The Celebration of the Death of DOMA

Taken from George Takei's Facebook Page

The caption to the left is similar to how I looked when I turned on my computer yesterday morning to see some of the best news I have seen in years. The Defense of Marriage Act or DOMA had been put down by the Supreme Court of the United States as unconstitutional. For those of you who are unfamiliar with DOMA, as I once was, it is a law that was signed by President Clinton. Simply it mandated that if a same sex couple got a civil marriage or a civil union that other states did not need to recognize that. Such as a same sex couple that got married in Massachusetts moved to New York the state of New York would not have to recognize that relationship as legal. Not only did DOMA make it difficult for same sex couples to be able to move where they pleased, it made it difficult for them to travel and retain their rights. Such as if a same sex couple would be on vacation in Florida and they were in a car accident the family of the injured party would have rights to visitation of the injured, but the spouse may not have rights of visitation and could even be asked by the family and the hospital to leave. These are the kinds of situations that make the end of DOMA worth celebrating.

However not everyone in the Union will see this as a matter worth celebration. Many people in California donated thousands of dollars to make certain that Proposition Eight passed. And when it did lawmakers were faced with a group of people who proposed that it may be unconstitutional. This is what made DOMA and Proposition Eight so controversial: the fact that people said they wanted X and the Bill of Rights said people should get Y. This is what the Supreme Court among others has been trying to sort out for years since all this began back in 2008. Now that it has been declared unconstitutional there are groups of people who are upset because the Supreme Court did not vote in favor of the people. Instead they elected to give the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community their rights. This is why I celebrate.

However I need to make a confession to you. I am a Mormon. Mormons did much of the funding for Proposition Eight in California. I do not agree with their choice despite some of my beliefs being the same as theirs. I believe that religious marriage is meant to be between a man and a woman. The purpose of that marriage is to have a relationship that lasts longer than our lifetime here on earth and into the eternities before God. None of the doctrine I have read has ever led me to believe that God offers that same opportunity for those of the LGBT community. That is the primary reason why I am against religious marriage for the LGBT community. However civil marriage which is the legal form of the union which is recognized by the state and federal government I believe is crucial to the livelihood of this nation if we want to continue to brand our nation as the land of the free.

The United States of America was established to offer religious freedom to the puritans over two hundred years ago. During that time we have had to redefine freedom multiple times. First we had to figure out what it meant to give the natives freedom. We hurt them as individual nations by taking their lands, corrupting their culture, and expecting them to peacefully respond to our demands. I do not need to describe to you that this went poorly. Next we had to deal with the issue of slavery. This issue lasted much longer because of the belief that blacks were less than human at one point. With the Emancipation Proclamation we purchased a peaceless surrender of the slaves. Over the freedom of slaves we started a civil war, we instituted the Jim Crow Laws, and we oppressed blacks for another hundred years after they were granted their “freedom.” Today we face the issue of Gay Rights and we are responding to it in much the same way we did with same grace and sensitivity that we have with these other issues. We as a people are undereducated about it, fearful of it, and unwilling to recognize in what ways we may be wrong about how we are treating our fellow human beings. Same Sex Marriage is only one of a multitude of rights that the LGBT community is fighting for.

In my celebration of the Death of DOMA I am committing to becoming more educated on how to help support the rights of the LGBT community because I do not want to repeat the mistakes of our past. As a young black man, I still see discrimination towards me and I’ve seen it towards the LGBT community as well. And personally I hurt, because I know they hurt. Civil Rights isn’t about protecting the definition of a word that doesn’t need protection. The definition of marriage changed in the Oxford Dictionary already. And marriage in the context of what the LGBT community is working towards has everything to do with legal rights and nothing to do with trying to take the domestic comfort of the families of heterosexual couples. This is about making us as a people living according to the values that we state in our Constitution to stand by. If we are seeking the Life, Liberty, and Happiness of all the people in our nation then we by definition need to give to our people the same rights that they can be with those they love, take care of their families, and build our nation into the beacon of freedom that it claims to be.

I end this blog with one of my favorite songs. It is by Mackelmore and Lewis and it is called Same Love. I believe if we raise the rising generation to hate themselves, fear the judgment of others, and polarize themselves and others on the issues we face in our world we will fail them. We owe it to ourselves, and our children to educate ourselves that we may be full of love one for another and live in real freedom.

Three Points of No Return

"Past the point of no return

the final threshold -

the bridge is crossed, so stand

and watch it burn."

