Marriage and Religion

A couple of hours ago, the California Supreme Court decided to uphold Prop 8, but the marriages already performed in California will remain valid. A victory for those already married, but a major blow to the civil rights of everyone else.

Since the court's decision, there have been a string of comments on Facebook from my friends that pretty much say the same thing...California sucks! One in particular really got me thinking though. A friend of a friend, whom I have never met, said that because she is a Christian, she doesn't believe in gay marriage. If you all remember the Miss USA pageant, Miss California pretty much said the same thing as well.

Here's what I don't understand about that argument...How can people stand behind a religion that promotes love and compassion and use it to justify that a certain group of people should be denied their civil rights? Christianity has many interpretations with some Christian churches being for gay marriage and others against it. No single interpretation speaks for ALL Christians. What I do think most Christians agree upon is that Christianity has its roots in love. "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." --Matthew 22:36-40

So here's the thing...If you want to be against gay marriage, you are definitely entitled to that opinion. But don't attempt to justify your opinion because you are a "Christian." The marriage that gays want recognized by the state is a CIVIL marriage. There is a difference between a CIVIL marriage and a RELIGIOUS marriage. Believe me, I don't want to get married in a church that doesn't believe in gay marriage. I just believe that I should be entitled to the same marital rights offered by the government to heterosexual couples.

A Mother's Plea

So about 10 years ago, I read a book called "Prayers for Bobby." I had recently come out of the closet and this book definitely helped me accept who I am. Well, Lifetime turned this book into a made-for-television movie and premiered it last weekend (no laughing that I was watching Lifetime!!!). The movie starred Sigourney Weaver, a Evangelical Christian turned gay rights advocate after her gay son committed suicide. This movie is very touching and I encourage everyone to watch it (I won't tell anyone that you TiVo'd something on Lifetime). There is one speech I would like to share with you that the mother gives at the end of the movie attempting to get permission from the city council to have a gay pride parade:

“Homosexuality is a sin.”

“Homosexuals are doomed to spend eternity in hell.”

“If they wanted to change, they could be healed of their evil ways.”

“If they would turn away from temptation, they could be normal again.”

“If only they would try and try harder if it doesn’t work.”

“These are all the things I said to my son Bobby when I found out he was gay. When he told me he was homosexual, my world fell apart. I did everything I could to cure him of his sickness. Eight months ago, my son jumped off a bridge and killed himself. I deeply regret my lack of knowledge of gay and lesbian people. I see that everything I was taught and told was bigotry and de-humanizing slander. If I had investigated beyond what I was told, if I had just listened to my son when he poured his heart out to me, I would not be standing here today with you filled with regret. I believe that God was pleased with Bobby’s kind and loving spirit. In God’s eyes, kindness and love are what it’s all about. I didn’t know that each time I echoed eternal damnation for gay people, each time I referred to Bobby as sick, and perverted, and a danger to our children, his self-esteem, his sense of worth, were being destroyed. In fact, his spirit broke beyond repair. It was not God’s will that Bobby climbed over the side of a freeway overpass and jumped directly into the path of an 18-wheel truck which killed him instantly. Bobby’s death was the direct result of his parent’s ignorance and fear of the word gay. He wanted to be a writer. His hopes and dreams should not have been taken from him, but they were. There are children, like Bobby, sitting in your congregations. Unknown to you, they will be listening as you echo Amen. And that will soon silence their prayers, their prayers to God for understanding, and acceptance, and for your love. But your hatred, and fear, and ignorance of the word gay will silence those prayers. So, before you echo Amen in your home and place of worship, think, think and remember, a child is listening.”

Whoever said “getting there is half the adventure” didn’t fly standby

Thanks to our friend Ryan, Eric and I purchased buddy passes to fly to New York on JetBlue for Christmas. You pretty much can’t beat two round-trip tickets from L.A. to New York for under $200. Flying on buddy passes means you fly standby—if there are open seats on the flight after all the paying customers have boarded, you get to go.

I finished my last final exam and had about five hours to pack everything necessary for the ten day trip. I didn’t think we were going to get on the flight that night because it was pretty full, but we had to give it a shot. After waiting around for about three hours, my prediction was correct—no such luck with leaving that night. The bright side of it all was that we were near Bob’s Big Boy!!!

We had no such luck the next day. The first flight was out of Burbank. First it was delayed two hours, then another hour, then eventually cancelled. We then drove to Long Beach airport to try and get out of there only to discover that the flight that left an hour before we arrived had TWENTY-SIX OPEN SEATS. Thanks a lot Burbank flight! We tried several other flights and had no luck. We could have boarded a flight that had a layover in Salt Lake City, but then we would have been stranded. I didn’t think it was a good idea for two gay men to be stranded in capital city of the Mormon church.

Saturday was a new day. Our best chances pointed to a few flights out of Long Beach so that’s where we started. No such luck with the first two nonstop flights. Our hopes were up when we were told the flight with a ten hour layover in Portland was looking good. After watching about twelve flights leave without us, we were excited to at least be going somewhere. Well, while en route to Portland, the flight from Portland to New York was cancelled. I can’t even describe the feeling when you look at the screen and see cancelled next to your flight when you're in a strange city. It turns out Portland was experiencing the worst snow storm in many years and pretty much every flight was cancelled. Not knowing how long we were going to be there, we found a hotel and checked in.

