{"id":1300,"date":"2008-05-05T21:48:27","date_gmt":"2008-05-06T02:48:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/1300"},"modified":"2008-05-05T21:48:27","modified_gmt":"2008-05-06T02:48:27","slug":"love-and-marriage-in-the-land-of-the-free-and-the-home-of-the-brave%e2%80%a6continued","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/1300","title":{"rendered":"Love And Marriage In The Land Of The Free And The Home Of The Brave\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6(continued)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m stealing this from Andrew Sullivan<\/a> because it’s worth your read…<\/p>\n

\n

I’m 30 years old, from rural Ohio, and met my German boyfriend in Boston 8 years ago.<\/p>\n

We moved to Berlin together when his visa expired, where we lived for 5 years and eventually got married (okay, "entered into a civil union" is more accurate, if not as eloquent).  We work online, which affords us a lot of freedom, and have lived in Ireland and now Spain. Thanks to the "Freedom of Movement" policy, I can legally reside anywhere in the EU, because Juergen and I are married.  But, I can’t move home.<\/p>\n

An American and a German can legally reside in Ireland, Spain and Slovenia, but not America.  When I think about it like that, I want to punch a wall.<\/p>\n

Trying to explain our situation to my American friends inevitably results in confusion and disbelief.  People are truly unaware of the situation gay, bi-national pairs have to deal with.  "You could get married in Massachusetts!"  Um, no. "You could get Juergen a work visa!"  Not likely. "He could marry a woman, and then you guys just, like, live together anyway!" Seriously, a suggestion I’ve heard more than once.<\/p>\n

It’s not that people don’t understand our situation — but that they don’t even know it. And, honestly, the chances that we ever move back to the States are getting more and more remote with each year.<\/p>\n

Thanks for continuing to expose this problem…<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The virtuous god-fearing lying connivers of the religious right have done a bang-up job convincing people that all their attacks on same sex marriage aren’t intended to deny same sex couples any rights so much as preserve marriage as a union of one man and one woman.  So a lot of people apparently think that same sex couples aren’t really as utterly bereft of legal standing as they are.  You could get married in Massachusetts…<\/em>  Right.  And that and a few bucks will get them both a couple Big Macs…but not the right to live together here in the United States.  Repeat After Me: The Defense Of Marriage Act<\/em>.  Or, as Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council put it succinctly<\/a>…<\/p>\n

\n

“I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them into the United States because we believe homosexuality is destructive to society.”\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Gotta love that loving the sinner stuff…<\/p>\n

I’ve said this before: the only reason I’m as free to move around my own country as I am is because I am single.  If I was coupled, the two of us could not travel in or even through most of the states in this union because if something were to happen to one of us it could quickly become a nightmare for both of us.  That was the intent.  Not to protect marriage, but to persecute gay people for doing what we are emphatically not allowed to do: Fall in love.  Commit to one another.  Make a life together.  If gay people can find love, can find in it peace and fulfillment and joy and contentment, then clearly the righteous aren’t loving Jesus enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m stealing this from Andrew Sullivan because it’s worth your read… I’m 30 years old, from rural Ohio, and met my German boyfriend in Boston 8 years ago. We moved to Berlin together when his visa expired, where we lived for 5 years and eventually got married (okay, "entered into a civil union" is more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16,46,12],"class_list":["post-1300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-marriage","tag-the-kultar-kampf","tag-the-struggle-for-our-lives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1300\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}