This is just a little thing I wrote today. I'm probably going to send it later tonight.
Dear Senator Obama
I am a 16 year old guy from North Carolina. I have really been inspired by your candidacy and would vote for you if I could. However, I take issue with one of your positions. I find it appalling that you believe that separate but equal is an acceptable position on gay marriage. I am gay, and I just don’t understand why you don’t think I should have the right to marry someone I fall in love with.
Before I looked up your position on gay marriage online, I was sure you would be all for it. After all, you’re the product of another type of marriage that was illegal for a long time. Interracial marriage was only made universally legal, in Loving v. Virginia, in 1967-six years after your parents married.
However, on ontheissues.org, it says that you believe that “marriage is between a man and a woman,” but you believe that civil unions are a way to protect gay rights.
Senator Obama, the United States has rejected the argument that separate institutions for minorities are a good idea for nigh on 50 years, since a group of concerned parents from Topeka, Kansas and around the country went before the highest court in the land and asked for their children not to be treated like second-class citizens. The high court said that, whether or not the schools were equal, which they were not, the very fact that black children were kept away from whites was damaging to their psyches. Just as then, the very fact that there exist two institutions, one for the majority, another for the minority, is damaging to the minority. This is especially true now, since there are over 1000 rights that the federal government denies to same-sex couples.
Marriage does not, nor will it ever, be the same thing as a civil union. In 1996, there were 1049 rights denied by the federal government to non-married couples. Even if I were to be given the rights society currently denies me, I must still be reminded, at every step of the way, that the rest of society has decided that I am not worthy of the ceremony they use to declare their love for each other, that my love is inferior and must be separated from society.
You also believe that the states should decide the issue for themselves. Do you believe that the Supreme Court should have let the states decide the segregation issue individually? Senator Obama, I live in the South. You live in Chicago. Schools in Chicago would have eventually integrated, but the South? The land of “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever?” When would they have integrated? When do you think I’d get to marry if we left it up to the states? 2040? 2050? Ever?
Senator, you said that you don’t believe that marriage is a right, but that equality is. What do you call a separate legal status for some citizens, if not inequality? What do you call “a special place for the union of a man and a woman,” (a direct quote from you) if not inequality for the rest of us? Why is marriage included in the International Declaration of Human Rights, if it’s not a right?
I appreciate that you think that there are bigger battles to be fought right now for gay civil rights. Well, we disagree. And we’re the ones who need the rights, so please; let us run our own campaign. This is where the Right is attacking us, so this is where we are fighting back.
Senator Obama, I will support you whether or not you will acknowledge that I deserve the all the rights of a human being, but it would mean a lot to me if you would.