It isn't about gay marriage
Andrew Sullivan says it well.
When people talk about 'gay marriage,' they miss the point. This isn't about gay marriage. It's about marriage. It's about family. It's about love. It isn't about religion. It's about civil marriage licenses - available to atheists as well as believers. These family values are not options for a happy and stable life. They are necessities. Putting gay relationships in some other category - civil unions, domestic partnerships, civl partnerships, whatever - may alleviate real human needs, but, by their very euphemism, by their very separateness, they actually build a wall between gay people and their own families. They put back the barrier many of us have spent a lifetime trying to erase.
It's too late for me to undo my own past. But I want above everything else to remember a young kid out there who may even be reading this now. I want to let him know that he doesn't have to choose between himself and his family any more. I want him to know that his love has dignity, that he does indeed have a future as a full and equal part of the human race. Only marriage will do that. Only marriage can bring him home.
