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.

As a people who have suffered for hundreds of years, tortured, murdered, tormented, defamed, brutalized, assassinated, and accused for all the world’s ills, we, LGBT people, have only shown our enemies kindness in light and in hope that they will see us as equal. For hundreds of years we have failed, and we must stop failing, by no longer asking, but DEMANDING our equal rights, our equal protections, and the respect we deserve!

We have a new president who now sides himself with the opposition when it comes to granting us full equality. We have elected him for hope that a change will come. My fellow LGBT I assure you, with those the Barak Obama has sided himself with, there will be no change. For those who place faith in a politician let me give you a word of the wise from a friend of mine who's is a law professor at Wayne state, "Trust a politician as far as you can shit, which has a distance of zero meters. That should tell you how much faith you should put in him or her."

Just because Obama supported us back then doesn't mean his mind can't change. Take Francis Collins for example. Raised an atheist, made fun of religion, then became infected with it and although he does great work for the human genome project, and supports LGBT people 100%, his work is becoming scrutinized by other scientist because of his widely, and ever changing religious views. His book, language of god, is great but is more on the lines of an opinion/nonfiction rather than a scientific document.

Basically Obama's views on us have changed. Get over it. I knew they changed as soon as he dumped Rev. J. Wright, who is inclusive to LGBT and same sex marriage. [link]
Look who he is with.

We have to get over the fact of putting faith in a bigot, will change him back or even change him at all. He is no better than any other president, and he will "NOT" give us our full equal rights unless we demand them and show that we are a threat. Otherwise we can expect more policies like DOMA, and DADT.

We have to get over the fact that he "was" for same sex marriage. He certainly no longer is and we need to stop having faith in his past. If he was such a supporter he would have done far more in stopping prop 8 in CA, Prop 102 in AZ, and Prop 2 in FL, and the horrendous Arkansas Unmarried Adoption Ban which has stripped dozens of children from their loving same sex parents, but he didn't. He only "willy-nilly" said he disagreed with the ballot measures.

And if you don’t believe me on children being removed from their home them just read this post by CBN.
[link]

If our new president was anything of a human being and not a bigot he would step in immediately and bring these loving families together. He has not; in fact he hasn't even made a comment since the elections. It's pathetic but its reality.

We must no longer stand for this. If you will not move to a country that is supportive of us then its time we fight back. We must stop asking these bigots politely for our rights. It is time we DEMAND them, and if they wish to fight us, separate us, murder us, on degrade us, then let us give them a fight they that will make them cower like the dogs they are. We must stop being pacifist, we MUST become activist who wont settle for anything less. We shall not ask our new president to give us our rights, we must make him. Anything less than equal is unequal, and its time we fight for what is rightfully ours; our rights for our love, our commitment to one another, and our families.

It is our duty and responsibility to secure not only ourselves but the future for other LGBT people in this country. Despite a majority disliking us it is time we rise above and make them respect us. Whether through fear, or love, it is our responsibility to make the change, because our president will not. And for all those out there who worry about this let us quote our Declaration of Independence for guidance.

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."

Haven't we suffered enough? Hasn't our families and our children suffered enough? It’s time we stop this vicious cycle of lies and lay the ground work so no other religion can trample the rights of others based on their bigoted interpretation of their fictitious and irrational ideologies to supplement their destructive agenda.

The time is now that we stop asking, time we stop making excuses, time we stop relying and hope and faith alone and start DEMANDING for our fundamental rights! Are you with me?

I walked through downtown Traverse the other day and as I was walking I saw a happy couple holding hands. It kind of melted my heart in a way. See two loving people holding hands. I thought to myself. “Gee I miss that.”

Then out of the retched anus of idiocy and malice, we call tourist, comes an asshole.

He uttered quite audibly “Ugh look at those fags holding hands, GOD HATES FAGS YOU QUEERS!”

Now being a person with autism and the problem with literalizing things, what I heard was

“ugh look at those two bundles of twigs holding hands, GOD HATES TWIGS YOU STRANGES”

Perhaps the fact that he had a southern accent, you know marble mouth, and a confederate patch on his shirt made it somewhat hard to hear him.

But that’s what he said isn’t it?

But then I thought to myself… wait a minute he’s not stupid he’s just hallucinating on some bad shrooms or LSD. I mean come one… what asshole would mistake people for bundles of dried dilapidated wood? Then call them stranges… Stranges? Is that even a word… hang on let me go look it up in my hillbilly eugenics dictionary. Then lets no forget he said that the bundles were holding hands. Since when did bundles of twigs have hands? I mean that must be one hell of a trip, not only is two bundles of twigs prancing down Main Street they holding fucking hands. I almost wanted to ask him, “hey man do you have any left? Where can I get some of that?” Seriously!

It reminds me of a time when my friend told me he had a trip and Nazi Trees where parading down the street to arrest him while their branches were saluting.

What is it with people that experiment with psychotropic drugs and their fascinations with trees? Bundles of twigs, Nazi pines... I know some people or zoophiliacs, but this takes tree hugging to a whole other level that I don’t even want to think about let alone touch on. It really makes you think twice when you see a hippy.

