Letter to the President

Dear President Obama,

I was terribly disappointed to see your administration's response to the question of Gay Marriage. Comparing homosexuality to incest? Wow. What an incredibly shitty and ironic attitude towards this civil rights issue.

As a country, we constantly struggle with civil rights issues. It is a measure of how far we have come that you are president at all. Sixty years ago it would have been inconceivable that a black man should become president. Black people were second class citizens. They were not awarded the full measure of rights that white people possessed. (Hmm, sound familiar?)

Many people felt that this was unfair. They spoke out and marched in protests. Not all of those people were black. The civil rights movement would never have succeeded if all the white people had been content with the status quo. It required popular support -- many people of varied colors standing up and saying, "This is not right."

I'm not black. I'm day-glow, fish-belly white. It's no skin off my nose if black people are oppressed. And yet, had I been alive back then, I would have proudly marched beside your ancestors. Not because I would have personally benefited, but because it would have been the right thing to do.

Of course, it would have been fairly easy for me to make such a gesture. After all, I am clearly not black. It's a lot easier to be a supporter of an oppressed group than to be mistaken for a member of that group.

Fast forward to the civil rights issue of our time. It's a lot harder to be a supporter of homosexuals. After all, it's not like you can tell who's gay or not just by looking. And so it's easy to dismiss support for gay marriage as being "a bunch of queers". Unlike white supporters of the black civil rights movement, straight supporters of the gay civil rights movement are not obvious. Many feel the need to declare themselves. Sometimes I wonder whether they are thinking, "They need to know that not all supporters are gay." or "They need to know that I'm not gay." Is that your problem? Gee Barrack, don't worry. With your lovely wife and two kids, you're probably not going to be mistaken for a homo.

So what is the basis of many of these objections to gay marriage? I think it would be difficult to argue that most of the criticisms are religious in nature. However, I was taught in high school civics that in America we have a separation of church and state. Because marriage is a legal status that confers many rights and responsibilities, it seems ludicrous that religion could dictate who receives that legal status.

Some people argue that "marriage" is a religious term, and that gay people should be granted civil unions. Fine. I think it's rather petty, but as long as you guys are willing to spend time doing a "search/replace" on all the legal documents in the United States that mention marriage, and replace the word "marriage" with "civil union" I guess it really doesn't matter.

But you're not offering to do that, are you? Basically whenever civil unions are mentioned, they seem to be second class marriages. Good enough for them homos, but not as good as a *real* marriage, for real people.

I recognize that supporting gay marriage would not be a popular move with much of your constituency. After all, you ran on a platform that included your faith. But faith can be an evolving thing. Unless you're following the bible strictly in your life (when were you planning on selling your daughters?) it seems hypocritical to pick and choose which pieces of bigotry you're going to follow in your own life. You need to balance your presidential popularity contest with doing the right thing.

So Barrack, I guess I'm asking you to grow a pair. In the name of all the white people who stood up for what was right so that you could eventually become president, why don't you stand up for what's right, even though your marriage is already legally sanctioned?

Sincerely,
Meg Claypool