Obama doesn't have that problem...obviously.

A couple things have converged in recent history to bring me to this post. Most recently I discovered that today marks Lisa Simpson's wedding day. Pretty exciting, huh? Yes, I think so, also. Furthermore, I have found myself discussing marriage a lot with friends, so this is the gay marriage post. Turn back if you don't care to hear my opinion of gay marriage, as a repentant-gay Catholic.

Still here? Alright, you asked for it. Here's how it all begins: I am Catholic. I am gay. I struggle with that dichotomy all the time. It was through a lot of prayer that I came to the realization that I was made the way that I am and that I have no choice but to be homosexual. I am called to be the love of somebody's life. I am called to be a parent - I want one boy and one girl. But, as a man of faith, I believe that marriage is a sacred union between a man and a woman. The doctrine of marriage has evolved from a Judeo-Christian background and is now backed by the power of law. So I will never be the person to rail against religion for not letting me marry the man of my dreams in a church.

Here's where it gets tricky. As a man studying the law, I have learned that a marriage is a legal union between two people (a man and a woman in most states) that classifies their relationship for purposes of insurance, survivorship rights, spousal immunity, etc. Legally, everyone has the right to marry whomever they please, so long as they are of opposing sexes (with certain exceptions) and they are consenting adults.

Ready for the paradox? I am against gay marriage but I am pro-gay marriage. As a gay man I am limited, only, by the vocable "marriage." In this post, alone, I have already given two definitions of the same word. Some people spend months planning huge wedding in grand cathedrals. Some just go to the court house and make it official. Then there are countless marriages in-between.

Separate-but-equal is a term used to describe the state of the country when it came to different races. There were white drinking fountains and black drinking fountains, white seats on buses and black seats on buses. The struggles of minorities in the history of our country have been long and hard, and to a certain extent they continue today. There remains bigotry in hiring processes, a supposed need for affirmative action in scholarship, and racial profiling under the umbrella of 'public safety'. I don't want to draw too large a comparison between the vast struggles of African Americans in the mid-1900s and what is happening to the gay community now, but there is an analogy there that I am willing to illustrate. Many people, hoping to find a way out of a very large can of worms, advocate for "domestic partnership." They tell you that being a domestic partner is sufficiently similar to marriage, legally. You get partnership rights, insurance benefits, etc. But there is one huge problem: you aren't married.

Domestic partnerships are our own brand of separate-but-equal. Sure, the black drinking fountain still had water in it, but it wasn't equal. Sure, the back of the bus got you there as fast as the front of the bus (barring negligible travel times, for you anal-retentive physicist readers), but it wasn't equal. Equality is something we all strive for and something that the United States has prided itself on trying to provide for all her citizens. There is a fundamental problem with calling a purely legal union between people of the same sex a 'domestic partnership' but calling a purely legal union between a man and a woman a 'marriage.'

So, like I said, I am limited by the word "marriage." I don't have the right to get married in a church and I am not seeking that right. But I absolutely should have the right to the same marriage at a court house that anybody else does with the person that I love, with whom I choose to spend the rest of my life. If I could call the legal relationship anything but a marriage, I would, since the word is too easily twisted to mean any of its various definitions. It is hard to think of other words that describe separate things that are so facially similar yet fundamentally different. Whether two [heterosexual] people that are legally married care about the religious implications of their union or not, their relationship is a marriage.

They are married.

Nobody would call a man and a woman eloping at the courthouse a 'domestic partnership' so why should that be what I settle for? My civil right to marry can and should be divorced (no pun intended) from the religious doctrine of marriage. As far as I am concerned, I deserve the right to be married to the person that I choose. I don't entertain the religious aspects of marriage when I think about my rights. Not everyone can get married in a church anyway. I'm not reinventing the wheel here, but next time somebody asks you for your stance on gay 'marriage', think about the fact that a marriage isn't so easily defined. If I am to settle for a domestic partnership, then that phrase ought to describe any legal union between people, heterosexual or not, that isn't established under the auspices of a relationship with God.

Legally, I want to marry the man of my dreams (or at least the man I choose), anything less and I will remain a second-class citizen, yearning for my own pursuit of happiness, which is a fundamental right, I might add.