Prop. 8 trial isn't just about same-sex marriage

Marcy Wheeler, a.k.a. Emptywheel, has been in San Francisco this week covering the Prop. 8 trial. She told us all to read Audrey Bilger's piece on Huffington Post titled, "Why Straight People Should Be Following the Prop. 8 Federal Trial":

It's time for straight voters to see that they're being had. The enforcement of "traditional" marriage -- one primary goal of the anti-gay marriage movement -- would affect the entire population, not just because marriage is a basic civil right, which of course it is, but because Americans should be free decide how to build their own family life. While many thrive in conventional roles as fathers out in the workplace and mothers in the home, not everyone wants -- or is even financially able -- to live that way, and no one should force them to do so.

Marcy's right. Bilger's got an important message for our straight allies. This marriage debate is about them, too.

I think everyone should read Marcy Wheeler's post, "A Barren Straight Wife Watches the Prop 8 Trial." It's a very powerful piece on what marriage means:

I actually don’t know whether I am officially (that is, physically) “barren” or not.

I know, though, that not long after I got married, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. My doctors told me right away I’d go through six months of intensive treatment, followed by five years of hormonal treatment. The hormonal treatment, Tamoxifen, was originally developed as a fertility treatment until they discovered it caused birth defects. So between the six months of acute toxins and the five years of birth defect inducing hormonal treatments, my doctors simply assumed that that would take me to the age of 40 at which point I would be too old to have kids. And while mr. emptywheel and I considered, for maybe a second, going through the very dangerous (because it involved high levels of hormones) process of saving eggs, and while we could have insisted I stop the hormonal treatment after two years, we ultimately decided that we could be perfectly happy being an aunt and uncle.

And, having made the decision to remain childless, my husband and I promptly plunged deep into discovering what “in sickness and in health” really meant.

Going through that kind of challenge taught me a lot about marriage.

The anti-gay theocrats aren't going to settle for just controlling the lives of LGBT Americans. We're the low-hanging fruit for them. They want to re-define marriage for everyone. This is about more than just the gays. Read More...