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I saw a Yahoo! News story from the AP that reports Massachusetts’s Governor Mitt Romney is going to fight a ruling from his state’s Supreme Judicial Court that declares a gay couple’s right to marriage is guaranteed by the state constitution. While I am not against gay marriages, I agree with one of the points made by some of the dissenting justices: this decision should have been made by the state legislature, the elected officials of the state. The court should have only ruled on the constitutionality of legislation that allows gay marriages to be recognized by the state. [image no longer available] The image above shows a breakdown of states’ policies on gay marriage. On the west coast, the government employers in Washington, Oregon and California offer some sort of benefits for domestic partners; most of New England does on the east coast. Wisconsin (go figure), New Mexico, Wyoming and New Hampshire are the only states that do not have laws prohibiting gay marriages. Every other state in the union has some sort of prohibition on gay marriages, including California and Washington. I don’t see why gay couples cannot share in the benefits offered to married heterosexuals. Things like tax write-offs, insurance and health benefits, being able to know about a significant other’s condition after an accident, these should not be restricted to only those who happen to be married to someone of the opposite sex. It would only seem fair to me to allow someone else to share in these privileges, no matter if their life partner is the same sex or the opposite. There was a time when the survival of the human race relied on opposite sex people mating and reproducing. In those times, I can understand the fear that leaders of the human race had of same sex couples hindering the procreation of man. Luckily, that need to procreate is no longer at hand. Now, marriage is done because people love and care for each other. I think a gay couple can love and care for one another just as much as a straight couple, if not more, considering the current legal roadblocks preventing them from showing just how much they love and care for each other by committing to a lifetime of marriage. In fact, it might actually help if people on this planet would have fewer progeny. This is especially true since the world is not too keen on the idea of letting people just die in the competition for precious resources like food, water and shelter. The survival of the fittest was the mantra chanted by Darwin some 150 years ago, as he helped build the foundations of evolutionary theory. Today, man is at the top of the food chain (Roy Horn aside). As a species, we continue to thrive unchecked because of amazing advances in science and technology that help ward off all that preys on man. Why should we fear homosexuality? There is nothing threatening us as a race so much that we are in danger of becoming extinct. HIV and AIDS strikes heterosexuals as much as it does the homosexual community. Peer pressure, love, hate, happiness and other stresses affect homosexuals and heterosexuals just the same. The differences between a gay person and a straight person are no more or less significant that the differences between two straight people or two gay people. And my point of view regarding religion’s long time stance against homosexuality? It’s just another policy that was created years ago to act simply as a guideline to help the survival and the cohesion of the community. It is now so far ingrained into the minds of those who follow their religion without compassion and love for their fellow human beings that so many people believe that homosexuality is wrong and the cause for eternal damnation. Let me ask this of Christians, since those are the beliefs that I feel I know best: is it not Jesus and God who is to Judge us in the Afterlife? Would a God who is so loving that he sends His Son to be sacrificed as Savior of his people (while supposedly being celibate and unmarried, unlike every other “good” Jew of the time) be so superficial as to condemn someone to Hell for leading a life that was otherwise good because that person was gay? Who are we, mere mortals, to judge whether someone’s sexual preference will lead to eternal damnation or salvation? I think somewhere in the Bible it is said something like, “Let he who is free from sin cast the first stone.” Anyways, I’ve been writing this post for damn near 45 minutes. So I will stop here. Visit the forum to discuss, or post comments below.