Contact
Gay marriage should be legal
Bill McCamley
If you are straight, when you consider this issue, you may feel like I do – an initial repulsion. But when that happens, I ask only one thing: Think. Understand that base reactions are not good enough to make or justify laws. If you do, I am confident you will come to the same conclusion I did.
“These people who are making a big deal out of gay marriage?… Why not? We’re making a big deal out of things that we shouldn’t be making a big deal out of… Just give everybody the chance to have the life they want.” – Clint Eastwood
Love between two people is wonderful and, recognizing that, love for all people should be legal.
That being said, I have an admission to make. I really don’t know why, but as a straight guy I get very uncomfortable seeing two men together showing affection. Something about it, until recently, made me feel downright squeamish. Many straight friends have admitted similar strong feelings, and they are so powerful that we use them instead of reason to make marriage laws.
In discussing this subject for years, three arguments become clear when denying gay people the right to marry. However, when examined closely each fails to hold up.
- Religion. The Bible has many deep, worthwhile lessons. Loving your neighbor, unbounded forgiveness, and care of the less fortunate are so important to any community. But if laws were only based on strictly Biblical teachings, bad things would happen. For instance, divorce for any reason other than cheating would be forbidden (Matthew 19:9) and tattoos would be illegal (Leviticus 19:18). So, wouldn’t you expect that people who use the Bible to deny marriage for gays and lesbians argue as forcefully for these and other Biblical messages? They don’t, and their use of the Bible as an argument for lawmaking loses its strength.
- The Gay Agenda. Many fear that gay people will use politics to force their ways on those who disagree with them. They view the marriage debate as an assault on a personal view of natural order. But this happens any time people fight for equality, and those exact arguments have been used for years against issues like women getting the right to vote, racial integration of the military, and allowing black and white people to marry. Today, most everyone recognizes that these changes created a better, more vibrant, and tolerant country. Gay marriage will too.
- Children. The most consistent argument against equality is that commitment and love are not sufficient reasons to alter the definition of marriage; it should only be about raising children. If this is true, then should women past menopause be allowed to marry? What about sterile men? Or straight couples who choose not to have children? I personally know couples in each of these categories, and the positive effect that marriage, with the love and support it signifies, has had on their lives. Most Americans agree. So how can it be used to deny that same right to gay couples?
People
There is another, bigger reason to support legalizing gay marriage: the definition of a person.
For two summers, I worked at a camp called Seeds of Peace. Teenagers from the Middle East came to the United States and talked about the problems in their areas with kids from the other side. It led to a deep understanding about how people justify horrible actions.
Often in these conflicts, the only thing many on one side know about the other is what they hear from other people or the news. So to many Israelis, Palestinians are not “people;” they are terrorists who blow up buses. To many Palestinians, Israelis are not “people;” they are jack-booted thugs who destroy homes. This substitution makes it easier to accept anger and violence. People weren’t being harmed, only “thugs” or “terrorists.” The camp’s whole point is to get these kids to look at each other as humans. Doing so makes dialogue easier and violence less justifiable.
The same problem exists with gay people. For better or worse, our laws reflect our community’s views, and the message we send by denying gay marriage is simple: Your love defines you. Our society’s definition of an evolved love involves marriage. Therefore gay people, who cannot get married, are not people; they are “queers,” “abominations…” or worse.
This effect of this is obvious as debate over gay marriage has taken center stage. For instance, preachers have been seen all over the news and the Internet calling for parents to punch their children if they act effeminate, advocating for confinement of all gay people in concentration camps, and even asking the government to simply execute gays. To them, discrimination and violence against gays and lesbians is not only acceptable, but good. Yes, these people are extremists. But their calls for hate trickle down, and the consequences are horrific to kids.
Gay teenagers and lesbians who come out are at a much higher risk of being kicked out of their homes, being abused, and committing suicide then straight teens. Recent high-profile suicides in California, Iowa, and New Jersey of gay teens bullied and threatened by classmates and roommates only serve to give a gruesome face to these statistics and illustrate the intolerance and fear that many gay Americans experience on a daily basis.
Think
So if you are straight, when you consider this issue, you may feel like I do – an initial repulsion. But when that happens, I ask only one thing: Think. Understand that base reactions are not good enough to make or justify laws. If you do, I am confident you will come to the same conclusion I did.
Life is tough. If you are lucky enough to find true love with someone, whatever gender, who gives it back; if you want to to support that person so you can cherish life’s good times and help them get through the bad together; if you want to get married, committing those values to each other; then you shouldn’t be stopped.
All of us should support you with everything we’ve got.
Bill McCamley is a Las Cruces businessman and the Democratic dandidate for New Mexico House District 33.
15 comments so far. Scroll down to submit your own comment.
Leave a response
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Mr. McCamley, with the honesty that you have already displayed can you answer this question: do you think the initial “repulsion” is an aquired feeling that was taught? I understand and will continue to respect you if you choose not to answer. After all, I wouldn’t want you to become a target – much less be compared to an animal.
I would agree with D Foley, this is none of government’s business, state or federal or local. I think anyone should be able to marry anyone they please, or have multiple spouses, or marry first cousins or other relatives, or even animals if that is what you want, what business is it of government who or even what you love? How does any of that hurt society?
