Fifteen Years of Love is Love

A note to our bloggity friends, from Mark and me --

Yesterday the two of us celebrated our relationship of (wait for it)... fifteen years. That's dangerously close to half our lives we've been together, including years of dating, being engaged, and now being married with a family.

To celebrate, we had a therapy appointment (hey, real is real) and went to dinner and reminisced about our early days together. And we also had a date at the polls.

We went together to vote against an amendment to our NC state constitution that would permanently define the only kind of valid relationship as a marriage between a man and a woman. No other types of relationships will get legal recognition in our state. Not common-law marriages, not unmarried couples, not currently existing legal civil unions and domestic partnerships. That all goes away.

And we just don't think that a relationship has to look exactly like ours to be real or valid or deserve equal rights under the law. Equal rights shouldn't be this complicated, and it shouldn't even be up for a vote.

Also, we believe that a constitutional amendment to discriminate instead of to protect is fundamentally wrong. Yes, it happens, especially with state constitutions, but it's not what a constitution was designed for.

We think arguments against same-sex relationships tend towards dangerous and overly reductive interpretations of scripture anyway, and aren't in keeping with our religious beliefs... but regardless of where people stand on the issue of same-sex marriage, mostly importantly, we don't believe that laws should be made for religious reasons in the first place.

Normally we're not very political in this here corner of the internet, but this is important enough for us to go on the record about, especially on the anniversary of our budding relationship turned married-with-kids.

Love is love, and God is love, and let freedom ring.

-- Mark and Erin. Since 1997. :)