Straights for Gay Marriage

A reader writes:

I wanted to say how moved I was by the story you linked to in Indiana about Brett Conrad and Patrick Atkins. While it is a scenario I have certainly heard before, everytime it is personalized, it is painful.

I have been married to my wife for about a year and a half after a lifetime of doing whatever I could to avoid getting married, and she has really transformed my life. In that short time, I have become one of those irritating people who says "we" instead of "I." I can only imagine how I will feel after 23 more years of shared life. I never really believed in marriage, but now I do -- and I have come to believe that there are really fewer injustices in our society more cruel than the apartheid-nature of marriage and marriage-rights. I guess this email is mostly about me, but opponents of marriage equality tend to argue that it somehow diminishes marriage if gay couples are included. It is obvious to me that it diminishes marriage when loving couples are excluded, and I feel that more now than ever.

I feel the same way. My marriage has been an immense source of joy and strength to me. To tell an entire group of children that they will never be worthy of this, that they are beneath such commitment, they they will never have a relationship as worthy as their perants' is one of the deepest wounds anyone can inflict on another's nascent psyche. We are changing this. But it has been a struggle. And it is by no means over.