As if I didn't have better things to do, I read the newest media hype on the efforts to ban same-sex marriage. Frankly I just don't get it. If I want to marry someone of the same sex, so what?

Okay, I understand the idea of the `traditional family.' I've even seen the pictures: white, middle class, never divorced, two children all happy and well adjusted. Hell, that's the kind of family that raised me, an unapologetic lesbian.

Let me address the particular arguments that the anti-marriage advocates espouse:
1) Only marriage for the benefit of the `traditional' family should be supported under law.

The problem is that there is no such thing as a traditional family. Less than a quarter of all marriages fall under the definition of a traditional family. If you are:
Previously divorced or a single parent,
Unable or unwilling to have children
Part of a mixed race couple
Non-Christian in your beliefs
Then you are not part of a traditional marriage as these various organizations define it.

2) Allowing gay marriage will cause the breakdown of the "traditional" family.

Citing `tradition' falls flat in the face of single motherhood, step-parenting and the approximately 50% divorce rate. Can someone explain to me how lesbian and gay couples are in some way the cause of a trend that has already existed for decades?

3) Marriage is for the purpose of creating a family and rearing children.

Child rearing in and of itself is not a basis by which gays and lesbians should be denied marriage. Or rather, if it truly is a legitimate factor, then there are already thousands of childless heterosexual marriages that need to be ended before the problem of homosexual marriage can properly addressed.

Marriage for procreation is not a factor, childless couples can and do produce children. It may require a larger effort for a gay couple, but artificial insemination, adoption and other methods have become common. There is also the (apparently) little known fact that gays and lesbians do in fact procreate, mostly during the course of heterosexual marriages which later end, often for reasons having nothing to do with sexuality issues.

Right now about half of all kids are from `broken homes'. These homes were broken long before I ever came out of the closet and, believe me, the gay conspiracy was not the one who broke these homes. Our wish to marry did not cause Joe Smith to get caught messing around with his assistant. Judy Sunshine's problems with alcohol did more to make her husband leave than my desire for equal and fair treatment.

In the rush to condemn gay marriage, children are being taught a second lesson. They are being taught that being raised in anything less than an idealized stereotypical family makes them somehow `less'. Children who have been adopted, those in single parent homes, orphans, kids living with grandparents or other relatives, do not have a traditional family. This does not even consider the children of gay families, a subject that the media never covers.

The traditional family never existed as the dominate paradigm in this country. In this day of divorce and single parenthood it's long overdue that we redefine the concept of family. It's time to recognize who we love is not nearly as important as the fact that everyone should be allowed to love without prejudice.

We deserve the rights we are fighting for simply because we are United States citizens who pay the same amount of taxes as the heterosexuals. It is a legal matter, a civil rights matter, not a matter of merit or competing ideologies.

"Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it . . . It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more."-Erica Jong, 1977