I have two boys, who I love more than anything in the entire world.  I was made to be their mama, and I am profoundly grateful that I have that honor.  They light up my days with love and joy.  Watching them learn and grow and become more of who they are each day is an amazing blessing.  I am so lucky.

It is my most desperate hope that one day, they grow up to be kind, strong, intelligent, happy, peaceful, loving men.  I hope they have lives that fill them with joy.  I hope they live such wonderful, exuberant, amazing lives bursting with passion that they don’t think to call me every day.  And I hope they are loved.  I hope they find someone who sees the fantastically wonderful people that they are and who feel as lucky to be in their lives as I do.

Because, love is fantastic.  And because life is hard.  Stuff happens.  Things get tough, hearts get broken, people suffer and struggle.  And we are all saved by the people who carry us through that.  We ALL need each other.  Each of us gets to, if we’re lucky enough to find them, choose that one other person we need beside us on those darkest days — and the one we want to share the gorgeous, transcendent, bliss-filled moments with, too.  We ALL get to choose.  And that choice, once made, should be equal, in the eyes of the law, whoever is making it and whoever they choose.

Equal.  The SAME.  Not “equivalent”.

Because, people, life is hard and we need each other.  Nobody should have to do it alone and nobody gets an asterisk for “almost but not quite”.  Whatever the future holds for my boys, my friends, my friends’ children, their friends and millions of others that I’ll never know, I want them to get to share their love, and their life, with the person they choose.

Frankly, I hope my kids grow up to read this and fail to understand the need to talk about marriage equality.  I hope they think that this discussion is ludicrous, because, in the world they inhabit, it will hopefully make no sense to them.  I hope that my children will inherit a world where this argument is antiquated, embarrassing and recognized as being fed only by hate and unfounded fear.

I’m an American, and I believe in freedom of religion.  I believe this also grants us freedom from religion.  The separation of Church and State ought to guarantee that the outdated morality of much of our citizenry cannot dictate the law of our nation.  Marriage, as defined by the Church, is the business of the Church (although hate and exclusion have no place there, either).  But marriage, as defined by the State, belongs to all of us.  Equally.