Me On the Issues...Abortion and Gay Marriage

My mom and I were having a discussion about some of the things she's been hearing from her crazy Republican friends about the election. She forwarded a couple of their emails, on the issues of Abortion and Gay Marriage, to me, and it angered the blogger in me so much that I had no choice but to spew out the following:

Abortion is a funny issue. If you're the type of person that vehemently opposes abortion then you're not very likely to be getting one. Why not let people make their own decisions on what to do and not do with themselves?

I really don't support the initiatives that require parental consent for abortions for minors. If kids thought that they could talk to their parents about that sort of thing then they probably wouldn't be needing an abortion in the first place. It's sad, but sometimes parents are even the cause of their children's problems in this regard. If safe abortions are not available for kids in these horrible between-a-rock-and-a-hard-place type of situations, who is naive enough to believe that said child will then choose to go through with the pregnancy and consider the softer options like adoption? What kind of world do these people think we live in? Rather than making an appointment with an adoption agency these girls are going to be making an appointment with a wire coat hanger. Bad news.

I've posed this argument to people several times. I always get the question, "Well, wouldn't you want to know if your minor child was getting an abortion?" My response: I wouldn't have fostered an environment that made my child think they couldn't talk to me about something that important. I can't stand the parenting approach that thinks excessive restrictions are a suitable replacement for involvement.

Gay marriage is actually another one of my favorite issues. People talk a lot about preserving the "sanctity of marriage" by keeping the institution of marriage between a man and a woman. How crass of supposedly refined and righteous people to suggest that the sanctity of marriage hinges on a penis and a vagina rather than on the enduring love and commitment between two people.

If marriage, as it's been suggested, is such a sacred institution, then we heterosexuals should be ashamed for what we've made of it. With domestic violence and divorce rates what they are then Christians the world over should be demanding that marriage be protected from us...the straight people!

I'm very happily married and the thought of sharing the institution of marriage with homosexuals doesn't threaten me or my marriage in the slightest. The only marriage whose sanctity I'm concerned with preserving is my own. Two men or two women choosing to devote their lives to one another and marry doesn't impact my marriage, or the "sanctity" of the institution at all, though it does tread on the "sensibilities" of Conservatives. What an archaic, twisted worldview to believe that the world would be worse for having more love in it.

Legalized gay marriage: three down, forty-seven states to go.