Existential Rant

As we reported way back in our very first post, Pennsylvania Senator John Eichelberger (left), Republican from Blair County, recently introduced a bill in Harrisburg to ban same-sex marriage. We can’t get legally married in our home state anyway, since it’s already limited to heterosexuals, but Eichelberger’s amendment would enshrine that prejudice in our state constitution.

Opposing Eichelberger is Senator Daylin Leach (right), from a part of the state that won’t make you swear you just heard the dueling banjos from Deliverance. Leach introduced a bill that would grant full, equal marriage rights to same-sex couples in Pennsylvania, and recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.

The two were in Philly Friday, and debated each other on WHYY’s Radio Times. Towleroad has excerpts of the transcript, and Eichelberger’s hate is on full display. It’s the usual stupidity; gay marriage will lead to polygamy and child molestation, that sort of thing. Predictably, Eichelberger is fixated on the sexual aspect of our relationship, reducing same-sex marriages to something he can only refer to as “that type of behavior.” Why do bigots think that the only thing that binds us as a couple is sex? People, we’re MARRIED (practically). We, like most married people, are bound by habit, comfort and a mutual fear of growing old alone. Yes, and l-o-v-e, but we’re not getting mushy on the blog.

He seems to treat our marriage as some sort of fetish, which we suppose it is in his warped mind. “They can practice whatever sexual activity they like to practice.” That’s nice, but we weren’t seeking your approval in the first place, Senator. What we’d like to do is file a joint tax return, or know that if one of us got sick or hurt, the other would be recognized as the legal partner and advocate for the patient, just like any other husband or wife. We’d like to be a family, in law as well as in deed. We’d like the same rights and privileges heterosexual couples receive when they are married. We’d like equality.

Eichelberger isn’t having any of it; in his world view, gay families, at best, are “[allowed] to exist.” Well, not as families; legal recognition of our relationship is a “special consideration.” He apparently thinks we should be content that we’re allowed to exist, free to “practice whatever sexual activity” we’d like. If we’d just wanted that, we could have stayed single!