So now that the background music in your head has become "The Point of No Return" from Phantom of the Opera, our conversation today might resonate with you.  The point of no return is something that is common in our society, though we hardly speak of it as such.  Many of the choices we make in our lives can find meaning in the burning Opera House as we hatch our best plans to achieve worthy ends.  Perhaps the problem in such places is that we don't really think of changing our lives forever with certain choices, or that the effects of our choices change other peoples lives forever.  Today I'll only address three, but keep in mind there are far more than these.

The first point of no return we deal with in life is that of birth.  Nobody gets to go back in the womb after they have come out (unless they take the entire womb).  As my wife and I have been married five years this question is thrown at me every so often, "When is Jayrod Junior coming?"  I could answer with the fact that in all my wife's dreams we only have daughters, or talk about our psychological issues we are facing now so we don't screw up our kids later, but the main reason is simply this: We are not prepared to have kids yet.  It is because we know this is a point of no return.  When you have a child they have passed their first point of no return, but as a parent you should be used to this, and you owe it to them to give them the best life you are capable of giving them.

I know a lot of people who are really unhappy in their marriages because they made the choice to have children too soon.  Either they listened to a religious leader who said "It is selfish to not have children immediately after marriage," just weren't responsible with their birth control, or they were so baby hungry that they just couldn't wait.  My wife made a boundary early in our marriage that I have honored stating that until I took care of my issues we would not have any.  Funny thing is that boundary eventually became about our issues.  You can tell us how wrong that is or that we are "sinning," but the bottom line is: We don't care what you think.  We care what our children will think, and we know they will thank us for putting their welfare first.  The poor choices of our parents affected us, likewise as did their wise choices.  We want more wise choices to affect our children.

Another point of no return in life is marriage itself.  Obviously we have stopped regarding it as such, or else there wouldn't be such a high rate of divorce in the world today.  Some folks think of marriage like purchasing a house.  You get a starter spouse this year, to divorce them and later have your second who you hope to keep a lot longer.  But by marrying them you tie yourself to them both socially and emotionally.  It isn't as easy to disengage as just saying "I'm leaving."  You might see this on the outside, but there is emotional trauma underneath the surface, because it was a point of NO return.  Women leave those relationships believing men are all scum, or that something was wrong with them.  Men leave those relationships believing women are conniving whores and think they can treat them as less than human.  Mind you I'm not saying that is what everyone thinks, but trauma of that nature does occur.

I know because when I came home from Iraq the first time, my wife told me she wanted a divorce.  The wounds those words left were deep.  I scrambled to save my new marriage, and found myself failing for nearly three years and each time I heard those words "I want a divorce" I was even more traumatized.  If we had divorced, I would not have walked out of that marriage the same man who went into it.  Because just like marriage, divorce is also a point of no return.   Or perhaps we should refer to these points a little differently.  They are changing points in life.  They are like earthquakes, so life changing that the past looks entirely different to us afterwards.  And we wonder how we survived before that experience.

The last point of no return and perhaps the final is death.  After one dies, there really is no returning.  Not to life as you knew it.  Whether you believe in life after death, or just getting put in the ground, Death changes everything.  It is the final quake that reshapes the worlds of the people around you.  Most of us don't think about death, we just figure that we'll go on living until we die.  We don't prepare for it.  And saddest of all, we often don't live like we are going to die.  I'll repeat that.  

We don't live like we are going to die.  

You might ask me what I mean by that.  The answer is fairly simple.  Over the course of this blog we have spoken about birth and marriage.  These are subjects that have to do with the idea of legacy.  Legacy is what we leave behind after we have passed on.  Legacy doesn't have to do with our will and giving all our possessions away.  It has to do with making the world a better place.  Through our influence, through our children, and through our actions.  To never look at the choices we make in life lightly, and thoughtfully consider what it could mean years from now.  Perhaps that calls for us to live like chess players being able to anticipate what may happen in life five years from today, but how much better would the world be if people took having children more seriously, or getting married more seriously, or took their lives more seriously?  Perhaps I'm just old fashioned in the fact that I want my life to mean something one hundred years from now, and I the choices I make today will shape that reality.  Or maybe, just maybe that is one of the ideals we should strive to achieve.

Thanks for reading my rant.  Hopefully you got something out of it.  Whether to make your life better or to make your fiction more realistic.  I'm Jayrod Garrett, the First OG, and I hope that you navigate the points of no return successfully.  Peace, peoples!

What are some of the points of no return, you've successfully navigated?

Anniversary Wife Hack!

Hey Everybody! This is Mrs. The OG and today is our 5th wedding anniversary. Jayrod isn't really into traditional gifts, so I have to get creative in order to make him smile. I decided to hack into his blog and tell everyone how great he is.

