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I'll be married 20 years this May. My sister just celebrated her 31st anniversary yesterday, and my parents will celebrate their 60th next month. In fact, as I look back through my family tree, I haven't found so much as one instance of divorce. This isn’t to brag (not too much anyway). My point is to simply establish some raw credentials that I come from a family that takes marriage pretty seriously.

Yet, no matter how I look at it, I can't see how gay marriage threatens or affects my marriage, those of my family or anyone else's for that matter. I don't see it. Defend marriage? From what?

A gay man or woman' is able to make medical decisions for their partner as a spouse would. Who does this hurt? A gay man or woman inherits their partner's estate. This does not effect me, or anyone outside of some rather selfish relatives.

Health insurance, credit ratings, powers of attorney – Whether you are comfortable with them or not, does the fact that committed homosexual couples could go about these things with the ease of married couples really have any significant negative effect on us heterosexuals?

Certainly a gay person referring to themselves as "married" doesn't have any direct effect on us whether we approve or not.

As near as I can tell, the great adverse reaction to the idea of gay marriage is reactionism in it's purest form: "Gays want it, they think it will make them happy therefore we must be against it."

Now what really bothers me is at a time when we have serious problems to consider: the Iraq occupation, terrorism, a huge deficit, the decline of our manufacturing base, corruption in the securities industry, health care, and on and on. These things really impact our daily lives and these are the type of things this coming presidential election should be about.

Now I'm afraid this election year is going to get all wrapped up in something as comparatively trivial as gay marriage, just as the pledge of allegiance and flag burning got all blown out of proportion as issues in previous elections. Emotional issues, sure; but not sustentative ones. Trust me, we have far more important things with which to be concerned.