March 17, 2012

A wonderful and beautiful, sad and inspiring column by Providence Journal writer Bob Kerr. I called to thank him and we talked.

“Civil unions are a fraud. They are a low-rent, out-the-back-door way of saying ‘Yeah, we care but not all that much.’ Civil unions attempt to confer the impossible status of being a little bit equal. They tell gays and lesbians they can have some of the rights but not all of the rights of other citizens.”

How can we do this to people – this separate but equal absurdity? Embarrassingly, immorally, the U.S. tried that with race. And the U.S. is trying separate but equal again with marraige.

If your religion or beliefs are anti marriage equality, fine. I don’t agree but you can live your life your way. Just don’t impose your personal beliefs – your religion – on the rest of us.

The right to marriage equality is a secular issue, a public issue, a basic human right. Marriage equality is a civil right.

This is part of the same Civil Rights movement that Martin Luther King, Jr. fought and died for. And the right to marry across racial lines – won by Mildred and Richard Loving – serves as an inspiration for the right to marry for gays and lesbians.

The fight for marriage equality will continue around the U.S. – and around the world. And, as Bob Kerr says at the end of his column, those against equality will be “unable, again, to show any damage done. They will be uanble to point to those states that have approved same-sex marriage and show how the married man and woman feel less married because of it.”

Shame on us.

Filed under: Social Commentary

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About Simone Joyaux

A consultant specializing in fund development, strategic planning, and board development, Simone P. Joyaux works with all types and sizes of nonprofits, speaks at conferences worldwide, and teaches in the graduate program for philanthropy at Saint Mary’s University, MN. Her books, Keep Your Donors and Strategic Fund Development, are standards in the field.

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