Equality

If you are allowed have health insurance because of who you are married to, and I can't, you have special rights, not me.

If you can sit at a lunch counter with your spouse and not be ridiculed, and I am forbidden to speak about it on pain of a beating, we do not have equal rights, you have special rights.

If you can go to school without being mugged for the way you dress or speak and I can't, we aren't equal.

If your taxes are calculated by averaging your spouse's pay with yours, and by law mine cannot be, we are not equal.

If you can get married by signing a piece of paper, and I have to pass a law to live unmolested with my chosen partner, you have special rights, not me.

If you can go to the hospital, and decide on the treatment for your spouse because you are of the opposite gender from them, you have special rights, not me.

If you demand that we let you keep your special rights, by calling our demand for equality a "Special Right", then you are blind, and mean-spirited, not me.

If you try to keep us from having equality, by hiding your mean-spirited behavior behind a religious curtain, you are a hypocrite when you claim that we are looking for special rights, because in fact you are seeking nothing less than special consideration of your religious beliefs.

Every human being, gay, straight, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender, undecided, decline-to-state, every single human being on this planet deserves nothing less than legal equality. And nothing more. This world is too damn tough to have to fight each other just to have one's basic rights not be limited. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" is not empty rhetoric, but the reality that this country was founded on, the first country in the world founded so.

For those who believe that allowing others to behave in ways that they disagree with will result in the destruction of society, I cannot tell you how intensely I desire the destruction of that "society." When my friends, my children, my family are attacked because of who they love, and you stand there and give your approval, it's time for your way of life to end.

I grew up surrounded by men and women with same-sex and opposite-sex partners. They were and are my family. I cannot fathom the hatred and sheer meanness of a group of people in Washington State and California who would deny their fellow humans the right to have the family of their choice, and still describe themselves as having "pro-family values." I know it is a dog-whistle for right-wing christianity, but I cannot wrap my head around it. How small must your heart be to do this?

In a couple of weeks, I am going to visit a dear friend in the heart of Michelle Bachman territory. Recently, several gay teenage children have committed suicide in a suburb close to where I'll be. (It's in the current Rolling Stone, if you have the stomach for it.) Part of my work is to make sure that the GBLT and questioning teens I meet know that there are adults who will protect them, unlike the cowardly teachers and administration of their schools, who piously defended their inactions. I don't seek confrontation, but I will not back away from it.