Thoughts on Prop 8

A close friend of mine wrote this criticism of Prop 8 recently. It really touched me, so I thought it was worth reposting here... feel free to voice your opinion, but please keep it civil.

"What, exactly, is "wrong" with same sex marriage? And let me ask another question. Is it humanity's business to legislate morality? I bring all this up because on election day Prop 8, a ballot measure that effectively bans same sex marriage, passed in California.
Now with regard to Prop 8...there must be something here that I don't understand. Homosexuality is not something that people experience because they are bored. Or depraved. Or immoral. Or "unChristian." Homosexuality is something that people experience because it is who they are.
So, just to get this clear. We are saying that people should not be allowed to get married because of who they are, is that it?
We've done that before, of course. There was once a time when human beings said that marriage between people of different races was against the Will of God, and could not be allowed. There was once a time when people who were divorced could not be married in the Church because the Church said that divorce was also against the Will of God, and divorced people could not re-marry with the Church's sanction. It gets worse than that. I remember a time in history when human beings said that it was "unnatural" to be left handed. The nuns in parochial schools used to bind the left arms of children while they were in class so that the kids couldn't use them - forcing them to learn to write and function with their right hand dominant. I also remember a time when we told ourselves that babies who died without being baptized could never go to heaven, but were sent to a place called Limbo. And that it was not okay to eat meat on Fridays. And that we couldn't go to worship services in any church other than a Catholic church, or God would consider that we have sinned by exposing ourselves to false teachings. And after 9/11 Baptist ministers were not allowed to participate in multi-faith services, for the same reason, while a minister in the Lutheran Church was brought up on charges of apostasy, removed from his congregation, and "tried" before an ecclesiastical jury of his peers, which threatened to have him defrocked for praying alongside a Jewish rabbi, a Catholic priest, and a Muslim ulama at a joint service in Yankee Stadium to help heal New York.
Frankly, I'm tired of all of us. So I was relieved when the Catholic Church said that eating meat on Fridays was okay after all. And when Pope Benedict declared two Christmases ago that the 600-year-old teaching about Limbo was a mistake and could be disregarded because, the Pope said (finally), there was no such place. I was also pleased when the Christians of the world came to their senses and noticed that it was not an offense against God if a man and a woman of different races fell in love and joined their lives in marriage. And that God really did not hold it against divorced people, or become incensed, if they married others.
Now when do you suppose humanity will become equally clear about gay marriage? Gay people are not gay in defiance of God, gay people are gay because they are. Just as blue-eyed people are blue-eyed, and tall people are tall, and left-handed people are left-handed, and black people are black. We just elected a black person President of the United States. So come on, people, come on... Can we decide that people should be allowed to love each other without restriction?
The irony of same sex marriage is that all gays want to do is what so many straight people are trying to avoid doing - get married! Straights are "living in sin" as co-habitating partners without the benefit of marriage in record numbers - and society has decided that there is nothing morally wrong with that. I mean, no one tries to change the law to stop that. (Or is that next???) Hmmm...
And even if same sex marriage is against someone's idea (or some group's idea, such as a religion) of God's Law...what business is it of the State? Someone answer me that question. Is it the business of the State to make sure that a particular religion has its views embedded into the Law of the Land? I must be missing something here. We sit around in the United States and roundly criticize the so-called "theocracies" of the world, where government decisions and rules of law are very often mixed heavily with certain spiritual scriptures and religious doctrines - and then we turn into exactly that here in the United States, when it suits us to do so. What is that? Isn't that hypocrisy? Am I missing something here?
In the past, I spent much of my life worrying that God was offended by my sexuality. I worried that when I fell in love that I would be punished, and when things didn't work out, I believed that is exactly what had happened. I knew from very early on that I was different, but I didn't know what to call it until I was about fifteen. I felt segregated, not just from my peers, but from humanity. When I finally I fell in love, I wondered what on earth could be so wrong with something that was so obviously (to me) true and good and beautiful. That many will think that statement deeply offensive is a matter of deep sorrow for me. I don't want to be offensive, I want, like most of humanity, to be loved and respected. And I want to commit myself to one person in the sanctity of marriage, a deep and meaningful commitment based on mutual love, respect and honor. Like many gay people, I pleaded with God and said 'if it's wrong then take it away'. He didn't. Many would say I should resist sin, but when the sin is love itself, how do you resist that?
I have since learned to love myself as I was created. In the end, that is all that matters. I only hope others can do the same. And eventually, maybe, we can learn to love each other."