First gay marriage in Iowa may happen today.

Sociologist Paul Saltzman, who studies prejudice, said of it: “Prejudice is always based on disinformation and sweeping statements that define all people according to one rule.” One of the best ways to stop this is for people to get to know gays in their lives — how present they are as 10% of the population, how they are as varied in their behavior and lives as straight people, how they are family, friends, neighbors, service people. It’s a lot harder to maintain bigotry toward someone who you interact with on a regular basis, a lot harder to declare someone you know evil.

As long as we’re talking, whether that is verbal confrontation or verbal discussion, we may get somewhere. At the least, it makes people aware that they have to share the planet/country with people whose views and lives they don’t like, rather than try to force those people to hide or stay in their own little corner.

I don’t know what side of this debate all my friends fall on, because like you say, it doesn’t come up. But yes, I do expect my friends to treat my relationship the way they would a heterosexual marriage. (Incidentally, that is *also* why my sister and I were able to get along, because she did the same, regardless of how she personally might have felt about it.) Of course I could not be friends with someone who treated my partner (or my relationship with her) with contempt. If I ever meet a Maggie Gallager-type in person, I imagine any potential friendship there will end before it has the chance to begin!!

And I really, really, did NOT mean to imply that I’m better than you in any way, shape or form.

*As an aside, I HAVE indeed lost friends merely due to being gay…but that was years ago during the initial coming out process. I’m sure most of us have had that unfortunate experience as well.

You don’t get to pick your family. You’re bound to them, like it or not, so finding some accommodation (unless they’re really so toxic that your mental or even physical health depends on excluding them from your life) is desirable.

You do get to pick your friends.

I do not think I have lost any friends with my stance on same-sex marriage and friendship. I have friends with whom I do not discuss the issue, in part because it just never comes up with them, and partly because I suspect they may feel obliged (for religious reasons) to take a position in conflict with their hearts’ dictates.

In one sense, it’s logically impossible for me to LOSE a friend to this cause, because someone who believes I should not have the same rights as a straight citizen, or who believes that my relationship is undeserving of the honor bestowed on a straight relationship, is already no friend of mine.

But I’m making a stronger statement: I have made my position abundantly clear among my friends, and never yet have I had to sever the ties of friendship with a single one. Perhaps that means I lead an insular existence, surrounded only by libruls; I don’t know. I think it means my friends are all people of empathy and compassion who have a strong sense of justice.

FWIW I disagree with Xopher’s stance that your gay friends (to the extent they are in fact your friends) are spineless for not disowning you. To the contrary, it is admirable on their part that they are willing to put up with you, to look past your ugly opposition to their right to simply be themselves and have their relationships be treated with equal dignity to ours. Hell, they are saints. I hope you appreciate that.

Along with the various other comments about maintaining friendships with anti-gay people. This made me think of a particular experience of mine. My only sibling is an older sister who has been in the rather conservative/evangelical Christian camp for a very, very long time (since she was a teenager). Me coming out and having a relationship with another woman did not go over particularly well. The “scorched earth” approach would have been for us each to write each other off, but neither of us did that. We just sort of muddled through. Even though she opposes the way I live, she treats my partner with respect, and that is the important thing.

Yes, it hurts knowing that she would most certainly vote in favor of things like Prop 8, even knowing (and loving) me.

A few years ago, after 10 years together, my partner and I hit a really bad rough patch and separated for a few months. It looked for a while like the relationship was going to end. I put off telling my family about this for a few weeks, afraid they would secretly be happy. My non-religious, but always weird-about-the-gay-thing parents were not particularly helpful during this time (they never liked my partner). My evangelical sister was incredibly supportive, and not in a “thank god you’re out of this relationship” sort of way. She actually referred to our breakup as a Divorce and she compared it to the recent divorce of one of her long-time friends.

I was terribly sad at the prospect of this relationship ending, but even so, I saw this as a tiny victory. My relationship was legitimate enough in her evangelical Christian eyes to give its ending the name “divorce.” Even with all her opposition to gay marriage (which, to be fair, I mostly assumed — we stopped talking politics long, long ago), she still DID regard my long-term relationship as a marriage, at least at its end. Yes, I realize in some ways this is a sad commentary that I found some small solace in my marriage’s recognition coming as it did at the end, but still.

Happily, my partner and I managed to resolve the issues that were causing the breakup and we got back together, and are now approaching our 13th anniversary this summer. Last summer we had talked about taking a trip to California this year and getting married even though it wouldn’t mean anything where we live, but of course Prop 8 killed that. Alas.

Anyhow, sorry for the ramble, but I did want to make the general point — I don’t think a scorched-earth policy with regard to friends and family members is a good idea. Someday, my sister may truly come around and support gay marriage…she’s given small signs of this already. Jake’s friends perhaps are not “saints” but are people who like him for other reasons, and perhaps hope that their example might someday bring him around.

And marriage is about law, not morals. Marriage is not a traditional institution and that’s not why gays want to have the right to do it. It’s a legal and financial contract making the two people who sign that contract a legal and financial unit partnership. Your stuff is now shared with me. I have legal say in our joint transactions. I am legally responsible for our children and for our children if you become incapacitated. If you die, I inherit our property. Marriage gives legal rights and powers to the participants and their families. Marriage as a legal contract protects the legal rights of families as spouse and dependents.

Domestic partnerships and civil unions are a separate but equal sop for people too threatened by the idea of gay citizens having equal legal rights to the marriage contract. They seldom provide the same legal rights as marriage contracts do, and even where they might come close, they can be easily ignored, as has been noted.

Only if gays have the right to enter into a marriage contract are they legally protected and entitled to the same legal powers as their fellow heterosexual married citizens. They are discriminated against on the grounds that they do not qualify to become legal and financial units, just as blacks were discriminated against by being forced to stick to selected schools, hospitals, and other facilities in the U.S. South as not qualified to use white facilities.

The law is secular. The law is for all citizens. And the law is not about what you morally believe to be right lorded over your neighbor, keeping him from making a legal contract that you can enter into. It’s the equivalent of saying that you can buy a house, but gay citizens can’t. They can buy a tent maybe, but not a house.

As long as gay citizens cannot enter into a civil marriage contract, we are causing them not just emotional harm, but financial and legal harm. We are threatening their partners, their children. We are depriving them of the right to decide their own finances, to receive medical care, and a host of other ills. All because some citizens disapprove of people being gay, and decide to use the law to force others to follow their beliefs instead of a baseball bat. (Though some have been known to use the bat.)

That’s injustice. That’s hatred. And that is a far more horrible and pernicious disease than what you think has happened to marriage.