pogoism

I often find myself getting very involved with politics, despite the country I’m in. When I was in Northern Ireland, I get really into it all, despite it not really have that much to do with me. I don’t align with either side, I live in South Belfast, an area more-or-less unaffected by it all, and I don’t intend on living in Northern Ireland for much of my life. All I want is to see some kind of progress towards a lasting peace.

But for the last 10 months, I’ve been in the US. Obama was elected in November, and on the very same day, Proposition 8 was passed in California. I shouldn’t care – after all, the UK has had civil partnerships since December 2005. Looking back, no-one cared. Not even the right-wing. Yet it seems to be such a big deal here. I think that part of the problem is the insistence on calling it gay “marriage”, rather than civil unions. Obama has repeatedly expressed his support for civil unions, but rarely, if ever, calls them “marriages”. Personally, I agree. I don’t like the idea of gay unions being called “marriage”. Marriage to me implies religion, and the notion that gays would want to join into an institution that fundamentally disagrees with who they are baffles me. I’m not saying all Christians hate gays, but the Bible makes it’s position clear.

Anyway, back to my original point: Why does Prop 8, and the whole gay marriage debate, matter to me? Well, the chances are high that I’ll be coming back to the US to do a PhD, which will take me 5 years. After that, I’ll probably look at staying in the US, and settling down – but if being able to get married, and have the same rights as straight people isn’t an option, it certainly makes it more unlikely that I’ll come back. That means that America is loosing potential science talent, something it can ill afford to do. With less and less students choosing to study science, and ludicrous legislation such as the recently overturned ban on stem cell research, America is falling behind. It’s time for the US to get on board with the continuing trend in the Western world of allowing gays to legally partner.

I just don’t get it. I don’t get the opposition to gay marriage. Why does it matter to people so much? Apparently it’s going to devalue their marriages? Rubbish! How would it? As Keith Olbermann so brilliantly put it:

In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don’t want to deny you yours. They don’t want to take anything away from you. They want what you want — a chance to be a little less alone in the world.

Only now you are saying to them — no. You can’t have it on these terms. Maybe something similar. If they behave. If they don’t cause too much trouble. You’ll even give them all the same legal rights — even as you’re taking away the legal right, which they already had. A world around them, still anchored in love and marriage, and you are saying, no, you can’t marry. What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn’t marry?

…

What is this, to you? Nobody is asking you to embrace their expression of love. But don’t you, as human beings, have to embrace… that love? The world is barren enough.

It is stacked against love, and against hope, and against those very few and precious emotions that enable us to go forward. Your marriage only stands a 50-50 chance of lasting, no matter how much you feel and how hard you work.

And here are people overjoyed at the prospect of just that chance, and that work, just for the hope of having that feeling.  With so much hate in the world, with so much meaningless division, and people pitted against people for no good reason, this is what your religion tells you to do? With your experience of life and this world and all its sadnesses, this is what your conscience tells you to do?