Personally, I am not much in the way of tradition. If you read the blog, you know that what little traditions I DO keep to, I see them as very important. Decorating the tree with my best friend and watching holiday specials with my roommate help to set and define the winter holiday season for me. So, to that extent, while I am not overly-traditional, I do see the value in it. I can also appreciate how these traditions are important to others.
For the people in my state who are against gay marriage, I think maybe it is time for you to look at the matter from another perspective. It seems like the only part about homosexual people getting married that you focus on is the "homosexual" part. Some of you speak about the issue as if the gay people are a group of foreign invaders who moved to Oklahoma to change our way of life. For the most part, I doubt that to be the case.
Most of the gay people that I know from Oklahoma are people who were born here or people who have been raised here for the majority of their lives. They are our siblings, our neighbors, our cousins, our coworkers, our parents, our classmates, and our friends. They have been the witnesses to our lives, our confidants, and the people who stood by our sides.
For many of them, the ideas a about love, marriage, commitment, and fidelity are the same as your own. When you met that person that you wanted to spend the rest of your life with, you experienced a mixture of elation and responsibility. You loved this other person and you wanted to honor that love by dedicating a great deal of your time, thought, and emotion to building a life with them. You are not some child who sees marriage as a prize. You see marriage as the most important way to love the person who means the world to you. Much of why you feel this way is because you were raised around people who taught you this. It is a basic value in our (and many other) area.
These values are the same values that the gay people raised in our area have. Like you, they grew up believing that loving someone meant honoring them with fidelity and building a life with them. Other than loving someone of the same gender instead of the other gender, their feelings about marriage and family are much like your own. Houses, well manicured yards, dogs, stable neighborhoods. They aren't trying to destroy marriage. They love marriage as much as you do. They just want to have the option of participating in it with someone they love.
I've always found it very interesting that conservative Americans, especially those who promote the family, were so against a group of people who very much want to have families of their own. I could understand them opposing divorce or people just living together or people like me who don't see marriage as worthwhile . . . but instead they focus on the people who really want the same stuff they do. It doesn't make a lot of sense.
These values are the same values that the gay people raised in our area have. Like you, they grew up believing that loving someone meant honoring them with fidelity and building a life with them. Other than loving someone of the same gender instead of the other gender, their feelings about marriage and family are much like your own. Houses, well manicured yards, dogs, stable neighborhoods. They aren't trying to destroy marriage. They love marriage as much as you do. They just want to have the option of participating in it with someone they love.
I've always found it very interesting that conservative Americans, especially those who promote the family, were so against a group of people who very much want to have families of their own. I could understand them opposing divorce or people just living together or people like me who don't see marriage as worthwhile . . . but instead they focus on the people who really want the same stuff they do. It doesn't make a lot of sense.
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