dusting off the soap box

Wow, for almost 20 yrs I have been done with ranting about Gay rights. Being gay is just one aspect of me after all. When I was younger I was much more in your face about the whole thing, it was THE identifying label I wore. If you didn't like it you could go to hell, you could certainly remove yourself from my life - which I told my family. As I got older it became less of an issue. It was like being white, or brown haired, or Californian - all things I was born with. Every year things seemed to get more accepting. Plus, my circle of friends was more varied and no one had an issue, gay or straight.

The HUGE issue of gay marriage came along, and truthfully I have never been a follower of organized religion, so if some church doesn't want to recognize a gay marriage then that's fine with me. If I decide to join a church, I'll join one that has an accepting - truly Christian or truly inclusive - philosophy. I do, however, think it is important to be afforded the same civil rights as the other taxpayers in my country. I do not think the government has any business pushing the religious values of any one group on to the citizenry of the whole country.

I may even take that a step beyond equal rights for gays though. Personally, I think that even people that do not form a sexual relationship can form a lifelong intimate relationship. Those people, regardless of gender make up, should be allowed to claim domestic partnership as tax payers sharing a household and domestic responsibilities. But I digress...

The reason I am writing today is because I just read an article Nigerian President Backs African Bishops that states, when discussing the concept of gay-marriage:
"Such tendencies are clearly unbiblical, unnatural and definitely un-African," Obasanjo said Wednesday. Obasanjo, who describes himself as a born-again Christian, is a Baptist.

I am so tired of people preaching to us about how our "choice" is unnatural. I no more chose to be gay then I did to be white, or female, or have brown eyes. I was born this way. Some people are born "straight" and we sure don't have any issue or global debates over that being unnatural. (I won't go into unbiblical because my personal opinion is that if there is a God, his word has been corrupted by the human, mostly male, interpretation of it. It doesn't exist in a pure form, no matter how much they wave/shake a bible at me.) Who made straight "normal" and gay "unnatural"?

I heard someone on the radio the other day try to actually meld the theories of creation and evolution to their own ends in an argument against gays. In the end it obviously was based on religion and not fact. It went something like this... Gays are unnatural because they serve no purpose in evolution. Male and female have the sole purpose of procreation, so if gays aren't driven by the need to procreate, they offer nothing to evolution therefore must be unnatural. The glaring flaw for me in that argument is that, well actually there are many:
1. not procreating is part of population control, a NATURAL form of checks and balances - more should try it but that's just my opinion
2. Many gays DO procreate, one has nothing to do with the other really
3. many primates participate in homosexual activity, not just humans
4. many "straights" are unable to procreate - at least until science caught up and they don't seem to have an issue with this "unnatural" form of procreation. If God had meant them to procreate, wouldn't he have made them fertile? Aren't they messing with Gods master design? Why is it that they only spout scripture when it's to their advantage?
5. Many "straights" choose not to procreate either because of political reasons, a lack of maternal/paternal instinct, or from a desire to not pass on a genetic "flaw" that they think might be harmful to future generations.

And what about that line "and definitely un-African,"? What in the hell does that mean? Africa is a continent, a country, a race of people, a culture, just where in all of those various entities do you get to speak for the whole of X? As an American I say it is definitely un-American to ... have green eyes. Oops, sorry, you are unnatural because all people should have BROWN eyes, like me. I am American, and I am natural (not really cause I'm gay, we're just illustrating a point) therefore I speak for and represent ALL Americans - and all Americans are JUST LIKE ME! Except they aren't.

Whether you believe in God or not you should at least be able to give the credit where credit is due, and it's not with you. Either Nature made ALL of us, or GOD made all of us. But either way, You are not the boss of Me!

I feel better now.