Zach Wahls and marriage equality.

Hello lovelies,

This. Week. Was. Awful. Seriously, I went from 8am to 3am every day. I was practically a zombie, zooming around on autopilot just trying to get everything done. Be prepared for this post - it's a gay rights rant.

Anyway, as I told you, Zach Wahls, author, entrepreneur and advocate for gay rights, came to speak at CNU. Here's a picture I took with him afterwards!

From left: My friend Jenn, Zach, and myself. (He's freakishly tall - like 6'5!)

His speech wasn't much different that his famous one in the video I linked in this post from Election Day. He framed it around different questions and reactions he frequently got when telling people for the first time that he has two moms. Questions like "Who taught you to be a man?" or "Why is the word marriage so important?"

His answer to "Why is marriage so important?" is what stood out the most. Just like in his speech before the Iowa legislature, he talks about one of his mom's battle with multiple sclerosis. One night, her pain was so intense that she had to be taken to the hospital. Though his other mom knew exactly what she needed, and though the couple were officially "partners," and though she had power of attorney, the doctors on staff wouldn't listen, and even made her wait outside. They poked and prodded for hours, doing nothing to help the poor woman's pain. (I wish I had a recording, it's so overwhelming to hear him tell it himself.)

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why the word marriage is so important. That is why FULL equality is so important. I can't imagine a loved one, especially my fiance/husband, being so critically ill, and having no right to visit in the hospital, having no right to make decisions or ask questions and receive answers. It just boggles my mind that a doctor, someone who is charged with helping people with a sense of respect and compassion, could ignore the obvious relationship these women had and treat it like it's nothing.

Despite growing up in a scarily religious family, I've been pro-gay rights as long as I can remember. It's just never made sense to me to deny some people the same beautiful and public expression of love as other people are allowed to enjoy. The "sanctity" argument especially irks me; any marriage - be it heterosexual, homosexual, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, interfaith, secular, what have you - only has as much "sanctity" as is in the hearts of the couple engaged in the relationship. Why not attack divorce as a threat to marriage, instead of homosexuals wanting to publicly (and legally) declare their love for one another?

There truly is no excuse to deny any consenting adult the right to marry whomever they choose. To say that someone else's love isn't as "good" as yours, or as "real" as yours, just because they love someone of the same gender is truly pathetic. As long as no one's being hurt, just be happy and let others be happy. Have whatever beliefs you want to have, but don't use them as a weapon to hurt others. Otherwise you end up making yourself and others like you look like a complete jackwagon. Why is this such a hard concept again?

<3. Ali