Trying to Regulate Love

I was raised a Christian and it is a very fundamental belief, or so many would have you believe, that homosexuality is wrong. For me, it was never really a big deal or something to worry about. What God actually thinks about gay people is up to God and the people who claim to be such. I think there is ample evidence that people are born gay and that would make them a creation of God, so I figure the Big Guy has to have some way to deal with the whole thing that doesn't involve the general hysteria with which we humans do.

Homosexuality has been around for a very, very long time. The Romans certainly dabbled in it, to say the least. The Greeks were known to play both sides of the street on a rather routine basis. I have never had a sexual urge toward another man, but I have met and been friend with many a man who has and I can tell you that I have never found anything particularly wrong with anyone who fell into that category.

At one time I was married. I married a woman I met my senior year in college and we were together for about three years. We probably rushed into the whole marriage thing a bit, but when you are guy like me and never had a date throughout high school, if you find a woman willing to take her clothes off around you on a regular basis, you look for ways to keep her around. The marriage didn't last, as you may have guessed. You really can't base a marriage on frequent nudity, no matter what your average nudist couple will try to tell you.

At the same time I have run into more homosexual couples who have been together for more years than my wife and I were and they seem much happier than I ever was during my entire marriage. So, it strikes me as odd that so many people would spend so much time hating people in these relationships and then spending even more time trying to get laws passed against them. It certainly seems to me like there are bigger and more important things in the world to worry about.

Right now there are several states that have suddenly legalized same-sex marriages. While for a long time people were saying that there were rules and regulations in place for same-sex couples to obtain something close to the rights and benefits that opposite-sex couples have, it turns out that isn't really the case. You see, if you have been with the same guy or gal for fifteen years and that other person suddenly gets sick and ends up in the hospital, it is entirely likely you could end up without having a say in what your significant other does for treatment.

There are other concerns as well. There are those who feel it is their right to decide what your morality should be. They actually feel it is the government's role to determine what is moral and what isn't. Rather than just providing some basic safety and infrastructure for its people, they feel that the government should legalize what a marriage is. They feel that they can regulate love.

Now, as for me, I tend to believe that "love" as most folks want to define it, doesn't actually exist. I have come to the belief that the world is spinning in an endless void and we have devised this mooshy-gooshy thing called love in order to try and provide meaning to what is essentially spinning in an endless void. That's me, however, and that is what I choose to believe.

At the same time, if you believe that love and marriage can only be defined by a man and a woman as a couple, then that is your right. However, I don't think you should FORCE that belief on me via laws and rules and constitutional amendments. I think that you should take care of those beliefs within the confines of your own home.

Meanwhile, I also firmly believe that if you truly feel that allowing two men or two women to marry will somehow affect your own opposite-sex marriage then you have problems. Just because two guys are living together and loving each other, how does that affect your marriage to your wife or husband? If your own marriage is that shaky, well, then nothing the government does is going to save it. You need to take a very long, hard look at your own beliefs, your own marriage and your own life to figure out why you feel so threatened by the idea of two people of the same sex being married.

I believe in people. I think people need to determine their own lives and their own beliefs. I think people should be allowed to choose who they want to live with and sleep with and love. I think that people are the best judge of what they need to do with their own lives and that governments and people who think they know what's good for everyone should leave everyone else alone. People need to stay out of each other's hearts and out of each other's bedrooms.

One thing is for sure, when it comes to the most basic and fundamental things a government should be doing, they routinely show to be less than competent. Your average person's love life is a mess already. If you let a big lumbering government in on the whole love thing, well, things are only going to get worse.

Hearts are not big enough for governments and constitutions. A heart needs to choose its own path, love who it wants to love, and take care of its own. It certainly doesn't need a congress telling it which way to move. Congress needs to figure out how to handle those fundamentals first.