DOMA Dome

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Here is the thing.  I remember a time when I did not understand homosexuality.  But I never remember a time when I thought that homosexuality was less than or bad.  I just thought it was really different form me.  In high school, I babysat for a couple down the street.  The husband finally came out to his wife, and then she acquired a female lover.  SO there ended up being four adults and two children in a four bedroom house.

I am sure he was gay.  I am not sure about her.  I think she was trying to keep her family together.  They had two amazing kids Wendy and Michael.   I have no idea where they are now, because I am ashamed to tell you that I was a teenager and insensitive.  The last time I talked to Ted (the dad) I made Aids jokes. (Yes, this was in the late 80s).  It was like a John Hughes teen movie where one of the characters just doesn’t get it and tries to be cool. Even now I face palm when I think of it.

The point is, I still didn’t think being gay was a problem.  Even when I was so mad at Jim Higgins that I called him a fairy.  I was six, and thought boy fairies were stupid.  I just don’t get why loving someone is wrong.  It is so hard to find someone who loves you, who you can love back in just THAT way.  To limit it, or to say that you can only love THESE people, and definitely not THOSE people, is somehow denying life and the universe.  No, seriously.  If we are put on this Earth to love each other and make our a world a bit better, then deciding love is wrong, is in itself wrong.  Granted it is a big assumption to think we are put here to love one another, and to make our world a better place.  But it is the only one that works for me.

It doesn’t make any sense that there are those who don’t know any gay people.  Or if they do, they just don’t know it.  So it confuses me when I hear a DOMA advocate speak.  Finally, I sat down one day to really try to understand what the DOMA advocates were evangelizing.  I learned in grad school that if you have an opinion, you better be able to back it up, or you will get crucified.  (I went to a really tough school).  Basically what it comes down to is two things.  1. People who are married want to make that status sacred, and 2. Religion (what the “Bible says’).  So breaking this down even further, 1. Fear that being married won’t be sacred, and 2. Faith. 

Emotions. 

Legally sanctioning emotion doesn’t work.  You feel what you feel when you feel it despite what the law says.  I know a lot of law abiding gay people who wouldn’t be gay if they could help it.  And I know many would not change it, despite all the crap they experienced.  I may not know much about the law, but what I do know is to legally sanction one emotion (love) through the use of another emotion (fear) is about the worst idea I have ever heard.  

My 91 year old mother says about the overturning of DOMA that it is something that my generation finally got right.