Why God Gave Gays Guns

I once heard a saying that went something like this: "Every minority must have its time under the gun."

Excuse me?

In order to claim any sort of validity, every minority must first be shunned, repressed, oppressed, and downtrodden?

I want to believe it isn't so, but then I look at the world we live in. Suddenly, I realize, the above statement is not the way things should be; it is the way things have to be.

Of course, there will always be that certain group of people that refuses to treat one minority or another as real people. But this is the time when the light is shown most directly on the following letters: G (Gay) L (Lesbian) B (Bisexual) T (Transgender) Q (Questioning) A (straight-Ally) I (Intersex; what, in the older world, would have been called the politically incorrect term "hermaphrodite").

People want to believe that America is behind in its treatment of GLBTQAI people, but in actuality, we are relatively far ahead. In some countries, there is no law protecting these people from murder. Yes, it really bites that the idea of gay marriage is frowned upon in this country, but at least there are legal safeguards (ineffective though they sometimes are) against hate crime.

Furthermore, an oncoming host of national crises seem to have prevented American politicians from giving this civil-rights debacle (on the international stage as well) the attention it deserves. Today, we are so worried about our financial crisis and the war in Iraq that it is just no longer a priority.

But basic human rights here and across the globe should be a priority. First, we need to encourage the growth of humanitarian sentiment in countries where people can be lynched for kissing someone of the same sex. We need to take a look at our country's biggest practitioner of unfair, homophobic discrimination: the Armed Forces. We need to divorce puritanical religious beliefs from the just outlook of our long-forgotten constitution and realize that the federal government has no legitimate right to tell people how they cannot conduct their private, romantic lives.

We need to look to Massachusetts and California not as overly radical, but as examples of where to take the next step. I don't want my kids growing up in a world where Uncle Sam tells Uncle Jeff and Uncle Johnny that they're disgusting perverts just because they want to get married. M-a-r-r-i-e-d.

The day will come. I've said that so many times about so many things because I have to believe it. But could we make it get here a little faster?