Monday, February 16, 2004

Love and Hope

I just got back into town from a week of medieval camping in Arizona today, and found out that the mayor of San Francisco had decided to call Bush’s bluff and allow same-sex marriages. This is wonderful news, and I hope it’s a turning point in history. I hope Valentine’s Day will now be forever linked to the idea that love is love, straight, gay or otherwise. On that day, I played harp for 3 weddings at Estrella Mountain Park outside Phoenix. I now hope to be able to play for some of my gay and lesbian friends when they “tie the knot” someday.

Notice that I’ve used the words “love” and “hope” a lot here. This is what the world needs so much now, more than anything else - happy people joining together, full of joy and love for each other. I am so sick and tired of scowling, fear-mongering “leaders”, who with their “wedge issues” and saber-rattling and “weapons of mass destraction” keep the people from that inalienable right, the pursuit of happiness. We live in a nation that has circled the wagons, wielding whatever weapons we may against other countries, each other and the earth itself.

The idea that you can somehow “defend” the institution of marriage by denying access to it to people who love and are committed to each other, is insane. How are any of our heterosexual marriages changed by extending the same right to those so long denied? My commitment to my wife will not be diminished, even in the slightest way, by same-sex marriages. Our vows won’t change, and our love is the same as it has been for 27 years. And for those that say that AIDS is spread by promiscuity within the the gay community, tell me how encouraging monogamy is bad.

Love is love, and that alone gives me hope.

- Bob Woods