As a nation, are we bored? I am beginning to doubt that the national pastime is actually baseball. I think we should finally admit that picking on every nonwhite, non-heterosexual, non-Christian, non-middle- or upper-class, non-able-bodied person we can find is really what we crave.

As a nation, we are willing to bomb, destroy and terrorize other countries in the name of freedom, but at home we are unwilling to grant the freedom of love to anyone who is not heterosexual. This is not only pathetic, it is inhumane.

Why is it OK that our sacred freedom ends with arbitrary laws defined by rich, old, white men?

The fact that people love each other enough to sleep outside on the sidewalks, in the rain, to participate in mass marriages that are already at risk for being deemed unofficial, speaks more for their love than can be said about many heterosexual couples.

Britney Spears didn't have to wait in the rain outside and overnight to marry someone she did not intend to be with forever. She didn't even have to be sober. Why do people who are genuinely in love and committed to one another have to go through this? We claim to be a country of choice. If we really are, then everyone who desires to be married to the person they have committed themselves to should be given that choice.

I am white, heterosexual, Christian, middle-class and able-bodied. Frankly, I am embarrassed about these laws, and I pray that I am not the only one.

Shannon McKenney
psychology and Spanish senior