"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt." –Abraham Lincoln

Isn't it just precious how people who are opponents of gay marriage equality endeavor to use public platforms to make their case? The answer to the aforementioned question is 'no', but sometimes it can be satisfying to see how flatly and irrevocably they are admonished by their peers. Such was my reaction when I read this article in my university newspaper, The GW Hatchet, by a student who was 'coming out of the closet' as a person that voted for Proposition 8. (Note: when I came out of the closet, I didn't write an article about it, I just had a party. It was a lot more fun and a lot less pretentious.) The article, published in November is still receiving comments, most of them pointing out the utter absurdity of the authors opinions. Why a person would openly admit that they were in favor of the first piece of legislation in US history to retroactively remove rights from people that already had them is beyond me. However, the various ways in which the people that commented on the article point out the authors less than firm reasoning, obnoxious analogies, and overall sense of idiocy were… well, very nice.

It's all about the logic baby…and, this guy is significantly lacking in that department.  He runs through a litany of arguments as to why marriage equality is not 'something that California or the United States needs to pursue', each one as faulty as the next. He asserts that gays are not being denied rights because they can marry people of the opposite sex just like heterosexuals. (hmm...)Then, using the same thread of logic argues that the advocates of gay marriage are wrong to frame their struggle in a 1960's civil rights-esque manner. Finally, he argues that gay marriage is an "aggressive push on society", refers to it as a "sexual taboo", and says its being "forced on the rest of the population".

Now that's just plain ugly.

While I should say that I agree that it is counterproductive and dangerous to compare oppressions (i.e.: the civil rights movement and the marriage equality movement share similar themes but are distinctly different) I do find it interesting how the current debate against marriage equality mirrors those that were used against advocates of the civil rights movement. For example, there is the gradualism argument—that we ought to wait for our rights, and maybe we will get them in the future.  There is the separate but equal case: gays can get civil  unions, they are pretty much the same thing. (Let's totally look the other way about the 1,049 rights available to married couples, but denied to those who's only options are civil unions. Who wants those anyway, right?)

I could run through a number of arguments for why gay marriage is absolutely critical for the state of California and the United States  to pursue now, but I think the various responses of my fellow students are equally as intellectual, funny, and thought provoking as anything I could write here.

As one responder pointed out:

"That gay person can't marry a man, but I can't do it either."?I actually laughed when I read this quote, because of its stupidity. Maybe the author is hiding something about himself, but unless he is gay, he would not want to marry a man. As someone said before, they used to force left-handed people to write with their right hands.

As another says:

"It is in many ways discrimination. There used to be laws that prohibited interracial marriage, because it wasn't "proper", it was a "social taboo", it made Americans "uneasy". Our nation saw the light and realized that that love is no less valid than members of the same race who wish to marry. Hopefully our nation will realize that no matter how "uncomfortable" homosexual marriage may make some, it's not about them. Telling people that their love is less valuable is a tragedy that Americans can (and should) overcome."

And another:

"That's a lot of words to say you're homophobic.

How about noticing that gay people are exactly like straight people, only they want to marry each other, not who you and Big Brother want them to? You should be ashamed to call yourself a Republican and be so fiercely defensive of a policy that uses government to take away the rights of private citizens."

And Just for kicks:

"Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning."

To be fair, not all of the comments were in favor of marriage equality. However, that's sort of the beauty of the post-column discussion--we certainly can't expect everyone to have an agreement on gay marriage. As Matt Foreman, the former director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Empire State Pride Agenda, points out in this op-ed "Everyone has an intimate, personal relationship with marriage and has an opinion -- usually visceral -- about it." Indeed, the quest for marriage equality is not about consensus— the struggle to establish rights is almost never agreed upon by all. It is, however, about the government recognizing that denying rights to certain portions in the population, whether those rights are for adoption, social security, hospital visits, or tax benefits designates those people as second class citizens. It legitimizes the otherization and discrimination that people of the LBGTQ people have to face every day.  While the author of this hateful article fails (miserably) to recognize this, I am glad that I live in an academic community in which he is in the minority.