Today’s letter - why do you want war?

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

Samantha Smith was a ten-year-old girl in 1982 when she wrote to Soviet Premier Yuri Andropov about the growing arms race between the countries.

Dear Mr. Andropov,
Congratulations on your new job. I have been worrying about Russia and the United States getting into a nuclear war. …I would like to know why you want to conquer the world or at least our country. God made the world for us to live together in peace and not to fight.
Sincerely,
Samantha Smith

Mr. Andropov wrote back to say

We want nothing of the kind. No one in our country—neither workers, peasants, writers nor doctors, neither grown-ups nor children, nor members of the government—want either a big or “little” war.

and went on to invite Samantha and her family to come and visit, noting as anybody who has visited Moscow any other time, that “summer is best.”

As a gay dad, I feel like the Opponents of Equality have declared war on me and my family through a petition initiative to take away my legal and social status with a Constitutional amendment. It doesn’t help that the Republican Party Platform calls for my extermination too, saying that “We oppose same-sex partner benefits, child custody, and adoption.”

Mr. Schwarzenegger, I would like to know why you and your administration want to destroy same-sex couples, or at least my family. God made the world for us to live together in peace and not to fight.

Yours,

Today’s letter - I’m a lover, not a fighter

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

As a foreign-born citizen, I’m sure you take an interest with how people come to this country.

On Friday, U.S. Marine Cpl. Mario Ramos-Villalta who earned a Purple Heart during one of his two tours serving with the U.S. Marines in Afghanistan, finally received American citizenship barely a week after CNN told his story.

The same Department of Citizenship and Immigration Services routinely denies citizenship applications to the partners of gay Americans.

It really says something about America when we let in people who fight for us but not the people who love us. It’s kind of hard to say that we’re a peace-loving nation, isn’t it?

Yours,

Today’s letter - nature lays an egg

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

Happy Easter, Governor.

Opponents of same-sex marriage have pointed to nature to say same-sex relationships are not natural. Well, in addition to penguins, orangutans and humans, we have observed roosters choosing to couple with same-sex partners.

Julius and Big Daddy came to Los Angeles’ A Dog’s Life rescue organization last year as a couple, and continued to eschew “normative chicken social conventions” by choosing each other as companions.

Their temporary caretakers were able to find them a permanent home in Alabama where they will be able to continue to enjoy each other’s company through the rest of their days.

In the human world, we take companionship to a higher level through marriage, a mutual legal and social framework that ties two people together. Nature doesn’t discriminate between same-sex and heterosexual couples, and I wish you would not either. Stop meddling with nature and let same-sex couples choose marriage like everybody else.

Yours,

Today’s letter - Greek letters

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

The digits of today’s date, 3.14, make the beginning of the famous number Pi (p). This Greek letter represents the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its radius.

Another interesting Greek letter is lambda (l). This letter is used in chemistry to represent a catalyst, physics to represent wavelength, and society to represent lesbian and gay people.

Some also say it represents the Greek island Lesbos where we get the term Lesbian, and in a shield pattern used by the Spartan army, which encouraged homosexuality to boost troop morale.

Next week, same-sex marriage comes to the place that gave us the letters p and l. An Athens couple will be married by the mayor of the Kessariani quarter where the marriage laws do not specifically exclude same-sex couples. This action will culminate a circuitous battle for marriage equality, at least for this lesbian pair, bringing the letter l full-circle, back to its roots.

I wish Californian’s same-sex couples could enjoy as much freedom as they do in the birthplace of Democracy. Please become a catalyst for change and bring us full circle to our foundation: that all of us – regardless of wavelength - are created equal, with the same rights to liberty, justice and the pursuit of happiness.

Yours,

Today’s letter - just don’t call it “day”

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

Today is so-called “leap day” that only comes along once every four years. This “day” was fabricated and imposed on us in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII just so that Easter would fall at around the same time of year. It is really just a collection of hours to make up for the six hour discrepancy between the traditional year and the seasons, and not a “day.”

In ancient times, the adjustment was a whole ten-day month that happened every 25 years; by 46 BC, Caesar created a whole month – one day long – to deal with the problem. The month was legally identical to the day before it, “separate but equal” one might say. Clearly, it is a time period like no other in the calendar year, and it requires special treatment, for calling it a “day” demeans all of the other days of the year.

Where is the incentive for the sun to rise if just any time adjustment can be called a “day?” We need to protect the traditional definition of a year – which everybody knows is 365 days – against this assault to logic.

I propose that instead of calling this a “day” we call it a “domestic time adjustment interval” and that people who are born or die during this time period are recorded on the previous or following day.

You don’t call a “domestic partnership” a marriage – you should not call “February 29th” a day, or else the calendar, the foundation of our society and economy, would surely collapse.

Yours,

Today’s letter - you make my heart race

[I put this on a NASCAR Valentine's Day card with car number 9 and a picture of Kasey Kahne. Or it might be Greg Biffle, Carl Edwards or Jamie McMurray, I'm not sure, they didn't put names on the cards.]

TO: Governor Schwarzenegger

You would be my Valentine if you let me wed!!!

Today’s letter - longer than the writers’ strike with more ill effects

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

The Hollywood writers strike showed us what damage is caused when a few key people are removed from an important industry.

While the studios can just go back to work, the special ban on gay marriage continues to prevent committed couples from contributing to the economy and society.

It is time to get California back to full strength by supporting strong families and individual choice. Please tell the Supreme Court that California immediately needs all of its citizens to have access to the time-tested legal structure that only marriage provides.

Yours,

Today’s letter - endorse individual freedom

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

I read today that you finally endorsed John McCain for President in 2008. You said “McCain has a great vision to protect the environment and also protect the economy” and that strong investments in green technology can lead to a cleaner planet without sacrifices in quality of life.

