Tired after a long day of work, feet aching and body weary, Rosa Parks rested her bones on the seat of a bus only to be told that she was “less than” all the “whites” riding the bus and she had to give her seat up to a white person.  Perhaps out of exhaustion, perhaps out of just being plain tired of being considered “less than” other humans, Rosa held fast and refused to stand.  Rosa sat and started a movement that could not be stopped; a movement that should not have even been an issue.  Rosa was a God-created woman who bled the same color as any other white, yellow, red, or black person.  When will the human race realize that each of us are humans who hurt, who cry, who bleed, and who love?

I can’t help who and what I love.  In fact, I pray daily that God will instill in me the capacity to love as He loved.  I don’t know for sure, but I’m thinking that the God that I hold dear to me loves mankind.  The God I hold dear is no respecter of persons; the God I love loves me just as I am.  I can’t believe that if God loves me as I am, he can not or will not love others just as they are.   God loves murderers and thieves just as He loves me; God loves heterosexuals and homosexuals alike.  He loves all these people as equally as He loves His church.

Now, the time has come, that we must petition the government to tell us it is okay who we love, how we love and who we can or cannot marry.  This issue, as was the issue with Rosa Parks, should not even be an issue.  It should not be “black” rights or “gay” rights, it should be “equal HUMAN rights.”  There are so many other “issues” that demand our attention.  Perhaps focusing on hunger, education, and our elderly and disabled would serve our resources better than legislating something that does not affect anyone but the two people involved.  The only marriage that impacts me is mine.

Long ago, a man started a revolution when he decided that Jews were not fit to live.  Hilter herded these people into boxcars to haul them to the ovens of ignorance.  It was ignorance that lead to the annihilation of many HUMAN Jews.  This man, who was adored by a multitude, also murdered Catholics, elderly, and homosexuals.  The legislation of today is not calling for the holocaust of human life, but before the killing of millions of Jews started, legislation was enacted to keep them “under control.”  Please don’t tell me “it can’t happen here” because it did.  It was not too long ago that black men and women were whipped, hung by trees until dead and crosses were burned.  In fact, the KKK is alive and well right here in this land that we love.

Out of ignorance, we feared educating the blacks, out of ignorance we allowed the annihilation of Jews before we said stop, and now, out of ignorance, this nation does not want to allow two souls who are bound by love to be bound legally.  The things that “mainstream” marriages take for granted, such as being covered by your spouses medical insurance, social security benefits, death benefits, and even being called a spouse and thus a family member, are being withheld because two people, who happen to be the same sex, found love.  The thought of excluding people because of something like being in love feels wrong to me on so many levels.

I will leave you with the thoughts of a man much wiser than me.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out–
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out–
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out–
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me–and there was no one left to speak for me.  (Martin Niemöller)