn’t make it any less intolerant.

That is intolerance, it is bigotry. Believing that others are wrong for being who they are is simply wrong. If this man wrote this tweet about marriage between different races, people would all be appalled. If this man wrote this tweet about marriage between religions, we’d be horrified. In fact, I’d bet that if he believed either of those to be true, he wouldn’t publicly post it because the vast majority of people would immediately dismiss him as a racist, as a bigot.

But for some reason, the issue of homosexuality makes people forget their humanity. We created marriage, it’s a document, it’s a ceremony. It’s a way to say that you are part of a family and that you are committed to someone. How it can be wrong to ever commit yourself to loving someone is completely beyond me. But I know that telling others that their love is wrong, that even if they get equal rights, they are still wrong is intolerant. It’s ignorant.

We look back on our history with regret for the years of racial discrimination. We realize how entirely wrong we were, we realize that the discrimination against African Americans was unfair, and yet, we continue to allow a similar discrimination to run rampant. We pretend that homosexuality is so different. We pretend that because you can’t tell homosexuality from birth, that if you are homosexual as an adult, you made a choice and that choice should prevent you from basic rights, from basic humanity. From being judged by others for being who you are.

I have confidence that some day we will look back and be ashamed at how long it took us to allow homosexuals the right to marry, how long it took us to be accepting. I hope that some day soon people can realize that the same morals that they hide behind in disagreeing with gay marriage also tell them to love one another. I don’t know, those tweets don’t sound like love to me. They sound like disapproval, like hate.

I hope that these people who cannot see their hate, cannot see their bigotry and intolerance will someday realize their mistakes and work to make them right. And that someday I won’t have to write about this because there won’t be people who believe that love is wrong.