Marriage Equality: Because It’s Right. Because It’s Time.

“Instructions for living a life. 
Pay attention. 
Be astonished. 
Tell about it.” 
― Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver writes sensitive, life-filled poetry. She challenges and inspires. She is also a lesbian.

The friend who introduced me to Mary Oliver’s poetry does not condone marriage equality… at least, last time we talked. This friend who finds Oliver’s poetry so lovely is prepared to prohibit Oliver from marrying the person she wants to marry.

Ironic, isn’t it? Mary Oliver’s poetry is good enough to inspire, admire and recommend, but her human rights are subject to approval.

I recall stories of slaveowners who had sex with their slaves, yet those slaves were considered as three-fifths of a person. Slaves are good enough to have sex with but not good enough to consider a whole person.

Whatever societal reasons we may use to deny human rights, whether race or orientation or simply personal taste, is just semantics. It’s self-interest. It’s wrong.

Whether equality supposedly threatens a slave owner’s commerce, or threatens our current perception of marriage (‘current’ because marriage has changed several times — here and here and here), those reasons do not justify, nothing justifies relegating entire groups of people to second-class citizenship.

This has got to break now. It is breaking now. In society. In the church. In our hearts.

The time has come for marriage equality. Because it’s right. Because it’s time.

Life is too short not to spend it loving and being loved.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” – Mary Oliver