{stolen from a friend's journal.)

A momentary digression into an Open Letter to "President" Bush:

Dear Sir,

Perhaps this slipped your mind and if so, I'd like to be one of the first to remind you that we have this little thing in our country called "The Constitution" and the profoundity and beauty of it is that it's about giving everybody equal rights and protections under the laws of the United States. Even the unpopular people.

See, sometimes big groups of people don't like other people and the bigger group wants to do things to harm, suppress and oppress the smaller group. Our founding fathers knew from personal experience how it feels to be a member of an unpopular minority and to feel like you have no rights or say in your own destiny. They didn't want that sort of thing going on in their new nation based on personal liberty, so they decided that the best way to PROTECT THE UNPOPULAR in this country would be to write a document that would provide people with equal rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" (that part is from the Declaration of Independence, just so you know, but that was the intention informing the writing of the Constitution).

That's equal rights and personal freedom for everyone.

Even the groups of people "The People" don't particularly like.

Therefore, the "will of the People" has nothing whatsoever to do with gay people legally pressing the nation to recognize what is our absolute right to "the pursuit of happiness" with the partners we love - the right to have the state recognize our partnership and our families as legitimate and to confer upon us the rights, benefits and responsabilities of any other couple joined under the auspices of the state.

Let's take the Wayback machine George, back to the days when it was -illegal- for black people to marry white people in this country. The legality of this was overturned because, George darling, it wasn't right to tell people who they could and couldn't love and build a life with. It was happening. People were falling in love and wanting to marry and building families with other people regardless of what the law said. Eventually this led to court cases and eventually the laws that were making interracial marriage illegal were found to be discriminatory and wrong. It made one group of people into a perpetual underclass of citizens and that's Not Okay in this country, so these laws were ruled unConstitutional and abolished.

The People, at this time in our history, were incensed about this. Just really livid as a large group. The polls showed the majority of the people in this country didn't support the court's ruling that interracial marriage should be legal. Various civic and religious leaders spoke out against it as a "sin" and the path which would lead this great nation to ruin. Muttering was made about passing a Constitutional amendment.... but eventually the People realized that they couldn't pass an amendment of this kind without irrevocably violating the Constitution itself. Thankfully the movement to push an anti-misogenation amendment died out and there was nothing The Will of the People could do about it. They didn't like it, but they had to SUCK IT UP eventually and now so-called interracial marriage doesn't even raise an eyebrow in most parts of the country.

Do you understand the words that are comin' out of my mouth?

You don't have to LIKE gay marriage.

You don't have to AGREE with it.

You can think it's the most immoral thing you've ever heard of.

You can think we're all going to Hell.

You can sit around and gripe and moan about how we're leading this country to ruin.

You can pogo up and down on one foot screaming incoherently about it until you're blue in the face (please do).

But the fact is that it's coming because it's RIGHT and it's part of the fair and equal treatment under the law to which we, as American citizens, are entitled.

And you can't stop it.

Oh you can slow it waaay down, I'm sure. You can foot drag on it and you -may- even pass a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage "and all legal incidents thereof" and make things really ugly for awhile in this country...

...but eventually someone will actually stop to read the Constitution - the principles of which provide the foundation upon which this great nation stands. When they do that, they're gonna realize that the amendment -you- just spoke up for and which you'll have backed, is a piece of bigoted trash based on your spiritual values and personal biases rather than solid legal precidents. It will be tossed out (think it can't happen? look up "Prohibition, The" please in your handy dandy U.S. Gubbamint Reader). When that happens my husband and I, perhaps in our walkers, perhaps on our own two feet, will walk out into the streets in matching tuxedos with bow ties and THAT will be THAT.

In short, Mr. "President", with all due respect, you ain't got a leg to stand on here.

You can't win this one and you're only going to go down in history looking like a bigot if you try. I'm sure that will go over well with your radical Right constituency and it may even get you elected a second time, which is probably all you really want anyway. But even that is not going to give you a "win" on this issue, not in the long term.

Please feel free to suck it up and try to get over your biases, perhaps with the help of some kind of therapy or encounter group. Or not. It's your decision.

This issue, however, is not.

A proudly patriotic U.S. homo

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