I haven't posted in a while (senior year is crazy!), but here is a column I wrote for the Daily Barometer which I thought the feministing community might enjoy/find interesting.

Who's afraid of marriage equality?

It's depressing to me that after National Coming Out Week, an important and progressive week to talk about the issues that can make lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people struggle with coming out, we are just a few short weeks away from when California votes for the opportunity to overturn marriage equality. According to an e-mail from Joe Solmonese, president of Human Rights Campaign, marriage equality is losing by five points in a recent poll.

Focus on the Family, one of many Christian organizations speaking out against marriage equality, has spent millions of dollars to pass Proposition 8, which would redefine marriage between a man and a woman.

It's 10 years after Ellen DeGeneres came out and seemingly destroyed her career in the process. But since that time, she has come roaring back with a popular talk show, and with the recent legalization of marriage equality in California, she married her partner, Portia de Rossi. We have "The L Word," "Queer as Folk," "Will & Grace," a new relationship between Erica Hahn and Callie Torres on the widely popular "Grey's Anatomy," and according to Gays and Lesbians Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), there currently are 16 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered characters on network television.

Ten years ago this month, we watched the horror of the Matthew Shepard story unfold. Shepard, a University of Wyoming student, was brutally tortured and left, unconscious, tied to a fence like a scarecrow for 18 hours, all because he was gay . He died five days later after doctors deemed his injuries too severe to operate. His killers even tried the "gay panic defense" to justify their terrible actions. This story created national attention and stressed the need to expand the federal hate crime bill to include sexual orientation.

It has been almost 40 years since the Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village that opened our eyes to the government-sponsored persecution of LGBT individuals and subsequently started the gay rights movement. As of 1973, same-sex attraction is no longer a psychological disorder. Today, gay conversion or "degayification" as the character Mary famously said in the movie "Saved!" only takes part in certain branches of the Christian faith; recently it came out that Sarah Palin's church is promoting a conference on gay conversion.

As of now, only three states have marriage equality: Massachusetts, California, and recently, Connecticut, with California on the fringe of redefining marriage as being between one man and one woman. Several other states, including Oregon, offer domestic partnerships, which give some of the rights currently given to married couples.

Back in March, DeGeneres spared with presidential candidate John McCain over the issue of marriage equality. He thinks a marriage exists only between a man and a woman and believes that same-sex couples have the right to have a legal agreement. Can we really think that DeGeneres' and de Rossi's love isn't worth the status of marriage, even a partnership, but just a legal agreement?

When will we learn that separate-but-equal, or more realistically, separate-and-not-really-equal, isn't fair?

The religious institutions opposing marriage equality believe that allowing same-sex couples the same rights to marriage as opposite-sex couples would erode the institution of marriage because it is not how their God intended. But that was the same excuse used to speak out against miscegenation (interracial marriage). We can look back at Loving v. Virginia, the most prominent court case regarding the interracial couple Mildred and Richard Loving, who struggled for the right to marry and who now know that their love changed the way society viewed miscegenation. It was even thought of as wrong to have marriages that were equal partnerships since God designed marriage to be patriarchal (the husband controls the wife), but wives today can have much more rights.

Those who defend the right to protect marriage by denying LGBT couples the same rights commonly talk of marriage as a sacrament: a religious union between a man and a woman. But we all know that marriage doesn't have to be religious. Atheists, agnostics and people of other faiths can legally marry in this country. We also hear that same-sex couples shouldn't marry because marriage is set up for raising children. If marriage was a place for bearing children, then we would have to kick out those who are infertile, don't want children and perhaps even those who choose to use birth control. We also hear that same-sex couples are bad for raising children because they need role-models of both genders. We don't take away children from single parents, whose children are just as capable of finding different-gendered role models outside of the immediate family as children of same-sex couples. These arguments would never fly with the rest of the heterosexual majority, so why should we hold the homosexual minority to these standards?

With all of the focus on same-sex marriage versus opposite-sex marriage, we seem to be leaving out transgendered individuals. Can we really say that transgendered persons can only marry if they get a sex change and marry a person of the opposite sex? That leaves those who don't identify as straight, or even as a certain gender (e.g. genderqueer), and those who don't need a physical sex change to identify as a particular sex.

Religion should have no ability to mandate what couples deserve state and federal rights and the right to partnership. It is an absolute outrage that we continue to let this form of discrimination stand. The thin veil of Christian morals held over the opposition to same-sex marriage can't hide the hate and intolerance underneath it. If marriage is such a sacred institution, then the government should not be giving out marriage licenses. Let the government give out civil unions to all committed partners seeking the rights and status, and let religious groups decide which partnerships they want to deem as "marriage" in their own churches.

The first line of the Declaration of Independence states, "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." In our history, we have used "all" to just include men, whites, Christians, and heterosexuals. Why can't we now hold "all" to mean everyone regardless of identities?

Cross-posted at Silence Is Betrayal .

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