As I had celebrated over on our Baduy Pride blog, President Obama surprised everyone (although for different reasons) when we (finally) publicly came out in support of equal marriage rights for members of the LGBT community. And as much as we could gripe how he had to time this for yet another election year, this landmark occasion is still something worth celebrating. I mean come on, this is still the first time that a sitting US president has made a public statement in support of same-sex marriage and not just wobble with things like civil unions and all that fun stuff.
But while we all ponder over his motivations, laugh at Republicans calling this Obama declaring war on marriage or even dream about local politicians someday making similar statements in support of LGBT rights, I'd like to go back to a core thought at the heart of this debate.
We often use the term "gay marriage" a lot to easily explain what we're talking about in terms of the rights we're fighting for. However the term in itself assumes that the marriage rights of the LGBT community are still distinct and separate from the rest of the heterosexual world since we need to clearly label it as "gay".
The image above (and variants thereof) has gone around on various social networks and has garnered loads and loads of Likes, Re-Tweets and re-blogging on platforms like Tumblr. The quote is attributed to the actress / comedian / writer / producer Liz Feldman, as part of a longer statement that can still be found online. Coincidentally enough, the statement was in support of President Obama's initial presidential run, and here we are 4 years later with him starting his re-election campaign.
At the end of the day, we need to remember that all these discussions are about the fundamental rights we should all be entitled to and our freedom to love whomever we chose to. Beyond that love, the law needs to respect us and recognize who we are and the decisions we make in terms of wanting to marry the men and women that we love so dearly and to be protected by those same laws.
This is not about creating a new type of marriage that should be tagged as "gay marriage" but instead we should just be allowed the right to marry - period. And allowing people to celebrate their love for one another will not take away or somehow taste the love and unions of others. This is not about some perverse effects men marrying other men is going to have on (theoretically) straight families.
So STOP SAYING WE'RE DESTROYING YOUR MARRIAGES YOU CRAZY PEOPLE!
Quite frankly - you're doing a fine enough job of ruining your own marriages given the statistics related to divorces, separations and other such break-ups on the web.
We just want the free to love. Is that too much to ask for?
I admire President Obama for saying such things. He earned my respect.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. Let's just hope that he lives up to his word and this isn't just some sort of pre-campaign politicking.
ReplyDeleteHey, look! A source!
ReplyDeletehttp://wildguess.tumblr.com/post/4539131082/gayparkingthisway