"How Getting Married Made Me An Activist"

An interesting essay, "How Getting Married Made Me An Activist" by David J. Jefferson, out in this week's Newsweek, reminded me of the rich history of the fight for gay rights. It's also reminded me, and made me sad to think, that it took a stripping away of a right granted to us (a right that is and should've been inherent) to wake us up from our complacency.

I hope this complacency never returns. I hope that this fire burning in us, urging us to not let something like Prop 8, and the violation of gay rights in Arkansas and Florida and elsewhere, happen again nor let us stop fighting to repeal these injustices. I hope that we don't let a majority continue to shame us so that we hide our faces from the masses, like we did in our ads against Prop 8. I hope that we remember that we DO have a long history of gay marriages (the Romans performed gay marriages before Christianity stepped in! Again! Or should I say, for the first time!), and that this isn't a new "special right" we're asking for, but a guaranteed right as tax-paying citizens. And I hope we remember, first and foremost, that this isn't just about our rights, but we're fighting to keep the core principles of our Founding Fathers from being manipulated and changed - we're fighting to keep those principles alive. Without these self-evident truths, without the declaration that "all men are created equal," we wouldn't have the right to fight in the first place, or to claim our "unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."