Thanks to the gaypatriot fort exposing this issue. Now let me tell my story and then tie it back in with this.

For the first 22 years of my life I was against gay marriage. It wasn’t until having a gay friend in college and having a gay family member come out that some of my assumptions and ideas were challenged. Its not like I ever hated homosexuals or thought they were disgusting people, but I realized that my opposition to gay marriage was just left over… Read More “aquired ideas” from my education in private school for 10+ years.

The first time someone asked me what I thought about gay marriage (freshmen yr college) I responded that I was against it. Well being called a “homophobe and bigot” was a real shock to me and predictably pushed me further against gay marriage. This situtation was repeated over and over again.

It wasn’t until my cousin and I sat down and talked right after our abuelo died that I really sat down and gave it some very deep thought. What sold me this…before I could even tell my cousin what my thoughts were on his coming out he said,”"No matter what you decide know that I love you and I will always be there for you.” It took a couple of months, but my cousin was patient as we talked often. It was my conservative principles, ironically enough, that pushed me over the edge. Why shouldn’t people be able to visit a loved one in the hospital (spousal right) even if they are of the same sex? Why not be able to leave you money/pension to whoever you want?

GayPatriots assertions are very true. If even one of those gay activists had taken the time early in my life to question my ideas in a, for lack of a better word at 6:30 am, loving way then I would have been on their side about 4 years earlier.

Here is a quote from a poster on GayPatriot….
“Gays had my support on this topic but they have lost it. Honestly, I didn’t care if gays married or not. Life is too short for me to worry about what 2 strangers do in their bedroom so I supported it. After seeing the Prop 8 thuggery, threats, badgering and violence when they didn’t get their way, and the Prejean thing-forget it. ”

So here is a note to the gay community. Instead of labeling everyone opposed to gay rights and marriage as “bigots” “homophobes” etc….next time try the approach that my cousin had and that GayPatriot advocates. Calling people bigots and homophobes just fruther sets people against your cause. I would make a gaurantee that if gay activists stopped doing this, then support for gay marriage would sky rocket among the American public.

To sum it all up…..GayPatriot says this,” But, to repeal Prop 8, it is necessary to win hearts and minds of people with attitudes different from those of the “cultural élite.” To that end, it is imperative that advocates of gay marriage move beyond the hate.”

Lastly, I would vigorously challenge you that whippet16 is being vengeful. The gay community calls for tolerance and respect. But some respond to people with differing viewpoints or ideas with vile attacks and name calling. Which turns many people who would have been sympathetic off.

Cynthia, you have to stop defending the Prop 8 and Carrie Prejean nastiness. I completely sympathize, seeing what my cousin and his partner go through. I know the Prop 8 decision was hurtful, but that is not an excuse to defend the vitriolic attacks that resulted afterwards. The end result of those attacks is to further cement the other side against gay marriage and turn undecided people against it. Your basically saying its a violation of everything the gay community stand for but its ok, becuase Prop 8 was really hurtful to us. Same thing with Carrie Prejean, whatever her true background or motives. It was in excusable what happened to that girl for simply saying she was against gay marriage. Again, more people turned against the gay community and their cause.

Nonetheless, keep preaching it sister. The conservative side is the place to be to have this discussion!

Yes, I really do think marriage equality and equality in general for homosexuals will improve the moral fiber of the country and support the institution of marriage.

As we have seen in the last couple of weeks, the threats to marriage are the ordinary ones of the human experience: immaturity, infidelity, laziness (leading to a failure to support one’s family), lying, drugs, alcohol, cruelty, selfishness and so on. I suspect that starting 20 or 30 years ago, preachers found they couldn’t preach against these sins without emptying their churches. But they can still talk about sex when they condemn homosexuals, so I believe they use us simultaneously for the titillation value, the self-righteousness high and as scapegoats for sins that are not ours.

Thanks for making me smile with your remark about your wife’s means of enforcing your virtue.

Cynthia

When I was a boy in small town America we had lifelong bachelors sharing houses and farms as well as lifelong spinsters doing the same. No one snuck in inspecting sleeping arrangememts. The adults may have had their suspicians, if they did nobody told us kids about it.

I probably ought to not write about things that, even now, I don’t fully understand. After all, nobody ever called us LEOs out because their lives were just perfect. I do think that society was better off when folks kept a lot more quiet about how they felt and we paid more attention to what they did. But what do I know? I’m just a bald fat guy in the country wondering why politicians can’t seem to control keeping their zippers up. I never had that trouble. Of course I never had the kind of money they do. Oh, and my wife has her own .38 as well as access to my service rovolver.
.-= Peter´s last blog ..A Politician Can’t Keep His Zipper Up, Imagine That. =-.

I appreciate your kind remarks and willingness to read a differing point of view. I am astounded and overjoyed to find how much more common this is on the Right than on the Left. It shows a generosity of heart, mind and soul.

Regarding marriage equality — the only change we want to make is the choice of spouse. That’s it. Nothing else. If religions do not want to perform marriages for same-sex couples, or allow same-sex marriages to be performed on property they own, we are fine with that as a group. If there are some random clowns who do try for that, they do not have the general gay community’s support, but no group has control over the behavior of everyone in it.

Also, regarding religions and marriage, one of the very first things that happened after the gay rights movement was born 40 years this month was the founding of the Metropolitan Community Church by an evangelical Christian minister named Troy Perry. In other words, creating a place where lesbians and gays could be treated equally before God and worship was at the top of the “to do” list. There are now Metropolitan Community Churches all over the U.S. We don’t have to take things other people own. When we need something, we create it. We are self-reliant and resourceful and accustomed to doing for ourselves and our own.

