With Liberty and Justice For All ......

Relationships are hard. At best it often winds up feeling something like a coin toss or a roll of the dice, but please try to imagine this ….. you meet someone new at work or a social function and notice there is instant chemistry. You both have eclectic taste in music, fashion and haute cuisine. Together you dream out loud about making more time in your hectic schedules for things like travel and exercise. As you continue to enjoy one another's company, hours seemingly pass in what feels more like minutes, then before parting ways you manage to exchange each other’s numbers and grant one another a ‘friendly’ hug before saying good night.

Over time it’s only natural that a close friendship develops between you as you share in each other’s joys and pains and begin to reminisce about simpler times, until one night after polishing off a bottle of rare vintage, it happens. One of you dares to make an uncalculated move toward intimacy, left previously undiscussed despite the amount of time you’ve spent together. Hearts quicken as instinct takes over where reason is left behind. Passion erupts culminating in an experience marked by the fact you’ve never quite experienced this depth of emotion prior to this moment.

There’s no denying it …. you are in love. You are filled with this overwhelming need to protect this individual who now lies sleeping silently beside you, because everything you share suddenly outweighs any concern you previously held dear. Instinctively you know there is no length you wouldn’t go to preserve what is manifested by God ….. the right to express love in its purest form. Now imagine this same love that is so precious and rare happens to be with someone of the same gender as you.

Love is the most powerful of all emotions. Figuratively, it has the power to move mountains and nations alike in its ability to call people into action, and it is not something confined strictly to our bedrooms on average 2 to 3 nights per week. That notion alone is strictly puritanical and outdated. It is meant to be celebrated and enjoyed in open fashion so that it may become more infectious than any pandemic that could ever threaten the world’s population. It’s only through the open expression of love that we can hope to save the human race for all humanity.

Since the recent ban on gay marriage in my home state of Arkansas, I’ve heard a lot of opinions expressed on the matter. I can’t help thinking some of those who squawk the loudest should be marching underneath a waving banner titled ‘The Unenlightened’. How can anyone claim to be evolved, much less assert that prejudice is dead when he or she is willing to openly discriminate against what conservative estimates number to be 9 million individuals who openly claim to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, which fails to account for those still scared to come out of the closet?

I am both heterosexual and a practicing Roman Catholic who has the utmost reverence for sanctity of marriage. With the church having hid behind the ‘veil of secrecy’ for decades before having been brought down by subsequent scandal, our newest pontiff, Pope Francis, has publicly stated in relation to the question of gays and the church, “Who am I to judge?” To me that comes closest to echoing the sentiment of God’s love than any representative before him.

And yet so many of our nation’s citizens do just that every time they claim exclusivity by stating, “Marriage is a sacrament reserved solely for one man and one woman.” In my book any love is good love when it seeks to ‘lift up’ another human being by exhibiting countless examples of selflessness and mutual concern for one another’s wellbeing, and it deserves the kind of legal protection offered by the statute of marriage.

With roughly 1 in 2 first marriages currently ending in divorce the ‘one man/one woman’ thing is only working roughly 50% of the time, therefore how could gays possibly set a worse example for our children to follow? But really, at the end of the day what gives anyone the right to project their personal beliefs about how to live a decent life onto another? What is it they’re afraid of? As the popular saying goes, “Why can’t we all just get along?”

No one can threaten the sanctity of your marriage or your beliefs systems but you. We live in a free country and its high time those freedoms were extended to ‘all’ of our citizens. It’s only then we can boast the claim ‘With Liberty and Justice For All.”