Marriage Equality

This started as a reply to a forum post about xians/supers vs athiests/brights; I went off on a tangent on marriage equality, and posted it here instead:

I'm all about living and letting live. I define myself as a skeptical agnostic; I have yet to experience evidence of God, but am open to it. I honestly respect all my family who are Baptists, and my friends, who run a gamut of Catholic and Protestant faiths. I'm a "bright", you're a "super"; it's not a judgement of intelligence or rightness, it's just a definition of one part of my person.

The problem I have is when people attempt to place their moral definitions on others. First of all, I understand that you believe it's wrong, and therefore it's natural to you, and arguing it is pointless. I also agree that some "morals" are universal (it's generally unacceptable to murder someone).

To use a topical example, some people are trying to enforce their religious definition of marriage into our secular legal definition of marriage. I think every faith has a right to refuse to marry anyone they want to, just as any business has a right to refuse service to anyone.

Whether or not our country was founded on Christian principles (I think our founding principles fall in the 'universal' category), and whether a majority of our Founding Fathers were Christian or Humanist or whatever, we are *not* a theocracy, and our laws need to be founded in the Constitution and the Declaration, not the Bible, Torah, Qu'ran, or any other religious document. The Declaration calls for the inalienable right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. The Constitution was written to "secure the Blessings of Liberty". I think that if anyone or legal age wants to marry anyone else of legal age, it's their Liberty to live their Life that way, and that precluding that precludes their Happiness.

I think that the laws preventing marriage equality are on par with the laws against inter-racial marriage of the early 20th Century, and that restriction of these rights is on par with Jim Crow laws.

I know it's a trite comparison, but many people who are against marriage equality state that it disgraces the institution of marriage. I think celebrity short-term marriages disgrace it more than a gay couple who've been together for many years who want to let the world know they are committed to each other. It's not about tax breaks or financial privileges, it's about common decency.

I look forward to the day that I get to marry a woman that I love, to show the world that I love her, and to have that bond. I cannot bring myself to not allow someone else that feeling anymore than that I could take a child away from their responsible parent.