Equal means equal

All men (and women) are created equal.  Equal protection under the law.  These and other similar statements are part of the bedrock of the American system.  It all sounds so easy, but it’s definitely been easier for some Americans than for others.

Advances in civil rights don’t come easily in this country.  It took nearly 150 years for women to gain suffrage after we became the United States of America.  One of the arguments against suffrage was that it was contrary to Biblical teaching.  Again, during the struggle for equal rights for blacks, some wanted to use scripture to argue against such rights.  Today, while bias still exists against both women and blacks, both groups have made undeniable gains. The latest group of Americans who are seeking equality are homosexual (including bisexual and transgender) people.

We all have gay members in our circle of family and friends, whether or not they are openly so.  They are our sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters, our cousins, our neighbors, our colleagues.  They get up in the morning, eat their breakfast, read the paper, go to work, pay their taxes.  They contribute their time and talents to our economy.  We buy their products and services.  But when they fall in love and want the blessings and the responsibilities of a loving intimate relationship, they somehow become unacceptable to us.  When they fall ill, their partners are denied the opportunity to visit them in hospital and to make important medical decisions on their behalf.  In most states they are not permitted to legalize their commitment to each other, to take on the legal and economic responsibilities of marriage, to care for each other in the ways that the rest of us can.  Why?  Simply because of who they are — because they are attracted to members of their own sex.

As in the struggle to keep women and blacks “in their place”, the reasons used don’t make much sense.  Here in California, as in other states, the argument against gay marriage is that somehow it will threaten so-called traditional marriage.  I have yet to hear a rational argument of how allowing a gay couple to marry can possibly pose a threat to anyone else’s marriage.  I know women who married, only to learn that their husbands were gay men trying to be straight.  I watched as these women struggled to understand how these men, men they had loved and trusted, left them not for another woman but for a man.  As one of them said, “I knew how to fight another woman for my husband, but not how to fight a man.”  They struggled to explain the situation to their children, children that both parents cherished.

Do we really want to go back to that?  Do we really want our straight children to face the heartbreak of learning that a spouse is gay?  Do we really think that our gay brothers and sisters do not deserve the chance for the kind of relationship that marriage can be?  I’ve heard some, mostly people in unhappy marriages, say that gays should at least have the opportunity to be as miserable as they are!  Some still argue that homosexuality is a choice — to them I have a simple question:  When did you choose to be straight?  Do you honestly think that people would choose to be a member of a group that is so maligned by so many? Others argue that while orientation may not be a choice, the response to it is a choice and that gays should remain celibate.  That expectation is as unnatural and probably as difficult as celibacy is for Catholic priests — and it doesn’t offer the promise of special rewards not open to non-clergy.

The so-called homosexual agenda that some people on the right like to try to frighten the rest of us with is simply bogus.  Homosexuality has existed from the beginning of time, and it will exist until the end of time.  My own view is that it is related to the biochemical reactions that determine gender itself in the very early stages of fetal development, that if that reaction is somehow changed, the linkage between gender and sexual orientation can be affected.  We know that some people are born with “confused” gender — whether displayed in physical traits or buried in their DNA.

The bottom line is that equal doesn’t mean almost equal.  It doesn’t mean equal, except for …  Equal means equal.  What people do in the privacy of their bedrooms shouldn’t determine how close they are to equal.