Phone-Banking

Ok so I hate the people that call during dinner.. I do.. just like the rest of you, I'm sure. Selling something, convincing you of something, a "quick survey"... whatever.. we just want to hang up on all of them, right?

Well last night, I have to admit, I did a little calling for the "No On 8 Equality for ALL" campaign and had one call recipient in particular that I just fell in love with...

So I call him and, out of pity for people getting barraged with campaign calls, try to shorten my spiel as much as possible. So I come to the point where I ask him if he's heard of prop 8, the proposition that would eliminate the right for same sex couples to marry the person they love and his response was:

(ok now picture apu, the "would you like a squishy" voice from the simpsons saying:)
"Oh, yes, is that the one where a couple who has a baby out of wedlock can't get married?!

Is that the one where a man out screwing anyone he can can't get married?!

Is that the one where.... "
(insert continued rant...)

Anyway... by this time, everyone in the room is crowded around my phone because they can hear this mean yelling into the receiver at me... luckily he was on our side...

He ends up saying this:

"If we begin to discriminate against gays getting married, we have to discriminate against the other things too...
Someone could tell me that my eyebrows are too close together, therefore I cannot get married" he said. "Discrimination is discrimination. Period"

To which I replied:

"sir, you're my favorite person I've called all night."

Don't you worry...

While I would consider myself a person of faith and occasionally attend a wonderful little church in San Diego called mission gathering... I understand that there are (many) other churches and faiths that don't quite belive that a person can be both Christ-centered and "religious" AND gay.

So for all of you, I reassure your right to still believe that you can't quite be both:

the court decision officially states: "no religion will be required to change its religious policies or practices with regard to same-sex couples, and no religious official will be required to solemnize a marriage in contravention of his or her religious beliefs."

So never fear. My rights won't take away from your right to continue to believe it's wrong and or deny me from getting married in your church. That's fine.
:)

Oh... and this might be helpful:
http://www.mercurynews.com/localnewsheadlines/ci_10757746

A word from Courtney:

Gay marriage isn’t a gay issue. It’s a civil rights issues. It’s on the same plane as black suffrage and woman’s rights. Their basic principle is the same. And it was deliniated in our constitution as far back as 1868, in the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.No state shall… deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws… deny state power to legislate that different treatment be accorded to persons placed by a statute into different classes on the basis of criteria wholly unrelated to the object of that statute.. so that all persons similarly circumstance shall be treated alike.Here’s the first and the last of it: ALL rights and privileges afforded by the government CAN NOT (by this principle set forth in our constitution) discriminate on the basis of race, gender or SEXUAL ORIENTATION (thus, including marriage).
-Courtney Orsinelli

studys show...

http://lesbianlife.about.com/od/gaymarriageinformation/a/UnionNotMarriag.htm

(that civil unions are not equal to marriage)

grey matter...

Total number of people whose bodies differ from standard male or female:

one in 100 births

(-http://www.isna.org/faq/frequency)



So if a person has male genitalia but two X chromosomes... who should they be ALLOWED to marry?
Do our genitals decide? Our chromosomes? What gender we IDENTIFY as?
Is there a true black and white in this area?

America, land of the free*

*some restrictions may apply



-sunny kats.

In The Correct Context...

"And yes, it's true that there are no same-sex marriages in the Bible. But that's what we'd expect anyway. Same-sex marriages weren't a part of the cultures in which the Bible was written, so obviously we wouldn't expect to see stories of men and women with same-sex partners. [2] In ancient Israel especially, marriage was as much about inheritance rights as anything, which resulted in such bizarre practices as levirate marriage (where men were required to take a dead brother's wife and produce heirs for him - Deut. 25:5-6; Gen. 38:8) and God-ordained polygamy (Exodus 21:10-11; 2 Sam. 12:7-8). Even more shocking, a master could buy wives for his male slaves and then keep the wife and kids for himself after setting the slave free (Exodus 21:2-4), and women were forced to marry their rapists (Deut. 22:28-29). There's a lot more that could be said about these practices and the rationales behind them, but that would be a bit off-topic. The point is this: Biblical examples of marriage reflect the culture both in what they include and what they do not."

-Justin@ http://www.gaychristian.net/justins_view.php