It goes far beyond marrying the one of your loving and for the "sake of" Equality. Prior to Friday not being able to get married brings a host of problems for gays and lesbians. Tax benefits (both filing and receiving) .. in some cases not be able to visit or making decisions on behalf of an ill partner .. are just a couple of things. You who are straight look at all things your marriage affords you, that's all gays and lesbians are looking for with Marriage Equality.
Despite what the anti-gay muck rakers have and will say it's not about forcing a particular church or synagogue or mosque to perform a ceremony of joining two people which goes against the "spiritual" beliefs of the "host" of a particular place of worship. There will be more willing than unwilling to perform the ceremony.
This will not make your marriage any less valuable than it was on Thursday nor will it make it more superior. It will however afford many who until Friday could not have the same "spiritial", legal and economics rights as you have had for so long. More importantly with Marriage Equality those rights which you so enjoy and probably don't even give a second thought to will now no longer end at the "state-line".
This isn't the second coming of Black Rights, the defeat of miscegenation nor Rowe v Wade. This is a wholly seperate circumstance of rights for citizens of the United States to be equal not only in the eyes of God but by the very Country they live in where now no one individual nor state can say otherwise.
So ask yourself how does the SCOTUS ruling affect your "straight" way of life .. it doesn't .. period .. end of conversation.
Many things, many great things have happen since the Stonewall Riots .. people freer to come out and be who they are, the end of DADT, protection in the workplace, housing and against discrimination in public venues and businesses (with still more work to go on those in several states) and now Marriage Equality.
The bottom line is those of the LGBT community ask for nothing more nor less than being treated and afforded the things and opportunity of their straight counterparts who would be aghast at someone saying or enforcing "we don't serve your kind here" or other such nonsensical rules, policies and "ideas" which stand in the way of "life liberty and the pursuit of happiness".
Those seven words are not for the chosen few but for all who live in this Country protected by a constitution written by the People and for the People ... all of the People.
As I wrote Friday on Facebook the world has not come to an end with Marriage Equality .. in fact in spite of it our world in the US has gotten better.
So endth the lesson.
