Today, California decided to oppose gay marriage in a defiant move against what the country has (at times) stood for. (Equality.)

It's not every day that some longstanding boundary of human interaction - one lasting 1,000's of years like monogamy, government, religion or slavery - just completely disappears. But it has with the notion that homosexuality is wrong, illegal or punishable.

I can't for the life of me begin to think of why this incredible turn of events has happened in our lifetime. Was it the invention of TV? Was it art? Was it Ricky Martin? Why is it that something as longstanding as oppressing gays can suddenly and drastically change without anyone ever noticing?

Can you think of any other morphing civilizational phenomena similar to the one we’re going through right now? Remember that only until barely 40 years ago, it was illegal for a white to marry a non-white in many states. (Diep and I would never be allowed to marry like we will in just 13 more months.) And in just 42 years, nearly one out of ten couples are interracial. When our kids are having kids that number will probably be closer to 50%.

Here is where those who oppose gay marriage come in. What do you think... do these people fear that, like how 1 out of 10 marriages are interracial, 1 out of 10 marriages will be same-sex in another 42 years? Of course they do. When they say they want to ‘preserve the sanctity of marriage,’ this is half of it. Many of these people simply want to make sure that the future America isn’t ‘diluted’ with children adopted into same-sex households, same as how today 1 out of 10 children are living in inter-racial households.

Why did anyone even care that a child might be interracial? It seems so silly, but at the time our parents were being born, it was a real fear among many Americans, just as today there is that exact same fear that our country’s future generations will be growing up in same-sex households. And when that happens, just as today, people will stop caring so much.

Where gay marriage has an upper-hand on inter-racial marriage, morally, is this: there’s an obvious and glaringly great need for gay marriage today because of how many orphans of war, famine, disease and poverty are scattered all over the world. To say that a person who wants to save a child from that life of poverty, illness and misery is wrong because their partner happens to be the same sex as they are is not just ludicrous, but absolutely devoid of any moral direction whatsoever, in my opinion. It shows a cankerous misunderstanding of how humanity and civilization work while parading an abundant glorification of the same old-world philosophy that made slaves out of blacks and criminals out of terminal pot smoking cancer patients.

And who are the people who are supposed to have all the moral direction in the world? The very same people opposing it: Christians.

Even though I believe in living by (true) Christian, I’ll admit - I think they’re full of horse shit most of the time. Because, really, who still believes the crap they say about how they want to 'preserve the sanctity of marriage' by opposing (and thus oppressing) gay rights? First of all, the fact that these people say they believe marriage is 'sanctified' is reason enough to sound the ‘bullshit’ alarm. Do they really want to admit they believe that love between two women destroys sanctity?

Of course they don't want to admit that. This is why people oppose gay marriage in the first place - this opposition is the last opportunity these people will have to discriminate against gays without any judgment passed upon them whatsoever. Once gay marriage is settled, these folks will have to put up and shut up. This is also why you don't see too many people who oppose women's suffrage or interracial marriage publicly today. Sure, those people exist - don't get me wrong - and we have even names for them: misogynists and racists. However, we don't collectively acknowledge anti-gay marriage activists as such... yet. We will. Don't be afraid that we won't. Once this thing passes nationwide in just another decade, anyone who speaks out against gay marriage will be seen as insensitive (not that they aren't already) and un-American. Isn't equal rights like this what our country stands for - a place where 'different' people, whether by religion in the 1700's, women in the late 1800's and blacks in the 1900's, can live in peace without fear of oppression or persecution?

Buckle up, gays: the 2000's will be your century of advancement, and we’ll for sure see a homosexual president - whether male or female - in the White House before this century is 'out.'

Yours,

Michael Ocean

P.S. I’ll close with this solicitous observation:

“We must legalize gay marriage. Gay males are the only men in America who still want to be married.” - Chuck Klosterman, Killing Yourself To Live.