Author: Aaron Weber

When I was in 10th grade I was required to take a religion class. At some point the teacher had this whole explanation about how there were two sources of rules for life, the written law (the bible) and the natural law (the world). And since homosexuality wasn’t in either, it was wrong.

At that point I raised my hand and tried to point out that there were gay monkeys, and he said, well, we can leave Aaron to talk about the sex lives of monkeys, and everyone laughed, and he went on to the next part of the class.

Well, fine. Let’s leave me to talk about gay penguins and how they successfully raised an adopted chick.

Also can I mention the Times’ URL naming conventions? Very sensible: date, section, and then a number and a word designating the topic: this article’s file name is 2004/02/07/arts/07GAY.html. Giggle.

Peter Gomes, Harvard prof and Baptist Minister, with a brilliant editorial on the division between church and state, the nature of civil marriage and civil law, and why gay marriage is necessary and just. Listen to the man, will you?

I know this is an unaccustomed bit of sincerity here, but this is actually important.

If you had a gay child, would you love that child as much as a straight child? If you’re a decent human being you would. And you’d want that child to have the same rights and responsibilities as any other child. So if you live in Massachusetts call your legislator and demand that they do what the court says: grant equal rights to same-sex couples.

The Catholic church ’round here is fulminating against it, and I’m almost glad: the more they do, the more apparent it is that their objections are inherently religious, and therefore should be discounted by civil law.

Learn to use it responsibly, or log the hell off, say tech-savvy people surrounded by people who refuse to learn how computers work.