A Straight Ally In Connecticut

Connecticut is one of the current battle-ground states in the fight for marriage equality, and columnist Susan Campbell of the Hartford Courant (the newspaper with the largest circulation in the state) has taken a stand. Here is an excerpt as she writes in response to some e-mails she has received from people that assume because she is advocating for GLBT rights that she herself must be lesbian:

What if I told you that I am not a lesbian, that I am in a monogamous relationship - a marriage, yet - with a man I love, whom I don't always understand? That we've raised two children to adulthood, that we vote, mow our yard and worry about our adjustable mortgage? And that, in those last characteristics, I am much like your garden-variety coupled homosexual - just an average citizen getting by.

What if I told you that I did not come to my present and permanent stance because of some intellectual tic on my part? I am public school all the way, born in Kentucky, raised in Missouri, came to Jesus in a fundamentalist church.

What if I told you that I read the same scriptures you do and that I've spent time with the text I was taught to hold so dear? And what if I told you that I consider marriage equality every bit as important as any other civil rights question, be it racial or gender, and that I don't have to belong to the oppressed group to speak up?

In fact, in these times, it's incumbent on those who are blessed with marriage rights to speak up.

I'm here to tell you that if a red-state fundamentalist Christian hillbilly can figure it out, there is ample hope for the likes of you.

Minds can be opened and prejudices can be unlearned. Fortunately, Ms. Campbell is open enough to share her journey with thousands of readers in her state and a few folks on this blog.

Thanks.