Why is marriage of any kind an issue for the Government? They should not be “allowing” or “preventing” this at all. Now the Government should not force a church to do this but if someone wants to do it go for it, stop letting the government be involved in these decisions period!
I said this before so I am going to let Timmy tell you. Gays rights cost nothing and is now a stand for cowards after the fact of the Gays doing all the work.
“Progressive” on Social vs. Economic Issues
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/20/1101602/-Don-t-call-yourself-liberal-or-progressive
This is where the rubber hits the road. The owners of our country don’t really care what we peons do, just so long as we let them continue to run things with the sole purpose of enriching themselves.
So we peons are allowed to seek justice on social issues. Furthermore, some of the people who own and run this country may also want justice on certain social issues. So we are allowed to band together and try to get our government to change its policies concerning social issues.
However, on economic issues people face the owners’ full opposition. Granting marriage equality to LBGT people doesn’t cost our rulers a dime. But try to get some economic justice in this country and see what happens.
Many of us were brought up to think poor people have done something to deserve their fates. We were brought up to believe that giving money to poor and unemployed people to keep them from starving to death is encouraging them to be lazy, while giving millions of dollars in corporate welfare to our owners is helping job creators. We are taught to believe that democratic unions run by workers are corrupt institutions, while corporations who’s sole legal purpose is to enrich their owners are benevolent institutions making the world better one day at a time.
So the ground has already been well plowed, fertilized, and watered, prior to the owners telling us that sending well paying American jobs overseas to be done by peasants being paid 40 cents per hour would be good for us all. That false seed easily takes root and grows, especially when the party that supposedly represents the interests of American workers has helped plant it.
In sum, we are all well indoctrinated to believe whatever the owners of our country tell us. This makes it is much, much easier to fight the good fight in those areas where the owners don’t oppose us, than it is to directly confront them.
However, in the middle of our current depression, economic issues have become much more important. The pie has shrunk, and our owners want their portion of the pie to continue to grow. If the pie shrinks, and the owners want more pie than before, then that means us peons will get less than our fair share.
Unless, of course, we do something about it. So we are going to see a sharp divide between those who are going to protect the economic interests of working Americans, and those who merely talk the progressive talk.
by TimmyB
IP and gofdisks, I agree with McCamley. Love is the greatest of things, I don’t think we honor that by making fun of the manner in which people choose to express it. Be they fat, middle aged heterosexuals or otherwise. I don’t find it repulsive among consenting adults not that I want to watch it, or envision it.
There is a lot of history of cultures and societies doing bad things to people who are “different”. If the shoe is moving to the other foot. hopefully we don’t replace one form of intolerance with another.
Aaaand somehow I forgot a verb; my last sentence should have read “…that I actually read that second sentence…”
Er, actually, qofdisk, calling someone “sexually repressed” based upon a single comment is not only remarkably presumptuous, but both lacking in actual evidence and completely irrelevant. That being said, it should be noted that I actually that second sentence as exactly the opposite of what you actually wrote, which rather changes the meaning of the whole thing…
Thank you Bill, excellent job. I know many in the LGBT community appreciate your support.
Actually, I take that back stever. When I read you comment, I have to admit to laughing out loud. So, thanks for that.
IP and stever, you left out the second sentence in your criticism. Also, I was directly addressing the sentiment of Bill Camley and agreeing with him.
” I have an admission to make. I really don’t know why, but as a straight guy I get very uncomfortable seeing two men together showing affection. Something about it, until recently, made me feel downright squeamish”
and,
“So if you are straight, when you consider this issue, you may feel like I do – an initial repulsion.”
The fact is that sex is generally repulsive and certainly hilarious..unless you are engaged in it. I actually feel sorry for you guys having such a humorless and grim outlook on the ridiculous act of joy that we animals engage ourselves.
The second sentence completes the thought that this body is just a shell that contains the loving spirit. It is that spiritual love that endures the long haul of being true and committed to another.
It is a shame I had to ruin my little couplet to explain to the humorless and sexually repressed.
Yeah, qofdisks, I’m going to have to go with stever on this one; you just managed to take a complex conversation about human rights and dignity and the intransigence of certain elements in our society towards extending the same freedoms they enjoy to their fellow citizens and distilled it down to a simplistic sound-bite that wouldn’t satisfy even the bare minimum requirements for academic standards in a high schools civics course. It does, however, pass muster for election year campaign commercial rhetoric.
Homosexuality is less repulsive than fat middle-aged heterosexual Americans having sex.
Thanks for the clarification. Some poor grad student’s Master Thesis proposal just got thrown in the trash.
Homosexuality is less repulsive than fat middle-aged heterosexual Americans having sex. It isn’t really about the sex is it?
When we talk about separating religion from government and “we” citizens of these United States have over 1200 federal laws that give benefits to people who are married as opposed to people who are in committed relationships but not married where is the separation between church and state? To those people who advocate restricting marriage to only men and women I say fine but let’s also stop the discrimination that is built into our federal laws for this “one particular group.” We should not have laws that promote discrimination and reward those who practice discrimination.
Thank you Bill McCamley.
If more straight people would voice their sane and fair minded opinions regarding same sex marriage, life would become happier, healthier and equally just for a large number of humans. Think humanity. Forgive me if you will but this commentary is figuratively and literally straightforward. And, if you will, it takes one to tell one.
It is time all People enjoy the same Constitutional Rights in the United States of America.
God Bless you Bill McCamley.