 Jayrod and I were married in the Manti LDS temple in 2007. We met on an ancient website called MySpace, and I was drawn to him by a poem he had written and posted on his page. Well, that and a picture of himself in his army uniform. *drool* Our courtship was a quick one, not because it's an LDS tradition, but because 2 weeks after he proposed he was told that he was going to Iraq for a year. We were so broke when we got married, I had no wedding dress, there were no flowers, and our Utah reception was pot luck - but we were so happy.

It has been a great 5 years. That being said - marriage is hard. It is why half of them end. It's a ton of work, and if you ever take a day off, you have just given yourself an extra day of work to make up later. There are ups and downs, twists and turns, and on the day you get married you seem to think that the downs won't be so bad. We have shared a half decade of joy, laughter, love, funny dances, buying our first home, fun trips, friends, cuddling, holding hands, personal growth, sharing, and blessings. We have endured a half decade of deaths, being broke, depression, deployments, illness, sacrifice,  miscommunication and sinks full of dirty dishes that nobody wants to do.

And there is no other person that I would rather have endured with.

There are a few things that I would like to share about Jayrod, that you would otherwise never know.

On a bitter winter night this past January, Jayrod came across a homeless man downtown. He took him to a motel and paid for him to spend the night there. Someone spent a warm night in a clean bed because my husband was willing to sacrifice of his time and money. I was so proud of him that night.

When my Grandfather died, I was sobbing and dry heaving on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night. Jayrod quietly walked in, sat down on the floor and stayed with me for I don't know how long. There was nothing he could say to take away my pain, but he just sat there with me and shared that moment.

He has terrible allergies, his sinuses are always bothering him. Because of this, we decided to not have pets when we got married. But once he realized there was a hole in my life from not having creatures in my care, he changed his mind. A couple of days before Christmas 2008 we went to the Ogden Animal Shelter and filled that hole with cat hair.

I have a terrible irrational fear of flying, and I'm pretty embarrassed about it too because I know how ridiculous it is. As a result, I often take the long way to get places, opting to drive or sometimes I will take a train or bus. Jayrod has never complained about it or ridiculed me (like everyone else has.) He took a 52 hour train trip with me cross country and didn't mumble about it once. I think the army has taught him to be patient during long trips.

There is something that I want to share, but I think it will make him uncomfortable if I share it specifically. But I will say this, he was kind to the detainees in his care during his 1st deployment to Iraq.

Here are a few things that we have learned about marriage:

The things that drive you crazy about your spouse? In 10 years, they will probably still do those things - it just won't bother you anymore.

Putting a ring on your finger does not make you suddenly oblivious to the opposite sex. Sometimes we will notice attractive people. It's ok that we continue to have eyes and hormones after our nuptials. Thinking that someone else is attractive does not mean that you love your spouse any less. We will occasionally point out attractive people to each other.

Name calling does not belong in a marriage. In 5 years of fights, Jayrod has never once called me an ugly name, and I have only done it once for which I swiftly apologized.

The obligation of marriage is what binds you together through the times where you might not want to be together. Those feelings will pass, and you will be glad for the glue that held you together.

Love is loving the other person more than you love your own pride.

Also, a list of books that have helped us tremendously:

The 5 Love Languages
And They Were Not Ashamed
Desperate Marriages
The 5 Languages of Apology
CoDependent No More
Between Husband and Wife
The Power of Commitment

Happy Anniversary Bear! This is my gift to you. Well, actually the new wedding ring that I gave you in December... that was supposed to be your gift. But there was no way in hell I was going to wait 6 months to give that to you. I love you!

Proposition Eight and Marriage

At the risk of sharing a bit too much of myself with my audience today I decided, instead of posting about the unjust story of Rumpelstiltskin, I would talk about a current issue.  That is gay rights.  First before anything else I would like you to know that I fully support gay rights.  I think that we as law abiding citizens should all share the same rights as other people.  There should be no discrimination between people in matters of employment, rearing a family, or privileges and rights offered by the government to a person.  However there is a place where I draw my line.  It is in religion.

As I mentioned in another post recently I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (in other words a Mormon).  And as many of you know in the Proposition Eight controversy many members of my church donated money to the cause of seeing Gay Marriage blocked in the state of California.  In 2010 it was overturned and then people appealed it.  And yesterday that decision was upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California.  Which means it is finally truly legal for homosexuals to marry in California.  The entire issue of Proposition Eight has caused a great deal of challenges in the homes of many Mormons.  Even in my home.  My wife entirely believes that gays should have the right to marry.  I don't.

Most of the difficulty of the issue comes from the idea of whether or not marriage is a religious term or a legal term.  Because if it is meant to be a legal term then, of course gays need to have the right to marry and you cannot deny them that.  It would be a gross violation of civil rights.  And this is exactly where my wife and many people in the LGBT (or Lesbian-Gay-Bi-sexual-Transgendered) community are.  Because it is a legal term to deny them the right isn't only unconstitutional, but it sends us back to hundreds of years in our treatment of people in our nation.

