Father, Help Your Daughter!

I love Margaret Cho!
(in an open letter to Gov. Schwarzenegger)

"...you cannot stop people from loving each other. What is going on is beautiful. Don't you think that it will be peaceful and joyous if you just let it be? What are you protecting us from? Heterosexuality? Homosexuality? Bigotry? Prejudice? Homophobia? Heterophobia? Flying bouquets of flowers? Rice thrown about willy nilly? The song "Here Comes the Bride" changing to "Here Comes Gay Pride?" What affect does this have on you, other than that it inflames your own prejudice and beliefs that gays and lesbians should not have the same rights as all other Americans?.......Yet the weight of the state just kind of rolls off your big shoulders, because I haven't seen you do anything except agree with the right wing conservatives who have nothing to gain in the war for same sex marriage except the satisfaction of knowing that they can control the citizens of our nation and impede their freedom. Is it that immoral to you that there is love between consenting adults which has nothing to do with bigamy, bestiality, incest or any of the other perversions the theocrats love to fantasize about - that will defy the status quo? Are you really afraid that this will open the floodgates of faggotry in the USA? Suddenly, the state will start to resemble Berlin in the early '30s? It will be the Weimar Republic all over again, and we might - God forbid - experience a renaissance of art and culture and tolerance. Can I play Sally Bowles? Perhaps the idyll didn't last for them, but it wasn't because there was a 'religious right' there to stop the 'madness' of freedom and acceptance, it was Hitler. But I don't have to tell you about that, do I? You know a lot about him. A little more than most people do, I would say. But I am not here to judge your role models. It just concerns me when you try to emulate them. He really hated homosexuals...."

(In a letter to everyone)

Step up
"Step up your game. No matter who you are or what you feel about homosexuality. If you are gay, lesbian, transgendered, bisexual, bi-curious, metrosexual, heterosexual, celibate, hermaphrodite, a satyr, a succubus, a fucking human being - and especially if you are a fucking human being, and really want to live in a country where all people are equal - not separate, not 'civil-unionized,' not lied to about your rights - realize that same sex marriage will not harm you. It will not make gay people more 'gay.' It will not make you gay unless you already are. It will not make your children gay, unless they are anyway. It will not change your life in the least, unless you are gay and want to marry your partner. Then it will transform your life, because it will change your status from second class citizen to first, where we should be.

If we are not absolutely strident, insistent, unflinching about lifting the ban on same sex marriage, if we settle on our presidential hopefuls fence sitting position of 'civil union,' then we might as well forfeit the Constitution, cross out all the Amendments, knock down the Statue of Liberty (it was a gift from France anyway - those peace lovers - who needs 'em?), reverse Roe vs. Wade, pretend Stonewall never happened, reinstate Prohibition, not let women vote, derail the Underground Railroad, bring back slavery, take out all the tea bags from the Boston harbors, give Patrick Henry death instead of liberty, because he's fucking dead now anyway, knock Paul Revere off the horse, realize that George Washington lied, albeit posthumously, besides, all those dudes had slaves anyway, get back on the Mayflower and go back to England. The only problem would be trying to bring the native Americans back to life and restore their nations that we so cavalierly destroyed in our own pursuit of religious 'freedom.'

Without the reality of same sex marriage, there is no freedom. This is not an argument about homosexuality, God, what is in the Bible, what is in your moral value system or what you feel is ethical. It is a no-argument zone. No spins here, not in the least. It is about upholding the idea that we are the representation of freedom in the world. That to be an American is to be free. Unless we have same sex marriage legalized and recognized by every state, then we are not free. We are hypocrites, for we are allowing a certain group of our population freedoms while denying others those same rights. It is discrimination and that is that. If the theocrats successfully ban same sex marriage, then what is next? What rights go up in front of the unjust jury then?..."