You don’t deserve marriage unless you fight for it

When we last met, we were discussing GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum’s Colorado surge. Tens of thousands of Coloradans came to support his anti-Obama/anti-gay platform.

Now we’ve learned from a Senate Judiciary Committee member that 30,000 “hand addressed” postcards and letters from voters were delivered to state senators asking them not to support same-sex relationship recognition. Who organized the delivery? I’m not sure. I can take a wild guess. And I’ll probably only need one: Focus on the Family.

OK, just to be safe: if it wasn’t Focus on the Family, it was one of their many affiliates, if not all of them working together. Hell, let’s throw in the Catholic Church for good measure.

Yes, the same Catholic Church that has been screaming about their religious liberties being violated. Never mind a woman’s reproductive rights.

I digress.

Since the Colorado Civil Union Act was first struck down by a Republican House committee in 2011, One Colorado, the organization leading the lobbying effort on behalf of our community for a civil union law, has been working in key communities: rural, conservative state House and Senate swing districts. Adopt a legislator! Invite her or him over for dinner, send a holiday card, or write a letter. Be sure to tell your legislator if your child took first place in the science fair. And no, you didn’t help her on the project. Yup, she’s that smart.

And while constituent-on-lawmaker efforts might tug at a wavering legislator’s heartstrings, nothing gets the attention of a politician – a politician up for re-election – like a shit-ton of angry and scared voters.

Angry. Scared. That’s the M.O. of whoever sent those letters.

After hearing Colorado’s most anti-gay state senator share the news of the delivery of a massive heap of postcards, I jokingly tweeted that the postcards were filled out at the Republican caucuses.

Truth be told, it’s worse. The postcards were probably signed at any number of churches on a Sunday not that long ago, an operative tells me.

Days later, I was out and about. First, Howard Dental’s Bingo Ball. Then, Tracks. Then, Charlie’s. Several whiskey and ginger ales later, I started thinking about what the operative told me. The word ‘church’ continued to flash across my mind.

A church, or more generally, a house of worship, is a place where a community goes to share their expression of hope, love and faith. In modern days, it also happens to be a space where good people go to get the Santorum scared out of them.

I admit, the aforementioned conversation I had with the operative was via text. A lot can get lost in translation. But the way I read “church,” made me feel like this person was conceding the religious right has a tool we don’t have.

I don’t buy that for one minute.

Weekend after weekend we fill bars, fundraisers, theater houses, malls and museums by the thousands. The United State census shows there are more than 16,000 same-sex couples living in Colorado. Multiply that by two and you already have 32,000 gays and lesbians, not including single folks. And let’s not forget how we pack Civic Center for our annual weekend of Pride by the hundreds of thousands.

There’s enough gay in that park to fill every megachurch in Colorado Springs and then some.

The problem is either you don’t care, aren’t aware of the issues or have some preconceived notion that you don’t matter.

A popular question on Out Front Colorado’s Facebook page has been ‘why are we begging and pleading for civil unions and not fighting for full marriage equality?’

There are plenty of logical reasons why this is the case in Colorado.
But the way I see it, until something radically changes within our community, until we are as active and mobilized in the political process as the religious right, we don’t deserve it.

And, we’ll never earn it.

Now, that’s something to be angry and scared about.