Marriage in our Human Society

Yesterday, Peter Danzig invited me to join the Facebook group LDSApology. I have been trying to sit on the fence on this issue for quite a while, while I learned more. I've spoken with members of this unfortunate group of humans, each time I've encountered the tremendous troubles that they have had, both personally and with legalities. While their legal inequities are certainly great, and possibly enough to gain my vote on this issue, it is their personal struggles that most influence my decision on this matter. I remember reading Carol Lynn Pearson's book Goodbye, I love you back in the eighties, and discovering many of my high school friends from drama and choir were gay (after I left highschool). This morning, I read Stuart Mathis' struggle on the subject (pictured here) when the Mormon church supported California Proposition 22. I recalled the tremendous local effort put forth by the church (as I lived in Santa Rosa California at that time).

I wrote my letter to ldsapology@gmail.com :

While I am neither gay, nor mormon (as of last week), I can no longer sit on the fence on this issue. The church remains stoically quiet while the GL community has made its point. Humans need each other. We need each other more than anything. Marriage is THE accepted symbol of our society to make our commitment to another human being. To refuse one class of human beings this right, is to deny them society in fellow humanhood.

Please add my name to your petition.

Kind Regards.

Brent Fisher

I hope you will join me in this petition as well. Let the title of Carol Lynn Pearson's recent book, "No more Goodbyes" work on you for a bit, and lastly, remember the closing remarks given by Stuart Mathis' Bishop in his heart felt requiem:

In his famous meditation on death, John Donne wrote, "Who can remove from that bell [for the dying] which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. ... Any man's death diminishes me, ... and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

The bell that tolls for Stuart Matis tolls for us all, for we are all diminished by his passing.