Gay Marriage -- Who Cares?

Tuesday is the first full day in California were same sex couples can legally get married! It is 02.54 Wednesday now while I write this sitting here in Jakarta and by my reckoning that makes it Tuesday in California. I am sure there will be a bit of a rush today with couples looking to tie the knot and get on with business. The system in California expects a rush too. They have extended operation hours and put on additional staff to cope with the expected rush.

The change in the law has required some form changes as well. The traditional "bride" and "groom" spaces on a marriage license have been changed to "Party A" and "Party B".

One of the first couples to get a marriage license were George Takei and his longtime partner. This is the fella that played Sulu in the original Star Trek and more recently appeared in Heroes. Nah, this is indicative of how much attention I pay to who is gay and who is not, as I did not even know he was gay! I just do not care!

I do not believe that homosexuality and lesbianism are lifestyle choices. I do not believe that homosexuality and lesbianism is a disease that can be cured like genital warts. I believe that you are born homosexual or lesbian and that society encourages you to repress your true self in order to conform to an unrealistic and arbitrary norm.

My good blogging friend Rima has written an excellent little post on "why religion does not matter" and I encourage you to drop by and read it! The relevance to that post and this one is with regards to the "not caring". I really do not give the proverbial rat's arse in terms of people identifying whether they are gay or lesbianism. I am not judging them on any criteria that relates to the sexual preferences as I would expect them not to be judging me on my preference for heterosexuality. To each their own!

Yet, I must care because there are many who want to convince me that there is something inherently evil and bad in homosexuality and lesbianism. So evil that I must rail against it now or forever live in damnation! My response is always the same...if this is such a bad thing then let them get on with it and God can sort it out later.

I have never really understood why some people think that God has given them the authority to be God's arbiter and representative on earth. This bothers me because I am asked to tolerate the stupidity of the Westboro Baptist Church and their protests. They seem to think that God hates Australia but I wouldn't be surprised if in fact God had a few more issues with the Westboro Baptist Church than God has with Australia.

I have never met a gay or lesbian person who has interfered with or been a hassle to my daily life experience. Not one of my gay and lesbian friends has ever tried to "convert" me in order that I bat for the other side. Nope, the only zealots that I have encountered are those who try and convert me to some misguided religion that looks for me to allocate 10% of my salary to the building of a bigger church or mosque!

Back to California. It was nice to see that the first couple married were Del Martin aged 87 and Phyllis Lyon aged 83. This pair have been together for some 55 years! A commitment of 55 years to each other deserves to be recognized in marriage. I do not care who was Party A and who was Party B. I bet my last dollar that neither did they! The picture is of the happy couple and it is a sweet photograph of two people still in love after 55 years. They have been together longer than I have been alive!

I am pro-same sex marriage!