I sit here thinking about the future... the sad dismal future for those thousands of LGBT who live in Maine who will soon have their rights to being seen as normal and human stripped from them like the people did to those in Hawaii and California. It is such a shame that, despite all the scientific organizations petitioning the government and educating society, the people still wont see us LGBT people as normal, human and most importantly OPPRESSED human beings. This letter is to those out there who feel we don't deserve equality. Who feel we are not normal, not equal, and not just as loving and just as real as they are. For everyone out there who reads this I hope this makes you think on the meaning of your marriages, your relationships but most importantly; yourself. Enjoy...


Dear supporters of anti-marriage equality campaigns,

This is a letter to all those who feel gays and lesbians do not deserve or should not be allowed to have legal and social recognition of their marriage. Let us get more serious for just a moment, we allow pedophiles to marry, felons while still serving prison sentences, murderers, thieves, rapist, zoophiliacs, some prodigiously insane people, but we cannot allow gay people to marry. We cannot come to the rational conclusion that these people are people too and they love each other. So this letter is to those that think gays should not be allowed to be treated as equals and get married. I do not expect you to change your mind, but hopefully it helps them understand why marriage is important to me and my fiancé Benn and why will die for our right to have marriage…

Let us talk about the love of my life. I miss Benn and I cannot wait for his service with the Scandinavian military to be over so we can be together again, even if we do not pass the UAFA we are not separating again. Being apart is just too painful. Every night now we cry ourselves to sleep because we cannot be with each other. Even though it has been eight months since our separation it is still just as painful as the first day being apart. I will never forget the last week we were together. Every night we dreaded the next day because we knew it would bring us closer to our separation. Either I would cry or Benn would cry and then it would start a torrent of tears because it was just so painful to think about. “It’s ok my woofie. I don’t want to have to leave either. I want to be with you forever. I love you so much” Benn would say to me between choking back tears and hugging me with all his strength. I could only reply by burying my head into his chest and crying harder. I did not want to let him go, and when he had to it was worse than a death. But that day, the final day together, that long and painful morning drive to the airport, changed my life when Benn proposed to me. Right before he got to the terminal as tears streamed from our eyes I began bawling when they called out that his plane was starting to board. Benn hugged me tight, placed his warm hands my cheeks, wiped my tears with his thumbs and said. “Shhh… It’s ok Woofie, I want to be with your forever, I love you.”

Every night as I try to sleep those words ring in my head: “I want to be with your forever, I love you,” as I stare sadly and numbly at the side of the bead that was once where my Benn slept next to me. I could not be with the person who was my universe. Even now, as I write this letter tears well up in my eyes as I constantly stare back at the pillow where Benn once laid his head. I remember as if it was yesterday when before we would fall asleep he would sing to me this song he made up off of the jingle from the song A Little Priest that he took from the Sweeny Todd movie. It would goes like this…

“It’s Wuff.
It’s me little wuff
And it’s so fuzzy and blushy
And Omigawsh it is so cute!”

I would blush a deep rosy red and whimper happily then he would hug me with all the love and warmth he could muster, tell me how much he loved me more than anything, and kiss me goodnight. As we embraced each other I would just stare into his eyes, as he would mine, until we drifted off to sleep. It’s so painful having to be apart from him. And with DOMA looming over our heads our choice to never be separated once we are together again puts us in legal turmoil.

Even though we are just engaged I have known Benn for so long it’s as if we are married. I love him so much and to me my marriage, that I wish I didn’t have to wait for, will be the symbol of our bond as best friends, as husband and husband, who have come from so little and have gone so far. I have always been the idealistic one. To me I took symbols of meaning, magnified them and held them close as things to live by. Marriage was one of those symbols of humanity. Benn never understood why marriage was so important to me until we were finally with each other, and I believe that last painful week together made him understand the importance in the symbol of marriage. To me marriage isn’t about sex and the after effects of it, like so many say it is. To me Marriage is about each partner is willing to sacrifice themselves for the other, change and grow with one another, for one another. To be there through times of triumphs, and in times of failure, in sickness, and in health, in wealth or in poverty, through the good times and through the harsh times, till death do them part. To me marriage is a symbol of sacrifice, commitment, and unyielding, unconditional love. Love of spouses, the love of being the most intimate of friends, love from compassion and love from the life you build with that person.

That’s what marriage means to me and that will never change. Nothing can replace marriage in my mind. Why do some people have this narrow view of marriage to be only about protection for heterosexual people in bad relationships, or only for procreation purposes? That marriage is just some sort of religious institution that only Christians should have, which excludes countless other valid religions that see marriage as an important symbol as well as allow gays to get married within their beliefs. There is so much more to marriage than that.... at least in my mind. Who knows...? All I know is that like countries like Spain, Canada and the Netherlands and in states like Massachusetts where our marriages are legal and have been for some time; the divorce rate has declined and people have reevaluated the importance of what their marriage means to them and grew stronger as couples and as human beings.

Every anti-marriage equality advocate keeps saying how important it is to keep marriage from people like Benn and I; that they have to protect marriage from the gays. When asked why marriage is so important they respond with "it’s god’s this, it’s god's that" but they never answer how it is important to them.... and I continue to ask them, but I never hear what marriage means to them as individuals. Is marriage that degraded in their minds that all it means is what others have told them? Why become a statistic of divorce because those two people got together for only that reason. Is that what marriage has become to our society as a whole: Joining Penis and Vagina to make baby, as a license to feel morally clean about fornicating even if it’s for all the wrong reasons and even if the two don’t like each other, or even love each other? Some anti-marriage equality people say marriage is only for raising a family, well what about the millions of children living with their gay parents who love them unconditionally and raised them since infants. Why are they forgetting as a society that prides itself on family that gay families are families too? Why should those parents not be allowed to get married?

Why it is that everyone can make excuses for their failed or failing marriages, but at the same time deny others to be miserable or happy too? Benn and I want to get married because that symbol of humanism, love, commitment, and sacrifice, that symbol of marriage means the world to us and is what we have built our lives on. That symbol gives us hope, bonds us as human beings, and creates the basis of our lives.

So for those out there that don't believe they are are anti-gay but are anti-marriage equality, can you understand now why people like Benn and I, and the millions of others call you haters. How can you tell us that our love is not worthy of being treated as equally as yours? How can you continue to say that our love is a sin, our love is wrong, our love in unnatural? How can you continue to try and destroy our families, our rights to have families? Is this what your conscious compels you to do? Is this what your savior or god commands you to do? After reading why marriage is so important to me and my fiancé Benn do you feel that your campaign against us is still as justified as it once was? Please search your feelings. If you are as loving, empathic and compassionate as you say you are, then how can you feel that denying us our marriages is the right thing to do? Please search your feelings. That is all I ask of you. Thank you.

Sincerely
Chris Marshall.