Gay Marriage in DC (or anywhere for that matter)

For those of you living in and around the District, you most likely already know a lot about this. Back in late April, DC Council voted to recognize gay marriages performed in other jurisdictions (AKA if you get gay married in Massachusetts, Vermont, NH, Connecticut, Iowa, or Maine, you can move to DC and still be considered married). The April decision said nothing about actual gay marriages being allowed or forbidden in DC.

Now it has come out that a group of various religious figures in the DC area (Bishop Harry Jackson, Rev. Walter Fauntroy, Robert King, and others) organized under "Stand4MarriageDC" to put together a ballot initiative that would define marriage as between a man and a woman. This would strike down the previous ruling that recognized gay marriages performed elsewhere.

Now, being a straight, conservative male, I usually don't side with the gay community on any issue but, this time, I am. The DC Council has already decided to accept marriages from elsewhere and now these religious leaders want to revisit and reverse that choice. What gives these guys the right to impose their subjective beliefs and values onto others? I will grant you that the largest religion in the US is Christianity of one form or another (and that means the rampant homophobia that comes with it), but, even so, that doesn't give the religious right the power to impose their completely and totally subjective beliefs onto an entire city. There is a major difference between voting on a government policy and standardizing a set of religious values and forcing people to adhere to them.

So, if the religious folks have their way, DC residents will be voting on whether or not to take rights away from people that already have them. Anyone who lives in DC and was married elsewhere will have that marriage actively un-recognized (is that a word?). This is the first instance I can remember where a group is in danger of having their rights actively stripped for no good reason. What do I mean by "for no good reason"? I mean that homosexuals have done nothing dangerous or illegal. They have not endangered our national security or flew planes into buildings (if you can't tell, I am unabashedly in favor of profiling in airports but that is a conversation for another day).

So where's the beef? Why are these people so adamant about taking rights away from a group of people who have done nothing wrong except for being themselves (I think there's a term for this...... discrimination if I am not mistaken)? I can only speculate here. Some say that people who exhibit these staunchly homophobic views are secretly homosexual to some extent and want any reminder of that banished from existence (wouldn't surprise me). My guess is that there are some deep seeded insecurities in these "devoutly religious" folks of one kind or another that forces them to take their anger and frustrations out on others. And now they are using the government as their tool.

An afterthought: There is a lot of talk about civil unions vs. marriage. These two terms mean the EXACT SAME THING. I hate it when the religious camps claim that marriage is a religious term and that it is a union under God. You know what? It's not. It is when two loving people commit to each other for a lifetime. Creed, color, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, tax bracket status, or how fast you can run the 40 have no bearing on if you can get married.

Another afterthought: I hate gay pride parades. Its the same thing as a Black Pride parade or a White Pride parade (which will get you branded as a racist). Amounts to the same thing: looks at us because we are who we are. Get over yourselves.