Today President Obama expressed personal views based on his experiences with homosexual staffers and military personnel struggling for equal rights experienced of their heterosexual counterparts. This news makes me absolutely ecstatic. Whatever the political forcing functions, President Obama has now made one of the strongest statements supporting equal rights for US citizens regardless of sexual orientation. You can choose to be optimistic or pessimistic about what forcing functions those were, but considering the traditional lack of liberal backbone I call this a victory.

A while back I tweeted about the story of the Lovings, a Virginian biracial couple whose extreme struggle for equality bears obvious resemblances to the stories told today for same-sex couples. Tradition-focused authority figures create arbitrary moral standards based solely on personal beliefs. I wish more people could listen to this story and honestly consider our current predicament.

I was startled when a local protester in Annapolis, MD stepped in front of a local field camera calling Maryland’s recent marriage equality provisions the first legislation legalizing the breaking of the family tree. The woman specifically calling out that every child has the right to a father and a mother (spirit of quotes. While I respect the right of this person to speak their mind, I exercise my right to vehemently disagree. When I think about the threats to marriage and the American family I don’t think about two men or two women who love each other enough to spend the rest of their lives working as a team to build a family. It’s my greatest hope that two such teammates choose the most charitable activity of adopting children in desperate need of EITHER a father or a mother, instead getting two loving mothers. I think that’s something worth cheering!

Here’s what completely legal things I do think of that destroy marriages and families: alcohol abuse, extramarital sex, pornography, lying, early/forced marriage as a result of teen pregnancy, overspending and unanticipated financial stressors*. If you want to pick a fight, then pick a fight with any of the above rather than a pair of people who want to visit each other in hospitals or adopt a parentless child, or share financial security of retirement savings. To adapt the words of Ben Kenobi, these are not the fights you’re looking for.

Don’t read past this point. Seriously, I get a little snarky.

*I’d even go so far as to point out that medical costs are an extraordinarily common cause of financial stress. But won’t go so far as to say that nationalized healthcare would be a great way to save marriages. That would be as silly as saying children having gay neighbors will tear my family apart. I will warn you that these will effect homosexual couples as well, possibly supporting the fact that they’re not any different than any other couple. [/trollingparagraphoftruth]