42 days: Victor Warne

This post is a guest post for the 42 days series. Learn more here!

Confession: unlike the rest of my straight, male cousins, I worship Zach Quinto.  I know, I know, unavailable and not a widely accepted divine being (even if Sylar was pretty badass), but that’s not what I mean.  I mean it breaks my little gay heart he found love before I got to LA to try to win him over.  In case that doesn’t give away my bias, here: I’m going to VOTE NO on the Minnesota marriage amendment.  I’m also going to give you a new perspective on the issue and create some talking points to help people see the issue from the side of a person, someone who lives with this every day.  I don’t care about right, left, religion, or rhetoric.  Bottom line: I care about people and I care about equality.

I understand that for many people, lack of exposure to our community is the issue.  I didn’t know an openly gay person until I was out of high school.  Even then, I didn’t technically “meet” anyone by the definition of the word.  Instead, I found out I’d gone to high school with a handful of LGBTQ people, including one who had been a very good friend of mine since elementary school.  Point: If I, as a gay man, lacked exposure to the real gay community most of my life (Perez Hilton and Will & Grace don’t count), certainly others are equally uninformed.  Though I would like to, I can’t fix this problem by myself, but I’m going to do my best to make a few brief points that may help broaden how people think.  Those of you already committed to voting no, I encourage you to have conversations with people around you who are on the fence, and I hope these points give you something to work with.  You’re free to use, adapt, or ignore anything below in your conversations.

1) We only wear the brave face.  I’ll call upon my bluntness here: it is almost impossible not to take this process personally at some point.  Think about it.  People I do not know, people with whom I have never even interacted, get to vote on if I should have the right to marry.  At the end of a long day in the library when my mental reserves are tapped out, that just feels exceptionally lousy.  I might pretend it’s fine for the benefit of those around me, but that’s because there’s nothing more they can do but be supportive to me and the cause.  But it’s not fine.  It’s hurtful, infuriating, and draining.

42 days: Hannah

This post is a guest post for the 42 days series. Learn more here!


I, unfortunately, enjoy watching “Sister Wives” on TLC. In case you aren’t aware, “Sister Wives” is a show that follows the lives of 4 wives married to the same man. And although I don’t agree with their lifestyle or even like Kody Brown (he’s the husband), I respect their decision to be married to the same guy. I feel for them that they cannot be “open” about their relationship to the world, even though it appears like they are a healthy, functioning family and are raising pretty decent and respectful children.

They live in Nevada; I live in Minnesota. There is a different fight for families going on in Minnesota. It’s the fight for “Traditional Marriage”. There is a proposed amendment that we, the people, have to vote on to make marriage defined to a man and a woman. Okay, well, why would that matter? Why is it so important that we need to spend time defining marriage between 1 man and 1 woman?

I wanted to know. So I went online and searched for vote yes website. They actually have a page dedicated to my question:http://www.minnesotaformarriage.com/why/

Let me give you the run down of it, this viewpoint believes that it’s important for the people to vote yes because of the children. We need to protect the children. Wait, no. Read further: “But marriage is a special relationship reserved exclusively for heterosexual unions because only the intimate relationship between men and women has the ability to produce children as a result of that sexual union.”

So basically you have to be married to have children? Uhm. As a pregnant and unmarried woman, I have to disagree. And why do married couples have to have babies? What if they don’t want babies? What if they want to adopt? What, if god forbid, they don’t even have sex? That’s a stinker in your argument.

It doesn’t end there. They pretty much say that “single” parents are ruining our children and that marriage between a man and a woman prevents fathers from running. Seriously. Because being married makes you a ‘present’ and ‘good’ father…I think we can observe several thousands of fathers that this is not the case. They are married to their baby momma but are not involved in their children’s lives.

Proponents to this Marriage Amendment also argue that when we allow “homosexuals” to marry or genderless marriage, it eliminates the meaning of marriage. Which to them, is to fuck like rabbits and make bunnies.

42 days: Molly Willms

This post is a guest post for the 42 days series. Learn more here!


Reader, blogger, people-lover, critical thinker, voting no.
I recently wrote an article in my campus newspaper defending my decision to wear a “Vote NO” shirt on campus, despite the fact that I’m the editor of a publication that strives for fairness and objectivity.

