In a December 2008 Newsweek poll, 55 percent of respondents favored legally sanctioned unions or partnerships. With more than 50 percent of the country now in support of civil unions for gays and lesbians, and a clear trend toward an increasingly secular America, it is not only those in opposition to gay marriage that are in danger of bearing the mark of intolerance and bigotry, it is more explicitly the “Christian” party these new American radicals hide behind.

I believe it is necessary to dispel some of the common arguments used by the American right to legislatively discriminate against homosexuals:

1. Allowing gay marriage would mean redefining marriage.

A notion ideologically beaten into American children is the value of honesty. And part in parcel with that “American honesty” is the idea that is incumbent upon us to admit the mistakes that we as citizens have made. The last three centuries of American history were plagued with civil intolerance and sexism. And at least one of them (the 20th) was laden with apologies for the injustices we have committed. Fortuitously for the pro-gay marriage argument, one of these American mistakes was anti-miscegenation laws. While a horrible injustice and flagrant disregard of constitutional and human rights, the right for blacks and whites to intermarry was prohibited in some states until 1967. We as Americans redefined marriage in the 1967 Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia, stating American values (as they pertained to marriage legislation) were now racially blind. This being not the first overhaul of marriage legislation, but certainly the most significant, should silence the views of conservatives that marriage laws are stagnant.

U.S. News & World Report stated in December of 2008 that according to exit polls, 70 percent of African Americans said they voted yes on Proposition 8. As a result, I pose the question: How can 70 percent of black voters now oppose the same rights they fought so fervently to reflexively posses? Are we as Americans so shortsighted that we cannot, or choose not, to remember the disenchanted, isolated feeling legislative prejudice creates?

2. Gay marriage violates biblical bylaws laid forth by Christianity.

For those who believe this second argument to be true, I believe that one phrase completely negates this misconception: Separation of church and state. This constitutional legal parlance is highly effective at mitigating biblical references.

I have written this partially to vent and partially to be one homosexual man who has put into writing his sentiments on the unconstitutional direction the United States has chosen to continue following. I say this to all gays who believe gay marriage doesn’t pertain to them or is unimportant: I used to be one of you. I believed I would never get married, which may be my future, or may not be. What I say to you is this, it is not about whether you as an individual choose to legally bind yourself to that man or woman with whom you are in love.

It is solely about making you and your children, should you, dare I say it, adopt with your partner, an equal, legal citizen of the country in which you reside and pay taxes.

We as homosexuals, if we do not actively support gay marriage, are more damaging to the gay movement then the conservatives I previously mentioned. Our apathy translates to heterosexual America as a flighty, disorganized and subsequently, less threatening group. We must band together for constitutionality, equality and that piece of the American pursuit of happiness we’ve all been promised.

Ryan Garrison

economics and Spanish sophomore