This is not "an issue." This is our lives.

I was thinking about a scene from "Milk" today. It's Harvey Milk's 48th birthday party, and he's been hit in the face with a pie, congratulated, sung to, and kissed by his ex-lover and love of his life, Scott Smith.

And then fellow supervisor Dan White shows up, drunk, and starts rambling about how Harvey is out-gunning him on the board of supervisors because he has "an issue."

"It's not an issue," Harvey tells him. "This is our lives."

Barack Obama may defend his choice of Rick Warren to pray at his inauguration by saying yeah, sure, Rick and I disagree on some issues but I'm all about the reaching out. But it's bullshit, because recognizing the fundamental equality of your fellow citizens is not "an issue." It's our lives, our rights, our standing before the law, our place in this country.

Being a lesbian isn't something I do; it's who I am.

Of course I get that the Christian extremists on the right say they don't think being gay is an orientation, but a behavior. And not just behavior, but SINFUL behavior.

Wow. Newsflash: the religious right is lying and trying to frame their debate in their own terms.  Who'd have ever thunk it?

They can say it until their faces turn blue, but being gay is not a behavior. And it's not a choice, but even if it were, we protect another choice under the law in this country: religion. Being a lesbian is a fundamental part of my identity as a person, just like little Rickie Warren's Christianity is a part of his. I don't share his religion, he doesn't share my sexual orientation, but this is America, dude. Suck it up and deal.

Of course, they won't. Instead they're all whining about being persecuted for belonging to, you know, the majority faith. And even though I've never lifted a finger to take that right away from them, they lift mountains to take my rights away from me. And when I object, they come whine how I'm oppressing them. It's pathetic.

And then there's the fact that they're the "small government" people. They don't think government should feed the hungry or house the homeless or educate the children or treat the sick, but it should be all over who we marry and love. It's no more Rick Warren's business to tell me who the government should allow me to marry than mine to tell him he has no right to be a right wing wack job fundamentalist extremist Christian.

And this isn't even about marriage equality, which even Obama, due to his wack job left wing Christian religion, doesn't support. It's about Warren equating being gay with incest, pedophilia, and eating peanut butter. (No, I'm not making that up.) It's about supporting the use of isolation, electric shock, and other cruel brainwashing techniques to "change" the sexual orientation of gay people, including youth. Which is wrong no matter what, but given that not one reputable study shows that it even works makes it nothing but punishment.

But I'm not joining the tiresome left wing OMG HE'S BETRAYING US chorus about Obama and whatever he's been doing since elected, which frankly I haven't paid a huge amount of attention to. I have other things on my plate right now. My feelings about Barack haven't changed, because I didn't vote for him because of his stand on my rights. He always sucked on those. All viable Democratic presidential candidates sucked on those. Bill Clinton did, Hillary Clinton did, John Kerry did, Al Gore did (although I believe he's seen the light now), John Edwards did.

But I'm not a single issue voter. I will always vote for the Democrat over the Republican because I don't want to live in the mean-spirited, vindictive country the Republicans want to create. And even though I've never had a candidate who stood up for my equality, at least the Democrats campaigned to repeal DOMA and DADT. The Republican platform, on the other hand, embraced not only those laws, but a constitutional amendment to deny us our equality under federal marriage laws.

Nah, I'm just ranting about how sick and tired I am of being dismissed as an "issue" when I'm a citizen and a human being. I'm tired of the left and the right both suggesting that lesbians and gay men aren't beaten up and fired enough to deserve being seen as fighting for our civil rights.

I'm sick, too, of the fucking wack job right wing assholes and Republican apologists who all have Google alerts on "marriage equality" coming over here and telling me I'm evil. I don't care what your totally imaginary "god" tells you; I don't care what's in your "holy book." Think what you want, use whatever religious mumbo-jumbo you want to justify your own bigotry. You just don't get to do it on my blog. Your comments will go off into blog oblivion the minute you make them -- although I may copy and re-post the best ones so we can all laugh at them.

Awww poor babies, do you feel all oppressed now?

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[Travis]

Word.