As I said at the beginning, it is, for lack of a better description, a one-sided debate, and I get the final word.  Herein you will find that final word — the conclusion of my serial on the gay marriage debate, final thoughts forged in personal experience and based on emotions grounded in a sincere desire for equality.

The intention of my gay marriage series has been to evaluate the topic from many different perspectives, including those being used by the conservative movement to argue against the idea.  Thus far, if you've been reading those entries, you've undoubtedly learned that the many arguments are false and misleading, including those based on the bible.  I doubt these findings have swayed anyone in their resolve, but they do bring this forced culture war to the forefront of our minds in an attempt to make people think about the entire issue.

My discourse on the topic has been an attempt at objectivity, at least as much as one can be objective when one is the target of such blatant discrimination.  I have approached the subject logically, discussing it in depth from the points of view used to argue against same-sex marriage, demonstrating in the course of those entries that the cultural, societal, political and religious undercurrents are indeed flawed — demonstrably so, in fact.

As my final thoughts on the subject, I will forgo the logical evaluation of the topic in lieu of addressing my own personal feelings, thereby following my near-objective analysis with a completely subjective summarization.

"But why another opinion piece about gay marriage?" you might be thinking.  "Why can't they just be quiet and leave us alone about it?"

Attempts to legislate against homosexual marriage are incomprehensibly offensive and derisive, not to mention the hypocrisy, bigotry, hatred and segregationist aspects of the idea.  We are not legislating, ladies and gentlemen, for remote unknown people.  Related laws will indeed affect opportunities for the happiness of our neighbors, our work colleagues, our friends, and our relatives, if not ourselves.  Whether that impact is positive or negative is the question to be answered.

Would you stand face to face with the gay people in your life and tell them blatantly that they are undeserving of the same rights and protections their heterosexual counterparts enjoy?

From the personal point of view, whether or not I ever decide to marry, the choice to do so should ultimately be mine, just as it is with the majority of people in our country.

"But we must protect marriage!" you declare.  Yes, there is always the marriage question.

Since the dissolution, rather than the creation, of a marriage tends to more effectively undermine its purported sanctity, would it not be prudent to follow the Biblical teaching that "Whatsoever God hath joined together, let no man cast asunder" (Matthew 19:6)?  If we are indeed to believe that the anti-gay marriage movement is based solely on the premise of protecting marriage from undermining currents, let's make divorce illegal instead of denying marriage rights to a minority class of citizens.  Divorce, after all, represents the greatest threat to marriage.

What religious or merely pro-Amendment pundits have argued is that "marriage" is a religious term, and thus they are unwilling to relinquish the phrase to those who fall outside of what their religion accepts as legitimate.

It's time to divorce the religious conflicts from the legal ones.  Let a church ban same-sex marriage but let the legal system recognize them.  Remember equal protection under the law?  Anyway, I've a big problem with the mean-spirited, cruel, self-righteous types who utilize religion to act out their bigotry and hate.

And don't proffer religious grounds for being against gay marriage if you don't also attack divorce in the same manner.  Besides, Matthew 5:32 and Matthew 19:9 make it clear, by Jesus himself, that anyone who divorces and remarries (except in cases of fornication) is committing adultery.  Where is your equivalent outcry?

Is that the message you intend to promote?  That, while it's not acceptable for gays to marry because of some remote and obscure references in the bible, it's completely OK for heterosexuals to commit religious offenses which are clearly proscribed in Biblical terms?  Essentially, this is the "do as I say and not as I do" mentality, the crux of hypocrisy and human offense.

And to entertain the thought of amending the US Constitution in such a manner so as to limit the rights of any people is abhorrent at best.  The Constitution, a document so limitedly intended to restrict the interferences of government in our private, personal business, being used as a weapon to denigrate a minority…  It's just shameful.

The direction of society should be toward freedom and equal rights.  I imagine it would be difficult to find anyone who disagrees with that.  So, if we're to restrict rights, it's necessary to demonstrate a good reason for this, and the religious right has failed disastrously at doing so.  The campaign against same-sex marriage promotes discrimination — so keep that in mind.  Just because you don't believe in same-sex marriage doesn't make it wrong.

Simply put, we gay people deserve the same rights.  We pay taxes and vote just like everyone else.

It is only within the current age of man that we have seen fit to label homosexuality a sin and a medical problem.  Historically speaking, this is a modern hang-up for man and not something carried to the present from our documented history.  The Greeks, after all, were living before either a sin or medical model of homosexuality existed.  While aware of differing sexual inclinations, they did not consider these important enough to establish a separate social category for gays.  They — we — were people like everyone else.