Republicans say they believe in their core that individuals make the best decisions about what insurance they want to buy and how green they want to be, but you and Senator McCain both stop short of letting individuals decide who they can marry.

In 2004, Senator McCain was on the right path when he said “The constitutional amendment [banning gay marriage] strikes me as antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans” because it would take individual decisions away from states and give them to the federal government.

Well, thanks to Republicans like John McCain, the power to block same-sex couples from marriage is in the hands of the states. Now, Governor, it is your turn to send that power down to the people themselves.

Republicans say they believe that individuals can make the best decisions about making their family healthy and strong. Under that mantra, the only people who should be deciding if they should get married are the people getting married.

Yours,

Today’s letter - Marriages are Mergers

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Scott McCartney writes of mergers in the airline industry that “analysts think multiple major marriages could lie ahead.”

Since Government regulates such mergers, are you going to withhold your blessing because the participants in these unions are not one man and one woman?

I know it sounds ridiculous to withhold a license because of an immutable characteristic of the participants – but as odd as that sounds, the fact remains that you are the last obstacle to my marriage, which you are blocking because of my gender.

Please, Governor, you don’t have to sign or veto anything – just tell the people that specially excluding some couples from marriage is un-American and wrong, and get out of the way of my basic liberty.

Yours,

Today’s letter - Get Government out of our Living Rooms

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

Anybody familiar with the syndicated cartoon The Lockhorns, the TV show “Married with Children,” the political travails of Larry Craig or the new film The Kite Runner knows there is a profound difference between sex and marriage.

Across all media, the message is the same: regardless of what happens in bedrooms, bathrooms and alleys, the partnership of marriage is a unique identifier for two people who are special to each other on a much higher level. Sex takes place in the bedroom; marriage happens in the living room.

There are people who say that gay couples are just taking their relationships into the living room. I believe that real relationships start in the living room. Whether they or I am right, Government should not be meddling in the intimate affairs of either room.

We got Government out of our bedrooms. It is time to get it out of our living rooms as well. Regardless of what you believe about same-sex relationships, I wish you would explain to the people and your fellow Republicans that a government that leaves the issue of sex to the individuals involved ought to leave the issue of marriage to individuals as well.

Yours,

Today’s letter - smokers have more liberty for less public good

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

I don’t understand why Government supports the freedom of people to smoke, but not the freedom of people to marry.

In the economics of exchanging liberty “for the public good”, an outright ban on cigarettes would clearly tip to the public good. Yet your sense of justice tells you denying people even the freedom to poison others is wrong.

In the case of my marriage, Government has taken away my liberty “for the public good.” But there is no good that has come of it. The “secondhand marriage” that I’m thrust into costs taxpayers more money to administer, limits my participation in the economy, and sends the poisonous message that government can punish people not for what they do, but for their individual beliefs or immutable characteristics.

If there is no public good, why am I forced to surrender my liberty? Would you please explain to the people and your fellow Republicans that Government should not have eminent domain on individual freedom.

Yours,

Today’s letter - This joy remains tinged with sadness

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger -

Next week, three generations of our family will gather around the dinner table: us, our newborn twins, and all four of our parents. It is amazing to watch our parents glow in the pride of their grandchildren – the first on both sides of the family.

Yet, this joy remains tinged with sadness. Unlike our parents, my fiancée and I are blocked from marriage. I am upset at being excluded from the time-tested security the law provides married couples, but what really makes me sad is that it deprives our parents of the hope of seeing their children’s wedding. All of the gratitude, joy and unqualified support that will be in that room that day are not going to create a world where we are free to marry.

We will be the only unwed couple at the table - the ones who had our kids out of wedlock - and until we can wed, we will always be thinking there is a small sense of shame when we – despite all our hard work – are grouped with Anna Nicole and Larry Birkhead as our parents shake their heads and cluck their tongues about the fallout from their unwed escapades.

I have been finding ways to convert the shame into anger, and I was surprised at how easy it is: we simply blame the fact that we are treated as less than equal, less perfect and less human than other couples directly on you, Governor.

You could have signed AB 849 in 2005; you could have signed AB 43 this past October; you could have said that you think all Californians should have the same freedom to marry. But you did none of those things.

It will take a lot more than you to spoil our Thanksgiving, but I don’t think I’m being greedy to say that I wish your support could have been one more thing for which to be thankful, rather than one more thing over which to shake our heads and cluck our tongues.

Yours,

Today’s letter - A good team at bat, but one bad player put us way behind on human rights

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger –

I knew California was the first state to end the ban on interracial marriages (194 and I always assumed we would continue to be leaders and proponents for all civil rights. Imagine my surprise when I discovered California didn’t add sexual orientation to its protected classes until ten years after Wisconsin (1982). We were also out-scored by Massachusetts (1989), Connecticut (1991) and Hawaii (1991).

Likewise with marriage equivalency, we were behind the ball. Even Hawaii had domestic partnerships before we did (1997) and Vermont scored in 2000, Our Domestic-Partnership-is-the-same-as-marriage law didn’t get to home base until 2005, five years too late.

On marriage, we were poised to take the lead when love went to bat in San Francisco in the spring of 2004, and when our legislature became the first to channel that human need from the people to the governor. But Massachusetts won the World Series of civil rights when they approved marriage and you struck us out – becoming not part of the first state to end the ban on same-sex marriage, but the first governor to unilaterally block the people’s freedom to marry.

I am embarrassed that you took away our victory then, and embarrassed that you refuse to stand on the side of freedom and equality now. Please stop telling your friends, colleagues and neighbors that their relationships – and their humanity – is less important than yours, and support the freedom to marry.

Yours,