I mean, come on how tripped out do you have to be to not see two loving people holding hands….

Then it finally dawned on me…. A light bulb finally blew off in my head.

Anyone who cannot, could not or will not see two loving humans holding hands peacefully without hurting anyone, and still feel personally attacked, can only be as paranoid of a schizophrenic as a Christian fundamentalist.

Who I Am.

That is a tough question and yet a rather simple one. I know exactly who I am at times and then sometimes I question that and ascertain that I don’t know myself at all. I could say I am a person of science, a scientist, but then… those would pertain to what I do and not really touch on who I am. But science has always played a major role in my life. I always asked why, aggravating all around me who could not answer such a complex yet simple question. With that I went out seeking answers that show empirical evidence from multiple sources to fully understand the answer to my questions. This question, “Who I am,” is similar in respects. It is rather complex, yet at the same time is extremely simple.

I could tell you how much of a caring person I am, how I feel it is my duty to place the world on my shoulders and try to rid it of intolerance and ignorance. I could tell you about people I have brought back to life with cardiopulmonary resuscitation or the person I brought out of a burning building before the fire department and paramedics arrived on scene. But yet I am also intolerant of those who I fight against, and the more they anger me with outright lies, misconceptions, and ignorance the more I realize this. It is not the people that are insane, intolerant, hatful, and harmful, but the idea and ideas for which they prescribe themselves too. The more I fight them the more the difference between those two lines begins to blur into one and I end up being intolerant of people rather than their idea.

I could tell you I am a loving person who wishes for one day to be able to legally marry his fiancé, his soul mate, and live happily ever after. I could tell you the greatest time of my life wasn’t going to Cedar Point for the first time, or even my affixation with science and acquiring knowledge. No, the greatest time of my life was seeing my love’s face with a wide and loving smile, full of enthusiasm and excitement, when he took the first bite of every meal I made for us and then gave me a hug and told me how wonderful my cooking was, carrying exhilaration in his voice. Seeing his expressions over the love I poured into each meal was, to me, the greatest time of my life. But at the same time you could see the deep hatred I harbor for ex-gay ministries, from the pain they have caused to me and countless others. My hatred from the pain they impose on innocent, misinformed families, friends, and parents of LGBT children, teens and adults, who either allow or force their children into these torture camps. And finally, just get me excited and you can see my extreme hatred for ideas that makes millions of LGBT people in the world question their morality, sanity, love, and humanity, to the point where they end their lives over it in shame, fear and guilt. I am not a person that can easily lend out a loving hand to an oppressive flock unless they know, and admit to what they have done wrong and understand why they were wrong. I can be a person that openly engages others in quite uncomfortable dialogue. I make them challenge themselves and bring forth their convictions only to have them slashed apart. But I can also be a person to which uses my pain and knowledge to comfort others who have too been hurt by ideas of a majority. To make them feel that they are not alone and that they are not the evil for which they are told they are.

Who I am? Such a difficult, yet simple question. Even I can’t tell you who I am. Perhaps once you get to know me, maybe then… you can.

In my opinion I don't know why people have such a negative perspective on same sex marriage. All people should be valued equality. It seems that the opponents to this issue don't really consider the fact that what is different in their eyes could mean something far more important to others besides them. Maybe they see these different individuals as of a lower quality than of themselves. If that's the case, let us bow to these god like beings that are in every aspect, perfect.

Ok what makes these people different now? I don't know, in my opinion they're the same as you and me. The same blood courses through my veins as theirs. We both are made of molecules. And we both are human. What is so different between straight individuals and homosexual individuals? Oh yes now I remember, its that minute fact that they love someone of the same gender. So call me a devil worshiper and burn me at the stake. I could care less what people have to say to me, on my opinions. But saying is one thing, protesting in droves against it, is quite another. Anti gay and lesbian activist have been pushing for those amendments far to long to make it even illegal to just say the word. Just one simple question. Why? Why is it so important that same sex marriage is banned? I don't understand such ignorance.

Could it be because a book says it's wrong? Oh wait I'm sorry its not the book that preaches that idea. It's the media that does. It's the general perspective on the situation, that is also a contributing factor. And above all it's the ignorant, that fear change that preach it above all else. We're the only country that still hasn't accepted the fact that there are gay people that live with us on a day to day basis. Yes some states are quite accepting to homosexuals. But look at countries like Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, England, Spain, etc, these countries have gay marriage or something of a similar nature. Why cant we have that here. That questions beats the heck out of me. Are we degrading? We don't want gay marriage, we're starting to reject science, what's next? Executions for not believing in the bible, or not converging to it?

What will banning gay marriage accomplish? Going on a even more controversial event, look at slavery. Few were against it and a lot were for it. Those that were brought up with slaves (which I think is utterly disgusting) though nothing of the fact that slavery was wrong. But there is a saying and this applies to those that want to ban gays from anything. "Just because everyone believes in a certain thing, that doesn't mean those beliefs are right."The Adventures of Huck Finn- Think on that saying, but more importantly think about others. Don't just think about your own beliefs and start imposing them on everyone. Think about others beliefs, who want gay marriage. Think about them, before you start criticizing them.