| It is difficult to think of an issue, the discussion of which provides a more comprehensive view of those "moral absolutes" in conflict with one another.
My respect and understanding of others has increased during the twenty-seven years of life shared with another whose sex I also share. Last year he asked would I marry him? Although I, like so many others, am not comfortable with the word "marriage" preferring "civil union", he asked for marriage and that is what I agree to. (The use of the word suggests imitation, as if one of us is "the man" and the other is "the woman".)
The discomfort with the word for us would be easy to bear considering the benefits, but I can see where a heterosexual man might have difficulty appreciating this. If people of the same sex can marry, a man who answers in the affirmative when asked if he is married, may then suffer the embarrassment of being asked the next question: "To a man or a woman?" Such embarrassment could cause the sufferer great resentment toward those of us who seem to be imitating real marriage.
The love is real. The marriages now taking place in San Francisco may, amid all the fuss, put that fact in focus. |