My two cents on the matter...

I've been trying to decide if writing this was worth the waves it would inevitably make. Trying to decide if I wanted to potentially put myself at odds with the church and, most unfortunately, members of my own family. I don't like to speak up, I prefer to fade into the background and let people do their thing while I do mine. But this time, I decided that I would be doing some people who I love very much a disservice if I just stayed quiet. So I shan't. Be warned, many of you probably won't like what I'm about to say, you might want to leave now. Though if you know me at all, you likely already know where I stand.

While I am not really surprised in the least, I am ashamed of my community today. Honestly, I don't understand why in 2015 we need laws to tell us to treat other human beings like human beings...and I REALLY don't understand why anyone would fight to take such a law away. Oh, that's right, it's totally ok for you to be an ass to other people in the name of your religious freedom, but it's not ok for people to be gay. And heaven forbid those gay people expect you to treat them with the same decency that you treat straight people, that's asking too much of you! After all, you don't agree with their life style so you shouldn't be forced to treat them like other people.

Let me just start in on this whole "religious freedom" argument that I've heard. I'm really not sure what to say besides that it's utter nonsense. First of all, you do realize that by law no one can be discriminated against based on their religion, right? You can't be fired or denied housing just because you're a Christian. So why would you want to deny anyone else those same protections? Oh, right, because they're gay. How dare they! It's not your religious freedom you're afraid of losing, it's the right to be an ass and claim that it's because of your religious convictions that you're afraid of. Because if it isn't a religion issue, that would just mean that you're a crummy person who wants to treat people as less than because they're different than you. Furthermore, if this truly was a religious freedom issue (it's NOT), why should your "rights" as a Christian trump some else's as a human being? Please, do tell.

And here's another question for you: why is this what we're fighting against so hard? Why have we picked homosexuality as the sin that we want to attack? See, I've heard this scenario about how it isn't fair to expect a Christian owned bakery to bake wedding cakes for a gay wedding...but what if an unwed mother wanted to get a cake for her kid's birthday? Would people be clinging to their religious conviction then? She made a choice to have sex before marriage so shouldn't you deny her business just as you would the business of that gay couple? What about that employee that just cheated on his wife? You should probably fire him because he's making choices that you don't agree with. Read that Bible that's clutched so tightly in your hand, you'll find out that ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. That doesn't make someone else's sin worse than yours or mine.

And can we PLEASE stop saying that we "love the sinner but hate the sin" because trying to deny someone a job or a home is not loving them. Telling them that you should get to decide to treat them like you treat everyone or turn them away is not loving them. Seeing them as anything other than human beings is not loving them, because once you've lumped someone into a group that you hold preconceived notions about, that's all you see.

What this comes down to for me is the fact that human beings are human beings, point blank. That's all there is to it. To be fair, I realize that I'm hating on people for hating on other people. BUT let me assure you that I don't think you should have any rights taken from you just because you don't agree with me.

This is a subject that hits home with me so it's hard not to rage about it. Because it affects people that I love, it says that in Springfield, Missouri my cousin, great aunt, and many friends don't have the same rights as me. You see, my cousin Ashley is one of my favorite people in the whole world and I have looked up to her my whole life...she is super smart and she moved out to Boston from small town Iowa after high school to pursue her dream of becoming an architect. These days, she is indeed an architect and is also taking flying lessons and has plans to buy and renovate properties around the Boston area so she can get into the rental business. Then one day she wants to spend some time living in Europe, and I have no doubt that she'll actually do it. And in October I finally got the opportunity to meet Ashley's wife, Jamie. And you know what? She's awesome! They are amazing human beings who opened their home to me and my best friend and were more than hospitable to us.
But I saw the pain on my cousin's face when the conversation came back to our family, most of which has decided to pretend she no longer exists. It was awful. No one should have to say that their grandmother has gotten better because she actually calls on their birthday now rather than just ignoring it. And let me just tell you, if anyone ever tried to deny Ashley and Jamie jobs or housing just because they love each other, I would lose my shit.

Human beings...not a general label of "gays or homosexuals or whatever else you may come up with"...but someone's brother, sister, daughter, grandkid, son, best friend, cousin, aunt, uncle, mother, father, etc, etc.

Human beings are human beings, end of story. Let love win, guys, that's what it's all about.