The Pursuit of Happiness

I am thrilled at the results of this week's election. I prayed very hard for this outcome.

I was disappointed that California didn't defeat proposition 8. I was also very disappointed with the way the Mormon church was depicted. I have some close friends who are Mormon, and many of the things that have been said by the prop. 8 opposition are not fair. Part of democracy is the freedom to vote for issues one supports. Simply because an individual supported prop. 8 does not make them a "gay-hater".

Here are my two cents:

I do not believe that being gay is a choice.

I am a Christian. I believe that Christ died to save me from my sins, that I may become closer with and more connected to God and His will for my life.

I am a Christian. I am also an American, and believe that in this country everyone should be an equal citizen.

Religious beliefs do not justify the treatment of individuals as second class citizens. Without an effective institution to recognize same-sex unions, gay American citizens do not have the same rights as straight Americans. The country that was founded on Christian morals also dictated that every American has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Every human being is entitled to happiness.

Part of my happiness-pursuit is spending the rest of my life with the person I love in matrimony. As an American, how could I deny someone else that path?

Marriage is not a right. Marriage is a choice two people who love each other make when they want to spend the rest of their lives together. Two people who love each other can also pledge to spend the rest of their lives together without getting married, but they don't have the same rights as people who do, i.e. hospital visitation rights, etc.

Marriage is a religious institution. It is also a legal institution. There are people who get married in churches, and there are people who get married in courthouses. I have trouble understanding why it is acceptable in some people's eyes for two non-religious people to participate in the religious institution of marriage and yet it is unacceptable for two gay individuals to do the same.

I don't believe you should get married in a church if you don't believe in God. It doesn't make sense for two people to swear to spend the rest of their lives together before a God they may not believe in. However, that's not the world we live in. Believers get married, non-believers get married. Meanwhile, gays and lesbians are treated as second-class citizens, ineligible for the same rights as other citizens. And so, I would've voted against proposition 8.

There needs to be an institution that gives gay and lesbian Americans the same rights as married straight Americans. Otherwise, we will not live in the nation our forefathers designed.



"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. "

- John Hancock