[Durham INC] Support the marriage amendment

[Melissa Rooney]

 With all due respect, I don't think it matters a whit with regard to the marriage-legalization issue whether or not homosexuality is a choice or a genetic predisposition. 

If two people want to marry in order to commit to a partnership in which they will both take responsibility for the other, then they should have the right to do so.

If I wanted to legally marry my best same-sex friend via a completely platonic union for the sole reason of legally committing to share our resources, our benefits and our family (families), not to mention to benefit from estate planning, etc., I should be able to do this. Why should it be a requirement that my partner be a man in order for me to benefit from the legal advantages that accompany marriage?

For that matter, if I am a woman whose biological clock is showing signs of slowing, I desperately want children, and  I am convinced that I will never find a man with whom to marry and have a family, why should I not be able to have a legal commitment with my best female friend, who also has never found 'Mr. Right' so that we can either adopt a child or have one via artificial insemination and share the responsibility and the love? Should I be required to be a single parent or enter, worse, to enter into a loveless marriage (perhaps even one that may be abusive) with a man in order to have the option of having a partner with whom to raise my children? Regardless of their genders, two parents who truly love a child can only be twice as beneficial to that child.

In terms of government oversight, marriage is a legal contract. In the name of separation of church and state, it must not be viewed as anything but this. What people do behind the walls of their own home is none of our government's business, as long as it is consensual and their actions aren't harming anyone else.

If a husband and wife want to be swingers and share their bodies with other consenting people, they are still allowed to be legally married. This should offend 'conservative' Christian values as much as homosexuality, but we aren't demanding that swingers be denied their right to commit to a legally binding union.

Separation of church and state. That is what is at stake here, IMHO.

Melissa (Rooney)
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