What marriage debate is really about
SIX OF THE 12 people our children call "aunt" or "uncle" are gay. We share our lives with these people. We celebrate the holidays, trade off baby-sitting, walk each other's dogs, and bury our dead with these people. The three gay couples in our family have been with their partners for all of the nearly two decades of our children's existence. These couples have college degrees and great jobs. They own nice houses, pay high taxes, make donations, and volunteer for good causes. They always vote. We have read the arguments in favor of outlawing gay marriage. We have tried to understand the reasoning of clergy and conservatives as it applies to our family. The best we can figure is that those arguments support maintaining the family as the basic unit of society. The contention is that our society cannot continue and our government cannot endure without the basic heterosexual family unit intact. However, our family has remained intact. Millions of other families have had the same experience. Still millions of others have been fractured and sundered, even though heterosexual couples started them with the most sincere intentions.
