This is going to be a very sad week for me. I am an American expat who has been living in Spain for the past three years. I came here initially in 2004 as an exchange student, and was only supposed to be here one year. However, as it often does, life had a different plan for me. I ended up taking a three year hiatus from school, with only a few more classes left to complete.
Why did I make such a drastic change? Simple. One word...love. It is a doozy that love. It is the ultimate plan breaker. It swept me off my feet, and preempted any other priority in my life. Well, now it is time for me to go back home and finish my degree, because my undergraduate degree plan expires next year. I have waited long enough. It is now or never, because the last thing I want to be is a college dropout. Next week, I return to my native Texas to finish my college degree at the University of Texas in Austin.
The only problem is my boyfriend can’t come with me.
(More on the flip side...)
Why? Because we are a mixed nationality homosexual couple. Jaime is Spanish, and I am a U.S. citizen. We have discussed marriage on more than one occasion, especially considering that gay marriage is legalized here in Spain. However, there is no point in getting married here in Spain because that marriage doesn’t count in the United States. If we were a man and a woman, it wouldn’t be a problem. It would just be a matter of processing a few papers.
My boyfriend and I of three years have to seperate because the majority of politicians in this country are afraid to stand up to a backwards thinking minority of people. I mean, not even the three frontrunners for the Democratic nomination can stand up to this "unmoral majority." What is moral about keeping two people who love each other apart? Why can’t Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or John Edwards just say "I think every human being has the right to get married to the person of their choosing."? Why is that such a controversial statement?
I am here to tell you it is not.
Spain passed a gay marriage law in 2005 in a country that is overwhelmingly Catholic. It is one of the more chauvinistic, and conservative countries in Europe. (Okay, not counting Poland.) What made the people accept gay marriage here? One politician, who had the courage to say no to the religious right in his country. Jose Louis Rodriguez Zapatero didn’t even blink when he brought the legislature before the parlaiment here. Once it was passed, the simple fact that gay men and lesbian women could get married changed their minds about the issue. In polling done before and after the legislation, more people supported gay marriage AFTER the legislation was passed than before.
I truly beleive the same could happen in the USA with one brave president who stood up to those who would discriminate against gay men and women. I think once a fair marriage law was on the books, it could never be taken away. I believe that it should be called MARRIAGE and not a civil union because anything less would be unconstitutional. I mean, haven’t we already learned that "seperate but equal" is anything but equal?
Well, in the mean time, while the rest of you are debating the issue, there are real American men and women suffering. Jaime and I are just an example of two of them. We are two men in love, who like Pyramus and Thisbe, are seperated by a wall. Only our wall will not be made of bricks and mortar. Our wall will be made of ignorance and cemented by hate and fear. If you have a significant other, hold them a little more closely this evening and be thankful you have them by your side. It is a privilege I will be without come next Friday.