Valid questions for those against gay marriage

Direct Address
Sally sends a letter to the antigay marriage crowd

By Sally Sheklow
Dear Heterosexual Chauvinists:

Thank you for caring so much about my personal business. I feel a little guilty because, frankly, I don’t care at all about yours. No offense.

It’s just that your marriage, as state-sanctioned and God-ordained as it may be, isn’t something I spend much time imagining. Not that I have to. I see and read and hear about straight marriages every day. The way you flaunt your lifestyle, it’s sort of hard to avoid.

I mean, who doesn’t already know that nearly half of all one-man-one-woman marriages end in divorce? It’s no secret. And any women’s shelter can tell you that 97.5 percent of domestic violence occurs in straight households. You don’t exactly keep your dirty laundry private. Still, I’m not out there trying to prevent heterosexual marriage (although I do support women’s shelters).

I don’t spend my time fuming over the heterosexual newlywed photos in my local newspaper, the very paper that—unlike the New York Times—refuses to print same-sex wedding announcements. That policy isn’t fair or right, but I haven’t launched any campaigns against heterosexuals’ civil liberties because of it. I don’t sit around plotting how to keep opposite-sex couples from enjoying their marriage rights. Nobody has to enter into matrimony if they don’t want to. If you choose to keep on marrying and divorcing your opposite-sex partners, go right ahead. It’s not my concern.

I can’t control your orientation, no matter how abnormal it may seem to me. Just like your freedom to choose your religion, your choice to marry outside your sex is protected by law. Even though I find your obsession with same-sex marriage totally bizarre, I don’t scour the Bible for verses that might bolster my point of view, although I understand there are quite a few—love thy neighbor as thyself, for example.

I find it odd that you blame lesbian and gay people for how difficult you find it to love, honor, and cherish each other. You claim that our marriages threaten the sanctity of your marriages. Hello? We didn’t invent adultery. Or wife beating. How you can fault same-sex marriage for your own failings is beyond me. Especially when as many as 70 percent of female murder victims were killed by their male partners. Where’s the sanctity in that?

I truly don’t see how my equal access to the same privileges you enjoy (and often squander) threatens you. I’m not the one organizing my congregation against you or rallying voters to declare your relationships unconstitutional or lobbying my legislators to deny your rights. I have neither the time nor the inclination for straight-hating.

How you relate to your spouse is your business. And what you do in the privacy of your own marriage—or even what you say about mine—is beyond my control. You call us perverse, but you have no idea how incredibly weird you Defense-of-Marriage people seem to the rest of us. Come on, is there anything odder than fixating on other people’s sexuality? Your non-consensual peeping into my life is downright creepy. I suppose I should be honored that you find my personal life so fascinating, and maybe I would be if you didn’t insist I can and should change.

Anyone who’s married surely should know your marriage is doomed if you think you can change the other person. Get a clue. You can’t eradicate or outlaw or convert everyone who isn’t made in your image. So we’re different—big deal.

You’ve spent millions persuading folks that our differences somehow threaten their marriages. Kinda crazy, but your freedom of speech, like mine, is protected. Just think, though, of all the good you could do if the time and effort and money you pour into your antigay rampage went toward something useful—like reducing poverty or saving the rain forest or making peace between nations. You know, helping.

Instead of demonizing me for being created as I am, why not pitch in? You have so much drive, why not use it to do something people really need? Help ensure education, food, housing, and health care for everyone. We could work together, pool our energies to increase dignity, respect, and joy in the world, for all creation.

I would at least like to continue the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness that our Constitution recognizes are my inalienable rights. I understand that prejudice runs deep and that blaming scapegoats is human nature. There’s room in my heart to forgive you for your limitations. Unlearning hateful thinking isn’t easy. You’re entitled to take as long as you want to come to grips with reality.

Meanwhile, this would be a good time to kindly step aside and mind your own business.

Most sincerely,
Sally Sheklow

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