Close your mind and follow me

Oklahoma State question 711 "...defines marriage to be between one man and one woman. It prohibits giving the benefits of marriage to people who are not married. It provides that same sex marriages in other states are not valid in this state." Basically, a ban on gay marriage

It passed with more than 75% of the vote.

This does not surprise me. Oklahoma is generally known as "The buckle of the Bible belt.*"

According to an article in the Daily Oklahoman, "Supporters saw no need to spend their money on a media campaign, given poll after poll showing overwhelming support.
   "Instead, they tapped the power of the pulpit to carry their message to the faithful. The 775,000-member Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma, the state’s largest denomination, urged its ministers to preach about moral issues, including homosexuality, throughout October."

I thought there was supposed to be a separation of church and state? It is a two-way street.

At the end of the article is this: "Sen. James Williamson, the Tulsa Republican who wrote the language that became the state question, thinks the amendment will stand up to the legal test. 'If they are successful in getting a higher court to find that this is in some way unconstitutional, we’ll be back with another measure to protect marriage,' Williamson said. 'We’re not going to give up until we find a way to protect marriage that even the Supreme Court can’t find unconstitutional,' Williamson said."

Why is this an issue? Why does marriage need protection? Why now? Why has this never been an issue before? Frankly, if people of the same sex love each other enough that they want to enter into a civil union, lifetime partnership, marriage or whatever you want to call it and gain the legal benefits and responsibilities of that union, who am I... who are we to say they can't?

Interrestingly enough, what little election coverage I did watch last night gave results on the state lottery questions (SQ 705 & 706), the Indian gaming question (SQ 712), and a couple of other questions related to state financial dealings. They completely avoided SQ 711 and SQ 713 (cigarette tax). Why? My guess is that the issues were too controversial and the television stations didn't want to refer to it as the "gay marriage ban" question. From what I can tell, the Oklahoman is the only major paper to even give 711 it's own column space. The Tulsa World is showing only a general article about all state questions on their main web page (you have to pay to see anything else). And our campus paper has individual articles on 705 & 706, 708 (Rainy Day fund spending) and 713 but did not mention 711 at all. Not even in an article recaping vote counts for the county.

In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Elton John had this to say on the subject:
"...how dare [President Bush] say I can't marry [my partner] if I want to. You know the scene. If you're a gay couple, and one of them dies, the family steams in, takes everything, and the other half is just completely devastated. I've seen it happen maybe 50 or 60 times in my life. There's nothing the law can do about it and it's just savage. We live in the 21st century."

According to the Daily Oklahoman article, one activist is quoted as saying, “We’re ready to go and it’s going to cost the taxpayers of Oklahoma a pretty penny to defend writing discrimination into their constitution.” And that's exactly what it is. Oklahoman's voted to add an amendment to our state constitution that promotes discrimination.

Can someone please explain to me what the ramifications are of same-sex marriages, beyond the religious and moral issues?

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* For those of you in other countries, the Bible belt is a group of southern states that generally follow very restrictive Southern Baptist values. Oklahoma is right in the middle of this group of states and, let's face it, it looks like a belt buckle.

To read the article in the Daily Oklahoman, you will have to create an account. The account is free and they only send opt-in email.