I used to think that the gay marriage issue didn’t belong to me. It wasn’t my fight, I’m straight. I used to think that it didn’t matter if it was called a civil union or marriage. To me, it was all semantics. I privately thought that the citizenry was probably doing gays a favor by not allowing them to marry. Don’t more than 50% of marriages end in divorce now, anyway?

Then Proposition 8 was put on the ballot in California in a year where I was paying attention to politics closely. Earlier in the year, the California Supreme Court overturned California’s ban on same-sex marriage citing that the state’s Constitution protects the fundamental right to marry. Afterwords, thousands of same sex couples married. Then in November, the California electorate stripped that “right” away by changing the state’s Constitution to say that marriage is between a “man and a woman”. And then last week, the same Court that affirmed gays’ right to marry only a year earlier, upheld the same sex marriage ban imposed by Proposition 8, stripping their rights away.

Now, some will say that same-sex couples in California shouldn’t complain because they still have the right to civil unions. It is equal to marriage. The problem is that civil unions only protect same sex couples under the law in the event of a death. In other words, if one partner were to die, then the law protects them in property rights and in the receipt of insurance benefits. Same sex couples aren’t afforded about 1400 legal rights that are given to married couples. That may be separate, but it is not even close to being equal. Gay marriage should be legal and recognized–not just in California, but by all 50 states and the federal government.

I know that the majority of Americans don’t agree with me. A recent Quinnipac poll showed that 55% of Americans oppose same sex marriage in their states. But I find it odd that the majority of Americans think that same sex couples should get social security death benefits if their partner’s die, should be allowed to openly serve in the military, and should be allowed to adopt. Also, it surprised me that a majority of Americans disagree with the notion that same-sex marriage is a threat to traditional marriage. So what’s the beef with allowing them to marry, then? I don’t get it.

To me, it seems that the people are opposed to same sex marriage just to oppose it. To disallow one group of consenting adults the right to marry is discrimination. That is just wrong.

This post is more to convince myself than you, so just humor me ok?

My son has been consistently slacking off this year at school, making sure his grades are barely passing, if we’re lucky enough for that at all. Since March the boy has only been allowed outside sparingly on the rare instance that all his grades are passing or a milestone was accomplished. When we found out he passed the TAKS test was one such occasion.

However, despite the rule in our house being “Failing grades = no outside/freedom/tv/fun” this child is unfazed. I vowed to him over a week ago that if he didn’t pass all of his classes at the end of the year he would be grounded the entire summer and have to do manual labor around the house, such as scrubbing baseboards, cleaning cabinet doors, and other tasks I can think of that are completely unnecessary and totally obnoxious so maybe we won’t repeat this lazy attitude towards school next year. He’s on track to fail one class for the entire year I’m sure of, but Social Studies, Science and Language Arts are all failing grades for the final six weeks of this school year. But as the summer for him draws closer (next week) the more I feel bad about having to take away his summer in this way.

I always keep my promises though and that is something I’ve been very diligent about throughout my son’s life so the poor child is going to find out what life is like for those that don’t try hard enough to succeed. Manual labor, doing a job he does not like or want to do.

It’s so hard to be consistent when you really don’t want to exact the punishment you promised in anger.

Any suggestions?