I don't sign a lot of petitions...

I had to sign this one.

Online Petition Opposing the Federal Marriage Amendment, which seeks to add the following two sentences to our Consitution:

'Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman.'

'Neither this Constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.'

My signature: 551022 Eilir Rowan (Lexington, KY)
My comment: This proposed amendment flies in the face of the civil liberties our Founding Fathers fought for. If this proposal sought to declare marriage to be valid only if both partners were of the same race, there would be a huge public outcry against its absurdity. Someday, I hope, the majority of Americans will see this as equally ludricous and damaging. Love cannot be legislated, and love between two individuals who in all other ways are able to enter a contract (i.e., of legal age, etc.) should be recognised if the couple chooses to show that commitment to one another through marriage.

I've never understood why some people feel threatened by the idea of two people of the same sex loving one another. Marriage has no need to be defended from any sort of 'homosexual agenda'. Most gays would love to be able to marry the people they love. I remember someone I knew who lost his partner of twenty years to a heart attack. It struck me that it was so ridiculous that I was married to someone I didn't love (and gay, incidentally, but male) for only nine months (yeah, it took getting married at the end of six years to really realise I was being stupid), and people would consider that a marriage, but Jim and his lover were never considered a 'real' couple by the world in general. Bah. Why do people feel so threatened by this? I just can't understand that mentality. It's the twenty-first century. Isn't it time for people to be treated according to who they are rather than what they are?