Looking back over events which got the attention of media last week, I’d expect anybody on the outside peering in to say, “you are some strange people.”  Such a fuss! The week started out with Vice President of the United States saying he believes marriage between two people of the same gender should be allowed by law.  A couple of days later the President said he agrees with the Vice President.  Later in the week a man who wants to become president made a speech before a stadium full of fundamentalist Christians asserting his firm belief that marriage of a man with a man or a woman with a woman should be illegal... because, he implied, that’s the way God wants it... and the implication included assurance that if he becomes president, he’ll see to it that marriage will be henceforth and forever more a word that can only be used legally to denote the living arrangement between a man and a woman.  The crowd of thousands erupted into cheers.  

The word marriage, in any language whatsoever, the last time I checked, hasn’t been copyrighted by anybody... and there is no logical reason to believe that out there somewhere in the cosmos there is a universal copyrighting deity which has decided that this particular word, m-a-r-r-i-a-g-e, may denote only a bonding, a wedding, a connubial relationship between one man and one woman. Some pretty serious hoodwinking is going on here, and I personally am offended by it.  Some serious debunking is needed.  Enough already.  Insisting that there is only one way of using any word, in civil life, regional and/or national life that includes and involves all of us is... shall we say, stupid.  

If you are reading this, and you happen to be one of those citizens who believes that not everybody should be covered and protected by the Constitution of the United States, just come right out and say so. Be honest about it.  Say right up front that you don’t want homosexual persons to have some of the rights and privileges extended to people who say they are straight... and you’re definitely not making sense If you are trying to make a case that problems in straight marriages can be traced somehow to connubial bonding between homosexual persons.  You’re not going to be able to prove your point. The evidence isn’t on your side of the argument... So give it up.   And it’s really tiresome to keep insisting that God is displeased with a domestic arrangement entered into by a man together with a man or a woman together with a woman.  Get real. How does that make any sense?

Oh, by the way, my son David is gay.  He is married, legally married, to my son-in-law, whose name is also David.  They’ve been married for only a couple of years, but the Davids “have been together” (that’s the way we say it in our family) for twenty-seven years.  Even thought we were not supposed to call their arrangement a marriage, they have been a separate family unit, a domestic union living together in their home for all those years.  In all those years they have been loved and respected by all of us in their extended families. They have been good, responsible neighbors to the people who live in the homes around their home.  Both of them are Ph.D. molecular and cellular biologists whose work has always been respected and valued by their colleagues.  They are known to do more than their fair share of community service.  

So, what got me going with this particular rant today?  It was a statement made on a Sunday morning news interview suggesting that the President and the Vice President should be ashamed of themselves for politicizing the gay marriage issue.