we know you better than you know you

If we don't teach them now that marriage is a special relationship between a man and a woman to which they should aspire, in the future the problem won't only be that they don't understand what marriage is – they won't understand the difference between boys and girls, males and females, or right and wrong on much else.

- Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and Families in Sacramento, a conservative lobbying group

let me get this straight - allowing gay people to marry will cause children to not understand the difference between boys and girls? of all the quotes i've read from the religious right over the years, this one has to take the cake. who can actually hear something like that and take it seriously? unless you lack the ability to think for yourself, that is.

this appeared in saturday's UT article about whether the gay marriage ruling is about civil rights or not. for me, it's pretty clear that it is - my partner and i do not have equal rights to straight couples who have been together for far less time than we have, yet we still have the same or worse tax obligation than they do. feels kind of like we're second-class citizens, actually.

for some local flavor, the article quotes the black senior pastor of the rock church here in san diego, miles mcpherson. mcpherson says gay marriage isn't about civil rights, because he knows gay people aren't born gay. so not only does mr. mcpherson feel his personal religious views should legislate denying rights to gays, but that he knows gay people weren't even born that way. now that takes some big time balls, especially from a guy who himself would have been a second-class citizen in this country less than 50 years ago.

hey miles, let me make something clear for you - as a gay person, i know i was born gay. and just where do you get off telling me that i wasn't? what a surprise to find that the rock's senior pastor is also an expert geneticist!

one of our neighbors is a pastor for the rock church (and has a very similar last name to me, so i need to be really careful that my subscription to latin inches doesn't end up at his house), and it's a reassuring feeling to know these kind of sentiments are just steps from my door. look, the great thing about this country is that the rock's pastors and their ilk are free to think and say whatever they want about the gays, and vice versa. yet somehow religious beliefs are justification to deny the rights of others? in a country with a clearly-defined separation of church and state? now (cue cholo voice) dat's messed up.

when folks vote on the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage this fall, i hope some of them think about the real meaning of statements from people like randy thomasson and miles mcpherson: that bigotry, masked as piety, is alive and well in 21st century america. and that maybe their vote can help end it.