A Marriage by Any Other Name....would stink.

My apologies to Shakespeare.

I have just finished watching a documentary on same-sex marriage. Same Sex America chronicles seven Massachusetts couples during that state's fight over same-sex marriage. For the last half hour of the show I sat on my couch, just me and my box of Kleenex; crying as the marriages took place.

I am not one of those right-wing conservatives that are crying over the loss of the sanctity of marriage. I am one of those conservatives who think that the sanctity of marriage was lost when the divorce rate rose above 50%. The crying came, as one by one, all the participants in these marriages wept over the signing of the marriage license. Most weddings have a couple of older ladies, crying under the nettings of their blue hats; but in this instance, all the participants were crying over the simplicity of a legal document.

While I was listening to each couple explain their feelings about marriage, I was disturbed. Each of the couples profiled have been together longer than 10 years. That is longer than a quarter of all straight marriages in the United States. My question then becomes, what is wrong with people in love wanting to get married? As a married woman, I do not feel that two men or two women marrying will be a detriment to my marriage, or diminish the validity of the union.

But this fight has been fought before. I am too young to remember most of it, but I am sure that there are some of you out there that remember it all too well. In 1963, Governor George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door, blocking blacks from entering an all-white school. Just 38 years ago, it was illegal for blacks and whites to marry in 16 states. In both those instances, it took the Supreme Court of the United States to break down those barriers.

We all look back on those years, shaking our heads, wondering at our ignorance. Yet most of the country is willing to again vote to inhibit the civil rights of a group. We can all remember "Separate but Equal"? and how separate was in no way equal. A "Civil Union"? is just another form of this quasi-equality, and should be treated with the animosity that it deserves. As citizens of a Democracy that is willing to go to war for human rights, we must first look inward, and be willing to fight for the civil rights of our citizens.