Happy Valentine's Day/Freedom to Marry Week

Tomorrow, I'll celebrate Valentine's Day with my husband.

For a long time, I used the word "partner" in public to describe him, because same sex couples in Connecticut were not allowed to marry. I didn't want to take advantage of my heterosexual privilege to be able to label him as such.

Periodically, someone at church would ask him if we were still married -- or why I referred to him that way. It was a good teachable moment.

That changed when Connecticut became the second state to allow same sex couples to marry this past fall. I decided I could say "my husband" again in public -- at least in Massachusetts and Connecticut (and Canada, Spain, the Netherlands, and some other places I don't go to very often!)

This is "Freedom to Marry Week." My colleague Tim Palmer has an excellent blog on the Freedom to Marry website, along with other reflections on marriage for same sex couples. Two thirds of Americans now support either civil unions or marriage equality.

It's time for this discrimination against same sex couples to end. It doesn't make sense that same sex couples who want to commit themselves to each other publicly can't; it doesn't make sense that they are denied civil benefits; it doesn't make sense that the marriages clergy from denominations that support full inclusion perform don't count if the members of the couple have the same genitals. Really, that's what it all comes down to...biology.

Because it's really not about sex...it's pretty clear that lots of heterosexuals engage in sexual behaviors that many people would not want to do themselves.

So go to Freedom to Marry, get involved, speak out. As our Open Letter to Religious Leaders on Marriage Equality says, "where there is love, the sacred is always in our midst."

Happy Valentine's Day to all of you.