Marriage as an institution changes with the times. Let’s set aside the fact that the form of marriage most common in the Old Testament was polygamy. My father and both his brothers were born before his mother, my grandmother, could vote. She was effectively her husband’s property. In the 1960′s, women could not obtain credit cards without their husband’s permission. I remember being taunted and baited by men in the 1970′s for advocating for equality for women. Equality for women didn’t really take hold until the 1980′s and it has changed the institution of marriage and made it better. I really do not see how changing the choice of spouse and nothing else will harm marriage as an institution. Marriage does so much to motivate people to do their best, to work toward long-term goals and to cushion the blows of sickness and hard times that it just seems to me that the more couples a society has that are married, the better.

I do hope you will come back and feel comfortable about sharing your thoughts, even when we disagree.

Cynthia

Your vengefulness over the Prop 8 protests and Carrie Prejean being put on the spot with a legitimate question and her dishonest reply — I believe the reports that her mother is a lesbian are true — is cruel beyond description. Marriage equality would save lesbian and gay lives by providing the legal tools couples need to build their lives together. Because it deprives same-sex couples of marriage equality, Prop 8 is murderous, and intentionally so. When people intentionally and maliciously succeed in damaging a group they hate, it is not very surprising that some members of that group would lash out. I really think gay and lesbian conservatives were staggeringly remiss in not giving social conservatives the experiences of the people they hurt and the emotional impact of their malice and the lives that will be damaged or lost by snatching marriage equality away.

Also: I spent a few minutes in the same room with Carrie Prejean at the NOM press conference in D.C. She cannot keep her story straight from one sentence to the next. I think everyone who supports her is going to regret it. Also — the story that her mother is a lesbian is a very credible one. In addition, you really need to take seriously why her modeling agency fired her and why the Miss California USA organization fired her with Donald Trump’s blessing. And you need to be aware that Ms. Prejean’s attorney also is general counsel for the National Organization for Marriage. That strikes me as a conflict of interest. It also suggests the possibility that he engineered the circumstances that led to Prejean’s dismissal because her martyr act was/is an extremely productive cash cow for NOM.

You are just not considering the lifetimes of agony that gays and lesbians have experienced due to being second-class citizens and denied marriage equality. Think about it — I am the descendent of colonists and have an ancestor who served under Washington through the cruel winter at Valley Forge. Yet every single illegal alien has more civil rights than I do because I am a lesbian. Lesbians and gays were so cruelly hurt by Prop 8 that the size and scope of the hurt and loss of life it will cause far outweigh the protests. Carrie Prejean gleefully threw salt in that wound as Miss California — a smarter, kinder young woman would have had a diplomatic answer to the question — then stomped it in wearing stiletto heels.

Please make more of an effort to understand to scope of the hurt and the loss of life and damage that will result from Prop 8/Carrie Prejean before you judge lesbians and gays so severely and seek to punish us with permanent second-class citizenship. I predict you will be more proud of yourself in the long run, and do more good in the world, with the more compassionate and forgiving view that homosexuals deserve equality, including marriage equality, in the United States of America.

Cynthia

I suppose I am a conflicted conservative because I want to preserve all of the institutions that strenghen our society and our future generations but I also do not want any person to be treated “less than” because they are in the minority. You have given me alot to think about and I thank you for that.

Much of the usual discussion about gay partnership/marriage inevitably gets into nomenclature and that is where people get hung up. The problem is that both sides entrench and refuse to give a little ground where a little bit of looking for common ground could get both sides what they want.

I have no problem with respecting the centuries of Judeo-Christian tradition and reserving to the church the use of the term marriage. I wouldn’t care to force my beliefs on people who don’t share them which is one thing that separates me from the liberals. They have no hesitation in forcing their beliefs (more likely, unbeliefs) on everyone else and ridiculing those who don’t submit.

On the other hand, you and many friends of mine illustrate why committed civil unions need to be supported and institutionalized. I think when two people are in love and make the commitment to a lifelong relationship, it should be celebrated and their rights as partners should be established in law.

I think you have rightly identified the Republican Party as the one with the bigger tent. I hope the party continues to expand that tent. It could make some of the holier-than-thou types apoplectic to discover that the founder of the party, Abraham Lincoln, carried on a very intimate relationship with Joshua Speed in Springfield, Illinois, sharing his bed for four years. So maybe the tent is just expanding back to where it began!

Democratic politicians don’t want gays to have equal rights either but the only way to get their money and their vote is to give it lip service. At least in my state, the Democrats in office have always had an unspoken agreement never to put thier collegues on the spot by introducing gay legislation they would actually have to take a stand on. One recent freshman that didn’t know the game did just that. You never saw such a mad scramble from Democrats in office to shut it down. I don’t know what eventually become of it but their is no legislation. It’s a near 100% Democrat office holder state and has been for decades

For me, the prop 8 thuggery and the prejean thing is what lost you my support. The addition of most of the gay community keeping quiet while it all went on just cemented it. Quite ironic that gays want strangers to support them but they were not willing to do the same for others while they were being ripped to shreds. Until the majority shuts down the minority of the Perez Hilton/Prop 8 thug mentality, and becomes the louder voice that people see and remember, you won’t get back alot of supporters like me.

The republicans have to make a choice right now, whether to follow their stupid social nonsense, or come back to where everyone else is. Let us make businesses, make decisions and keep our money.

Personally, I think the federal government has no right to regulate marriage. It should be merely enforced as a contract, which the relavent parties draw up for themselves. Not just for people who are gay, but think about how bizarre it is that your marriage contract can actually be retroactively changed, just by a new law, judicial activism, or even merely changing states!

People should write their own, or use a standard one (open source? ) and have the government stop getting in everyone’s business.