Write to Marry Day: Contributed Posts

17 thoughts on “Write to Marry Day: Contributed Posts”

1. 

   Steven at Green Dads

   October 29, 2008 at 12:06 pm

   Dana,

   I imagine we can’t be the only ones getting a negative comment on our post.

   But, check out the third commentator down on our Write to Marry post.

   I’m tempted to post his email address but I’m sure that would get me in trouble.
2. 

   Sexorcism

   October 29, 2008 at 12:51 pm

   Thanks for this wonderful opportunity to promote social equality.
3. 

   Up4Now.com

   October 29, 2008 at 1:46 pm

   The cause is just, the fight is right, the time is now to show we might … just win!
4. 

   Daddy Geek Boy

   October 29, 2008 at 3:16 pm

   Steven… That commentator has hit me also. I’d venture to guess that he’s working his way down the list, posting the same thing on each site. It seems well written, but is as filled with holes as most of the arguments against this issue tend to be. He doesn’t seem to be continuing to lurk or is around to actually discuss or debate.
5. 

   Kevin Hoffman

   October 29, 2008 at 3:46 pm

   Please help defeat California ’s Prop 8.

   On Oct 1, 2008 my life partner Jesse Gonzalez and I were able to do in California what we could not do here in Texas . We are very happy to announce that after spending 20th year together as life partners we were married in San Francisco , CA . We fully understand that we still will not enjoy any of the benefits of our marriage here in Texas , but it is a start to help tear down another wall that we in the GLBT community face.

   “ California ’s Prop 8 would eliminate equal protections and put discrimination into California’s state constitution”

   There are forces in this great country of ours that believe that GLBT persons should not enjoy the same rights and protections under the law that they themselves enjoy. Jesse and I strongly believe that all laws should treat everyone equally. It is with that thought in mind that we ask you to help use defeat the California’s Prop 8 ballot measure. Please make a donation today.

   Your donation will help our GLBT Brothers and Sisters who one day may wish to marry the person that they love. Help is also needed to help defeat Florida ’s Amendment 2. Both of these ballot measures seek to ban gay marriages by changing these state Constitutions. The Florida Amendment would also ban Civil Unions and Domestic Partnership benefits for gay and lesbian couples in that state.

   We may live in Texas but we can help tear down walls and stop new walls of discrimination from being built in this great nation.

   Please make your donations today to defeat the California ballot measure at:

   NO to Prop 8 http://www.noonprop8.com

   Last, if you know people that live in California and or Florida please call them and ask that they VOTE NO on these ballot measures.

   Thank you for supporting equal protection for all.

   Kevin J Hoffman
6. 

   Drew Tatusko

   October 29, 2008 at 9:45 pm

   Prop 8 and FL’s Amend. 2 are clear cases to reinforce taxation without representation. It is unjust and all arguments to the contrary are religious dogma or the most hollow figures of straw.

   It’s time to end this charade and fight for equal regard for all US citizens. Jesus said the meek shall inherit the earth, not the religiously pompous. Those in The Call on Saturday in San Diego will be praying to take back America for God. I am just not sure they are praying to the same God I pray to who feeds the poor, nurtures the sick, preaches hope, and disturbs a system that is drenched in its own self-serving delusion.
7. 

   emptywheel

   October 29, 2008 at 11:56 pm

   Defeat Mormon Hate: Defeat Prop 8
   http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2008/10/29/defeat-mormon-hate-defeat-prop-8/

   I moved from San Francisco to Salt Lake City in 1993.

   I was generally well-prepared for the cultural adjustment. My best friend from high school is Mormon and through her I had learned about LDS culture and its attraction for people who want a tight-knit nurturing religion. From living in in-land San Diego I knew how to get those trying to convert me to stop, quickly and definitively. And I quickly learned that, in Utah, the mountains were gloriously uncrowded on Sundays. For the most part, SLC was a gorgeous city where I could afford a house.

   My biggest problem was the way Mormons treated gays.

   For the year before my move, I had been the only “out” straight girl on a Bay Area woman’s rugby team. It was an instructive experience for me, having to come out as straight, having to prove to the women on my team I’d do things with them–like share a hotel bed–I would do with guy friends I trusted, having to beat down silly stereotypes they had of heteros (“oh, I didn’t think straight people had monogamous relationships!”). I was definitely an oddball on the team–for many of them, the team was their main social circle, and several of them were dating women on the team or on rival teams. I had an entirely separate social life and I spent much less time with the team than my teammates.

