I am very happy that gay marriage has been legalized because the more open our society the better nature will fare. Legalizing gay marriage is one step closer to an enlightened society where plants and animals have the same rights as humans.
The fact that gay marriage has not been legally recognized up to now is sadly an indication of how far we have to go and how ignorant parts of our society are. In fact gay marriage has been a non-event for most straight people in New York City, the most liberal place in the state. I suspect that in other places of the state it was even met with disgust.
Here in NYC I’ve been vocally happy about gay marriage and straight people have responded to me with amusement and a little bewilderment. Most straight people don’t see gay marriage as relating to them. Even though they are mostly approving of gay marriage they don’t share my view that gay marriage is similar to the racial and gender equality issues we fought for with women emancipation or removing segregation.
These people are uniformed, though. This is BIG!
Not because marriage is a magic bullet. In fact many gays may come to curse this day once they discover that gay divorce just got a hell of a lot more expensive! Darlings you have no idea what you just got yourselves into. The state is now allowed to have a say in your matrimonial bliss (and agony). But that is another issue.
This is big because it is about recognizing gays as equal, regardless of the legality, in this case marriage.
As a New York green contractor intimately focused on turning New York green it has rocked my world. I see gay equality as intimately connected to my success at turning the world greener.
I see Gay marriage as our generation’s move towards enlightenment and universal equality for all life forms. No longer do gays have to sit at the back of the proverbial bus and this has huge impact on my work of turning New York green.
As long as some humans do not have the same rights as other humans we don’t have a chance in hell of saving our ecological planet. The reason for this is that humans in their arrogance place themselves well above plants and animals in superiority. And as long as some humans see themselves as superior to other humans we will never take the next jump to realizing that not only are all humans deserving of equal respect but so are all plants and all animals.
Plants and animals always fare worst in a closed society where there is large human suffering because they are always put at the bottom of the ladder. If a society does not respect its children, women, gays, people with disabilities, people with the wrong skin color, or any other creature who has the bad luck of being below the dominant oppressor then you can be sure the animals and plants are being treated even worse.
So any time we move closer to human equality I see it as a step towards animal and plant equality. We may be a long way off, but Eco Brooklyn’s mission statement of turning New York green keeps us focused on that vision.
So on this historic day Eco Brooklyn salutes all gays, married or not, as part of our vibrant and open society. May this bring more love, more respect and more happiness into the world. And may it trickle down to other parts of society, especially our plants and animals who contribute so much and ask for so little.
You go girl!