I believe that marriage is supposed to be between a man and a woman who are joined in a holy union before God.  It is a religious ceremony and I would prefer it to remain that way.  However because of the nature of how our country was founded and has grown, it is no longer simply a religious ceremony as I would like.  It is so riddled with political and legal rules that it cannot ever be simply a religious ceremony of the union between a man and a woman again.

Do not misunderstand me, I do not mean to say if a church decides they desire to endorse a man and man or a woman and woman relationship that it is wrong.  I am saying that I personally don't believe in that.  There is a huge difference between those two concepts.

So now with all of this legal mumbo-jumbo concerning marriage and civil unions, I find myself wondering how in the world do we make this just?  How do we make this fair?  Gays can't get married in every state, and civil unions aren't accepted universally to my knowledge either.  And because I want the world to be a place where we can accept the diversity and uniqueness of everyone in the world, I need to have a solution to this current problem.

So I decided that we should abolish the legal function of marriage and instead institute civil unions throughout all those who are currently married.  This would do several things.  It would have all the companies who have their current laws set up to help only those who are married rewrite their rules and laws for their companies in such a way that it would have to include all those who are currently in civil unions.  It would also remove marriage which is a religious term from the vocabulary of politics.  It would return the power of declaring what marriage is and is not to the individual churches and religions themselves.

Personally I wouldn't mind what I am in being known as a civil union legally and a marriage religiously.  It wouldn't change how I feel about my wife.  It wouldn't change my rights or privileges.  It wouldn't make me any less of an Iraqi veteran.  It would enable people who love each other to have legal rights to their children with their partner, to change the way people see the LGBT community in their neighborhood, and perhaps most important teach us as a nation that each of us has an individual worth and value.  That we shouldn't hate each other so much, nor should we fight against each other so much, and instead we should seek to find how we can envelop the entire human family within the bounds of respect, truth, and love.  And I now stand by the overturn of Proposition Eight, grateful that the people of California spoke for what they wanted for themselves.

I chose this as my subject because during my writing today I was writing about a young female warrior who has PTSD (or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) in my story.  And it got me thinking about how sometimes people are so misunderstood and especially in that community.  Speaking of communities, perhaps I should share my goals now.

My ROW Goals for the week are now as follows:
1. Finishing a Scene of "Crimes of the Umbramancer" each day.
     I've been searching for a job lately and the same time that is dedicated to the job search is often shared with writing, so I'm behind.  I plan on catching up by this evening however though.  (For the record I got an interview coming up this Monday, which I'm super excited about.  Hopefully this will work out for the best.)
2. Comment on ten blogs in ROW80:
     I've been working hard on this goal.  I'm starting to retweet blogs of things I find important and also comment as much as possible.  I've commented on nobody's ROW80 posts for this week, but a lot of their regular blogs.  I'll take care of this tonight when I post however.
3. No more than twelve hours of video games per week.
     I haven't played anything this week at all.  I'm pretty proud of myself.
4. Bedtime between 11PM and Midnight each day so I can be up at six or seven to take advantage of the early hours to write.
     Of seven days I got about four.  Much better than last week.  But I think I still can do a lot better than that.
5. Walking at least a mile five times a week.
     I've probably gotten to this honestly about three out of five days this week.  I'm kinda bummed about that.  Being so busy with various obligations has made it difficult to find the time.  But I'm hoping this upcoming week will be better.
6. Finding a new job in the upcoming month.
    This past weekend I had a conversation with an Amir Jackson, the Founder of a Nurture the Creative Mind and perhaps I might be able to work with his organization and bring some of my talents to helping the minds and talents of local youth grow.  And as recent as this afternoon I spoke with a woman at a local Junior High about being able to work in a program at their school to help them out.  So things may be looking up in terms of jobs.  I worry only because I need to find enough employment to support my wife and I.  I am ever hopeful though.

You might also notice that I recently changed the design of my blog slightly.  I am working on branding myself and I wanted colors that represented me as well as something I could have in my twitter profile also.  I chose the topic today, because part of who I am, is about being fair and just as best as I can see how.  I might be wrong, but part of taking a stand for what you believe in is taking the chance that you could be wrong.  And I would love to hear you tell me why I'm wrong, or why I'm right, or what you liked about this.  Please comment below and I'll make certain to get back to you as soon as I can.  I sincerely enjoy responding to everyone's comments.


Here's the links to other ROW80 blogs.  Hopefully you find interesting comments there too.  Happy reading!