It’s the word “despite” that my detractors would use. Me, I’d use “because.”

I will vote no because to vote yes goes against everything that I am.

I’m the first sentence of this post, but I’m also a writer, an ally, a kind person, a friend to straight, gay and everything around and in between.
I’m a journalist. My job is to question the status quo. My job is to report the provable facts in order to spread the power of knowledge.

42 days: Patrick RichardsFink

This post is a guest post for the 42 days series. Learn more here!

What Marriage Equality Means To Me
I’m bisexual, which means I have attractions to both people of the same gender and people of other genders. Unless I specifically point this out, people assume I’m straight, in no small part because I’ve been happily, lovingly, monogamously married for over 20 years to a straight woman.
It was purely a roll of the genetic dice that led to this. It happened that she was born XX – an approximately 50% chance – and she was assigned a female gender at birth, and is comfortable with this gender identification. Had she been born and assigned as male, or had she transitioned genders to male (or eschewed notions of masculine and feminine altogether and been genderqueer), or had I been female-identified, I would be just as crazy head-over-heels passionately in love with him (or with her, or with hir), but we would not have been able to get married.
It would have been prohibited.

There are perks to marriage, legally, socially, and culturally. There are also basic human rights, the ability to declare your family of choice as your legal family. We are completely unrelated in any genetic sense, and yet she is the person who is, in the eyes of the law, my Next of Kin, the one person who is not only closest to me but is legally empowered to make choices should I be incapacitated. Hey, I’m middle-aged, closer in a very real sense to death than to birth. I *have* to think about these things.
Every long-term relationship goes through periods of struggle and compromise and renegotiation. Being married helps navigate the tough times – not because the piece of paper itself has an intrinsic meaning, but because a legally and socially recognized commitment removes some of the external stresses faced by unmarried couples.
Marriage is not something everyone wants. But for those who do (and, in this culture at this time, the people who desire at least the option to be married, for whatever reason – as a public affirmation of commitment, as a legal handle to protect the interests of our little 2-person corporation which has for the last 15 years included a third person who has special needs, as a significant milestone in our breathless journey together, as a way to empower each other in decision-making -- are at the very least a strong plurality and in all honesty probably the majority), the option *must* be available.

42 days: Amanda

This post is a guest post for the 42 days series. Learn more here!


Hi, I’m Amanda. I’m what’s called a “red”, which means it would not be to my advantage to have my photo on an atheist site.

Ensign Ro Laren: Who *are* you? 

Guinan: I told you. I'm Guinan. I tend bar and I listen. 

Ensign Ro Laren: Well, you're not like any bartender I've ever met before. 

Guinan: Hm. And you're not like any Starfleet officer I've ever met before. But that sounds like the beginning of a... very interesting friendship.

I didn't really know much about gays growing up, except that my two creepy neighbors were probably gay but no one ever saw them because they were ashamed of being bad people. Or something like that.

By middle school, I had started to buy into the "gay is a choice" school of thought, and I was creeped out by the idea of being gay. It was something I didn't understand, and I was afraid that I might be gay (turns out I'm not). Like many confused adolescents, these reasons were enough to justify hateful feelings.

On the 42 days

42 days.....
At the time of writing this post, there are 42 days until the election. One amendment on the ballot this election could change so many, many lives.  I am talking about the Marriage Amendment. This amendment would define marriage in the Minnesota Constitution as between one man and one woman. I, as well as many others, have explained over and over why this amendment is wrong. And yet nearly half of minnesotans are planning on voting yes on the amendment.

So, I am calling on the people you likely haven't heard from. I am calling on the people I normally wouldn't ask. Im calling on the people who are not very out-spoken, and the people who I often disagree with on some key issues, and everyone else who cares about this issue. Im calling on the people who care about equality and the lives and rights of families all over this great state.

On The Philosopher's Blog

So, as you may or may not know, philosophy as a whole is not my favorite subject. Now dont get me wrong, I see the benefits of studying philosophy, and the important things it has done, and will continue to do, in our society. That being said, don't usually by choice go much farther into my philosophic studies than necessary. And I don't think I could ever devote my life to studying it. But I usually have GREAT respect for those who do.