Citizen Second-Class

I have to stop myself from getting too negative when I read the news. I read stories like this and I wonder if I'll ever be a full citizen in this country. People everywhere seem hell-bent on ensuring that I remain a second class citizen. They argue over rights/liberties that don't affect them. Whenever talking-heads of the media debate same-sex marriage or equal protection under the law for gay citizens I almost never hear real questions that need to be asked. Many on the right say they need to "defend marriage". My question is, defend it from what? After our wedding a few years ago I checked in with our next door neighbors, a heterosexual couple. I asked them if our getting married affected their marriage in any way? They said absolutely not. I asked them if same-sex marriage had been legal in the USA at the time of their wedding, would they have had second thoughts about getting married themselves? Their replied again, absolutely not. There have been no divorces among the neighbors that we know since our wedding. In fact, the son of one couple down the street married last summer. He married in Paris to a French woman. I don't know, maybe he felt he needed to get married in France because the proximity to us would be detrimental to his own relationship? I doubt it.

This young man's French marriage is valid in America, yet our Canadian marriage is not. Most people, I think, don't understand that it's not just a piece of paper. Legal, civil marriage comes with rights and responsibilities. If my spouse (heaven forbid!) fell ill and rushed to the hospital, I have no right to see him. We pay more taxes because we have to file as single people. A 50% inheritance tax would be imposed because we are not related by marriage. Involvement in a law-suit by one of us, means that the other could be compelled to testify against him. And the list goes on and on. Over 1000 rights and responsibilities come with marriage. You can learn more about the issue here.

Leaving all the legal, civil rights and religious stuff aside for a moment, I would love to hear a journalist ask the rabid Christian-right spokespeople: How does this issue affect you personally besides being against your religious beliefs? After all, those of us truly affected live in your neighborhoods now, our children learn in the same schools as yours, and we shop along side you in the grocery store every day. A civil marriage contracts between two people and nobody else. I would certainly never tell the neighbor couple next door that they should not be able to see each other in the hospital or provide health insurance benefits for the other because I don't like their relationship. That idea is ludicrous!

Meanwhile convicted felons marry and I can't. Britney Spears marries in Las Vegas on a lark for 55 hours and then dissolves it. Donald Trump can get married once, twice even three times. Newt Gingrich, the former congressman and "Family Values" Republican gets married, announces divorce to his first wife while she undergoes cancer treatment in hospital, marries again only to divorce his second wife and remarry a third time to a woman rumored to be his lover in an on-going extra-marital affair. Yeah, making me a second-class citizen is very important so we can "defend" the "sacred" institution of marriage.