A Step Closer...

I'll admit, when it started a couple of years ago, I didn't totally understand. I was in my own, personal closet. Out to my friends, hiding from my parents, and not allowing myself to be who I was. Here were two men, doing their own thing, who some asshole neighbor calls the cops just to mess with them. The cops enforce an old statute that was rarely sighted, but still made it illegal to make love to whom you wanted to if you didn't fit into societal norms.

A long time ago in Texas, someone tried to legislate morality. Sometime later, that legislation was changed just to legislate the condemnation of a few. Those few who chose to love each other, and happened to be the same sex. A whole population was targeted, and persecuted under this law. Another example of the compassion shown by "Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin." One of my favorite ways people sugar-coat their contempt for me.

So things change. The law had rarely been used, but still came to cause these gentlemen grief, and a public viewing of what goes on behind closed doors. These brave men allowed their lives to be put on public display, just for a little bit, to stop a law, and create a change in this country. I'm proud of my fellow Houstonians. I wonder if they will be at the Pride Parade tomorrow? Certainly they would be the biggest celebrities around.

I wish them well. I wish them peace and privacy. I thank them for allowing their lives to be used, their names trampled on by the religious right, and to be put in harm's way as their identities were splashed across the county. Today there's a few lynch mobs that would be happy to get them.

We are not out of the woods yet.

Now, a few years later, I see the significance of this ruling. Just last weekend, what I did with Chris (oakleycub)was illegal. Tonight, when he's in my arms, I can be happy, and secure that someone can't get a wild hair and try to have me arrested for doing something in my own home, for loving someone in my own home. Some fool who can't understand, or won't understand that loving a man is natural and beautiful wants to try to stop me, but now a bullet in their arsenal is gone.

Don't think they won't try again. They fear that marriage is next, and given what the enlightened folks in Canada have done, it surely is. Yesterdays ruling was carefully worded. Marriage was kept out of it. That is an issue to be taken up at a later time. Yesterday's decision wasn't about marriage, but what it did was de-criminalize sodomy. This takes away a legal barrier for many things. You can't say that a gay man or lesbian woman is a criminal and unfit for a job, for custody, for adoption because of the sexual acts he/she may or may not perform. Sexual acts between two (or more) consenting adults are the business of those adults, not the state. Safety and well-being is the providence of the state, morality is the business of individuals and religions.

Here's where marriage comes in. Canada shows that with no national religion, with countrymen having the individual freedom of religion, and the implied rule that church and state are separate, how can marriage on the state level not be granted to any two people who wish to enter the legal bond? The definition of marriage as being between a man and woman is a marking of a religious preference, in my book. I'm one of the most conservative people, politically, on my friends list, and even I can see the case for gay marriage. If religious groups want to keep marriage separate, thats fine, they have the right to refuse to marry gay couples in their church. They have a right to their beliefs. I have a right to mine.

I dropped by Target, and in doing so, I decided to check the registry for Davo's (davomatic) wedding. I thought he might be kidding, but I checked...bride, Davo. Yep, there it was Davo and Josh, Bride and Groom, sort of. I'm thinking we may need to redefine what constitutes a marriage, and have registries that accept Groom and Groom, and Bride and Bride, if that's what the couple wishes to call themselves. Still, here it was, in a Target store. Hmm, an $129 set of knives? Sorry Davo, but I don't think so. Expect a sauce pot or such.

Last night I went out and got my hair cut, and Kelly at SportClips asked me what I was going to do this weekend. At first I didn't say, telling her that friends were coming into town. She then told me that she was going to Pride tomorrow. I said, yes, I was too, with my boyfriend. Wow, that made me feel so good. We talked about the case, we talked about love and what the ruling meant to me, and I realized that I got it. It was really more than just a privacy case, though that's what the country at large should see it as. This was monumental to the community. The state can't look at us and say you aren't entitled to the same protections under the law as everyone else in the country. You can't be singled out just because you fall out of the standard norm. I got it, finally.

All men (and women, it's implied) are created equal. It's important. It matters.

And now we're one step closer to it really being true.