Will You Wait With Us?

(please rec at dkos too)

If you will indulge me for a few minutes, I have a thought experiment in which I would like you to participate. Sit and close your eyes for a minute. Now imagine, you wake up and it’s tomorrow. The government tells you that you aren’t married to your love. Everyone in the media calls your marriage a “marriage” with scare quotes, or a partnership or even worse. Some in the media decide to tell you that you’re completely sick and wrong. That your existence and the love you have for your partner is not love but a sick, hedonistic perversion.

Nobody understands you.

People cast you out and ignore you.

They call you names.

You have trouble finding support among friends, or even a lot of the time, among your own family.

Every day. Every day your family talks about how sick you are for loving your husband or wife. Then, Congress passes laws BANNING your marriage to your partner. If you’re straight, imagine that only gay marriage is legal. Straight marriage is deemed sick and immoral and it’s bad for the promotion of the family unit.

We support the sanctity of marriage here, which means your only choice is to marry someone of the same sex. It’s what the law wants. It’s what society wants.

Religions hate you.

Society hates you.

Your parents want to send you to get reparative therapy at a hospital or camp to turn you gay. So you comply with societal standards. So god loves you more.

All you want to do is meet someone, fall in love and be with them. You want to get married and have a kid.

Haha, kid. Society doesn’t like that either. You dirty heterosexuals are filthy pedophiles. If you’re allowed to adopt kids you’ll corrupt them and probably have all kinds of sex with them. You’ll turn them straight and that’s wrong.

You’re not ever getting a kid, stupid. Good luck.

Oh and you can’t file taxes with your partner. You aren’t recognized federally in any way. There is no recourse for you. There’s only scorn at your “choices” and your filthy heterosexual “lifestyle” that you need to change. Why can’t you just be gay? That’s normal!

Try going out in public. You can’t. You have to walk separately, away from your love. In most places you can’t even hold hands, and god help you if you share a kiss.

Do that in your own bedrooms.

You want a job, right? Well you better hope it’s not obvious you’re straight. And you better hope that no one ever finds out because in most places they can fire you legally at this point. You better dress “gay” because that’s the only appropriate way to dress. If you get harassed at work in any way, that’s too bad. Ya shouldn’t be such a pervert.

Even if you’re gay, in this scenario, you can still be fired if you’re PERCEIVED to be straight. You can still be discriminated against, denied a job, harassed or ATTACKED… based on perception.

If you love this country and you want to serve in the military, well, don’t tell anyone you’re straight. Ever. Lie. Lie for the rest of your career. Never ever get caught. If you’re dying for our country but you’re a hetero in this scenario, you’re sick. Heterosexuals shouldn’t be able to serve in the military. What if they perv on normal gay people? You might watch them undress and shower. Or rape them, because you’re disgusting.

Also it’s worth mentioning in this scenario that you’ve probably attempted suicide twice by the time you’re twenty-eight or so.

You, my friend, have a fun life.

This is your life. Every. Single. Day of it.

So, now your partner, your “wife” that you so-called “married” is in the hospital. And, guess what. You can’t go see her. She’s probably going to die soon, or maybe not, who knows? You aren’t allowed to get information on her condition and you’re not allowed to see her or anything. You get to sit outside, try to call her family repeatedly for information. Maybe her family hates you for turning into a pervert though. Maybe you’re not allowed to see her. Maybe she’s not out to her family yet. So, you’re stuck listening to machines beeping in the hospital. Listening to crying and panicked nurses.

A bell goes off. Is it her room? Is she dead? Everyone goes into her room. You can’t.

So, you sit there and pray your hardest that she’s okay and you hope that she knows you tried to get to see her.

Hopefully she lives. Good luck.

You pace until you can’t take anymore. Then you go outside. When you reach your truck, the tail lights are busted and someone has scratched names into your vehicle. They’ve written “You are going to die” on it. You’re scared to start your car.

There’s nothing you can do because there are no hate crimes laws in your state, so if someone wants to commit acts of terrorism against you, they’re able to do it with no problem.

You turn on your radio, listen to the commentator railing against your lifestyle. You turn on the television. Same thing.

You get online.

You type in the address to a forum you frequent. The people there are nice and understanding. They’re intelligent and cultured and generally open-minded.

They’re so empathetic.

You type comments, or anything else, about what you’re going through. You wait for responses as your head is killing you. As you’re stressed and scared and alone.

Then you begin to read.

It seems that people aren’t as understanding as you thought.

“Just wait,” they say.

“You want a pony,” they say.

They tell you that you hate the president. They tell you that you’re a traitor.

All you’re doing is caring. All you’re doing is trying to right a lot of wrongs and make life better. And this is what you’re told. Just wait. Wait.

How long?

Til when?

Til your wife is dead?

You’re wondering how you’re supposed to “man-up” and tough it out.

You begin to realize that the people you trusted and interacted with don’t really understand you at all. They don’t understand anything. They don’t want to fight as strongly as you were led to believe. The president is in their party so you should just sit around and wait until he decides what’s best.

He knows what he’s doing.

You read comments telling you “Dude, he’s playing chess. Wait and see.”

You have a hard time taking that seriously.

You start to think about waiting. You notice that the sentiment is coming from a lot of married people. A lot of people with jobs. A lot of people with healthcare. You wonder if they’ll wait with you.

Will they leave their marriages? Will they get rid of their 1,138 federal benefits granted because of their marriage?

If they won’t do that, will they at least call and write and try to get the government to move on important legislation to advance your rights? Or will they just mock you and tell you to keep waiting?

We’ll see.