I was going to bore you with my mindless drunken stories of Texas and the birth of “Boys Gone Wild,” but I’ll spare you the petty details of my life and concentrate on a much larger issue at hand – gay marriage. ?You may be sick of hearing about it, but talking breeds change and maybe that’s what we need.

Almost everyday in the newspapers I see pictures of Bible huggers holding signs, exclaiming the word of their God and stressing that one man, one woman marriage is the only way to prosper.

I want to scream that people are gay and it is OK. ?

It’s not contagious; it’s not going to hurt someone if the boy or girl who sits next to you likes someone of his or her own sex. ?

It’s not just marriage, it’s not just the morality of the situation. Marriage is essentially a legal certificate of promise.?The real issue deals with the legal rights that are bestowed upon married couples that should be granted to any citizen who wants it.

I didn’t realize the depth of this issue until a couple of weeks ago and I was shocked.?

Did you know married couples have the automatic right to visit each other in the hospital and make medical decisions for one another??Same-sex couples can be denied this right without question.

They can be denied family leave from work to care for their significant other if they get ill, while straight couples are legally entitled to the leave. ?And sometimes employers will offer health insurance for both partners in a marriage, but not to gay and lesbian couples.

The list goes on and on. There are so many other reasons why a ban on same-sex marriage is a serious breach of fundamental human rights. ?

My friend Seth pointed out to me that most people who vehemently oppose gay marriage are pro-life.?They fight for life but they find it perfectly acceptable to devalue homosexuals by treating them as second-class citizens because somewhere in some book that was written thousands of years ago it said that marriage is for one man, one woman. ?

If you don’t agree with me, that’s fine. You don’t have to.

Lindsay Sainlar’s column runs on Thursdays. You can reach her at [email protected].

This column does not reflect the view of the Herald or its nine-member editorial board.