   That spring, my Dad was dying. Rather than go to tournaments with the team on weekends, I was flying to AZ to spend time with my parents. Though I tried to make it to practice during the week to blow off steam, my mind wasn’t really with the team. Which is why it was so meaningful to me that the team made it clear to me that, even though I was gone most of the time, even though I was an oddball straight girl, I was still part of the team. I remember one morning, stopping by the apartment between the airport and work, finding a bouquet of flowers from the other backs on the team. I had a lot of other support from closer friends at the time, but that gesture meant so much to me because it reassured me that my extended community remained strong, that even a community where I was an outsider was reaching out.

   When people said anti-gay things in my presence in UT, I’d explain to them how loving my rugby team was, even for me, an outsider. I don’t think I convinced them, but I think describing a community in terms of its love, its support, its generosity–all traits Mormons rightly cherish about their own community–at least meant they couldn’t respond, they just had to accept it.

   Not long after I moved to UT, a woman in my department in her early 20s got divorced, a rare thing for a Mormon woman. She had learned her husband was gay when he revealed to her he had been exposed to HIV during a relationship with a man in AZ. She went twice, utterly alone, to be tested herself. When she told me about it afterward she still seemed ashamed, scared. I think I was the one person she knew who had known people living with HIV.

   The worst thing, though, was that (perhaps predictably) they blamed her. It was because of her inadequacies as a woman and a wife, the former mother-in-law said, that her husband had slept with other men. And every time I saw the amazing generosity and community that Mormons are capable of (I’m thinking, in particular, of the funeral of another co-worker’s mother out by Dugway), I thought of how they had failed two of their own when they were having a crisis.

   It’s through that lens that I see the fight over the right to marry in California. I always knew that Mormons had no monopoly on caring–that gay men and women are every bit as loving as the incredibly warm community of Mormons. For that reason alone, they should be able to get married. But at least in my own personal experience, my gay team mates were the ones to extend themselves to others, not the Mormons I knew. And when it counted–and when it pertained to one gay man and his unfortunate former wife–the Mormon community was even willing to fail one of its own to make their hateful stance.

   The opposition to Proposition 8 in California is largely funded by Mormons, claiming that their own loving relations and their lifestyle will be threatened by other humans entering into legally sanctioned loving relations. That offends me, and reminds me of how angry I was at Mormon hate 15 years ago when I moved to UT.

   Don’t let that hateful stance win now. Donate to defeat Prop 8.
8. 

   TomChicago

   October 30, 2008 at 8:12 am

   All the Mormon meddling and money in the world will not change the fact that enhancing marriage–by enabling those who want it to be able to have it–will do absolutely nothing to diminish the nuptial integrity of anybody else. To repeat a (by now) tired observation: it would seem that the shabby statistics on matrimonial longevity that obtain today could use a little boost from those who deliberately and in a committed way seek out the married state.
9. 

   Jesse Archer

   October 30, 2008 at 9:06 am

   Hi Guys, thanks for your hard work. I wrote a post about it here:

   http://jesseonthebrink.blogspot.com/2008/10/write-to-marry.html
10. 

    Robin Reagler

    October 30, 2008 at 3:48 pm

    400 posts… awesome! Congratulations!
11. 

    GiraffeOnAStick

    October 30, 2008 at 6:04 pm

    Late as ever (and I can’t use the time difference as an excuse), I too have rambled.

    Link: http://giraffeonastick.com/blog/?p=57
12. 

    Robin

    October 31, 2008 at 2:43 pm

    I have written three posts in the last two days in opposition to Prop 8 before I even knew about your awesome effort. Here are the links:

    http://grommitblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/yes-on-prop-8-mice-have-been-here.html

    http://grommitblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/is-political-sign-vandalism-answer.html

    http://grommitblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/another-yes-on-8-flier-has-arrived.html
13. 

    Gianpiero Doebler/Doug Bernard

    October 31, 2008 at 3:29 pm

    We have posted our story on our site and sent a shorter version as a link to everyone we know. It is important for voters to understand that they they are not voting on an abstract issue, but something that affects a very large number of real families.

    http://www.doebler.us

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16. 

    Patricia

    February 5, 2009 at 4:13 am

    I loved the post no. 73 – “I LOVE Z-:):) God made me gay because he didn’t have any other option!” Thanks to Dana for sharing 400 post links. Great job.l

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