Monday, August 27, 2012

Gay Marriage

Being that I have already typed about abortion and guns, I figured why not another subject that apparently has become a big issue without needing to be an issue really.
A few days ago a friend of mine posted the picture of a letter written by a child to the government asking why the government hated his two moms; needless to say that sparked the longest thread with the longest comments I have ever had to read on facebook, people were arguing about why it is so wrong for two people of the same sex to get married, why that word should only be used for heterosexual couples and why is such a SIN to allow homosexuals to get married.
I have to say that anyone that was against it could not give a reasonable explanation to be against gay marriage, as always religion got the best of them and of course the reason is because God did not want it to be that way, because is not natural, because marriage and a family is formed by a man and a woman, because the Bible says so; none of these mentioned reasons are logical explanations to their objections.

So here is my point of view:

1. I don't know who the heck decided to make marriage a word that only comes from the Bible, the word existed before Jesus was ever conceived and therefore before the Bible was ever written, people were getting married way before then so why use the Bible as a guide to say that marriage is only done between a man and a woman and is a spiritual word. If we look up the word marriage the most general definition is that marriage is a "social union or legal contract between people called spouses that creates kinship" (Wikipedia), let's read that again and try to comprehend something here, in no way does it state that it has to be between two people of the opposite sex.

2. Let's cover the "kinship" part, what does kinship mean? It means to be related, so basically the act of marrying someone allows you to become legally related to the person you are marrying; in this sense we can basically say that the legality of marriage (which was created by men, not by a deity) came from us humans looking to create new "kinships", new relationships, new bonds, we wanted to make our own family, it did not state it had to be done between people of the opposite sex, that is just something that has become a social norm.

3. On that note, let's talk about family, what is a family? A family is a group of people that live under one roof to form a household. What is a group? a group is created by 2 o more things, persons, animals, etc.; a family is not form especifically by a man and a woman and children, that is also a social norm but if we kept the social norm that only a man and a woman and children can make a family then we would have a lot of single mothers or single fathers out there that only live with their child furious about it, because if someone came to me and told me that my daughter and I do not form a family, well that someone has something else coming their way, because my child is my family. Two people of the same sex living under the same roof form a family.

4. Let's now take this to the Christianity side of the equation and argue about what God intended for humans to do. First of, let me clarify that according to the Bible, God intended for us to live in what is called the Garden of Eden, where there is peace, harmony, no disease, no death, no worries, no debt, no good vs evil; but as we all know God's intention got completely shattered by the fact that Eve decided to eat an apple from a "forbidden" tree after God decided to give the first two humans ever what everyone now calls "free will" but at the same time he decided that they could do whatever they wanted escept touch the darn apple. On that last note there, this all so merciful God, the one that forgives all our sins, also decided that every single human being that was born from the first two humans would now forever suffer and pay the price for what someone else decided to do... ok getting of topic here, anyhow, God's will obviously did not come true, also have you ever thought about the fact that if Adam and Eve were the only two humans that were first created, in order for us to preocreate we would have had to sleep with our parents, siblings, cousins, sons, daughters, etc? This which is now considered to be NOT the social norm, would have been and probably was the social norm back then, and I hate to point this out, but if we all came from just two people then that means we are all related! Yeap! I said it!!! And this is where the whole we are all brothers and sisters on the eyes of God comes from. Social norms can and do change as we progress and as new issues arise, what God intended did not happen so is time to let it go and see what we have and what we have is adults from the same sex that want to come into an agreement and form a family legallly.

5. On another note, and this goes to everyone, being that I was raised by my grandmother who was a single mother, a mother that never got remarried legally and a father who decided to get married three different times, decided to lie to the Catholic church so that he could get his first marriage in the church annuled and who really seems to care less about what that legal paper means. I have a different idea of what a marriage really is and where it should come from; yes the legal document helps us out with certain things that we must deal with and yes it protect us from certain things that the other person might do to us if one day they decided to go crazy and pick up and leave or when they passed away, but the reality is that the commitment any person makes to another, that is what a marriage makes, is deciding to trust the person you are with, to respect them and to cherish them the way you would cherish yourself, is the decision one makes to walk along with that person and help each other achieve your dreams.  I used to say that I was more married to my ex boyfriend than I was to my (hopefully soon to be) ex-husband, why? because I trusted my ex boyfriend more, I respected him more and he trusted and respected me more than my ex-husband ever did, all I had with my ex husband that was different from what I had with my ex boyfriend was a piece of paper saying that now we were related, but I never really felt that I was related to him, so to me the paper means absolutely nothing, is just one more legal document in the eyes of us humans.

I don't know why people make a big issue about any of this, like I stated before: social norms are meant to change, they are meant to evolve as we see new things arise.  A legal document to become a family or become related in the eyes of the law should not be denied to anyone, we should be allowed to chose who we want to be related to legally and we should not place rules that make no sense just because we are afraid of change, because we have been taught to hate what is different, or because we are creatures of habit. Habits, while they are hard to change, can be changed. We don't have to hate what is different, no one is saying you have to try it and I agree when people say that every person is different, but every person has and was given the same rights and the same freedoms, and in a way each of us has been given the power to decide and as long as no one is being harm why stop them? If you are worried about your children, guess what? they are being raised in a world that has different social norms than when you were being raised; I don't expect my grandparents to change their way of thinking or even my mother to change it but I do know that my child will have a completely different way of seeing things when she gets older, just like I see things different than the way my grandmother and even my mother do and while I respect their opinions I have to say that no law should be passed based on the opinion of the masses but based on facts, lately we have been setting those aside.