Opinion: Same Sex Marriage

By: Jesse Stoler

Posted: 11/11/09

Last week, the voters in the state of Maine voted in favor of restricting marriage to heterosexual couples in a vote of 53 percent to 47 percent. This comes just six months after the governor, John E. Baldacci, signed a law that made Maine only the fifth state to recognize marriages between homosexual couples.
Sound familiar? Well the same thing happened in California last year as well with the now famous Proposition 8. Both states were already allowing for homosexuals to marry, and then the voters took that right away with the simple pull of lever.
I guess Maine voters were sick of all the changes that gay marriage brought to their lives: Weekly mandatory town hall screenings of Moulin Rouge, wear your stockings to work day, Lady Gaga being put on the state flag and what not. Oh wait, none of that happened? You mean that their economy didn't collapse and that the second graders haven't been lost to a world of moral malevolence? No, none of that. Gay marriage made Maine exactly what it was before: unbearably normal.
Yet television advertisements from the supporters of the measure in Maine would have you believe otherwise. Supporters always put forth such notions that allowing for gay marriage to continue will lead to teachers teaching homosexuality to grade school children. This is such an absurd concept. Everyone knows that school teachers don't do that; that job is reserved for Catholic priests. Yet Maine homophobes still turned out the advertisements of children, hypnotized by the gay agenda, all the while violin music plays in the background to warn of impending doom as if Norman Bates was standing right outside of your shower.
This issue is close to my heart for several reasons, one being that I do a have a close family member who chose to go up to Canada to marry her partner. Did this make me a different person? Well I'm four years older and I still can't grow a moustache, but I don't really blame that on gay marriage. But many men across the country do feel threatened by the issue; that somehow gays being able to marry will cause widespread emasculation. Gay marriage is currently allowed in four states, and none of those states are suffering from epidemics of male-on-male oral sex in sports bars.
Legendary gay rights activist Harvey Milk once said that everyone needs to know that they need to know "one of us," one of us being a homosexual person. His theory was that if those against gay rights found out they knew someone they loved to be a homosexual, they couldn't vote against that person. Unfortunately, Milk is dead. So I'll go ahead and help him out. Maine voters, do you want to know who's gay? Clay Aiken. You loved him on American Idol. You couldn't turn away from his sweet voice and his Johnny Rotten meets Ellen Degeneres face. Are you going to turn him away at the altar?
Gandalf is gay, or at least the guy who played him in the movies is. So that's Dumbledore and Gandalf. Are you really going to keep hating on these magical men? How about that guy on How I Met Your Mother? That show's pretty funny, don't you think? And I really hate to break it to you all, but Bert and Ernie; gayer than Judy Garland on Easter.
I find myself always asking what the holdup is. Is it really the Bible? The Bible does indeed say that two men shall lay down together. But it also says that people can be burned for planting two different crops side by side, and that working on Saturday is punishable by death. Sorry college football coaches of America, but your injection is ready.
We have been raised in a society that values some ludicrous imagery of masculinity and virility over love and understanding. Our foreign policy has long been one of "Shoot first, ask questions later." We need a shift of values. I'm not saying that children should have to be forced to experiment with same-sex kissing. But in a country that proudly boasts to the world about our freedoms and our tolerance, we need to allow our gay citizens to marry in order to actually live up to that image. We currently live in an America where an African-American can become President, a fact that cannot be overstated as such an amazing thing. This is the time to break down barriers of all kind, whether they be religious, racial or gender related. And plus, I really want to watch the Bert and Ernie wedding special on E!