marriage is a civil right

NO H8 - The Church Channel

While working for my friend Ky on her film Fish Out of Water earlier this year, I read through a lot of bible verses and ended up at a lot of protests. I drove to the capitol building in Madison Wisconsin to have my boyfriend wave a giant rainbow pride flag in front of its shimmering white rotunda. I've talked to theologians and furious people in front of the Renaissance hotel in Chicago. I've seen people's hopes uplifted with the onset of a new administration only to have them dashed by a multi-million dollar propaganda fueled 'popular' vote in California.

I've run through protests in a foot of snow to get footage of thousands of people marching through the streets of Chicago. I've been soaked to the skin and certainly questioned my poor choice of footwear, but I've never seen these crowds diminished as a result of terrible weather. You can't win a war if you don't come out to fight. People keep coming out to fight, but I have no idea why they HAVE to keep fighting.

The opposition's argument simultaneously makes me laugh and desperately want to choke someone. This 'storm' that's coming our way, this scare tactic that you're good conservative family values are going to be destroyed is laughable and infuriating. I can't wrap my brain around how two adults wanting to commit to a long term and responsible relationship is a bad thing. When you get down to it, that's all it is. Two people, in love, committing to each other for a lifetime. Settling down. Being responsible. Building a life together. How is that against conservative values? Also, a homosexual couple is able to adopt a child, but they can't get married? Doesn't that go against conservative values? Isn't it supposed to be the other way around? Please, someone explain this to me, their argument fails to make any sense.

No minority should be forced to defend its equal rights at the ballot box.

Wouldn't you be upset if, by popular vote, your right to riding on a bus was taken away and you had to take a different bus for people like yourself - say Irish American, or Left Handed. What if you couldn't have the same job as other people? What if your happy, stable marriage was now null and void? Wouldn't you be angry?

I may not be a gay American, but I'm an American and I'm fucking angry.

While I have so many things to be angry about these days - climate crisis, world wide lack of education(Africa/India), and huge corporations knowingly poisoning a region of people (Nicaragua)- this topic hits really close to home. This revocation of equal rights is affecting my close friends, the people I work with, and whole communities. I submit that it is an obscene failure of justice.

I don't understand how a nation that rose from the ashes of a bloody rebellion and came together to create a country based on the separation of church and state can tolerate such a clear intrusion of the former to the latter. If anyone bothered to read a true translation of the bible instead of misquoting a biased rewritten version - like quoting lines from a movie that were never said in the actual film i.e. 'Play it again Sam.'- they'd know that the bible doesn't say anything negative about homosexuals.

I'm a strong believer in people being able to think what they choose. If someone want to think that I dress like a jerk and will get no where in my life, that's just fine. But it's not ok for that person to act on those emotions in a way that can hurt me - ie punch me in the face and break my glasses. I'm hoping at this point that anyone reading this would think that the above mentioned action would 'not be cool.' The same can be true of a majority's thoughts on a minority. You may not agree with a homosexual's choice of partner in life, but it's certainly not cool to stand in the way of their pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. Taking away this simple right is doing just that. It is not the place for the many to take away the rights of the few.

Here's your take away for today: Turn off the church channel and start talking to your neighbor. If you're old enough, think about what happened during the civil rights movement. And when you see that dude that's walking like a lady, or that chick that wears a plain white tee and a faux-hawk better than the man of your dreams, think twice before you judge. Odds are they're just trying to make it through life just like you - as happy as they can possibly be.