Apparently we need to have a talk about gay people.

Well, America, we’re finally here. President Obama has declared war on marriage. Or, as some ‘liberals’ like to call it, endorsed marriage equality. The nerve on those guys! Coming a day after the patriotic North Carolinians voted to include a constitutional amendment banning gay marriages in their state, we are shown again how out of touch Obama is with religious, red-blooded Americans and is furthering his own gay, socialist, Muslim agenda.

(Note to self, sarcasm is not the most effective blogging tool)

A USA TODAY poll indicates that 51% of Americans agree with the president’s decision, compared to 45% opposed. With the addition of North Carolina, 31 states now have constitutional bans on gay marriage. Let me say it again: thirty-one states have now codified discrimination into their constitutions. Nearly half of Americans are content with this development.

If you happen to be one of the 45%, let me speak directly to you: your beliefs are at best ignorant or perhaps vestiges of a conservative upbringing, and at worst bigoted. This isn’t a political issue, nor a religious one, nor a hammering out of technicalities. Both sides aren’t equally right. This is effectively a civil rights issue, and just like the women’s suffrage battles of the early 20th century, just like the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, we must decide between recognizing the equality of Americans or legitimizing the discrimination of them. Pick your side.

But why can’t LGBT just have civil unions? They’re basically the same!

They’re not. Not when the American government finds distinction between the two. History also dictates that the last government attempt to set up things that were “separate but equal” didn’t turn out fantastically well. By saying to the LGBT community that they can have x but not y, you effectively make them second-class citizens.

But Leviticus 18:22!

Now we get into the most frustrating and most common defense of the anti-LGBT crowd: religion. Luckily, in matters of law, we refer to the constitution, and not the Bible. Had we adopted the Bible instead, we could still own slaves (Leviticus 25:44), and perhaps buy them in exchange for selling our daughters into slavery (Exodus 21:7). There are plenty of morally horrific acts that are justified in the Bible, which is why rational folk derive their morality from other sources; perhaps ones found a few chapters later in the same book. And even if you maintain in your religiosity, you still don’t have a justification for pushing your ethical code onto everyone. Legalizing gay marriage won’t make Baptist ministers marry gay people. Religious folk have every right to their homophobia, if they so choose to maintain it, but they don’t have a right to legislate it. This is not Saudi Arabia; let’s leave the theocracy to theocrats.

But gays marrying undermines the sanctity of marriage!

Even if this were true, since when is it the federal governments job to uphold the sanctity of marriage? I’d hope our government would find that their duty to upholding equality is greater than their duty to their institutions. Furthermore, the idea that gay marriage destroys the sanctity of marriage is totally untested and unproven. The gays didn’t have any role in upping out divorce rate to 50%. That distinction falls to Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, “marriage defenders” who find themselves on their 4th and 3rd wives, respectively.

How about the notion that banning two people that love one another marry is what’s undermining the sanctity of marriage?

Get on the right side of history, America. And, if you persist in picking homophobia over equality, find a reason to do so that holds up to rational discourse. We’d love to hear it.