In November of 2009, Rhode Island made national headlines in one of the few ways that it often does — as a mockery to the masses.
State Governor Donald L. Carcieri (for whom I have previously interned, in the interest of full disclosure) vetoed state legislation that would have added domestic partners to the list of people who can legally make arrangements for a deceased person’s funeral. His rationale was that passing such legislation would begin the gradual process of granting same-sex couples equal rights as married heterosexual couples.
That said, it is hard to fathom a more absent-minded obstruction to equal rights in modern America so rudimentary and cruel as to prohibit an American citizen access to the body of his or her deceased loved one because of one’s God-given, not willfully chosen, sexuality.
While Governor Carcieri has already slightly backtracked on the legislation’s veto, the basis for his actions could be described as a very poor attempt by Rhode Island’s “lone ranger” Republican to fulfill a failing component of the national conservative agenda — same-sex marriage.
A Most Simple Case for Same-Sex Marriage
And so on this day of days (coincidentally, National Adoption Day in the United States), I present A Most Simple Case for Same-Sex Marriage in spite of my typically conservative political affiliations, for the sake of what should be a rudimentary American obligation: standing up for those who seek equality through recognition of Love, if only for the sake of America’s children.
We have upon us a surplus of adult men and women desiring children, who, wed, exemplify and embody a surplus of Love, and will do good in adopting, loving, caring for and raising a surplus of orphaned, abandoned, and adoptable children who so desperately need and deserve it, and who exist largely in part due to a surplus of irresponsible heterosexual men and women who do not deserve to procreate, let alone who possess the simple capacity to best raise, children.
As being a heterosexual does not necessarily facilitate capacity for or exemplary ability to aptly raise children, then conversely being a homosexual does not prohibit or deny the ability to raise children. A most simple case for same-sex marriage is in the interest of providing as many children as possible with supportive and loving families that can best enable them to live fulfilling lives.
This advancement of equal rights for equal American citizens is being hampered only by stagnant feet that drag in fear and hesitation of what uncertainty lays beyond. But when equality undoubtedly advances toward this equal right — as it always does, if only with time, in a pioneering, free and progressive society such as America — in as little as furthering the sanctity of Love we shall ask ourselves, whom have we injured?
