I have many acquaintances of many persuasions. Its been interesting to me to watch the differing opinions as we watch and see how Prop. 8 is handled. You have extremists on every side who are trying to demonize the other. You have the people who just don’t care and don’t see how its going to affect them. You have the politicians in both camps rubbing their hands in greed as they fight over the power to control our choices. You have the people for whom this is an emotional issue.

And through it all, nobody is treating each other with respect.

I watched almost ten years ago now, as homosexual friends of mine started to become fearful that their rights as ordinary citizens were going to be taken away. They were getting worked up as if we were heading back to the early part of the last century when you could still be fired, kicked out of your home and killed for being homosexual. As they talked, discussed and allowed unreasonable fear rule the idea was brought up that through marriage could the community gain the respect and protection such a validation could provide. As if by gaining the ability to marry, they could be protected from losing their homes and jobs and even their very lives.

Now the silly thing was that they weren’t in any danger of these things. It was rumor and fear running rampant. And the nutjobs in both camps were running off at the mouth, stirring the pot. I watched as the rhetoric was allowed to get out of hand, this side accusing that side of this and that side accusing this side of that. And I watched a President cash in on fear and nonsense to motivate people to vote, which put things in his favor for re-election. I watched in disgust as Washinton D.C gloated in pleasure over making people knee jerk react in the voting booth. I saw two groups of people manipulated.

And it hasn’t ended there.

Watching what is going on in California has been sometimes disgusting and sometimes bewildering. Being LDS, I get some heated comments my way but while people are trying to demonize my church in California, they overlook that for us, its not about who is better than who. Its the law of Chasity for us. Anyone who is outside the bonds of husband and wife marriage has to abstain from sexual relations. Doesn’t matter if your gay or straight. I know that often you’ll see Christians who will bring up how homosexuality was a punishable sin by stoning. They don’t bother to add that any type of sex outside of marriage was treated the same way. If you had an affair, if you were sleeping with your girlfriend or boyfriend or an animal.. you got to die too. I bet you anything most of those idiots shouting absurdities in protest of gay marriage has broken one of these rules.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with gay marriage. I know several gay couples who are raising children and they are providing stable homes for their kids. They work hard at it. Its not an easy choice for them to have kids in the first place and they don’t take it lightly. And I’ve never met a child of gay parents who also chose to be gay. So you can’t throw those arguments at me, it doesn’t hold water. My opposition is purely theological at this time.

I do have a problem with pop culture telling us what we should be doing. Its currently “fashionable” to be bisexual. I’ve had people look at me weird because I haven’t kissed another woman. Sorry. I have no interest and feel no lack for never having done so. There is no curiosity, but I’ve had people look at me as if there is something wrong with me because I haven’t experimented. As if I”m supposed to right? I have a problem with a bunch of middle school children who have no idea about human relationships telling my daughter she’s really gay because she’s mad at men because of events in her young life up to that point. Being angry at men doesn’t make you gay, but these little twits don’t know any better. And the schools aren’t helping. They’ve had their arms twisted and tied in knots. Pop culture has no clue.. because right now its fashionable to be gay. Whether you are or aren’t. I have a friend who was raped by her father for years. She likes to spout off every so often that she was born gay, I had to pull her aside and tell her to stop doing that when I was around. I wasn’t about to tell a room full of people she was raped by her father. But we can easily see why she spurned the touch or company of men.

Some, are clearly born with those feelings. And its tricky to navigate how best to handle all these different elements. But there are two things that are sure. Its going to take a lot of work and there are plenty of people wanting to abuse this issue for political power.

I think its just a matter of time before its legal. But I have some concerns. If its passed as a legal form of marriage. Does that mean the schools have to teach homosexuality as a lifestyle choice? There are already pamphlets everywhere supporting it. Of course, do you see any pamphlets supporting making a different choice? Nope. No wonder kids don’t know which side is up and what it really means when your homosexual or heterosexual. There is not nearly as much taught about how to have healthy relationships in our schools. The attitude of supporting kids in their teenage sexual relationships only leads to kids being exposed to STD’s, pregnancy and disillusionment by bad experiences. There is very little protecting them or showing them what are all their choices. If you teach one type of relationship style.. are you going to teach them all? Equally?

And what about freedom of religion? If gay marriage is legalized will the extremists in that camp try to force all religions to perform those marriages? Or will they let it go and let the different religions follow their own conscience? I don’t think they will let bygones be bygones.

I think we have a very ugly legal battle on the horizon. I know people like to blame Prop. 8 on us Mormons, but there are less than 2% of registered voters who are LDS in California. Clearly it wasn’t just the Mormons who were voting. But it seems to be the Mormons getting all the backlash. I’ve seen both religious and homosexual communities say terrible things to each other. For some, there is no “agree to disagree” And all that name calling isn’t going to warm up the general public who will weigh in on this.

I can’t help but feel there has to be a solution to this. But for the life of me, I can’t see what it is. I worry about the pandora’s box we’re about to open.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 13th, 2010 at 2:32 am and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.