After several calls, it seemed like to get to anywhere (either to New York or back home), we had to get to Seattle. Portland was experiencing freezing rain which prevented planes from flying while Seattle just had snow. We got to our hotel and attempted to make the most of our night there. However, since Portland isn’t use to such severe weather, everything was shut down—movie theaters, restaurants, etc. The next morning, we began our search for a way to Seattle. Our first attempt was on the Amtrak. A few hours after booking the train, we received a call that all trains were cancelled. Our next attempt was on the Greyhound bus. When we called to book a reservation, we were told that all buses through Portland were cancelled. Our third attempt was purchasing two one-way flights on Alaska since they were still allowing people to make reservations. When we showed up to the airport and stood in line to check in, they told us all flights were cancelled. We were definitely not going to rent a car to drive because neither one of us felt comfortable driving. So it looked like we were in Portland for another night, until we noticed there was room on the midnight flight from Portland to New York. This was our last and final attempt—if we didn’t get on this flight, the next step was go home and enjoy Christmas in Santa Monica. Our luck changed and we were able to board. After sitting on the plane at the gate for three hours as the plane was being de-iced, we were finally off to New York! Ten days in New York turned into seven, but we still had a great time (a blog about our trip will be coming shortly).

So, the moral of the story is: never fly standby during the holiday season when so many parts of the country are experiencing the worst winter storm in years!

My First Political Protest

This past week has been rather intense at school. Known to 1Ls as “Memo Week,” the past eight days have involved researching and writing a legal memo worth 70% of our grade. Now that it’s over and with a little breathing room in my study schedule, I thought I would take this opportunity to sound off on the election and last week’s protest.

I went to a political protest on November 15, 2008. I have to admit that I initially didn’t think I was going to be affected by the experience. I was wrong. Let the record show that Eric was right and I was wrong…at least this one time. We arrived early (by public transportation I might add) and the first thing you see are the anti-gay bigots standing behind a police line. There were only seventeen of them with their signs telling me that I’m going to hell and shouting other sorts of nonsense. You see and hear about these people on television, like those from the Westboro Baptist “Church,” but it hit me in a way that I didn’t expect. They’re real. They believe they have a duty to go out and judge other people telling them they are going hell. Last time I checked, God was the only one who can judge me.

Approximately twelve thousand Los Angelenos managed to put down their cell phones and their Starbucks to stand up for what is right. City officials, such as Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and celebrities like Nikki Blonsky (star of Hairspray) and Rex Lee (the gay assistant from Entourage) managed to come out and support the cause.

You see, three weeks ago, my civil rights were stripped from me. I once had the ability to marry and now I don’t. Just think about that for a minute…I cannot marry the person I love. With all that is going on this country—home foreclosures, lost jobs, food prices—the religious right took it upon themselves to focus on stripping away my right to marry the person I love. Yes, I blame the religious right. They funded the campaign of lies and fear mongering telling people that their church will lose their tax exempt status (a lie), gay marriage will be taught in schools (another lie), and Barack Obama supported Proposition 8 (yet another lie). They even called people posing as members of the Long Beach Gay and Lesbian Center asking them to vote yes on Proposition 8 in order to create confusion!!! Did I miss something? Is lying a Christian value? I am a Christian and I believe these people have hijacked Christianity and used it preach hate. They have tarnished the principles of Christianity. Jesus, last time I checked my Bible, was all about love. See Matthew 22:36-40.

I had the fortune/misfortune of attending a discussion on Proposition 8 with an ACLU attorney and a Reverend from the Episcopal Church at my school shortly before voting day. The attorney took the legal aspects and the Reverend took the faith aspects of Proposition 8. The legal argument was essentially that if this proposition passes, the government will take away the right to marry from one group of citizens. The faith argument was that God loves all of His children and you should love your neighbor as yourself. You could tell these two individuals were passionate about this cause. The misfortunate part of this discussion was the student questions. Most disheartening to me was one student who refused to accept the parallel between restricting marriage because of sex and restricting marriage because of race because a person does not choose their race, but a person can choose their sexual orientation. I honestly could not believe what I had just heard. You see, to be in law school, it does take some level of intelligence. However, this statement is frankly riddled with ignorance. Someone chooses to be gay? I no more chose to be gay than a straight person chooses to be straight. I grew up with a Mormon mother and a father in the Navy. It really doesn’t get more conservative than that. You think I would choose to be gay and want to come out to parents with that level of conservatism? Give me a break. The only thing I chose was to be honest to myself and my family. And guess what…my mother, still a member of the Mormon church, loves me for who I am and strongly believes her church has their views of gays and lesbians completely wrong. My father, before he passed away, loved me for who I am. He knew his son didn’t choose to be gay. He knew God created him to be that way.

Another argument I heard at this discussion was that allowing gay marriage will create a slippery slope allowing all other kinds of marriage. I’m sorry, but I don’t want to marry a goat. And why is that the next logical step in these people’s minds? We’re talking about two, consenting adult human beings who love each other and want the stability that marriage will bring to their relationship. The slippery slope we should be worried about is who will be next...who will be the next group of people to have their rights taken away from them next because of a simple majority?

So, the protest surprisingly helped me. Being there with my fiancé, two of my other friends, and twelve thousand other people really helped me. I didn’t feel alone. I didn’t feel like people were apathetic that my rights were taken from me because of a simple majority (and believe me, where I go to school, you inevitably feel like the only gay man and supporter of gay rights on the planet). I didn’t feel like this fight was over. And it isn’t. The California Supreme Court will hear the case to overturn Proposition 8 because it revises, rather than amends, the state Constitution. The petition is persuasive. And it’s going to win.