Why not extend the right to marriage to same sex couples?  Then everyone has the same rights and nobody need feel excluded.

This was undoubtedly the same question asked when our country's anti-miscegenation laws were finally overturned, seen for the segregationist and bigoted attempts to keep black Americans from enjoying the same freedoms and rights as other Americans.  In the context of the gay marriage question, it would seem our country is reversing its course and attempting to, after the fact, legislate similar hate and exclusivity.

What kind of society do we want for our children when we are trying to teach them to hate, to discriminate, to treat those who are different as unequal and undeserving of the protections, rights and privileges that we hold dear?  We are telling them that those who are different are not even human as they do not deserve basic civil rights and equality.  Hitler would indeed be proud of America today.

A growing trend within this culture war is the attempt to use children as justification to subvert non-heterosexual members of our society.  Gays, as you put it, must pose a threat to children, perhaps because they want to sexually abuse them, perhaps because we're likely to "recruit" them into the gay glee club.  A family must be a man and a woman, right?

You would not question the family values of a single mother and her mother (or a single father and his father) raising a child on their own.  You would see that household as one full of love and compassion for the child.  You would see it that way despite the fact that it's a same-sex household.

Yet when two women or men who are not related take it upon themselves to bring up a child in a home full of love and caring, it somehow becomes sick and twisted and immoral.  How the straight community does not see that double-standard continues to amaze and shock me.

The gay community has long been viewed as a sexually crazed sub-culture full of child molesters and "queer folk."  But if you examine "normal" society, there are sick and twisted heterosexuals just as well.  In fact, the majority of child molesters are heterosexual.  For example, 74% of male children who are sexually molested identify heterosexual males as the perpetrators.  Approximately 80% of children who are molested are girls, and their molesters are straight men.  And those are just preliminary statistics.

Being gay does not inherently make you a pervert or a threat to children.  In fact, with just a cursory glance through the global statistics on child molestation, heterosexuals pose a far greater threat, demonstrably so, than homosexuals do.

Besides, I don't see that any child has an inherent "right to a mother and a father" as many have said.  Plenty of single parents raise children, and they do a fine job.  If you're going to argue that gays raising children would lead to "unbalanced families," it would be much more intellectually honest (but clearly inconvenient for you) to say the same of single-parent families.

The funny thing is how laughable this kind of hypocrisy is.  The same people who proclaim gay marriage will bring about the downfall of humanity won't mention the stack of Playboy magazines they keep hidden, they won't mention the pornography they watch, they won't admit that the greater threat to children comes from their own community, yet they'll line up for blocks to catch Nathan Lane in The Producers on Broadway.  It's OK to entertain us; just don't try to be like us.

Equality, although right, is not always easy or painless.  After the emancipation of America's slaves, it took a long time to force society into accepting the equality of black Americans.  Even today there are people in our own culture who do not believe in that equality, yet the majority would happily argue in its favor, believing deeply that all straight people are indeed equal.

This is the premise our country was based on, a strongly held belief by our founding fathers.  This is the premise our Constitution engenders.  How is it then that we readily throw it away now?

Morality is subjective.  Not everyone believes what you believe.  To have a free society, we cannot make laws that directly infringe on any peoples' rights except when those laws are there to keep people from infringing on the rights of others.  This brings me to my conclusion.

Does allowing gay marriage directly infringe on anyone's rights?  No.

Does banning gay marriage directly infringe on anyone's rights?  Yes.

We can either be the true society of equality and freedom or we can disregard the Constitution and founding principles of our country, only to accept that we are indeed a nation of hating, bigoted, hypocritical elitists who believe in equality only for those who are the same as the majority.

America is a melting pot of cultures and people and religions.  It is not, however, a conservative Christian nation ruled by a theocratic plutocracy (despite evidence to the contrary).  We need to get back to our base principles.  We need to dissolve the hate that religion is attempting to inject into our society.  We need to remember the inclusive nature of our country instead of embracing elitist segregationism.

The facts speak for themselves.

As Jean-Jacques Rousseau once said, "Liberty cannot exist without equality."  The moment we begin arbitrarily diminishing the rights of others simply because we do not agree with them, we begin losing our own freedoms.  The willingness to segregate society and reduce rights based on that segregation starts us down a dark path which will ultimately draw unto itself the continued segregation of society — and related diminishment of rights — until all people are classified and afforded liberties accordingly.

In closing, please allow me to draw your attention to a letter written by a heterosexual mother in a post from November 2003.  I believe it speaks for itself, and it certainly carries the inarguable passion of a straight mother who has had enough from society: Ignorant Cruelty Robbed Me of the Joys of Motherhood.  Read it, and I mean really read it this time.